It’s astounding; Time is fleeting; Madness takes its toll. But listen closely…

<Not for very much longer.>

<I’ve got to keep control.>

I remember doing the time-warp; Drinking those moments when the Blackness would hit me

<And the void would be calling…>

Let’s do the time-warp again.

Let’s do the time-warp again.

– Let’s Do the Time Warp [Again] from The Rocky Horror Picture Show

Several members of my current linkshell, Paradigm, had expressed an interest in getting access to Chains of Promathia content, but had thus far been depending on pick-up-groups (PUGs) to get past the inital Promyvion battles.

The problem with PUGs is that you’ll never know what kind of player you’ll get, and in the the case of my linkshell mates, they seem to have only managed to come across the worst kind.  I listened to horror stories of groups giving up because they couldn’t make it to the spire, or of multiple attempts to kill the boss only to wipe.

So I suggested to my linkshell mates that we, as a linkshell, take on the Promyvion battles ourselves, and I’d lead them.  I wish I could say that was met with a resounding cheer, but alas this was not the case.  I think the most positive comment was “I know we’ll die, but I need them.”

I’ve been through the three initial Promyvion battles scores of times on Gentoo.  I enjoy them.  In my last round of getting past them with Suquamish, our group was led by Hripthe when he was part of the lolCats linkshell.  I previously mentioned how much Hripthe taught me about how to get through the Promyvions like a real team.

I organized our fights like I always have — Promyvion-Dem as the trainer, Promyvion-Holla to put the skills to test, and then Promyvion-Mea for the real fight.  It’s only the last one that I think requires a bit of luck, thus the one I leave to last.

When the day for Promyvion-Dem rolled around, morale was low.  We had to fill-in absences.  Because no one had a map of Promyvion-Dem, the team was convinced we’d get lost and die.  When we made it to the Spire, without so much as hiccup, people started perking up.  Just like with Hripthe, I talked out the entire battle-plan before going in.  Also, just like with the lolCats, everyone listened and made sure they understood their role.  When we went in, we took things very slow before starting the battle.  When we finally engaged, we were prepared, and things went off like clockwork.  Even with our careful/slow start, we finished the battle within a hair of the server record.

So Paradigm handed itself it’s first Promyvion victory.  With that, all the negativity evaporated, and everyone was charged to go after the next ones.  Lessons learned by me: Blue Mages are simply awesome in these fights.  With their ability to stun and heal, they end up being the key utility player.

For Promyvion-Holla we had to go without our Blue Mage; which made the fight slightly fairer for the boss.  We also traded a Red Mage for a Black Mage.  However none of these changes much mattered as Paradigm handled itself with grace.  Promyvion-Holla fell with the same smoothness that Promyvion-Dem had.

I’ve always considered Promyvion-Mea the hardest of the three, and it didn’t disappoint.  To make things harder, we had more substitutions that left us low on damage dealing.  On our way through Promyvion-Mea, one of our team-members suffered a disconnect just as we made our way to the final level before the Spire of Mea, causing us to back track.  The boss didn’t disappoint me either — I opened the battle; upon connecting with my Great Axe it responded using Murk immediately.  Nothing like have a boss charged to 100%TP before the battle.

Things only got harder from there.  Our animas were partially resisted, and the Delver starting to spam other TP moves with only 25% of HP removed — which meant we had to start using our Hysterioanimas VERY early.  We pressed on sucessfully, but when we had wittled the Delver down to ~5% of it’s HP left, we were out of hysterio and psycho animas and the Delver decided it didn’t want to lose.  It pulled out a Carousel, and immediately follow that up with Promyvion Brume (does damage and resets all enmity levels).  This left our White Mage in a tough spot, with all our of team membes low on HP, and enmity in complete chaos.  Everyone affected by the TP moves started downing Hi Potions, and our cool headed White Mage (Marthamoonbeam) Curaga’d us and braced for the coming beat-down.

We got things temporarily under control again, only to have the Paladin get hit with Impalement. Another big cure an the Delver was stuck to our White Mage like glue.  It was at this point I was worried we wouldn’t beat this boss.  Evidently the Delver sensed this and decided to use Material Fend (evasion bonus) to remove the last shred of hope I had.

To counter, our White Mage was brilliant under pressure.  She stuck herself into a corner — the Delver followed — and just before getting KO’ed, hit us with Benediction.  With full HP, we wailed away taking the Delver down to 1% of it’s HP, and with it cornered and our remaining team surrounding it, I hit it with a Terroranima.  For the final 30 seconds of the fight the Delver quivered before us as a we flailed away.

It wasn’t a decisive victory, but we won.  Lupellus, Marthamoonbeam, and Baritan all managed to get access to the CoP areas.

More importantly, Paradigm did an excellent job of peforming under pressure.