Tornadoes, cysts, crosswinds and the Serpent's Fury clock, pull by pull. Piian's Mid-Pressure progression night, 1 November.
The night split into thirds by pull number. Every count is taken from the part of each pull before it was over. A pull is over once fewer than 15 players are alive with no battle res ready, because Serpent's Fury cannot be popped with fewer, and the raid called it there. A pull is also over when the raid jumps off the platform to reset, or at Unbound Ferocity. Rates are per event (per Tempest, per Crosswinds set), so longer pulls in the later thirds do not inflate them.
| Pulls | 1–13 | 14–25 | 26–38 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Median boss health left | 70% | 50% | 52% |
| Best pull | 43.6% | 8.7% | 22.8% |
| Median pull length | 115s | 172s | 165s |
| Pulls that cleared an intermission | 6 of 13 | 10 of 12 | 11 of 13 |
| Deaths a minute, before the wipe | 5.8 | 3.0 | 3.4 |
| Tornado hits per Tempest | 9.2 | 5.7 | 6.7 |
| Tornado deaths | 16 | 17 | 19 |
| Cysts popped by accident in phase one | 7 | 1 | 1 |
| Deaths to those cysts | 34 | 3 | 0 |
| Clean intermissions | 3 of 9 | 8 of 12 | 10 of 14 |
| Intermission deaths | 24 | 18 | 33 |
| Crosswinds launches a player could have solo-cancelled | 23 in 23 sets | 20 in 29 sets | 16 in 32 sets |
| Crosswinds deaths | 11 | 6 | 6 |
| Fury pops with an alive dps or tank missing | 8 of 25 | 15 of 32 | 12 of 32 |
| Virulence second-hand per pop | 1.9 | 1.7 | 1.1 |
| Virulence deaths | 18 | 18 | 11 |
| Mutilate deaths | 13 | 11 | 32 |
| Pulls ended by the Fury enrage | 1 | 3 | 2 |
What improved. Phase-one cyst pops went from 7 to 1, and the deaths they caused from 34 to 0. Intermissions went from 3 clean out of 9 to 10 out of 14. Crosswinds launches a player could have cancelled alone went from 23 in 23 sets to 16 in 32, tornado hits per Tempest fell from 9.2 to 6.7, and deaths a minute fell from 5.8 to 3.4.
What did not. The Serpent's Fury enrage ended 2 of the last 13 pulls, and Mutilate deaths rose to 32 in the last third (9 of them on pull 28 alone). Tornado deaths held level (16, 17, 19) even as hits per Tempest fell; the later pulls saw more Tempests.
Boss health left at the end of each pull, coloured by what ended it. Most pulls ended when deaths took the raid under 15 alive with no battle res ready (32 pulls). Those are coloured by the mechanic behind most of the deaths in the twenty seconds that got it there. A Fury enrage only counts as the cause when the raid still had the numbers to pop. Across the night: intermission (winds and cysts) (7), mutilate (6), serpent's fury enrage (6) and tornadoes (6).
Read off this log rather than a guide: every pull ran to the same clock. Each phase one has two Apex Predator combos, and each combo is followed by a Serpent's Fury pop, a Venomous Surge and a Crosswinds set. Dig In then opens a 25-second intermission, and the cycle repeats.
685 tornado hits across 98 Tempests, counting a tornado tagging the same player twice within a second as one hit. They killed 52, and they were the first death of a pull more often than anything else: tornadoes (13), virulence (6) and mutilate (6).
Per Tempest the raid took 9.2 hits in pulls 1–13, 5.7 in 14–25 and 6.7 in 26–38. Per Tempest the player was alive for, the non-tanks hit most often were Valanarr (0.65), Atheniás (0.50), Shazàm (0.49) and Шамшыммыч (0.49), against a median of 0.30. The tanks stand where the tornadoes come out of the boss: Laradendusk (0.90) and Vesemirr (0.36).
A cyst popped outside the intermission is an accident: everyone near it is knocked across the room, and at the edge that means off it. 9 went off that way, on pulls 2, 5, 8, 10, 12, 19 and 35, catching 18 players at the median. 7 of them went off within ten seconds of being dropped, which means they were dropped where the raid stood. They killed 37, by knocking people off the platform or by the damage they leave behind.
This is the clearest improvement of the night. After pull 25 only one more went off (pull 35), and it killed nobody.
35 intermissions were opened across the night and 21 went cleanly: three cysts, about eight and a half seconds apart, and at most one death. They cost 75 deaths in all (22% of every death before a wipe).
The failures come in two kinds. Two cysts within two seconds, which wastes one, so a later gust has nothing to ride: 5 times (pulls 4, 16 (intermission 3), 22, 26 and 34), 41 dead. A pop missing or late: 6 times (pulls 6, 8, 10, 15, 17 and 30), 53 dead. The last intermission to lose five or more players was on pull 34.
The Fury holder must not set off the pop while Dig In is being cast: on pull 6 it went off at 100.0s, as Dig In started, and Virulence killed 11 that pull.
661 knock-ups across 84 sets. 488 were cancelled by a partner, and 94 by the player's own movement within a second and a half of the launch: mostly Alfi (26), Huibalast (26), Abeei (19), Squashiclysm (6) and Duruwarr (5). 59 launches went off on a player who could have cancelled alone: 34 pressed movement too late, and 25 pressed none. 20 more were Paladins and Priests, who can only be caught by a partner: Ghani (6 of 30), Shazàm (6 of 43), Indris (4 of 41), Aelyssar (2 of 41), Aeonara (2 of 37) and Angryde (0 of 42).
Launches that could have been avoided alone: 23 in 23 sets in pulls 1–13, 20 in 29 in 14–25, 16 in 32 in 26–38. Most often launched with a cancel in their kit: Mattiseppo (14 of 41: 8 late, 6 with no movement), Alfi (7 of 42: 7 late, 0 with no movement), Atheniás (7 of 35: 6 late, 1 with no movement) and Duruwarr (6 of 37: 3 late, 3 with no movement). Crosswinds killed 23; 3 of them went off the edge, and the rest died to the launch damage.
The pop needs 15 bodies in the circle, the marked player included, so a raid with 14 alive and no battle res ready cannot pop at all. 11 pulls reached Unbound Ferocity. In 5 of them (9, 11, 21, 29 and 31) the raid was already under 15 when it came, so the deaths ended those pulls, not the clock. The other 6 (3, 18, 22, 24, 27 and 36) still had the numbers, and the pop came too late. Every pop that did go off had 15 in the circle: 16 players at the median by Virulence and never fewer than 14. On the two pops with only fourteen players, the marked player was Piiaan, whose Beast Mastery pet stands in but never gets the debuff.
The boss reaches 100 rage 57.7 seconds after a pop within a phase, and 82.3 seconds after the last pop before an intermission, because the rage keeps building through Dig In. The first pop after the intermission cannot go off until the post-intermission combo ends; when it worked it went off at 154.6 seconds at the median. So the second pop of the pull sets the deadline for the third. Pop two landed anywhere from 72.6 to 82.6 seconds this night, and every second earlier is a second less after the combo.
Of the timing failures, 4 pulls died at that first post-intermission pop (3, 18, 24 and 27). 1 died at the next one (22), and 1 after the second intermission (36): pull 16: pop four at 202.6s, so the boss would enrage at 284.9s, and the raid popped at 282.4s; pull 29: pop four at 202.3s, so the boss would enrage at 284.6s, and it did at 285.0s, but the raid had been under 15 alive since 220.1s; pull 36: pop four at 200.7s, so the boss would enrage at 283.0s, and it did at 282.9s.
Against the plan (every dps and both tanks in, healers only to cover a dead one), 54 of 89 pops had every alive dps and tank in the circle. Missing most often while alive: Atheniás (8), Abeei (7), Alfi (6), Huibalast (6) and Squashiclysm (4). Healers stood in when no dps or tank was dead on 36 pops: Shazàm (28 of 39), Valanarr (16 of 31), Ghani (5 of 12) and Aeonara (2 of 8). A healer who soaks takes a Virulence they did not need, which is one more set of lines in the raid. Second-hand Virulence, someone clipped by a line, fell from 1.9 per pop to 1.1; it killed 47 across the night.
Mutilate killed 56, mostly through the Mutilated Gash bleed after an under-filled soak. Pull 28 was the worst at 9, with 10 of its soakers still carrying Gash from the soak before (14 such soaks across the whole night). Mutilate deaths rose from 13 in the first third to 32 in the last. Ravage hit someone other than a tank 10 times and killed 6. Venomous Surge killed 10, and the caustic puddles 15.
346 deaths before a pull was over. Deaths after the raid fell under 15 alive with no battle res ready are not counted (three seconds of grace, so one blow killing several counts in full). Neither are deaths after a jump-off reset (1 pulls reset that way before going under) or after an enrage. That leaves out 315 and 87 more. The biggest killers were intermission (winds and cysts) (75), mutilate (56) and tornadoes (52).
| Player | Tornado hits / Tempest | Crosswinds marked | Solo cancels | Launched (late / none / no partner) | Fury missed | Fury extra | Clipped | Ravage | Deaths | Top cause |
|---|
Per player, before each pull was over. Fury missed: pops where they were alive, assigned (dps or tank) and not in the circle. Fury extra: healers standing in when no dps or tank was dead. Clipped: Virulence picked up from somebody else's lines.
How this is read. The platform's edge is about 60 yards from the middle. No player still alive fifteen seconds later was ever logged past 69. A death whose last eight seconds went past 65 yards, with no killing blow, is a fall. It is blamed on what moved the player there in the seven seconds before they left the platform: a Crosswinds launch, a cyst pop, the intermission's winds, or nothing. Nothing means they walked or jumped off. Three of those inside ten seconds is a called wipe. Under the number is fewer than 15 alive, counting a ready battle res as one more. Charges follow the raid rule: one at the pull and one every 4.5 minutes with twenty players, spent by Rebirth or Intercession; a shaman's Reincarnation is free. Every death more than three seconds after either point is left out. A tornado hit is a Tempest hit without the tick flag. A cyst pop is a burst of Viscous Cyst hits without the tick flag; pops during Dig In or in the ten seconds after it are planned, all others are accidents. A Fury pop is the mark dropping with Virulence going out to the soakers within 1.5 seconds; the rage windows are read off the enrages themselves. A Crosswinds launch is Turbulent Gusts lasting past 1.5 seconds. A solo cancel is the player's own movement ability (Alter Time, Blink, Burning Rush, Charge, Chi Torpedo, Demonic Circle: Teleport, Disengage, Fel Rush, Feral Lunge, Glide, Gust of Wind, Heroic Leap, Intervene, Roll, Shadowstep, Shield Charge, Shimmer, Vengeful Retreat, Wild Charge) cast from half a second before to 1.5 seconds after the launch. A launch with that movement pressed later counts as late.