Post Mortem: Dar Narbugud (three parts)

Alright, we did it! Despite DN being only a level 60 raid, I think we have all seen that it's no walkover and beating it was actually quite an achivement. To my knowledge only two other raiding groups (Crownless/Prism and Valacirca) have cleared it on the Imladris server, so wear your "supressor of pestilence" title with pride! I know a couple of other groups have taken it on and failed, so we're definitely making some good progress.

Now, that's not to say that I believe that only a few dozen players on the server have the skill to win these fights. But a key part of raiding is organisation and preparation and it's here that I think we are starting to find our feet. There's two sides to this though - the leaders need to be organised, but everyone needs to be prepared. There's more work that we can do in both of these areas:

• Strategy outlines. We put up written strats on the forum for a reason, it's because trying to take in the sheer volume of material people need to know about these fights moments before we do them is basically impossible. I do my best to keep the reading down (I don't do what other raid groups do and just expect everyone to do their own research, it's all fairly succinctly laid out here) so I'd really like it if people can put aside 15min to read over the strat before we start.
  
• Consumables. I put up a post on raid preparation a while ago and I'd really appreciate it if people could put in the effort to being prepared. I didn't check up how everyone was going with food and potions, but certainly the hope token situation was pretty bad and I don't think it's fair for me to go through 10+ tokens every raid like I did in the 2nd part alone. Maybe people don't realise how bad dread effects are, but in addition to losing 5% of max morale for every point of dread, you lose 1% incoming and outgoing healing, incoming damage increases by 1% and for dread levels above 2 you lose an effective level for each extra point of dread. So the party's effectiveness is MASSIVELY reduced with 3+ points of dread and it simply can't be allowed to happen. We need someone in each group available to pop a +5 token before each fight and then if you die and get an incombat, it really should be YOUR responsibility to pop your own token to get back up to full performance. I saw many people ressed and then immediately die again, part of this was because they were waking up with 5 dread.
  
• Virtues Now this wasn't such a big issue in DN because it's underlevel but it will become a big issue going forward. Raiding requires your char to be at the top of their game, and virtues - especially ones you might not use outside of raids that increase specific mitigations to things like shadow and tactical damage - are a part of this. Going into OD, the top raiding groups are building their entire raids around mitigating specific damage in order to win the fights. This means getting Fidelity and Innocence to 8+ for shadow mitigation and Tolerance and Mercy (ugh!) to 8+ for tactical mitigation. When doing ranged taking roles (eg. watcher and OD disease wing) having Compassion at a high rank is important for hunters for ranged defence. It's hard to boost these stats in any way other than virtues, they make a big difference. Even the basic ones like Valour, Loyalty and Innocence can make a big difference to the survivability of the squishier classes in particular and in raids (more so than 6-mans), everyone will be taking damage at some point so this is important. And speaking of mitigations, I don't know how many people took my advice to wear 3 pieces of Moria gear but it would have helped a lot if you had.

The main things we are going to look at from a leadership perspective is working towards a more static and regular raiding group so that we can get started quicker and work together even more effectively, finding a second raid night that will work well on a regular basis as well as how to better use and coordinate important cooldown skills.

Earval or others might have some more input here, this is just a quick snapshot of my thoughts.

Not sure if this is open for everyone to post their thoughts, but whatever

I think the biggest that stuck out for me was the real lack of preparation people put in. People turning up without poison resis food is one thing... turning up without morale pots, poison pots or tokens is really another :/

I used a couple of tokens, mostly popping them after people got rezzed. Shortest one was probably for Vas, who died again about 10 seconds later

The raid other than that were very fun. It dragged on a bit after awhile, stretching it for god knows how many hours across 3 sessions pushed the boundaries of patience

In regards to virtues. It's boring to death. And realisitcally, you need to give people a bit more notice than 2-3 days before a raid, if you expect an increase. If people choose OD for this week's raid, it'll be too soon too have virtues in creased for it.

The small ones are easy enough, but killing 400+ foes for 1 level makes you want to cry. I see we've got most people in that aussie channel now though, could be worth encouraging people to shout out if they're working on 1. It does go much faster, and less painfully with more.

Nasda wrote:Not sure if this is open for everyone to post their thoughts, but whatever

absolutely, it's positively encouraged . Would love these to be a conversation and discussion.

In regards to virtues. It's boring to death. And realisitcally, you need to give people a bit more notice than 2-3 days before a raid, if you expect an increase. If people choose OD for this week's raid, it'll be too soon too have virtues in creased for it.

Yeah I should have emphasised that that's more of a medium-long term thing. I know virtues don't get done overnight that's more of an overall goal. I personally need to put in a bit of effort to get mercy up to scratch so I've got work to do in that area too. It's not like we'll be doing virtue checks at the door or anything, just setting longer term aims.

Well, overall I think that went pretty good. Funny how it was the last boss that caused the most problems, but that was more about communication and working out exactly where to stand and what to do at each stage. I think when we got her, it was fairly easy, just due to being in the right place at the right time.

I always read up on the info posts that are made for each raid, but at the same time, it can be a lot to remember and really, without seeing it on screen, half the time it doesn't gell, and by then it's too late for that try.

I'm slowly working on more consumables, I'm looking at the tokens from the ancient level of ore, simply because it's easier to get the mats and at a crit, they last 30mins, long enough (without much of a delay in running in) to last for a boss fight. While non crit at 15mins, is fine for post rez. Biggest problem is they all only stack to 5, that will be solved in next update and hence much easier to hold 20 of each. As end game stuff starts to be more done, my bag's get more filled for raid type runs (tokens, resits/regen/boost foods and various pots) then just normal running around. I've still got a lot more work to do for all that, most time has been spent getting my RK to 65. However, as that nears completion, I'll then spend a day or two (it will take that long) on crafting up a good supply for both characters.

Virtues is something I have already thought about. My medium term plan, is to go back and with both my Champ and RK, complete most of those deeds so that basically all virtues are at a min of lvl 8 and can be swapped in and out as need be.
However, having said that, my Champ runs with all 5 at lvl10, so he is pretty tough and most things that are likely to kill him, likely would anyway, even if I did change a virtue or two. But even so, I still want the option, just going to take time.