After clearing Vykas raid the first day after reaching 1430, and then a second week one shot with a “reclear” party full of 1430-1445 alts where I singlehandedly destroyed 2 tentacles, I want to summarize my pretty sad experience with “learning groups”.
Basically, the skill, awareness, concentration and overall involvement levels of most people in “learning groups” is underwhelming. Can safely assume that after just watching a video, with ZERO experience in the actual raid I was already doing better than an average “learner” who already wiped 25+ times on Vykas G3.
From what I’ve seen after playing with like 6ish different learning groups in G3 for a total of 10+ hours, I can tell that 90% of wipes are due to people failing to look at the monitor. Vykas G3 has a pretty dark monotone color scheme, and with all of the debuffs and buffs that you get under your char it requires some experience to be able to tell what you’ve got and what you need to do now. But how much? In my opinion, somebody who keeps dropping lust pools in the center of the room after 5 attempts is just braindead. And please don’t tell me every third person in there is colorblind or something. It is not true. It is just people refusing to see. They know what to expect, they’ve seen it for 20+ times already and still the pools are everywhere.
Another thing is underestimating normal patterns of the boss. In most encounters people are able to overcome getting hit too much by overgearing and gatekeeping, but not in Vykas. Every time you get hit you get the lust gauge. It is pretty sad to see 80% of the group being at the border of lust while you are at 55-60% pull after pull after pull. One of the dumbest, for example, is the one where she swings and slams the ground. There are only 3 possible patterns: slam and done, slam and turn and slam, no slam but additional swing in the opposite direction. I am not trying to say that everyone is expected to be able to tell by animation what exactly she does, but guys maybe at least get ready to move behind her after the first slam just in case?
The typing test is another nightmare. For somebody who plays videogames, this kind of stuff should be a no-brainer, but after 10+ hours I’ve only seen failed absorption like 2 or 3 times. Even in alt reclear one shot, somebody failed 1. This is simply unacceptable. It must not be happening, and the reason it is, is because you are either approaching it in a wrong way by trying to type too fast, or you didn’t have enough practice with the website simulation. ( Just realized most people might not even know what that is ). That was basically the first thing I did for 10 minutes a day for a week straight when my main was at 1415, because I wanted to go into Vykas PREPARED. Guess how many I failed so far, at 4 second timer? ZERO. I once got distracted by a family member and turned away after the first set of keys, when I turned back it was 2.5 seconds left and I haven’t press a single button yet. And I still got it.
To summarize, it’s gonna take an entire article to describe all of the dumb mistakes people do over and over again, so I will rather end here by stating that all of those mistakes are the result of people consistently refusing to put in efforts, look at the monitor, memorize basic stuff and play a little bit more safe. There is literally no excuse for somebody who is still unable to beat G3 in 1-5 attempts weekly, it is easy, you know it, I know it, everybody knows it. Turn on you brain and save your time by either starting paying attention or quitting the game. “Learning” means that you show signs of improvement. What is happening in most of these groups is not “learning”, it is literally wasting time.