Branded by Lightning.

Airship 1/1.






Setup:

-Espera, WHM/BLM
-Tarai, PLD/WAR
-Acacia, RDM/WHM
-Blaize, WAR/NIN
-Kamineko, RNG/NIN
-Nikup, SAM/RNG

...yeah. One tank. And a PLD to boot.

Not possible, you say?

Think again.

The event was at 4 eastern today, which in my time was 2. I got on at about 9:30ish this morning to get some stuff ready for the battle. Going in, I had:

-CCB Polymer Pump
-8 Hi-Ethers
-9 Yagudo Drinks
-1 Pro-Ether
-1 Vile Elixir
-3 Walahra Water
-10/10 Reraise Hairpin

Exiting:

-5 Hi-Ether
-1 Pro-Ether
-1 Vile Elixir +1 (Tarai donated, since I'm doing the fight tomorrow also =P)
-5 Yagudo Drinks
-1 Walahra Water

Not too bad, I'd say. I got the CCB for free, since we farmed chips last night in Pso'Xja, but everything else ended up HURTING my checkbook. But eh, better overprepared than under, I suppose. ^^

So... we all got into the Sealion's Den promptly around 4 EST, but... damnit, Kamineko forgot to get his cutscenes, AND the NM fight in 6-1. -_-; So we ran outside, killed those detectors, and Kami hopped on WHM/BLM to get the cutscenes for the Airship battle.

So... after that was done, we were ready. After some last-minute preparation and strategy discussion, we got the opening cutscene, exited, and began the dry run against the Mammets!



















The initial dry run went... interestingly well. They died REALLY quickly due to 2x Sidewinder from Nikup and Kami, but... Transmogrification is bad. Having all phsyical attack heal instead of damage... yeah. >.<




















The mammets dropped like flies. Tarai supertanked them (with a total of +50 evasion, due to the mammets' absymal accuracy), which is when the tank goes in, grabs aggro on all of them, and either kites (NIN) or just stands and cures (PLD), while the rest of the party kills them off one by one. Since the tank isn't actually engaged with any of them, there is no hate, only aggro, so curebombing will grab no hate whatsoever... that left me totally free to cure all that damage that Tarai was taking! ^^

So yeah, we shredded the mammets using DD support. It was very lovely. ^^

But of course, the mammets aren't the real challenge in this battle. Perhaps the most difficult was...




















...yeah, Omega owned us.

What happened was, when we got to Omega the first time, Tarai's fuse box blew, and her parents were tinkering with fuses to find out which one controlled... something, I don't remember. So anyway, we wiped quickly (but it was okay, since no items were used) and Tarai shortly came back on. After dying, we exited, Reraised, and waited for weakness to wear. We took down the mammets one last time, and finally went in for the true Omega kill.



















...let me tell you, Omega gets really mean while low on life. We eventually took a wipe while he was at 28%, reraised, rested, rebuffed, and reengaged while he was at... 29%. =P We pulled with one of our two allotted CCB pumps, which stopped his initial TP move, and we used one more during the course of the fight. Omega down, only one more to go!

Ultima was... also interesting. Tarai sadly couldn't establish enough hate early on to prevent Nikup and Kami getting hate from Sidewinder spam, so the mob was really all over. The fight was hectic until the Nuclear Waste+elemental breath part... then it got worse. Having to cast any random status cure that came upon Tarai, I was constantly casting spells, and as such my MP depleted very quickly. Eventually, we got Ultima to about 50%, where he becomes very dangerous with his TP moves, and thus we began our CCB pump order. I began, and that stopped some moves for a while... but somehow Ultima started going around one-shotting people, and we just kept at it. At the last 10%, the final pump was in place, but I was still in despair because Ultima was still killing people. Finally, it happened:



















Blaize used his Icarus Wing for a nice Rampage finish. It was beautiful... I thought for sure we were going to go something ridiculous like 1/20 like Celestria's group did, but nah. 1/1. =P

HUGE kudos to Tarai... it takes many duo-NIN groups many many tries to finish this battle, but through her... amazingness, we managed to do it in one fell swoop. Solo tanking the Airship as PLD FTW! ^^

I'm sure as hell excited... after hearing the records people have had on this battle, I'm simply amazed at our skill (and luck, I guess). One more run on the Airship tomorrow, and we'll be ready for Al'Taieu access! ^^




















Tenzen had better be scared... because here comes Rakuen!