I've been feeling quite bored lately. Bored enough to try to start another CoP static with some of "newer" members of the LS. It would also be nice to have a couple more regulars to our Limbus runs (although at the moment we'd probably only get one new regular XD)
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Getting back to it, I decided to hold a Promyvion-Dem/ENM run for two LS members who haven't started the CoP missions.
Chains of Promathia. In the past it was feared as the hardest expansion to complete. Many of Vana'diel's children have yet to see the fields of Lufaise Meadows because of how much trouble it was to put together a random, well-prepared, well-stocked group of six people.
Now, radical changes in the
June 2007 updates has toned down the missions in terms of time and the effort it takes to do them -
BIG TIME!Anyway, here's the group that did the climb tonight.
Setup: Lenor (DRK/WAR, WAR/NIN), Jojax (WAR/NIN, MNK/WAR), Eja (WAR/NIN), Skeith (BLU/NIN), Solonuke (RDM/WHM), Zaeon (WHM/BLM).
Now, let's play a game of:
What's missing from this picture?
zOMG! Altana ate the hordes of empty mobs! \(T^T)/
She made them level down too. The Promyvion-boss look a like on the first floor now check as
Decent Challenge instead of
Tough. We aggroed a Gorger on the third floor and Zaeon didn't even break a sweat. White mages with MP make me /emo...
Even the MRs didn't pack as huge a punch as they did before the update.
With these changes, it was no trouble getting to the fourth floor - the infamous gauntlet stage. In the past, much adrenaline was pumped on the fourth floor of Promyvions. Once it starts, there's no turning back. It was "run-for-your-lives" or risk being eaten by mobs and having your carcass dragged through half the map by the resident BLMs.
Welp, after the update, this is what remains of the once mighty Promyvion gauntlet:
/cue tumbleweeds...
So we all reach the Spire of Dem in one piece, and after going through the basics for the CoP nubcakes, we do the ENM first and then the mission boss. I ended up dying in the ENM. What can I say? Jelly Emo-Knights and Provoke just doesn't mix. But that's ok because Zaeon was able to give me a raise.
And after pumping the Promyvion-Dem mission boss full of Psychoanima and Hysteroanima, he didn't put up much of a fight either.
Total finish time: 1Hour.
We finished the whole thing at 10:53pm AEST. So thanks to the convenience of Auction House-vended anima, we decided to do Promyvion-Holla + ENM as well. Back to Jeuno it was for a re-stock and slight job changes. Then it was off to the Crag of Holla for some Promyvion-Holla action.
Thanks to the trees and narrow sections in Promyvion-Holla, there were some tricky areas to get past and some monsters we had to kill along the way. But the gauntlet is still very much nerfed. We aggroed a Thinker-mob and I got lost along the way. In the past we would have been punished for such mistakes. These days you'd be lucky to have two or three angry empty monsters after you on the way to the Spire. You'd have to run around gathering them on purpose.
We manage to get to the Spire of Holla all in one piece. The ENM went off without a hitch. Even better was that the Vision item for the Evasion Earring dropped! About 500,000G to split between six people that night - woo hoo!
As for the actual mission boss. He was a bit harder to bring down than the Promyvion-Dem boss. Especially after he managed to land Slow towards the end of the battle. He still got schooled though, and everyone walked home in one piece with 9000 experience points in total (3000 for ENM, 1,500 for the mission) and a 500,000G earring.
It was a pretty productive night ^^
In closing, as a CoP veteran, I can't help but feel a bit disappointed with the new changes. I can see the perks in AH-vendable anima and XP rewards at the completion of the mission. Those additions were rather nice for the most part. But I kinda miss the rush you get when dancing around herds of empty monsters and trying to get through the fourth-level gauntlet in one piece.
With most of the linkshell crying for some Temenos action, we decided to give Temenos farming a try tonight. Temenos West was taken so it was Temenos North.
Pretty straight forward run tonight. Hardly any casualities to speak of. Or maybe this post just seems boring because I'm writing it a month later.
Thanks to Luna's sleepga, we came out with a win. Everyone went home with some beastcoins and Alvar was probably crying in his sleep because THF AF+1 items x2 dropped that night.
