Bolty Conversation

Babylonius — Yesterday at 12:40 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?

Bolty — Yesterday at 8:32 PM
Hi Babs.  While I'm never truly satisfied with my own play, I do wonder how much the gearing meta in SL has altered peoples' approach and desire for raiding.  I feel like there's far more emphasis put on parsing than getting kills as of late.

Babylonius — Yesterday at 8:38 PM
How so?

Bolty — Yesterday at 8:39 PM
Less focus on mechanics versus trying to get that last spell off.

Babylonius — Yesterday at 8:48 PM
I agree with that, what do you mean about the gearing meta changing peoples approach?

Bolty — Yesterday at 8:52 PM
Raiding isn't as key anymore to gearing up, as PvP was a significant alternative and M+ provided a lot more options as well.

Babylonius — Yesterday at 9:17 PM
Gotcha, I agree that could play a part
How are you doing with everything?

Bolty — Yesterday at 10:32 PM
Sorry for the long delays in responses, doing things.  I'm fine.  I made it through Azshara; this is nothing by comparison.

Hindsight being what it is, I think it's clear that we shot for an all new SLG strat too early, which yes is easy to say looking back so please don't think I'm randomly bitching.  I think healer input gets put aside fairly often, and the healers were all in agreement that the timing changes and inconsistencies make the fight much more challenging than it needs to be.  By the way, the timing changes and inconsistencies still aren't corrected on SLG, we just kept pulling it until we got a decent pull - but the 2nd transition of the fight is still inconsistent from pull to pull.  Perhaps this is simply a Disc Priest perspective, but I'm affected the most by being unable to tell if Meteor 7 will be gripped, soaked, Barrier'ed, or Spirit Shelled from pull to pull, and with only 4 healers, it matters.  Meteor 8 can be as little as 8 seconds after Meteor 7 or as much as 20 depending on transition timing.  A Disc Priest has to predict what will happen 20s-25s before it does, and I can't.

One can make the argument that "if people played better, it wouldn't be a problem."  But that's always true.  If we were Limit, we could make any strat work.  The key sign of a good strategy/approach is that it minimizes risk of wipes, and I don't think we're doing that on SLG.  Finding a way to shore up the transition times will generate fewer wipes.

Babylonius — Yesterday at 10:52 PM
I agree
And I also agree that because of the way Disc works you’re forced to look at things in a very different way from almost everyone else on the roster
With that in mind one of the things I wanted to mention is how well you did with a lot of things this tier. You were in for pretty much every pull of every boss and were generally very reliable.
I remember a long time ago where conversations were had with you about performance and consistency, and in recent memory you’ve been very solid. I don’t think we do enough to highlight the positives people do.

Babylonius — Today at 10:45 AM
Given that you've been with the team for so long, is there anything that you think I, as the GM, or the other officers could do better or differently to help the raid be more successful?

Bolty — Today at 4:14 PM
I'm not privy to officer conversations - nor do I really want to be, mind you - but I do get the impression that healing feedback isn't being valued as highly as perhaps it should be.  I think we had a situation in the past raid week where there was a consistent feedback point from all healers participating in an encounter, and when it was brought up, it was summarily dismissed as "people just need to play better."

You know I'm a pretty quiet guy, and if I'm speaking up about an issue I see on a pull - in voice - I'm trying to raise a concern regarding my observation as to what is a problem in our raid's approach.  I've been raising those on Sludgefist and SLG.

For Sludgefist, my general observation that our players happily stand on each other during during Seismic Shifts.  This is because they want to eke out as much damage as possible and typically survive the hits, so they don't mind if they're sacrificing healer mana to top them back up.  The two issues there is that 1) late in the fight, we can't top them back up because there's just too much overall damage, and 2) not every class can just eat Seismic Shift damage if someone stands on them.  Case in point: me, who has to run around scared shitless every Shift because if another ranged player inches over to me, I die.

For SLG, we've discussed that already.  All four healers on the encounter were reporting that we needed to figure out a way to consistently time the 2nd intermission, and the feedback was generally "we don't see this as a problem."  But healing issues are often fairly invisible to non-healers, and then people die to things they typically don't, and it can be difficult for non-healers to trace the problem back to its source.
I'll go back to the 2nd intermission timing thing.  Each Meteor throughout that fight is covered by CDs.  From my perspective, I cover each and every Meteor with either a Spirit Shell or a Barrier.  Our inconsistent timing of the 2nd intermission makes that difficult to impossible to perform.  After intermission, Meteor timings reset.  Our first intermissions are very consistently timed - there's only an occasional pull where things get delayed.  Our second intermissions are all over the place.

What happens is that Phase 3 starts and a Meteor comes down, and that winds up not being covered by a Spirit Shell or Barrier due to the inconsistent timing.  No one dies.  Here's a classic case of the "good recovery" meme: although to a non-healer, it looks like we're doing okay because we all survived the Meteor, the healers can recognize and tell you instantly that we're screwed.  We're all now behind the ball with most of raid at half-health or lower, and new mechanics are coming out - we need to soak, we have Wicked Blades coming out, tank damage is severe, and we never catch up.  This leads to people dying to things they wouldn't have, and it's not immediately obvious that the problem stemmed from our missing CD on Meteor 8.

I'll reiterate that Discipline Priests are a wild spec; we live and die by our ramp timings and everything comes down to windows of literal seconds here and there for timing properly.  I remember one Denathrius pull where I was 4 seconds late performing a ramp in P2 which caused me to be out of window for the first P3 ramp, killing most of the ranged as a result.  The spec is so highly reliant on consistency of timings for things and it is hideously terrible at reacting to damage that has gone out with no lead-time of preparation.  It was so bad during many of the SLG pulls that I briefly considered going Holy.

Thanks for listening to my Ted Talk.  :slight_smile:

Babylonius — Today at 4:42 PM
I think thats a very well explained point

Bolty — Today at 4:44 PM
Do you agree with it?  It's okay if you don't.  As I was saying, I had the perception that healer feedback was being dismissed, but I don't see what goes on in officer chat or other communications.  Perceptions often don't match reality.

Babylonius — Today at 4:45 PM
I think given that you spoke up this week and were summarily shut down is evidence that it doesn't NOT happen
but I agree with what you said that its not a problem that non-healers can really see

Babylonius — Today at 5:03 PM
I think its one of those situations where I trust you enough that if you feel its a problem then it is a problem because there's no way I will be able to see if it is or not

Babylonius — Today at 10:45 AM
Given that you've been with the team for so long, is there anything that you think I, as the GM, or the other officers could do better or differently to help the raid be more successful?

Bolty — Today at 4:14 PM
I'm not privy to officer conversations - nor do I really want to be, mind you - but I do get the impression that healing feedback isn't being valued as highly as perhaps it should be.  I think we had a situation in the past raid week where there was a consistent feedback point from all healers participating in an encounter, and when it was brought up, it was summarily dismissed as "people just need to play better."

You know I'm a pretty quiet guy, and if I'm speaking up about an issue I see on a pull - in voice - I'm trying to raise a concern regarding my observation as to what is a problem in our raid's approach.  I've been raising those on Sludgefist and SLG.

For Sludgefist, my general observation that our players happily stand on each other during during Seismic Shifts.  This is because they want to eke out as much damage as possible and typically survive the hits, so they don't mind if they're sacrificing healer mana to top them back up.  The two issues there is that 1) late in the fight, we can't top them back up because there's just too much overall damage, and 2) not every class can just eat Seismic Shift damage if someone stands on them.  Case in point: me, who has to run around scared shitless every Shift because if another ranged player inches over to me, I die.

For SLG, we've discussed that already.  All four healers on the encounter were reporting that we needed to figure out a way to consistently time the 2nd intermission, and the feedback was generally "we don't see this as a problem."  But healing issues are often fairly invisible to non-healers, and then people die to things they typically don't, and it can be difficult for non-healers to trace the problem back to its source.
I'll go back to the 2nd intermission timing thing.  Each Meteor throughout that fight is covered by CDs.  From my perspective, I cover each and every Meteor with either a Spirit Shell or a Barrier.  Our inconsistent timing of the 2nd intermission makes that difficult to impossible to perform.  After intermission, Meteor timings reset.  Our first intermissions are very consistently timed - there's only an occasional pull where things get delayed.  Our second intermissions are all over the place.

What happens is that Phase 3 starts and a Meteor comes down, and that winds up not being covered by a Spirit Shell or Barrier due to the inconsistent timing.  No one dies.  Here's a classic case of the "good recovery" meme: although to a non-healer, it looks like we're doing okay because we all survived the Meteor, the healers can recognize and tell you instantly that we're screwed.  We're all now behind the ball with most of raid at half-health or lower, and new mechanics are coming out - we need to soak, we have Wicked Blades coming out, tank damage is severe, and we never catch up.  This leads to people dying to things they wouldn't have, and it's not immediately obvious that the problem stemmed from our missing CD on Meteor 8.

I'll reiterate that Discipline Priests are a wild spec; we live and die by our ramp timings and everything comes down to windows of literal seconds here and there for timing properly.  I remember one Denathrius pull where I was 4 seconds late performing a ramp in P2 which caused me to be out of window for the first P3 ramp, killing most of the ranged as a result.  The spec is so highly reliant on consistency of timings for things and it is hideously terrible at reacting to damage that has gone out with no lead-time of preparation.  It was so bad during many of the SLG pulls that I briefly considered going Holy.

Thanks for listening to my Ted Talk.  :slight_smile:

Babylonius — Today at 4:42 PM
I think thats a very well explained point

Bolty — Today at 4:44 PM
Do you agree with it?  It's okay if you don't.  As I was saying, I had the perception that healer feedback was being dismissed, but I don't see what goes on in officer chat or other communications.  Perceptions often don't match reality.

Babylonius — Today at 4:45 PM
I think given that you spoke up this week and were summarily shut down is evidence that it doesn't NOT happen
but I agree with what you said that its not a problem that non-healers can really see

Babylonius — Today at 5:03 PM
I think its one of those situations where I trust you enough that if you feel its a problem then it is a problem because there's no way I will be able to see if it is or not