The Nettle Tea Chronicles

Cassandra

The rest of the [Routine Quest : Area Safeguard] was going well. Nyx and Firo had zero trouble handling their respective turns and were mostly competing between themselves for the best clear time on the waves.

Cassandra was competing more with Sylvia in terms of clear time for their waves, and it was not an easy win. Even with Evie's entire build made precisely for quick mob clear times, Sylvia's gameplay as a [Blade] was very good.

The two [Fencer] [Dedications] were [Blade], which focused on a single one-handed weapon and a free hand, and [Reaver], a dual weapon variant. Sylvia was built as a [Blade], and used all of the finesse and clean play that the class was built around beautifully.

Sylvia was a Sylph, and her character design was clearly well thought out by the player. He utilized the Sylph's distinct dainty and flighty personality to contrast the [Blade's] choreography-like fighting style wonderfully. Sylvia was dressed in light pastel-colored leathers that were probably a high-level variation on low level gear - it had more ornate bits and bobs attached to the otherwise simple armor design. She also had a long ponytail of mixed pink and blue that was reminiscent of cotton candy colors. And Mag Mell's game engine brought that long tail of hair to life as she danced around the battlefield.

Cass felt like acknowledging how a [Blade's] general gameplay revolved around dodging attacks to successfully tank took away from the actual spectacle of watching one do their job. While it was impressive to watch an [Aegis] like Fiona stand their ground and eat a massive boss attack with their shield without blinking, or see an [Ebon] like Aleister turn aside an attack with a barrier of magic, watching a good [Blade] dance around an enemy was a treat all its own.

[Blades] had multiple skills that combined movement, invulnerability frames, and debuffs into a single skill that would, for example, allow them to dodge an attack, reposition, and [Trip] the enemy in a single move. They may not have access to a lot of those types of skills, but their entire gameplan revolved around using the ones they did have in a rotation to keep themselves alive. With that in mind, they typically shined most in a single-target scenario where they could keep their opponent under their control and rule the fight.

As one might expect, they were absolute monsters in PvP for that same reason when played well. At least in one-on-one scenarios, anyway.

So Cass wasn't expecting anything mind-blowing when Sylvia had taken her turn against the wave of enemies. She was sure that they would have no issues with the enemies, generally speaking, but she was expecting something more akin to her own turn, revolving around careful positioning and high damage from very specific attacks.

Instead, Sylvia looked like she was a dancer dominating the field. Cass was pretty sure that Sylvia wasn't using the common 'meta' [Blade] set up, with the way she dashed around the field. She used multiple thrust attacks that sent her dashing through the entire group of enemies, hitting everything in her path. Parries with conal AoE counters followed, then quick repositions to get out of danger and it repeated.

"Holy shit."

"I know, right?" Sylvia laughed. "Endgame focuses so much on the big boss fights - which is fair - so everyone gets hyper focused on the disabler-type Blade that's really strong in boss fights as a main tank." He snorted as he sent Sylvia flying through the center of the mass of enemies, then danced backward on the new side of the mob, preparing for more attacks.

"Having a strong meta is always a bit of a curse. It takes some of the fun out of the game. Like playing a hyper mobility focused Blade like this."

Once the last group of enemies spawned, Sylvia did a few more quick dashes to gather everything up into a group before using a few more skills in quick succession. Sylvia quite literally pirouetted through the group while attacking, moving from one enemy to the next, spinning and cleaving everything in the group. Following that with another two dashes with attacks built in basically cleaned up the rest of the mobs.

Zoe whistled. "Damn."

"Sylvia's been a solid tank friend for a while now." Firo said. "I always call him when I need someone to get me a quick queue for dailies."

"Happy to do it." Sylvia said brightly. "Especially when I can get to play the weirder builds like this instead of the meta tank stuff. I've literally been kicked from groups for bringing this exact build into the raids."

"That sucks." Cass said. "Like, bringing my damage-focused nonsense build into a raid setting would be obviously bad. But if you're able to do your job, who cares how you've set up your skills?"

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"Lots of people do, sadly." Sylvia slipped back to stand with the rest of the group while they waited for the boss to spawn. It did so fairly quickly, and the group engaged it immediately. "Like I said, it's the curse of a meta. People just love to optimize the fun out of a game."

"They do." Firo said. "I haven't seen it first hand too much in Mag Mell because I play a pretty on meta version of the Invoker, but I've seen it first hand in lots of other games."

"Same here." Zoe said. "I've been kicked out of groups for playing off-meta classes and the like."

Cass watched as Sylvia easily grabbed and held [Threat] on the boss while taking minimal damage. Even in her significantly healing-reduced state, she had no issue keeping the group alive. And while she had had concerns that Sylvia's 'hyper-mobile' version of [Blade] would mean the boss turned a lot, leaving Nyx struggling to hit her [Back Attacks], the tank was utilizing quick positioning skills to dodge through the big attacks, then jumping back to her original position. It was really quite fun to watch.

"It's actually crazy how many people care about strict metas and tier lists and that sort of thing." Cass said, thinking about her occasional forays into fighting games or MOBAs, and so much of the online discourse being centered on tier lists and meta item builds and the like. She had to admit, of course, it all had its place. But its place was also basically at the top levels of play, and even then, expertise could often overcome a tier disparity. One-tricking characters was a thing that existed, after all.

"To be fair," Sylvia said, "making tier lists is fun. And the discussion around metas and stuff can be equally as fun." Cass could hear the shrug implied in his voice. "But I absolutely draw the line at stopping people from playing the game how they want. Unless they're being actively detrimental to the group."

"That's the issue, isn't it?" Firo asked. "All of the gatekeeping or whatever comes from people saying that not playing on-meta options is actively hindering the other party members."

"Yeah. It's all about where you draw the line on actively hindering the game." Zoe said. "It's simultaneously an interesting and absolutely bullshit topic."

Cass chuckled as she watched the boss they had been fighting drop. Her [Starlight Lance] still had a minute left on its cooldown, so she was relieved it would probably be up for the end of her wave, which she stepped up to prepare for while they talked. "It's tough, because at least in a situation like Mag Mell's when it comes to things like raid, the outcome is pretty binary; you either win or lose. So, as long as the fight in doable with your loadout, you should be allowed to play how you want."

"Agreed." Zoe said.

"It gets messier when you get into cooperative PvP, though." Firo said. "Say, like, hero shooters for example. Someone could pick a bad character and still win. But is choosing a bad character and making your teammates cover for your underperforming actively detrimental to your team? Do you make them switch to a higher tier character or just play what they want? Is someone picking a bad character and your team suddenly losing their fault? Or was the other team just better?"

Cass groaned. "Ugh, Firo, you're hurting my brain." She said, trying to focus on clearing her wave of enemies. Thankfully, she knew exactly what her plan was and was playing fine despite the lack of concentration.

"Sorry."

"He's right though. It's all about where people draw the line." Zoe said. "And, I guess, making friends who agree with where you draw the line."

"True." Sylvia said.

"Hooray for build freedom!" Cass cheered as she let her [Starlight Lance] vaporize the last group of enemies in her wave. Zoe, Firo, and Sylvia all followed up her cheer with their own, whooping with excitement.

Nyx stepped in for her second turn at the enemies, ready for action as the group continued to chat about it all. The talk even turned to the PvP meta in the game briefly, when Sylvia brought up the PvP event that was supposedly coming in a couple weeks, just after the new year. Cass had planned to take part a bit, mostly just for fun, but was waiting to see who - if any - from Clan Nettle Tea would be interested in joining her.

Aside from Zoe, anyway, who was all in for a unique PvP experience.

"If y'all end up needing a teammate, let me know." Sylvia said as the group was moving into the final round of waves and the final boss. "You seem like fun people, and I like the PvP in this game. It's really fun, especially with how much you can mess with people with the build variety."

"Do you play your hyper-mobile Blade in PvP?" Zoe asked.

"Sometimes. It's probably 50-50 between it and my Tower. The way Tower gets set up for PvE is very focused on using mitigation to reduce the damage you take while swinging a big fuck-off two-hander. In PvP, though, Tower has so many playstyle options, it's actually kinda nuts. There's a high-defense variant that just uses mit to try to outlive your opponents, but there's also a high-damage, high-CC version that is basically designed to jump on someone and CC them from full HP to zero. It's really funny in group PvP."

"I hate classes that do that."

"Says the Shroud." Firo snorted at Zoe. "You literally picked the Path designed to 100 - 0 people in PvP."

"Except I don't play Shroud in PvP, so -" Zoe blew a raspberry into the mic.

"Really?"

"Really. I like Athame and Brave in PvP." Zoe said.

"Athame doesn't surprise me with the whole dark, edgy, magic-y vibe with hexes and knives. But Brave? Really?"

"Brave is super fun in PvP." Sylvia jumped in. "It's pretty similar to how I'm playing Blade right now. Very mobile and kinda dance-y."

"Yep. If you build a Brave for mobility, they're nearly impossible to pin down in group PvP. A lot of the movement skills can be altered to include an escape effect to get out of roots and stuns, which makes them a menace unless they get focused down really quickly. And they do respectable damage, but nothing too crazy."

"Yeah, she doesn't get very many kills in group matches on Brave. But her assist count is usually insane." Cass offered, having played PvP with Zoe a number of times.

"Having a pocket healer makes it pretty easy to hurt literally everybody else." Zoe chuckled. "But yeah it's fun. Athame is what actually gets me my kills though."

"And what about you, then, Evie? I assume you play PvP on Evie?" Firo asked.

"Mhm. Usually Mystic or Hallow though."

"You guys should see Evie's Mystic. She's disgusting." Zoe laughed. Cass was proud of that - she was very confident in her Mystic PvP abilities.

"Oh yeah?"

"Mystic can get pretty dumb if you build it right. You're basically unkillable unless you get hard CC'ed to death, and you can help your team dish out lots of extra damage." Cass said.

"What about one-on-ones?" Sylvia asked, his curiosity peaked.

"Hallow is my duelist of choice." Cass said. "Most of their abilities by default are AoEs around them, but a lot of them can be altered to be single target with a boosted effect - whether it's a self buff or damage. They can get pretty nasty if the opponent isn't familiar with what they do."

"I don't think I've ever dueled a Hallow, actually." Sylvia said.

"To be fair, I don't think all that many healer mains do duels. If they PvP - which plenty do - they probably default to group content given, you know, healers." Cass shrugged. "The game's totally balanced for healers to take part in duels, though."

"I might need to test my luck against you later." Sylvia said, and Cass could visualize the cocky grin that the player must have had on his face.

"Let's get through the dailies, and then we'll see."

"You're on."

"I'm putting 50k on Evie." Zoe said the final boss of the Quest they were on finally showed up.

"Not sure I want to take that bet." Firo laughed.

"Shit, man, thanks for the vote of confidence." Sylvia sighed.