Zoe sat at her desk, tapping her foot anxiously.
The previous day’s raids had gone well, she thought. Or at least mostly well? It was hard to really judge, because while they only cleared two of who knew how many scenarios, they had made appreciable progress.
And more than that, they laughed and had a good time even when they failed. She was definitely of the opinion that keeping a positive mental state while doing the sort of intensive teamwork activities that raiding required was very important. Raid teams had certainly broken up or gotten incredibly toxic over less.
So while they weren’t going to clear the whole thing in one day and have some kind of legendary status secured, she felt like the day had gone well.
And that had led her to Wednesday - and work. She kept glancing at the clock, unable to wait to leave and play more. Even while she dealt with the incoming customer calls and tried her best to troubleshoot their problems or help where she could, her mind was constantly wandering back to the game. It was becoming a problem, and she absolutely could not focus. It happened often enough whenever new games launched, so it was something she was used to, but it didn’t make it less intrusive in her work day.
At least she would get to see and chat with Cassandra on their lunch break. They had planned well ahead of time to make sure that they would have at least their lunch breaks at the same time for this week to discuss the previous day’s raids. And at this point, that was something that Zoe couldn’t wait for. She just had to keep her head down and do her work until then.
When the clock finally showed her 12:30, she quickly stood up and walked away from her desk before another call could come in. The last thing she wanted right now was to be stuck with a long call at the last minute.
She quickly made her way past Cassandra’s desk to see what her friend was up to, but as soon as Zoe was within sight, Cass stood up and pulled her coat off the back of her chair and put it on quickly, nodding toward the door. The two made a quick getaway before they could be stopped.
Once they were safely in the hall of the big office building, they both breathed a sigh of relief.
“Oh, thank god. If I got trapped in there for any more time, I think I might’ve exploded.” Cass laughed. “I can’t concentrate at all.”
“Me either.” Zoe agreed. “What’s been running through your head?”
“You really need to ask?” Cass said, raising an eyebrow. “You know what it is.”
“I know that much. I meant specifically. Any interesting ideas?”
“A few. But they’re mostly personal - how I could better use some of my cooldowns and the like. I’m not used to playing Mag Mell at a raid level like this, so suddenly all those little optimization choices I don’t care to make can matter.”
“Yeah, I get that.” Zoe said as they moved to the elevator to head down to the ground floor. “There were so many little things that I could’ve done differently in the moment, and they keep rattling around up there.” She said, pointing to her head. “Like if I hadn’t jumped the gun on killing the rat.”
“I still think you did the right thing, Zoe.” Cass said, thinking about it. “I mean, what was the other option? Let it be until the boss killed us thanks to the buffs it was giving out? We were going to die anyway, may as well do what we can.”
“Sure, but then we got absolutely smoked by the army.”
“And? That was bound to happen anyway.”
“I guess.” Zoe shrugged. “Though, to be honest, I’ve mostly been thinking about what we can do from here.”
“Oh, yeah?” Cass prompted as they left the elevator. They hadn’t discussed it, but Zoe was pretty sure they would be walking toward the nearby cafe for lunch. It’d give them a place to sit and chat while they ate.
“Yeah. One idea has been stuck in my head all morning, and I think I need to run it by everyone.”
“And what’s that?”
“I think we may want to approach this from a different angle than normal for a raid. We’ve been working with a pretty classic set up comp wise. And it’s classic for a reason. We’ve got a well balanced group of different classes, and that helps us fill a bunch of different roles where necessary. And it helps having a wide variety of skills when you’re fighting a boss, so you always have someone able to do what’s necessary.”
“Yeah, duh. That’s why party comps are a thing?” Cass said, sounding lost.
“Well, think about the fights we’ve been in so far - or scenarios, rather. We’ve seen three so far, and not one of them has been as simple as go in, fight the boss, win. I think we may want to start coming at this from a more…logical angle.” Zoe said.
“...meaning what?”
“Well, consider our last attempt at scenario three. Fiona was guarding the gate, but was basically useless once we stopped the battering ram. The first time we were in there, only the ranged DPS did anything useful, until we found the throwable firebombs. Which, to be clear, is still less effective than a ranged DPS doing their thing.”
“Okay, I think I see what you’re getting at.” Cass said, nodding. “Path changes.”
“Yes, exactly. Putting the boss fight against Rruk aside, We’ve not actually fought another boss where we gain anything from having the normal, well balanced party comp. If anything, the two scenarios since Rruk feel weighted against the normal comps.”
“I can see that.” Cass said, clearly coming around to the idea. “The ‘get to the city’ scenario could’ve been much easier if we had done the same thing we did, but with generally more maneuverable classes, able to fight on the move.”
“Right. But we’ve not considered that sort of change because it really does go against all of our built up knowledge. Mind you, I’m sure I’m not the first person to come up with this, but I do think we should consider changing things up.”
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
“Like trying all ranged classes for the defend the wall scenario.” Cass said.
“Exactly. Or at least all ranged DPS.” Zoe confirmed. “I bet with all four of us on ranged classes, we could not only keep the enemy mages fully contained, but we could probably also get rid of the ladders when they show up before they get set up on the wall.”
“Suddenly everyone being trapped up on the wall is a net positive, rather than half the party wanting to get down in front of it to be useful.” Cass said.
“Exactly.” Zoe said, pointing at Cass. “I don’t know if Fiona or Aleister have any sort of ranged-focused loadout for any of their tanks, but that would help, too. And obviously while your Radiant is good, Mellody may want to try something else.”
“Maybe. But Revel is still really good because it can buff the NPCs around us.”
“True.” Zoe said. “Well, I don’t pretend to be the best planner in the world, but I think adjusting our paths to match the scenario is still a solid idea.”
“I’m inclined to agree, yeah.” Cass said, “I think you’re right that we’ve all been conditioned to think too hard about general party comp instead of the situation at hand.”
“Years and years of games will do that, yeah.” Zoe said, then added, “Tabletop RPGs, too. One of the first things you do at a session zero is talk shop on party comp.”
“Very true.” Cass said. “Why don’t you drop a line in the group chat? See what everyone thinks?”
“Good idea.” Zoe said, and she pulled out her phone to send a quick message as they walked. She trusted Cass to tell her if she was about to walk into anything.
{Nyx} : So, guys, I’ve been thinking. We may want to take a second look at our party comp for this scenario tonight.
{Mello} : Oh yeah? What’d you have in mind?
{Nyx} : We haven’t really talked about how to approach the scenario tonight yet, so I was thinking about it. What if we go all ranged paths?
{Fiona} : All ranged how?
{Nyx} : Like four ranged DPS, and maybe a ranged spec tank? (Do those exist? lol)
{Aleister} : With some tweaking it can. probably.
{Nyx} : Ok, cool. My thought was that if we go all ranged, we can probably just completely handle the fight from the wall, right?
{Nyx} : Like, we just keep Bisky or Firo on mage duty, and the rest of us just attack the regular mobs, focused on the battering ram and ladder peeps.
{Mello} : It’s certainly worth a shot, at least. We still don’t exactly have a winning strategy yet, so we may as well try whatever we come up with.
{Fiona} : Agreed. I think it makes irl sense at least. If you’re defending city walls, you want archers. Or catapults and trebuchets.
{Fiona} : Trebuchet is such a fun word
{Nyx} : I know I can go in on Hex. I think my gear is good enough, though I think my headgear is kinda shit.
{Mello} : Caoimhe has Ardent all set up, so we should be covered for all ranged.
{Aleister} : Mag mell really needs another physical ranged or two. Too many magic users.
{Fiona} : Not much they can do to start. They had four types of magic, and each of those got a focused class, which meant four ranged magic minimum. I bet the rest were filled in around them.
{Aleister} : Sill. Four magic classes, four melee classes, 1 archer. Seems unfair.
{Fiona} : Never said I disagreed, Allie.
{Aleister} : Bitch.
{Nyx} : lol
Zoe snickered as she slipped her phone back into her pocket. She quickly stepped up to the cafe’s door to hold it open for Cass.
“Thank you,” Cass grinned as she slipped by and walked straight toward the counter. Zoe followed a step or two behind.
“The 9th Place” was a little cafe that they frequented for lunch often enough. As far as Zoe understood, it was a common lunch spot for many of the workers from the nearby skyscrapers, but not many of them opted to stay and eat. It often meant that while the line at the counter was long, there were still open tables, despite there not being all that many.
After Cass had ordered her own lunch - usually a turkey club sandwich and a coffee - Zoe stepped up to place her own order. She said a quick hello to the cute girl running the register and ordered a bagel with cream cheese, a banana nut muffin, and some coffee. It didn’t matter that it was lunchtime - breakfast was still the way to go.
By the time she walked over to the table that Cass had grabbed, Cass had already pulled out her phone, settled in, and was clearly reading something, her coat still on. Probably the party’s chat.
“Anything new?” Zoe asked as she slid into the seat.
“Nope, not really. Aleister and Fiona are bickering about nothing. Doesn’t look like anyone else has popped in since your last message, so you haven’t missed anything.”
“You really think it's a good idea?” Zoe said, unsure. “I feel like leaning fully into ranged still feels icky.”
“I think you said it best earlier. It goes against every ingrained instinct we’ve built up as gamers over the years. Just gotta get over it - I think it’s a good plan.” Cass reiterated, dumping her phone unceremoniously on the table. “Genuinely. I think it should work. The only real concern is that we still don’t have a good handle on the different variables in the scenario.”
“Yeah.” Zoe nodded. “In my head, if we keep the enemy mages contained, kill the enemies with the battering ram and the ladders, and keep the wall clear, we should be able to just retreat when the commander dude shows up.”
“Right. But we don’t really know what to do about the hedgehog guy. If he doesn’t take the ladder up to the wall, maybe he just rolls over the door.”
“Exactly. There’s just too many potential variables that we don’t know.” Zoe said. “And even then, there’s some like the rat that we just don’t understand.”
“I’m inclined to agree with Fiona that the rat’s area wide buff is how we got so completely destroyed that first time. The big bear guys didn’t seem like much of a threat without the buff, right?”
“Right. When Caoimhe and I were fighting them without the rat around they went down easily enough. It felt like a random on-level zone enemy. Only a threat if you make a mistake.”
“Or are surrounded by a literal army.” Cass snarked.
“Or you’re surrounded by an army.” Zoe repeated.
Zoe noticed Cass’ leg bouncing up and down as she waited on the foot to arrive. She kept glancing toward the counter, even while they were chatting, which made Zoe chuckle.
“What?”
“Impatient for your food?” Zoe asked with a smile.
“No.” Cass shot back quickly, then added, “Well, maybe. Mostly I just want today to be over so we can play. New content and new strategy talk makes me antsy, you know?”
“Of course I do.” Zoe laughed. “I’ve been dying to play all morning, and it’s all I can think about.”
“Damn new games.”
“Not a new game.” Zoe corrected her, and answered Cass’ resulting scowl with a grin.
“‘Scuse me, sorry.” The girl from behind the register that had taken their orders worked her way over to their table to drop off their meals. She smiled and nodded then went off on her way again.
Zoe smiled happily and cracked her knuckles over her paper plate. “Right. Let’s eat and go finish work so we can go home and play.”
“Mhm.” Cass mumbled, having already gone in for a bite of her sandwich, wasting no time. She quickly chewed and swallowed before speaking. “If only working harder and faster during the day actually got us out faster at the end.”
Zoe sighed and slumped in chair. “Yeah. Suppose we may as well take our time and enjoy our food.”
“You should always enjoy your food.” Cass said pointedly. Cass was acting like she had said something particularly poignant, but Zoe just didn’t see it.