Monthly Archives: June 2012

Making Lists

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You all know I ❤ making lists… Wonder if there is a proper job in there????? Anyway, lists make great posts. They are fast, informative and always starts a conversation because no one ever aggress with someone else list 100%.

So lets make a few lists.

Top 5 new named items for Samyus (my tank)

#5, Draught of Hearty Apple Cider
Potion: Recovers Hit Points over 20 Seconds

#4, Boots of the Woodsman
Boots: Striding +30%, Insightful Dexterity +2, Move Silently +15, Woodsman’s Guile Set

#3, Purple Dragon Helm
Helm: Constitution +7, Exceptional Strength +2, Intimidate +15, Knight’s Loyalty Set

#2, Purple Dragon Gauntlets
Gloves: Strength +7, Exceptional Constitution +2, Healing Amplification +30%, Knight’s Loyalty Set

#1, Purple Dragon Armor
Full Plate: +6, Heavy Fortification, Superior False Life, DR 5/-, Knight’s Loyalty Set

Okay that one seems simple. I have a tank need tanky stuff + run faster booties that might add AC + more self healing. I had a plan to do the 3 piece Greater Might of the Abishai set. But the purple knight set is real close to the same thing except if I was super motivated one could also fit in the (3p) Abishai set too (cloak, boots, bracers) for even more of a good thing.

And the top 5 for Samius

#5, Strinati’s Hand Cannon
Runearm: Exploding Cannon Shot, Max Charge Tier 3, Wizardry II, Rune Arm Imbue: Fire II, Craftable +3 [ML:5]

#4, Purple Dragon Gauntlets
Gloves: Strength +7, Exceptional Constitution +2, Healing Amplification +30%, Knight’s Loyalty Set

#3, Seal of House Dun’Robar
Ring: Strength +7, Dodge +4%, Shatter +10

#2, Scorching Wraps
Handwraps: +2, Flaming Burst, Spiked, Bleed [ML:4]

#1, Vestments of the Sun Soul – Outfit: Armor Bonus +9, Resistance +6, Enhanced Ki +1, Reinforced Fists, Way of the Sun Soul Set Bonus [ML:20]

This list is a little strange. Thinking of trying a 6 level arty splash on the pally life and who doesn’t want a cannon for an arm? More amp at cap is uber! What I said about amp bit dodge and strength in a fast swap is great. I have lots more TRs to do and most of them are planed to be monky. And last in the number 1 slot; did you know I love yellow? I do. And these are as yellow as you get. Bad Ass!

Comment away! Think I will do a run down list of my none ddo free time today too. And maybe fit in a biking report to keep me honest.

❤

Ship Reboot

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The Defense guild has a Stormglory Tempest airship and sitting at level 71-72 atm. Last week I would have told you that I was very happy with our layout Tobril and I had many a talks about how to best layout everything, but mostly he let me do, as I wanted.

At the time I based the layout of our airship on buff effect at the time. But with the reboot/s of the airships I wonder if going the same route is still the way to go for us. Now this post is my thinking out loud, not really a chance for you to dictate how my boat is laid out. As I tell the people that bitch at my layout when they beg for an invite. When you start buying my ship buffs and earning renown for my guild you can offer up comments.

Anyway The Fat Halfling the unofficial name for my boat has 4 large slots, 11 small slots and 9 people slots. And I am trying to do this from memory so I might make an error or 3 but I think there are 4 small 2 large and 4 crew slots on the top deck. That means there are 7 smalls 2 large and 5 below deck. There are two rooms below deck one that is just a small and one that has a crew and a small hook point.

Normally we do the four main resistance buffs the Deneith Defender, Phiarlan Entertainer, Kobold Shaman and Artleblart up top. Oh and the biggest xp shrine that we can afford with plat and most the time a stone of change.

Below I took and the Kundarak Battlemaster dummy and the banker and stuck them in range of the inn the Int shrine hangs out her too. Put the dps buffs (Str shrine/Hobgoblin) behind door A and the con shrine behind door B, and finally the Healer and the other defensive buffs (dex/wis) on the way out. Sometimes we keep a large guild chest running and if someone needs them a large slot for the shroud alters but they are not constant fixtures for us. Oh and the plans caller is in that one hard to get to crew slot, because you need to want to get to him.. Or at least that is my thought.

This works really well for buffing up. But is not ideal for banking and doing down time work. Like selling or clearing the shared bank.

So I am thinking about moving the “bar area and its important bits” upstairs. Thing is what I think of as bar stuff is: the inn, the bank, dummy, dps stuff needs to be close, the Battle master (bonus to haggle) and sometimes the healer to buff amp so vamp weapons work a little faster when “healing” off the dummy.

But there is just not enough slots up stairs for all that. So either we move something that should be a bar buff below decks or keep things the same.

What do you think? I don’t promise I will do what you think, but I will think about it.

❤

Ac Changes and Me (P2 – Lvl 20 Samyus)

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Samyus is/was my AC build. I was able to self-buff to over 85 long term with only ship buffs and class/race abilities/feats. With a few other buffs from other people I was able to get a 92 or more fairly simply.

So how did the Ac changes feel last night? Irritating and infuriating.

Last week doing just normal stuff I felt amazing, sure casters can be a problem but if you charged them and imp sunder/stunning blow – trip you can avoid some spell damage. Last night I didn’t feel untouchable. In fact I all night long I drank and drank pot after pot just trying to keep my health bar at a fair level so the healer might feel sorry for me and throw a heal my way a little bit but I had to yell at him a lot for heals. At one point even I ran to him to just stand in his aura while there was some plot story happing and he moved away so I followed him and he moved again taking his aura with him and I said if I am not allowed to use the aura for healing then you damn well better heal me or I am about to barb out and then I will scream for HEJLS nonstop. The healer went “What?”

Head Shake….

So some details, or what I can remember of my details. Samyus’ Ac is now about the same maybe a little higher over all. I spiked to 100 at one point but I don’t remember exactly what I did to make it happen. But I think my normal non- tanking mode AC was around 90-95, which according to the % calculator is a 69% (Sexy if not great ☹). Switching to my epic Swashbuckler from my +5 mitral tower shield cost me 3 or 4 Ac and I went to a 68% but gained double strike and the rest of the Swashbuckler abilities. So I was sword and baby board most of the night.

Incoming damage felt all right, most numbers were in the 15-20 point range, if coming in a lot more often (that is my issue). My dodge % at about 8-9% I saw one attack missed due to dodge all night. I am thinking I need to try and boost that dodge number some and see if it saves me from a hit more then once a night. Switching to the E Dualist leathers cost me 7-10 points of AC (dropping my & to low 60s) but added a lot of dodge (taking me to 15ish% with room to go to 24%) so it is a maybe until I get my Purple armor.. But if the dodge % is not worth wild I will be freeing up a few dodge item slots.

I also felt that I missed on trash mobs a little more then normal but I was able to use cleave and great cleave to boost attacks here and there and I feel like that made those misses up. Also I felt like my hate was turned all the way up. A lot of times I could run in to a friendly AOE spell and cleave/G cleave and take all the agro. I even caught Tobril on his caster Intim trash off me trying to get his torc to proc some and I was able to regain the hate with just my AOE attacks right away. So I like that.

I also love the +x[W] damage with the cleave/G cleave. It is nice to see that 60 first number become 100+ on a non crit spin. Might look in to picking up the Whirlwind Attack as an option. Swapping is totally doable if dodge and past life ranger is not worth the feats any longer. But I will see if adding mobility on its own is worth any thing. Have the feeling those free +0 lessers are about to be real popular.

Btw I am a master of flowers. Totally helpful for my pure defender fighter to have ki effects, but it looks like I need to level it up to go Unyielding Sentinel. Which is the real destiny I want (I think/hope). More on that later when I know a little more.

❤

Ac Changes and Me (P1 – Little Samius)

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Getting home to an updated client was real nice. I was able to change and long on with out hours of waiting for things to update and mad tweeting about how I couldn’t get on. So I am calling last night a win on that alone. I got to play. There are lots of people that couldn’t due to waiting for updates. And to those people I say Remote Desktop or phone your kid/wife like I did.

Speaking of the wife real fast. Today is our 13th wedding anniversary. In light of my new try to get healthy mindset I bought her a bike last Friday and now she thinks I am trying to kill her via bike riding. But really I just want her to be healthy too. If she is going to make me live a long life she better tag along or else….

Anyway back to ddo.

After spending a ton of plat reupping the ship buffs (the DG got hit with the ship wipe bug) with two rentals a buff my haggle bard became broke as shit but Samius was able to buff so worth it?

Now normally I don’t bother with AC until level 5 or so on Samius. A crafted Invulnerability outfit with a med guild slot is all the defense I need for the first few levels. But I thought lets look and see how things stand with the AC changes. At level four I had a 29 AC which the little defense calculator told me was 50% to 64% miss seems good, right? I am not sure if I was fighting mobs over the level that Turbine does its calculations against or if elites factor in to things more then the calculator can factor in but there was a constant stream of red 0s flying across the screen. Meaning I was getting hit but my DR was reducing the damage to 0 or less. I caught myself dodging once all night, but my dodge is all of 1% so that makes sense expect I have 3 monk levels and 1 artificer level thought monks were like the dodge masters??? I will say I don’t feel any different AC wise right now at level 4. I normally get hit a lot and live via the Invulnerability DR.

On the flip side I did notice a difference in my attacks landing. While no to yellow skull I felt I was missing more then before. It could be that I normally use higher pluses wraps or a staff at this level where this life I only have my +0 lesser vamp wraps boosted via my arty spell to +1. Yeah baby! Arties rule, even at level 1!

But I was missing a lot more then I normally would during normal play, however I did red skull myself in a few places and I felt that I didn’t have the normal difficulties getting out of the red skull that I normally do. So maybe there the Ac/to hit changes were helping me. Fopo will know better then I because he is always complaining when I red skull us when he can’t hit. But if didn’t like the red skulls he wouldn’t play with me, right? :p

At the end of the night I leveled to 5. And that is where I start to switch into early AC with the Jidz, a 3 piece Abishi set and shield wands. So maybe I will know more in the next day or two.

Think the guild will be hitting the new stuff to night and I plan to take my tank and that might be an AC shock! I will let you know tomorrow.

❤

Believe It or Not this is my Fighter Life

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Saturday night I capped out As400 and started preparing Samius to TR. I know there is an update coming/is here. But I have to keep my eye on the ball if I am going to hit my completionist goal this year. And really I am not worried about doing the new stuff on Samius yet, give him a few levels when he can get xp out of them. For now Samyus, Butters, Java and As400 will be my explorers into the realms.

I was on the fence as to how to best level Samius this go around a few reasons.

Fopo is planning to use his xp stone to jump to 16 when he reaches level 8. And it is a great plan for him. And if I didn’t want as400 ready for this new content I would have done the same, but I did.

So I will need to be able to mostly solo from 1 to 16 assuming that Fopo waits for me at 16 and doesn’t push on to cap out. Which he could and if he did I wouldn’t blame him for doing so.

Lastly I might not be soloing the whole time, Steiner Davion, Phlor and the wife all have TRs coming up in the next few days/weeks. So depending on everyone’s leveling speed and how much time I spend on alts working on the new content I might be leveling real slowly. Slow enough that people can catch up with me. I just don’t know.

All that typing to get to here, the real start of the post. I can be long winded for no good reason.

How would you build a solo fighter build? What would the first 5 levels look like? Would people know you’re a fighter? This go around I am going 10/9/1 Fighter/monk/artificer. Level 1 artificer and levels 2 through 10 monk, aka no fighter levels at until level 11.

This is what I am calling the Heavy Bowonk build. I get skills (traps and full UMD), a blue bar (for AA) and a few helpful spells from the artificer as well as assess to a few cool wands with out umd checks. Also my scrolls get a little boost. Monk gives me well most of what I need to cap out; ToD, evasion with high saves, free heals, Amp, earth stance (hps, dps, more ac and dr (assuming that MotU didn’t break earth stance)). Fighter will give the feats for both ranged and two weapon fighting as well as more hps and the bonus to fists dps if I do Kensei 1. Not to forget the past life fighter feat once I TR again in a few weeks.

Okay time to go. Look forward to some posts real soonish as to how the AC changes affect me while leveling. You can thank Tobril for requesting them if you get tired of me talking about AC. Remember the Bowonk model can reach real solid AC numbers while leveling. Becoming almost untouchable at different points in the game with simple gear swaps.

Anyway back to work. ❤

Xpac aka the Loss of Excellence Pack

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There are lots of changes coming to the game with this pack. And to me a lot of them feel unfinished. Today I want to as briefly as I can talk about how I feel about the AC changes.

To me Ac is the thing that keeps other from hitting you. And DR is how to lessen blows that land. In my mind they are two very different things. And together they make up how much damage you end up taking in a given combat.

This gives us a clear progression of how one can excel in AC or DR or anything. Want to hit guys with AC of 40 on a 2 and better you better get your to hit to a 39, but if you run in to someone with a 60 AC you need those 20s. Aka it is liner and simple to understand. Hence when DnD switched to the d20 system in 3.0 it revitalized the game as a whole.

Now lets DDO this thing.

You have an AC of 60, fairly simple to get with little effort. And you can tank/play Vod on normal no problem. Sure you take a few hits but you would say you’re a 90% miss tank.

IF you walk into the harbor for a favor run to help your pal earn some TP you are totally untouchable but the mobs that caused you issues when you were level 3, aka a clear progression.

And if you go in to An ELOP you get hit all the time, it is like you might as well not have any AC for all the good it does. Yes is a bummer. But you really haven’t progressed in to that level of AC yet.

Now lets look at the things to come.

You get to an AC of 120 real simply now. And you do that same Vod but watching the numbers and hits you are getting missed 60% of the time. But your new magic DR is taking a lot of the hits smoothing out your damage but you are taking more damage over the whole of the quest. But feels a lot smoother. And you sit aside that feeling of “I am getting hit more with an AC twice as high as before, but the quest seems easier… “.

You go help that same friend do the same favor run and WTF? Level 3 kobolds are hitting you? With that 120 AC, that is not right. But it is for a quick 3 min quest it will be fine. But it feels very wrong.

Now that ELOP your AC is working a ton better then before from 5% miss to 50% miss and that feels great.

And you think if getting hit 50% of the time feels this good what would it feel like to get hit only 80% of the time. So you work and you grind and you lose DPS for AC. And it takes a long time and lots of work but before you know it your AC is 190.

And we do those same 3 quests and in Vod your getting missed 70% of the time. Kobolds are missing 80-85% of the time and in the elob you clawed yourself to 60-65% miss chance. And you start to think all that for what? Less then 20% betterment, why did I bother?

Excellence is gone.

Will it be nice to have my happenstance AC mean something? Hell yes.

But will anyone try to be better then what is easy? I don’t think so. As it stands, there is a reason to GO AC. Once you’re there you feel invincible, and you say how it was worth it. When people ask me about AC I say go big or go home. Soon I will say why would you try to go big?

Can Turbine fix Ac? I think so I like the system as it stands right now with one change. There needs to be a point of AC compared to the attacker’s Bab that puts the defender at a set maximum miss chance. When I did my posts on leveling my SD fighter I ran down some of the raid bosses according to the ddowiki, and most of their Babs were in the 70- 80 range with the Elob being out side of the list in the 100s. But I think that if someone has 1.x-2.0 more AC then the attackers bab give a fixed AC miss chance of 90-95%. Then going big Ac still matters as apposed to get what is easy and be happy with your 50ish miss chance.

Anyway, I will say Turbine is really selling these changes. And people are buying for now. But lets see how they feel once don’t bother with AC becomes be happy with what you have because it doesn’t get any better.

Hopeful I am wrong, but knowing I am not.
❤

My Dream Rune Arm

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As you know I am having a bromance with the artificer class. I am not planning to leave my wife for Artificer class. But if I hosted a dinner party and she and the artificer class got a little too drunk, dirty smexy things could happen.

That said I still don’t know if it is the final class to build with for Samius over the 18/2 wizard/rogue. One of the main reasons I am holding myself back from becoming the artificer guy is pure removal spells, ie finger, wail, implosion. The ruin arm goes a long way towards making up the lack of removal, but it is not the same, yet.

So how would I fix things? A true removal focused rune arm of course. First of all when I think removal I think PMs so I would think making it few pm like would be easy. Use the necro blot and blast animations for firing off the rune arm. Maybe change the colors just a little and make it more redish over purple over tones, and have the rune arm itself look like it is made of bones. It would need to have a level 5 charge of course.

Have it imbue with say vorpal or manslayer to weapons. The main powers would be a slay living or neg level guard. I like the neg level guard when combined with the second main power, which is when the rune arm is fully charged it would trigger an ability that casts an implosion or the new wail of the banshee spell (add a timer of 30ish seconds before it can be retriggered).

This does two things. One gives Artificers a straight up removal spell/s with a solid DC (rune arm DC are level and Int based), and gives an artificer a reason to stop kiting as stand still in heavy trash combat.

All I know is the arty capstone is real nice but as it does not work with scrolls there is no way except via damage an arty can remove trash mobs.

And once the teck is in place to trigger an event when a rune arm is charged to a given point something happens can make all kinds of fun does X on charge Y events. Like mass repair spells at tear 4 charge, or fire shield % proc at a given point or even different kinds of guards are active at different charge levels say crushing wave while holding a stable charge and freeing ice once at stable+1 level or greater charge.

Lots of possibilities is all I am saying. And to me rune arms are the most fun items added to the game well ever.

❤

All According to Plan?

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So today I called the company I ordered my new trike from and asked them “Where the frack is my bike?” I was told it would be here 4 or 5 days ago. And I am starting to wonder….

An hour later my wife sends me a text message that it would be here after lunch.

Get home, no bike so I start lunch, a 12 oz stake. What? I am a caveman. Stake is every time food, for me. ☺ Sit down and go to town and I hear the sounds of a truck in the yard.

Get the bike unboxed and the driver lets me know that he is glad I called the company as it has been on his truck for 4 days now waiting to be delivered but they refused to let him deliver it with out an appointment and they gave him the wrong number. Even this morning when I called and gave them my number they got it wrong and ended up calling my wife to make an appointment. Some people’s kids, I swear.

So I finish my lunch and ride to work. Should have just had a banana. Took me 10 mins to do maybe 2 miles. Once I got to work it took me 30 mins to get my head and stomach to settle down. Lighter lunches are going to happen from now on.

Day one of riding to work down, just need to ride home now. Hurray? Wish me luck. And maybe I will be in a lot better shape by Gencon.

❤

The Highs and Lows of Puging

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Anyone that knows me knows that I am not a fan of the pugs. Just to be clear I mean the pick up groups and not the dogs, although I am not a big fan of the dogs either. My son has one named Xander and it is about 600 pounds and like to wake me up on the weekends by crawling onto my pillow and farting, very unpleasant little fracker.

Anywayyyyyy, Yesterday I worked on my second life TR just soloing and watching Doctor Who. Aside: I like David Tenneat as the good doctor the best, and stopped watching the show originally once I heard that he had left the show. But in a “What is streaming on Netflix that I can watch and play?” moment I have become re-addicted to the show even watching the 11th Doctor at work, which I am starting to warm too.

At some point Tobril logs on and askes to get in for xp. And we are off. I help him do a hard Coal Chamber in 27ish mins, which is not bad. As we complete he sees a hard Lob and is gone.

In a weird mood I look at the LFM panel and see a group for an elite IQ boat ride. I dislike soloing protect the NPC quests as it is too easy for the NPC to do something dumb and get killed failing the quest out of the blue. So having a group when running them is nice. Mean while Fopo was in challenge mode earning mats to trade in for xp and renown pots, so I didn’t want to bother him with my sudden want to do the IQ quests. So I joined up with plans to ride the fail train into some kind of xp.

But it was great, my DCs hit constantly. I danced and weaved killing trash and leading the kill count 2 to 1 over the other 4 group members. And when the red named boss showed the intim sorc took agro via an intim and then died. There was a dwarf defender that intimed also but I took the hate off him before long and he took that time to run off for a heal from his hire and I tanked the little boss. It was good times.

Even ran through the optional netting myself an extra 900xp and 2 chests for 30 sec of work. But the puggers didn’t make it drow are too hard to kill I guess. ☺

The group decides to move on to Elite Mindsunder, as the leader has all the disks. And we fly through the quest. Again I am feeling good cleaning house even kill the Mindsunder at the end with disintegrates, lots and lots of them. It was fun trying to tell the FvS that we picked up that I had it under control as she yelled at melee to kill the Mindsunder and not the trash she was kitting and begging for a heal to fix her stat damage and the rouge kept throwing cure wands at her. It was quite the good times and I felt like a millon plat.

Then Tobril frees up and we regroup and we do hard Mindsunder as I have a few sets of stones from the xp runs on Samius, Samyus and the 400. And I died like 4 times on Hard in one run. Riding so high to fall so low was a shock to my system. I guess if you’re the best turd in a group that doesn’t make you a gold nugget, just a turd from someone that ate glitter the night before.

❤

How the Pug Snatched Defeat from the Jaws of Victory, Elite VoD

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Saturday morning I am on Samius and sitting on the last rank to cap out. No guildies or channel people are on. Guessing the domain issue is holding some people at bay. I know Phlor is pissed off and refuses to “hack” his Host file. But I luck out and I don’t have to edit my host file and get on right away. Going to say my ISP is not as shitty as his, although Turbine really?

Okay back to the story. Post people check I hit the LFM panel, hey you never know. I might pug something. Low and behold there is a 1 from full Elite VoD looking for something or an artificer with silver weapons. I have silver weapons and even with out the first time bonus Elite Vod is a ton of XP and is worth doing. The group looks fine. I know a few names, as fair to alright players. And I jump in thinking this is going to make a dent in that last pile of xp.

I get in and the path to the raid is clear, win. And the chest is unopened even. I short wait for someone that didn’t make it into the sub yet and we go. No one types out buffs. After I ask for them 3 times both over mic and in chat. So I start giving out deadly. If someone wants silver they better ask. I am about to shrine when someone hits me with GH and blur. I am only down a little sp so why not just go.

As we start to zone in I start getting tells from people asking for silver…. Great…. There is a time for request people. And that is when the rest of the buffs are being handed out. But I go ahead and hand out silver to people that asked via tells. And we start.

The Orthons go quickly, as the leader starts to tank. For the record I don’t think that the leader should tank in pugs unless that leader has a clear second that can give orders for times the leader is busy.

Any way the raid is going nice and smooth. Sully is falling and those HPs are falling off. The healers are healing nicely and all is well. Until the second wave of Orthons hit at the same time a wave of trash devils hit. And there is no clear trash tank or a second to get people focused. People spread out the healers are over taxed and the CC is shitty. And people start to die. I start to give orders (not that it mattered) and rez people. My stack of scrolls started to drop quickly. Some people started to rack up the deaths. And one guy at least that most Sarlona people would know if I typed it out went afk dead and didn’t say anything in chat so I wasted 4 or 5 scrolls on him (btw he never returned).

But we got things under control and started moving again. And sully dropped and dropped. BBs started going up and I said let me BB as I still have 400 sp and the healers claimed to have drank a pot or 2. But still BBs that were not mine kept going up. And we took a few waves of bats and all was fine. Sully dropped and dropped we had some losses but we still had fair dps. And I started to notice that mine were the only BBs. And that I was siting kinda low. But I saw one of the clrs right behind me casting. Then bang took chain lighting to the face and died and then I saw the mass go off. I don’t know if the clr didn’t have quicken on or was trying to use a scroll or what but the heals just slowed to a crawl and people started to die. Right after I died it was the tank, the bard and an healer. And the take fell. Sully was at that sliver of life that you can’t even see. Someone threw the tank a rez and he he retook agro for a bout 4 secs as buff less and at half hp he didn’t get any heals. The healer died right after and the bard ran around like a little girl and died screaming. Or that was my take on it anyway.

After a moment I got a tell from the leader asking me if I knew what happened and I gave my quick summary of the heals slowed to a crawl and we died. Back on the boat and after I dropped group filling up as I let the auto attack kill the training dummy I got a few follow up tells from the former leader. He said that the healers refused to use pots.

I am cool with that but if they said something I would have healed myself and I could have scrolled the tank I think long enough to finish it. But no commutation kills groups more then any raid boss. Also in hindsight if that one dps (who had an Esos) would have returned I think we might have had the extra dps to but us over but like I said it was right there. Hell if one of those divines doted sully vs throwing BB after BB on top on my BBs it would have been enough.

I don’t know. There were a lot of things that could have fixed things. But I think if there was more helpful commutation and less unhelpful chitchat I think we would have won.

❤