reaper ponderings

[jeremyt]

bear with me, going to try and avoid this being a rambling post. the struggle will be real though.

So im playing a pretty basic alt. still filling out EDs even. running in a semi-off destiny and has gear that could be upgraded a decent if not outstanding amount. So i am in no way shape or form bringing the uber powa to the table. just a regular dwarf paladin tryin to make it in the world.

so my good friend has the star, we finish doing the lev 23s the previous day, solid group through druid chain, was a real fun time, ended up ddo'ing way too long but loved it. great group, ended up getting my 10th and 11th reaper AP on this toon yesterday, huge game sesh of uberness.

today was a different experience. we hit gianthold, start duo and folks start hitting lfm as we cruise through feast. we get a duo from one guild, a warlock from monty that actually played very well under level (kudos), and a melee fvs.

now i am not positive but i think the fvs might have had me ignored, which is odd since i havent played this toon in many years, and when i did it was mostly solo and it was only for a week or so. but communication was given but not acknowledged or heeded. so, ya thats odd.

just setting up the situation. so the guilded duo is a cleric and paladin. paladin build looks very like to my own toon, except 4 less levels and running in unyielding. so a bit of a give/take but should be about even with my toon considering all my gear is lev 18 or lower. I feel promise this is going to be a fun team worky group.

cleric from guild duo, is chatty. says 'hey folks, im down on hp/i plan to do X and Y in this fight" and then he would follow through pretty darn well despite some limitations his toon had. good dude.

paladin toon was struggling to be effective in feast but survived. Nobody was taking too serious of damage in feast except my friend a few times getting caught by spells as he plinked away.

the fvs toon joined last and we had started cabal. his toon was seriously flawed. very flawed/zero preparedness for reaper/didnt heal others or cast spells: melee toaster build. contributed next to zero dps, extremely squishy and full negative heal amp. spent quite a bit of time and most my lays helping keep him up.

So, as the group fills up in cabal, i am already not outstandingly impressed with paladin. His outgoing lays in feast where non existant, his tactics where not landing so didnt really help at all in that angle and his dps was understandably weak. So we decide to do traps since my friend is on mechanic and it splits up end fight/more reaper xp/ tons of benefits. So the first room fight is serious. I get and maintain aggro with my shieldy paladin, no problem done this quite a few times before. The heals are slow coming, the cleric it seems doesnt cycle cures much due to SP limitations so it was pretty much work down HP then huge heal bomb to full. I needed more on my not uber toon. paladin watches as i die. swinging his sword merrily along. So im kinda jilted. im like dude...im playing paladin, i know you could have easily kept me up/helped keep me up, please engage healer mode when necessary. he did respond, but he responded with " i do" which he didnt. ok so its morning time, maybe getting sick, my patience isnt at its best. But im just like *** am i gonna do about it? notta. so just ignore it and make sure to keep lays for myself/mechanic and cleric on standby expecting no help from paladin.

So cabal started with kinda negative vibe but was just gonna plow ahead and hope the group started working as a team going forward. So fvs hits lfm, doesnt get to quest till about point where we hit shrine i believe or right before it. big toaster charges into melee, kinda suprising, and i was actually kinda interested to see if this toaster fvs was bringing some hidden uber to the table (long interest in melee divines, call me a glutton for punishment) but sadly he doesnt do much in dps, doesnt have any CC tactics, doesnt throw heals, doesnt throw any divine CC spells and made me stop dpsing to heal him (which admittedly after first few fights i stopped doing).

so i send a tell to fvs "hey man, your making me focus on curing you instead of doing my thing, mind dropping back to heal and cast?" and i get no response. So at this point i take full blame, my patience ran out. i just put my head down, do best i can for rest of quest to keep folks up, dps/tactics like i do on this toon. fvs ends up with like 2 kills. other paladin like 4 and i think the cleric healing 99.999% of the time and CCing **** near carried them on his back personally. I think i ended up with about a third of total kills and friend had the massive bulk on his mechanic (of course). So me and my best ddo bud had just started our gianthold round, quest #2, and I was like hey dude, im not down for carrying paladin and fvs through the whole **** chain when the teamwork of the players and the capabilities of their toons where so lacking. My friend tosses me star, as i have a long history of just going full **** and booting people. But in my agitated state i was still able to piece together some semblance of restraint and didnt. I tossed star back to friend and said im just going to split.

So i split.

But the **** part comes next. I was anticipating my friend plodding along struggling with lame group, maybe finding some fun in it. but nope, My friend tells me he reformed the group but added a blurb before he did that "im sorry guys, i dont want to be a ****, but this is reaper mode and i need to reform. i will invite back folks who were prepared (cleric/warlock). so this sets up a horribly negative situation. so this reform implementation was fueled by my departure but it was soured with not so gently worded reform Gtell from friend (he is usually a sweetheart to puggers). I know friend ment for it to be a diplomatic "hey guys this is whats up gtell". but ended up going pretty sour on him. He logged off in a negative mood shortly after due to group failing/bad vibes. don't blame him/i logged as well.

so im at a loss. I definitely wasn't going to have fun carrying folks that where not communicative/sucked/where not trying. and i pretty much ruined the ddo experience this morning for my friend, we would have been fine staying as a pair like we normally do and just scooting through the chain. we had such great luck yesterday with our pug...we just had high hopes. I know pugging is a danger, but now im faced with fact that when you roll a dud in pugs, now it is kind of like im expected to stick it out and carry these folks to not hurt feelings. this makes it not fun for me/i probably wont pug. this seems counter productive.

Communicating with folks to try to get them into team mode or to get their toon more prepared for the challenges of reaper is still met with extreme sensitivity/negativity. folks dont want to hear from anyone how they can improve, its embarrassing, it doesn't seem to work. But i feel stuck because i for sure am not just going to silently carry these folks to reaper completions while all they add is scaling.

so i see a issue, and i dont see any easy solutions. shrug

[psykopeta]

Sorry to read that but after so many years of childish and selfish ddo (and you should know thelanis is the most selfish and childish server xD) stuff like that is what happens most times

I've been 1 month doing 2k favor for 1st time in other servers(causr i never hit even 200 on them, and purchased 1 month vip for the puppy so... It was the best idea i had)

And can tell you that even in the servers where the lfm are lacking (at this point i think channels should be removed) the cooperation and interest from other players was insane, i've been running reaper lots of times out there and felt like playing a proper mmorpg, slower on lower diffs, much safer in tougher diffs(reaper)

[Vint]

This situation does suck. I would have sent your friend a tell that you would go back to doing and start a new LFM, and not taking back anyone from the first group that was dead weight. Maybe this is why so many people have me on their friends list, but I am not going out of my to hurt people. Besides, your a great player to hell with what others think.

[jeremyt]

thanks for the thoughts and vouchers guys. still mulling over in my brain some different approaches, vint's classy and classic ninja reform just seems like the best solution. It doesn't communicate any problems to the folks lacking in reaper/so that problem probably doesn't get remedied/ but less hurt feelings, less drama and hopefully everyone still having fun in the game.

I above all don't want to just drive away ddo players in scores, far from it. Id love to help the server population as a whole flourish and grow, but that doesn't include carrying pikers :P ...maybe after a few ninja reforms the folks would start gently getting the idea that they need to be better prepared for reaper themselves...making the evolution more organic and not some 'elitist vet griping about my build/play'

[rover223]

I only do reaper levels 1-20 because it speeds up the process back to epic levels. Most quests only need to be run once and given how long I've been playing, once is enough to avoid a quest being tedious. Once I hit 20, I'm content to run hard or elite.