OD post mortem 15 July

Since no one else has posted, I guess I will.

So, I think it's fair to say that didn't go well. From the high of a full T1 clear the previous week, to a mess that almost reminded me of a couple of months ago. What went wrong?

We had most of the same people as before, I don't think anyone present hadn't already cleared Disease on T2 and yet it was wipe after wipe. Did people take it a bit too causal, we've done it all before, even wondered if it was T2 and just stormed through. Clearly T2 can still easily kill if all aren't focusing on what to do. I've just about never seen so many extra bugs, it's not that hard, keep a glancing eye just under your power bar and if you see a white/red eye, pot it.

Everyone had pots right, I mean I always make sure I come prepared for raids, after all it is 11 other peoples time, so to not have what you need and stop the whole group from wiping, is just rude.

Now sure it's just a game and played for fun, but even so, there's not a whole lot of fun in wipe after wipe, so that after 2+ hours, all I have are 20 or tokens and a large repair bill. If that's going to be the case, I may as well spend my time getting my characters better prepared for RoI. While if I want a challenge, I'll continue on trying to beat skirms at T3.

I recall two times where I did not get an eye potted during the trash pulls. Both times, my pots were on cooldown after mistakenly hitting them during my rotation.

Why? I was running a different trait set than I have in a long time (quiet knife). To run this trait line I used a different weapon and an entirely new rotation of skills. The unfortunate result of this was that I accidentally hit pots when I did not need them, and then they were not available when I did need them. This is one of those things that probably happened unnoticed when I was running skirmishes during the week, but of course skirmishes are far more forgiving than OD.

Bottom line, I just need more practice with quiet knife. In hindsight sticking with my familiar gambler traitset would have been better for the trash, but I did not foresee having pot issues at the time.

On a more positive note, the positional damage from qk is outstanding - especially noticeable on the trees.

Probably because no one wishes to talk about it

The previous bad disease raid, resulted in yelling, bitching, awkward silences and finger pointing. This one was a complete mirror image of that, but not neccessarily in a good way.

After 1-2 wipes on disease pops, it is almost as if people gave up. No one seemed overly angry, most seemed actually amused.. and people spent more time joking and giggling about not potting their diseases. It became something of a joke. People stopped caring about potting because it was "funny". It was funny the first time or two. Not two hours later on the 12?

It does bring in to question how good people Usually are at potting their diseases. This is the first time in a while, we've gone without a LM traited for incombat disaese removal. Perhaps people relied overly on the LM's to remove things, and couldn't handle suddenly having to pot them.

I think the fact there was no sunday raid ( despite probably having 'just' enough people ) and no raid posted for this week, says a lot about the people's willingness to go back.

Well, I want to go back, just don't want to 'waste' 2 hours on something that we should be able to do in around 30mins.

So yes, maybe people did get a little lazy about potting diseases, when a LM was doing it a lot before, tho really that should only be as a back up option or double hit with pot on CD, otherwise there's no reason why all just can't clear it themselves.

That aside, I wouldn't mind finding a better way to handle the second trash pull, one that doesn't involve one or both of us dying in the first 10secs. There maybe a good reason that I'm not aware of, but how about the following.

Mez both of the worms at the start, main tank picks up the big bug, off tank takes the far queen and a champ takes the near queen (I am working on the theory that the queens don't hit as hard as the bug, which given how hard those big bugs do hit, the queens can't be any worse).

The raid group then burns down the big bug as fast as possible, with luck the Champ is still alive and then the main tank takes the queen off the Champ. Raid group burns down one worm and then the other, followed by each of the queens.

Needless to say that diseases are potted as need be during it all

Good Idea ant and from the trend i noticed i would agree. It ultimately is a 'safer' way to do that pull, but irregardless the potting was the root of the problem. Once bugs are out everything slows down, the first worm target lives longer, the bug gets more time to do damage the healers attention becomes more divided etc. during that pull the captain/champ should be getting the majority of heals from one healer as the tanks can quite comfortably sit with a queen. I'd say greater than 70% of diseases weren't potted last week (once i have aggro in the first ~2s of the pull i can scan people for diseases and the rate that the first to diseases would pop in both pull 2 and 3 was mind-blowing. I think alot of people don't realise how fast it is because babble was doing it for them and hence think it simply CAN'T be them. (hint: bugs at your feet? it WAS you) (also; define: being carried)

I should probably note here (for those who actually read the forums). The reason a raid hasn't been posted for this week is because I'm stepping down as co-leader of aussieplayers in part because my flight training is now ramping up, in part because it takes alot of time and effort to chase people up...screen players...form raids...get people to do basic things (like checking what group they're in!...or POTTING!), and also in part because i think that some people in the group of 12 are wasting other peoples time by raiding with us as they are obviously not putting effort in as is being shown by the fact they do the same things week in week out and aren't actively trying to improve etc...Don't jump to conclusions and think it's you because many players in the group our singularly outstanding, fun people and others are improving and obviously trying to be a part of the 'team'. It's those people that are plateauing and obviously not the 'best' of their class in lotro that are dragging us down. That said: last week was a wake up call and this week off hopefully serves as time to think about what went wrong a little longer.

This means that babble will essentially be the only organizing leader in the group until someone is able to step up and as he is on holidays until next week, so no raid this week.

sheesh, i go away for a week and the raid group falls apart?

Gotta say, it's a bit disappointing to see this happen. We were in a really good place the week before this raid and I would hope that the group is resiliant enough to not fall apart over a few missed pots. The biggest thing that disappoints me here is not that there was some messiness on the trash pull, but how toxic the atmosphere sounds. What people need to remember is that the real competition in raids isn't to beat our previous attempts (in terms of time spent, 'clean-ness') and it certainly isn't to 'beat' other raid groups. The goal is to beat the content and the thing that will stop us doing that, more than anything else, is if people don't have fun. Turbine puts in stupid little mechanics like eye diseases/wounds etc to give raid groups the opportunity to self destruct in bouts of finger pointing and resentment towards fellow raid members. It looks to me like Turbine won this week.

When the raid atmosphere becomes one of blame, negativity, disappointment and rushing through to try to make up for 'lost' time due to previous messiness, people don't respond by getting better, they get worse. This is a game, not a job. When people feel it's overly stressful, they just tune out and don't care they don't get motivated to suceed because if they aren't having fun then they've already lost. This is essentially the same group of people that has been clearing that wing and others in OD for weeks, there's no lack of skill. there was a lack of focus and motivation. Getting that back is the key to future success.

Anyway, while I'm obviously disappointed with Ear's decision to step down as a raid leader, I can assure people that the show will go on . Given how well a "3 officer" setup has worked for us behind the scenes, Ptp and I will be looking to bring Anthony on board as a raid-night leader once he's able to setup voice in TS. Obviously there's going to be some adjustment here but hopefully it'll work out.

I should also say that one other issue that's been raised with me is that of people raiding in multiple raid groups. While I've got no trouble with it in principle - we're a cross kin group and we can't expect or demand absolute loyalty - i do recognise that it can put unnecessary pressure on the raid leadership because you can feel like you're 'on show' to another raid group that (for good or ill) you can feel in competition with. Going forward, as a general rule, I think we will generally discourage our regulars from raiding regularly in other raid groups and will look to use 'aussieplayers' raiders more as fill-ins when necessary. As I said, that's a general rule and there will obviously be exceptions, but based on past experience I can see how this can be a contributing factor to things like what happened in last Friday's raid.