I dont actually think we are disagreeing on much
Sieger
tell me where you disagree on history here:
1. we walked away from open world race for all the marbles which you were the primary decision maker on (I think we agree here -- and we agree that the decisions to not funnel ruined our chances- but we still should have stayed open world and tried as atabishi and others have pointed out)
2. we attempted to clear instances by glitching we failed (of which i was a part of) -- we disagree on the fact here regarding the horse. i tested on test with my SK and AA horse -- we tried to scrounge together what money we could in real time during the raid and i went and got the only horse i could afford with what we had. i had not tested it with the slower horse and it was pretty much a dead end
I'm going to Bishi style wall of text here to try to actually fully respect your points and explain where I'm coming from.
When you say we didn't funnel are you talking about keys or gear? If you mean gear maybe you missed my post where I specifically refuted your funneling claim, we funneled gear for Luclin launch, to tanks and warriors. We then acquired damage bonus weapons for monks and things of that nature, we actually didn't do a ton of raids that dropped weapons in Luclin or Velious before the first VT. Weapons did drop in a few of those raids that weren't directly funneled, and maybe that is what you are talking about. But you're probably unaware we had gotten good damage bonus, Velious weapons, in the hands of like all the melee we brought to VT. Our actual DPS issue was that we had too many clerics, too many monks, and too few int casters. That ties in to the fact we did not pre-anoint 40, and the top 40 who put in the most work that we "could" make a raid from, just wasn't an ideal comp.
Would I have done that part differently if I could redo it? I really don't know. Something I take real offense to (and for someone to accuse me of showing my ass after this thing you said) is you saying that you tried to carry the guild on your back. Dude there were a lot of people who gave up weeks of their lives for that launch. There were hundreds of people farming VT shards. You were farming haste belts, something I will never not give you big credit for, but there was a world outside of your little world of people doing a hell of a lot of work for the guild. Most of them were not "Faceless Veterans" (a concept with minimal meaning because most people have mixed guild ancestry), so to me to reward OG Faceless people that probably I know their in raid abilities better, but who maybe weren't going as hard at the launch with keys, I dunno. I'm not sure I wanted to win that hard, because I felt like it would've built my guild on a foundation that would have doomed me to long term failure. I could be wrong about that, by the way. I don't know. But the idea we did no gear funneling or gearing of people in the first 40 isn't accurate, Tevinter who you may remember from Agnarr told us very early on how important damage bonus weapons would be for Monks in VT against MOTM mobs, and we made sure they had them. There may have been individual weapons that didn't get funneled, and maybe you saw that and that's what you remember, I don't know.
The total amount of raid gear we had even available at all going into VT was not high. We got a ton of gear from group content and the Bazaar, Plane of Growth trash clears, the Haste belts that you and your crew farmed etc.
Now as to your claim I walked away, I am willing to say there are two separate options. Maybe yours was right, but I do not believe mine was "walking away." The race was server first AHR, not "dps races in OW VT up to AHR." After the first DPS race in OW VT, I did not think we could beat Amtrak's DPS. Cupie mentioned he knew that was the case, we looked at all their characters classes in ShowEQ and looked at our raid. They had a better raid for DPS than we did (this ties in to the Mistake I mention about raid comp and picking specific people.) So if we can't beat them in a DPS race, because DPS races largely come down to basic math, my mind goes to can we still win at all? If we start training them, they can't use OW VT. But they have an AHR waiting for them in DZ that they regain access to in a few hours, so to me a train war advances nothing at all, in fact us getting bogged down in a train war would simply reduce our already bad chances of pulling a win, down to 0, because we would be bogged down in that, then they'd go to DZ when the time came, and what would our option be then? Full clear OW faster than they can kill AHR only in their DZ? Full clear a DZ faster than they can kill AHR in a DZ? So to me the only logical way we had ANY chance to still beat AHR faster than Amtrak was to hit our DZ, and try to get to her in DZ before they could get to her in OW. Our DZ had a 6 hour timer, and I think their DZ came up in around 7-8 hours, so in theory if our 40 had been able to kill AHR before the DZ closed, we would at least be positioned to win. If we actually were doing well in DZ and they were getting close to AHR in OW, I 100% would have had a few people go and train the fuck out of them, interrupt their raid, and hopefully give us time to get there first. The reality is we did terribly in the DZ.
At that point sure we could've gone out and griefed them in OW until their DZ came up. I didn't. I told Drillisen grats and he had built a great raid. Some of that is just having a small bit of class, and I admittedly don't have much of it, but I think there is something to be said for just tipping the hat and taking the loss, instead of being a full on cuck about it, which frankly is how I would've felt about just griefing them when it could make zero difference in who wins.
Now your perception is we stay in OW and keep doing those DPS races and "somehow" we win. By the way that would mean we would have to follow them during their skips, skips we couldn't do, skips that we tried (after you left even) and while we half ass got some of the skips working, we had individuals fuck up bad trying them. Like I said, our first VT was very bad. I'm actually glad that was done behind closed doors and not in public to be honest. I couldn't have known this at the time I made my decision, but we would likely not have been able to follow them as they skipped OW bosses anyway, due to inability to execute on the skips. I'm fine with your opinion your strategy was better, but characterizing my strategy as "giving up" isn't true. I've explained the actual logic involved, and think my strategy was a way to actually have a chance to win.
As for the horse stuff, so honestly man my memory is we tested horse vs no horse, and we could actually sometimes sorta get the glitch to work without a horse at all, but it was low %. Horse raised that % a lot, so my memory is we always assumed a mount would be needed, which further confuses me as to why you perceive we wouldn't give you a mount. And then I specifically remember scrounging plat together for one and you said the slower mount likely would work based on what you thought from the testing. I spent over $1000 on the Luclin launch out of pocket, the idea that I wouldn't have just given you a 4kr mount at the beginning if I thought that was needed confuses me because that would be way out of character for me.
