Operation Heathrow

Chapter 6: Bio Break

Even though Ram is the first to show signs of fatigue, he is the one making the switch in characters, logging out of Béteulle and into his templar, which has been resting in the guild hall. (Or potentially doing other things Ram doesn't know about, nor would his templar have liked to let him know) Especially since he believes, based on his experience of brutal mode, that this boss can be solo-tanked in all difficulties.

Little does Ram know is that Béteulle could secretly start doing what Clavet did, at least within the confines of the airport, when the Death Fiscalists are going to fight General Confusion in the control tower.

Meanwhile, his guildies move along taxiways, and even past satellite terminals of Terminal 5. Whereas no trash stood between the Cyber-Tech Alligator and the two tanks, here taxiways are littered with trash, such as baggage handlers, police officers with hound dogs, and even airport trucks, such as tankers, stair trucks and so on. Obviously, Ram must have his character travel through empty sections of taxiway until he can catch up to his guildies fighting their way to the control tower.

When Ram finally catches up to his teammates, Karine hears a few notifications for new followers on Streamlabs.

"Thank you for the follow!" Karine tells her new followers on her stream.

The party takes the elevator to the control tower's top floor, where General Confusion awaits them in a cramped space. That room is littered with radar consoles and bordered by windows.

"For thde codebreaker mechanic..." Karine designates whom she feels is the worst DPS on the first three bosses.

"Wait a minute, this boss is supposed to be the boss where my spec does best; the codebreaker mechanic allows for a window of burst DPS if done properly!" the guild's assassin retorts. "Caroline should be doing the codebreaker mechanic!"

"Yeah, I was doing it on brutal mode, because skirmishers take a while to set up DoTs, and the burst window the codebreaker mechanic gives us is too short for skirmishers to amount to much" Caroline argues about why the assassin is a poor choice for the mechanic.

"Your turn then, Caro" Karine rules.

On previous bosses, Caro was the one willing to take the most risks to squeeze in extra DPS. However, the skirmisher is the worst ranged DPS spec among those we have, and I expect this boss to favor melee, Karine is left wondering how would the mechanics change. Especially when the codebreaker mechanic might carry additional implications in fatal mode they don't know about yet.

"From here on out, I say you take bio breaks only after your character dies. Just don't cause wipes on purpose" Karine lays down the ground rules for bio breaks for the rest of the session.

Here it seems like, as the Canadian players play into their evening, their Japanese arch-nemeses are approaching high noon. The raid leader, playing a vandal, that is, a melee tank with stealth, has fallen asleep somewhere in Misawa, much to the chagrin of people watching the race to world first.

"Oyasumi Kataparuto" (Good night, Kataparuto) Kataparuto's tired raid leader tells both his own guildies and his viewers, and yawns, not realizing that it isn't night-time in Misawa.

Which, after he logs off the game, causes the other Kataparuto players to stop playing. However, that hasn't gone unnoticed by other viewers, especially not Breathalyzer News' podcaster.

"We lost the Japanese feed! However, it's remarkable that a country with such a limited player base somehow clawed its way into world first position!" the Breathalyzer News podcaster announces while the remaining front-runners, China, Denmark and Korea, have barely started fighting the fourth boss.