Sidetrek: Ascension!

Whoooooo. After two unrelenting days of joining any pickup group that would take the 'ranger/monk' read: not a tank (warrior), not a nuker (elementalist mage), not a healer (monkmonkmonk), ie...U F'ING USELESS. / SRY TOO MANY Rs...

Yesterday, I logged on for one more try. I figured I would try it for an hour or two and then go somewhere else to amuse myself if it was going to be like the past days, with hours of frustration.

Amusingly I actually logged on, and then had to go off for dinner. Now this is one thing I miss in CoH, the ability to just log on and sit afk like in RoD. GW allows it. So when I came back, there was amusing stuff to scroll back to. But only all the standard calls for "NEED 1 more monk in grp pls!" "Looking for warrior + monk!"

*sighs*

BUT as I was reviewing the disappointing backlog and wondering where else I should attempt going...a call came out for 'need 4 more people'

Ooooh. Quickly I found the leader and clicked on her and prayed she'd take the pathetic lost ranger in. SHE DID! She was an Ele/Mes and she had TWO count 'em TWO Monk buddies. Oooh. That's swell. Two monks are really good on this mission because one just doesn't cut it, I know, I've tried, pickups + henchies alike.

Another ranger/monk jumped on in, and then two other elementalists, I think. One of them was a loud mouthed E/Mo calling DOOOOM on us because we had (gasp) no warriors.

But before they started, they were actually PLANNING. There was a discussion of spell overlaps, so the monks sorted out which skills they were taking and when. They got the elementalists set up as nukers, asked them to bring meteor swarm, etc. Then Mr loudmouth elementalist was twitching and frothing and asking them to START already.

So they did. And he was screaming DOOM DOOM DOOM no warriors, we're dooomed. But we had two ranger pets that were pretty good tanks. (If only the monks deigned to heal 'em though.) Our first encounter with rock devourers left almost everyone dead on the ground except the two rangers, who killed the rest. We ress'ed them but they had a death penalty and didn't want to kill sand giants to restore it. Or rather, Mr Loudmouth didn't, the rest were quite ok about it. So to assuage Mr Loudmouth, we all died to restart the mission fresh.

This time, the leader lady said, Rangers, bring a run skill. You'll run to the ghost and get us to the cinematic, we won't fight these devourers.

*gasp* They actually recognize we have some roles. We can pull, and we can run if the warrior ain't about. So quickly, I agreed and said, gimme a sec to switch skills, and did.

The other ranger was probably new, he didn't know where the ghost was, but thanks to about 20 failed attempts at this stupid mission, I had the location of the ghost etched into my brain and could probably run to him blindfolded. Except...my optimized mission mob-killing build + a run skill, lacked any sort of healing or regen skill. Oh crud. I was suddenly not so confident anymore, but said, I'll try my best.

Mr Loudmouth was of course still screaming doom doom, a warrior sprint would work, rangers can't run.

Welp, I made it. They distracted the first group, and I ran past, and there was blissfully nothing else in the way except for one more sand giant. So because I understand basic aggro in GW, I waited for him to move past. He didn't. The rest caught up, and Mr Loudmouth was chafing his heels again, and so I tried a gamble. Shoot an arrow at the giant to send my wolf on him, and then dash right past. No sweat, I didn't even get hit by the giant, Jano took the massive club and remained standing cos the monk was a little behind.

Enter cinematic in 3 more seconds before they could even kill the sand giant.

First arena: one team of mobs to kill. Very professional planning. Leader lady said, kill outside mobs until 1 min, then all focus fire on enemy priest. That happened, whole team dropped shortly in slightly over 2 mins.

Second arena: miscommunication, some wanted to take the right team, some wanted the left team. Aggro'ed both teams. Was thinking we're dead, but somehow, magnificiently, with ferocious healing and fighting, we pulled through, survived, got to the left team and killed. Mr Loudmouth was screaming about lousy monks because he died, and wondering who aggro'ed the right team. Well, since I did, I told him so, because someone else had earlier said to go right.

Oh, and it didn't help his mood when someone ressed him only to get him killed again, he was screaming which lousy monk ressed me and doesn't send a heal my way. The monks couldn't be bothered to answer him. (We had an amusing revelation after the mission, tell ya later.)

Left team dead, wait for the 6 minute mark (we missed 4 minutes) and charge the right team. Not a problem, all down.

Third arena: I was holding the ghost, and I forced them (diplomatically) to come to a consensus on a plan of attack before unlocking the gate. So everyone was now aimed right, in the right direction. :) Then open the gate, and voila, first team dropped. Next, outside mobs of second team, then the priest, and voila, second team dropped.

Last team, and the hardest because the monk boss and the priest heal each other. There was a really tense time of seconds before the mobs would resurrect and everyone was focusing fire like mad on the priest - I think the sheer elementalist might plus ranger poison and arrows and me trying to fire distracting shot to disrupt his healing spells somehow...just somehow, got the priest down. I still don't quite know how he fell, but he did. And the two monks kept us alive through this. And then was a cleanup of the mobs outside, then the monk boss...

AND THE MISSION WAS THEN COMPLETED. OMG. Screw the bonus, I completed the Thirsty River mission. Which must have been one of the toughest to do with a pickup team.

Last trial for Ascension was NOW DONE.

Raced back over to Augury Rock to open the cliff. (The cinematic ruled.) And face mirror self. First time, I just wanted to try it without artfully rearranging my skills. The damn mirror got Apply Poison on faster than I did, and started to disrupt me. I was down half hp before I even got the mirror scratched. No heals, so I just keeled over dead.

Ok. "Cheating" time. I scanned through the skill list and put every single 'useless' skill in my skill bar. I took pet skills (which are useless since none of us have a pet in this) and a bunch of Rituals which did nothing to our damage (so he'd take time like a good moronic computer to cast them).

Sure enough, second time around, the thing was busily casting Rituals and making the stationary mobs, and I just stood there peppering him with arrows. :) By the time he finished with his useless spells and decided it was now time to shoot me, HE was half hp, and I was untouched. And by sheer dint of hack and slash evenness, ok, shooty shooty trading fire, guess who fell first.

It felt almost anti-climatic after the Thirsty River striving to find the perfect team. :)

And so I Ascended.

Next mission after that was the Dragon's Lair, I sped right through it with my new group of henchies (which now consist of two monks, swoons) and almost took down the bonus, which was to kill the dragon. Soooo close, she had a sliver of hp left, then she whacked the last monk and we died.

And I got to the town with the 1.5k armor, and finally decided now was the time to use up the 12 platinum and 250 tanned leather squares I had been hording in my storage. So I got myself a brand spankling set of 'near-ultimate' armor and splurged on the dyes (weren't so bad, only about 180 gold for green) to make myself look purty. 2 platinum went back into storage. :P

And now the game opens up again. I could go ahead and do more missions, but I'm a little scared of hitting another thirsty river scenario. Or I could trek back to the Crystal Desert and unlock the trainers who will change my secondary classes. I managed to unlock the warrior with me and some henchies.

Why? Because I actually took a monk skill that I'd never tried before and wondered how good it was. Protective Bond, reduces damage to max 5%, but takes 6 energy every time your target takes damage. I thought with my low energy bar I wouldn't be able to maintain this. But my hench party was getting massacred by hydras because their fireballs and meteors were massacring my healer hench so fast she couldn't cope.

I stuck it on Alesia, praying it wouldn't rip off so fast, and wowzers, I'm not sure if it was the mob AI that changed targets or something, but she didn't seem to get hit that much any more, and I was maintaining the enchantment fairly well, all things considered. Sometimes sure, it ripped right off, but the damage mitigation was enough to keep her more or less alive. And if she died, then I slapped it on the tank, and we tended to win the battle of attrition.

No wonder protection monks (pri or sec) are the FIRST target in PvP.

Amazing. It's my new favorite monkly skill. I dropped my healing breeze for it too. Time to re-adjust attributes next time I log on. The fun of GW, so many skills to play with, so many good combinations to discover.