As far as alt swapping goes, I don't think it matters if they want to change alts every week.  As long as they can't take their DKP from toon to toon and maybe the bonus is a one time per human, not one time per alt I get to level 46.

Maybe I am missing something, but the bonus points seems to be an incentive to create alts.  I get that maybe the bonus points are a recruting tool of sorts, but if someone wants to change their alt every week and earn DKP on that alt without the bonuses, why should we de-incentivize that?

Incentivize moving from an over populated class to an under populated class by having leadership decide if they can take their DKP with them to the new main.  If someone wants to "main" switch, then maybe we should have a requirement for them to be a higher level than their old main, or max level if their current main is max level.

I think alts getting 50 dkp just for showing up is a mistake.  I would much rather have a planar geared level 50 toon show up to a raid than a group geared (dare I say cloth or raw-hide wearing) level 46 alt show up and get twice the DKP I eaned for that raid.  Perhaps we could allow for alts to earn DKP after they were level 50 and not get the 50 dkp bonus just for leveling a toon to 46 so they can raid, get loot and get bored and start another alt.

As far as alts go, I think alts should ALWAYS get gear after mains.

I know right now we don't have a full raid force and our roster is ever changing.  Until that changes, I suspect it would help to have boxes in the raids, unless the person boxes demonstrates a lack of ability to play both effectively.  I would rather have one serious player playing one toon with complete focus, rather than someone playing multiple characters and us only getting fractional benefit from each of them.  I know the technology today can literally allow people to play at nearly 90% of what a live player would be, but when SHTF I would rather have the complete focus of a main.

As far as closed classes, i don't think it matters until we consistently get 72 people in the raids.  Before that, DPS is DPS is DPS.  And this current content is largely tank and spank.  Kill bosses before clerics run out of mana.  With the Mitigation of the Mighty virtually all melee classes (to include tanks and PETS) are out dpsing the casters, with the exception of Phinny and Yael, which are arguably the easiest mobs in this expansion.

I think the 50 dkp bonus time has run out.  It was a great idea when we first started as the people that had been raiding had no points and needed something to get them going.  Today the 50 point bonus is causing more problems I think.

As far as main changes go, there should probably be an app process if they want to move the DKP over.  And by app, I only mean discuss it with leadership before doing it and expecting a

KFC as you call it seems to be a pretty easy way to get the banestrike.  They seem to respawn pretty quickly too.

I was looking in to Damage Shield Stacking a little bit too, do we know which damage shields stack?  Are damage shield potions in the game yet?  Were we using bard's DS last night?

After looking through the logs and comparing things, I think I have a few suggestions that we can implement to increase our DPS.

Our longest fight last night was Keeper of Souls at 400 Seconds at a whopping 170 DPS from 23 people that had any damage.  Everyone contributes to the DPS totals, by Buffing, Damage Shields, Healing etc.  Any death outside of DTs leads to lower overall DPS, so here are some ideas:

1.  Die less (if you are not the MT or are not trying to eat a DT, try not to take aggro)
2.  Damage shiled (should be on all Warriors (or tanks in the Tank Order), this is huge and accounts for almost 60% of burta's DPS on Spiroc Lord)

A few other interesting notes about bosses:

1.  No procs from any weapons landed on them.
2.  No spells from any int casters landed on them past Gorgalosk
3.  The Int casters with highest DPS on Spiroc Lord was only crush damage.  No spells landed.
4.  Burta is the only one to hit The Spiroc Lord with Banestrike.  Are there mobs we should kill to be able to land Banestrike on The Spiroc Lord?  That is a potential 2 DPS for everyone if this is simply a player flag we can try to get.
5.  All rogues were getting "tries to pierce The Spiroc Lord, but The Spiroc Lord is INVULNERABLE!" warnings on occasion.  This seemed to be consistent with all namers and the meteors.

it seems to be really tough to do much damage to bosses.

It's hard to get real "tanking" data, so I can't back this up with data, but these are some observations from last nights tanking on Bosses:

1.  Tanks with rez effects seem to get chewed up like rag dolls, to include Ogre Warriors
2.  Most tanks (appropriately geared) without rez effects is better equipped to tank than the best geared tank with Rez effects.
3.  Tank swaps cause chaos with the healers and ultimately cause unnecessary deaths.

If those three things are true (and I have no data to back it up, so I would love to hear other's comments), then I would propose that tanks with Rez effects do not hit the taunt button, or cast any form of hate spells unless their intent is to take the next death touch.

I would love to hear your thoughts on this.

Not a guide, just some observations, and some ideas.

We are getting pretty good at not dying to trash mobs, but it sometimes seems a bit chaotic.

I am quite certain everyone is using some sort of "/assist main" macro and believe that engaging whatever the MA is targeting at that point as the next target and might even be dot'ing the target.

After being MA one night, and realizing that to find the next target the MA will need to cycle through the available mobs and pick the best one, so will often be targeting a mob that ultimately will not be the next target chosen to die.

Now, how we get to the point where that decision is made is really a side note, as I believe that no one should engage the next target until the MA has announced for everyone to assist them (hopefully in some sort of /ooc).

This should keep the Enchanters and Healers happy by making their jobs much easier, and enable us to kill trash in a much more controlled manner.

On the MA subject, I think having the MA tank the mob they have chosen may slow us down as at 35% (or whatever is appropriate) it might be time for them to look for our next vicitm.

Thoughts?

I suspect that Sky will be faster once we have it on farm.  We will likely be skipping the first few islands as everyone will be keyed.  

While the instance does have a very short lockout, the Islands and Loot lockout are the standard 6+ days.  Last night we had a few things go against us as far as time goes.  We had the nearly guild wide crash, there was a lot of chatter in Discord, we did Open World first, and it was our first night bidding with DKP.  All of which should be much quicker in the future, if necessary at all.

The other thing I noticed is that there is 1:40 between my Island 1 lockout and my Island 4 lockout.  I don't know what triggers the timer, but that seems pretty quick either way.

I think we made great progress last night, and had substantial increases in gear for a lot of people (I hope there are no tanks wearing gear like I saw being upgraded last night  ), and a lot of the melee got haste belts, so our DPS should continue to increase.

I personally would like to see how things go next week before we forego a hate raid to rearrange the schedule.

Maybe we could set up a channel for bidding.

There is so much chatter in /rs that I miss things sometimes.  I am used to only raid instructions being passed in /rs, that way nothing important gets missed.

First TLP server for me.  Also first Warrior of any significance.

My first character was a Cleric on Tallon Zek with creation date in 1999.  Very rough server to start on, especially with a cleric.  PCs don't seem to be impacted by the taunt button, so the guys wearing gold or purple were the first ones to die.

The few raids we have done have been more successful than my first time through this content, although I "kinda" raided through Velious, then took some time off.  Beat House of Thule raid content when it was current and took a few more years off.  Came back a little over a year ago and app'd to what my old raid guild had changed to and made it through the application process that took a couple of months (where I got gear just before alts as an app).

I raid with them every Monday and right now we have TBL raid content as well as the new GMM raids on farm mode.  I will continue to raid with them as they have pretty strict attendance policies if you want to stay on the raid roster.

Since you get a year in between expansions, and it doesn't take long to stay max'd AA/exp/flagging, I will have plenty of time to "enjoy" the content on Mangler.