Role Skills: the raid

[ForsakenRoe]

IDK where else this would go, so it's going here. Had an idea while waking up (the time when the best ideas are created), Role Skills are bad and underused. We should change that. I had an idea of a raid, inspired by several other sources, but mainly a certain WOW raidboss, Nefarian. For anyone out of the loop, Nefarian was the final boss of Blackwing Lair, and his main gimmick is the Class Call mechanic. Every now and then, he'll taunt one 'class' of your raid, mock them, and screw them over in some way, thematic to their class. Warriors would become enraged, forced into Berserker stance (not good for your Warrior tank's survivability). Rogues would be forced to stand in front of the boss, meaning the tank had to aim the upcoming fire breath to the side to avoid cleaving your sneaky boys. Mages would start polymorphing your raid, which was an easy one to handle cos you just hit Iceblock, etc. I've heard they even went back and added Class Calls for newer classes, like Demon Hunters are blinded and have to Spectral Sight to see where they're going.

Back to FF land, imagine if you will, a tricksy kind of boss. Halicarnassus, Kefka, that kind of vibe. At certain times, they'll do their Class Call, and summon an add, lets call it a 'Glyph'. These adds will be both colored, and shaped, based on the role that's getting Call'd (for accessibility purposes).

These Glyphs would have to be dealt with, in a Role specific way, to resolve the mechanic. Four would happen at once, so you'd take them to the corners, with the safespot being in the middle under the boss. BUT! When you 'resolve' them, they still blow up in a big AOE, like so:


The Glyphs would have special functionalies for this to work how I imagine, which will be explained below. Here's the shapes, colors and functions of each of the glyphs:

The Green Plus: (the only one I could be bothered to do art for)

The Green Plus will fixate a healer. It has to be taken out to the corner of the arena, as it has a long, say 25s? debuff that, upon expiration, causes a large AOE explosion that deals 9999999 damage. It cannot be slowed, stunned, bound, damaged, anything really. But as the cute little emoji face implies, it's pretty tired. So the solution is to Repose it, so it falls asleep in the corner, stops moving, and times out/explodes on its own while the healer it was chasing can safely move away. Repose will not last long on this guy though, so you can't just sleep it right away and ignore it for the full duration. It gets a Power Nap of maybe 5s, then wakes back up, so only Repose it when it's gonna detonate! Also, it will autoattack hard, requiring the healer to heal themselves (yes forced GCD healing, crazy I know), and throw out occasional debuff splats. The debuff will happen even if it's asleep. Each applies 'Drowsy' to the healer it hits, and if you're Drowsy when you take the second, you get instantly killed. The solution is to Esuna the Drowsiness away before the second hit comes in.

The Blue Shield: Tank specific. It'll do hard hits, requiring CD rotation to survive, and will apply a healing received debuff, so your team can't help you. As far as HP recovery goes, you're on your own. Has a oneshotting Tankbuster that needs to be silenced. Will blow up at 0s left on it's debuff timer, needs to be stunned with Low Blow to get away from in time.

The Red Sword: Melee specific. Has TWO debuffs to deal with (all the DPS ones will have this). One says 'cannot be brought below 1hp. Upon reaching 1hp, swaps to 'debuff 2'. Will explode and cover entire arena upon expiration'. So DPS it down to 1hp before it blows up. Once it hits 1HP and moves over to debuff 2 mode, it's like the Tank one, Stun it with Low Blow and get out of it's AOE.

The Golden Gun (heh): Ranged specific. Has two debuffs, same as the melee one. DPS down, move to debuff 2, lock it in place. This time, however, it's kinda fast, and if it gets close to you, it'll hit you really hard. Leg Graze it, and slow it down with a Heavy so you can outrun it! Once it gets to debuff 2 mode, it stops trying to hit you, and starts moving hyper-fast, so you can guide it into place in its corner easier. Once it's there, it has to be Foot Graze'd to Bind it in place, so you can get away. Remember not to accidentally autoattack it and break the bind after! It also has a cast bar to Interrupt with Head Graze.

The Purple Staves: Caster specific. Two debuffs, DPS check, you get the idea. This time, however, there's 4 of them at once, meaning that AOE damage is the name of the game. If any one of the staves is hit by the damage of another blowing up, it also blows up. They also will do Proximity Damage upon exploding, based on their remaining HP, so try to keep their HP equal, 'kill them' all sort of at the same time, Sleep them all in the corner so they can't chase, get the heck outta there.

The Cursed Black Skull: Ominous. This bugger cannot be slept, slowed, stunned, silenced, knocked back, bound, heavied, anything. He's immune to everything, including damage. There's no escaping him, he is inevitable. He only targets your most stalwart allies, though. I wonder if there's some way that a Tank might be able to survive even the most destructive of attacks...? (yes it's a forced invuln, only one per tank in the fight)

Enrage would be that the boss just goes mental mode and summons a Glyph for everyone at once, meaning that there's no room on the arena that is safe anymore, and you all blow up.

Please make Role actions relevant SE thank you it's been like literal years since I had to press Interject in a raid