ffprompt art for June

Forgot to crosspost here, but I drew some FF characters I'm not familiar with for ffprompts's June prompts [post]. Most happy with how Lenna turned out. Beatrix is meant to vaguely be in that fighting stance where you have two fingers out like claws (I don't know if that's just a fantasy thing or not, but I know there are different hand positions).

Raiding: Scathath's Newest Victims

Just had a run of Dun Scaith (last Lv60 AR) as WHM (because I made a new glamour) that was the spiciest it's been in a bit.

As a precursor to the dangers of Scathach, we almost wiped on Deathgaze Hollow (first boss). Not from any particular lack of skill or knowledge for the most part, but from the unpaired proxim for the second Void Blizzard IV ending up on the complete opposite side of the ship. I am sure anyone who sprinted or used a targetless dash would have been fine, but it is what it is. I usually forget that sprint is an option during battle, so I understand that. My course of action was to use Aetherial Shift immediately to give myself leeway, enough to hopefully Rescue someone. I had thought my cohealer WHM would make it, so I picked a random far-off DPS. Maybe unfortunately, I picked someone so far away that I had to wait for them to get closer, so I don't know if they made it.

Didn't you rescue them, why would you not know? Well, I was immediately distracted by seeing almost the entire raid fall into the abyss, leaving me as the only healer alive, so I was a touch preoccupied. I believe a SMN survived, but it still took a hot sec to raise everyone (we still ended the fight with dead people though lmao).

Ferdiad Hollow was fine, but it started off messy, with all 3 initial bleed AoEs getting placed in the middle of the crowd. From what I could tell from just staring at my party's HP rapidly draining, most people caught in the AoEs did not in fact move for an absurd amount of time. I don't blame anyone for forgetting how those AoEs work, but I implore anyone reading this to please pay attention to your own health, and if some strange thing appeared where you are standing that shouldn't be there.

Just before Proto Ultima, our DPS who had kept dying left after being AFK while dead.

Now, our beloved Scathach, queen of darkness (or whatever her title is). The battle was going fairly normally, maybe with a few more hits but that checked out with what had happened so far. Then the bane of "I turn my brain off if nothing's going wrong" players appeared: Connla, the add that causes the proxim and appears after its resolution. Not only does Connla pack quite a punch with its autos and thus need to be taken by a tank ASAP, but the raidwide it casts if you don't kill it fast enough is completely devastating and is pretty much the only way most parties could wipe against Scathath nowadays.

Evidently, we did not kill Connla in time. IIRC, Scathath immediately released a raidwide of her own after, which caused most of the deaths. Because I had not felt safe after being reduced to <20% HP from Connla, not confident in being able to get GCD heals out, I'd used Benediction on myself just before her raidwide went out, which ultimately saved my life and left me as the final healer yet again. Thus began the struggle. Most of the raid was still dead when add phase started, though we did get everyone up by the end. Most unluckily, "alive" did not mean "fast enough DMG" because maybe about half of us, including me, were oneshot by her Blinding Shadow at ~88% gauge. It felt both a little unfair but also affirming that my first death in the run was from something I categorically could not have survived without jacked food, different gear stats, or a shield from someone else (tank was GNB who probably used their shield already).

People continued to get picked off from who-knows-what, including my cohealer. Only Alliance C had their healers at this time, so I pointed out in alliance chat that we (B) had an LB3 that could save our party if only they helped out. My co gets rezzed and LBs (can't remember if any other alliance follows suit), but even then, somehow we fall at the hands of the second Connla again, ending in a wipe.

Of course, the second attempt whizzed by with 0 issues and Diabolos Hollow was also generally fine XD

Performance Evaluation:
I would consider my personal performance in this run as pretty good. There were a couple of fumbles where I could have healed more effectively and saved a few more people, but I think the number of rezzes I did during critical moments balanced that out. I don't remember doing anything particularly wrong mechanics-wise, which you'd hope for as I have played a lot of Dun Scaith in my two years of being locked into Free Trial and loving raids.

Anyway, that was fun and worth every second. Though, it would have been so good to have recovered in that first pull of Scathach. I think twice I've experienced a healer LB3 into wipe for her so far, with one of the various almost-recoveries involving me actually proccing Walking Dead on Connla because my healers were ignoring me completely (most were ignoring me and Connla actually, contributing to the wipe).