Messages

1

Freelance Ramblings / Furro gets nerfed! RB changed

« on: September 25, 2012, 06:29:12 PM »

So, Reluctant Benevolence got stealth nerfed.  It will no longer proc off of others spells, only the necro.  It will still provide group heals when it procs off of a necro cast, but it will no longer proc when Furro casts. 

Good luck dealing with that boss.   

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Freelance Ramblings / Re: Freelance DKP & Random

« on: July 07, 2012, 08:34:43 PM »

The best tank agro focus mask we have available currently is in HoT t3, with the next one we will have access to is in HoT t4.  After that will be Rubak raid.  Also the most usable charm items are still in HoT t3-t4.  Can these items be put to bid instead of open?  thse items are atleast as important as overhaste clickers and arent available elsewhere.

 
No on anything like this.  We're just not going to get into select lists beyond CoP3/OH and specific Quest drops (ie, Shawl 2.0 head). 

Fortunately, the aggro mask is at least available via Vendor for 60 Diamond Coins.  That's probably the best route to go currently to pick one up.

Except that won't be unlocked until Rubak is defeated, which may be a ways out.

3

Freelance Ramblings / Re: Attendance, and dkp.

« on: July 08, 2012, 08:28:40 PM »

Ok, Ssark, I see where you're coming from.  And, tbh, I think it definitely is the driving force for a portion of the Freelance raid team to complete content.  I'd like to give a little bit of background for myself in response to what you've said.

Buukala is my main alt, and has been for 10 years.  My main is an officer in a guild and can sometimes have conflicting lockouts, so I almost never raid with freelance on my main, except once to help with Miragul's, so you guys could get past Phase 1.

After having maxxed AAs on my main, I decided that I wanted to focus on playing Buuk more, mainly because I wanted to see what it's like to play a tank.  I decided that tagging along with Freelance would be the best way for me to get some raid tanking experience, and to test my mettle as it were.  Now, I raid 4 nights a week on my main, from Sun-Wed, so I'll never be at Wed's night raids, and if I raid with Freelance Thur-Sat, that means I raid 7 nights a week, and well, that gets a guy burned out a bit, so if I'm not around some nights, I'm just taking a break, not avoiding content.

However, as a tank, I do need gear, so even though I'm not joining the raid to grab all the loot I can, I do need to make sure my gear is up to snuff so I can tank that big bad Beast in BD for y'all.  So, even though, I'm mostly in it for learning about tanking, and seeing a different side of the game, I do have an interest in gear/dkp.  My main motivation will never be to beat the events, because, well, I've already beaten everything Freelance tries.  Don't get me wrong, I understand that's why you guys are in it, and I applaud that, but for me, I just like tanking on my alt, if you can understand that.

So, even though I bring up the dkp/loot aspect of the raid game, I don't want you to think that's all I'm here for.  If it was, I wouldn't show up to farming events, I wouldn't give you guys tips on how to beat older content, in short, I obviously wouldn't "care".  The thing is, and I've experienced this in a few guilds, there are always a portion of the raid force that has this ideal of "We raid because we want to beat the content!", and while that is certainly true for a number of people, it is in no way true for all members of the raid force.  What I was attempting to do, was provide some means for those that may be more interested in loot than winning additional motivation to stick around tough/learning events, because in the end, numbers > all.  To say that you would prefer to have a raid force made up of people that only care about completing content is definitely ideal, and I agree, but I think it's hardly the truth if you look at your attendance, especially considering the very nature of your raid team.

Also, in regards to moving the raid force, you could have a wizard or druid plant an anchor in a spot, and Xloc the raid to their anchor.  Would make for faster moving to far away events, if you can plan ahead of time.

4

Freelance Ramblings / Attendance, and dkp.

« on: July 07, 2012, 09:08:18 PM »

Let me start this off by saying that I do not have all the answers, and that I think Furro and Ssark, and the rest of the leaders of the Freelance raid team do an absolutely admirable job.  I enjoy contributing where and when I can, and I have a good time for the most part.

However, it seems to me that some things need addressing, the biggest of which is getting attendance to be a bit more uniform.  As anyone who has spent any time working with FL knows, there seems to be a core base of players that show up regardless, and then the loot and scooters.  With the new raid currency it is obvious that most loot scooters are more interested in doing Sarith/Valley/Beasts than anything else.  With all that in mind, I have a few questions/suggestions that I'd like to propose, feel free to tell me to shut up and sit down, but I was just having some thoughts and figured I'd ask.

1) Spread out the farm, and make it the last event per night.  Do whatever raid you want to work on (RT?, Fear/MC, etc), for a bit, and then, if it just isn't going to happen tonight, finish off with a quick Valley run.  That way people feel like at least their efforts got some reward, and you increase attendance because people want to get their chits.  True, some people won't join raid until you head to Valley, but if they know that you're likely to do at least one currency-winning raid per night, it increases the likelihood that they join raid earlier, saving their spot.  If you do Valley/Sarith/Argath all on a Wednesday night, it lessens the motivation for a section of the raid base to join for the rest of the week.

2) Provide some sort of dkp incentive for learning events and first time wins (especially helpful for taking down encounters that no longer offer desirable loot).  Right now, as FL DKP works, we earn the most dkp on the farmable events, thereby increasing the desirability of the already most desirable raids, while nothing is done to increase the desirability of the least desirable raids.  Look at 6/30 raids (nothing but RT attempts) vs. 7/4 raids (farm).  On 6/30, if you spent your entire raid night busting your hump trying to learn the ins and outs of a difficult new event, you earned a whopping 5 dkp.  On 7/4, we did 2 current farm events, and one HoT key event for a total of 22 dkp.  It is my humble opinion that something should be offered to those folks in the trenches night in and night out learning the new, hard, events rather than earning the victory over night after night of little earnings, just so that when we finally do get it on farm, the lootscooters can then join the raid, earn more dkp in one night than those who toiled to win did in all the attempts at trying to win, and benefit far more.  It would also help to have a bonus for first time wins to incentivize those to join raid when doing obsolete raids that yield no desirable loot like HoT raids with no CoP/M/L/G clickies, OH clickies, Hate masks, etc, etc.

3) More pie.  All this talk about pie, and I have yet to see a single slice.

Anyway, like I said, I don't have the answers for everything, and running a guild (and make no mistake, this is a guild, it's just a guildless guild. ), is by no means easy.  Just an observation or two.  Feel free to tell me to go back to my hole.

5

Upcoming Events & Strategy / Re: VoA - Pillars - Unearthing Alra

« on: September 30, 2012, 07:20:26 PM »

Arcwards are charmed by chanters and usually sent to go sit down somewhere away from the gargs.  At times you will have 2 Arcwards up.  The chanters need to be able to keep mez on the gargs and charm at the same time.

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Upcoming Events & Strategy / Re: VoA - Pillars - Unearthing Alra

« on: September 29, 2012, 11:28:50 PM »

Oh, I didn't mean that feedback isn't useful.  It's fine to fine tune it with picking and choosing what you can.  But at the end of the day, Furro makes the choices and we have to live with what we're given.

As an example, when my Light Pillar team told me "Man, if we could get some SKs in here so they could HA the adds it would be so much better", I had to tell them that they weren't getting one because we needed them in Shadow, and we didn't have enough.  Not to mention that Light is a terrible pillar for SKs.  Basically what I'm trying to say is it's more beneficial to squeeze as much functionality and awesomeness out of what you have instead of trying to  alter the raid leaders plan.  If the plan is to have 2 enchanters in Arcane, and only 2 enchanters are in raid, as much as it would be nice to have one in Light to help stun adds, or maybe in Nature to help with charming, then Light and Nature are just going to have to make do without it.

Unlike most raids, this one has very little wiggle room.

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Upcoming Events & Strategy / Re: VoA - Pillars - Unearthing Alra

« on: September 29, 2012, 07:54:18 PM »

Arcane:

Essentially this starts easy, and gets geometrically harder.  Each garg we kill pops 2 others which must be dealt with, starting with 1.

We found that:

• Roots of all forms work, including ranger punts
• Mez acts as a significant DoT
• Heals are very limited; spells heal exactly the amount, as if you had no AA and no heal foci whatsoever; so
• Tanking is nearly impossible and probably not needed (if we were short tanks, we could do without them in Arcane)
• We had enough crystal DPS with Curmugly and crew
• Ranger CC methods and Enchanter mez don't mix well.  One overwrites the other a lot (maybe they can comment on this)

We tried:

Several of our first attempts were just learning CC methods, and how quickly mez acted, etc.

Then we tried a Mez-fest with 2 enchanters.  Essentially, let them PBAE, single target, whatever -- mez anything that popped.  Works great until we get 2 minutes in when there are 6+ gargoyles because:

1. The Arcward breaks mez and (maybe!) root too.  He can be charmed but he still wanders about breaking mez.
2. If the gargoyles are too close to each other, they break mez (and we think root) too.
3. If all the gargoyles die at the same time, they all make new gargoyles at the same time, too, giving you even more unhandled gargoyles at once.

Several commented (including Mistatk) that the roots/mezzes seemed to break at the same time.  So, we'd have it held and looked good, but suddenly all hell would break loose with 6-8 loose gargoyles.  With small heals and a lot of cloth wearers (they make a beeline for the chanters too of course) and one WS ranger, the pillar wipes quickly.

What we are going to try next:
Ranger-root CC, with one enchanter handling the Arcward (charm kills him), the other using single-target mez to kill off one gargoyle at a time.

We'd also like to see how a bard works in this room.

IF we happened to have 3-4 enchanters/bards in raid, we could also try mezfest again, perhaps with different result because we have more enchanters to continue the mez/dot fest.  Like if we had 6 enchanters and 6 wizards, this pillar might be finished in about 60 seconds.

Group makeup recommendations at pillar for next attempt:
2 druids for light heals and calls when things go wrong - otherwise we can nuke crystal or help with Vinelash
2-4 wizards or mages for nukeage on crystal
More vinelashing punting CC rangers - talk to Huevos
Same number or less tanks (we had 2)
2+ enchanters or bards -- didn't see how bard charm/mez affected both these, would be interesting to see

Incidentally, the CC-root-kill-one-at-a-time method is posted as the method on EGL, but I do think the Mezfest Idea can work with enough of the right classes.
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If you try to only kill one garg at a time, you will not kill them all sufficiently.  The goal should be to kill all gargs and the crystal, and that's only going to happen if you can juggle dealing with the gargs and killing them simultaneously.  Our usual strat is thus:

2 Warriors to aggro and move gargs from spawn to root area.  Druid (better roots) roots gargs in place.  Chanters mez them.  If they get too close to one another, due to breaks or other issues, ranger punts them to a different area and druid re-roots, and it gets remezzed.  Need a minimum of 4 wiz/mage nuking crystal at full (not burn, save big burn for Phase 2) DPS power, utilizing CoM clickies, Enchanter 2nd spire, and if possible Glyph of Lost Secrets for mana pres.  Need a minimum of 2 mezzers, preferrably chanters, but bards work.  However bards are much more crucial in Light and Shadow, so if you have 2 chanters, save the bards for elsewhere.

That doesn't mean it's the only way to do it, but I thought some info from someone who's done the Arcane pillar many, many, many times would help.

Also, in regards to feedback from all pillars, keep in mind the trick to this raid is that you only get so much of a force.  After that it's up to us as raiders to maximize what we're given.  During our trial runs on this, I frequently got told "If only I had an XXX class....", well you're not going to get it, you need to figure it out.

8

Upcoming Events & Strategy / Re: VoA - Beasts' Domain - King of the Beasts

« on: April 22, 2012, 02:49:26 AM »

King summons adds every 3 minutes, not 2 minutes.

9

Upcoming Events & Strategy / Re: HoT - SS7 - Morell Ascendant

« on: August 16, 2012, 04:35:22 AM »

During the second phase, wisps respawn every 4ish minutes and their f/x are a bit worse than their phase one counterparts.

10

Upcoming Events & Strategy / Re: HoT - SS5 - Elements of a Dream

« on: August 14, 2012, 11:45:47 AM »

Some tips for puzzle solving.

On the first puzzle, it's best if one person (usually the one at main raid) coordinates the solving.  What's posted is how the puzzle functions, but the way it's written it's almost as if it's suggesting that each person figures out their own color.  The quicker we get the puzzles done, the less the main raid has to deal with so it's best to do it quickly.  If we do one at a time, it will take longer than necessary.  If the main solver coordinates everything it just seems to go quicker because confusion is easy on the first puzzle.

Second puzzle, you must track 15 colors.  Once you have the 15 you must go as quick as you can without making any errors.  If you have 2 of the same color in a row you must step on the button, step off, let it reset, then step on it again.  If you make an error, it won't instant fail you, it will only fail once you get to 15.  Now, if you fail, everyone must stop inputting their order, immediately.  This is because if you continue pushing buttons it will mess up the next order.  So, be aware of the fail message, and as soon as it pops, stop, compose yourself, and get in position to track a new set of 15 colors.  You have roughly  3-5 seconds before a new set starts, so if there's a fail, you must get ready to track right away, or you're going to have to go through another set failed and try yet again.  Remember, every time we fail, that means more mobs for the raid.

3rd puzzle.  If the puzzle solver has a smart phone, I recommend setting it up ahead of time, if not, you can use your computer.  Using my phone, I've been able to knock out the third puzzle so fast that we sometimes didn't have to kill anything.  Basically this one is all done by the main solver.  They'll use the solve matrix to find out how to solve it then communicate to the others what they need to do to finish the puzzle.

Dream master's Avatar....just burn the sucker out.  The info that says you're not supposed to cast spells on him is just wrong.  We tried every way of not casting spells on him and it never worked to stop adds from spawning. He has low hp.  Also, if you cast spells at the appropriate time it makes the adds go vulnerable.  When he's normal color use fire, Green use corruption, Blue use poison, Red use ice.  Adds come at a flurry best to kite em off (or whatever Furro wants you to do) and just hold them until Avatar dies.  They're a bitch and they constantly spawn up to 15 I believe.  Kill one, and another takes its place.

Any other questions, let me know.

11

Upcoming Events & Strategy / Re: HoT - Miragul's Nightmare - The Force of Eternity

« on: June 09, 2012, 09:56:23 PM »

1) The basketball is a ground spawn dropped after a mob kill just like all the rest.  There are some other glowing translucent spawns that are orange in color that drop earlier, however, the "basketball" actually has the texture of a basketball and is not translucent, and is significantly bigger.  Also, it does not disappear after you loot one piece from it (because it has 2 pieces), further distinguishing it from other spawns.

2)  I would think it is possible to click things too early on Miragul's mind, however, since the last two mobs drop the last 3 items for 2 combines, usually the combiner is going to be busy finishing up the combines such that they won't be early.  Basically as soon as the Evil is out and attacking Miragul, and the emotes have started, you're gtg.

3) Correct.  3XShining Power on Mind, then Inspiring power on Mind, then Spot of Bother on Evil.  I have followed other peoples advice on how to do this and it has never worked for me.  This has.  If you'd like to play with it to see if Allas is correct, feel free, as I have not tried that particular method, and tbh, it may work just fine.  However, I know this has worked for me, so I'm just passing on the knowledge.  It's been my experience that this particular thing is somewhat buggy, and if you don't do it "just right" you will fail. 

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Upcoming Events & Strategy / Re: HoT - Miragul's Nightmare - The Force of Eternity

« on: June 08, 2012, 08:47:02 PM »

Combine strategy for brain room.  First of all, you only need:

Words of Power X3 (looks like a face open book on ground)
Gem of Power X3 (looks like a crystal laying down in a line)
These combine to create 3 Shining Power.

You need one Inspiring Insight (looks like a crystal "plant" growing out of the ground, 2 will drop, but you only need one) to combine with an "Insight to Power" (part of the double spawn from the orange basketball, more on that later.) This creates Inspiring Power.

You need one Wandering Thought (part of the double spawn from the orange basketball) to combine with the Inkblot (looks like a mass of black stuff on the ground) to create Spot of Bother.

All other drops are essentially useless, and can be disregarded.

Most important things for the person responsible for combines to remember:

1) Follow around the mobs as they die, get your combines done as quick as you can.

2) Make an easy to find space in a bag to store your combines so that they are ready to click right away.  Keep that bag open if you can.

3) The last 2 mobs will drop 3 of the components you need.  The one that looks like an orange basketball stuck in the floor will have 2 of the items you need.  Make sure you grab them as quick as you can so you can make your combines asap.

4) Once all of your combines are done, and the Expunged Evil is attacking Miragul's Mind, you must (and I cannot emphasize this enough) AS QUICK AS IS HUMANLY POSSIBLE click the following:

Target Miragul's Mind and Click
Shining Power X3
Inspiring Power

Then target the Evil and click Spot of Bother (although at this point, you have probably already won).

So, have your bag open and get ready to click all your combines, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, done.  If you don't do it fast enough, you will fail.  The only thing that seems to matter is speed (From someone who has tried on many occasions to use the Passwords, and Favors to no recognizable effect).

Hope this helps.