Team 5: Experimental Training Project

I've pulled a group of trainees together and a potential replacement leader for a side project group on Wednesdays. The idea of this is to potentially find a new way to create new static groups and bring trainees up to full clear status faster than previously doable.

My reasons for this:

Previous raid schedules included 6 days of raiding, 5 of which were training. There were no full clear groups except for Monday's raid leader team. We often ran two groups during this time. Even with the increase in the amount of raid leaders (from me/Smith and Mire to Kow/Goat and Tai/Beast being added to the leader list) it is still exhausting to raid 6 days a week. In lieu of this, we have decided to cut back days allowing us to raid ~3 days a week mandatory (roughly) and the rest are free for us so as to keep us from getting burnt out.

The idea here is to take people who show commitment (willing to make new classes and always come on Wednesdays and even play more than 3 hours in the same session) and try to get them to full clear status quicker than would be possible otherwise. Currently training is limited to Wednesday/Saturday for 3 hours each. Meaning that we need to get 20+ people trained in 6 hours a week, which just doesn't seem possible.

While I realize this does not solve the problem of certain people not getting to raid as much, it will take several of those people and reward their extreme level of patience/commitment with a more detailed level of training and with leaders who are willing to put in extra effort to train them.


Last night I ran for 6.5 hours with a handful of people who ran exceptionally long into the night to get kills with us and practice getting better. Due to time restrictions for some of those players (as in, Wednesday, not time commitment during the day) not all players can be included in the future, unfortunately. But we had, for trainees:

Ellie.8095 (healing for us)
BSteel.2891 (necro for us)
SacredGeometry.9831 (tempest for us)
Fosh.5073 (reaper for us)
Locke.4539 (reaper maybe? memory doesn't serve)

In addition to this, myself and MrSmith were there for the full duration. For Trio/Matthias, we had JarJarBinks.1926 with us.

This leaves 2 spots open, one of which I have already decided to fill with Rizekurohi.4398 due to their ability to be present on Wednesdays for up to 4 hours.

This leaves one spot open, which I may consider using a person from Monday team for, so as to help the new guys get accommodated quicker and potentially make room on Monday for Tai if this group can become efficient quickly.

I'll be keeping track of our progress here. Due to JarJarBink's previous history of calling/tanking I'd be interested in getting them to a proper status and then phasing ourselves out. Of course we'd have to find him a partner.. you know.. for balance reasons.

Sloth:

Took about 2.5 hours and some change to down. We (in addition to the above trainees) had Hennet (a backup trainee) and Diremongoose (also a trainee). Initially only MrSmith/Ovalle/myself came in with experience in the fight. Their initial mechanics were insanely good very quickly. DPS was a bit low but still pretty doable w/o hitting enrage. Once cleared was very clean aside from a really awkwardly timed bomb that pushed us to finish dps in the edge of the room.

Were some huge issues with bombing us but ONLY on the last burn of the fight. I think the initial excitement of being so close to a burn created a sense of panic or excitement that caused them to lose focus and drop bombs causing unfortunate wipes on many occasions below 5%, and on one occasion at 1%. After telling them that ISIS recruiters will lie and pulling a George Dubya on us and bombing us wasn't the way, they decided to focus more.


Trio:

Messy at first, people seemed confused by south/north and the range of their necrotic grasp. Attempts to teach Mortars were questionable so I decided to solo them. Once downed dps was fantastic and overall kill was clean.


Matthias:

Had no intention of going for a kill due to a lack of well mastery for raiders. They saw up to fire phase and practiced breakbars etc for a bit until we called it for the night.

Results: 2/6 Practiced the full 4 hours


Vale Guardian (4 pulls maybe?)

Pros: Fosh learned to tank, Locke called greens. Honestly, dps was literally amazing considering the experience level of the group.

Cons: Wanted Ellie to call since she was dedicated healer but her mic wasn't working properly. Tenvol needs to work on his awareness of his positioning.



Gorseval (10 pulls maybe?)

Pros: Excellent DPS, rivaling our experienced teams. Once a kill was obtained it was clean and perfect with plenty of time left on the timer.

Cons: Took several tries and a lot of time was spent giving directions due to the fact that some were new to the fight. We were training a new orb-clearer (BSteel) so orbs were messy on the first few runs. People struggled with hitting the orbs and not cleansing them properly or going down. Due to the newness of the fight people were sometimes out of position resulting in them getting hit by "World Eater." Our Chrono was high on Ketamine and decided to see if he could fly. He could not.



Sabetha (4 pulls - no kill)

Pros: People seemed to nail down these mechanics pretty quickly considering only a couple of people had ever done the fight. We tried dual cannons with one person doing it being completely new to the fight. It was a resoundingly positive experience. They saw Karde very quickly and killed him very quick. Turrets were no problem at all, even with the Tempest/Thief busy with cannons. Very enjoyable runs.

Cons: Cannon duty people need to have more regard for the times at which they step on the platforms. A couple of unnecessary flakk shots hit the platforms they were on. DPS was ever so slightly lower than it should've been which is expected for the level of newness.


Notes:

• Fosh learned to tank. He had issues on the first couple of runs on his positioning and getting teleported by blue circles. Once I suggested he call them, he stopped getting teleported. His final run was very smooth and clean and good positioning on his part.
  
  
• On Gorseval we originally only had BSteel clearing. We ended up swapping Fosh from thief to Tempest and having them both do part clear/part dps. The DPS remained excellent and the orbs were barely there at all. Once they got into the swing of things, the kill was clean and smooth.
  
  
• On Sabetha I'm debating making myself a condi druid set or zerker druid. I haven't decided, but, the damage during this boss is a bit weaker and it may be my gear partially holding them back. Alternatively, one of our necros we had would normally be a Tempest, so that's something for me to consider prior to making a new set.
  
  
• On Sabetha, Ellie was brand new to Flakk duty. She struggled at first with her positioning but once I went out with her and we duo-flakked so she could get comfortable doing it, she was much better at it. Once I came back in she showed much better awareness than she had before. I think she'll do quite good with it.
  
  
• Tenvol needs work on his bomb throwing. We recommended GW2Taco to him. I think he'll do better in the future.

Results: 5/9 Practiced the full 4 hours


Vale Guardian (1 pull)

Pros: Excellent mechanically. Good dps. Solid group.

Cons: A slow pull resulted in more than half of the squad going down. Thankfully some intelligent gameplay by the whole squad resulted in a full recovery with no deaths at all.



Gorseval (2 pulls)

Pros: Excellent dps, clean kill, good orbing.
Cons: Should've died the first go. A bit of sloppiness in the last phase with someone running into orbs kinda got out of control and resulted in us just barely missing the dps check.



Sabetha (4 pulls)

Pros: Excellent DPS, dual cannon run.

Cons: Should've died the first go honestly but a bug caused the bomb to not be thrown properly and resulted in a missed cannon which sorta spiraled out of control from there. Would've been a kill but both players wiped due to the bug so we reset.



Sloth (5 pulls)

Pros: They got to 5% on their second try. Fabulous dps, solid understanding of our center-placement eating patterns. Good mechanically.
Cons: Bomb placement needs some work. Majority of issues were poorly placed bombs.



Trio (3 pulls)

Pros: Good saboteur control and awareness.
Cons: A bit sloppy. Initial runs had really low dps and poor positioning. Awkwardly enough I'd say Trio is their obvious weak point atm.



Matthias (4 pulls)

Pros: Good dps, good breaks
Cons: Really bad at dodging Hadoukens. Players need to learn the tells and learn to respond to them more precisely.



Notes:

Not much to say. This is the progress I was expecting/hoping for. Requiring people who struggle with certain mechanics to call those mechanics seems to have improved their ability to notice and respond to the mechanics easier and quicker. Bomb throws on Sabetha were excellent. Overall good night and I'm looking forward to next week.