Raid 9/17 thoughts

[Mango]

Overall went fairly well with people getting into their roles. Areas that seemed to give us trouble:

1) Need more push back for the red orbs. Consider switching out the condi necros for condi engineer. Flamethrower has push back every 15 seconds as does bomb. We died a few times because of a red orb inside the green zone and no way to push it.
2) Tank needs to be tankier (not sure that is even a word). The inability to move the guardian around the circle because the tank was down was the stopping point for the progress. Might need to separate the chrono and tank as running the boon share part is hard enough. While the extra spot for dps is nice with the combo, if the tank goes down "game over". Adding a second dedicated healer to keep up a light armor tank with minimal self heal would probably weaken dps more than splitting the roles.
3) Clearly assign 4-5 range people to get inside the green circle at the start. These people stay back at range and really just look for the green circles. DPS on guardian is important but secondary. The engineer should be part of the range group running condi pistols.

Some thoughts to consider.

Had fun.

Mango

[Windemere]

1) Need more push back for the red orbs. Consider switching out the condi necros for condi engineer. Flamethrower has push back every 15 seconds as does bomb. We died a few times because of a red orb inside the green zone and no way to push it.

I noticed that last week too. The green circles take away about half health on squishy classes so there isn't a lot of breathing room.

[Valikk]

Thanks for the comments! I agree with many of these and there are place that we can/need to iron out some specifics. The biggest thing to remember is that although we were kinda leading that night, it was still their hosted night so they had first pick on who and what to bring, and we filled in for what they wanted/needed/missed.

1) Need more push back for the red orbs. Consider switching out the condi necros for condi engineer. Flamethrower has push back every 15 seconds as does bomb. We died a few times because of a red orb inside the green zone and no way to push it.

This is very big and did affect us on more then one occasion, the main thing was that Zy, the only healer, was mainly the only one doing push backs so she was also splitting her healing to maintain distance. Ideally we need to have most if not all the green circle group having knock backs, stuns, soft CC kinda abilities.

2) Tank needs to be tankier (not sure that is even a word). The inability to move the guardian around the circle because the tank was down was the stopping point for the progress. Might need to separate the chrono and tank as running the boon share part is hard enough.

I don't think this is really necessary, simply because no matter what classification of tank is being ran, if they aren't getting heals, the tank won't be lasting long no matter what. This was also the tanks first time actually tanking, doing the condi/green circles before, and with experience and seeing what to come, it can only get better.

Adding a second dedicated healer to keep up a light armor tank with minimal self heal would probably weaken dps more than splitting the roles.

The other druid healer that came in the beginning for 30min, had actually barely played a druid so there really wasn't much extra heals really coming from him, and with everyone being pretty new to the fight there was a lot of excessive damage going out with people getting hit with the red in avoidable scenarios, teleported, and getting hit with the cleave. Plus the green circle damage is also typically avoidable damage. So yes 1 healer would be preferable for down the line once we get the mechanics and rotation down, but till then 2 healers might suit us to work out the kinks, then worry about added dps.

3) Clearly assign 4-5 range people to get inside the green circle at the start. These people stay back at range and really just look for the green circles. DPS on guardian is important but secondary.

This is a very big part, the ranged green group should only be really paying attention to the green circle spawns till they all get the hang of balancing dps and head swiveling. But this was also our big problem we just didn't have the ranged dps at all, out of the group we had an engi, a necro, a druid healer, and then another necro after a switch later. Having more ranged dps would help tremendously along with each of them have good knock backs for the seekers.

Had fun.

And of course the MOST IMPORTANT thing. As long as we have thats what matters! Thanks for the thought and help!

[Cheese]

Running unbound guardian in Bloodstone Fen is a great way to practice green circles. Since I basically lived in that event for like 2 weeks on my necro, doing green circles our first night wasn't something all that new to get used to (plus the fact that condi necro is kinda faceroll in comparison to some other builds). I'm sure most people have done it a good bit and know about this, just wanted to throw it out there in case.

As to the tanking mishaps... some of my issue was trying to sort out doing quickness rotations and keeping track of when teleport circles came up to try to block/evade/distortion/evade out of them.. which screws up quickness rotation... and if I block/evade slightly early it ends just before they pop and i get teleported anyway... which was a few of the times i got ported. There is a LOT to keep track of in this fight between timing of blocks/evades to prevent damage, not getting hit by teleport circles, and then a pretty involved rotation on top of that. I generally have problems getting a TON out of videos/guides until I've tried something before, and I'm working on going through some extra videos before we go back in to try to pick up some pointers. That said, if we only end up getting 3 in a green circle and I'm at full health, suddenly I'm in panic mode trying to make sure I invuln my way through melee swings and other dmg to keep myself up until I can heal or someone saves me and then I run out of cd's to use. Another part I'm having trouble with is figuring out what damage and such I'm taking is due to missed timings and what is green circle damage. If we can call out when it seems we're short on the circles I can try to save distortion for that and invuln myself (and ppl in melee with the way I'm built) since it's the only thing that stops that damage (not blockable or evadable).

On a second healer, it wouldn't be a dedicated one, but generally a dps druid (condi or power) that can throw out healing as needed. Most of the time I'm avoiding damage... it's just if I'm hit with a few spikes in a row I start getting behind (and after the first down it's hard to recover, especially during the movement phase)

Next try I'm going to drop the trait that gives signet of inspiration use on phantasm cast in favor of phantasmal defender on block/evade (eats 33% of incoming damage at the cost of a 50%+ hit to boon sharing) at least until I/we get a bit more comfortable.

I've also seen a lot of posts agreeing that VG is the hardest fight for a chrono tank as well (so hopefully after figuring this one out the rest should be comparatively easy).

[Cheese]

Other thoughts/comments

I wasn't really paying attention to boons.... did anyone notice if we had someone running prot? (likely the rev?) as I'm going through more vids, it seems they have full to nearly full uptime, and 33% is pretty huge. Watching vids and it seems like their incoming damage is lower... maybe I'm just exaggerating what it felt like in my head.

Swiftness mushrooms give attack speed too... didn't realize that.

[Valikk]

Other thoughts/comments

I wasn't really paying attention to boons.... did anyone notice if we had someone running prot? (likely the rev?) as I'm going through more vids, it seems they have full to nearly full uptime, and 33% is pretty huge. Watching vids and it seems like their incoming damage is lower... maybe I'm just exaggerating what it felt like in my head.

Swiftness mushrooms give attack speed too... didn't realize that.

I wasn't really paying attention to what the other rev was doing, since I was watching for the cc window call out and my own banners. BUT I do know that the first raid night I was on my Rev and I was doing the simple rotation that includes the Herald Protection upkeep with no problem, so I'll watch for the rev (if it's not me) to make sure they keep that up that. 33% is a lot of damage off so that's important.