Well, I don't know if anyone is going to bother reading all of this, but here it goes…

I noticed that the atmosphere was off earlier, so felt it was necessary to make a thread on this. Maybe it was just me, but I felt like what started out as a pretty confident alliance for the most part had turned into something completely different by the end. The morale seemed to drop considerably by the (premature) end of the run. The reason? Well of course that's obvious. We had to resort to brewing both of the pops. In other words, during both pops, we were in a position where a legitimate win seemed out of reach, forcing the brews.

Not only did we end up brewing both pops, but neither of those pops dropped rings. Who could be pleased with that? I think many people came for different reasons, but most left disappointed. I know I did, but the thing that worries me the most is that this will affect future morale… maybe even stop people from attempting things like this in the future. A few of us went from "taking a wrecking ball" to altepa the night before to, for the most part, getting shit on by rani.

It's easy to get discouraged if you focus on the end result, and that's why I'm worried. I don't want that to happen, so that's why I'm making this post. I'm not focusing on the end result. I'm analyzing everything in my head. I'm taking everything into consideration…both the things that went wrong and the things that went right. That's just it… plenty of things went wrong, but just as many things went right. Maybe some people might have missed that. I'm not convinced that was a group worth giving up on.

The first pop was a mess pretty much from start to finish… but the second was a massive improvement over the first. It's safe to say we weren't properly prepared in the beginning, but we took what we learned from the first fight and went off of that.

With mobs in this game (at least for me) it's all about familiarity. Especially with the tougher mobs, if you're not 100% sure how they behave and what they're capable of, you're asking for it. The problem with this (again, at least for me) is that there's simply no better way to become familiar with a mob than to actually get a fair chance to go up against it (preferrably multiple times). Once you're familiar with the mob in question, the rest is just paying attention and good comms. It becomes a lot less difficult, and the second rani pop was just more proof of that for me. The second fight wasn't flawless, but if people were just a little more wary of aoe output and charm was handled properly, then we would have crushed it.

The vibe I got after it was all said and done is the thing that disappointed me the most, by far. Of course, that could have all been in my head, but in the event that it wasn't… it's bad. It's bad because because we don't need that kind of thing after what I saw. Like I said before, the improvement from first fight to second was massive. Heals were on point, comms were better and overall it was surprisingly smooth. The feeling I got around 50% of the second rani was one that I hadn't felt in a long time (at least while playing ffxi). I felt secure, confident and… excited. For a little while there I was having fun.

I got the impression, though, that a lot of people weren't having what you could call "fun." A lot of people seemed stressed. I certainly was, but everyone probably already knew that. I noticed defiant for example gets really irritable during things like this. It certainly doesn't help, but it's completely understandable. This is serious shit. The pop alone is worth a ton of money. Epona's sells for around 2mil right now. The pop is a pain to farm and a lot of time went into farming the ones we had. Then you add in the brews, and yeah… it's easy to see why people would be irritable/stressed. Losing those pops means losing a ton of time, effort and/or money (after all, time is money, apparently).

It's unfortunate that it has to be that way, because it can cause people to lose sight of things that they shouldn't. Ideally, people would be able to fight a mob like this relaxed, without the worry of losing or not getting what they want out of it. If that was possible, we'd be able to learn much quicker, and I'm confident that we'd have a mob like this locked down in no time. That's not possible, though, since a lot is riding on a fight like that. You're forced to learn in a not-so-ideal environment… but that doesn't mean you should be coming out of it the first few times with nothing. That's why I feel that it's important people are coming out of this without a feeling of hopelessness. Don't give up. We made progress. It might not be as much progress as we would have liked, but progress was definitely made.

With all of that said, I'm going to list a few things I noted in my head about both fights that we (or in many cases, I) need to think about and work on.


First fight:

I don't remember this fight as well as I wish I did, but like I said, there was a lot wrong with it. Sure, we had the wiki available to us, but often that's not a good enough picture of the mob in question. You're going to end up being surprised by something more often than not, even if you go over the wiki page completely. The biggest issue of the fight was, by far: ME. As the main tank, I was getting torn apart during the first fight.

I made a really massive mistake early on. I focused too much on proc'ing blue and ended up forgetting I was tanking the mob at times. In the end, I couldn't focus on anything properly. The massive mistake I'm talking about was leaving counterstance up with a 240 club in my hand wondering why I was taking so much damage. Only me, right? I'm not going to be countering consistently when I can't fucking hit the mob half the time. Somehow, I forgot about that. It made things rough for the mages in the beginning, which only made later problems worse.

Later problems include panicking (as was mentioned before) and poor positioning. I don't want to say the poor overall positioning was the fault of the tanks, but I think it certainly contributed. I was obviously at fault there. The problem with this mob is once you're in place, it's difficult to move the mob around in small amounts and get it where you want it. Whether it's the size of the mob or the dumb ai, I'm not really sure. It just doesn't go where you want it to go.

The other issue (that I noticed in the second fight) is that I just don't have the chance to screw around with the mob's position much when I have counterstance up, and as MNK/WAR, counterstance is absolutely necessary. Physical TP moves (for once, somehow) were never an issue and overall damage was significantly reduced with counterstance up. Magic was where the real damage came from, which is not affected by counterstance. Having it up at all times is the most sensible choice in my mind.

Unfortunately, this means that moving around makes you extremely vulnerable. Everything's going to hit, and it's going to hit as hard as possible. Then again, that doesn't really mean a whole lot when Rani in general hits extremely hard regardless. There really isn't a good time to be fucking around with mob positioning. Regardless, both the placement of the mob, the tanks' positioning and our "camp" as a whole made positioning difficult for the mages, which (I think?) resulted in magic aggro from dolls.

I really don't like the area we fought it in, but there really isn't a whole lot you can do. Fighting it up near the flux (ideal area) means risking the claim. Of course, it's possible for it to be stolen where we fought it, but it's a lot less likely. Everyone needs to be more aware of their positioning next time, I guess… plain and simple. That's huge, and it's really all you can do. That and panicking are definitely the things that killed us in this fight.

Of course, the fact that Defiant had to go switch jobs to blue proc hurt us a LOT too. Again, that was on me as well. People knew I didn't have Black Halo, but still. We got unlucky, but I should have prioritized getting my blue procs more than I did. I just didn't envision ending up in a situation like that. I knew we had other MNKs, so I opted to attend all ls events instead of getting my blue procs done. Maybe I should have voiced concern before we went, but honestly I don't think many of us thought it would actually be one of the two weapon skills I didn't have… of course it was.

Oh, almost forgot: underestimating the significance / not fully understanding the phys/mag def down debuff rani has. I didn't even know it was mag def as well. I just saw the def down icon on me and thought, "Well, big fucking deal. My defense is practically zero thanks to counterstance anyway." How wrong I was. I can't say for sure since I don't remember well, but that was probably what ended up killing me the first time around. Fortunately I learned from this mistake.

So, to summarize the first fight:

Bad things
–-
- Not being properly prepared for Rani's damage output
- Lack of focus
- Poor overall positioning
- Lacking procs

So, yeah. Mostly me. Sorry.

Good things
–-
- Well, I thought Defiance did well holding as thf. Other than that, not a whole lot.



Second fight:
As I have stated many times already, this was a massive improvement over the first fight, but it also wasn't anywhere near perfect, hence the forced brew. For me, though, it was nice to see. We had a better idea of what to expect. Mob actions were called out (albeit not perfectly), mages stepped their game up considerably (really good heals most of the time!!), and positioning was better. I don't have nearly as much bad shit to point out here. The only things that really killed us here were:

- Improved, but still pretty bad calls (from me)
- Some panicking and people just being stressed out (mostly me)
- Improved, but still less than ideal positioning (especially during meteor, but that's a tough one)
- CHARM.
- This one might be more my opinion, but… too many people on the fucking mob.

Defiant, if you feel differently about this one, feel free to voice your disagreement, but I really felt like there was no reason for us to have a SMN bping on it or like any of the other people on it for that matter. I'm sure the damage of other people probably helped, but I felt like I was doing enough damage on it most of the time to warrant other people staying off of it. I understand THF is necessary at times due to TH (not like it was worth it this time around tho) but everything else? No thanks. What the fuck, man… SMN BPs? Why?

People were also way too slow to get off of it once proc zerking time was over. Seems like this is a problem pretty regularly. I've had issues with it too (but a lot of that has to do with my horribly bad dual-boxing abilities). People underestimate the time the freeze will last and also underestimate the amount of time it will take for them to get out of there without taking massive amounts of damage. Like you said in mumble, when the freeze wears it's GOING to hurt people… and it did. That was a turning moment, I think, and it made that charm even more difficult to handle. Maybe I'm wrong… but that's how I felt.

It makes me really uncomfortable having more than maybe a couple people on the mob, especially at a low HP%. That's an unfortunate thing, since while most were off of it, I felt surprisingly comfortable during the second fight… That was huge - at least for me. I really thought we had it for a while. I almost never felt like I needed to get Siani over to heal me, which is usually what happens. It happened in the first fight, and it killed my focus even more.

I know I've mentioned it before, and I don't actually know how much people notice, but I'm really fucking bad with dual-boxing. The mere presence of a second ffxi window distracts me and I've developed this weird fucking shit where if I feel uneasy on Icet, I always resort to getting on Siani and attempt to handle them both in tough situations. Like, "Fuck, people/me dying; gotta heal on Siani." Maybe sometimes it helps, but I can't help feeling like it would be better if I just fucking focused on Icet and left Siani alone.

A lot of times though I feel like I can't do that… That's why I really loved the second fight. Heals were overall exceptional. There were a few times where I felt like I was at like 2900/3100 for a little too long, but mostly when something hit me I was never in yellow for very long at all. Most -nas/erases were quick too… so mad props there.

Aside from all of that, just gotta figure out how to handle that charm, man… Figure that out, improve comms (me), stay off of it / focus and be wary of your positioning… and we're golden. We got this next time. Just have to try to relax and learn from every fight. We can definitely get it.

At least, that's what I want people to believe… but I know some things might have made it hard… namely (in my mind) me. The majority of my performance was really poor, so I want to apologize, but I'm also worried that an apology might be enough… this might have caused people to lose more confidence in me (if they had any in the first place). Dual-boxing kills a lot of my focus, but even putting that aside, my performance generally ends up varying a lot (usually on the bad side)… I'm generally not as prepared for things as I should be… and I forget / don't notice a lot of small things. Defiant knows.

Before coming back to ffxi, I was working toward playing competitive tf2 (medic), but I was constantly getting frustrated with how much my performance ended up varying and I never got to the point where it was consistent enough to warrant trying out for a team. I thought, coming back to ffxi, I would just end up doing insignificant shit on my own, but I ended up being wrong. It's been a long time since I've done anything serious in this game. Fighting Rani is what I imagine getting thrown into competitive tf2 would have been like for me. Even so, I don't want to give up, but I'm worried people will end up giving up on me.

Fighting Rani the second time got me really excited… I don't want to give up. I want to keep playing with you guys. I don't think I'm hopeless, but I'm sure it's easy to believe that I am, given what a lot of you regularly see… but I also think there are moments when I play pretty well… our night in altepa / uleguerand with me focus healing on Siani was one of those. I mean, I was drunk toward the end, but I was still pretty satisfied with my performance. I don't know if anyone else felt the same way. I know most of it was easy shit, but still…

Also, want to apologize again for my comms… I know I got pretty anxious/stressed at times during second Rani, and when I get like that my voice tends to sound pretty obnoxious… maybe it is all the time, but especially when I'm like that. Sorry. I'll try to chill out so I'm less obnoxious. I'll also work on comming more useful information ("aga iii" is too vague) and comming that information quicker. I was slow on a few def downs and especially that last charm… sorry.

I'll also work more on some of my gear sets. My phys/mag damage sets weren't properly prepared at all. The twilight torque I got today helped… thanks to mrkil for passing it. I'm sure he could have used, but he passed it for whatever reason. Thanks a lot… I'll try to put it to better use next time. I feel like the quick sets I came up with helped, but they could be a lot better.

Of course, things like blue procs too. Defiant and Mrkil helped me with breaking my club and I killed the NM for that one. I'm in Boyahda now working on my staff solo… about halfway done probably. It's really hard finding time to do this stuff when I want to participate in all of the events (cuz it's fun as shit). I would really like a chance to improve, though, so don't give up on me if you can, ok? Especially Defiant, Mrkil, Glitterbug, etc… I really enjoy playing with you guys.

Anyway, sorry for all of the rambling that probably belongs on a blog. It seems like I'm really bad with that kind of shit these days. I can't seem to stop myself. Hopefully this post was informative/helpful/uplifting in some way though… if anyone bothered to read it.

If I'm not on for events tomorrow (today) it's because I spent too damn long writing this and thinking about all of it. Hopefully we can still do stuff together and enjoy it though. Thanks for reading.

Morning Ice,

Reading this reminded me a lot of my own analysis process.. There definitely was an air of disappointment; I felt it too, but please don't allow yourself to feel solely at blame. I was also a weak link - I know I could have done a lot better especially in the first run… and I'm sure there are others criticizing their performance, even if they choose not to voice it here.

Firstly, you make a solid point about the wiki- while it is a good place to start, it isn't going to fully predict how the fight will go for all groups. That, and it doesn't help that only a few people likely read it before going into the fight, which means there were likely some of us who weren't sure what to expect. I'm guilty of this.

I know myself, and probably several others, have come to rely on Defiant/Mrkil to provide us a breakdown of how these events go. While it's awesome that they are knowledgeable, and have a lot of experience, it's unfair to rely on them solely. We should be taking the time individually to research these runs on wiki, youtube - not DA/Mrkil's instruction alone. That said, when the person running the event gives instructions or makes calls, we also need to listen. There's needs to be a level of trust where if someone says - "no cures" or "disengage" - we respond immediately to the command. Generally, the people scheduling these events (and others) have experience doing so, and know when a hate dump is going to occur, or if proc is going to wear and we should prepare for a major AOE attack.

The first fight was a mess - I think a lot of things went wrong alliance-wide, so don't bear down on yourself too hard. From a healer standpoint, I think you were doing great on the second run making calls - it was easy for me to keep up with heals/erase using verbal commands to signal spells/abilities - especially when a lot of my time was spent monitoring your health bar and the distance plugin to stay as close to max distance as possible. I can freely admit I'm not so talented to where I can watch everyone's health status, the chat log for spells/abilities, and distance myself appropriately all at once. It's something I need to work on. I do feel that each event I attend, I'm getting better at it. More importantly, I want to get better at it, so I need to maximize the limited playtime I have in the week to do so.

I don't think, as a whole, our linkshell is too far off from being able to do challenging NMs. When I think about our incredible performance the night before in Uleguerand Range with Isgebind, I am excited and proud of our members (yourself included!), and what we are able to accomplish. I think with a little more effort from each of us, and if we all give just a little bit of TLC to our mains, we have what it takes to make these fights look easy.

If there's anything I can do to help you, or there is something we can work together on when we are both online, let me know - while it's nice that you are able to dual-box, you shouldn't feel the need to all the time, and I think if you and I spend some time working together we'll make a solid team during events, and you can put far more focus into playing Ice confidently without feeling the need to have Siani on a second screen.

Most importantly, don't beat yourself up. It's a learning experience for everyone. I'm not going to give up on you, and I sincerely doubt DA/Mrkil/Glitter will either. I've made way worse mistakes and they still let me tag along (although I seriously question why, haha).

Well I guess some people might see it as excessive, but I really feel like most of the problems on the first fight started at me. I can't see it any other way. Also, playing heals on something big like this is ridiculously hard just because of the stress involved and having to deal with everyone else's inexperience. When you're tanking the mob, you mostly just have to focus on yourself. Most other jobs focus mainly on the mob. WHMs have to watch everyone (mainly the tank, though, obviously). It's tough, so I find it hard to criticize WHMs early on.

I definitely like the idea of working on things together, but unfortunately it doesn't make a lot of sense in this game. Unlike a game such as tf2, there isn't a whole lot of room for developing synergy between a tank and a healer like there is with the pocket/medic (tf2). Most people end up having to play mostly the same way in a role like that. There's not a lot of variation in playstyle. If anything, there are simply just different levels.

I think the second fight showed that there's not much for you to work on anyway. It's just getting more comfortable with those bigger fights and how mnk/war (or whatever we're using) works for them. I can personally say at least that after two fights I've got Rani down now. If I had the same support I had before, I'm confident I would never go down. After that, the only issue is meteor/charm.

Few suggestions for next time:

- At least two WHMs, preferrably three. We'd have two focusing on the tank while the third is way the fuck out there focusing on keeping the two main WHMs alive (priority #1) and supporting anyone else that is dealing with adds or w/e (priority #2). Personally that's what I would have used the SMN for but lol. One of the two main WHMs will focus strictly on curing. The second will focus on -nas/erase and backup curing. This way, cures/-nas/erases don't go off more than they should, minimizing MP waste. I realize something like this would be hard to do in our current camp, but if we could figure out a way to do it, it'd be awesome.

- Every single person in the alliance needs to have a designated role. Felt like a lot of people just didn't even know what to do. Adds should have never been an issue. We should have people whose job is to handle adds if we're in a place like that. I think some people had an idea, but others didn't. We had enough people yesterday to allow for a team dedicated to killing adds. Don't need five people on Rani anyway.

- Blue proc and tank need to be seperate people - preferrably two MNKs. My incompetence aside, proc'ing blue and tanking a mob like this at the same time is the dumbest shit and makes no sense. Second fight was much easier since we had these roles seperated like they should be.

- If we're going to be zerging during red freeze again, we need to have warnings or something. For example…

"Proc'ing red in 5/10." People need to be engaged at 5, ready to move in.
"Red is proc'd; zerg it." They should be in or very close by now.
"Unfreezing in 5. Everyone off NOW." By 0, everyone is out of - at the very least - normal aoe range.

Think it's obvious that the goal of zerging during red freeze isn't to kill Rani. There's no way that's going to happen. It's best just to do what you can in that like 10 second window and get out long before it gets the chance to kill you.

That's all for now.

My input on this is to learn from the mistakes and apply it on the next time. There will be times when things just go completely wrong and nothing much more we can do about. I will always keep a brew handy for any situation, but that is only used as a absolute last resort. Rani is a different animal from my experience, compared to other HNM's and other endgame bosses including AV and Pandamonium Warden.

If we all focus on our A game a bit, we can do really well on almost anything that SE has to offer. Yes there are times me and DA will vent our frustrations, but please don't take it to heart. All we ask of you guys is do what you can to help improve yourselves and we will do what we can to help you achieve it. Once I get internet restored to my house I will have my SAM handy to help break any latents. Also my other jobs are at the LS disposal as needed. They are listed in my signature here.

Just take this as a learning experience and improve upon it. One thing about me and DA will always will be when assessing issues, we will be blunt, no sugar coating. We are doing it to help you guys assess issues. Again I see great potential in everyone in the LS, just needs a bit TLC and polish to "awaken" it.

I'll be honest. We were unprepared. We did use some tools at our disposal, such as Mumble, Wiki and knowledge of previous battles. But unfortunately it just wasn't enough. The LS did in fact show improvement from 1 NM to the next. But there was still a lot to be desired.

Big things were the lack of paying attention, by a LOT of people. I think there were too many people not paying any attention, and then there were a few people trying to give their 2 cents when it wasn't needed. When there is an event like this, you can't be distracted. If RL issues come up, I understand that. But when people are watching TV or texting during events, that is when things will certainly get bad. Another big thing was in fact communication. Yes, we had a lot of communication. Also, there was the lack of a lot of communication. Not all blame can be passed from 1 person to the next. We all had a little bit we should have worked on. I, myself, found that I too lacked some communication, but I promise you that it won't happen again.

Rani is a beast of an NM. Hands down it is 1 of the toughest NMs we have ever found as a linkshell. But I guarantee, it was not a lost cause. Yes we had to Brew. No we didn't get any rings. But we won. And damn it, that was the goal. I personally would like to beat this mother fucker with out brews. That dream is still a little far off, but dreams are dreams for a reason. We will soon realize it.

Everyone that was in attendance was meant for a certain roll, but I didn't tell a lot of people their rolls, because I assumed they would know. But you know what they say about assume. For future runs of any kind, I will in fact tell people what they are to do. Both runs were hella sloppy, but I know we can shape up and do better. There is a lot of potential in this linkshell and i'll be damned if I don't attempt to get that potential and make the best of it.

I would love to give an example of good/bad things from each fight, but to me it was all rolled into a clusterfuck of wtf. I do know there were good things and bad things about each battle. I do know people were in fact disappointed. I do know that a lot of people did try. And trying is a good thing.

From now on, we will know to sort certain things out before battle, and we will make it to where we can have a lot of good people with a lot of good jobs and a lot of good times.

Rani will fucking die! This, Defiantangel commands!
Knowing is half the battle!