OD Post Mortem 4th and 6th June

Hey guys. So first up i'll post the port mortem for night 1 which was: Disease, Wound, Fear.

Overall it was a really fun night and I really appreciate the good nature of the aussieplayers group and the fact that were in it for a good time and even if we fail we still have fun. That is a core value that will bring us success and great enjoyment going forward in our raiding! I'll put a few quick notes for each of our wings - a digestible list of suggestions to improve going forward.

Special thanks goes to Bainin for really bringing it on his first raid night having not played lotro for about 2 months and being thrown in the deep end for raids, shows that there's alot of promise going forward!

Disease:

• The first trash pull: We'll continue with our original kiting strat on future attempts, if we find the workers continue to nuke us we may adapt a double cc strategy on the gnawers and try to clear workers first.
  
• Third pull: as with all our other wipes on this pull the pull is generally going well, and then a few diseases time out and the greydbg kill the group off. I cannot stress enough the importance of potting those diseases!
  
• The trees fight: Overall it was really well done. After a a fail on my part the 2nd attempt was excellent. We got both trees down with only 2 waves of adds which is the challenge mode condition, so well done guys! We'll keep pumping up the DPS on that fight and really going all out to be ready for T2. We're definitely getting our rhythm there!
  

Wound:

• Gauntlet: well done, nothing really to say here.
  
• Boss fight: The only issue we're encountering at present is making sure the renewer gets both interrupted and the corruption removed, there were a few occasions when mammoths were healed. I'd love some feedback from people that were actually observing the spawn timings on this. also the other issue i can think of is we need to make sure we're hitting the right mammoths in order, there were times when the wrong mammoths were releasing add waves which suggests incorrect targeting.
  

Fear:

• Trash pulls: Farmed. That's all i can say, if we take that kind of gusto to tier 2 we'll barely notice the difference! well done guys
  
• Balrog: So we had about 6-7 attempts and didn't get it - but we had a ball at the end of it all!. Importantly everyone was learning things from the fight and bainin did well learning what is a difficult fight to tank. The most important theme overall above all else is it is an ENDURANCE fight. Whenever we died it was due to a breakdown in aggro swapping between myself and bainin for various reasons, and there were several occasions were DPS were gaining aggro during the tank swaps (you guys need to remember during the swaps theres 10-15s of very weak aggro building as we reposition). At the end of the day if a DPS is getting aggro during a swap phase they need to really take their foot of the accelerator as the fight is all about having a nice comfy buffer. We'll get it on farm guys don't worry! The fundamentals of the fight are laid down well we just need the finesse!
  

I'm looking forward to Sunday night! We'll be hitting Poison first then returning to fear if we have time. See you then!

K so u covered our run pretty well. Im only going to add one bit here, where u asked for observations with the mammoth add spawns.

Our strategy guide is wrong. waves 1 and 2 should be switched so it should be as follows:

# Wave 1 (75%): Renewer + Wights
# Wave 2 (50%): Warden + Wights
# Wave 3 (25%): Warden + Renewer + Wights

Now with where the renewers spawn:
On the 75% Wave 1 - Right in the middle of the carpet - close to the ball. about 6-8 meters infront of it.
On the 25% Wave 3 - All the way at the other end of the carpet from the ball/warden spawn point. (about where the red carpet ends)
The diagram on the strategy explains it correctly - the point above it needs to be changed though (will fix).

Other than that, was a great and fun run. Def looking forward to poison, but lets remember it'll be new to us again (remember our 1st attempts at disease + fear), so dont be disheartened by any mess ups or wipes guys. We are inching closer and closer to T2 now, so really get into this raiding group and give us your thoughts on strategies, ideas and observations. Glad its been fun up to this point, lets keep it up.

Echo the above, was a good night. My only general comment is re AFKs - it'd be nice if we could make them a bit quicker. If you want to go afk, leave straight after we break instead of hanging around to chat afterwards. and we'll try to set a time to get back by in future to keep things moving a bit.

yeah, it's definitely a learning experience on the renewers my fundamental problems were (1) as ptp pointed out, we had wrong info on when they spawned so sometimes i wasn't expecting them when they came and vice versa (2) the close one spawned closer to the gate than i expected based on the map so I missed it a few times (3) they sometimes spawn really late in the wave, after the other mobs have come, so a few times I was like 'oh it's not coming this time' and then it did. This will be fixed now that we have order figured out and (4) you can't tab target them given the number of mobs and a few times i had trouble clicking on them, either because they were in the ball or because they were between the two tanked mammoths.

All of these will get better with practice. Quite frankly the room fight is easy enough on T1 and even, i hear, on T2 until you start trying for the challenge condition that this won't really matter for quite a while. It'll be important to have people learning the role though because it's a crucial part of the T2 challenge.

Echoing the sentiments here, it was a very good night overall. We took a bit to actually get in our stride, but once we got into it, we did great. Sure, we still have a few kinks we need to work out here and there, but we're coming along great, and it's showing.

I will admit that one of the add spawns in wound was basically my fault, as I went for a volley of moves on the wrong mammoth by mistake, which in turn sent it over the threshold and spawned the adds. I think I apologised for that last night after I did it, and I apologise for that again, as I know better than that. Also, PTP is right in his observations as to what actually spawned in the separate waves; there were no renewers in the mammoth's second waves at 50% health (though there were some in-game calls claiming there were), and there were what appeared to be staggered or delayed add spawns in a single wave at times. Still, we adapted great, and it's a credit to our group.

One suggestion I will make, though: I suggest that there be a back-up status-effect caller for our group. Nav in general did an excellent job, but there were times where he missed some effects, which is very understandable considering he's a main healer and is a busy man throughout. But when he had a back-up voice calling effects (I think it started in wound wing from various people, and PTP took over as the main back-up voice in Fear), we didn't miss a single one and it seemed to take the stress off of Nav, which is a good thing. Making a guy like PTP or someone else as a back-up caller who can jump in with an alert when stuff doesn't get called and needs to get cured ASAP (like the diseases in Disease or the Fear dots in fear) would, I feel, be a boon to the whole raid, and relieve pressure from Nav, who in all fairness already has quite a bit to do in a lot of these wings, what with the healing, Do not falls, and so on...

Anyhow, just some obseravations from what I saw last night. Great run (especially when we hit our stride), and good fun. Hope to see you guys on Sunday and have even more fun!

Vasilion

All in all it was good. I think I missed one clobber on a warden and that was due to going too soon. In some cases it seems they pop up almost in an induction, while another time, there was a 1-2 second delay before it started. What has been most good was in getting a better handle on the order of adds in the wound wing. I found myself sometimes looking at the gate, waiting for an add that wasn't coming at that stage. Of course, this is mostly due to having now only really completed that wing twice. So the more experience the better.

On the subject of experience, I found the Balrog a little disappointing (not sure if that's the best word for it). I understand it's a bit of a tank challenge and we had a new tank, which of course made it an extra learning experience, but I still felt we should have got that done. It does seem things were maybe taken a bit too casual on the Balrog, compared to how well and generally easy we handled the mobs. Now sure, it was all fun, but I get just as much fun and enjoyment out of winning the fight, like how much we totally owned those trees.

So far we are batting around 10 to 1 on the Balrog and I'm wondering if it would be better to do and complete the Balrog first on Sunday, rather then adding something totally new, which could mean no real attempts at the Balrog after. If that happens, then it will be another week before we get it done.

Anyway, just a thought.

@Vasilion

There's a few considerations here though. Something which should be emphasised and which probably hasn't is that at the end of the day it is the responsibility of the affected/infected player to take care of their own adverse state effects. How you do that is up to you, but I strongly suggest taking a look at some of the interface plugins outlined here especially if you find it difficult to notice or respond to effects which happen to you. So at the end of the day I don't actually mind - no, more than that - i don't actually want the 'caller' to shout out 100% of the effects. If people rely too strongly on calls they get lazy, whether they mean to or not, and the whole raid will be stronger if everyone spots and responds to their own effects as quickly as they can.

Introducing a backup caller introduces a new raft of problems. When does the 'backup' caller call? Do they wait for a set number of seconds or do they do it straight away? If the former, it gives people less time to respond, if the latter we get lots of unhelpful cross chatter. Also, the more people we have who are responsible in some way for spotting and calling these, the more we distract from those people's primary role in the raid. Nav's in a pretty good spot to see these because he's watching morale bars anyway, but even then there's obviously things which can draw his attention away. Making other players do it takes away from their roles.

I think the system we've got in place at the moment strikes a decent balance. We need to tweak it a bit, eg. I think only the really dangerous effects need to be called (eg. in the wound wing, call the eye wound but not the other ones - pots should be saved for the eye one), but i think one caller is the right balance of the above factors.

@Ant

As discussed with you, I hear your concern but the learning on poison won't really start until we actually see it and there's a lot of learning which will need to be done in that fight, both from players and the leadership. So I'm really keen to get the experience while we have an opportunity and it'll get us started on that learning earlier.

I also agree that it's disappointing if people weren't taking the raid seriously at some point. When you're using up 12 people's time we should always be respectful of that and not just muck around imo.

sorry for the delay had issues shrinking adding music lol things like that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJCTX5ZmXUM&feature=youtube_gdata

To clear it up since a couple people are already poking holes (correctly too i might add) I am aware I did not use fall to flame and that was a definate my bad. since im aware of this id prefer it wasnt rubbed in my face anymore. twice is enough. healing a raid is not as easy as you think, unless you have a healing class and are capable of doing so, can we leave the critique as constructive opinion and not authoritive. (because that is the way it comes accross)

At a very rough first count of my target changing in my video i have 51, thats a average of 7.2 targets per minute, one every 8 seconds in accordance with our 8.2 min battle (just over 7 minutes for me since i was defeated) add on top of that the other elements we all had to deal with its not easy, so just realise that adding half a dozen weapon swaps and inductions in there isnt just a case of saying la de da add a weapon swap. even when it is done (like the first durin bane we did and passed) its going to take time to be effective at it, at the rate that is required.

This is partly a vent, but it is also bothering me because all in all i felt I did well. it wasnt even 24 hours before getting pm's and having conversations about this issue. im not saying I dont apprechiate the advice because I do, but give me my victory and bother me in a day or two about the flaws.


Gankvalor

For great Squidvalor victory

Great video thanks for posting. I hope you can continue to post these in future for other wings .

No one was questioning your healing ability. You, as always, did a fine job on that front and the fact that you were one of the two (as opposed to the three we took last night) healers that beat the 'rog on the previous attempt shows your healing output is excellent. I'm sorry if any of the feedback came across as anything other than constructive and I also apologise for getting my wires crossed with ear as to who was going to mention it to you - I agree, it's not nice to have person after person bring it up. We'll do better on that front in future. And I also realise that we went into the wing on very short notice, you had obviously prepared yourself for the poison wing and the last minute change of plans didn't help things.

And you're not the only one to make mistakes! We all do, it happens. As I acknolwedged on the night, I made a huge error in party composition in putting both lore-masters in the same fellowship. In doing that, I was thinking about which people I wanted to have in the same party as the two healers, I completely overlooked the fact that the LM's raven shadow mitigation buff is fellowship wide so for our first two attempts one half of the raid was missing appx 10% extra shadow mitigation which was very detrimental. These things happen, it doesn't reflect badly on you as a player and we only brought it up in the context of future improvement.

One question Nav (and yes, as an owner of a lvl65 RK, I know how hard healing can be, there's no way I'd take on any T2 or raid content at the moment, character just not ready for it yet. And of course, as a healer you have so much more pressure. If your DPS is a little off, no one will really notice, if healing is a little off, ppl die and they tend to notice that ).

Anyway, the question, I noticed on your video, how you had your main healing skills mostly on numbers 6-9, with lightning skills on 1-5. As such you wher always using the mouse it seemed to hit the healing.

Personally, while I have my lightning skills on 1-5 and healing on the next bar directly above that (which I think is Shift 1-5 or something like that), when I know I'm healing, I drag swap those around, putting all the main healing skills on 1-5. I tend to find that is then much easier to hit, sicne ones hand is over WASD anyway. That way, if there is a single skill that I know is coming up and I'm going to need it, I then have the mouse sitting on or near that.

Of course once I've stopped healing, I then just swap healing and lightning back around. Anyway, it's just a thought, not sure if it's something you have tried or considered and no doubt, we all have our quickslot bars configured in various ways.

Jtime wrote:For great Squidvalor victory

I can only laugh, theres no other option, thank you

Anthony wrote:
Anyway, the question, I noticed on your video, how you had your main healing skills mostly on numbers 6-9, with lightning skills on 1-5. As such you wher always using the mouse it seemed to hit the healing.
Personally, while I have my lightning skills on 1-5 and healing on the next bar directly above that (which I think is Shift 1-5 or something like that), when I know I'm healing, I drag swap those around, putting all the main healing skills on 1-5. I tend to find that is then much easier to hit, sicne ones hand is over WASD anyway. That way, if there is a single skill that I know is coming up and I'm going to need it, I then have the mouse sitting on or near that. Of course once I've stopped healing, I then just swap healing and lightning back around. Anyway, it's just a thought, not sure if it's something you have tried or considered and no doubt, we all have our quickslot bars configured in various ways.

tbh im not entirely sure why I do it the way i do, my left hand does all my movement . my eyes are kinda just fixed between raid bars and my characters postioning & my right hand just seems to be automated with the mouse. I guess its a comfort thing. in another mmo I played where I had a killer medic I did have all my skills on 1-7 and used the fkeys for group targeting but i think the difference was a reticle was in a fixed position in the centre of screen (so no roaming mouse arrow unless it was toggled to) and moving the mouse turned ur toons without holding down any mouse buttion. or it could be the fact I do things awkwardly so im told at work all the time lol.

i think key layout is very personal and everyone got their own logic... i look at PB skill bar and i am very confused why he will place the skills the way he has placed them =D

I used to play Counter Strike with a fren that uses delete and page down as left/right, up/down arrow as the forward/backward and 0(insert) on the number pad as jump and right ctrl as crouch! I cringe every time look at him play and when i ask him why he doesn't use wasd like the rest of us his response is he is just use to it... and the best... each time he reload he takes his hand off the mouse and press R...