8 Wins, 0 Losses and...

...a whole lot of junk.

Team Splitting Heirs reunited last night for the first time since July to take on the team's namesake Campaign Op BCNM. Jess surprised me a bit Sunday morning when he pointed out that Odin server managed to pick up La Vaule[S]. Prior to this recent drought, you could pretty much count on this zone being picked up at least once every couple months. For whatever reason (guessing campaign boredom), we had a near 8 month drought.

The great thing about this team is when we originally did our initial batch of runs back then, we went something like 10-1 over the course of the week that the BC was available. Eight months later, our characters (namely our DDs and Tank) were insanely improved.

Izman has a lot more enmity gear. Jess has an E.Body and an augmented +2 Damage Death Scythe. Ravax, I think, picked up more Usu gear for his SAM (although that didn't do him much good since he died in every run except for one). Myself personally, I've tweaked my gear a little bit. Gone are the Homam pants. Those were replaced by +2 DA/+3 Haste Blitzer Poleyn. I also picked up a white tathlum and a forager's mantle since then.

Once we all got word that the BC was available, we all picked up Op tags Sunday and had 8 available tags for Monday evening. Naturally, work kept me late, but that wasn't a huge deal as Inbred had Limbus to take care of.

I figured our first run, we'd be rusty as hell, but nope...done in 9 minutes and our reward was...

Junk.

Ravax didn't even die in that one.

Our second run saw us wipe in the early going thanks to Ravax and Izman having a little bit of bad luck with counter and shoulder charge and Mav getting slept. Girlfriend went to wake Mav up (who was down in the big area of the BC sleeping stuff while the rest of were in the passageway) which pretty much sealed Izman's fate after the shoulder charge connected.

We're pros though. We wiped quickly once Izman went down, got up and had more than enough time to recover and finish the job. We were rewarded with a Cuchulain's Mantle for our efforts.

The next 4 runs saw similar results to the first one, only with Ravax dying at least once in every run.

I apparently picked up Miss Cleo's powers as I had a rather uncanny streak of accurate Tigris Stone and chest predictions.

An example:

On my way to the BC the 7th time, I aggro'd a RNG orc. Earlier in the evening, Ravax had aggro'd an orc and tried to train everything to the BC entrance where...

...the entire team just let the orcs beat on him and kill him.

When I got aggro, they came back to help me.

(Ravax) I hope you die.
(Qtipus) I won't. The stone is going to drop off this one too.
Obtained Key Item: Tigris Stone.
(Ravax) I really hate you Q.
(Mav) lol
(Izman) lmao
(Jess) wow


I think I went something like 5-1 on Tigris Stone predictions and made 3 accurate predictions on treasure pool loot.

I'd also like to point out that our average time spent in the BC was around 10 minutes. Our average time spent outside farming/getting op tags?

Around 20 minutes each.

Our last two runs ended up being profitable. The 7th run dropped another Cuchulain's Mantle and the 8th run dropped a Witch Sash. There were a couple runs where Izman dropped in the last 10-15% and we'd just muscle our way to the finish. There were a couple of close calls, but I think the six of us are probably just so cool under pressure that it didn't phase us much. While I would have loved to see another mantle/sash or two for the efforts, I won't complain at all since we won every time, thus maximizing our chances.

It really seems strange sitting in this position given the struggles I had initially with that BC. While we were there last night farming, we saw a number of groups fail (some numerous times). One of the groups was built similar to us, sans relic DRG. Given those observations along with my own, it seems to me having someone that can dump out a steady amount of damage (DRG's specialty) that has the ability to help keep hate on the tank (MP conservation) goes a long ways towards success. Breaking down the jobs we went as:

Izman(PLD/NIN): Obvious role.
Ravax (SAM/THF): Plant hate when possible.
Jess (DRK/SAM): Dish damage without pulling hate very often. Stun a lot.
Kaylea (WHM/BLM): Focus on healing the tank primarily.
Mav (RDM/BLM): Control the sub-NMs, let melee know when the BLM NM is on the way.
Qtipus (DRG/SAM): Dish damage, shed hate, secondary Trick Attack target.

Hate control and killing that damn BLM NM were pretty much the two keys to success here. Most melee don't know how to pull their punches or time their weapon skills so that you don't pull hate. Thirty minutes is a world of time to whittle that NM down.

Team Splitting Heirs might try to sneak in a run or two after Einherjar tonight if everyone's around (and if tags have regenerated), but tenatively, we're looking at Friday evening as the next day we do a batch of these runs. Hopefully we won't run into the whole gate spamming bullshit, but we likely will.

I'm halfway wondering if we can force a mantle or a sash to drop if we all have Orcish Gauntlets in our inventory...

2 Mantles, 1 Sash in 8 attempts. Off to a good start :)