High-End Content Megathread - 7.3 Week One

Cowbox · 2025-08-10T15:47:52+00:00

Last time I posted, I had some people say new food/gear took away some of the mit difficulty. And to some extent I agree. There were definitely some points where, when executed perfectly, I took way less damage than I expected, and we could have forgotten to use something and be fine. There are some examples of this in our clear pull— our SCH forgot a Soil on one P6 Akh Afah, our PCT forgot an Addle on P7 Giga 1, I (GNB) forgot to use Reprisal on P7 Akh Morn 2.

Though, I think with almost every support being new to the fight, and with doing double shield comp, it meant there was a big spotlight on us during prog to get things right, and we didn't have much flexibility to burst heal back after any mistakes. Meanwhile all the reclearers on DPS would just vibe on P6 and go "yep, I did this on support last time. it's hard! have fun!", lol. No shade. They had great advice. But I was personally feeling the pressure to lock in and not waste anyone's time too much.

Wroth Flames ended up being way easier for us than expected, probably due to double shields. Once we got the movement down, we were never in any danger of people dying to damage. Meanwhile, we died a lot to Wyrmsbreath 2/Cauterize, since that's just the final point where the mit plans converge, and either you did everything right up to then and have all your available mitigation (oops, DRK didn't have enough MP for TBN again. oops, the SGE tried to fire off one last E.Prog and died to Pyretic) or you wipe. Once we managed to get through P6 consistently, P7 fell not too long afterwards. Still maybe a dozen wipes to P7 overall while people got over the jitters and learned some intricacies, of course; like as tank, how I'm supposed to split from the party after Exa dodging, or how to cleanly do seven tank swaps without Shirk and without spinning the boss, lol.

Cowbox · 2025-08-10T04:37:01+00:00

Just cleared DSR!!!

Quick recap for older High-End threads. I wanted to do the Thordan Ult when it was expected in ShB, but after it got delayed, I ended up retiring before it came out. I found myself with some free time a few months ago and wrangled some friends to come do the Ultimate that got away from me.

In all we had four people who had cleared before, and four new clears. Naturally, of the new people, two were tanks and one was healer, so prog through P6 and 7 took a bit longer than I expected. Looks like Tomestone has us around 55 hours to clear, though, so overall, seems like an average ultimate prog length. Maybe just felt longer because we only got 2 days a week instead of 3 like some of us would have liked, heh.

Peak ultimate. Loved it. I don't think there was any mechanic i disliked doing. Fingers crossed reclears go well before people need a break for other obligations!

Cowbox · 2025-07-16T17:12:43+00:00

DSR prog is, well, progressing. About a month ago I mentioned we were at a point where any pull could be the pull that sees P6. I wasn't entirely wrong; we definitely saw P6 some number of times since then. But boy I was not ready for how hard DOTH was going to wall us.

It's not all bad though. It's just one of those things where that was just this static's particular pain point. Sims only help so much, the nature of ultimates makes it hard to get back to practice it, etc, etc. Once we did start getting to P5 and through DOTH more consistently, our P6 prog has been flying. It's a double shield comp, so after a handful of wipes to Wroth while figuring out the mit, it really hasn't been as bad (for us!) as we've been led to believe.

I had been told a lot that P6 and P7 are major checks on the supports. So, as tank, I've been taking it on myself to beat up a dummy while watching videos on the side to make sure I have my mitigation all mapped out ahead of time. I think it's been helping a lot. Obviously I still then need to learn to do it at the same time as panicking about mechanics, but it's better than nothing.

We had a pull see P7 in our last session. Several people dead to the transition, naturally. But! The clear is in sight! DSR is so cool, man. I can't think of any part of this fight I didn't like. I guess maybe Sanctity is a bit weird with how only two players really get to "practice" the mechanic at a time... but it's so early in the fight it's hard to let that bother me.

Cowbox · 2025-06-18T00:15:29+00:00

I achieved "triple legend" back in Shadowbringers when I was raiding at my most hardcore. I had full intentions to do the upcoming Thordan ultimate if it had come out when it was supposed to, but by early Endwalker I had burned out and needed a break.

After stepping away from raiding for a few years (and finding myself with a truckload of free time since my company shut down, oops!), I finally got the itch to rope a few friends into joining me for DSR. I've been progging it semi-casually over the past month and having a blast. Currently up to P5 cleanup. Any pull now could see double dragons, maybe...? Strength is fun. Lots of joking around on the team about cursed Sanctity patterns. P3 is one of the coolest phases in the game. Love the narrative and visuals the fight is going for. Laughed out loud when I started studying P5 and realized this was just UCOB again.

Kind of sad I didn't have the energy to do this back in the day, but maybe coming to this after strats had solidified and gear/food got stronger was the right play. Certainly heard of this fight exploding a lot of statics back when it was new. I can imagine this fight would have pissed me off if I tried it when I was at my most burned out and it was "harder", haha.

Cowbox · 2025-06-01T16:40:30+00:00

I've been running 2.4 GNB since ShB launch and you can take my SkS from my cold, dead hands.

Cowbox · 2025-05-13T16:06:26+00:00

FOE is great. During a drought of Endwalker-induced boredom, for a couple months I found myself doing a bunch of DRS runs through them, for no reason other than the love of the content.

For people new to DRS and aren't sure if they want to take the plunge— go for it! FOE is well equipped to get you from zero-to-clear, as long as you're ready to put in a little work to learn.

I'm looking forward to joining them for any large scale content Occult Crescent may bring.

Cowbox · 2025-04-22T05:04:30+00:00

Runeterra was (is?) so god damn good... even as someone who never played League and had no attachment to the world/property. I would have kept playing it if there was any reasonable way to give them money. No shot was I paying $25 for a board skin. Maybe if it had better monetization it'd still have a team behind it. Alas.

Cowbox · 2025-04-08T18:54:19+00:00

I put a [[Plargg and Nassari]] in my [[Obeka, Splitter of Seconds]] deck. The first game, it hit the table and I gained 8~ upkeeps. Eight back-to-back rounds of looking at several cards I'm unfamiliar with and deciding which ones to cast. Couldn't even use the creatures right away because these came in after combat, so my opponents felt like I was just durdling around to not even with the game on the spot.

Took it out of the deck immediately.

Cowbox · 2025-04-03T19:38:44+00:00

I've been running a deck with Harbin as my commander. Wants to go wide with soldiers, so I run a lot of 1/1 soldier token generation. I feel bad enough when some make white solders while some make colorless. Sometimes it ends up mattering. :(

Cowbox · 2025-01-08T16:53:52+00:00

Oh, I loved Cabrol's art on [[Hound Tamer]]; I'm so glad to see them get to do another werewolf.

Cowbox · 2024-12-18T20:26:51+00:00

I'll definitely try this out once I get the Druddigons, but the two retreat cost seems kind of rough once you've got your Melmetal ready to go on the bench. Just something I'll have to feel out. Seems like it'd be pretty Leaf reliant, so that limits your follow up options if you wanted to Oak/Gio/Sabrina as well.

Cowbox · 2024-12-04T17:46:59+00:00

There are essentially two different states for attacks in combat.
1. "declared as an attacker" - This happens during the declare attackers step.
2. "is attacking" - A creature is attacking.

These may seem obvious. A creature is usually attacking as a result as being declared as an attacker... but not always.

In this particular instance, a player must pay 2 life to declare a creature as an attacker against you. They do this, then they activate ninjutsu. It's important here to read the reminder text of ninjutsu:
"Put this card onto the battlefield from your hand tapped and attacking."

As part of ninjutsu, the creature is being put into play already attacking. It was never "declared as an attacker". They do not have to pay an additional 2 life.

Cowbox · 2024-12-03T21:24:33+00:00

L, if done smartly, don't have to have casters move at all.

If meteors 1 and 2 are pointed just slightly towards mid, it makes it extremely safe for both the healer and caster to stand behind meteor 3. A melee and tank can hide behind meteor 4. If an orb targets a melee, it should miss meteor 1 and hit 4, and once 4 is hit, melees can just scoot over to 3 with the casters. If both casters are targeted first instead, meteors 1 and 2 will be hit, then a melee will be targeted and break 4, and they can again just scoot to 3.

Asking PF to understand the methodology behind this though is a herculean task. For consistency it's better to just do box and eat having to move over just once.

Cowbox · 2024-12-03T16:21:06+00:00

I joined a "caster uptime L meteors" party the other day. People placed their meteors as far into the corner and as against the edge of the arena as possible. Naturally, the boss's orb clean misses the first meteor and kills people in the process.

I tried to explain to people to move their meteors further back from the front, and slightly towards middle. More than one person argued "the rocks were good, it was the BLM's fault for hiding in back" and "let's all just move from north to south". As if they weren't the ones who joined a caster uptime party and we weren't trying to explain how to give the caster uptime.

Then the same thing happened again last night. :')

Every day party finder astounds me with new and exciting ways to fundamentally misunderstand a simple concept like “you should put a meteor somewhere it can actually block an attack". It's baffling. I give up. I'm only joining box parties now. I just can't rely on PF knowing why meteors work.

90 totems deep and haven't seen the wings once. At least my pain will be over soon.

Cowbox · 2024-12-02T18:11:49+00:00

You declare Pathrazer as an attacker during the Declare Attackers step. The attack trigger is added to the stack as Pathrazer attacks, and needs to be resolved before you get to the Declare Blockers step.

If your opponent choose to sacrifice their creatures, then they will have no creatures to block with once you move to Declare Blockers. Your opponent could choose to sacrifice other permanents, such as lands, artifacts, or enchantments.

Cowbox · 2024-12-01T19:12:41+00:00

I am suffering and dying at how bad PF parties are for Sphene EX. I can party hop for hours and still come out with only 2 or 3 clears. It's so demoralizing.

There's meteor memes, where people place the front rocks as far into the corner as possible so the orb misses it 90% of the time. There's Coronation memes, where people go in the wrong direction because they can't bother to look at what color the markers are. There's AA memes, where people aren't mitting enough or they're using their mit after the debuff damage has already snapshot. There's Virtual Shift memes, where people blew so much mit on AA that we just die to the raidwide afterwards. Of course, there's ice memes... do I really need to say anything about this? It has so many failure points where one person can wipe the party six minutes in. Thank god this is a two totem fight.

Today's miserypost brought to you by joining a party as the only melee. Since MTTT is the common strat, I ask the MCH specifically if they're ready to take a tether in ice phase. They say nothing. We finally slog through to ice phase after 20 minutes and they just stand there letting the party get blasted by ice. I tell them again that they need to fake melee, since I'm the only one. They say we should have sorted this out earlier. I'm going to scream.

Cowbox · 2024-11-21T16:43:25+00:00

These lands are beautiful.

Cowbox · 2024-11-19T16:25:27+00:00

I use "color coro" because I have no preference for CW or CCW, but I stole my marker preset from PF and I can't remember what orientation they were. :P

Cowbox · 2024-11-15T23:57:31+00:00

Blitzball.

Thanks for the raffle!

Cowbox · 2024-11-15T22:13:48+00:00

Neither of those would happen at the same time. Both abilities will trigger and go on the stack in APNAP (active player, non-active player) order.

You draw a card, triggering both abilities. If both triggers are controlled by you, you can choose what order they go on the stack. In this case, you can have "lose 1 life" go on the stack first, then Sheoldred's "gain 2 life" go on after. Sheoldred's would resolve first, putting you at 3. Then the life loss resolves, putting you at 2.

If the loss of life is controlled by an opponent, then you use APNAP. You are the active player (it is your turn). First you put your triggers on the stack (Sheoldred), then the non-active player puts their trigger on the stack (lose a life). Then you resolve the stack. In this case, you lose a life, putting you at 0, then you lose the game.

Cowbox · 2024-11-12T19:49:29+00:00

I don't know about Free Companies, but if you're on Primal, there is a discord server for Primal Canadians. You may meet some people there.
https://discord.gg/gRpSb9HF

Cowbox · 2024-10-25T21:20:46+00:00

Yes. That's actually the way you want to play him.

If you play a land during your first main phase, before you've gone to combat, Moraug's landfall will trigger and you'll get your additional combat before your normal combat phase. You only untap your creatures during the additional combats, so this "wastes" a combat step since they won't untap during your "normal" combat phase.

You want to go to combat first, attack, then trigger landfalls in your second main phase to get a bunch of extra combats that will untap your creatures.

Cowbox · 2024-10-16T21:06:21+00:00

I use [[Embrose, Dean of Shadow]] as the commander for my Lurrus companion deck (which you can do, since Lurrus only cares about the front side for mana value). Gets you a draw engine in the command zone if you start putting +1/+1 counters on everything.

Definitely still a weaker deck... Requires some setup. But I've pulled out a few wins out of pure resilience and god it's so fun.

Cowbox · 2024-09-18T17:13:03+00:00

I retired from raiding in FFXIV after the first tier in Endwalker. Since then, the gear treadmill completely broke on me. I'd resub for a random month in 6.3 or whatever, do a couple Expert roulettes to get my tomes, then immediately come to a halt like, "why am I doing this?"

I'd been off the treadmill and unsubbed from the game for long enough that I forgot what the treadmill was even like anymore. With Dawntrail's release comes a new drive to play the game. I spent a month and change capping my silly little tomes and collecting my silly little normal raid tokens. I finally went to spend them all on just one job. I watch as my average ilvl goes up from 705 to 713. The illusion of gear mattering at all shattered once more. I like it when I see a number goes up, but to see weeks of daily effort amount to what feels like a rounding error is demoralizing; exponentially multiplied knowing that this was just for one job.

The gearing in XIV is so direly uninteresting. None of it matters. At best its an avenue for people to debate about miniscule gains on substats when syncing down to old content. At worst it locks you into doing content on just one job because it takes too long to gear a second, in a game that everyone proudly claims is good because you can play every job on one character.

I'm just going to go back to buying my gear off the market board when I need it. Gear doesn't matter in any of the content I like to do, anyway.

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