The Nettle Tea Chronicles

Zoe

It was just about two hours into their planned long day by the time everyone in the party was comfortable with what they believed they had to do to get past the add phase they were in. Most of the group's wipes up until that point had been small mistakes leading to spin-outs and slow deaths rather than single mechanics immediately killing everyone.

It really put the general in-battle resurrection situation into perspective. The combination of long cooldowns on the resurrection spells and the limited number they had in any given fight being limited was a pretty significant factor. Zoe was almost positive that, had the game allowed multiple resurrections in quick succession without limit like some other MMOs, they would have passed the phase already.

But the fact that one death could lead into a cascade of dominoes falling that they couldn't recover from after two deaths was a real problem. Or, well, maybe not a problem so much as a big part of the game's balance.

"So, before we try again. Anyone have any questions? Zoe?" Cass said, calling her out directly.

"I said I was sorry!" Zoe whined. "I got greedy. It happens."

"If I had a nickel for every time I've heard that…" Mellody chuckled.

"Still better than that one time Fiona killed us all because he couldn't walk in a fucking straight line." Caoimhe added.

"Hey! Don't drag me into this!" Fiona said.

"Wait, how'd that kill everyone?" Cass asked.

"It was the Duroza fight," Caoimhe said to explain, and that was honestly enough. "Fiona ran through the boss as normal, but somehow ended up like 20 degrees off the straight path. No one noticed and when the opening half-room cleave went off, the whole party got killed with it."

Cass snorted as basically everyone except Fiona laughed about it. Zoe chuckled too, imagining the whole thing, but Cass suddenly cut off to say, "Wait, we're supposed to be giving Nyx shit for being greedy."

"Hey!" Zoe said.

"Sorry sweetie, but you gotta learn somehow."

"Oh, Evie, I am going to give you so much crap when you die doing dumb shit in the PvP event." Zoe chuckled darkly.

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah."

"Is Evie prone to that sort of thing?" Firo asked, "She seemed pretty sturdy to me when we were doing the duels the other day."

"That's because they were duels." Zoe said. "In big team fights, Evie will be the first one to dive behind enemy lines and get blown up before her team even realizes she went in."

"Oh no." Bisky said.

"Is she also the type to immediately turn around and blame her team for not following her into the breach?" Caoimhe asked.

Zoe considered saying no, because Cass was generally pretty good about recognizing that she made a stupid mistake or got too excited and leaped before she looked. But at the same time, she did regularly shout about where her team was. "Eh, let's say it's like 40-60 in favor of not blaming her team."

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Zoe glanced over at Evie's name in the chat room before adding, "If I choose to kill myself with her, she usually complains less."

That got the group actively howling with laughter, while Cass was sputtering, trying to figure out how to bite back.

"So what you're saying is, I should set up a macro to pull Evie out of danger during the PvP event. Got it." Mellody said, laughing.

"I don't…need that…" Cass said, a little quietly. Zoe wasn't sure if she sounded embarrassed or was holding back her own laughter. "Well. Maybe, I do."

"Don't feel too bad, Evie. Fiona does the same thing." Caoimhe added.

"What a shocker." Zoe said flatly. "You're telling me the guy that literally leapt off the side of the battlefield just to see what would happen regularly runs at the enemy hoping that someone else does something to make the unga-bunga strategy work? No way."

"Hey! Now, hang on a sec, here." Fiona shouted over the laughter. "I feel like I need to defend myself because my role in PvP, as a tank, is to dive the enemy team and cause chaos so my team can do their damage."

"Bro, in the 8v8 scenario that we're going to be in for the PvP event, a tank's job is for sure going to be defending their own team by getting in the way. DPS like Nyx will be the ones diving enemy lines to get at the squishies." Caoimhe said.

"Well, unless the whole team builds around a dive comp. But even then, that means that the tank isn't going in alone at all." Aleister said.

"Hey, guys, can we get back on track here?" Bisky asked, pushing the PvP talk aside before it really ramped up.

"Oh, yeah, sorry." Firo said quickly.

"I'm gonna run to the bathroom really quick before we do the next pull." Aleister said, which was followed by the sounds of a headset being removed and put on a desk.

"Anyone else need a short break?" Bisky asked.

"Nope." Zoe said, and heard Cass, Firo, and Caoimhe echo the sentiment.

"I'm gonna just go check on Sam and Eli real quick." Fiona said.

"Aight, do your thing." Bisky said.

There was quiet in the chat after that for a bit. Zoe pulled out her phone to browse social media while waiting, and saw a message that came from Cass that just said "Jerk." Zoe rolled her eyes and sent back, "You started it," before resuming her random browsing.

It didn't take long for Fiona to return, having quite literally just poked his head in on his wife and son in another room in case his wife needed anything. Aleister didn't take very long either, returning just a minute after that.

"Alright. Once again. Everyone ready?" Bisky asked.

When no one said no, Fiona triggered the pull countdown. Zoe quickly stretched out her arms and legs in her chair, cracked her knuckles, and settled into the most comfortable position she could find before things began.

The opening of the fight was something the party had basically fully solved at this point. Mistakes were still occasionally made, given that every single one of their party was somewhat accident prone, but by and large they were able to get through it reliably at this point.

What was still risky, however, was the transition into the second phase. If any mistakes were made too close to the transition, things went poorly. The healers needed enough time to prepare defensive measures for the party against the heavy raid wide damage. As long as they were reaching it cleanly, though, there were no problems.

When the add phase began, the party split up the way they had done the last several pulls. Zoe sent Nyx off to the right side of the battlefield to help Aleister deal with the halberdier enemy. Nearly as soon as the enemy was targetable, Nyx used some of her bigger damage skills. [Deep Trance] let her skip straight to the final attack in one of her combos to get a quick burst of damage. [Dark Dance] was a risky skill that allowed her to follow a finisher with another one, so long as she remained stationary and took no damage.

Together, they were essentially a [Knife's] biggest damage nova skills. She could spend extra skills like [Death Dealer] or [Hemlock's Touch] to boost her damage further, but with so much of her general [Might] hidden behind long combos, anything that let her land more finishers held the biggest damage potential by a fair margin.

She also knew from experience so far that she could squeeze in four finishers before the enemy mages made her move, or even five if the safe spot was nearby.

Admittedly, trying to eke out that fifth finisher was what made her get greedy on the last pull, so she was trying to be mindful of that.

Bisky, who had also split off to her side with Mellody and Aleister, pummeled the halberdier enemy with shots as well, trying to squeeze in a solid burst of damage before the actual mechanics began.

When the two casters began casting earth-elemented spells, Mellody called it out and the party moved. They had seen this pattern once before - the earth spells created two giant stones over the platform, which then dropped. They were essentially simple AoEs, they just didn't show the red warning markers. Instead, you were meant to see where the stone appeared overhead and get out from under it.

It was simple, but the rocks were very large, and the camera angle made it somewhat difficult to see where the safe zones were clearly. Or at least where the exact edge of the rock would hit, anyway.

The spells were cast, and Zoe tilted her camera up. Aleister had brought the halberdier a little north-east on the platform to remain far away from the greatsword fighter. They had lucked out, as the rocks were clearly positioned in the north-west and south-east of the platform, which left Zoe to click that fifth finisher that she was desperate for - so long as the archer enemy didn't target her.

When she saw the line AoE head toward Bisky, she smiled. Bisky would have no issue at all dodging the line, and since she naturally stood a little to the edge of the safe zone, no one else even had to move when she just scuttled inward a bit.

Zoe hit the button, and when she saw the numbers pop up with the slightly bolded, slightly italicized text of a critical hit, a grin spread across her face. Big numbers always felt good.

"Alright, what's next?" Caoimhe asked.

"Three seconds…" Mellody said, waiting for the next cast to begin. When the fire and water pattern came up, the party waited just long enough for the AoE markers to appear, then moved to safety.

They had decided beforehand that Fiona would take the swordsman north or west, and Aleister would move south or east after the knockback, and then they performed the clean split without a hitch. After the knockback pushed the whole party toward the north, Aleister slid to the east as planned, pulling the halberdier away from the swordsman before they could do their combo attack.

Zoe stuck to the halberdiers back the whole way, laying on as much damage as she could while moving. Unfortunately, the movement did limit her somewhat, but she was willing to let it go after the huge chunk of focused damage she had gotten in earlier.

They knew from experience that, assuming the DPS on both sides performed their duties cleanly, it was around five rotations of the spell combos before they could kill the two melee enemies. That meant at around a minute and a half of clean play, which should be totally doable - as long as no one made dumb mistakes.

When the third round of enemy casts began, Mellody once again called out the warning. It was a two light purple casts, denoting raw arcane magic. They had also seen this attack twice before, so had some idea of how it functioned, despite being a little unusual.

Both times, the enemy casters had targeted the nearest healer, launching magic chains at them that emanated from the caster. Whoever got hit by them was locked down and took damage over time that quickly ramped up while being unable to act.

Unfortunately, the first time had caught the healers as the enemy intended, and caused a group wipe. During the second time, DPS tried to body black the chains from hitting the healers, but ended up in the lockdown instead, which told the party one thing; tanks needed to do it.

According to the plan, the smaller party groups split up to their sides, with the tank moving between the caster and healer so they could intercept the chain. They each popped mitigation skills to better survive the combination of damage from both the melee enemy and the chain's DoT effect, then they got to take a short break.

As soon as the tanks were locked down, the DPS focused down the chains. It didn't take long, but it was still a noticeable drop in damage on the melee enemies.

"We're gonna need six rounds." Zoe said, noting that after three spells, the melee enemies were still hovering around 55% HP.

"Great. Stay focused." Bisky said.

"Incoming AoEs." Mellody called as a warning.

Right on queue, after the third round of caster spells, the large group of Fae that still flew around the tower let loose another barrage of spells, leaving two small safe zones. It was clearly designed to be on opposite sides of the platform, allowing the parties to split up naturally.

"Nice. Keep your heads up." Fiona said, trying to keep the swordsman well-positioned. Aleister was doing the same, trying to keep the two melee adds separated, but slightly toward the center of the platform so the teams could react to whatever spell mechanic came next.

Two more rounds of spells came and went cleanly, with everyone performing well. As the fifth round ended, Fiona's team finally brought down the swordsman enemy.

"Ha! Left team, best team!" Caoimhe laughed, as the whole group quickly shifted over to burn down the halberdier, who only had a couple percent of HP left.

The sixth spell rotation began, showing the lightning cone pattern. The ranged DPS moved off to bait the cones away from the center, and before they even went off the halberdier was down.

The party cheered as the tower's platform once again transitioned into a huge mess of AoEs that they needed to dodge. The party quickly scattered to the two safe spots as before as they turned their attention to the enemy mages.