Hello everyone,
This blog has been almost exclusively for documenting my FFXIV journey and experience, however I undertook and completed something a bit different a few days ago which I'm quite proud of, and wanted to put it here so I can look back on it in the future.
On Saturday the 5th of March, I took part in the Vow Of The Disciple day 1 contest mode in Destiny 2, and managed to complete it. Earning myself a rare emblem and bragging rights in the process.
I've played Destiny on and off since the launch of Destiny 1, but always fairly casually. I've cleared plenty of raids in the past, but never even close to day 1. I always used to play it with some real life friends for a few hours on release, and then we would go back in when contest mode was finished, and when it was a lot easier to get the clear and loot.
During a quiet time in FFXIV, I decided to get back into the game again, and managed to find a clan called EXG (Excelcius Gaming) I quickly found myself to like the clan, as many of their members also played FFXIV, and therefore we shared common interests and got on well.
I managed to clear Deep Stone Crypt and Vault of glass with relative ease, including farming VoG for several weeks with a set group of people. Bungie then announced The Witch Queen Expansion, which looked fantastic, and while we vaguely discussed the possibility of a day 1 clear in our group, we never really finalised these plans.
I was then asked by Creative, who was part of this VoG group if I wanted to form a group to try and tackle the upcoming raid in day one. This would be with 2 others in our clan who weren't in our VoG group, but either had previous day 1 experience or were competant players, and wanted to raid until it was cleared, or until the 24 hours had passed.
I was at first fairly reluctant. I am nowhere near as good at D2 than I am at FFXIV, and I was essentially going in with very experienced and capable players. I was reassured by Ciphaz that if I was capable of clearing ultimates in FFXIV, that I could do this, and that they had faith that I could do it based on what i had accomplished since coming back to the game. So I agreed. I was told how to prepare for the raid in terms of weapons, loadouts and materials, and so I farmed for about 60 hours from the start of the expansion until the raid was made available about 10 days after expansion release.
Our other 2 members we recruited from LFG, both of which had previous day 1 clears, and seemed to be capable players. We initially planned to do master VoG to have a chance to get to know each other, and check that everyone was capable of clearing the raid, however Creative had a power cut during the storms that the UK was hit with and we had to call it off. We agreed to just prepare as much as possible leading up to the raid and it would be fine.
Our 5th member Zero, was a very good player. He knows how to play the game very well, pumps out good damage, and was pretty quiet, but that's a good thing when you need comms clear for mechanics.
Our 6th player however, who I will not name (it's not the guy in the screenshot, I will explain in a bit) was the exact opposite.
We got through the intial add clear with no issues and quickly got to the first puzzle encounter. It then became quite apparent that this 6th member was not as we expected. We essentially had to split into 3 groups of two, and he was paired with me. I did the majority of the mechanics for our side of the room, and what little I left for him to do he was messing up a fair bit. It took us a few hours to clear the first encounter, so we didn't think much of it, so moved on to the first boss encounter.
This was when the problems started. This guy:
-Kept dying to adds, when the other two people doing add clear and stunning the boss were doing so very consistently.
-Was doing absolutely awful DPS. Being beaten by two titans using a banner shield, which meant they couldn't DPS for a third of the DPS phase, when he could, and doing a third of the damage that Me, Ciphaz, and Zero were doing
-Either kept going AFK, or asking for time to change his build after nearly every attempt, even though we had barely made any progress that would warrant changes needing to be made and wasting valuable time.
-Kept talking or complaining during mechanics where Me and Ciphaz needed to call out to each other and Creative, making it very difficult to do so, and resulting in wipes.
-Refused to listen to any advice that we would give him to improve his DPS or performance. He came across as quite a knowledgable player leading up to the raid, suggesting weapons and builds for us to use, but seemingly could not execute this himself.
We put up with the above for about 6 hours, and eventually got fed up. We told the guy that it wasn't working and he clearly wasn't capable of performing, and kicked him out of the raid and discord. We then went to the LFG discord and found another guy to replace him, and a couple of hours later. We made good progress and killed the boss.
We then got to the gauntlet part of the raid, it was fairly tough, with a lot going on and a lot to figure out, but about 4-5 hours later we got it done. The mood had improved dramatically at this point now we had 6 good players, so we were in hgih spirits despite being quite tired.
After going through the jump puzzle and reaching the final boss. We had about 10 hours left to complete the raid day 1. The contest mode had been extended by 24 hours as the launch of the raid was riddled with errors which thankfully we managed to avoid. But we wanted to clear it day 1 so we wouldn't have to come back, and we couldn't really delay it, as some people had to go to work on Monday morning. So we made the decision to push on and get it done.
At this point, we had been playing for about 14-15 hours, and we were starting to tire mentally. To add to this, the last boss was incredibly buggy. Mechanics weren't registering despite us doing them correctly, the boss had a mechanics where it would shoot out beams in multiple directions, and often it would shoot one where it was not supposed to, hitting people and killing them, which would cause us to need to wipe as the DPS check was so tight.
This was causing a few of us to become very frustrated, and we were expressing this verbally, this seemingly caused our replacement member to become fed up and he left the raid and discord at around the 20 hour mark. We debated taking a break to get a bit of sleep before returning as the emblem was available for a further 24 hours, but we were hungry for a day 1 clear, so again, we found a LFG and carried on.
In came Motorolaphone. the guy had also been at it since release with several LFG groups, and was frustrated, but he fitted in well with us at this point, He was a lot more consistent than our previous guy, and did better damage. We came so close to killing the boss about 3-4 times, and arguably, it should have died twice but it did not due to seemingly being bugged.
We decided to change our dps strat a bit, opting for a titan bubble to increase damage a bit more. and finally, after 23 hours and 8 minutes in total. The final boss died and the raid was over. We all shouted in relief. It was rough as hell. but we finally did it. and could go and get some well earned sleep.
Adrenaline had kicked in for most of us, so we hung around to chat until the 24 hours was up, and to see how many teams had managed to clear it, and the final number was 902 teams day 1. Which was quite a low number compared to the previous raid.
At this point, my back was killing me, and my legs were numb from being sat at my desk on and off for a full day straight. So I went to bed at about 6PM, and woke up a 8AM the next day for work. Which was about 14 hours. I also went back to bed after work had finished as I was still tired. fuck I'm getting old...
If you had asked me after we had killed the final boss, if I would do this again, I would have answered no, however after catching up on sleep, recovering, and processing the experience. It was a lot of fun, and it wouldn't have been so time consuming had we had a competant 6th member from the beginning.
Another raid is going to be released in about 6 months. So I will likely be going again for that. But a huge thanks to Creative, Ciphaz, Thear, and Zero. Despite the struggle, we never gave up, never once snapped at each other, and our determination and perseverance bought us home the win, also thanks to Motorolaphone for coming in during the dying stages and helping us get it. hopefully we can all stay together for the next raid.
A lot has happened in XIV since my last blog post, some good, some bad. I will make a post about it at some point. But until then. stay safe, and see you in game!
-Aud/Dom.
