Chapter 572: The Melancholic of Sword of Light
Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation
Well, with many bosses, come many drops. Investors would even walk through the valley of shadows just to earn 100% or 200% profit deals. In comparison, equipment damage that players had to pay on death was nothing compared to the chance of obtaining a boss’ loot!
Hence, after a short session of panic and confusion, players made a huge come back when they realized the benefits of rushing up to the bosses.
Such a scene had made even the calm Zhang Yang shocked. It was something he had never had expected. Zhang Yang could not help but shake his head in disappointment. A fool would always commit a fool’s deed. They knew nothing about the danger of the boss, hence the absence of fear. The space in their hearts had been completely filled by greed. F*ck logic!
However! It was good!
Is it not greed that causes most wars? Greed and the will to live are yin and yang. Both emotions could instill a zealous fervor that would drive a man to fight.
The burst damage inflicted by hundreds of bosses at the same time was of nuke-level. After each wave of attack, players would die at the rate of a few 100,000s at a time. It could not be helped. The Zergert Mammoth AoE attacks were too strong. One stomp could kill as many as a thousand players. Note that there 800 of them were spread across the islands, enhancing their overall killing power.
"Dive! Dive into the sea! Fan out! Try not to group together! The damage dealt by the mammoth would be reduced by half in the water." Zhang Yang soared into the sky and bellowed to everyone around him.
One man’s voice is nothing but as tiny pop in the midst of an explosion. However, when 40,000 players scream their lungs out, it was an explosion above another explosion. Their voices could even dampen the noisy cries of the monsters.
During times of war, soldiers would be extremely receptive to one man’s voice, their commander. Instantly, players around ran into the water and forced the attacking monsters to split up.
Zhang Yang smirked and switched to the party channel. "Follow me. We’re going to kill a straggler."
His party members nodded. Zhang Yang had taken this time, while many players were still alive and kicking to sneak away to kill some bosses. It was to pick off the strong ones to lighten the load. In a way, it was doing the other players a favor. Zhang Yang original plan was to hunt the boss himself so that other would be able to snatch his loot! The few bosses that had died previously had only dropped Silver-Gray, Yellow-Gold, and Violet-Platinum Insect Shells. Since the officials had revealed that the highest tier equipment available for trade was the Violet-Platinum, a Mythical boss would drop a Mythical Insect Shell. In that case, those higher tiered bosses would be dropping Mythical equipment!
Zhang Yang did not want to hunt for Insect Shells, so, he had led his team of 27 Lone Desert Smoke members with flying mounts to search for stragglers.
"There!" cried Sun Xin Yu as she raised a jade-white hand towards the corner of an island. There was a Zergert Cthulhu that had wandered far off from its original position. Zhang Yang had guessed that a party of players must have thought that they could kill it once they had successfully lured it away from the bulk of the swarm. So much for their smart idea.
"Let’s go!"
Zhang Yang shot down to the boss as quickly as he could. The Cthulhu boss was already on its way back to the swarm. If it makes it back, it would extremely difficult to draw it out again.
Pew!
The Violet Thunderhawk zoomed across the sky, leaving a trace of blue light trails and brought Zhang Yang to the boss. Once he was in range, Zhang Yang threw a {Spear of Obliteration} at the boss, successfully inflicting it with a wound that it spewed grayish brown blood out. The spear had dealt close to 26,000 damage to it.
A split second later, an axe flew pass Zhang Yang and struck the boss. Even though Zhang Yang had not observed the resulting damage value, he knew that it was lower than Zhang Yang’s since the boss was not provoked by it and charged towards Zhang Yang instead.
Zhang Yang turned his head and glared at the axe-thrower. It was Sword of Light, the guild master of Radiance. Others had already spotted this fat piece of cake.
With the overall success of the war, one must have no civil war in one’s nation. Zhang Yang stopped his attack and said, "Sword dude. I propose that we fight the boss together. As for the loot, let us compete with our total damage dealt. The winner shall have the first pick. If it’s an even number, we shall divide it equally. If it’s an odd number, the one with the higher number shall have one equipment extra!
"I agree." Sword of Light was not stupid, he too shared the same view and neither of them should be fighting each other for a boss loot. He had a team of around 30 members, hence, he should have the upper hand.
The two guilds parted ways. Each heading to either end of the boss and started their attack.
Even though only their guild masters had spoken, there was a burning sense of competition brewing in the atmosphere. Neither of them wanted to lose to the other guild! Especially the guild Radiance. They had always been eclipsed by Lone Desert Smoke and had never gotten the chance to stand out. Even if they win the boss fight, it wouldn’t prove anything. Still, at the very least, they would not want to lose to Lone Desert Smoke in DPS fight.
Both guilds divided their own members into different positions. Naturally, the tanks stood in the front and the healers heal from behind, while the attackers attack from the sidelines.
After fighting for a short period, Sword of Light felt that something was off. His Rage was not adding up normally! It was something that had never occurred to him before!
He realized the reason behind the odd situation. He had not been attacked by the boss.
A Warrior has 3 ways to regenerate Rage points. The first being time. Rage will regenerate slowly over time. If that was too slow, a Warrior could also inflict damage via their normal attack. The stronger the damage inflicted, the more Rage points he will recover. Lastly, a warrior has to receive damage to restore their Rage points. The higher the damage inflicted on them, the higher the Rage point regained. A successful {Block} could also restore Rage points, but it required a Warrior to be targeted in the first place. The active skill {Blood Rage} can also restore Rage points, however, it had a one minute cooldown period, hence one shouldn’t rely on the skill to restore Rage points.
Tanks can only use a one-handed weapon, and their armor was mostly defense oriented. They would have 30% or even 50% less attack power when it comes to a Spellcaster and Berserker with equipment of equal tier. A tank will mainly rely on attack to restore Rage points, as they had 30% extra regeneration via attack.
However, the God of War Inheritance belonged to Zhang Yang alone, only he would have the ability to equip a two-handed equipment.
Since Sword of Light had never been struck by the boss, so he could only rely on his normal attacks to regenerate his Rage. Sword of Life’s weapon was strong. It was a Level 100 Violet-Platinum axe. One axe attack would score 30 to 40 Rage points. However, his axe had a 2.8-second attack interval. During that time, he could have already unleashed 3 skills. However, {Destructive Smash} costs 45 Rage points! {Thunder Strike} and {Cripple Defense} could be cast but only the two of them could be cast. He would not have any more Rage points to cast the third skill.
It was a waste of global cooldown time, which led to lesser aggro gain, and the boss would never attack him. With such a derailed cycle, the aggro value would only drop lower and lower which would lead to the boss completely ignoring him. The gap would only widen.
Sword of Light started to panic. When the attacking class is competing with the opponent, he too was competing! However, what could a tank compete with? Obviously, the aggro generation rate! Sword of Light immediately cast the costless {Provoke}. Technically, {Provoke} should not work on a Mythical tier boss, but surprisingly, the Zergert Cthulhu had taken the skill and turned towards him to attack.
With a single attack, it attacked Sword of Light by over 23,000 damage, causing Sword of Light to recharge all of his Rage points! With moments to spare, Sword of light quickly sent out all the skills that could generate the most aggro and take his place at the top of the aggro list.
{Provoke} worked by inflicting 99% of the aggro inflicted from a previous attack and forcing the monster to attack the caster for 2 seconds. If Sword of Light wants to maintain his position at the top of the aggro list, he has to generate adequate aggro value to compensate for the 1% aggro. If he not, once {Provoke} ends, the boss will turn back to Zhang Yang.
Zhang Yang noticed how Sword of Light was struggling and had decided to unequip his shield. At most, he will compete as an attacker instead of a tank! Who has set the rule that a tank cannot be an attacker? No one. However, Zhang Yang never had the chance to do so. Luckily for him, he had a free punching bag to fully let loose.
Zhang Yang had never wanted compete for China’s best tank. Even if he had not wanted to, he was sitting on the King of Tanks throne. Even if he had not realized it, he was looking down on the others. Sword of Light had always wanted to compete with Zhang Yang, but Zhang Yang had never had the thought of it.
The weak will only seek to compete with others to prove that he is better than others, while the strong will only seek to be stronger than his own past self.
Sword of Light heart tightened the moment when his {Provoke} ended. The boss had not turned his back and had continued to attack Sword of Light instead of Zhang Yang. Sword of Light relaxed a little, but when he spotted that Zhang Yang was nowhere far from him in the aggro list, his heart sank a little. Zhang Yang could overtake him at any moment! Sword of Light could never let his guard down, even for a fraction of a second.
Sword of Light sighed in disbelief. It was the first time in his gaming life that he had ever performed well for a tank.
TPS or Threat Per Second and DPS, Damage Per Second are different mechanics. DPS is used to measure an attacker’s prowess and TPS is used to judge a tank’s. A tank’s TPS may be high but he might be performing poorly as an overall combatant. Surely, a good tank would have high TPS.
Sword of Light had discovered that his TPS was at most 18,000, which was an extremely high for a tank. It was similar to that of a DPS that exceeds 18,000! His TPS would not be something that any player could reach easily.
Sword of Light was overjoyed. His normal TPS achieved was usually 12,000. However, the pressure of Zhang Yang’s presence in the field had increased his TPS generation be 50%. As expected, motivation derived from pressure.
However, Zhang Yang is no ordinary player!
Sword of Light checked the aggro list and bit his lips in anger. Zhang Yang was only behind him by about 1,000! Zhang Yang was in the same situation that he had been earlier on, the boss was not damaging him, so Zhang Yang should not have enough Rage to attack! However, Zhang Yang was still able to tailgate Sword of Light closely. If it was Sword of Light who was in that position, he would surely fall back!
As expect China’s number one tank!
"But, I will defeat you!" Sword of Light muttered verbally. He glared at Zhang Yang not with hatred, but with a competitive mindset. His eyes froze at the sight of a shieldless Zhang Yang.
Not wearing his shield? What’s going on!?
If a tank wears the exact same equipment with an attack, the tank could deal only 50% to 70% of the damage of an attacker. A tank can only inflict high TPS value by relying on aggro generating skills. A shield is a tank’s trademark!
All skills and attack can only inflict increased aggro value when equipping the shield! A tank without his shield would be nothing but a severely underpowered attacker!
However, Zhang Yang could still generate enough aggro by inflicting damage as an attacker! It only meant one thing, Zhang Yang could have easily defeated him if he had his shield on!
Sword of Light had been blowing his own hot bubble, while Zhang Yang had no intention of fighting him on even grounds! He was in his own world!
With that, Sword of Light was distracted and had slowed down by half a beat in attacking.
Even though Zhang Yang had been attacking the boss, he felt bored, since he could not use {Shield Bash} to increase his attack. His DPS was around 25,000, while Sword of Light had been fighting with 100% concentration but only could cough out 18,000 TPS.
It was not that Sword of Light was weak, on the contrary, his aggro controlling skill was so strong that he could be one of the top 10 tanks in China. However, the person he was competing with was Zhang Yang, the man with the God of War Inheritance! He had a 50% attack boost passive skill and the little girl’s {Strength Aura} which was a 12% Strength bonus. His weapon was a Level 120 Mythical tier Two-Handed Axe. His DPS was so strong that even the little girl would have to bow her head to him! As such, no other tanks without powerful Inheritances could compete with his TPS power.
Zhang Yang had been pulling his punches. If he had gone all out with the boss, Sword of Light would have been facing the boss’ arse all day long!
Since Sword of Light had missed an attack chance, Zhang Yang had managed to surpass Sword of Light’s skill cast by 1. The poor Sword of Light who had been struggling to remain a hair-breadth ahead of a shieldless Zhang Yang immediately fell apart and lost his lead.
The boss immediately turned around to Zhang Yang and hurled its thick foot at Zhang Yang.
"What!?"
Zhang Yang was surprised to encounter the boss attack. His hands flipped to his back in a flash and he equipped his shield. With extreme reflex, Zhang Yang raised his shield and protected himself.
{Block}!
Sword of Light had finally awoken from his distraction and gave Zhang Yang a weak smile. Inside, his heart was crumbling. Lord have mercy. How could a tank have such brute attack power!? Sword of Light should not have been worried about aggro if it was against the DPS of a half-*ssed attacker!
Just when Sword of Light decided to give up his own competition, his eyes locked onto Zhang Yang’s hands.
"Y-You’re using a Two-handed weapon!" cried Sword of Light as he had only then discovered the oddity. However, Sword of Light saw the bigger picture. How could a tank use a two-handed weapon? He had always thought that Zhang Yang’s sword was a little too big. However, he had realized that if it was a one-handed sword, it should have a lower attack power! Zhang Yang should not be able to have such a high attack!
"Well, yeah!" said Zhang Yang as he blocked the boss attack. In his "shielded" status, he had the attack from {Block’s} reflect damage, and {Shield Bash} which could increase his attack power. Furthermore, he could fully focus on the boss and had nothing need to be distraught about.
Sword of Light lost his mind. All this time he had been fighting beyond his limits, and Zhang Yang was not even trying. Just when, he had thought of something and asked Zhang Yang, "Did your Inheritance give you the ability to use a two-handed weapon, and increase your damage? If so, how much bonus damage does it give?"
"Both. I have a passive skill that adds 50% attack damage!" Zhang Yang had no intention of hiding his secrets. All kinds of Inheritance will be explored thoroughly, sooner or later. Zhang Yang was not afraid of his secrets being leaked out. It was not something to be so secretive about, to begin with.