Imperial Propaganda

So much has been going on recently, that I barely feel like I can keep up with everything going on in the past few weeks. Here goes (takes a deep breath):

First of all, I managed to get in some good, quality lvling with Imperial people again. Getting so near to 75, I can finally join up with all the senior members and not be merely a weight they are choosing to carry along. I actually feel useful once in awhile, so that is a major bonus for me. In this case, it was a pt of epic dings in Bhaflau Thickets.

Both Makina and Kia would hit their first 75 jobs (DRG and PLD respectively), Thayos would hit 75 in PLD, his original dream job, and even the elusive Pikko was along to get her first merit. If this is not a reason to celebrate friends and linkshell mates, there really is not much of a reason being in the shell afterall.

In further Imperial news, we have been clearing through the Aht Urghan storyline quickly; winning at least one battle a week, sometimes two depending on the length of the cutscenes and waits between the missions. We plowed through the mamool ja PLD fight in Jade Sepulchre (AU29) and the special assault in Periqia where we had to kill-ten-lamias and not aggro them all at once. This one took a quick revision of strategy, but we managed to finish it twice of both pts in the alliance.

Oddly enough, I did this very mission the next day with a friend of mine, Nibelungen as a duo. It got very close, but she went as mnk/nin for (extra survivabillity) and I went as whm/smn (for carby pullingness) and we managed to beat this as a duo. I still find it strange how we wiped our first time with a full ot and several 75s, while a pt of two got through it with only medium difficulty.

The storyline for ToAU took some interesting twists, bringing us to a battle against Gessho. It is hilarious how much the expectations for this fight differed from what really went down. We all thought it was going to be a simple case of get in there, remove his shadows, and start to spank him. Gawd we are dead wrong. This BC fight with him would prove to be the most difficult fight yet in the AU storyline. The setup was Kia PLD, Zaro BST, Thay RDM, Maki/Zeph DRG, Verr/Kaer WHM x2, and we still could not keep our PLD up from the amount of damage he was dishing out between his AoEs and everything.

We ended up having Zarovich kiting Gessho around the arena, which worked much better than trying to straight tank it all. We began to see much closer matches, and Thay managed to keep Zaro alive by pulling the frequently spawning clones off Zaro until they despawned. The most hilarious moment of this fight was when we found out that when real Gessho hits his two hour, all the clones do as well. This meant four Mijin Gakures hit the pt at the exact same time. It dropped everyone in the actual arena, leaving only a raise weakened PLD and myself, the out of mp WHM, up in the tunnel, though we would both drop very soon after that from angry birdman aggro.

Once, we got so close to winning that we got booted from the BC when there was only 2% HP remaining in the enemy. Needless to say, we were very happy to be over and done with that fight. As much as a pain in the ass this fight was, it was actually worth every cheap death once the resulting cutscenes came rolling in. This story has me so hooked and I cannot wait to resume for the final missions.