A note on Alts

As more of you get alts to max level and raid ready, we will ultimately need to deal with the issue of when and how we use those alts in our Ost Dunhoth raid.

As you have seen, we are trying to get a static group with a balanced class makeup for our OD raids. Our ideal is that we will be able to take on and win every fight using that group, even if it isn't the theoretically 'optimal' class makeup for a particular fight. This is important for people, I know, because with limited raid time and no possibility of swapping characters around for looting in OD, everyone wants to be able to raid on their main character as much as possible.

However, we expect that as we progress through T2 especially we might run into situations where we simply cannot progress with a particular class makeup. Before making that call, you can be assured that we will assess both our strategy and our execution of that strategy to make sure that it is class makeup which is holding us back, but at the end of the day swapping characters around might be something we need to do to progress past some fights. Our first option in these circumstances will be to try to use people's alts. This means that at least the same player, if not the same character, is able to progress with the core group. We really want to avoid the situation where we have to swap players out of a raid to get an optimal class makeup for a particular fight (although we recognise that this might ultimately happen), so please let us know if you have alts that are getting up to raid readiness.

My only other main alt at the moment is my RK, but other then maybe for DPS with a little off healing or her special skills (Do not Fall to Flame, etc), she is really no where near raid ready. As a healer, forget it. I still have yet to get a working lvl65 2nd age DPS bag or healing stone and the virtues still need some serious work. That also doesn't even cover equipment upgrades.

Speaking of which, even my Champ isn't at the level I'd like, missing some equipment that I know would help but just can't seem to get. After spending almost 3 hours on NCF a couple of days ago and still not completing it, I will no longer PUG T2 stuff, it's just not worth it. But since I seem to miss-time getting in on any runs with experienced ppl, I have no idea when I'll be able to upgrade a few things.

Sure, I can likely do OD at T2 anyway, for the most part I'm only dying if it's a raid wipe, but the stronger I am, the less the healer has to worry about me and more time they can focus on keeping alive the ones that really matter, like the tanks.

As for any other alts, my highest is a lvl27 Warden that I really have no idea how to play (too many darn gambits to remember at this stage).

Anthony wrote:My only other main alt at the moment is my RK, but other then maybe for DPS with a little off healing or her special skills (Do not Fall to Flame, etc), she is really no where near raid ready. As a healer, forget it. I still have yet to get a working lvl65 2nd age DPS bag or healing stone and the virtues still need some serious work. That also doesn't even cover equipment upgrades.

Don't worry about gearing Nyssiel up for heals, we've already got two or possibly 3 (Marsi) RKs that can heal in addition to Dec.

The only spot I can see us POSSIBLY using Nyssiel at this stage (and it'd be a last resort) is if we find that that T2 poison is simply too hard with heavy melee DPS. Not sure we'll get to that point, but it's a possibility. There's also possibly a bit of an issue with Melee DPS in the Ivar fight due to the healing puddles but I think we should be ok there.

Speaking of which, even my Champ isn't at the level I'd like, missing some equipment that I know would help but just can't seem to get. After spending almost 3 hours on NCF a couple of days ago and still not completing it, I will no longer PUG T2 stuff, it's just not worth it. But since I seem to miss-time getting in on any runs with experienced ppl, I have no idea when I'll be able to upgrade a few things.

Ant, I know you need to do NCF T2 and I'm really keen to do it with you. And the good news is, I solo-healed a T2 HM run the other day with a warden and champ (Nightwing) from my kin in about 1.5 hours, and that was the warden's first time in there T2 so that we actually wiped once on both the first and final fights. Cleared the cauldron first time though with a fair bit of time to spare. I reckon we would have cleared the whole thing within 1hr without those wipes and all of the necessary explanations.

Unfortunately Nightwing also needs another Sarenzar lol and he's kin so he gets pref! I will try very hard to run it with you sometime though, as long as we have a main tank then I can solo heal it (Well, I can solo heal a warden, not 100% about a guard but I'm still pretty confident). But yeah, it's a sucky instance to PUG, I know .

Psychobabble wrote:Unfortunately Nightwing also needs another Sarenzar lol

ANOTHER... right now I'd just settle for 1

If I can get the timming right, with a nice free 1-2 hours of game time, then I can likely get Nya to heal. As such, I can then just tank it and we are all good. I just don't I could stand another T2 PUG.

I did a PUG Stoneheight last night at T1 with two that didn't know it, on my RK (she was upto that point in the quest line) and that was hard enough healing. I'd never PUG that either at T2, it is of course, other then the drops, nice to build up more tokens.

quite a bit of the pain on raiding OD on alts seems to have been alleviated with the latest update - medallions of the northmen are now bound to account which allows you to raid on an alt but still get the medallions on your main (you have to use shared storage to do this). Note that this is another advantage of using the proposed ladder loot system - because your position is linked to the player not the character, it doesn't mean you lose the benefit of the loot (moving up the ladder) just because you're on an alt and can't physically roll.

There has been no official announcement if this is WaI yet but it would address one of the biggest annoyances that the top tier raiders have with the current system, which is that it penalises groups that have to switch around main/alts to progress through the content.

I just read about that as well and while not a big deal mostly for us at the moment, I can see how it can be a good thing in the future.
It's the player that completes OD, not a specific character so much. Tho then of course, the various equipment drops and armour tokens are still character bound, aren't they?