Turning the raid into a marry go round would lose too much dps that we are already lacking in. We have trouble stun locking 4 mobs while we have 4 paladins and 3 enchanters and we have trouble with positioning in all areas whether it's mob positioning or PC positioning, and we have yet to do this raid without someone using an AE spell or attack and waking up half of the mezzed Fortitios, and we seem to enjoy root punting the prolox mobs way off behind the hills on the far walls so FV can go and get herself killed.... moving as a coordinated pile every 20 seconds is out of the question :p
I'll add an AE weapon reminder to the final assign hotkey, to help.
I said this on our first few attempts at doing this raid, that we need to learn to just heal through the AE damage because there will never be a time when we don't have the AE's hit the main raid pile. The nature of the AE's on how they work coupled with this being an open raid team and having new people join us on a very regular basis who have never done the raid guarantee that there will be missed emotes. We have to get over the blame game or the think-tank mentality of how to avoid the ae or how to stop it from happening because bottom line is, it's going happen each time we do this raid. I have a hotkey that cures the AE with Ognit, and a few other high priority players should do the same, IE a Good Warrior or two, A Good Enchanter or two and a good cleric or two and our MA (Myself, Mist, OE, Mildy, Furro, BD, Orumptiyum). It's 10 people every 3min ~
The funny thing about this is, we're not sporting that many new players over the last few weeks. Emote failures are coming from regulars. In fact, I can think of only one or two off hand that are actually new players.
Splashes/IoS help counteract the failures and beams, but it's still worth while to focus our efforts on preventative measures. Most players don't want to be "that person" failing, but some are failing for other reasons too, like returning to the raid too early, or perhaps not understanding that if they run away and they run to a spot where someone else is standing, they just failed the emote. They don't get penalized (DoT/DD'd) and so they think they're not failing the emote...
First Stage: The Fortitio.
Do what we have been doing so far with this first wave of having a knight Deflect/start and AE mez. Go back to the kill the first 4, then the remaining 4 we bring each mob at a time to 20%, then AE fuck them up and kill them asap. We weren't very good at doing this when we tried it, but it is the best way to limit how often the AE will fire/hit us.
The issue with this approach is it's mickey mouse (no offense man). We've done this on events like Bixie2 because we're faced with a kill-at-once time interval. But effectively, in the context of the Lucia event, when half of the Fortitio are dead and emotes are in play, we're only talking about killing the remaining 4-5. It doesn't take long to kill those remaining mobs. It also comes back to trying to adjust our tactics to prevent something that is already preventable by reacting properly. We're going to get the odd emote failure sure, but the failures to the degree we're currently getting is obscene.
Second Stage. Fulgia and Proloxis.
We crumble pretty fast and become headless chickens on this stage way too often. I use to just pop fort and ae when this stage started because way too many were dieing when these 8 mobs went live.. waaaay too many.. Tanks have gotten better though so I usually will fade off all of the agro I've built up on the Fulgia and prolox from tanking the Fortitio so they no longer all b-line to me. We started using a good strat on the fulgia last night with just having 1 warrior fort/ae the pile to the designated location, then the assigned tanks peeling off that warrior when in position(and hoping they are stun locked when at the position). The best way to handle these two piles of 4 mobs each, is to setup a warrior near each pile before the last mob from the previous wave dies, then have them Fort/AE thier pile when they go Live instead of using 8 tanks total who each have to use a deflect or other discs where 1 for each pile will suffice. We also need to get waaay better at stun locking the Fulgia, unless we have low turnouts of paladins and enchanters there really isn't a reason these 4 cant be locked down. As for the prolox, rooting is the safest, but I'd just be mindful of the direction the rooter is facing before they knock thier mob way off to no mans land where nobody is going to be looking and therefore FV secretly goes to kill herself. Which set to kill first depends on how many stunners we have for the fulgia really, or at least how well they are being stun locked I guess. Rooting seemed to be easier/better handled than stun locking so that's why Fulgia die first though one would rather the prolox die first because the KB ae is annoying.
The single Warrior fort/ae Fulgia worked well. The reason we have 4x tanks (1 per Fulgia), is just to ensure each is covered because stun is never going to be 100% reliable (although it could be way better than what we've witnessed to date, which isn't a dis to anyone person atm).
The Prolox are not individually tanked. We do have a 4 tank lineup just to ensure each Prolox is covered (and those tanks work out their /tars during prep). But arguably, this isn't working out well, because to my understanding; for whatever reason, the aggro is not there initially when the Prolox go active and our rooters are ending up dead often (Minisca has some bingo moments on this front).
I'm all for trying a Warrior approach to Fort/AE the Prolox, as it may be simpler and aggro won't be such an issue. It would simplify the tanking and healing as well.
As much as the KB is annoying, we changed to killing Fulgia first on our later runs last night solely because we were having such an issue keeping them stun locked and as a result lost several of the OTs (as you know). If we can clean up our Stun issues, we can go back to killing the Prolox first. Either way, when you look at this stage, it's really just 8 mobs: 4 we can CC (root), and the other 4 partially mitigate the damage (stun). So it's not really excessive by any means.
Third Stage! 3 Minis and boss
This one again is rough at the onset. By preserving the warriors/knights deflect and Fortitude by using only two in the previous stage we should have at the least 4 with the discs up and gtg when these go live. I would use warriors to tank these btw instead of knights (again depends largely on turnout and who is in the raid). Warriors are just better off tanking especially when we will have 4 mobs tanked at once and we are stretched thin already. The positioning is bad on this part too, as I don't think we have ever tanked the 3 minis in the same location on this raid yet. Setup designated spots for each mini and the boss to be tanked. I've already expressed my thoughts on where on previous raids and why, they don't need to be way the hell apart from each other just spread out enough that the beams don't overlap on the raid targeting the minis and the Mini's AE's aren't criss crossing the raid pile from being too close, the AE's all have really small ranges. This is something that can be shown in game of where to plant each mini as I've tried to do on previous raids before we go. Also we should kill the annoying mini who does the gravity flux aura first because that's annoying as hell. Paladins at this stage also do group armor and spire, we are getting better at this but still could use some work. Go check out the post I made on the Forums here under Buffs post don't make it a suggestion make it an order. Another thing on the last stage I've mentioned in the tank channel before is to not spread the minis so far apart, as when the boss jumps the mini tank the farther the MTO has to run to her to drag her off you, the longer she has to beat you down and kill. Warriors use warlords grasp when she warps, best and quickest way to get boss off who she warps to and back in position.
We make this raid a lot harder than it needs to be, but a few tweeks here and there on minor things that a lot take for granted and we should be fine.
Our SK tanks can hold up on the Elites (we tend to use our Paladins more as Splashers/reinforcing heals on Elite tanks for this stage). The key point being, is that the SK tanks healing is present. Each tank has 2-3 healers and at least one slower. Now of course, depending on our setup this isn't going to be perfect, and there's going to be situations where we need to reinforce Elite tank x that has two Druids healing with two Paladins to help further. Admittedly, reviewing the hotkeys from last night, I can see one situation where moving a Paladin or two would have helped. But having said that, it's not going to make up for an assigned healer being completely absent from the heal parse on not just the point tank on Elite x, but the backup tank as well.
Re: Positioning
I'm actually thinking we had our best success positioning at the South end of the event area. I think the beam actually does less damage the further away we are, and Lucia warp-to locations are furthest from the south end. From the point of origin, the further we are away, the wider the gaps should be as the beam pivots.
For stage 3, the Elites can be spread out from their reset points, but as discussed in the tank channel, they don't have to be excessively far which leads to healers being OOR of their assigned tanks and makes CC handling charms on scavengers more difficult. I also mentioned in the tank channel last night to try not to line up the Elites with regards to Lucias Beam. Some tanks may not have been aware. During prep tonight in the tank channel, we can all go over locations.
Re: Killing the annoying gflux mini first.
We kill in alpha order for the /ach.
Re: Paladin Armor/spire
This is helping, thanks for taking up the cause. Paladins already assigned to Elite x's can use that as their MTO/group target for Armor/spire and might make it easier to co-ordinate. I didn't back read the tank channel chat on this front last night, so I can't speak to how it was being setup for Lucia.
