Hold the Front Line!

Tonight was one of the most crazy exciting quests I have EVER attempted in Aion.

As the title suggests, this is the ultimate quest of the Morheim area (after completing a score of campaign quests from level 20-40) and your group's job is to hold back an onslaught of Balaur (dragon-people, the third NPC race that maintains balance between the two winged player races and provides lore story excuses) after their Mau (cat-people) servants opened a rift into the Abyss to let them in.

Of course, the Abyss gate the Mau opened just -happens- to be near the very end of the open instance area. Good thing there were a couple dozen non-campaign group quests that led you by the nose right into the Mist Mane area (or MM for short, as WoW escapees tend to abbreviate everything.)

The Mist Mane area is no joke, but there are a couple glide paths through it and so on that veteran groups use when they skirt the place and aren't killing every single mob between point A and point B.

I felt very thankful that I previously had lots of prior practice in this area, because the group showed themselves to be very skilled. We lacked much CC capability at all - the group had been hunting for a sorceror for cc reasons, and I sort of wheedled my way in, saying I wasn't a sorc but I could offtank, up to them if they were ok with it. They'd only been broadcasting about 30 times for a sorc, so I suppose they said what the heck.

(See, apparently, the sucky thing about this quest is once you complete it, you can no longer enter the portal, so you have to find fresh n00b faces who HAVEN'T done it, yet have done all the previous campaign quests and are on the same step of the quest as you. How many planets align at once, eh?)

We moved through the Mist Mane area with nary a hitch. We had a few scary moments where we drew too much aggro, but amazingly, there were no total wipes. The tank was very fast to call RUN when there was evidently too much aggro, and frankly, the rest of us were already hoofing it out of there by the time he called it.

So only the tank died twice or three times, and the unfortunate cleric bit it once when there was way too much aggro... the chanter, the glad (that'll be me), the assassin and the ranger were all spared.

Two elite mobs were no problem, I'd offtank one, the tank would tank another. We survived a number of three pulls by the skin of our teeth too, either the tank would grab two and I'd grab one, or the other way around, though I'd be very shaky grabbing two.

The cleric half-annoyed me with his style of healing, because he was quite comfortable letting us drop to half hp, and staying there for a good 5 seconds, but I suppose he knew what he was doing. Certainly I didn't die, even if the tank did, and even if I had to blow a couple of my cooldowns too. He proclaimed himself as very "pro" so I bit my lip and let the guy work his magic and see.

We eventually made it relatively uneventfully to the site of the Abyss Gate. I wish I'd remember to take a picture. But it was quite a sight, with a rift right next to it.

Zoning into the quest instance by clicking on the Gate started a 4 min timer.

This was a one-room style quest instance where there was a portal behind us and a portal in front of us.

With us was an NPC that we were supposed to protect. By holding the front line for 4 minutes against the onrushing hordes of Balaur.

The first wave was nothing. 4 normal mobs. We killed them. I'd basically charged up and AoE'd merrily, thinking haha, maybe they're glad they got a glad with them after all.

The second wave wasn't much either. Another 4-5 normal mobs. I was in AoE heaven.

About the time I'd pretty much bought the propaganda on the forums that if you got in here, it was all non-elites and really easy, I was AoE'ing down the third wave (presumably with folks blowing apart their choice of targets behind me, the tank wasn't bothering to mark anything) when I suddenly noticed that one of the mobs was named differently "Chandalar Scaleguard" from the others, and he was taking quite a while to go down.

Eh, the tank is fighting him. I look at the mob's hp bar, and egads, it's an elite!

Everyone puts two and two together when that mob is the only one left, and soon we're all gathered around blowing it apart.

Fourth wave arrives, and aha, 2 normals, 2 elites!

No problems, I know what to do. I turn on my defensive toggle, move into offtanking stance, and take one while the tank takes the other.

Of course, the slight hitch in doing this is that it drops my offensive potential to not that much at all, and the tank is already busy with his own mob, so basically we have two DPS on one elite and everyone else helping with stuff we hope is more than tickling.

Our group has also shown a previous tendency to get a mite confused as to which target to focus fire down at this point, with both mobs getting damaged, and both tanks getting beat up, until one finally drops, and then shortly after, the other.

This slows us down to the point that we're just about finishing the first elite, and turning on the second when the FIFTH wave shows up.

Holy crap. This time, if you've been counting, there are three elites with them, and one of them is *shudder* a MAGE elite. I hate mage elites, they go through my plate (which are oddly set up to highly resist physical damage and have poor magical resist) like butter.

So we are suddenly surrounded by 3+1 elites, and 2-3 normal mobs. Approximately 40 seconds to go.

I have no clue what to do. There's no way I'm AoE'ing because if I take all their aggro, I will die, and if I am dead, quest completion doesn't trigger in Aion.

I have full DP saved up (Divine Points, which allow for some spectacular cooldowns to be blown), so the only thing that hits my mind is to hit my 3000 DP skill Daevic Fury, which sends my Physical Attack +80% and Attack Speed +10% for 30 seconds, while I'm still in my defensive toggle.

Maybe if I go crazy on the elite I'm already facing and tanking, I might be able to finish it off really quickly, and then try and pull another elite off the tank... were the vague thoughts in my brain.

Just as the elite is dying, the tank who is literally surrounded by stuff, falls over and dies.

OMG OMG OMG. ~30 seconds left.

I'm thinking, we're so bloody close, and we're going to wipe now. How the hell am I going to survive all that aggro...

... but somehow, I'm not dying. All that aggro must have come loose off the tank, and god knows where it's gone, but I'm miraculously not dying. In some kind of last stand frenzy, I start AoEing and hopping around, in the vague hope that my random knockdowns will hit the bunch of Balaur and interrupt them briefly, vaguely cognizant that the next elite I've targeted has me as its target and possibly the others (but not the mage, or I'd be dead by now), pop my +parry cooldown, wondering how it is I'm still alive, pop my stigma defence shield (which blocks a measly one hit of 300 hp)...

10, 9, 8..... 5...4....3.....2.....1...

And boom, just as I have 1/3 of my hp left, the cutscene animates and a deus ex machina saves the day. (The NPC we were protecting was preparing some kind of uber spell that pretty much wiped up the Balaur.)

Later, as I sat through and analyzed the combat log, it solidified my resolve as to how this was one of my best experiences ever. Because the group, without speaking or prior arrangement, worked in fantastic serendipitious tandem...

At the point I blew my Daevic Fury and started attacking elites in mad gladiatorial frenzy, the pro cleric must have realized that the tank was going to die very shortly. He blew HIS 3000 DP skill, which was Aquittal, this cleanses all party debuffs, and gives every single team member a heal over time that heals for 20% of their hp per tick.

At 6000hp buffed from chanter and cleric spells, I was healing over 1000 hp per tick from that spell alone. (So was everyone else, pretty much.)

This wasn't enough to save the tank, who fell over, and the Assassin blew one of HER special stigma skills Blinding Burst, which blinds all enemies within a 15m radius of her for 10-25 seconds.

We must have gotten very lucky and got a long blind out of it, because all the mobs were now blinded and missed their attacks. So -I- who had actually drawn about 4/5 of the aggro, evaded about 7 out of 8 attacks a tick and parried the last.

Hence my mysterious, miraculous survival: both blind AND the HoT working in tandem.

I had, by chance good fortune, pulled aggro of nearly all the physical attack mobs with my AoEing, who were now missing me 8 times a row.

The assassin and the ranger were barely scratched with one or two attacks from a stray mob or two, which they were also evading, thanks to blind.

The MAGE elite's aggro had been yanked to the cleric, in the manner of all healing aggro, who was actually one of the best suited to tank magic-type attacks as he has more magic resist than plate wearers and can heal up his damage and has decent hp. He soaked about 800-1000hp a tick from the mage, and his prior HoT kept him upright.

In the midst of this madhouse, either healer must have rezzed the tank, stood him upright long enough for him to start taunting one more elite off -somebody-, at which point, we were at around 5 seconds left on the timer and counting down.

So everyone was left alive to reap the quest completion when it ticked around.

Dayum. How crazy was that? I should think everyone left feeling like it really was a last stand scenario because it was so intense.

We were doing it on level too, by the way. Our group was around 37-42s, for a level 40 quest. I've seen 45-50s beg to do this quest because they hadn't finished it yet, or failed earlier and wanted a sure win with overwhelming levels.

Bloody fantastic group. Bloody fantastic experience.

Not doing it again in a hurry though. Can't really, that Abyss Gate probably wouldn't let me in again. :)