OD Post Mortem - 1/3 July

The biggest overarching comment i have is - creepy whispering raid leaders are bad, mkay? We need you Earval! I did my best on both nights, but my voice is necessarily subdued (when i'm able to talk at all) because i have a sleeping 9mth old 2m behind me in the same room and a 2y 9mth old toddler in the next room, both of which can and do wake up when I talk too loudly. Sorry I know it's not ideal, but that's how it goes and it's why I'm not the main raid leader .

Anyway, thought it was a good weekend of raids overall with some good wins and a lot of continued learning.

Friday night

Disease T2

We finally got this one - yay! And with the HM condition too, that's a really good achievement. All the hard work we put in learning the fight a couple of weeks ago really paid off and the fight went really well. If it wasn't for some unfortunate technical issues then we basically had that fight first time. No one swapped sap colours at any point, our DPS was excellent and almost perfectly coordinated (did you guys see those morale bars at the end of the fight? they were so close to each other it was scary!) and the healing was comfortably able to cope with the incoming damage.

Oh and the trash pulls were a thing of beauty. A couple of disease eyes went off, but nothing fatal, and with good cc and good responding when things go a little bit wrong we got through them with minimal problems.

Wound T2

Not so good lol. Idk, maybe we weren't paying attention or something after the big win and a bit of a break while we shuffled people around, but we didn't really get past the channels on any of our attempts. Anyway, this is a fight that's winnable for the group if we're all on our game, but it's also a fight that due to the splitting up, puts a lot of pressure on every individual player to perform.

Sunday night

Poison T1

That was my first time in, and we had a few new players in the group, so it was quite slow. We also had a few misfires on that 2nd trash pull - which really doesn't seem as hard as it was made out to me. If we can just maintain cc on the trolls - and we've had enough practice dealing with Anger in the disease wing that I think we can - then we can get through those pulls as quickly as we did the disease ones on Friday.

Also, for Dec's beneift, here's Fluffy:





The boss took us a few tries to find our rhythm, but at no point did I feel like that fight was too difficult to complete and i think the strategy is sound and with a bit more practice will be able to be turned into a T2 clear in time. There's some really tricky issues with positioning and the tanks have a tough job, but that's just a case of learning. We also need to all make the platform swaps happen a bit more smoothly, and we'll think about how we can better communicate them in future, but again, that's just practice.

I know i've linked it before, but if we could all watch this to see what we're aiming for there that'd be great:



As you can see, it's possible but not easy to keep the boss basically stationary the whole fight which is the key to making the strategy work given how difficult he is to move.

I should also say, our DPS was wicked good there, especially at the start. We were crossing the 10% morale thresholds quicker than every minute to start with. We slowed down a bit before the end, but the message is that getting enough DPS is not going to be our issue on that fight for a T2 win, it's just going to be about controlled platform swapping.

Anyway, a few more tweaks and probably at least one more clear of that in T1 and we'll be good to go T2 in poison.

A note on my availability

As I explained last night, I am going to be unavailable for this friday's raid due to a late meeting and also the two weeks subsequent to that due to a family holiday. I discussed last night the possibility of doing Thursday night raid this week, but unfortunately Earval can't make it and I'm obviously not going to make him miss a raid because I'm not there so we'll probably just go Friday without me. Anyway, there'll still be raids without me obviously, just letting people know where I'm at.

Yeah it was really great to finally beat disaese challenge GJ all.

From your disease guide... "Save rally cry up for the final add which is killed in the add phase to ensure that it is up for the full 1min duration of the 2nd and subsequent tree phases." I think you mean war cry

A little birdy also tells me that if a loremaster brings a bog lurker pet into the room (or gets bugged outside) and dies, it counts towards the boglurker death on the challenge conditions. Pretty sure I've seen you with the eagle most times, but worth bearing in mind

Yup, it was good to finally clear those darn Trees and like I've said in the past, if all else goes well, then DPS isn't a problem. The reason it dropped a little on poison was because we lost a couple of ppl part way through the fight. So yeah, we just need to get that platform swapping better and have the CC nailed down for the trash and we should have that much more under control.

It was a pity we didn't get Wound T2 done, we should be able to do that without too much of a problem. Mind you, on Sunday we gave Wound T1 a go and while we got it done, it did take a number of tries and I think just shows how all need some good experience in raids and harder content.

Other then that, if I could just make one request, that all come prepared for raids. I always check my contents a few days before a raid and make sure to stock up on anything low. Even if I wasn't scheduled for a raid, I still generally have a good supply and at worse am only one quick map skill away from a vault and bard for anything else I may need.

oops yes, war cry. i'll fix that up. I've also added a note to use time of need before first the tree phase which means war cry can be up for 100% of the DPS phases - my cappy got to level 50 so i finally discovered that skill lol.

Nasda wrote:A little birdy also tells me that if a loremaster brings a bog lurker pet into the room (or gets bugged outside) and dies, it counts towards the boglurker death on the challenge conditions. Pretty sure I've seen you with the eagle most times, but worth bearing in mind

Yeah I read that... OUCH. what a nasty bug to discover . I've been using the raven which has a ranged damage debuff skill - i send him over to the opposite tree from what i'm on so i can at least partially debuff both trees.

Anthony wrote:Other then that, if I could just make one request, that all come prepared for raids. I always check my contents a few days before a raid and make sure to stock up on anything low. Even if I wasn't scheduled for a raid, I still generally have a good supply and at worse am only one quick map skill away from a vault and bard for anything else I may need.

I hear you Ant. I'm not sure what more we can do at this stage but it frustrates me no end. we've come a long way but people still haven't got the message that the time to chase up food, potions etc. isn't as we're walking into a raid. We've constantly harped on this point and from my perspective it's just rude to your fellow raiders to show up unprepared and make them wait around for you, or to go in without the necessary stuff because you haven't prepared in time. I also make it pretty clear to people when it's going on that it's not appreciated, but people will say we're too harsh if we start banning people from raids if they don't show up on time with all the right consumables. I've put our expectations in writing here and this applies to our existing raiders as well as to prospective ones, I hope people can respect each others time enough to follow those relatively simple guidelines. I obviously don't have the same expectations from people we bring in at the last minute, but for those people who are raiding week in week out with us, it's just getting inexcusable to not know what is expected by now.

One other thing - for T2 chests, we are not going to roll on relics and runes anymore due to the ridiculous volume of them. I've been told that the chests have the following number of relics/runes:

T2 (non-challenge) - 12 relics, 11 runes. Everyone gets a relic and I won't even look at what tier they are before assigning, I'll just go down my master looter drop down list in the order that it appears (it's not alphabetical, I think it's based on the order of people in the individual fellowship lists. Everyone except the person getting the armour piece gets a rune and again, I won't look at tier, i'll just assign in order.

T2 (challenge) - 16 relics, 12 runes. Everyone gets a relic and a rune. We could either roll on the last 4 or I could just go back to the top of the list and give it to the top 4. up to you guys if you want to roll on those last for or not.

Just bringing the debrief back to life.

I found a nice GIF that summarizes what we should be doing in all situations during wound wing t2. I hope this makes it clearer for some people!

A few notes and lessons learned:

POISON trash pull
When burglar stuns with startling twist to remove anger, it is important to have no more than 2 gambler traits. 3 or more causes a chance for a damaging gamble (dot) which renders any subsequent mez useless. Stun dust may be an option too, though I have not tried it and it has a long cooldown

DISEASE BOSS
Make sure to apply reveal weakness to the trees well before the dps race. This debuff can miss, which at the wrong time will slow your entir group's dps.. also, make liberal use of cj. cooldowns, since they reset on restarts

LAG

I heard at least one person mention lag in Wound T1. I have been reading the forums, and a recommendation from the leader of Resistance is to uncheck all 5 Special Effect options, and to set graphics to DX10 or lower. I have made these changes, and hope to see an improvement in my pc's performance during raids. I think the lag caused my client to crash on Sunday, and I apologize to the team for that. I am glad that the team got through Wound T1 anyway.

Thanks for posting that Ellda. I've been applying my damage increasing debuffs to the trees prior to them becoming vulnerable and I can confirm that the shield coming down is not a formal 'phase change', it doesn't wipe marks/debuffs.

One other thing - do you typically slot confounding riddle (the one which adds a +5s stun at the start)? I'm not sure it's necessary (its main benefit is that it gives you a 5s window to reapply the mez in rather than having to do it right on CD), just wondering your thoughts on it. Also, I couldn't exactly tell what was going on in all of the craziness, but were you having issues with resist? if so, complicated terms obviously might be worth slotting.

Note that we have hunters retraiting after the trash anyway, so if you want to jump out and go reslot for more DPS in the boss fight after slotting for cc in the trash that won't slow the group down.

Just some info on the incoming damage in the poison fight. First the smash, which hit me 16 times (in the final attempt) for:

Total: 33,767
Average: 1,986
Max: 2,420
Min: 1,388

Note that this is all acid damage which really vindicates our decision to wear 3+3 purple/teal moria imo.

The acid water itself did approximately this amount of damage with my resistances (forgot to note what they were exactly, but I was wearing 3+3 moria, had DP acid buff and empathy). Looking at my log the numbers did start increasing at each tier later in the fight, I'm guessing one of the minstrel buffs dropped off or something:

295
490
687
985
1182
1399
1599

Those ticks hit every 5 seconds and tier up every 15s (so you get hit 3 times at each tier). Early in the fight, I was clearing them just after getting into tier 4, I only got hit by the highest tier there once, and very rarely got hit by the fifth tier.

When I am on primary cc duty, I slot both perplexing riddle and complicated terms. I think complicated terms is more important since it increases riddle's reliability. I also think perplexing riddle is worth traiting - partly due to the extra 5 seconds, which makes it a little easier to keep a mob locked in one place. I also like the initial 5 second stun, which has some forgiveness if someone hits once or twice before realizing it is mezzed.

At least one of the mez breaks was my fault, as I discovered that my damaging gamble was breaking mez. It looked like the mob was immobile for the 5 second stun, then was loosed with the gamble dot.

As we recovered later, I stopped using startling twist and had better success with riddle. I can also use Confound, but I think that would be hard to coordinate since it is a delayed mez. For next time, I will most likely trait qk/mischief if I need to cc in poison. That will allow me to use startling twist, and will give me a feint attack + provoke mez as a backup option. Of course, that is only if my cc is needed.

Yeah, it's unexpected stuff like that gamble DoT which is why I was keen to get you practiced at mezzing these anger mobs. I know me and ptp have had a bit of a learning curve in disease to get it down pat, and what to do if there's a resist or a break or whatever, so it's good that you're able to figure stuff out.

And yeah, delayed or % chance mezzes aren't great - these mobs are dangerous enough (or at least will be on T2) that they need to be locked down in place for 100% of the time or else we risk wiping, which is why we're cc-ing them .

Ya ellda, seems like riddles the way to go, startling twist takes too long with a trick application needed first. One think you may find confound useful for is anger removal. When watching the enemy buff bars u can time when anger buf comes back and apply so that it is delayed to hit just after the anger buff comes back (just a thought).

The trick application makes startling twist kind of dicey due to resists. A couple alternatives are exploit opening and stun dust, both with 5min cooldowns - and also Trip. I like the Confound idea as a way to anticipate anger.

Unfortunately with you get some extremely tricky timing going there, because as soon as anger is cleared the mob wakes up (and won't be dazed because the anger will absorb the counfound). So you'd need to time the counfound to go off just as your riddle comes off cooldown - not impossible, but really not easy.

Can't you apply a different trick (other than disable ofc!) if the initial one resists?

Trip and stun dust are definitely options though, you probably won't be needing to clear anger more than once or twice.

Good points, pb. Yes, I can apply multiple tricks before startling twist if needed. Usually not a big deal; the biggest risk to me is a healer or someone squishy getting aggro while I am fooling with tricks. Again, not usually substantial risk.

I am thinking of Confound as a backup option in case things go wrong. With the Buffbars plugin it might be easier to time, but yeah still tricky.