Underground Trial Run 10/23/2011

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~ The Earthguard ~

Vary rarely does the lemming approach accomplish much. If it does, it usually works over a much longer period of time than would an organized approach. Remember that the Avatar fight on the UGT is timed.

Recently, I've switched strategies for the Avatar fight based on the first UGT I ever lead and a tactic used as a fallback method when the normal method wasn't working. Normally, Lore Pets during the final fight would be avoided due to the fact that they could turn on you if confused. Sometimes this wouldn't work out for various reasons and as a last ditch effort, pets would be brought out to try to turn the tide. Sometimes this actually worked, though it required people to be able to regroup mid fight. Therefore, I decided to try to start with Lore Pets to take advantage of the fact people are naturally grouped up right before the end fight. Using Lore Pets relies very heavily on having enough Confuse Protection.

• The magnitude of the Avatar's Confuse is 20. Before even entering the trial, make sure people with Tactics are evenly distributed across teams. Leadership buffs affect your team only, not your league mates. Therefore, having these people all on one team isn't helping the other 2 teams. Of course, there are other forms of Confuse Protection, such as Steamy Mist, CMs, etc. However Tactics, being a pool power, is one of the most easily accessed since any AT can have it. On a full league, I'm usually able to find 3-4 Tactics for each team. You'll also want a count of how many people with Clarion are on your league.

If you have reason to believe that each team can safely maintain a Confuse Protection of 20 or above, do the following right before the Avatar fight:

• 1) After the cutscene, have everyone gather up at the doorway.

• 2) Have everyone summon their Lore Pets.

• 3) Have everyone cast their Destiny buffs, especially Clarion.

• 4) Have everyone run in and dogpile the Avatar. The only time you'll want to move away is if you're targeted by Grasp of Gaea, a power that can cause Avatar to heal.

• 5) You should have enough DPS and Confuse Protection to take him down in approximately a minute, or before buffs run out.

I've seen this work extremely well twice so far when used as the initial strategy for the Avatar.

In terms of league communication, League Chat can get fairly cluttered such that people who want to listen have difficulty reading. The use of Request is a good idea in theory, but relies on people actually turning Request on. There are times I have difficulty getting people to turn on League Chat alone. There have also been other times where people have commented to me "Gee, Leader X is awfully quiet today" only to realize they missed the part about turning on Request. If you can get it to work, it could definitely be a useful tool.

There are also ways to cut back on League Chat spam without having to resort to an additional channel, such as having people not test macros while instructions are being given. There is nothing more annoying than having DISINTEGRATING! pop up while you are trying to read up on what you're supposed to be doing. Asking people to test macros and hold questions until the end helps to limit that kind of interference.

In general, it's important to realize that sometimes things don't work out, even though it may seem like they should. I have seen a great many highly successful PuG UGTs. I've seen PuG MoUGT runs as well. Overall, everyone does a great job, so try not to get too down if a run fails. I think the biggest cause of failure at this point is that people get overly confident due to previous successes and forget why certain steps are important. Sometimes a good kick in the rear can serve as a useful reminder.

I agree, and I went back to using the Request channel on raids and trials I lead myself, as there's just too much chatter on the League channel and people will miss what I say. Unfortunately, that has its own critics as a couple of people have complained that I "put too much red tape" on my raids and trials, as they do not have the Request channel on a chat tab, and will not add it just for me "since there's a perfectly good League channel already." :\

Just wanted to point out that it's possible you'll get flack either way, unfortunately. Part and parcel of leading something.

As I said before your leadership is unquestionable and I would follow you again in another UG.