I think part of the difficulty was in that it was a defensive battle. With offensive battles, you have time to plan and figure out who wants to fight it, like what happened with Arta.
But with defensive, you don't know when the save will be available and there is pressure to get it done fast so the next turn can go up.
I should have figured out ahead of time what to do and had alternates lined up so there would have been no save confusion.
Bookmarks