AAR, Titan Raid

For those of you who've never served in the armed forces, you may not be aware of the abbreviation AAR. It stands for After Action Report. It was one of those things that can sometimes be a rather tedious and boring part of the job for NCOs (Non-Commissioned Officers) and Officers, following the execution of whatever mission happened to be on-tap. It was a chance for everyone to recap what the mission's goals had been, and to examine how well those plans had been executed, what went right, and what went wrong, and most importantly, how to correct deficiencies before the next mission.

Well, I must say that our series of Titan raids hasn't been as successful as any of us would've liked. Each time, we had *something* go wrong somewhere along the line that prevented us from seeing the maniacal machine meet its demise.

Of course, this time was no exception. The Warforged Titan, once again, prevailed upon our party of adventurers.

But, we were very close this time.

Very close.

Still, it seems that there were a few things we did that I thought deserved some attention.

First would be to determine precisely what everyone's roles are.

One of the biggest problems adventurers face when they take on the Titan is his rolling aggro. That is, he will target one of the adventurers in the party and attempt to kill them, then change targets and attempt to kill that adventurer, and then change targets yet again. Managing the Titan's aggression isn't as easy as most of the other quests in the game, simply because no one player can hold the Titan's attention for very long. It's kinda like playing with a two-year old... the attention span is simply too short to be very effective.

As a result, it's necessary to designate which players will serve in which roles. And, there are four basic roles to be served. The first is that comes to mind is that of the aggro manager. This player's sole purpose it to try to keep the attention of the Titan while the others perform their roles. The interesting thing is that the majority of the players in the quest should fill this role. That is, as many as nine of the twelve should be filling this role.

To be successful aggro managers, though, the players filling this role *must* stick together, in one position, so that when the Titans aggro rolls from one player to the next, they're all together, and the Titan doesn't wander around the room, making life difficult for the folks filling the other three rolls. To make things more interesting, the aggro managers *must* move together each time they have to reposition the Titan for an attack. If the aggro managers don't stick together and only move as a single unit, keeping the Titan in the right spot can be almost impossible.

The next role is that of the shooter. One of the players has the responsibility of aiming and shooting a large laser-like device. It's the only weapon that can penetrate the Titan's shields. The problem is that this player has to maintain a position that's relatively exposed. So, when the Titan's aggro rolls to this person, they really need to have the ability to deflect the titan's weapons and/or keep themselves healed up once they've taken damage.

Another role is that of the crystal runner. The laser-like device can't operate without power, and its up to the crystal runner to bring power crystals from the storage room over to the power slot on the device. Again, this is a role where the player is relatively exposed, but this player gets to move, and has a chance to evade the assault of the Titan. However, this is still a role in which the player serving stands a significant chance of dying, and really needs to have the ability to keep themselves healed.

The final role is that of the Titan killer. This role is challenging because this is the player who has the dubious honor of taking down the pillars that temporarily disable the Titan while the shooter takes his shots, but is also the player who has to be on-hand to deal the final blow once his shields are finally down. The killer has to be able to endure a significant amount of damage and/or be able to keep themselves healed, or be able to make their way to within range of one of the healers in the party.

In the past, I've seen the role of shooter be successfully filled by, of all things, a Cleric. This isn't to say that it couldn't be successfully filled by some other character class, but that a Cleric, by their very nature, is usually well defended because of their heavy armor *and* they have the ability to heal themselves.

The role of the runner is also often successfully filled by a Rogue. And, again, this isn't to say another character class couldn't do it, but that the Rogue's typically high Dexterity and Evasion gives them the ability to maneuver across the game board relatively quickly and easily.

Of course, the role of the Titan killer is usually best filled by one of the tank-type characters that has a *lot* of Hit Points and a high Armor Class. Usually.

Everyone else, by default, becomes an aggro manager.

Mind you, we've tried to keep the players in these roles as much as possible, but the battlefield rarely sticks to the plans you've made for it. Particularly because the developers at Turbine have tweaked the behavior of the Titan with each successive Module they've installed. And, this last Module has made things more annoying than ever. The Titan can launch your character across the game board pretty easily. It really makes it difficult to keep the group of aggro managers together when they're sent flying against their will.

Now, knowing what we normally like to do helps us evaluate what actually happened this last time.

I wanted to start with the suggestion that folks take off their armor and don a balance item. I *completely* understand this suggestion, as it allows each character a better chance to regain their footing when the Titan knocks them down. Which happens a *lot*. But, I do have to question the suggestion for *everyone* to take off their armor. It seems to me that there were an awful lot of players in our raid this past Friday night who took a lot more damage than was necessary. Particularly since many were aggro managers who were simply supposed to be remaining in a single location until instructed to move to the next. In such a role, it should not matter that they're knocked off their feet, except when they need to heal themselves. So, it might not be as good an idea for everyone to take off their armor.

Of course, there are alternatives. There are Shield spells and Sphere's of Invulnerability, and things like that for those folks who would like to increase their dexterity without sacrificing their character's survivability.

But, I believe this is something everyone in the raid should be aware of. That the removal of armor may *not* be the best idea for every character in the raid. And that the ability to self-buff and self-heal are extremely important for those who do choose to increase their Dexterity the old fashioned way.

The group had also made the decision, once characters began to die with rapid succession, to let characters remain dead so the Clerics could concentrate on keeping the key role players on their feet.

At the time, this seemed like a good idea. Until there were only four left on their feet, that is... The two Clerics, the shooter and the Titan Killer. At that point, the Titan's aggro could only roll amongst the four of them, because everyone else was dead. At that point, there was no way the four remaining characters could successfully manage the Titan's aggro, and this eventually led to our failure of the raid.

It seems to me that it's imperative that as many characters be kept alive as possible, so there remains a large number of aggro managers in the group to keep the Titan's attention. Without this group of aggro managers, the shooter, runner and killer are all subject to the Titan's wrath, and the chances of success drop significantly. The problem is how to go about doing this.

In the case of what we had this past Friday night, both of the Clerics were running about trying to keep everyone alive. It quickly became an overwhelming task for them. And, this despite the fact that many folks were doing all they could to heal themselves. In fact, neither of the Clerics were serving as shooter or runner, so that meant they often had to break away from the group of aggro managers to go throw a heal on the others. This wasn't so much a problem in terms of keeping folks healed, but it did reduce the effectiveness of the aggro managers because folks were more spread-out than what we'd have preferred.

We did also have a couple of mis-fires. And I'm not trying to fault anyone. One of the mis-fires happened purely because the Titan decided he didn't like where he was standing. Although the pillar did knock him down, the laser wasn't in the correct position to hit the Titan once he'd fallen to the floor. The other was a miscommunication, and a pillar was knocked down when the laser had no power. The funny thing was that these two mis-fires weren't quest-ending events. In fact, we still had two pillars left to succeed with.

No, our problem was that we had a party wipe before we could use the last two pillars.

Of course, this is DDO. So, using what we learned from each of the previous attempts, we have a much better idea of how we can be successful the next time. And, because it's DDO, ther *will* be a next time.

After all, Obsydiian is still looking for that elusive pair of Seven-Fingered Gloves.

But, next time, I'm hoping we also have a full party of twelve adventurers. Perhaps having three Clerics would be helpful, too.

Who knows, though...

We'll just have to see what we can put together.

Keep it fun!