Raiding Reminiscence

I'm feeling better. :)

Especially after tonight's raid. For a variety of reasons.

How shall I put it? I've had my faith restored in myself, the oxymoronic strength and fallibility of human beings, my mind set at ease and my perspective readjusted to something a little more sane, all at the same time.

My mind is personally at rest because we managed to hit upon a tactic that held my crucial part of the raid steady, and still involved me in a non-"extradaneous spear carrier" role that I felt confident in achieving (given no unforeseen Failcom "fixes.")

I run a little ahead of myself, however. Let's begin at the beginning.

For the past two to three weeks, my guild has been making various attempts at the Age of Conan tier 1 raid bosses. Around 3 days in the week are selected. Being a casual raid guild, there is officially no pressure to raid if you don't like to. Fair enough.

I would like to, though. Just cos I was curious to see how a raid was run, and what the big group mobs in AoC were going to be like, etc. Obviously, other people raid for different reasons, and a big motivator for most people is loot pops. More on that later.

Me being GMT+8 instead of GMT+10, it's been tricky to find the time. Been fortunate that I've had a couple off days owed me, so I took the chance to snatch time away from work to go raiding. :)

I've been generally quite impressed with how our guild has been organizing raid rules and so on. They had some kind of dkp planner website set up for sign ups and loot distribution and raid summaries. Instructions over Vent and for the most part, the raid leaders have been pretty clear and calm and encouraging and positive.

I attended recon raids for two areas - Kylikki's Crypt and Yakhmar's Ice Caves. Lots of wiping, but since they were stated as recon, we kept trying new strategies and making progress and learning. We gave up on Yakhmar after the first recon because our MT's gear just didn't seem to be cutting it at present, which led the focus back to Kylikki.

Kylikki is some zombie lady deep inside a huge underground crypt. Very straightforward map (unlike my "favorite" Cistern/Main System dungeon) with trash mobs in the way, that require clearing.

A single 'trash mob' spawn consists of one Priest, one Honorguard, one Spellguard and some minions. All of them raid elite level.

The strategy they designed for single-pulling was quite amusing, and I suspect came from the general guild's EQ/Vanguard background. The Death Pull. One ranger (longest range, apparently) would shoot, aggro'ing all the mobs, and take off running into a corner to die. As the mobs were in motion, a second ranger shot an arrow to aggro one mob, and led that back to the tank, who would take over aggro duties from there.

Interesting, because I suspected that another strategy would have been to just send a tank to each mob and occupy it. (Of course, our guild being rather tank-light doesn't help.)

The Priest has very little special tricks, and dies to a simple tank and spank with DPS. The minions are disposed off easily with some special skills from DPS classes (ranger, HoX, necros all have one-shot minion kills, apparently.)

The Spellguard is the trickiest one, as he randomly decides to pump his fist in the air and do a hard hitting spell AoE all about him. So the idea is to watch for it, and run away. Takes a bit of getting used to, and squishier classes tend to drop dead quite suddenly here.

Over the course of some raids, I learned about this cute little interface option gizmo known as a timer bar. You can actually see what combo the mob is casting, just like Guild Wars.

Today I had some validation in learning how to read this, as I managed to survive even with no healer watching over my health bar in my group. (Not tanking it, obviously. Just in a DPS role.) I feel...happy? satisfied? content? Kinda. Because I'm in this to improve my skill, rather than to get loot. Just like how when I play an FPS, I expect my skill to eventually improve.

The Honorguard is the buggiest of the lot. We're not sure how much of its "features" are by design, and which are just pathing errors. He dumps aggro constantly, and selects new targets seemingly at random, which leads to a mad frantic chase of meleers trying to get collison detection to work for them, while the softer classes try and survive/kite the crazy bugger who suddenly hates them.

All this wouldn't be so bad, except he has the irritating habit of having his path blocked and so deciding to reset himself by "evading" all attacks and having his hp fully restored. Leaving us to begin ad nauseam. There was one ludricrous time when he evaded 11 times and counting (wiping us like mad.) Most other times, he does it 0-2 times and dies in a civilized fashion.

And that's just one spawn of trash mobs. There are easily about 10 of these spawns in the way, I think. They sort of blend together. Since I don't do pulling, I don't care to count 'em.

Things went well with the trash mobs today, in that we were acting like a massive cohesive team, pulling very quickly and knowing all the strategies, so that stuff died without too much effort. Not bad, considering we were short on manpower, and invited about 4-6 from Radical Dreamers, who had been attempting Kylikki yesterday on their public raid and let some AA'ers in as well.

(As an aside, I'm quite impressed with the diplomacy levels of our guild officers, who go around making contacts/friends/allies with all the other guilds and start trading people around to make up raid numbers. Things could so easily devolve into a political competition. It's also far more effort than I ever want to go through for a game, I know that much.)

The Champion of the Honorguard is midway in. This first raid boss had a buggy tendency to shoot people through walls (caught me by surprise my first time in), and of course, another gimmick. He has two debuffs. One such curse does AoE damage to the whole raid if anyone hits him. Another one just reflects back damage slowly on you. So the idea is to obey the "stop DPS, slow DPS, resume DPS" calls, and nibble him slowly to death.

A PoM apparently can dispel this curse. But it's on a 5 minute cooldown, so limited opportunities for use anyhow. Just like my taunts/goads.

I mentioned that I got a little bit grumpy and insecure the other day when our MT wanted me to pull aggro off him when his health got into trouble. That's all very well if you want me to do it sporadically, but if you're screaming for help every minute or so, I only have so many taunts at my disposal, and it's still bloody hard to trade off or pull aggro. Part of it is probably me (not enough +taunt on my gear, not feated into the 2 min goad), and part of it is probably you (not being sensible enough to turn on your -10% hate stance).

Well, today we had a special guest tank from Radical Dreamers, who was all decked out in 50% resist to crushing crafted gear. Such gear being way beyond my means to create at the moment, instead of jealousy, I was rather relieved to have this fellow around, actually. Since that would mean they'd turn to this tank for help, rather than to me and my very iffy survival. (It doesn't help that I have limited healer support in my group to watch my bar, either.)

Today, I also did manage to use my first taunt as called on by the MT, and took aggro perfectly and slid it off when he recovered. The second taunt was a bit more iffy as it took a little longer to get aggro. In retrospect, I suppose he'd built up more hate, while I hadn't, obeying stop DPS orders, after all.

Surviving the second time also sucked, because the only healer in my group had gone linkdead and vanished. This healer was also the player that a lot of people didn't like, as they found him selfish and only looking out for himself. Catching the occassional cone heals from other group's healers isn't quite the same. Either that or my armor sucks. Or both. I came really close to dying, but fortunately, I regained enough presence of mind to snap on the -hate stance, and voila, like magic, it dumped off to another tank.

This time the Radical Dreamers tank got the aggro. And wowee, that 50% crushing resist worked like magic. His health bar only dipped ever so slightly (2 healers in his group too, btw.) And he basically tanked the rest of the fight, maybe trading aggro with our MT. Wouldn't know. I figured I would just DPS and focus on surviving, since I had crummy support and crummy armor, and there were other tanks to pick up the slack anyhow.

I guess that answered the question of both gear, as well as the feat spec that fixed the taunt frequency. (2 min goad does seem helpful, if it bugs out sometimes - what else is new?)

Past Champion and the other trash mobs, we finally get to Kylikki. This bad girl spawns two wolves after 15 seconds, which have to be somehow dealt with, or they eat up the raid. Killing them just respawns them, apparently. So the solution that most guilds went with was to get a tank or two to kite them. Wolf team: that's mine.

Kylikki also creates spellguard minions who will heal her, in three alcoves, in 30 second intervals. And she will run to them for these heals. This necessitates a minion team with all the minion-killing skills (all on 2 min cooldown timers, mind you) to somehow coordinate and keep the spellguards dead dead dead.

And of course, Kylikki has a gimmick of her own. All those doing DPS on her have to be within 5m of hugging close to her, because if the person who she's aggroed on is too far away, she throws this death dealing AoE bolt to the entire raid. That's obviously a wipe.

Previously, the wolf team had some issues with kiting. From figuring out the length of distance to kite. The first time, I figured kite in a corner meant exactly that. In a corner. In a small circle. Nope, dropped dead very shortly, one healer couldn't keep up. And they said, no, a longer circuit, up and down the entrances.

Oh, ok, fine. So I do that, and things are not too bad, except that I find out that the wolves stun from time to time, and midway through my kiting, I turn and see that a wolf has either eaten the sub-80 tank or a healer, which obviously bodes badly for our team, and I have to try and grab both wolves aggro (or the Kylikki people shriek about a loose wolf), and when I do that, I drop dead like I'm made out of jell-o, and all everyone sees is that the tank has died...AGAIN, and the wolves are eating the healers, and shortly the entire raid.

Most embarassing. So they try a smaller circuit, with an additional sub-80 tank, and the chaos of kiting and running around just doesn't freaking help at all.

So this time around, we had a bunch of outsiders, and one of them was a wise guy. Not a Radical Dreamer, some other guild, and this guy was the typical obnoxious, gee, you guys suck, why aren't you doing it this way, backseat strategist spouting conspiracy theories.

Still I found it interesting to hear that apparently you couldn't overheal the tank, or you would immediately get aggro from the wolf. (I'm not sure how far that was the case, but it posited another possibility for the easy shedding of aggro. I also have another personal pet theory about the -distance- from the mob.)

So fine, we have our invincible guest tank, don't we? As I said, that made me relieved, as I figured some of the load would be off me, but it also stressed me out slightly, because then -I- became the weakest link, and I wasn't quite sure I could survive. And if I died, then people would blame me for wiping the raid. :(

Trial Number 1: Nightmare Scenario came true. They were trying out some kind of funky necro pet strategy. And the instant the wolves spawn and I was supposed to taunt a wolf back to kite... I LAG. 4000ms worth of screen frozen latency. I'm left for 15 heart-rending seconds wondering if my client is going to crash, and hearing the howls of "what's this wolf doing here" over Vent, and being unable to respond or explain the problem. Obviously, by the time I recover, it is a disaster recovery scenario, I have to try and grab a wolf that has already eaten 4-5 people, everyone's angry, etc, and yep, we wipe.

So here I am left looking like I'm a total hopeless klutz. Sighs. Trial Number 2: and our invincible guest tank offers to try and tank BOTH wolves cos he wants to try out his special 50% resist crushing armor. He just wants 3 healers babysitting him. So I get to watch in total mortification as the raid leader arranges stuff for him, and goes, ok, this time, he gets both wolves, and you Lycaeus, hmm, guess you can join those around Kylikki.

*mumbles* Then I get told off for starting DPS before the MT gets aggro - er, I was on the wolf team before, I can barely see what the DPS people were doing. But fine, it was just three white swings of the sword, and I quickly stop. My bad.

And in a perfect self-vindication scenario, when the two wolves spawn, our guest tank tries to grab aggro, but somehow loses it. One wolf is harassing at our heels. People are screaming about it. Me being grumpy by this point, I curb my natural instinct to turn and taunt it away and go back to the original kiting plan. I let the invincible tank struggle, while the wolf chomps up a few people. Not until I hear the vent orders from the raid leader, do I turn and goad the wolf away, after some minutes past and it's obvious that the great plan ain't so great after all.

Alas, for some unknown reason, just as I'm taking it away to the healers to execute plan A - to kite - Kylikki decides to throw an AoE bolt in our direction. And the greater part of the wolf team wipes. And invincible tank is back to struggling with two wolves and 0-1 healers. And Kylikki has gone AoE happy by this point regardless, so we wipe again.

This time, I watch the third degree laid on the invincible tank for the "what went wrong NOW?" question from the raid leader - who is barely hanging on to his patience by this time. Ah, somehow, they couldn't quite get aggro on both wolves, something kept drawing it back to Kylikki.

Vindication: At least I'm not the only one having problems generating aggro, it seems.

So for Trial Number 3: The raid leader looks about and figures, well, we don't actually need Lycaeus here with us at the DPS team (said a little insultingly, but fine, maybe I'm reading too much into a voice.) So Lyc will goad and bring a wolf to invincible tank to regain aggro further away from Kylikki.

Suits me fine. If I'm not actually frozen with 4 bars of red lag, I have no problems grabbing aggro, and dragging the wolf back to our position. Done it a bunch of times. And I have major nightmare issues about surviving the wolf damage, so I'll be happy to dump it off on invincible tank.

So in vindication session number 3: Things go like perfect clockwork. Wolves spawn. I grab the aggro. (I also notice the invincible tank is standing on the right, when the raid leader actually said I should be on the right, but nevermind, I say nothing and go stand on the left. Where the two wolves decide to spawn. Ha, vindication again.) I run it back to the healers, and invincible tank does his counterstrike and takes the aggro from me.

The 3 healers keeping invincible tank up are set up in a nice triangular cone direction for once. I like it, because it keeps them further away from the wolves (my lil distance theory of aggro) and they look really strong and unified with their heals in this fashion.

Having done my part to go fetch, I realize I'm now extradaneous and no one told me what else I should be doing. So I decide that I may as well camp out there, see what invincible tank is doing so I can learn his tricks, and what not.

Couple tens of seconds into the fight, I notice our invincible tank with 50% crushing resistance isn't so invincible after all. His health is dropping. Yes, tanking both wolves with 50% crafted armor crush resist, and his health bar is dropping! Down it goes, steadily, 3/4 full, then half full. HoTs are full strength on us already.

Vindication again. But well, this I know how to fix. Learned through hard necessity. The skill aspect. I cc one wolf with my stun, and watch his health bar. It creeps back up. And I know my new job, and it makes me happy. I basically take over cc'ing one wolf, kb'ing it and dropping a stun on it every so often.

After all, it's probably less dangerous to the healers for me to be cc'ing, rather than them, since that would just build their threat.

The wolf team suddenly turns rock solid. We can keep this up indefinitely. The three healers are maintaining their HoTs. Invincible tank has dual wolf aggro, and I'm helping him watch his hp by cc'ing rather than trading aggro onto my presently squishy self.

And in a surprising turn of events, it's the Kylikki team that falls first rather than the wolf team. And we wipe. Again. But this time, my mind is at ease, because I know a theoretical structure that can hold the wolves at bay.

I'm mildly amused by human nature because to the raid leader, at this point, he's thinking invinci-tank has managed to tank both wolves successfully cos the wolf team has suddenly held out a lot longer than most previous tries. He asks the tank how tanking both wolves was, whether it was manageable. To my immense amusement, the tank goes, oh, not too bad, might be better if the healers could do a bit of cc. Fine, ego is ego, I'll just shut up and let him think what he wants, knowing that it was MY cc that kept one wolf off him.

Of course, that resolution lasted only as long as the raid leader, thinking further, went, oh, Lyc is there. We don't need him on Kylikki. Maybe he can help you cc.

Obviously at this point, I speak up and say, um, that's exactly what I was doing on the previous go. (Biting my tongue on the next part: that's why we lasted that long) And invinci--tank finally goes, uh, yah, noticed that.

Good.

I'm actually all revved up by this time because we'd finally found a workable solution to our wolf team problem, and I was looking forward to seeing the rest of the raid reveal their dysfunctionality, so that we didn't look like the only hopeless idiots around.

Guess I should be careful what I subconsciously wish for. :)

Because someone said over vent, ok, let's all release and respawn and give it another shot. (I'm not good at recognizing voices though - not sure if it was the MT or the raid leader.)

But someone told me to release and respawn and come back to the instance, so I did. Along with the rest of the raid.

And then we gallop back into the instance to find out that because all of us had exited (and forgot to leave one dead person keeping the place warm), the instance had reset. Trash mobs and all. (Minus the Champion with his loot reward, which was on a timer.)

Hilarious.

Shortly after that, as overall morale is plunging and the raid leader is sounding frustrated, but still trying to be fair and take a vote as to what to do next, juggling people who don't want to say and people who do, and we're about to call it for the night, our resident drama queen mischans the best tell ever.

Now I've actually got a fondness for this woman, mostly because she reminds me a hell a lot of Aylssa, continents away. Foul of mouth, good of heart, with an inflated sense of her importance in the large scheme of things and a tendency to paint things to reflect her in a good light and bad mouth others to make herself look better.

One thing unlike Aylssa though, she does have a tendency to act up in raids. Periodically afk without warning (kids, love 'em), using ranged attacks and not doing enough dps even though she's a melee class, unsoweiter - so she's not exactly a saint. Some no-names-mentioned warnings had already been given to all. (She did however instigate the entire guild demon farm for the benefit of all, and do a lot of resource farming and acting as the archetypal foul-mouthed guild mom.)

And there was an incident in the raid earlier on when she had gone unannounced afk, and the entire raid ended up waiting for her, and you could sense some of the more hardcore raid fellas getting snippy, and they actually kicked her from the raid at one point.

(But yet, she had previously been doing all of the death pulls for the trash mobs. And 5-10 minutes later, was reinvited to rejoin the raid without a word. So goodness knows what kinds of drama tells were flying around behind the scenes.)

All this background is for that best tell mischanned ever, because it was a paragraph long rant, full of vulgarities, about someone (just referred to as he) being a control freak and needing to sound like he knew what he was doing, and wasting time when the raid could have been done a long time ago, unsoweiter.

Lol.

I'll be frank. My sensitive self first wondered if it was me that she was referring to.

Then I wondered if it was the guy we all love to hate, the selfish one, that this guild mom LOATHES to the death. (Except he had previously upped and disappeared halfway through the raid, so it couldn't be him, could it?)

Then I wondered if she had just been insulting the poor raid leader, who sounded a little taken aback by her invective, but coped with it really well and said some very decent, civilized things and used humour to defuse the situation.

And then shortly after that, our MT left the guild abruptly, and logged his alt and left the guild with that one too.

Which then makes me boggle and wonder if he was the "he" being referred to - did he have a guilty conscience, was he the one who told everyone to release? Or if he'd just gotten tired with all the nonsense/frustration of the raid and so on.

But I only wonder with a wry, bemused smile on my face, and not in an obsessed kind of manner. (My main brooding questions were solved. How to control the wolves, and what factors helped in both aspects of tanking - aggro gaining + surviving.)

Ah, guild and raid drama, born of frustration, mistakes and perceived stupidity. I didn't think the day would hit quite -this- fast. Drama mamas and huffy main tanks. Classic.

So now I'm in watch-and-see mode, to observe how and if they manage to get this mess cleaned up and sorted out.

It's a good time because I can't attend any raids for the whole of next week. I can work without guilt. I'd probably still putter around with some AoC resource gathering to work on my crafting quests, indulge in some solo stuff - and see if the guild implodes.

Most of the other members seem relatively unaffected. Or at least aren't showing any outward signs. So I dunno. Be amusing to wait and see.

WAR is coming, at any rate.

I really like AoC's graphics and combat though. However, the future still doesn't inspire confidence. Perhaps I should grab all the screenshots and videos I want. Soon. :)