RvR August 30th

[Augomatic]

So we went out again last night, w/ a FG this time, me(Cleric), Zuse(Cleric), Phillll(Minstrel), Mosthula (Playing Nikolaos, Pally), Malus(Reaver), Thel(Heretic), Xarko(Armsman) and Tinypunch(Sorc).

Things went much better, I think a lot of the problem last night was the non-guildies. We ran the island for a bit, and did pretty well. We lost to a mid 8v8, but it was actually a real fight, and we lasted a fair amount of time, instead of just dropping.

The tank train was doing really well, with Xarko, Nico, and Malus all assisting, and Tiny, Phillll, and Thelonius shutting down their healers. Tiny actually managed to live a bit more now that Zuse and I were making an effort to keep him up.

Agramon got a bit zergy, so we headed over to hib. Tiny went Yogging, so we ended up humping a tower for awhile.

Zuse and Xarko logged around 10:45 EST, so we ran out to suicide to guards. A zerg of 2 groups of mids showed up so we ended up camping in the tower.

We ended up rolling them, then camped a bit more, before getting rolled by 2FG of mids (Fury I think).

Vent was working much better with everyone on it, now we just need to get Malus to turn his mic up, and Tiny and Thelonius to get one.

[Mosthula]

I was very pleased with our preformance and cannot believe we ended up taking those mids out when we were humping the tower. We simply outplayed them and used some very good gorilla hit and run tactics and then the last hit and run we realized we were winning the whole fight and just whiped em.

I saw a lot of promise with how we were playing together last night. Not to mention it was pretty fun.

[Xarkon]

i crashed and the damn patcher didnt work i gave up after 10 mins

[Joshll]

That non-guild healer and Pally we grouped the last 3 nights sucked and were a large reason the group did poorly. We now know not to group them. On the other hand, Loxie was very good when we grouped him the two nights before. Good Sorc & Tiny can learn some tricks from him I think.

We will need to get better at CC & interupting/shutting down enemy support. Thats the whole game right there if tanks are assisting & prioritizing targets.

Assist train: Cloth casters --> then bards/shaman ---> Tanks ---> healers/Druids I think we are settling on.

We need to figure out what Thelonius's (and Daemic, and Hall's if he ever comes back) role is. I see it as interupter first, and damage add/snarer second. I don't know if that is doable or not, I'm just speculating. But we have a number of tics so we need to know how to use them. People have mentioned that the PUG tics they've seen have not been a strong asset, but I think we can make them so.

Mosthula learned how to Pally twist.

We also talked in guild about if we wanted a guild merge or not. It was decided for now that recruiting would be preferred. As the only GM online nowdays, as far as I'm concerned anybody can recruit. We need to add played 50's for RVR, but I'd like anyone that wants to apply to run with us at night so we can give them a trial run, and also to post here. Nothing new there. On the other hand, if someone sucks we can kick them, so I'd rather be aggressive adding people than holding back. We need more RVR peeps.

I've been also autoremoving people who haven't been online. With a few exceptions, if someone hasn't been online for more than a week they are assumed quit and I'll autoremove them.

[Sirion]

Why drop the shamans and bards second? Just keep them interupted while you drop the light armored DPS (the BMs/Savages/Zerks) then the hybrid DPS (mostly just Champs). As long as the healers are being interupted the light tanks usually go down in 2-3 combat rounds, depending on everyone's damage type, and then their group has no dps at all, and the healers are just free rps...?

[Augomatic]

Well, the way I see it is this.

If you don't drop the shamans/bards second, you probably won't be able to interupt. Mid groups have typically 4 seers (2 shamans, 2 healers), and you can't count on being able to keep all 4 interupted while killing their tanks.

Shamans are a pain in the ass as well, using their disease to interupt/stop the train. Once the train is diseased, their typically non-diseased target can outsprint them.

On top of that, you drop the shamans, there goes their spec buffs, which cuts their DPS way down.

With bards, they are a good target because they have crappy defence, and are difficult to interupt. They get insta amnesia, and insta AE amnesia, so even if you start to interupt them w/ some sorta AE, they can usually get out of it. On top of that, they have the AE mez, which if you leave them to later in the fight, they'll get you with it.

From what I saw, it also is difficult to go straight at the tank train, when they are fully buffed, with all their healers up. Taking out a few "softer" targets like bards, cloth casters, and healers, gives you an early advantage.

If you had a 4 person tank train, w/ some Det5 tanks, I think going for the tanks first is good, but with the hybrid trains we are currently running, softer targets seem to work out well.

[Sirion]

Except out of every class in Mid, the Shaman will have the easiest time kiting an assist train and has better armor than the typical 2 savages. Also, if the savages have to start kiting, you have lowered their groups' effective DPS without even having killed anyone, and you've pulled the attention of one Shaman off of interupting your healers, to trying to keep your train diseased, while the other has to pickup slack on healing, because the two healers are being interupted. Bards and Shamans suck at healing, they almost never spec for it, so it will take both of them to fill in for a typical Druid or Healer, with 3-4 DPS classes on a light tank, especially one that hurts itself with buffs, they won't be able to keep up with the DPS that's going out to it. If the healers/druids are locked down, then that Savage or Blademaster or Tank is as good as dead.

Now, I suppose I can see Bards being second, they have RF armor, and no defense capabilites other than instant mez, which is probably not going to help them if they've already landed it one fight. In looking back at my Merc, I wish I spec'd him Slash instead of Crush, sure the anytime stun is nice, but with a Reaver it's fairly useless, and Xark just keeps everything in Melee Range with his anytime snare so.... the dmg type doesn't seem worth it anymore.

[Augomatic]

Yeah, its true about getting the shamans kiting I'm sure. I'm not sure they are necessarily tougher than savages. We've been pretty quick w/ the cure disease though, so it hasn't been so bad.

Savages get the 360 evade, which will make it tough for lower WS tanks (like Pallys and Reavers, which we usually have ) to hit them.

I'm also not seeing a lot of savages out, been mostly troll warriors/zerks, but I'm usually staring at the group mini window more than the classes.

Its definately worth a try, I just know last night our tank train tried going after their tanks but thought it would be better to hit support.

[Tinypunch]

My back would say different, almost every fight while sprinting i get back stuned by a savage.

[Sectoid]

Savages aren't rare, but they aren't common either really, somedays you find em sometimes there's none at all.

[Keabit Guinness]

I can only interupt so many at a time. Tiny has done a great job assisting me lately. I don't think it should be done all the time, but.... with me stunning (9 sec) and him LT'ing, it's pretty vicious. Maybe not assisting, just being right place, right time.

[Sirion]

Yeah, but Tiny should be interupting with Amnesia, and debuffing before he's assisting you and lifetapping. A Minstrel can keep one person shut down pretty much for the whole fight, and should be able to decently disable 2 people (assuming they are standing relatively close together), if you are on one Healer/Druid, and Tiny is on the other, then only the Bards and Shamans are left to heal. If the Shamans and Bards are FORCED to heal, then they aren't interupting or Diseasing. I don't know how good this strat works for Albs honestly, but I don't think that going for the Shamans first is better than going for the light tanks first. With a Bard I can see it, because they are just pretty much fucked if they can't get out of range and the healers are locked up. Shamans just have too many tools at their disposal for kiting a train around while their train kills your DSP/Casters.

360 evade doesn't give full evade to the back, it gives you evade 1 (iirc) from behind. Evade 1 isn't much of a hurtle to overcome when it comes to killing Savages. Even better if there are Zerkers, because they can't augment their evade skill, or their melee resists. Plus when/if they zerk, they can't parry or evade at all... and they will miss most of their attacks if your Merc DT's them then, or the Reaver slams them.

Either way, I can't claim to be an expert, I always got bored with 8v8, perfect setups against perfect setups tend to bore me. I very much prefered doing a small group of 3-4 people out in Alb's frontier back in the day before every person/group that thinks they are good decided to go get radar to "prove" it. You might want to seek advice on it from people that are more experienced on it than me, but it just seems to make sense to go for the softer/higher dps classes first, then higher abs/kiting classes last.... /shrug