Feedback on this raid

[Balshor]

So, here's a thread where you can post any thoughts or comments you might have on this raid. I'll start with my initial impressions. Keep in mind that these are things that I'm saying purely from my own viewpoint as I have not yet had a chance to do a post-raid debriefing with my coordinating staff.

If you're going to do a pick-up raid, people will *not* arrive on time. At the start time, we had 70-80 heroes. When we started attacking the mitos (after the briefing and initial monster clearing and such), we had 100ish. By the time we were tackling Hamidon, I heard numbers closer to 150 being batted around (although I was too busy to verify this myself). Unfortunately, this makes it *very* difficult to organize with any sort of level of detail. My goal was to set up two healing teams and a distraction team, plus have the coordinators in place in case we needed to split into two groups. This, we managed, although the initial turnout of 70-80 made me decide to try to run just a single group initially. (I didn't think we had the healers to support two groups.)

This ended up being a mistake, seeing how as soon as we started the attack, we couldn't target the mitos. By that time, we had around 100 heros, and I believe that the limit of the number of hero/mobs that the client draws is right up around there. We had to pull back and reorganize into our original plan for two groups.

Among other things I wanted to test today was the effectiveness of the global chat during the raid. I believe that it was very useful having separate chat channels for the two group's coordinators to talk to their group without interfering with the other group's communication. However, I think it was a bit much to ask for everybody to successfully get on one or the other chat channel. We only got about 80 people on those channels, out of the 100 or so heroes there. Still, 80% isn't bad considering that this was an open raid.

I'm really not sure how better to divide a group of heroes like that into two groups would be without spending huge amounts of time micromanaging the division. It's something to think about before doing something like this again.

Once the two groups got themselves situated, the mitos went down pretty fast. I don't think we had any outright griefers at this point, although I think that there were a number of bored melee heroes that decided to either take a few swings at Hami or throw a taunt in his direction. The fliers and jumpers seemed to be doing a good job attacking mitos, but it would probably be good to have something set up for the earthbound melee next time.

People sure didn't like pulling back to the rock after the mitos were gone. The main raid edged right up about halfway into the bubble even before I had signaled the controllers to attack.

It seemed pretty straightforward getting a hold on Hami -- kudos to our controllers, rad defenders, and other holding heroes for pulling that off on the first try. As soon as the rest of the raid attacked, the entire zone lagged like crazy. Not sure there's anything that can be done about that.

We got hami down to 1.5k when he spawned some mitos (some meaning a lot). I suspect that our holds slipped somewhere in all of the lag, but it took so long for his respawn power to activate that we punched him down to 1.5k before they popped up. Fortunately, there was so much lag that we managed to take out that last bit of hps of his before the respawn wiped us out. As a bonus, the mitos wiped out the trip mines that had been planted to try to ninja-loot the raid. The mitos died when Hami was defeated, although it took a long time for them to despawn and the buds to appear.

Enhancement drops seemed to go okay. I didn't get any drops myself, but I got a fair number turned over to me (about 2 dozen), and passed them out in Founders' Falls after the raid. Predictably, people kept all the most popular enhancements for themselves (like dmg/acc, heal/end, resist/end, etc), but there were enough debuff/* and */mez to give the heroes waiting in FF an enhancement each.

I did end up with four extra enhancements (of types that nobody wanted) at the end (2 debuff/end and 2 dmg/mez)...these will go to a few people who I know for a fact didn't get one but deserve to. I'll be contacting these people in game over the next week or so. (Some of you can be quite tricky to track down.)

Overall, I think enhancement redistribution was both easier and harder than I expected. It was easy in the sense that all of the enhancements I got were in some sense equally unwanted (as they were mostly debuff/* and */mez) except by a few controllers and defenders, so there wasn't really any fighting over who got which enhancement (except for those people who insisted that I must have some really nice Hamis hidden in my back pocket or something). There were also enough to go around, so we lucked out in that regard. On the other hand, I was pretty much never able to give somebody exactly what they wanted, which frustrated some people. Oh, well...you can't please everybody, and some people you can never please.

Oh, and regarding a certain post on the official Pinnacle forums that will probably soon be deleted by a mod? I've sent a PM to the original poster, and hopefully he's not one of the usual forum crazies who post this stuff and refuse to listen to reason. I ask that you please not respond in that thread, as feeding flames and trolls usually only makes them stronger.

[Spark1]

You can please some people all of the time and all of the people some of the time, but you can't please all of the people all of the time.

Things I noticed from the posistioner posistion:

Dispersion bubble is a great gathering tool.

Even though the original plans required me to move under the next mito usually the next one was within striking distance by the ranged component of the team. Thus I'd be standing all alone wondering if salt would add a little to the taste of the dirt.

Sometimes, people just don't want to listen. (this is directed at those who wouldn't follow the battle plan, not for anything else)

and over 100 heroes in the Hive is too much.

[DemonNightmare]

Spark, I don't think you announced that you we're moving, if you did, I missed it everytime. I was in your group, and I didn't see anything that said the group was moving. There is a possiblity that I missed it, but between swtiching between main assist, secondary assist, and dropping rez's on dead people, I didn't have time to actually check to see if you had moved or not.

[Quarbis]

DemonNightmare said:

Spark, I don't think you announced that you we're moving, if you did, I missed it everytime. I was in your group, and I didn't see anything that said the group was moving. There is a possiblity that I missed it, but between swtiching between main assist, secondary assist, and dropping rez's on dead people, I didn't have time to actually check to see if you had moved or not.

Spark was announced as main positioner originally, but then things got a little wacky with the recall to split into the East and West teams. As the numbers continued to increase and the lag got worse, targeting people even on your friends list became increasingly more difficult and the only real way to continue to move was to follow the horde of flying green numbers. During the course of battle, it appears that the groups of healers and bubblers became seperated into two distinct groups, which led into the confusion of what is going on.

[DemonNightmare]

park was announced as main positioner originally, but then things got a little wacky with the recall to split into the East and West teams. As the numbers continued to increase and the lag got worse, targeting people even on your friends list became increasingly more difficult and the only real way to continue to move was to follow the horde of flying green numbers. During the course of battle, it appears that the groups of healers and bubblers became seperated into two distinct groups, which led into the confusion of what is going on.

Yes, Spark was the main positioner, and when the groups split for east and west, he became the positioner for East. And that is what I am saying, with trying to keep up Mito targeting, it became hard to check if spark was moving or not. I don't think there was any sort of vocal saying that he was moving, to help us. In a previous raid, someone had set their chat bubble colors to yellow and red (I don't rememeber who) but that work pretty well for visually identifying them w/o changing targets.

[Spark1]

DemonNightmare said:

Yes, Spark was the main positioner, and when the groups split for east and west, he became the positioner for East. And that is what I am saying, with trying to keep up Mito targeting, it became hard to check if spark was moving or not. I don't think there was any sort of vocal saying that he was moving, to help us. In a previous raid, someone had set their chat bubble colors to yellow and red (I don't rememeber who) but that work pretty well for visually identifying them w/o changing targets.

I was announcing on the Global Channel. Maybe a thought for next time I should use binds like these on request line:

"West Group, moving into posisition!"

"Posistion established! West Group, cover on me!"

Or something of that nature.

[DemonNightmare]

Ok, guess things got a little confused when we split into 2 groups, I thought you was with the East group.

Ok, who was the positioner for the East Group then?

[FireCurtain]

I was, and the morning of the raid my 512 stick of RAM snap crackle and popped, SO balshor came and helped.