Did you know I actually have two gaming blogs? Once long ago I wanted to start a community gaming blog for people who didn’t want to run one, or who didn’t think they had the content to post regularly. Thus, Nomadic Gamers was born. These days there’s only one writer, and I thought I’d give a taste of their posts in case you want to go check them out. Here’s pkudude99.
[FFXIV] Baelsar’s Wall and More
You didn’t think I’d tell you about only 1 of the new dungeons, did you?
So yeah, last night I started working through the Main Story Quest in order to advance to unlock the next new dungeon. To those caught up in the story, it’s a nice continuation and the reason for the assault on Baelsar’s Wall makes sense. The dungeon itself is part of the story, and the final boss especially is a “reveal/spoiler” so I don’t actually have a whole lot of screenshots I can share this soon after a patch without people whining at me about spoilers. And TBH, I pretty much forgot to take any shots while in the dungeon both times I did it (once in the MSQ to unlock, and once as my Expert queue pop) so there is that too…..
Initial trash is your typical Imperial soldier cannon fodder, along with some war dogs that do some point-blank AE attacks. There are some ranged mobs, so tanks need to be sure to drag the melees to them in order that everyone gets AE’d down and you don’t kill the group of mobs, then have to individually kill the ranged mob. There are also a couple of “sky armor” mobs that appear and tether to dps players as part of the pulls. I’m not really sure of the effect of the tether, but there seems to be an occasional hit of about 1500-1800 damage to you while tethered, so assuming that’s what it does, they need to be priority targets.
The 1st boss is “Magitek Predator.” It’s a mecha with 2 big tanks on its back. It does a tankbuster “claw” attack and summons more Sky Armor adds that tether to the dps periodically. They don’t have a whole lot of HP so they’re easy to clear. He also does a big raygun shot in a line across the arena that he points at a random player. It’s telegraphed, so it’s easy to dodge. And with a name like “predator” — yeah, he also puts prey markers on the dps. At 1st he only does 1 at a time, but he rather quickly starts hitting both dps simultaneously with it. It hits for about 10-12K damage, so it’s pretty spicy for the healer to deal with. He likes to do it while he’s got his adds up and tethered as well, so …. not really a big deal, but can be a little hectic.
2nd trash set happens while you’re taking a ride on a platform. No “big pulls” here due to the mobs being tossed at you a group at a time. There are a couple of timed ones so you will get a 2nd group before you’re fully done with the 1st, but … they’re trash, so the 2nd group really just turns it into a “big pull” and then it waits until you’re done with that whole thing before it “moves” again to give you more mobs, so it’s not like its a dps race or anything. Mobs are all imperial robots — the colossi, the floating claws, the vanguards, and some little spider robots they call “slashers.” They do the typical attacks you’ve seen before, so… burn ’em down.
2nd boss is “Armored Weapon” and looks like a mechanical crab, though I guess it’s got 8 legs, not 6 legs plus 2 claws, so it’s more probably a spider. Anyway…. it tosses out random unavoidable AE missile strikes for the healer to deal with, and occasionally casts “Dynamic Sensory Jammer” which puts several red shields around each player and a 5 second countdown. If you do anything (move, cast, whatever) during the countdown then you get tossed into the air, stunned, and take a 12-15K hit, so… watch for that and just stop doing anything when it hits you. Later in the fight he’ll do that and then do a ground target on a player also. WAIT until the red shield is gone before trying to dodge out, else you’ll get hit by both the stun and the dodge-able thing for even more damage. He also sometimes fires a spread of stuff sorta front-ish, but it’s not always the same direction. I haven’t yet learned how to anticipate that attack, but it’s always been toward the front and maybe 1 side, so… stay behind him. And finally about mid-fight he casts “Armored Bit” and some bits pop up from the sides and do a grid-patterned attack. It’s well telegraphed and easy to avoid, and I’ve only seen him do it 1 time in the fight, so it’s not a big deal at all.
The next trash section is a combination of Imperial war machines and foot soldiers. Lots of ground targeted AE gets thrown around by the magitek armor and gunships, but it’s easy enough to avoid, and hey.. trash.. it all dies fast.
The final boss is you finally catching up to the person you were sent to find in there. It’s not another war machine! He does some light-damage unavoidable AE, a tankbuster that I just don’t recall the name of, but is easy to tell when he’s doing it, so tanks shouldn’t have a problem with it. He also sometimes slides around the arena and then does a gigantic AE that covers the entire arena in front of him, so you have to run behind him to avoid it. It does about 13K damage and does a big knockback. He also does a gaze attack called “Flash Powder” with an easily seen “eye” marker. Just turn around to avoid that. He calls down a bunch of flaming swords (along with an 11K unavoidable AE called Lionsheart or Lionshead or something like that ) that blanket the arena with a ground telegraph, but you can kill them to create safe spaces. Best to all focus on the one closest to the tank. He’ll do his gaze attack while you’re doing that, then mark a player for a big knockback/stun into the “bad” so it’s best to actually run to the edge of the arena in the safe spot if marked so he doesn’t knock you anywhere. He also occasionally has a “titan gaol” type of mechanic where he’ll chain up a non-tank and the dps needs to break the chain to release the affected person before it explodes. Reading back over this it sounds pretty complex, but both groups I was in were able to 1-shot the fight just fine, so it’s really not bad.
Completing this dungeon then goes into a long story sequence which finishes out the MSQ for this patch.
Once it’s done you can then move on to the 3rd fight in the Warring Triad series — Zurvan the Demon. The pug I went into this fight with was all doing it 1st time and blind. Even so, we got him down to about 30% on the 1st try and had him figured out, just weren’t quite executing. The 2nd try went really smoothly. Rumor has it that the Extreme version is “the easiest EX primal fight ever” but I won’t know about that for a while yet, I don’t think.
Anyway, you start the fight with him chained in place like you see there. He does easily avoidable ground telegraphs while destroying the ground in quadrants. Don’t fall in the 1st 3 areas, and then when he does the 4th everyone falls into a new arena and he’s now “free” and the fight begins in earnest. For the most part he just tosses out easily avoidable telegraphs, but he summons adds a couple of times too. With the adds, 1 of them won’t aggro on anyone and just stands there doing a long cast of “[something] Meteor.” You need to find that one and focus it down, else the whole raid takes a very large hit when the cast finishes and the meteor hits the ground. It’s recoverable if you take the hit, it’s just big and on everyone.
After the 2 waves of adds are down Zurvan does a big ultimate cutscene on everyone, and the fight resumes. There’s really nothing that stands out in my mind as special to worry about other than the typical “avoid the telegraphed attacks” so it’s really not a bad fight at all. I take that back — he puts a fire or ice debuff on people and calls meteors that are red or blue. Ice people need to stand under the blue, and fire under the red, else it’s a really big hit to the raid. I think that was actually the wipe the 1st time — a fire guy stood under a blue meteor, and so that hit didn’t get soaked like it should. Still… it’s not hard to do there’s a LONG lead-in, and we got it just fine the 2nd try so… it wasn’t bad at all.
After doing this, I did the new beast tribe quests. It’s 100% story and running around. No combat, not doing anything other than watching the story unfold. You learn a new “moonlift” dance as part of it, which is *hilarious.*
It’s like it’s half moogle dance and half manderville dance, and just all funny.
After finishing that up you’re now rank 8 “Allied” with the 3 Heavensward tribes and it says there is more available on the vendors, but I haven’t looked yet. Not that I’d probably notice anyway. It’s not like I actually use those vendors for anything…
From there I went to Ishgard and picked up the Hildebrand quest line. As with the beast tribes it’s all story. And it’s engaging and funny with some nice visuals, so no complaints at all from me.
I’ve now also begun the “Scholasticate” side quest series, but all this had taken me up to past my bedtime, so…. I’ll finish that tonight or maybe later this week.
Happy Gaming out there!
