Jormungand! {Run away!}

Keeping with the theme of bumping into outrageously hard HNMs, I decided to tag along and join in BBQGold's run at Jourmungand today.

Actually, that's not quite true. As it turns out, I have a few friends in BBQ, and so when I logged on and looked at the friendlist, I was wondering what was going on at the Uleguerand Range, so I decided to find out. Upon hearing that they were going to try Jormungand, I asked if I could tag along for fun. As a Black Mage, well...

Onekomaru>> we can always use more blms ^^

So I found myself soon switching over to my Black Mage gear, and hoofing it up to the top of the Uleguerand Range. Fortunately, Jormungand is just next to where the King Buffalo camp is, so I knew the way there. And the map didn't hurt, either. ^^ Sure, I was a little reluctant to put on an endgame linkpearl on, seeing as how I make my disdain for endgame drama rather obvious, and I haven't popped into BBQ for a long time because of that, but I guess I can let that slip for one fight...

Anyway, I was going to be part of the adds alliance. The thing about Jormungand is, as if he wasn't hard enough alone, the place where you engage him is literally swamped with all sorts of aggro- Bombs and Ice Elementals, all of which are VT-IT to a Level 75, and all these are on a 5-minute repop. Needless to say, there needs to be some way to efficiently dispose of all this extra aggro, which is where the adds alliance comes in.

The main alliance seemed to be comprised of three parts- the tank party (where all the Ninjas and support are), the damage party (this, I'm not sure of- I imagine Summoners), and the Black Mage party, whose job it is to MB on the various skillchains, and keep a good Stun cycle up. Communication is important here, since skillchains are the only real way to make a dent in Jormungand's armour, and so the BLMs need to know in advance what skillchain the melees will be making.

The adds party consisted of about eight BLMs, with the requisite RDM and BRD support for mana regeneration. We also had some melee, whose job it was to pull aggro from the main alliance over to us. For obvious reasons, we camped well away from the actual fight, actually further down the valley towards the big slope, so we couldn't actually see what was going on, and just had to listen in to the "news" to get an idea of what progress was like.

Our first attempt went pretty smoothly, I think. With enough BLMs, we could easily take out the adds quickly enough to avoid things getting out of hand. Some care needed to be taken to make sure that the bombs don't Self-Destruct (the Ice Bomb's version is called "Hypothermal Combustion"), but that rarely happened. Sometimes, we'd end up in a little bit of a sticky situation, but because we had so much firepower, we only had three mobs to deal with at any one time at the most.



Well, one and a half hours later, we lost the first attempt in the end, with Jormungand at 1% HP too. >_<

Several things can be attributed to this, but the most noticeable thing, I felt was everybody starting to panic when Jormungand's HP was in the last 3% or so. Everybody went on {Full attack!}, and all semblance of a system, of order, went out the window. The main alliance was crumbling, and so a call went in /linkshell to bring in all the BLMs from the adds alliance. Unfortunately, this was not done quickly enough, and by the time the BLMs from the adds alliance were actually put into the main alliance so we could cast something on Jormungand, the magic aggro had caught up to us again, and we were killed before we could get any nukes off.

Granted, Jormungand starts going berserk at 20% HP, and by the last 2%, he starts spamming more and more AoE, including the dreaded Spike Flail. The battle, lost, it was time to start picking up the pieces, and try again.

Given that the last attempt took only an hour and a half, we figured a second attempt wouldn't be too bad. Besides, several members were getting rather adamant about beating him tonight. After all, it would be a waste to come here, get him to 1%, and walk off, no?

They should have just gone home.

The second fight took about four hours before we, once again, lost with it being around 5%. This second fight, was a disaster in my opinion, and showed almost a complete disregard for what mistakes were made in the first fight.

We made some improvements though. Noticing that the "swapping in adds BLMs into the main alliance" was taking too long (and the main alliance's leaders might be dead at the time), we decided to let the main alliance wipe at say, 1% like the last time, and then when Jormungand turns yellow, have the adds alliance "claim" it with a few Thundagas. A good idea, but unfortunately, one that we weren't able to test in the end.

The mistakes in the second run were rather numerous. I'm not sure about the main alliance, but from the adds perspective, first of all, people were getting sloppy. There were numerous occasions of Hypothermal Combustions, due to lack of Stuns. Overall, our failure on the adds side can be attributed to a lack of co-ordination (the multiple "NUKE NOW!!" calls didn't help- a time is really needed since people need to react and stand up to nuke), a lack of co-operation (despite times being called, only one or two BLMs started nuking), and a lack of concentration (There were so many things that could have been Stunned to make things easier, but people just weren't watching. That, and BLMs were starting to nuke the wrong target, despite the correct one being pointed out.)

Furthermore, another noticeable difference was a very distinct drop in power. Three BLMs had to leave during the course of the second fight, and by the end, there were only five of us left to do the nuking- and just three of us were BLM75. While a 3-man BLM party can easily take out a bomb here, or an Ice Elemental there, they cannot kill the adds fast enough to keep the main alliance free. That, and the reduced firepower meant a larger mana output for the BLMs, so when push came to shove, we did not have the mana to kill the adds anyway. What resulted in the end, was a buildup of mobs being brought over to the adds alliance, to the point where, handling eight mobs at once, we were in serious trouble, and had to call on the main alliance to help clean up.

In lieu of that, I'd definitely put at least six BLM75s in the adds alliance, simply because with Thunder IV and Blizzard IV available, it is the higher level BLMs that can do the significant amount of damage needed to clean the adds quickly, and efficiently, MP-wise.

When the call came for the adds party to go "claim" Jormungand, I was rather shocked at what I saw. Jormungand still had a lot of HP left- somewhere around 5-7%, and I could not fathom how three BLM75s could deal enough damage to kill it. It didn't matter in the end since I never got the chance to nuke. Wary of Spike Flail, I ran to the front of Jormungand to cast my Elemental Seal'ed-Thundaga III. However, somebody decided to turn Jormungand at that moment. -_-

Long story short, Jormungand turned, he Spike Flail'ed, and I took about 1500 damage and died. >_<

I Reraised to try and nuke again, but this time, Jormungand was in the air, and I was hit by some collateral damage and then died again, although if I had time (and mana) to Stoneskin up first, I might have been able to get a nuke off. However, in my weakened state, I only had enough mana for one nuke, so went for broke.

Overall, I still have to say fighting Jormungand was quite an experience, although I would've much rather been in the main alliance, for the kicks, despite {death} being handed out to you like flyers on a busy street. I still think people losing their cool had a lot to do with their ultimate loss in the end, but there were also some setup issues that needs to be fixed. Hopefully they (and others) will learn from what happened here to take down Jormungand the next time.

As for myself and BBQ, well...let's say there was quite a lot of behaviour going on that I didn't particularly take a liking to, especially when Kitsume popped down to watch, not to mention the general feel of the whole LS. I understand that Kitsume's relation with some of the members of BBQ isn't terribly ideal, but some of the things they were saying were really quite childish. >_< Maybe it's time to take a break from the endgame once again?