I survived Titan hard mode!

-dance-

Okay, this post is for my gamer friends only. Apologies to everyone else, but today has been a huge milestone in my gaming career, and I just have to write about it. You see, Titan hard mode is…a very hard fight. The video clip below is what I studied, for hours this weekend, just to try and learn the mechanics of the fight:

If you’ve had a look at the video you’ll know that even young, very competent gamers consider this one tough. As I am neither young, nor very competent when it comes to battling, I fully expected to die, multiple times. Worse, I fully expected my incompetence to cause the whole group to fail dismally. Given how much gamers invest in these fights, they do not tolerate failure terribly well. And they don’t tend to be very forgiving of group members [like me] who make them fail.

So I am not exaggerating when I say this particular fight has ruined my weekend till now. I literally could not think of anything else, and when I logged on this morning I had to grab a bunch of tissues because my palms were sweating so much. Fear sweat, people, fear sweat.

And then none of the bad things I’d imagined actually happened!

Titan hard mode is an 8 man fight — meaning two healers, two tanks and 4 dps [damage doers like me]. Two of the eight were my wonderful friends, Mateus and Baufian, but the rest were complete strangers. Luckily they were all players with heaps more experience than me, and essentially, they carried me for most of the fight.

But…. I managed to remember all the mechanics of the fight, and more importantly, I managed to avoid all the many things that could have killed me. And then, at the Heart phase, I actually remembered to use the caster LB [Limit Break] against Titan’s Heart. I can’t tell you how proud I am of that because my hands were still shaking at that point.

[For those who don’t know, the caster LB is a ground targetting skill. This means you have to click on the LB and then move the ground circle under the foe you want to target. When you release the button, the cast time for the LB begins and it goes boom.]

And I lived. No one had to waste time resurrecting me. No one had to bite their tongue about the ‘useless noob’. And I didn’t humiliate myself in front of my friends. I will remember this fight for a long time to come.

Now, just in case there are others like me out there, here are some tips that helped me get through Titan hard mode, in one piece, first time through:

Do your research.

For me this involved watching the above video a million times. It also meant taking something like 8 pages of notes AND doing dinky little drawings of the hardest bits — like the Bombs.

Turn off Titan’s music.

I’m told the music is very stirring, but for this fight you need to be calm, not revved up even more.

If you’re on a pc, click on the system icon as shown:

Select ‘System Configuration’ from the menu. That opens the System Configuration window:

Click the ‘sound’ option in the left hand pane, and then drag the BGM slider all the way to the left. That will shut off only the music. Click ‘Apply’ and you’re done.

Turn the battle effects display down.

When you have a boss and 8 players all using showy weapon skills, it becomes almost impossible to see what’s going on, and in this fight you must be aware of what’s happening at all times.

Again, you start with the System icon, but this time select ‘Character Configuration’ as shown:

From here, you will get this window:

Click the ‘Character’ tab and scroll all the way down to the bottom. That’s where you will find the Battle Effects Settings [the big, showy special effects]. To change the settings, click on the words, not the radio button. For some strange reason, the radio buttons don’t actually work. -shrug-

Again, click on ‘Apply’ when you’re done.

Zoom your camera out as far as you can.

Again, this is so you can see the whole fight instead of just your own small corner of it. Coincidentally, that will allow you to see the things you have to avoid. If you can’t see it, you can’t get out of its way.

Position.

If you’re a caster dps like me, don’t hang out right at the very edge of the fight. I know this is what we normally do, but this fight requires you to move almost constantly so if you’re a little closer in to Titan, you have more options of where to move to. Also, when he does Geo Crush, it means you can run in towards the tank faster. This in turn means you can be AOE healed.

Marked guide.

And last but not least, it really helps if you go in with an experienced friend or two, especially if one of those friends puts a mark above his head. That mark is very visible all through the fight and if you ever suddenly get that awful feeling of not knowing where you’re supposed to run, following that mark can be a lifesaver.

So there you go, a very non-expert review of Titan HM. I suspect that preparation aside, I was very lucky to make it through so easily, but hey, I’ll take a little credit for my win. :D

cheers

Meeks