ZG for the rest of us...

[Tal]

So, as a man of my word, I am posting to find out Avarice thoughts on ZG runs for the rest of us. Tuft's runs are fun, but are usually too late at night, or on the weekend. So I've stepped up at looking into an alternative time for those who can't make either.

The day I'm looking at would be Wednesday. Probably a 7-7:30pm start. Perhaps earlier if folk wanted. I could see the earliest around a 6pm server start, but much earlier and we run into folk getting home from work and the like.

I have thought about Wed as it would leave Friday available for a followup on the same raidlock, if we so chose to go that route.

So...discuss.  :lol:
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Wow. I don't think I can do another night of raiding at the moment. Perhaps when Krystian is capped I can look at it.

[Wiz]

Doesn't help those who can't make Tuesdays or Saturdays at all though.
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True. I confess I am biased -- I very much enjoy the Wed night runs that Martini and Legedi have been organizing and would hate to give them up.

It might be best to start with a thread that asks people
* If they would come
* when they could come( 2-3 choices here, preferably), and
* would they prefer a continuation of Tuft's raid or a separate raid instance?

Those questions were asked for the Wed night early runs, whch is why they are on Wednesday. Tuesday was the second choice, as I recall.

[Sabra]

Hi, Mirajj:

The late evening runs and Saturday daytime runs just haven't been working out for me. Late is ... well ... late, and Saturday is errand day. Wednesday 7:30 looks good, and I'll do my best to be faithful.

I'm so glad you're doing this, Mirajj. I have this feeling that your raids are going to be a lot of fun. (Must, Must Must get Meg's Warrior to 60!)

[kandrathe]

I like those times too, the 7-7:30pm start that is.&nbsp; If limited to about 3 hours, it should also allow an early enough stop for some us (->me<-).&nbsp;

I would also urge that should this go through, the characters brought in for this are not ones that are participating in Tuftears runs.&nbsp; This is to avoid tripping over each others raid timers and progress.
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We'll see if they *intended* to have a 24 hour timer on ZG or not. If that was their intention then it is the worst possible choice. It would make those running with Tuft late Tuesday night collide with anything Mirajj wanted to do Wednesday.

My two cents; 16 hours is enough of a Raidlock to prevent sequential runs with the same raid group, and 24 hours still allows a dedicated group of 20 to run the entire thing every day. I would like to see a 48 or 60 hour raidlock to allow a casual guild enough days to have a good shot at Hakkar.

[Pesmerga]

Wow. I don't think I can do another night of raiding at the moment. Perhaps when Krystian is capped I can look at it.
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Yeah, only when the wifey gets her own char, and caps it, will I be able to raid more frequently than I already do. :)

Need to buy her a laptop and the game asap.... ::nods::

[Tuftears]

It's already been said that 24 hours was a mistake and they intended it to be 2.5 days.

A Friday 7 PM run could initialize the instance, and get continued to Saturday morning, which might give us the best of both worlds - new people get to see a new instance, and the experienced crew gets to mop up more bosses. A Sunday morning continuation should be possible, since the instance would unlock Sunday evening.

Ah, so many choices.

[Mirajj]

Ok, it looks like the interest is there. So what I need from you is...

~Will you come? If I'm going to do this, there will be signups. If you sign up, I'm going to need you to be there (Barring RL stuff of course, this is a game. *G*)
~Would you prefer a Wed or a Friday start?
~Would you mind continuing a previous raid or letting 'our' raid be continued by someone else on a different/following day?

At the moment, ZG requires a pretty good class mix of people. I am certain that we could take any 20 people in and see at least the first boss, though. ;) So I will need to know who's coming, and what class they want to bring.

The start time of 7 or 7:30 (I'd prefer a 7pm first pull, myself) seems to be pretty good. ZG isn't that rough to get to and if we can start a bit earlier, that works quite well.

If we go on Tuesday, I'll start us with a fresh instance the first handful of times, so that we get used to the new place. If we start on Friday, I have no problem with letting Tuft and crew use the instance as well, to push deeper into ZG.

On a personal note, if we go with the wed/fri rotation, I'll always miss one of those two days. ;)

So...what I'm looking at right now. It's a bit early to call for a ZG raid tomorrow, and next Wed (the 19th) is when my vacation ends, and I go back to work. So the first one that I could lead would be Friday, the 21st.

How's that sound? I won't make an official signup post right now, but if you reply here, I'll copy it over when I do.

[WildFire]

Friday PM and Saturday noon would make Kateley one happy gnome... may even help lessen the pain of not being able to make weekday raids ;)

[Sabra]

~Will you come?

I will. Sabramage - Mage

~Would you prefer a Wed or a Friday start?

I could start tonight. Gabe has to work late - no date night.

If it's the 21st, that's Gabe's birthday weekend. Could be a bit of a juggle, but I'll get it done.

~Would you mind continuing a previous raid or letting 'our' raid be continued by someone else on a different/following day?

I am truly a bit lost on these questions, but

If you mean using an existing raid lock from The Basin runs, I'd really like to see an Avarice run started and maintained. The Basin has great attendance, I understand - like 16 regulars. If that's the case, let's get another one going. More flexibility for more people.

If by the 2nd part of the question you mean letting The Basin use one of the Avarice raid locks, I have no issue with that. Again, flex = more people, more fun.

I'd prefer a 7pm first pull, myself

This could be difficult for me, but 7:30 is a very safe bet. I'll do my best to work with 7 if that's what most people would like.

On a personal note, if we go with the wed/fri rotation, I'll always miss one of those two days.

Then my question is - who will be stepping up to take the reins reliably and with reasonable knowledge of the instance? There is little point beginning this if we can't finish it due to lack of informed leadership. We should not go off half-cocked on this. We need someone to step forward.

Who's up for the challenge? We need a good cat herder.

[Kevin]

Fridays would not work for me. I'm not giving up my runs on Terenas. Of course I won't be around tonight anyway it appears but if you did a Wednesday run I would probably be able to come, if I wasn't totally raid fried.

I'm happy the alliance is raiding so much but it's getting harder for me to 5 man and lower instance raid. I either have to compete with a 40 or 20 man raid or go at odd hours. It's just one of the problems of our group trying to be everything for everyone.

Of course there are days where I know that with my condition going someplace, even in an avarice group won't work for me unless it's mostly people I know. You may have noticed I wasn't on TS most of raid last night and I was pretty silent in chat most of the time.

Anyway back to the subject at hand. I would have no problems on a continuation or a fresh start, or alternating a fresh vs a continue.

I also have no problems with an early Tuesday run though again I'm not saying I'm going to be there all the time. Just like I'm not always going to be there for MC or Ony (even though I have been so far).

As for group mix, I think CC is being emphasized more than it might need to be. If your tanks are used to holding more than one mob I believe the trash mobs in ZG can be dual tanked if the raid shows enough discipline. Holding an additional mob against just healing is not all that hard to do if you are used to it. Heck if you give the tank a little prep time they can hold 2 or 3 mobs to full blown AoE attacks. However if you spread damage over 3 or 4 mobs and expect the tank to hold it, no that won't happen. But if you let the tank grab 2 or 3 and only do damage to one of the mobs the tank should have no problems with it. Of course I've only seen the trolls and snakes trash mobs and very few boss encounters. I'm not saying that class mix isn't important and it's even more important when you are learning encounters to make it smoother but I also think that we can do things with sub par set-ups. Heck I think we could kill Lucy and Mags in MC with 25-30 people right now as well. We've taken Garr with just 2 warlocks and 6 warriors using others to offtank and had we had enough DPS we might have done it with 2 locks and 5 warriors and only 33 people.

[anadrol]

So, as a man of my word, I am posting to find out Avarice thoughts on ZG runs for the rest of us. Tuft's runs are fun, but are usually too late at night, or on the weekend. So I've stepped up at looking into an alternative time for those who can't make either.

The day I'm looking at would be Wednesday. Probably a 7-7:30pm start. Perhaps earlier if folk wanted. I could see the earliest around a 6pm server start, but much earlier and we run into folk getting home from work and the like.

I have thought about Wed as it would leave Friday available for a followup on the same raidlock, if we so chose to go that route.

So...discuss.&nbsp; :lol:
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I enjoy tufts raids quite a bit, but tuesday nights are starting to get tough on me when we finish up at 2am on a work night. Saturday mornings i have been iffy on due to the wifes business as well and flea markets, etc. I'd love another option mirajj i think its an excellent idea!

[Tuftears]

If you mean using an existing raid lock from The Basin runs, I'd really like to see an Avarice run started and maintained. The Basin has great attendance, I understand - like 16 regulars. If that's the case, let's get another one going. More flexibility for more people.

I'd like to emphasize that while I am a Basiner, if I didn't want the Avarice allied guilds to participate in my runs, I wouldn't be posting on all three boards. A run shouldn't be considered 'not Avarice' just because it happens to be run by someone from the Basin - we are alliance members too.

That said, I think it's clear there's more interest in ZG than any single run will accomodate. Hopefully we can get the numbers for an early evening raid!

Then my question is - who will be stepping up to take the reins reliably and with reasonable knowledge of the instance? There is little point beginning this if we can't finish it due to lack of informed leadership. We should not go off half-cocked on this. We need someone to step forward.

Who's up for the challenge? We need a good cat herder.

Well, Anadrol has MT'd fair chunks of ZG now. If you want to 'read ahead', I maintain strategy notes.

As for group mix, I think CC is being emphasized more than it might need to be. If your tanks are used to holding more than one mob I believe the trash mobs in ZG can be dual tanked if the raid shows enough discipline. Holding an additional mob against just healing is not all that hard to do if you are used to it.

As far as group mix goes, I think these are the minimums:

• Two tanks. Preferably warriors, but bears may be capable of doing it, if you have enough healing.<>
  
• Four healers, one a priest for pre-shielding the Lead Mage.<>
  
• Three mages. With four-humanoid pulls (and some six pulls where four of them are especially dangerous), you want to be able to put some out of action consistently.<>
  
• Enough druids and mages combined to be able to sleep 5 out of a 6-serpent pull. Druids can double as healers.<>
  
• Two paladins. Numerous applications!<>
  [st]
  Fill up the rest with extra damage, support, or whatever you like! The above accounts for 11 slots out of 20. A warlock comes in handy for Curse of Shadows and Curse of Elements, though soulstoning the raid is less important given that ZG is so wipe-friendly with long respawn times on the trash mobs.

[Lissa]

Ok, it looks like the interest is there. So what I need from you is...

~Will you come? If I'm going to do this, there will be signups. If you sign up, I'm going to need you to be there (Barring RL stuff of course, this is a game. *G*)
~Would you prefer a Wed or a Friday start?
~Would you mind continuing a previous raid or letting 'our' raid be continued by someone else on a different/following day?

At the moment, ZG requires a pretty good class mix of people. I am certain that we could take any 20 people in and see at least the first boss, though. ;) So I will need to know who's coming, and what class they want to bring.

The start time of 7 or 7:30 (I'd prefer a 7pm first pull, myself) seems to be pretty good. ZG isn't that rough to get to and if we can start a bit earlier, that works quite well.

If we go on Tuesday, I'll start us with a fresh instance the first handful of times, so that we get used to the new place. If we start on Friday, I have no problem with letting Tuft and crew use the instance as well, to push deeper into ZG.

On a personal note, if we go with the wed/fri rotation, I'll always miss one of those two days. ;)

So...what I'm looking at right now. It's a bit early to call for a ZG raid tomorrow, and next Wed (the 19th) is when my vacation ends, and I go back to work. So the first one that I could lead would be Friday, the 21st.

How's that sound? I won't make an official signup post right now, but if you reply here, I'll copy it over when I do.
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I have two capped characters, so I can take either depending. The only problem I have is that 7 pm is too early a start for me on Friday nights (although the Tuesday night 10:30 server time will be too late for me come the end of the month when all you Heathens finally realize that Standard Time is the right time... :P ). For Fridays, I could make 8 PM more readily come the end of the month (next two weeks I would definitely be late if I go). There are definitely lots of goodies in Z'G that both Taha and Lissanna want to get their hands on (more so Lissanna than Taha... ;) and it's not Mandokir's bow I'm referring too... :P )

[LochnarITB]

~Lochnar is interested and would sign up to come.

~Wednesday would be the preferred night as Friday has been offered up as best family faction farming night.

~I would prefer a new instance. I have not been there yet and, at least for a first run through, would rather not be led by the nose. Discovery/exploration is always my preferred play style.

[Ruvanal]

I am interested in these runs on either of the nights and on thier being a combined 2 night progression if possible.

~I would prefer a new instance.&nbsp; I have not been there yet and, at least for a first run through, would rather not be led by the nose.&nbsp; Discovery/exploration is always my preferred play style.
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I agree with this for the first several runs. While I have been in there, most runs to date (all but one actually) have been rather crappy at learning anything about the mob layout of the place or their abilities. I do have a genernal knowledge of the layout since it has been possible to sneek inside the area since beta to see the overall ground layout. Note though that the terrain layout from just prior to the instance opening up for use is not the same as the layout in the actual instance.

[Sabra]

I'd like to emphasize that while I am a Basiner, if I didn't want the Avarice allied guilds to participate in my runs, I wouldn't be posting on all three boards.  A run shouldn't be considered 'not Avarice' just because it happens to be run by someone from the Basin - we are alliance members too.

Tuft, if I offended you, I apologize. It was never my intention to imply that these runs aren't open to everyone. They are. We all know it and we all appreciate it.

What I meant is that you have good, regular attendance and adding another group wouldn't hurt your runs. That there are many faithful Basiners in attendance is merely a matter of doing the numbers. I'd bet The Basin is bigger than CA, Lurkers and House Harpell plus a few other guilds put together.

I admire you for taking the initiative and making the commitment to do this.

And let there be no doubt that I LOVE OUR BASINERS and will always go out of my way to make sure they know it, since they have not always been made to feel appreciated by some.

Thank you for all that you and our other Basiners bring to the Avarice Alliance.

[Legedi]

Wednesday between 7:00-8:00 start times would be perfect for me. Even other day of the week I'm either raiding already, or it's days I take off with the wife.

I wouldn't care if we did our own runs, or continuted the Tuesday one. I'd guess that doing your own would be fun for a while, and then picking up off Tuesdays wouldn be nice farther down the line.

[Tuftears]

And let there be no doubt that I LOVE OUR BASINERS and will always go out of my way to make sure they know it, since they have not always been made to feel appreciated by some.

:wub:

[Bevock]

I'd be glad to go on a mid week ealier (7-8 EST) ZG raid if we can get a balanced group going.

[Quark]

So...what I'm looking at right now. It's a bit early to call for a ZG raid tomorrow, and next Wed (the 19th) is when my vacation ends, and I go back to work. So the first one that I could lead would be Friday, the 21st.

How's that sound? I won't make an official signup post right now, but if you reply here, I'll copy it over when I do.
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I will gladly join on Fris/Weds almost completely regularly. I am willing to run alternate days you can't run, once I know the instance a little better.