log d.: Brain of Argus #4, #5, #6, #4 again, #7, #8, #9

When i said in my previous entry that I will be leading the Brain of Argus raid, I thought it wont be difficult or stressful. Go in there, do the procedure, get the loots and done.

After doing Boss Summoning that night, I gathered a squad for the raid. The first batch had 7 people, which was a healthy number. BOA #4 consisted of Vugtis as tanker and me as main DPS. Our "roasted sotong" method is very dependent on our tanker, and Vugtis' internet connection is... not that reliable. Don't get me wrong, Vug is a very capable tank - if he is online. As fate would have it, Vugtis disconnected at BOA #4, and we aborted that due to people dieing left, right and center.

A small squad is enough

I then switched people around and designated Cruz to tank. It was his first time to do so, but he has seen me done the role several times. I had hoped seeing me do the tanking was enough for Cruz to tank well. As his first time on the job, he did pretty well :) BOA #5 and #6 was a breeze. We went and revisited BOA #4 on the same evening and finished it with no problems.

Roasted Sotongs

After the max emo time a.k.a. respawn time was over, I gathered a squad again to visit BOA three more times. I was not able to farm Amethyst Piece over the week, so I did not have enough to sponsor my raiders. Luckily, drummies (server's Highest family level - 56 + 2) had been farming at that map and was kind enough to provide AP for the rest of the crew.

We went off with a cold start with BOA #7. Vug was available again to tank, but was unable to maintain his connection for the first half of the raid. We also had a newcomer with us, who used AOEs (Abyss Flare) against the 8 sotongs. Sotongs are very angry mobs. You touch them once and they will not stop whacking you until you are dead. And die, we did. Without a tank, the ideal way to deal with sotongs is to attack them 1 at a time, with a scout on arnis upfront while elementalists and musks whittle away its HP. But due to Abyss Flare, all 8 sotongs engaged us. The family who turned them aggro quickly died, which left the 8 sotongs free to choose from the rest of the squad. There were 8 of us at the time and sotongs had a target fest. We were getting knocked backed and consequently dieing. It took me a fair bit of time to settle things down, even with the help of drugs. As we were finishing rounding up these wild sotongs, Vug's connection improved and he was able to tank the brain.

Cruz came online just before BOA #8, so again Cruz and Vug switched roles. This time around Cruz had minor computer problems and some people (including me, lol) went to the wrong channel for the raid. By the time everyone was gathered, there were 2 sotongs left. We moved on to the brain and it didn't prove to be a problem as we were able to down it before it hid it its shell and summon Argus.

Finally on BOA #9, everyone was familiar with their roles and we were able to do it a lot quicker. Everyone went to the correct channel this time (lol), entered the same time, stacked the right buffs and attacked according to plan.

Everything was going ok until I looked at my inventory and saw that I had brought 2 Prelude Rings. I could have lent them to our Prelude buffer for level 12 buffs. Many thanks to drummies for sponsoring them much needed AP and the faction's excellent Daemon bracelets. This will be the last time I will lead Argus raid (for now) as next week our Faction Leader will be back.