The Nettle Tea Chronicles

Ashton

"And there he is. Finally." Marissa said, sighing.

After the accidental and brief detour that led the group to fighting [The Shadestinger], it took another fifteen minutes of walking and getting mildly lost before they finally made it to [Vaivru's] nest.

The room that [Vaivru] had claimed was oblong and egg shaped, with the entrance at the 'top' of the egg. The 'bottom' of the egg was wider and rounded, but there was also a large fortress carved into the wall. The portcullis and one defensive wall extended beyond the cave's wall, and behind that wall in the courtyard was [Vaivru's] hoard. It visibly spilled out from under the heavy iron gate of the portcullis, which was currently raised.

Even from just outside the room, the whole party could see [Vaivru] rested atop his pile of loot. The wyvern was clearly more than happy to ignore people that stayed outside of his domain, as he eyed the party, but made no moves to get up from his makeshift throne.

The party, for their part, went about their battle prep. As was standard for them now, Aleister dropped down the campfire and cooking station and Mellody got to work.

"Everyone's fought Vaivru at least once, yeah?" Marissa asked.

As Ash went about his meal prep, Marissa went over the basic strategy for the fight with everyone. Ash had done the fight before, but this would be a bit different as they were down a tank. He opted to keep an ear on the discussion as he picked the ingredients for the meal.

"Okay, we know the basics." Marissa began. "Vai has two main attacks. The claw attack is heavy single target damage, and the tail swipe cleaves. Aleister, you need to keep him faced away from the party at all times."

"Yeah, duh." Jazz snarked back.

Ash could hear the eye-rolling as Marissa continued, "Beyond that there's two different rear-facing AoE's if I recall? A conal tail attack and a donkey kick line AoE."

"There's also a stomp." Ash said, idly. He picked out mostly offensive food buffs for this fight. While [Vaivru] was a level 90 world boss, at this stage of the game, their party was so well geared that they shouldn't need any defensive buffs to survive.

Or at least, in the moments where it mattered, the meager meal related buffs wouldn't make a difference. Instead, the offensive ones to end the fight even just a little bit quicker would be more useful.

"Oh, right. The circle AoE around whichever foot does the attack. Be ready for that." Marissa said.

"What's the plan for the tank buster?" Evie asked. "We don't exactly have the strongest mitigation Benefactors here, and Vai has a stacking swap mechanic, doesn't he?"

Ash chuckled at the general terribleness of the 'meal' he put together. Spicy foods were typically the best physical damage buffs, while sweet foods were magical damage ones. More bland foods were the simplistic but necessary HP and MP buffs.

He was allowed to make a 'three-course meal' for the team, which amounted to three food items total that couldn't overlap on their 'course' designation. That meant Spicy Firebird Stew as the [Main Course], Garlic Toast for the [Side Dish], and Mixed Berry Shortcake as the [Dessert]. Not exactly a mouth-watering combination of courses.

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

He shrugged, tuning back into the discussion. "Each time Vai uses the buster, it gets a damage boost, right?" Ash asked. "How many stacks do you think you can survive without assistance, Aleister?"

"Without any outside assistance, only my own mit?" Jazz was quietly in thought for a minute before answering, "Probably four? I think he uses the buster every minute or so if I recall correctly, so it'll be on minute five that we'll start being in danger."

"Got it." Evie said. "I don't have a lot of mitigation abilities as a Soul, but I'll save what I do have for later then."

"We'll need to rely on the party's mit to survive the later half of the fight. Especially yours, Nyx. DP is going to be invaluable here."

[Debilitating Pierce], or [DP], was a [Shroud] skill that, by default, had a 30 second cooldown that reduced the target's damage by 15% for 4 seconds. It was one of the best mitigation skills in the game, and one of the reasons talented [Shrouds] were so well liked in party content.

"Food's ready, by the way." Ash said as he interacted with the cooking station to eat. "All offense this time. No reason to do anything else."

As everyone filtered over to grab the buffs, Marissa continued, "Beyond the AoEs and the tank buster mechanic, I think the rest of the fight is pretty straightforward. Don't stand in death and try to keep up your damage."

Ash chuckled when he heard Jazz crack her knuckles. "Let's do it." She said, posting Aleister in the threshold to the room.

"On your count, Aleister." Marissa said.

Jazz began a ten second countdown, and everyone began their pre-fight routines.

For Ash, this meant getting Mello's main buffs up and running, as well as a few targeted ones doled out.

Within Mag Mell, every [Path] and [Dedication] had a specific [Path Skill] and [Dedication Skill] respectively. In most cases, [Path Skills] were bound to a mouse right click by default, and were integral to how a Path played. [Dedication Skills] usually either altered the [Path Skill], or played off it in some way.

In [Muse's] case, [Musick] was its [Path Skill]. They were all buffs that were applied in an AoE around the character constantly, as long as the [Musick] was played. A [Muse] had access to a fairly wide variety of [Musick], but could only play one at a time. It also required the player to regularly hit their right mouse button in time with whatever song they played; it made [Muse] a deceptively active class.

Mellody's chosen [Dedication] for the moment was [Revel], whose [Dedication Skill] was [Double Time], which would boost the current [Musick] for a short time. That was a very powerful buff that Ash would absolutely be using in the opener.

[Vaivru] would need to approach the party when they crossed into the room, so for the opening move, [Forward March] went up as Mello's [Musick]. The speed boost would help the team get into the fight faster, and the small 500 HP shield would be at least a little bit useful going into the start of the fight. Maybe.

As everyone sped into the room and began to spread out, Ash took a second to place Mellody's [Coda Step] by the door. Hopefully that would be as good a place as any to escape to if things went poorly.

[Vaivru] reacted as expected to everyone entering the room. He stood, stretched out atop his pile of loot, then swooped down to the center of the room. The boss was big, but not as large as some of the truly massive bosses. He did still dwarf the party members pretty significantly, especially Caoimhe.

With the boss in range, Mellody swapped her [Musick] for [Overture of Might], which was a party-wide 3% [Strength] buff and added 3% more physical damage on top of that. It had reduced effectiveness by default on Firo as a magical damage DPS, so Mellody gave him the [Target Audience] buff. [Target Audience] was a single target skill that allowed that target to benefit from a [Musick] that wouldn't normally be able to benefit from it.

In this case, allowing a magical DPS to utilize a physical damage buff. The skill was even smart enough to swap the [Strength] increase over to an [Intelligence] increase for Firo. It did mean that Mellody herself, Aleister, and Evie wouldn't gain anything from [Overture], but that was alright.

During any sort of boss encounter like this that allowed a party to prepare for, the opening of the fight would be a huge burst of damage. All of the DPS would rotate through any buffs and high damage skills they had to get their cooldowns rolling; unless a skill had a secondary effect, holding it back just meant less times you could use it in the fight. It was better to use high damage skills as many times as possible during a long fight like this.

That meant that standard procedure was to open with all of the damage focused abilities you had as quickly as possible, including buffs, attacks, or any other skills that boosted the party's damage in any way.

For Mellody, that meant once [Overture] was out and [Target Audience] was on Firo, [Double Time] was used to boost the opener damage.

[Critical Muse] was given to Hibiscus for a 10% boost to her crit rate. [Dance of the Dervish], which granted [Haste], was given to Nyx to increase [Speed]. [Hero's Inspiration], a raw 5% damage buff, was given to Caoimhe. And finally, [Dance of the Fae] was given to Firo, increasing his magic damage by 5%.

Each of those buffs had a different associated cooldown, and would be paired up best with a specific party member. Going further, each of those party members had slightly different burst timings during the fight, which would require Ash to mete out the buffs at the right time for each player to get the most out of them.

Playing around that sort of coordination was one of the things that had attracted him to [Muse] in the first place. It required more knowledge and timing than many of the other [Benefactor] [Paths], and he enjoyed needing to keep track of so many things in his head - all while maintaining his main [Musick] buff.

Mellody also applied [Day's End Nocturne] to [Vaivru] for the opener. They all knew what to expect with this fight, and there wasn't any dangerous DPS check that they would need to meet later, so using it now would turn their opener into a functional nuke.

Aleister quickly blasted the creature with a few high threat attacks to get its attention. Once he had [Vaivru] locked on, Aleister ran past the wyvern to spin him around, leaving his back toward the party; entirely standard procedure.

Ash settled into his chair, comfortable. Unlike in the fight with Cu Chulainn where everyone was operating mostly under the guise of trying to stay alive, this was a much more standard boss fight.

This was where Ash felt comfortable. And that's why he had always been in charge of the team's call outs.

"Opening raid-wide." Ash called, knowing the rough blueprint for most large party fights like this. They almost universally opened with an attack from the boss that hit everyone, regardless of position.

Mellody and Evie both threw out party mitigation, while Nyx waited just a few moments before hitting the boss with [Debilitating Pierce].

As if she could read [Vaivru] like a book, the boss immediately went airborne and breathed a wide swath of firebreath down on the room, scorching the entire party. It was unavoidable damage, but they had prepared for it. By the time the animation ended and the wyvern was on the ground again, everyone's HP was topped off.

"Caoimhe, get behind it to try to bait out the tail swipe. We want to delay the tank busters as long as possible, so if we can bait out the AoE's -"

"Yep." Kieran said, and Caoimhe immediately slipped directly behind the boss, rather than the more traditional melee positions that were more like south-west or south-east on a compass, assuming the boss's facing was north.

"Nyx, stay where you are. You can bait out the stomp at the normal spot."

"Yessir." She said, while moving through a flurry of dual-wielded dagger attacks.

When the ground flashed red in a cone behind the boss, Caoimhe slid out of the area without needing a callout. She slipped back into position, only to be followed by Nyx doing the same thing when the stomp's warning AoE appeared.

It was nice to have a team that didn't get entirely lost in their rotation all the time.

"Buster is up next." Ash called. And sure enough, [Vaivru's] mouth began to glow with fire, the signal for the tank buster. The first one wouldn't be a big deal, but they would have to keep an eye on the later ones.

Aleister hit a mitigation skill - [Shade Wall] - as well as his [Dedication Skill], [Ebony Guard]. Ash swapped Mellody's song to [Bulwark's Ballad], which boosted the party's [Defense] and [Resistance] by 3%, as well as reduced incoming damage by 3% - the defensive version of [Overture].

When the buster landed and did around 5,000 damage, Ash smiled to himself. That wouldn't continue, given the stacking [Enflamed] debuff that Aleister would gain every time he took one of those hits, which would make him take 30% more damage from fire-based attacks for each stack. But for now the attack essentially barely tickled.

"Alright, let's bait out those attacks again." Ash said, as he swapped Mellody's [Musick] back to [Overture]. He chuckled to himself; there was something poetic about the group's shot-caller being a [Muse], conducting everyone across the battlefield.