Character

Note, this entry is a looooong bitchfest. If that tends turn you off, DON'T read this!!!!!! This is MY blog people, and I WILL annoyingly bitch about stuff from time to time!

(Oh who am I kidding, you people LIVE for this kind of stuff! ;-) )




Yes people, it's THAT time again! Time for all you Annabel lovers, (and haters), to get an earful of another one of Annabel's rants! And WHAT do I have to gripe about THIS time? Well, LOTS of stuff concerning Unreal! That's right, I am bitching about it. With three clears of Shiva Unreal now I have seen a LOT of crap and I just want to get it off my chest.


Ok, first off......People, people, people, PEOPLE! Why,, oh WHY does doing anything well.,.......HARD cause soooooo much annoyance, trauma, and down right frustration to the majority of people TRYING to DO it because people are too LAZY to learn simple rotations properly?

The Shiva mechanics are NOT hard, they are really NOT! They are VERY repetitious for the most part with VERY little variation, which you learn with practice. Once you know the timing and what to look for, the mechanics of the fight should NOT be an issue for clearing it! UGH!

And PEOPLE! HAILSTORM! Clockwise means right TO left!!!!!! STOP going to the WRONG place and killing a THIRD of the group! AGGGGGGH!

Seriously people, there are markers and a lot of the time they are COLOR coded for BOTH people! Remember your color and GO to it when hailstorm hits! If they are not CC, remember your letter or number!

Ok, look, I KNOW it can be a little disorienting sometimes in the thick of battle, but not ALL the time!!!!!
You people KNOW who you are!

A. Cardinal- N,S,E,W you go CLOCKWISE if needed!
B. Inter-Cardinal: NE,SE,SW,NW, you go COUNTER-CLOCKWISE if needed!

Watch the positioning of the circles and go to the proper place when you need to move; PLENTY of time to do this! Really!

Now, I won't bitch about inner and outer because I know that can confuse even the people that know how to do this.

Oh what the hell.....But PEOPLE, how hard IS it to just well,.......ASK your partner which one he prefers? "Hey, do you want inner or outer?" SEE, EASY and you WON'T die to hailstorm grouping! Yeah, I know some go by healers/tanks outer, DPS/inner, bur not ALL groups DO this! (They REALLY should though!)

And finally concerning the Hailstorm phase. People, REMEMBER that sometimes she will do the sword and NOT the hailstorm cast. Please remember to watch how she rises and react accordingly. If it is sword and you don't stack, it will KILL you!!!!!!!

Ok, now, people. you really NEED to realize this.....the Unreal challenges are HARD!!!!!!!! They are NOT for causal people trying to be carried though it!

It CANNOT HAPPEN!!!!!!!!!!!!

It CANNOT happen because of two things.

A. The DPS check itself. I have said it before and I will say it again, it is BRUTAL!!!!!! It is HARD to achieve and you CANNOT do it if you ..

A, Have LOTS of deaths
B. Do NOT use the DPS LB3
C. Do NOT position her properly.

And B. Are not on the Ball with healing.

If you choose to heal this thing, you NEED to know the mechanics so you don't die and you NEED to be ready to deal with those AOE's, cause there are a LOT of them which can kill the party VERY fast! Dear, dear healers, I am NOT exaggerating about this. Four subzeros in a row on phase 3 will pretty much wipe most of the party before you know it if you are not prepared to brute heal through it. This means casting as SOON as the subzero is done cause you sometimes DON'T know if another one is coming, and if it does and that AOE heal is not ready, you are probably SCREWED, especially if the other healer is dead and isn't backing you up.

Plus: healing this in general.....

Sig told me that people say Shiva's damage to tanks in Unreal are on the level of SAVAGE damage!!!!!! If you don't know, that is a LOT of damage to them, over 20% health a hit, and tanks have a LOT of health!!!!!! AND she will hit them over and OVER again, so you NEED to WATCH for it and DON't let them drop!!!!!!!

Lazy healers equal FAILED runs! If you do not think you can heal this properly, practice with practice groups first to get the hang of it, NOT clear parties where you can't go the distance and deal with high buff stack damage!

SPEAKING of .......Tanks! Keep her the MIDDLE damn it! DON'T let her wonder around the arena, it KILLS people! Positioning is the SECOND thing that kills people in this, after not knowing mechanics and before hailstorm screwups., which are 1 and 3. You keep her in the middle for most and move her north for bow, and the odds for winning are doubled!

DPS, oh DPS. Some of you are soooo good at it, others....NOT so much. KNOW your rotations and learn to adjust to the mechanics as necessary.. You know how I know you are sucking in phase 1? Because of how many subzeros I have to heal your asses through before the add phase. The longer you take to get her to the health trigger, the MORE subzeros she casts till the reaches it!

Really GOOD DPS will trigger ZERO subzeros before she summons, typical tends to be two though. If I see 4-5 subzeros before summons, I go, "shit, there is no WAY a clear is going to happen, the DPS is sucking!" In fact, that high amount of SZ and the ice warriors tend to die VERY close to her Diamond Dust cast, which is NOT good!!!!

When doing a run, watch how may subzeros it takes to get to phase 2 and how fast the ice warriors die. If it takes too long, try and do better.

Ok, next......Party finder makers............Shiva Unreal is LOCKED to Ilevel 435!!!!!!!!!!!!! Requesting a high Ilevel does NOTHING other then lock out others that can possibly do it and CAN'T help you do it!

Look, I know WHY you try and do this. You think people with high ilevel are raider level and got their stuff from doing hard things. But the jokes on YOU!!!!!!!

With the patch it is EASY for people now to get ilevel 500 stuff through hunts and nut collecting. In fact, my Game wife Aria told me because of this she almost has a complete set of 500 gear for her red mage and she does NOT do hard stuff or have experience in it!!!!!

So STOP ilevel locking the PF requests for things that are a set ilevel; it is NOT going to guarantee you getting skilled players anymore!

And PEOPLE......oh you silly people. PLEASE stop giving up so early just because there is a mess up and we wipe. This fight is HARD. It is VERY easy to derp, even the good players. If the DPS is there, give the party a chance to dial it in and get in sync with one another. STOP leaving and forcing us to start again with new group members!

If the DPS is sucking and people are constantly screwing up mechanics, I understand, but if we are doing well and just choking because of stupid mistakes, you NEED to be patient and give the group a chance!!!!

After all, we are a bunch of RANDOMS, NOT a static who knows one another's style!!!!

Ok, I think I am done. huff, huff........

I honestly don't see much of a future for this Unreal stuff unless they...
A. lower the Unreal DPS check or
B. put the Echo in there.

The Unreal fights are just currently too hard for a lot of the game base and they expect them to do this every week just to play the faux game, which has a crappy payout for the effort.

The constant failure of PF parties to get a clear for this tells me that most are just going to drop it and not even care, with only the die hard people still willing to suffer through it.


Ok, rant over! Whew, this ditzy blonde is TIRED! ;p


IE: One last thing about subzero

I have said before that bow and hailstorm are the worst mechanics, but actually, subzero is the worst one of them all due to it's unpredictability of how many Shiva will cast when it comes around. In the fights I have seen, I believe this is directly related to the DPS the party is doing to her. The more damage she takes to drop her bar, the less amount of subzero's she will do when it comes around.

I will have to observe more to see if this is actually true. If it is, it means the worse the DPS is in a full mechanics cycle, the more work the healers have to do to keep the party up during the subzero phase, which is a BAD thing due to the serious drain of their magic points.

Addum to this: I was in a static group clear and saw really good consistent DPS , so I now know that this is TRUE! I had very few subzeros to heal through during that fight compared to other fights. So the better the party's DPS the LESS healing there needs to be done due to AOE's!