Mango Conversation

Babylonius — Today at 1:59 PM
So like I mentioned in the midweek channel, I’m reaching out to everyone to get their thoughts and opinions on a variety of things.  Before I get to the more targeted questions, is there anything you want to get off your chest about your own play, the team, the raid, the people, the game, anything?

Mango — Today at 2:59 PM
the past few weeks there have been times where i’m unsure if my deaths are due to my misplays or if i’m just not getting heals. going through logs (on sludge this was a big issue it felt) there were some deaths where i went close to 30 seconds without a direct heal. i was planning on talking with pao about that more in depth at some point to help me find in logs and see if it’s something that i am doing wrong that i’m unaware of or it it’s out of my control.
and then second, it’s really frustrating when we have someone in on kills who is consistently messing up mechanics or just making the fight harder than it needs to be. i understand we need to get people their first kills but it’s unfair to the team to accommodate to those people when they’re not doing the proper research or learning from their mistakes
sorry it took so long to respond i was busy

Babylonius — Today at 3:01 PM
No worries, i'm reaching out to everyone, part of me likes that not everyone is responding at exactly the same time lol

Mango — Today at 3:02 PM
haha

Babylonius — Today at 3:03 PM
So to address the first point, and it largely comes from my very old school perspective of tanking, but you were, based on what I could see, using a DPS legendary and two DPS trinkets for the most part this week correct? I'd imagine some of that plays a part in survivability

Mango — Today at 3:07 PM
so the legendary isn’t something that would contribute to my deaths. while i ran sslk on our first kills, the defensive benefit of sslk over chp is extremely small. on the other hand i haven’t been using defensive trinkets on any bosses (except denathrius) since first kills. i felt through feely craft that for most bosses after the tank buff it was overkill. as for denathrius last night the first pull i had forgot to put on the chest death trinket and was pleasantly surprised when it felt like i didn’t need it at all that pull. we hadn’t pulled denathrius since the buff so i was unsure if i would still need to use it
however denathrius can be king fucky sometimes and there were points where cheat death would have saved me or even a pull. but there was one particular death where i complained about denathrius in whispers with pao and he said “it was because all you had for 6 seconds was an earth shield” hence why i was wanting to reach out and talk about that more with him

Babylonius — Today at 3:12 PM
I agree, and one of the things that we picked ju last night after the fact was that Seth was moving his beacon around a bit when it probably could have been left on you
However, one of the things that the officers talked about last night that was lacking was your consistency with calling out for externals or help in those situations. Looking back at last night you were in the first 4 deaths 11 times on Denathrius and in the first 2 5 times. Obviously some of those were wipe calls and some out of your control, but its been a problem that has popped up before, so there has to be some kind of solution that is in people's control

Mango — Today at 3:20 PM
yes i saw those myself last night and was pretty bummed about that.
most of my deaths were when we were in p3, where pao is calling for seths sac sometimes so i didn’t want to take that away from him and end up having that be his death either
iirc there was only 2 times? where i died before p3. would have to check logs. but one of those times was completely my fault because i couldn’t click the gate going to first add due to how big of an ass denathrius has
second time was when i whispered pao about it and he pointed out the earth shield

Babylonius — Today at 3:23 PM
Makes sense
How are you feeling about the game right now? One of the things I mentioned last night to the other officers is that I feel like you're looking for a change of circumstances in some way, whether its WW or MW or something else.

Mango — Today at 3:28 PM
my jokes about getting out of monk jail are mostly memes. i just wanted to be able to experience other specs/classes to not bore myself of the game completely. i still enjoy tanking in raid and am completely fine with staying on monk next tier.

Babylonius — Today at 3:31 PM
Ok. If there is a situation where you feel like you need a break from Monk or from tanking for a week or few, you just have to let us know and we can try to work it out. I know Pao is planning to move off of DH, and with fights being shit for melee, having one or both tanks provide the raid buffs we need make comp a lot easier, but for farm there's no reason why we can try to give you a chance to play bear or DPS

Mango — Today at 3:31 PM
cool sounds great
i hope i didnt come across as defensive or unwilling to take feedback. alot of my deaths im unsure if i should blame myself or talk to others. its one of the things where im really unsure about in tanking. normally im the type of person to blame myself for everything that goes wrong. but many of the times im unsure if its warranted. i am still and always will be 100% open to feedback and recommendations

Babylonius — Today at 3:37 PM
I appreciate that
One of the things that I'm asking everyone, since it was something that we saw a lot of guilds do, is do you think that you, or the team, would benefit from taking a week or few off? A lot of guilds did so after killing Sire, so I'm interested in people's thoughts on it

Mango — Today at 3:39 PM
i think personally a small break would be very nice. as much as i enjoy bashing my head against slg a lil mental breather would be helpful. however im not gonna throw a tantrum if thats not what you and the officers decide to do.

Babylonius — Today at 3:41 PM
Historically its not something we've done between tiers, but I understand we have almost entirely new players from the past, so it something I wanted to gauge the temperature on

Mango — Today at 3:42 PM
this is my first time in a guild at this level so im up for anything

Babylonius — Today at 3:44 PM
How do you think the adjustment has been for you with that? Anything thats been harder than you've expected or things you still think you need to work on?

Mango — Today at 3:45 PM
i think as a player i feel that ive been able to grow tremendously. however i still have things i need to work on. currently im working on log analysis, as well as connections for what people do in specific raid situations
i also tended to right off the "easier" bosses this tier and didnt do as much preparation as i should have.

Babylonius — Today at 3:47 PM
I think thats a good assessment

Mango — Today at 3:48 PM
how do the officers feel taking a "risk" on me went? i came from very little raiding experience before coming here. was honestly surprised i got a interview let alone a trial offer

Babylonius — Today at 3:53 PM
I think there's a lot of fine tuning that can still happen, in communication, preparation, and positioning, but I think a lot of that comes with experience. There's also a big chunk of it that comes with playing and seeing things from other perspectives. For example if you've never been a melee at this level then its hard to just know where and how to position the boss so that melee have the best uptime, similar with healing and cooldown management

Mango — Today at 3:56 PM
thank you for the feedback i appreciate it. ill continue to work on the points that you mentioned
i would however like to bring back up my second point, as i dont feel it was addressed.

Babylonius — Today at 4:00 PM
You're right, I did want to circle back.
Getting people their first kills is obviously important, but this tier we've struggled with that a bit more in the past, and I think it highlights a problem that the team had this tier with preparation and engagement, which is even more highlighted by the lower performers on the roster
It is something that we've been trying to address this tier, and we're still tryign to strike a balance. WE definitely saw that we probably should have prioritized getting the kills faster than we did this week, but its one of those hindsight things that are hard to see in the moment

Mango — Today at 4:04 PM
yeah hindsight is 2020
i cant speak for others, but when people come in and dont understand how the fight works it feels pretty disrespectful. mistakes happen and sometimes people need to ask more questions which in 100% ok with, im the same way

Babylonius — Today at 4:07 PM
Yeah, we've had some not too fun conversations with people in the past week or two, because I agree that "disrespectful" is a good way to describe how its felt sometimes

Mango — Today at 4:10 PM
i didnt realize there was stuff happening behind the scenes, not that i have a right to know, but thanks for putting some of my worries to ease.

Babylonius — Today at 4:13 PM
Yeah its something that we've been trying to handle, and finding a balance between telling people that things are being handled and not just handling them all out in the open is a hard balance to strike

Mango — Today at 4:14 PM
for sure. people also have a right to privacy when theyre being talked to

Babylonius — Today at 4:16 PM
On that point, is there anything you think that I, as the GM, or the other officers, could be doing better or differently to help the team be more succcessful?

Mango — Today at 4:19 PM
something that immediately jumps out to me is on tuesday. there was one time where schlim brought up a concern and jesir shot it down almost harshly. and at the end of raid (which i wasnt here for the full conversation) it felt like koji was closed off to hearing the healers concerns about the new strat. i cant speak for how everyones felt in those situations just my observations. i think what could help that is just being more openminded to what others have to say about strats or what might help the raid kill a boss quicker.

Babylonius — Today at 4:23 PM
Understandable
One of the things that we've been trying to do is to figure out the situations where it really is a personal play problem or a strat or raid problem and how we address that stuff. In the past we've had situations where we talked things to death and wasted time just talking about what we could do without doing it, so its possible we've swung too far in the other direction.

Mango — Today at 4:31 PM
for sure. its a balancing act that you guys have to figure out and i dont envy it. when it comes to raiders voicing their concerns only to be shut down it can be hurtful towards other raiders unsure if they should speak up about something themselves. i guess coming across as more open minded is the best way to put it.
ultimately what we do as a team is up to you and the officers judgement. but letting people ask their questions or voice concerns without shutting them down could be beneficial

Babylonius — Today at 4:35 PM
Makes sense
Is there anything else you wanted to mention or let me know about?

Mango — Today at 4:43 PM
nope i think i’m good. thank you for taking the time to talk to me, listen to my concerns, and give me some feedback. i really appreciate it

Babylonius — Today at 4:44 PM
No problem, I appreciate your time and your thoughts. Let me know if anything else pops up as you think about it