User blog:SolarMist/Reflection

Stress levels have been pretty high in my guild for the last month or so. So I started wondering what the root of it all was, and eventually my thoughts led me to the reasons why I don't get too stressed over AGG.

At first, I thought it was just because I know I've exhausted more than my fair share of luck. I got my starsign (Libra (Calm), who is pretty damn awesome in her own right (I'm looking at you, Scorpio (Pure)... I'm not the only one who cringed at your skill), and then I got Aries (Pure), which was a fantastic addition to my Divina team. In addition, I rolled four rare monsters(?) in a row recently in another game I play (Puzzle and Dragons). But then I realized that couldn't be all of it...

Ever since I started AGG, my attitude towards most daemons has been "If I can get it, that's awesome. If not, that's cool, too." As a result, I've rarely seriously tried hard for daemons (as evidenced by my lack of FH 5*s and EG 5*s and WG 5*s, which is absolutely absurd for someone who has been very active for more than 1.3 years). I also have issues with spending items; unfortunately, I still can't get rid of the "but it's just one!" mindset @__@ and that has led me to using my items rather spontaneously. Ironically (or maybe not?), I also don't enjoy the thought of risking all of my items for a certain goal.

Compounded with my inability to fully go on zombie mode (just ask my guildmates) as well as my lack of money, I've been extremely laid back regarding AGG and now have a ridiculously weak deck. I do get long stretches of "I want this daemon!" (Virgo (Pure), Cancer (Pure), Ohina (Princess Wars), Takemikazuchi), but they are rarely enough for me to really push me towards getting the daemons.

I've observed a lot of people getting upset that they couldn't get the daemons they wanted for various reasons (lack of items, bad connection, even education in real life). I've rarely been truly upset over not getting the daemons I wanted (I think I only got very upset over Alucio (Anniversary), Amaymon (Anniversary), and Ameno Tajikarao), likely because of the attitude I mentioned earlier: "If I can get it, that's awesome. If not, that's cool, too."

This has likely led me to harboring an unhealthy viewpoint for a guild leader (as well as my reliance on high spirit, not a strong deck, to deal a lot of damage in GCQs):

"Oh well."

And that has probably led to many of the increased tensions in my guild, however indirectly.

The only two fallens we have gotten were Gemini (Fallen) and Cancer (Fallen). For Gemini, one of our guildmates (who had recently joined) decided to whale us to Fallen because Gemini meant a lot to her. For Cancer, most everyone chipped in, but some more than others. Both were very new experiences for me. We had previously been far too weak to attempt 50 without a huge item stockpile (during the Taurus GCQ, we couldn't beat level 40 without a significant number of items; many of us got 2HKO, myself included).

So when Asahagi-sama whaled us to Gemini Fallen, I was very startled and completely unsure of what I should have done. (If I had known better, I would have probably taken note of how high Fallen's defense was for 40-50 >.> as well as how many hits I survive >.>)

Then Cancer came, and we decided to push our limits again. To our pleasant surprise, we could beat the fallens in the early 40's without significant item usage, and most of us did not get 2HKO until later. So we pushed... but I had completely forgotten that some sort of schedule (not a strict one since a lot of us have busy real lives, but at least a loose one) would be helpful. As a result, our headcounts were often spontaneous and people would only know of the headcounts 4 hours in advance and we were often hoping that people would wake up before we fell asleep.

In addition, some of us were getting extremely itchy by spirit overflow (which was never a problem for me; remember how I said that I rely on high spirit to do a lot of damage? Yeah, that probably didn't help my attitude any) to the point where they sometimes disregarded the "All right, let's regroup in 4 hours" messages. Whoops.

Lastly, I didn't have a good system in place for people to report what spirit refills they used, so I still don't have a good read on how easily we got to 50 >n> and I also don't know how much pulling was done by some of our guildmates. I know that a few of them used more SW than I would have been comfortable with, but they were apparently fine with it... until they got stressed that they were pulling weight for the people who didn't use as many SW and got Cancer Pure. And I didn't even ask them to pull -flails-

Did I mention that some of us got into heated arguments about things that we should do during GCQ? -soul flies out of mouth- It's time like this when I wish I was a whale just so that I can do stuff to end those arguments...

Damn it, peer mediation training didn't prep me for this! I'm way too laid-back for my own good.