With the lucrative rewards that come from the Vanquisher Raid Achievements the last several expansions, FL Raid team has worked on them when time and effort present themselves. These achievements unlock purchases on vendors, present you with special titles, present you with gear, and present you with some of the more powerful augmentations not available anywhere else in the game.
These achievements take a coordinated effort that includes
all 54 of the people on the raid. So you following instructions, following position announcements, following emotes/GINA triggers, following MA, and watching the pertinent channels you belong to are required. Below is some reminders of basic behaviors that you should, by level 105 and 3/4 of an expac in, already know and be constantly doing as second nature in a raid.
I am more than well aware of real life commitments, lag, being tired, playing while intoxicated, among other things. I will not sit here high and mighty and pretend that I myself haven't been one of the items on that list. You are able to raid with FL Raid team for up to 9 hours a week. That is only 5.4% of your week. We ask only that you bring your A+ game and intention to play your role to the best ability to meet the goals of the team.
I understand as well, that we all raid for our own reasons - to see content, to get better gear, to win the hard mode, etc. However, for too long now, too many people have been coasting. We have seen people lax in following MA calls to boost their DPS numbers on the wrong mob, ignoring instructions because they 'know' better, yelling louder than the next guy to get people to follow them, failing to ask questions when uncertain, etc. FL is led by Furro. Strats are learned from experiencing the event and adjusting. Sideline coaching will be a quick way to get yourself benched. This does not preclude you from offering ideas in channels and on the boards - but telling FL that XYZ guild does it this way...
Adjusting raids on the fly and post event is part of the FL raiding experience. Adjusts are usually posted within the next week to the FL Forums event strat post.
Forums should be visited more than 1 time an expansion. You should be here checking up periodically on new and exciting ways of the FL raid experience. To be able to see full posting (pictures, links, etc) you should be registered on the board and logged in - this takes 2s.
DPS parses are posted frequently by FLBOT, or by individuals from within the raid team. While there is a measure of competition that is present and somewhat desired by some individuals of the raid team, the goal overall is to defeat the event in a timely and low death fashion. If you have to lower your dps to move out of some bad shit so that the cleric doesn't have to heal you and let a tank die, this is something you do.
On the whole, you are expected to do the most DPS you can do. The aforementioned DPS parses being posted is to increase awareness of your fellow class members who are pulling out more dps and give you the opportunity to learn from them. On these boards, there are MANY posts on how to increase your DPS. Read them and learn. If you are shy, speak to one of the leads who can help you speak to another of your class for tips.
One key point that doesn't seem to get across as often as it needs to for this to happen -
Always Be Casting - ABC. If you have spells and your little blue bar isn't being used, you are not doing enough to increase DPS. If you have AAs or activated discs/abilities that aren't on cooldown during a fight, make use of them. Find your class type websites that still exist, find the eq forums, and use them to learn what discs/abilities/adps stacks for your use.
There are options available in your settings to help decrease your lag, Even Furro plays on a machine so old it's almost legal to vote. Several posts can be found to help you with this. One such is Scornfire's lag reduction guide:
http://www.daguild.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=8823GINA is not optional. This is a powerful tool to help you avoid bad emotes, help remind you to keep your abilities on cooldown with timers/announcements, and to assist in bettering your burns with notifications from ADPS abilities landing on you. There are trigger packages available from the individual event posts. At minimum, you need these triggers. There is nothing stopping you from altering the triggers to fit your needs, or creating new triggers for your own personal use or to share. You should know the events past and present via these boards at the very least and not failing emotes.
All classes should have the ability to shrink themselves. This is basic Raiding 101.
This is not optional.
Here is a list with links to all/all shrink devices:http://lucy.allakhazam.com/item.html?id=96480 - Philter of the Ant - Alchemy
http://lucy.allakhazam.com/item.html?id=28906 - Bracelet of the Shadow Hive - Vex Thal
http://lucy.allakhazam.com/item.html?id=110796 - Demagnifying Glass - Convorteum
http://lucy.allakhazam.com/item.html?id=96481 - Mist of the Ant - Alchemy
http://lucy.allakhazam.com/item.html?id=19725 - Wand of Imperceptibility - The Deep
http://lucy.allakhazam.com/item.html?id=9176 - Anizok's Minimizing Device - Tinkering
http://lucy.allakhazam.com/item.html?id=86735 - Earring of Diminutiveness - DoD quest 68.4
http://lucy.allakhazam.com/item.html?id=101362 - Humanoid Reductionizer - Mech Guardian
http://lucy.allakhazam.com/item.html?id=67098 - Ring of the Ancients - 13th Anniversary quest
http://lucy.allakhazam.com/item.html?id=62433 - Shimmering Bauble of Trickery - PoMischief
http://lucy.allakhazam.com/item.html?id=28727 - Vial of Shrieker Essence - Fungus Grove
I suggest you invest some time to get one for use.
Any and all shaman that raid, should have the rank 2 of the Shrink AA. You may be called upon to shrink people in some events that require 54 people to fit in a tight space.
Playing in third person can and does help when you are shrunk, learn to play in third person on the short term for raids if needed.
There are spells that alter your form that get cast mid fights. The illusion portion of these spells needs to be put on the block list. Your increased size is a detriment to the raid. Events do call for people to squeeze into a tight space, and you being big can prevent people from fitting.
Here is a short list that is incomplete - add yours to this thread as they appear.
http://www.raidloot.com/Spells.aspx?name=16443 - Group Bestial Alignment Form - /blockspell add me 16443
http://www.raidloot.com/Spells.aspx?name=16442 - Group Guardian of the Forest Form - /blockspell add me 16442
http://www.raidloot.com/Spells.aspx?name=30710 - Visage of Death Form - /blockspell add me 30710
http://www.raidloot.com/Spells.aspx?name=30708 - Group Pact of the Wolf Form - /blockspell add me 30708
http://www.raidloot.com/Spells.aspx?name=41142 - Visage of Decay Form - /blockspell add me 41142
http://www.raidloot.com/Spells.aspx?name=49288 - Night's Terror - /blockspell add me 49288
http://www.raidloot.com/Spells.aspx?name=21685 - Form of the White Wolf - /blockspell add me 21685
http://www.raidloot.com/Spells.aspx?name=21684 - Form of the Black Wolf - /blockspell add me 21684
We are getting to the point where winning the raid sloppily is not enough. If you want to see the Vanquisher achievements finished out, you need to step up and be better. Attempts that are failed will start resulting in a "die please" call so we can start over and do it right.
It is expected that you ask questions. If you are assigned to a role you are uncertain of, speak up. If you fail emotes, fail to pick up your assigned mob, fail to do any myriad of things that you were assigned to and the raid wipes -
you have wasted 53 other peoples' time.
