Chapter 64: 64 – The Squishiest Tank

"How do I become a strong tank in one day?" I wondered as I slung stones at Snowy Swinelings while leisurely wandering through the forest. I kept repeating the question to myself as I gathered a bunch of the white-furred, six-legged piglets before finding a spot to kill them all.

The Swinelings didn’t provide me with an answer to my quandary. I’d be extremely surprised if they could suddenly talk. All they did was ram me with their heads, try to gorge me with their stubby tusks, and oink in frustration.

“Maybe I should’ve asked for at least three, maybe four days,” I muttered as I cast [Gnawing Rot] at my hooves. The sickly green fog engulfed the monsters crowding around me. Perhaps it wouldn’t have mattered how many days I took to plan because there was no solution.

Was I overestimating myself?

But how could one overestimate the infinite greatness of Herald Stone? That was a great question if I might say so myself, and I must be great if I could come up with a great question—the logic was flawless. Proceeding from that thought, someone great should be able to answer: How do I become a strong tank in one day?

Our party agreed to meet again tomorrow at the same time for another training session. The Great Hunt was looming close and we'd need every chance we have to improve our teamwork and gameplay.

I told them that I'd come up with something for our tank problem.

Expectedly, they didn't believe me. I couldn't blame them. Why the hell would they trust the claim of a random level twelve player with the username of the owner of a fast-food chain? For all they know, I was just an overly optimistic newbie who didn’t know any better about the game.

If I couldn’t come up with anything, they’d think that.

Forgiving them for not believing the words of Herald Stone, I told them that if I failed to formulate a plan to beat the Living Statue, we'd simply fight another boss somewhere around the level of the Rotted Cedarlyon. I just wanted to take another crack at the Living Statue after a day of planning.

Crack...statue? Dammit! Herald Stone, Stand-Up Comedian didn't catch that potential joke. I could've lightened up the mood after our rough practice session.

In the beginning, I enjoyed the challenge of fighting Zoar Elab, the Living Statue. It reminded me of my Nornyr Online days when my friends and I would spend hours trying to defeat the latest end-game boss. But then, as we continued dying, one party wipe after the next, fatigue and discouragement set in. We weren't a bunch of friends who could laugh at our repeated failure and find humor in the situation, maybe even trash-talk each other a little.

The four of us had only known each other for a couple of days and our newly-formed bond was getting strained.

I could sense Kezo's frustration, not at our sucky party lineup, but himself. He was the strongest in our group and he likely felt pressure to defeat the boss. There were situations where sheer DPS could triumph; this wasn't one of them. A lone player couldn't take on the Living Statue, not at our level anyway.

Luds was right—if we had someone else as the primary tank, Kezo could switch to his main full DPS build and rip apart the boss. Luds, that clown had to show up and further ruin the mood.

That was the reason I immediately volunteered that I could come up with a plan without having a clue what to do. I didn't want our practice session to end in hopelessness. But it wasn't simply an impulsive and baseless claim; I could feel in my gut that I already held the pieces of the puzzle.

I should then put together those puzzle pieces in an unintended way and come up with an unexpected picture that was the solution to our apparently impossible problem.

That was what it meant not to think like a box.

That was what it meant to be Herald Stone.

After my teammates logged out to rest, I headed to farm Snowy Swinelings. I still had a Contract to fulfill with Chimichangaroo for Swineling fur. Furthermore, I also wanted to do something repetitive that didn't require much thought.

Over the years, I found that doing routine tasks was conducive to brainstorming, more so than sitting down and fully focusing on thinking. When I was stocking shelves at a supermarket, manning the cashier at convenience stores, or chopping vegetables at our restaurant, I'd listen to recorded lectures on my headphones and learn more about my high school and college lessons compared to if I read the book and concentrated on studying.

I hadn't done anything repetitive these past few years as our business expanded and grew. Farming and grinding in a game were a return to form for building a suitable brainstorming environment.

How do I become a strong tank in one day?

Now that I had more time to mull things over, I realized I didn't have to be the actual tank. Nitana's barrier sprite and Eclair's advice about summons came to mind.

Although I would've preferred not to rely on minions, I didn't have much of a choice. Perhaps if I had a couple of months to level my character, Cidule, and Ocadules, as well as farm tanking gear, I could reach a competitive level for the Great Hunt. However, time was limited. Conventional facetanking wasn't the answer.

"It should be something like Nitana's summoned sprite," I muttered to myself, barely audible over the squeals of the Swinelings dying to my retribution damage.

Each monster that died was replaced by its fellow eager to attack me. The process repeated until there were no more Swinelings. Then I'd move to another area to farm them.

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If only there was a way to replicate this when facing the Living Statue. I didn't need to have high-level, high-Quality summoning Ocadules. A level one minion would do just fine absorbing one attack from the boss like how Nitana's barrier sprite protected us. The problem was endlessly sending minions to tank since they'd disappear in one hit. I should also make sure the boss would attack them.

And I might have the solution to that. I needed to check the market first if the ingredients for my masterpiece plan were available.

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Lvl. 1 Spell Bonded Totem: A hefty payment of blood establishes a contract with the world beyond for the aid of a spectral totem. The totem will have 15% of the Offense and Defense attributes of its contractor, and it will continuously cast all damage-dealing linked Skill Shards.
  Cost: 25% of Maximum Health
  Duration: 45 Seconds
  Cooldown: 1 Second

 

This was Megan’s priced Link Shard she bought with all her savings, and it did boost her DPS by a huge percentage. But this was for damage-dealing Skill Shards. I wanted its counterpart Totem for casting non-damage spells. And that was:

 

Lvl. 1 Superior Replicant Totem: A hefty payment of blood establishes a contract with the world beyond for the aid of a spectral totem. The totem will have 15% of the Offense and Defense attributes of its contractor, and it will continuously cast all linked Skill Shards that do not deal damage.
  Cost: 25% of Maximum Health
  Duration: 45 Seconds
  Cooldown: 1 Second

 

Compared to the insanely expensive [Spell Bonded Totem], the [Superior Replicant Totem] only cost a fraction of it at just a bit over eleven million Artas. I say 'only', but its price almost half of the money I had. Nonetheless, I'd consider the money well spent if my plan was going to work.

It was so much cheaper than the [Spell Bonded Totem] because it was more limited in its use—not to mention DPS items were naturally more expensive than support-oriented ones. The [Superior Replicant Totem] simply didn't have the game-changing impact of its DPS counterpart.

Taking [Gnawing Rot] as an example, I could cast it on a certain spot while my [Superior Replicant Totem] could also cast it in a different location, assuming I planted it somewhere else. But I suspected would still be constrained to a maximum of three AoE debuffs between the both of us since we'd be using the same [Gnawing Rot] Skill Shard.

If both I and my [Superior Replicant Totem] cast the [Gnawing Rot] on the same area, it wouldn't double the rate of Armor and Magic Armor Decay on the affected enemies. I suspected this should be the same case with buffs. In the case of buffs and debuffs, it would be most beneficial linking with Skill Shards that explicitly stated their effects could stack. Otherwise, it'd be better to use another Link Shard that directly boosted the effects.

It was different when it came to crowd-control skills. It would be as if two players casting the same CC skill. I surmised this was the reason that this Link Shard wasn't at floor price.

And I was going to use it to cast a CC skill—[Enraging Taunt] to be exact.

But this wasn't enough.

Similar to how [Gnawing Rot] was sort of an upgraded version of [Rotting Ground], I hoped there was a weaker version of the [Superior Replicant Totem] as I scrolled through the listings in the auction house. Sure enough, there was. It was also easy to find because it was called [Lesser Replicant Totem].

 

Lvl. 1 Lesser Replicant Totem: A payment of blood contracts the aid of a lesser spectral totem from another plane. The totem will have 10% of the Offense and Defense attributes of its contractor, and it will continuously cast all linked Skill Shards that do not deal damage but double their cooldown.
  Cost: 15% of Maximum Health
  Duration: 30 Seconds
  Cooldown: 1 Second

"Superior...Lesser," I scoffed at myself. "I should've known with their names."

The cooldown penalty of the weaker version didn't matter. It'd die the first time it taunts the boss anyway.

A plan was starting to take shape in my head. A piece of equipment with three slots filled with [Superior Replicant Totem], [Enraging Taunt], and [Lesser Replicant Totem]. Both Totems only had a second cooldown, meaning I'd be able to negate two of the boss' attacks every second. And if I placed each Totem behind the Living Statue, it'd waste time turning around to attack the Totem taunting its stony ass. If I was strategic with their placement, I could keep Kezo safe to whack away at the boss to his heart's content.

That was the first half of the plan.

The second half was making sure I could continuously spam both Totems. That was the easy part. The first thing to do was to reset my attribute points with the NPC and remove all the points I invested in Vigor.

In times like this, I question myself if I'm mad. But no.

This is simply not thinking like a box.

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