Chapter 0061

Rayael engaged the [Frenzied Salmon] as soon as it was within range with, trying to build aggro as fast as she could before the dps attacks.

There is always a trigger happy dps eager to kill the mob they attacked before the tank can generate enough aggro. The mob head for the relatively squishy dps and if Rayael is tanking, she’d let them go splat. Once a tank has aggro, unless the dps burns all their cool down, the tank retains the mobs attention.

It is also the reason why Rayael doesn’t open with her skill, Intense Aggravation, a skill that forces the mobs to attack Rayael for 3 seconds. Skills that forces mobs to focus on the tanks for a specified amount of time are called snap aggro skills. If Rayael used the skills and mobs attack the dps after the 3 seconds is up, she has no other skill to pull the aggro back to her.

Generating high amounts of threat right after the pulls is the sign of a good tank.

Rayael isn’t a good tank. She an okay tank. Given time and motivation, she might be a become a good tank, but Rayael mostly focus on healing rather than tanking. Regardless of Rayael’s less than stellar abilities, Aggrieved Strike is a high threat generating skills. Even an idiot should be able to tank the [Frenzied Salmon] by spamming Aggrieved Strike all they long.

“Even an idiot can tank the [Frenzied Salmon].” As if to echo her thoughts, Erica complained about the fight. “It has two physical damage skills, Lunge and Tail Whip and one magical damage range skill, Water Shot. Each attack is slow and easily dodged, blocked or parried and the Water Shot is like a high pressure hose firefighter use, strong when the players are directly in front of the attack yet weak in all other regards.

“Sylphie, you don’t need to heal Rayael. The [Frenzied Salmon] barely does any damage to Rayael. Your HOT can keep up with the damage.

“Damage dealers, use magical based skills. The defense of the [Frenzied Salmon] is too high for physical attacks to be effective on it. Magic base skills bypass the hard scales of the fish and do considerable amount of damage.”

Despite Rayael’s negative feelings towards Erica, with her siding with two strangers rather than her family, she had to admit Erica’s ability to analyze the situation is top notch. Even in an unfamiliar situation, Erica was able to discern the strengths and weaknesses of the mob they are fighting and give appropriate recommendations.

A minute later, the [Frenzied Salmon] died.

Rayael continued to pull the [Frenzied Salmon], one after another. She has to admit, their teamwork was excellent.

Leveling to level 30 got Erica comfortable with her class that she attacks in an efficient manner and knows when to slow her attack to allow for Rayael to generate more threat and when to burst the enemy down. Erica’s analytical ability is scary good.

Egarious fought in a conservative manner, probably because he is guarding against Rayael. Rayael could have told him she knows when to put the interest of the group before her own but her previous outburst didn’t help any. During the fight, Rayael didn’t pull any tricks, seriously doing her job well.

Aetharious Auralist class was interesting. Apparently he has a leech type of healing that heals the group by X% of his damage. Rayael doesn’t know by how much because they weren’t close enough to discuss class and spec. All Rayael knows it that Aetharious’ leech healing can out heal the damage dealt by the [Frenzied Salmon], allow Sylphie to dps.

Rayael lament the versatility of the hybrid class. It limits her revenge option. Don’t heal them? They can heal themselves! Pull aggro? They can tank the mobs, although not as good a class geared and spec towards tanking, but enough not be one shotted by the boss.

Throughout the fight, Rayael was busy paying attention to threat, damage and her own buffs. Aggrieved Strike is excellent threat generated, but Rayael finds it weak compared to the threat generated by the raw damage a powerful dpser does from putting a bit off effort into their attacks.

Rayael needs to either put more points into the skills or get a better weapon, but she intends to do nothing of the sort yet. It is because Rayael notice the Physical Counter skill and the Magical Counter skill generates a lot of threat when it pops up.

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Physical Counter reflects 20% of physical damage done back to the attacker and Magical Counter reflects 20% of magical attack back towards the caster.

Any mob would be angry when they saw their attacks did only 80% of the damage while the 20% is reflected back to them.

Rayael can understand the embarrassment the mob would have felt, if they could feel any emotions, when they were damage by the very attack they were proficient in hence the reason for her to use the attack to damage the mob when their hp is between 10% and 20%. It is the perfect range for the mobs to realize they were hurt by their own attacks and feel the deep humiliation for their incompetence as they die from the damage the other players dealt them.

Dealing 20% damage while receiving 20% less damage is good as it is but the implication is amazing. If Rayael put enough points into the skills, then she can completely mitigate one damage every 10 seconds. The skill is on a 20 second cool down right now, but it can be reduced to 10 seconds. The most important part is there is no limit on how much Rayael can improve the reflected portion of the skill. She can reflect 20%, 100% or 200% of the damage back to the mob!

The skills can work as her ‘oh shit’ button. If she knows she can’t survive the next attack of the boss, then she can activate her skills and completely reflects the damage.

Another benefit to the skill is the mechanics of the skill. Rayael has to first activate the skill, receive the damage, then activate the skill again to unleash the damage.

The skill will be overpowered if she could store the reflected damage as long as she wanted. She’d can soak up the damage then release all the stored damage at one time. At its base, with no modification, she can store three attacks since the duration is one minute, while the cooldown is 20 seconds.

Endurance can extend the time of buffs by one second per point. Rayael has 70 endurance points. She can store 6 attacks at one time and unleash all at once.

The major drawback is the points required. Rayael needs to reduce the cooldown timer to 10 seconds, so she needs 20 points there and then she needs another 40 points in order to completely mitigate the damage and reflect the attack completely.

Therefore, to be completely immune to both physical and magical attacks, Rayael needs to invest 120 points!

Not to mention, the skill is heavily reliant on endurances to be effective!

“I don’t want to an M.” Rayael thought to herself.

“What does tanking have to do with being an M?” Erica jeered while little Aetharious asked, “What is an M?”

Damn her and her big mouth!

Wait, she didn’t say it out loud did she?

“Yes you did. Apparently you aren’t used to the mechanics of Arashia yet.” This was from Sylphie, who could read her cousin like an open book.

“What is an M?” Aetharious asked like a over excited boy who found a treasure map and wants to set out to look for it right away.

Everyone ignored him in favor of giving Rayael strange looks. Who shouts, “I don’t want to be an M,” in the middle of the fight?

“Geez, you guys don’t realize the pain the mobs does when they attack? It is painful.” Rayael lied. It is true that taking damage is painful in Arashia. The game mechanic tries to mimic the real world after all. However, the pain is only 10% of pain they would have felt back on Earth. Unless the mob is a boss or it’s strength surpass the tank by a large margin, the pain felt while tanking is equivalent to an ant bite. A swarm of ants can kill a human given enough time, but everyone here is ignoring that point.

Furthermore, the pain Rayael felt is reduced by her shield, so the pain she feels is even less.

“If you don’t believe me, you can try tanking!” Rayael said. Her words were unbelievably, like the lady that doth protest too much.

“We can take a 30-minute break if you want.”

“I want!” Rayael said, then immediately flew up to a secluded ledge, leaving her group wondering what in the world is going on in that head of hers.

Sylphie’s cruel smile didn’t allay the groups worries either!