“Odin,” or “Oh, DON’T”
Don’t queue for it unless you’re prepared to DIE.
Backstory: after I got bard to 55, I randomly leveled summoner to 50 so I could wear the HORN OF DIGNITY, and I’ve been unlocking hard mode dungeons and whatnot as summoner since. Odin, however, is making me SERIOUSLY ANGST over this choice.
AAAAAAAAAHH
SWORDS EVERYWHERE
KILL OR WE DIE oh wait, we’re dead …
To briefly describe the encounter for those who have not yet undertaken it, you zone in and find a big angry dude on a black horse with really short legs. The main tank may or may not do a ready check – most just run right out of the gate the moment everyone’s zoned in.
At first, the fight seems pretty much like your standard tank and spank with some intense AoE damage spikes from different sources thrown in. (Added bonus: one type of AoE will petrify whoever it hits!) Eventually, you get the AoEs plus a nice bleed effect going on, which the two overworked healers absolutely must dispel or the whole party will literally bleed out!
Still, all seems easy enough until three party members get this red CIRCLE OF DOOM. When this effect ends, these SWORDS OF EVIL land on top of them and the SWORDS MUST DIE because OMFG DAMAGE WHERE THE HELL IS ALL THIS DAMAGE COMING FROM WHY DO WE ONLY HAVE TWO HEALERS THIS IS INSANE. (Also, the other AoEs keep going while the Odin continues to punch the tanks in the face, which sometimes causes them to fall over dead.)
After that, I dunno, because the closest I’ve gotten to killing Odin is about 2/3rds of the way down. Every single attempt I’ve put in has died once the extra swords show up.
Back in WoW, whenever junior-level raids of strangers wiped to a boss, they would get a stack of this “Determination” buff. Eventually, the group’s low coordination/damage/healing/whatever would no longer matter quite as much and you could simply beat your opponent to death. I’m told there’s something similar in FFXIV, but I didn’t see it happening in the Odin fight. Even when I was in a “good” group, we just kept dying to the swords, over and over and over and over and over again. We never made it past that point, which you would expect us to do eventually if our damage was actually being buffed after each wipe.
I’m convinced that the swords are always our end because our DPS is too low, we are incapable of focusing on one sword at a time (since they end up wherever their targeted player does, they don’t always land in the same place and people ignore marked targets), and our healers can’t compensate for the extra seconds the swords stay up. In other words, I’m like, I NEED MORE DAMAGE AND I NEED IT NOW.
The thing with summoner is that I don’t feel like I’ve got particularly high DPS. With the reliance on DoTs, it seems to be more of a style that requires you to keep as many up for as long as you can. My basic spell, Ruin (or a Ruin 2 every now and then for an additional Blind effect), does run-of-the-mill damage and basically feels like filler until it’s time for me to refresh all my dots. The one spell I have that feels highly damage-y when I use it is Fester, which does more damage if I have more DoTs up. (Lemme tell you about this one time I had a critical hit and got a number in the 900s!) True, my damage did double when I finally gave in and purchased a higher level weapon from the MarketBoard (been hoping to see one drop or something), but even so … I just don’t feel like I have an extra attack I can pull out and beat something upside the head with in times of OMFG WE’RE DYING.
With bard, I have buffs I can use in tense situations to temporarily increase my crit chance, for example. I’ve got some DoTs, but I also have some higher-powered attacks that feel like they refresh faster than Fester does. I think I may be slightly better with bard, but I have no numbers (since I have no damage-counters or whatever) to back that up. So although I like summoner, I’m feeling indecisive over what class to continue with.
HORN OF DIGNITY
I wear it well.
Summoner Pros:
- Having a pet to take the heat when soloing is extremely handy!
- I’ve been purchasing Ironworks gear, and thus have a higher item level as summoner than I do as bard.
- Has a resurrect which can be used in battle (AND BELIEVE YOU ME I’VE BEEN USING IT).
Summoner Cons:
- Having a pet with derpy AI is extremely annoying, especially since my skills that boost my pet’s damage have a very limited range. Garuda-egi won’t move with me during a fight and sometimes gets knocked clear across the fight area – meaning I have to spend precious time finding her while in battle.
- Doing low-level dungeons via Duty Roulette can be super tedious because the summoner class didn’t get interesting until I got to a higher level where I had a million DoTs and the ability to spread them.
- I miss Carbuncle, dammit. I wish I could have Topaz Carbuncle with Titan-egi’s capabilities …
HAT OF AWESOME
Never before has Eorzeazeroth been so stylin’.
Bard Pros:
- HAVE YOU SEEN MY PANTS LATELY
- PEW PEW PEW I SHOOT EVERYTHING
- Closer to level 60.
Bard Cons:
- Lower item level at this moment
- No pet to take crap for me while questing/out and about on my own. But then again, I never really seemed to need one as a bard …
I mean, it’s not like me switching to bard will magically make Odin keel over and grant my group victory. It’ll just make me feel like I’m doing more RIGHT NOW when we try to off him.
The Fanciest Pants 