Safety or speed.

So, we did a Proto-Ultima last night which was a solid success. Two Nashira legs for Crlmsonking and Raikoh. I was thinking about it and I believe that we have a decidedly different strategy than I believe most people have for this and most other fights. Versus, in general, tends to focus on safety in fights rather than speed. Proto-Ultima is a perfect example. When you fight Proto-Ultima you are given 60 minutes to do the fight, which is apparently just enough time to kill it with fully stacked DoT's. LOL So I see no real reason to rush through this fight. Last night we used a set up that we are very comfortable with, and that uses the huge amount of time we have available to our advantage. We have four tanks, 3 PLD/NIN and 1 NIN/DRK. The PLD/NIN's obviously do the heavy lifting, while the NIN/DRK is an extra stun until they are needed to tank. We have 2 or 3 WHM, 2 or 3 BLM and SMN, a couple of melee DD, a BRD or 2, then as many RDM/DRK as we can cram into the alliance. Stuns make this fight incredibly more bearable as Proto-Ultima uses its nasty TP moves very quickly so they are hard to stun, but even a late stun can help with recovery. Mostly, though, the extra stuns are very helpful for stunning Dissipation. Dissipation is a lucky stun at best, it goes off so quickly that even if a RDM/DRK is paying perfect attention they are not going to be able to stun it. So instead we just have everyone stun right as Proto-Ultima gets to the HP mark when it will use Dissipation. Even when you are doing this and having 5 or 6 stuns land it can still get Dissipation off because it is so fast, but we were able to stun 3 of the 4 Dissipations last night. This saves on MP in a myriad of ways, including healing for the tanks when they are Terrorized and the rebuffs that have to be reapplied to the tanks after the full Dispel. In general, we only keep the BLMs in a stun order then have everyone else just free stun as needed. This is because most everyone else that has Stun also has another role in the fight; the RDMs need to do a plethora of other standard RDM things, and the NIN/DRK may be called in for tanking which will mess with the stun order.

Now, I know many people would say that we don't need that many tanks or that many stuns and if we had more damage we could finish the fight more quickly reducing the risk of running low on MP. But I believe this is more of an excuse for the impatient rather than a good strategy, as MP with that many healers and refreshers is never really a concern. We definitely have a longer fight. Considering the normal 5 minutes of last minute comments and prep right before engaging it takes us about 30-35 minutes to go from 100% to 0%. Considering that the last 19% involves a lot of running around and with Physical and Mana Shield can vary the kill time by a large margin, I would say that this is a pretty decent clip through most of the fight. We do get small lags right before the time when Dissipation is set to go off because people are getting ready to stun, but outside of that the damage we inflict is consistent and constant. So why rush really? Our goal is to survive the worst part of the fight without having to deal with major problems, and if major problems happen, to adapt and move on quickly. The speed kill for Proto-Ultima often leaves people without a resort once the Citadel Buster phase is entered. With 4 tanks the only real risk of something bad happening is the errant Armor Buster on an overzealous mage. Even then it is something that is easily handled while recovering. As long as everyone does their job well there is no real risk in this fight at all, and in fact I would say that it is even easier than Proto-Omega.

The reason that I mention is that I tend to see the idea that speed for killing things is better than safety, and this is antithetical for me to the goals of most everything I do in the game. This does not mean that speed is unimportant, of course, but that it needs to be balanced with being able to actually win the fights that we do. If speed gets people killed and increases the chance of a loss then it is not the best course of action. It can also work against other important values. For example, TP burning Kirin, when done correctly, can be both fast and safe, but this requires a lot of support and preparation. The problem is when speed overcomes safety as a concern. When we have TP burned Kirin, we have had people ready to pull the minis immediately and deal with them fast enough that they do not become a concern for the killing alliance. I have seen this done wrong several times, and my conclusion is that if people become more concerned with the speed of doing the event, instead of actually killing the mob, then mistakes can happen. This is outside of the fact that events like these tend to be pretty exclusionary to people and that is again against the reasons that we do events. It's not just for the gear, but more so that everyone can enjoy themselves while doing the events. Events, to me, are not just a means to an ends, but more about enjoying the journey.