Choreography of Vault of Night 5

[Bonulino]

I have run the raid enough times to understand the sequence of events that must happen, but have not really figured out what my role in the party is. This is particularly true when I run with my Mechanic Rogue, less so with my Barbarian. It seems that every group I run with splits up and goes into separate corridors to accomplish the tasks simultaneously. As a Barbarian, I usually head into the west hall first and kill trash mobs, then join the rest in the north hall, where I await the opportunity to kill more trash mobs. On my Rogue, I am not sure where my effort is best utilized. Since there is usually at least one other Rogue or an Artificer, by the time I get to where the traps are, someone else has already disarmed them. I run desperately after the Group (I always seem to be the only one who can't run the raid in my sleep) and try to pump a few bolts here and there into some enemies. I fell like a piker, even though I am actively trying to contribute. Any positive advice would be appreciated.

[Faltout]

First of all, the key is to enter the raid before the other rogues or artie get in.

Most DPS characters will go west as soon as they get in. There's 1 blade trap there early on, so you go and disarm this one first.
After that, you head north alone or with another trapper and disarm the spinning blades traps at both sides.
By the time you do that, the group will have cleared the west side so go disarm the chest traps so people can loot the chest.

Appart from traps, there are locked doors everywhere. Wizards can also get those, but sometimes it happens that only one character can disarm traps and open locked doors. In that case, the group splitting up won't do any good. Since noone can progress if you're not there, you basically go with the group.
First you go east to unlock the puzzle door and leave someone there to kill drones if group wants conquest. Then you go west to disarm the trap and open 2 locked doors and also get traps at chest. Then you go north from left side to open a locked door. When side is done, drop down to unlock a chest. Then go east again to unlock several doors. Then south where you disarm another trap.

My personal opinion is that this quest is stupid when the group splits all the time, where one person does all the work. people in the forums say this is one of the best raids, but I despise the way it is ran. Too much self-sufficiency needed and know-how. One person to take care of the puzzle and the drones. Everyone should have a nice jump skill to make it past the bridge because noone ever stays on the 2 levers to open the way for the right group. North side gets opened when 4 people are there doing 2 levers each and people arriving at north side later get locked out.
VoN 6 is way better than 5

[Thalone]

If you don't know what objectives need to be done, the best bet is to ask where you're needed.

The west is the first chokepoint in the objectives as the ring is needed for the north. So if no one but you can open doors, then you want to clear west first and open the two locked doors leading to the miniboss. There's also the blade trap there that people may need disabled. Depending on whether you're needed to disable the lightning traps at the chest or if the chest is being left for later (e.g., clearing is in progress and you're waiting for more people to join the group), you can then head back and do the north traps so people can get through relatively safely. The puzzle door should be opened around this time; which you do first depends on how quickly the group is moving. Once you're at the north, you can either follow the party or wait at the next objectives to start clearing faster while people are making their way back. There's a good walkthrough of the preraid on the wiki.

That's the "efficient" way of doing it. When I lead VoN 5, I will tend to open and solve the puzzle first (I always start IP), then clear west. Hopefully the party fills relatively quickly and at that point we have enough people to do the north split. If your stats are high enough, you can solo one side of the switches (the induction bar for pulling levers/etc doesn't have to be 100% full for the action to complete; just twitch and move on to the next switch). Or if you have a pet, you can have it pull the lever or hit the WIS rune. If you have wings, you can also easily jump from the right side to the left using the bridge supports.

My personal opinion is that this quest is stupid when the group splits all the time, where one person does all the work.

Not sure I'm understanding you properly. But nonlinear quests are my favourite. People can split up and do objectives/optionals, greatly speeding the completion. And if you prefer moving together as a group, you are free to post a group requiring the party to stay together. It's kind of on my mind since I just finished a few hours of PUGging where my party members were following me all around the dungeons instead of splitting up, even though we were stomping the quests.

[Merlin-ator]

If you're worried about looking like a piker, don't. I have yet to see a single VoN5 without at least 3 people piking at the entrance. In fact, ask the leader if he can assign you to piking duty :P

[Faltout]

Not sure I'm understanding you properly. But nonlinear quests are my favourite. People can split up and do objectives/optionals, greatly speeding the completion. And if you prefer moving together as a group, you are free to post a group requiring the party to stay together. It's kind of on my mind since I just finished a few hours of PUGging where my party members were following me all around the dungeons instead of splitting up, even though we were stomping the quests.

Linear quests, non-linear quests... What's the difference? There are other things that make a quest likable. Tactical fights, tactical movements, puzzles, coordination, story, scenery, challenging monsters, loot, experience, uniqueness. That's pretty much all. Trying to categorize quests in other ways and saying "I like non-linear quests" is just missing the bigger picture.

While I don't find VoN 5 a bad quest, the way it's being ran loses:
- Story (It all happens too fast)
- Puzzles (except the one person doing them)
- coordination (since everyone goes wherever he wants and the mechanics like the 2 levers for the bridge get totally ignored)
It still maintains challenging monsters, scenery, experience but those are not what I am looking to get from this quest.

I'm not against people splitting up because the quest requires it, but I don't like missing out on two thirds of the quest because either I am not fast enough to make it to the next part or because I need to solo kill a hundred drones in the tile puzzle room.
I'm also not blind. I can see that 90% of the people that run this quest move "solo" all the time except the lever doors. Even if I don't like it I still want to run this quest, so I can't keep those people out by putting an LFM "VoN 5/6 elite. Group stays together". People would mock this LFM.
So why did I mention that I don't like this quest? Because in other threads people mention quite a lot that "VoN 5 is one of the best raids in the game and this can be confirmed by it being the most ran raid". So I want to show to whoever reads this post that not all people like "soloing in a group" raids/quests and the devs should not make content with that in mind because as I pointed out above there are many things that a quest needs to be appealing.