The Nettle Tea Chronicles

Zoe

By the time the party was approaching the end of the night, everyone was on edge. Even Zoe was pretty sure they had seen basically right up to the last mechanic three times now, and had just managed to bungle the run at the finish line. Group morale was up because of how close they were to finishing the fight, but at the same time, everyone was getting frustrated. It had been a long three hours of raid, and they kept stumbling at the important part.

Zoe found herself stretching her neck and rolling her shoulders more and more as the night went on - she knew she tended to tense up her shoulders more when she got frustrated. It was a sign that she was getting annoyed by the whole scenario, which she figured was fair. They had been at it for hours at this point.

"One more?" Bisky asked.

"Sure."

"Yep."

"One more."

The agreements didn't sound as enthusiastic as they had an hour ago when they were making solid progress. The last few wipes had come down to stupid mistakes and bad positioning that for sure could have been avoided. But it was nearing bedtime for most of the party, and the mistakes were coming out.

"Guys, take a minute or two and get up and stretch. Shake it out a bit and get reset for the last one." Zoe said, taking her own advice.

Getting annoyed at the little things wouldn't help anyone, least of all the group.

"Yeah. Yeah, that sounds like a good idea." Caoimhe said. Zoe heard headsets getting removed and rustling after that from several people. Zoe slipped her own headset off and placed it on her desk. She didn't exactly have a lot of room in her cramped little apartment, and her bedroom in particular was crammed with her bed, desk, and chair.

She had to actually step out of her bedroom to have enough room to actually get a decent stretch in. Which she did, and even took the opportunity to run to the fridge and grab a water bottle.

She gave her back one final big stretch before she returned to her chair and sat down, unscrewing the top of the water.

"Alright. Everyone here?"

Everyone in the group dropped a message into the in-game text chat in some variation of 'yes'. Once Bisky had confirmed the whole crew had returned, she told Fiona to prepare to make the final pull of the night.

The chatter among the group remained minimal through the first phase. Everyone was playing well, and the callouts were crisp as opposed to the low-energy ones that had been coming through the last couple attempts. Zoe hoped that meant the short stretch break had helped relieve some of the frustrations.

As the group passed into the second phase easily and proceeded to continue the easy progress through the opening phases of the combined fight, Zoe felt good. This pull was going better than the last several had. The party members were moving cleaner than before, and she distinctly noted that Caoimhe's attacks were better aimed than before. Some of that late-night exhaustion seemed to be gone.

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"Hell yeah!" Firo shouted as they moved into phase 3. [Scathach] created her shadowy shield to block the stunning effect of the lightning-charged attacks, while [Firdraig] and [Garmiad] would fight as a single enemy from here.

The party arranged themselves safely around their NPC companion, prepared for the next group of mechanics. Caoimhe and Nyx continued to harry the underside of the dragon every chance they got, while avoiding the few attacks sent their way.

Fiona and Aleister were using this section to practice trading targets. Fiona was only trying to intercept [Firdraig's] attacks, while Aleister only took [Garmiad's]. The ability to do so cleanly would be very important in the later stage of the fight, once the Fae pulled out his water whip.

Bisky and Firo continued their ranged assault. Like the melee, they focused on the dragon to maximize their damage, forcing [Firdraig] to use his own HP to heal [Garmiad] whenever they got the dragon particularly injured. They had figured out through experience that they were aiming to trigger around three heals by the time they reached the final phase. That seemed to be where they topped out for damage.

As expected, Evie and Mellody simply did their jobs. Mellody continued to do the callouts for the party, and by this time they knew most of the mechanical tells for anything that would be sent their way. At least until the final phase, anyway. And where Mellody was reliable for the more support side of things, Evie picked up the relative slack in healing output, keeping everyone healthy.

Everyone was on the quieter side, fully focused, as [Firdraig's] HP dropped to around 25%. As they neared triggering the final phase - or, at least, what they hoped was the final phase - of the fight, Zoe used two of her big damage cooldown skills to drop [Garmiad] below 10% of its HP for the third time.

That was the threshold to trigger the healing. [Firdraig] leaned down to touch his dragon's neck, offering a chunk of his own HP to the beast. Zoe watched in satisfaction as the Fae's HP dropped from 22% to 12%.

It wasn't entirely on purpose, but the timing on that trigger could not have gone better for them. Up until now, [Firdraig] had been beginning the water whip phase at around 20%, and the final AoE attack at around 10%.

They had fallen into a major success, practically skipping the entire water whip phase just by timing alone.

"That's what I like to see!" Fiona yelled. "Aleister, back me up just in case, but I think we're gonna skip this part altogether."

"I got you." Aleister responded. "But cover me for a moment."

"Hm?"

The party had learned through the night's worth of progression that targeting [Firdraig] wasn't worth it for the party members. The level difference between them and the boss was too high, essentially giving the Fae a massive damage reduction against their attacks simply built in through stats alone.

It may have been a poor strategy for the fight as a whole, because targeting [Garmiad] dealt indirect damage to the boss. But in specific circumstances, attacking [Fridraig] directly had merit.

Aleister decided this was one of those times.

As [Firdraig] was performing the cast to create his water whip, Aleister dumped her entire MP bar into [Ebon's] big attacks. It was something the group made fun of Aleister for - keeping his MP in reserve for defenses and party mitigation.

Aleister's picked item from the Vault had been one that completely refilled his MP after emptying it, though. It made dropping everything he had on damage a viable strategy without needing to worry about keeping anything in reserve, because it would simply come back immediately.

And [Ebon's] burst damage was impressive. It usually went unused because of the need to keep MP to defend the [Ebon's] party and do their job as a tank.

Zoe saw the first two skills go off, the big dark magic explosions monumentally hard to miss. Aleister shouting "Burn him down!" in addition was enough for Zoe to swap targets. Caoimhe followed suit as well.

The sudden target swap with all the burst damage from Aleister plus two attacks from [Scathach] was enough to drop [Firdraig] to 9%. It felt like a pitiful amount of damage with the amount of burst skills the group had just spent on it, but if they really did basically skip an entire phase, it would be worth it.

"Hell yeah!"

"We got this, guys. Focus up!"

Zoe shifted in her seat, leaning forward to get mentally and physically 'on her toes' while [Firdraig] skipped right into his big cast for the big AoE combo.

The white-silver strands of magic coalesced around the boss, and everyone scattered. Even knowing roughly what to expect, Zoe could see the nervous energy in the way that everyone's characters were moving back and forth, as if they were jumping their fingers between the A and D keys. Zoe was doing it too, though, ready to move in whatever direction they needed.

Zoe watched as the water whip exploded into the massive dragon heads, twisting around in the air, preparing for their big attack.

As the first round of red AoE tells appeared, the group moved quickly. They had ended up in two different groups; the melee crew stayed with [Scathach], trusting the NPC to lead them to the safe spots as she had done in previous attempts. The ranged players ended up settling in a nearby safe zone, prepared to meet up with the rest as soon as they could. No one wanted to push for too much movement and get clipped by an AoE.

That had caused two of their earlier wipes already, and they had learned.

Zoe could feel it in the quiet tension that was present in their quiet chat. They would get it right this time and at least see how this phase ended.

She took a deep breath as the pattern began launching. The melee group stuck with [Scathach], following the NPC's massive shadowy wings from safe spot to safe spot for the first several blasts. By the time the third AoE went off, the ranged players had joined up with the rest, leaving the entire party stacked together.

Mellody counted the AoEs as they went off. They knew from the previous times they saw this far that there would be seven blasts that [Scathach] would do successfully, followed by an eighth round of AoEs that would end with [Scathach's] safe spot getting hammered by [Garmiad's] lightning breath attack.

They had yet to see what the outcome was if the group managed to survive that attack. They had only seen to that point twice, but both times were killed by the AoEs before the next event happened.

As Mellody counted the fifth round of AoEs, chatter erupted from the group.

"What's the plan?"

"I can Final Vigil it if we just want to see what's next." Fiona offered.

"No, we're killing the bastard this pull. No dying." Bisky said.

"Can we bait the attack elsewhere?" Caoimhe asked.

"Six."

"Don't think so. I think it targets Scathach directly." Firo said.

"And we're assuming if she gets hit, we lose."

"Probably."

"It's an AoE, so we can't exactly body-block it." Evie said.

"Decide something quickly!"

"Why didn't we talk about this before the pull?"

"Seven."

"Fuck it." Bisky said, launching an attack at [Garmiad]. When the shot landed on the dragon, Zoe recognized the effects of [Dazing Shot], but the interrupt failed.

Zoe followed [Scathach] and the group to the final safe spot among the AoEs. The attack that [Garmiad] was charging to hit the party with was clearly telegraphed differently than most of its attacks previously. This attack was bigger than most of the others, covering a much larger area. The wind up was also clearly much more telegraphed.

Zoe pushed her eyes shut and tried something stupid.

Moving to the final safe spot had gotten the party progressively closer to the enemy, and they were within range of her [Shadow Slip].

"Cover me."

"Cover you?" Evie asked, incredulous. "What do you mean, cover you?"

Zoe had already hit her skill, teleporting right behind the dragon. She hit every debuff skill she had, which unfortunately wasn't much. [Shrouds] didn't have access to a [Stun], and as she landed a [Knockdown], a DoT, and a [Debilitating Pierce], she was growing increasingly sure that she needed a [Stun].

And then Aleister appeared right next to her, having teleported similarly with her [Shadow Step]. [Ebon], however, did have a [Stun] at their disposal, and Aleister immediately reached toward the dragon with magical shadowy appendages in the animation for [Spine Crack].

And this time, the [Stun] went through, stopping [Garmiad] from making its final attack against [Scathach] and the rest of the party.

Everyone else in the party had prepared to eat a big attack in the safe spot. Fiona had stepped forward and used a party-wide mitigation skill to block some of the attack, while everyone else had been using whatever personal mitigations they had access to.

[Scathach], however, was clearly not preparing defenses. Instead, she was clearly preparing some kind of attack. She held her massive spear in both hands, pointed straight at [Firdraig], while her other weapons and shield floated around her attached by small wisps of shadow.

"This is our victory, Fae," she said.