Intro / welcome

  • Urostek – GM
  • Zextol – HR, M+, Loot, Shotcalling
  • Quetzie – Tech Support, Analysis, Shotcalling
  • Tiraffe – Analysis++, Shotcalling
  • Welcoming Vultreus (devoker) & Azoll (dh) from the weekend group, Jeff (mage) and Swag (druid) from outside the guild

Survey Feedback

Thank you to everyone who filled out the Mythic Vault of the Incarnates Raid Feedback survey. We have a thorough writeup of the feedback given, but we’ll touch on the main points here.

Positive Attitude

Time and time again, respondents commented that they liked our vibe, that we were upbeat, that we had great banter, good humor, etc. This is probably one of the most well-balanced tiers we’ve had in a long time, with noticeably few personality conflicts, sour grapes, and stressful situations. We want to keep that vibe going forward.

Push for Prog

Lots of data pointed to a desire to push even farther and harder, with CE being mentioned on multiple responses to questions. So to respond to the overwhelming player goals: we, too, would like CE by Dragonflight’s end.

Common critiques

  • Too many of the same DPS towards the bottom
  • Players dying to the same mechanics on repeated pulls
  • Players not working hard enough on their own time to improve
    • We’ll talk later about individual expectations to better guide player improvement

Short-term goals:

  • Push into Mythic earlier
  • Penultimate boss kill in Aberrus

Benching feels Bad

Common complaints from benched players are the inability to prove themselves or catch up.

From an administrative standpoint, rotating the roster or involving the bench, in general, is really hard given the state of the vault + rare loot. When you have to kill 2 bosses to get a box (3 in Aberrus) there is less incentive to swap out anyone on those early bosses, because you’re costing a Vault slot from another (maybe/probably stronger) raider. Likewise, rare loot means you want all your strongest raiders to have as high a chance as possible to get the drop, both from boss kill and the vault – so even if Tiraffe didn’t necessarily need anything from Eranog, we might have rostered him anyway so he gets 4 boss kills for 2 vault slots and therefore a higher chance at getting a Whispering Incarnate Icon.

Vault + Rare Loot combined into a situation where we couldn’t roster our bench as often as in previous expansions, because it would come at the cost of our stronger players. We had to make a decision, and it was never going to be an easy one, or one that everyone agreed with. We actually accidentally screwed one raider out of a vault box one week because we failed to kill Terros, and he was not rostered on one of the earlier bosses. It’s not a situation we want to repeat.

But the concern hasn’t fallen on deaf ears. We have a multi-track strategy to address this issue:

  • Provide earlier feedback (4-6 weeks into tier, not 10-13 weeks)
    • Less detailed but more regular for struggling players
  • Adding the “first 2 / first 3” bosses on mondays (for practice & vault loot)
  • Recommending Tuesday heroic “important bosses” (think eranog, diurna) groups
    • Rare drops from these bosses can be upgraded to mythic ilvl (more later) so it will be easier to roster more people in Mythic
    • Not official, we may not always be around to organize it, but we encourage you, the team, to do it together.
  • Recommendations (explained later) to help players improve on their own

Raid Planning & Strategy

We – both raid leads and respondents – really want people to do most of the dialogue, analysis, strategizing, etc before raid begins, so there is less confusion the night of. That means using the Discord channels…which can sometimes be utter chaos! We’re going to better organize it to encourage an open dialogue and better raid planning.

  • Every boss will have its own thread in the mythic prog channel with organized pins for strategy, MRT notes, etc. If any relevant discussion happens in the main mythic prog channel, we’ll be sure to screenshot or link to relevant discussion from within the boss thread.
  • We will post strategies, guides, mechanics timeline, MRT notes for healers & raid cooldowns, and rosters at the same time.
    • Expectation that you come into the night having already read up on the strategy. If you didn’t have a ton of time to read discussions for the week, discuss during the 6:30-7 gather time. Also, don’t wait until raid night to share a strategy video you found. Share it early!
    • This means that when strategy discussions do come up midraid, everyone will be on the same page and there will be fewer instances of folks “left behind” from the discussions we had previously.

Raid Callouts

More than one person in more than one spot recommended we start calling people out by name when they make mistakes, whether out loud or via whispers, to get people to focus more on the things they are doing wrong in the moment.

  • We’re doin’ it.
  • It will require practice from us
    • We do not want people to feel bad, but in the spirit of helping people improve upon mistakes and make them more aware of what’s happening, we will have to get comfortable with it.
    • It’s going to be a bit of a change for everyone, so we ask for your grace during this transition – it might come off as more aggressive than we intend, or you might feel like you’re the only one getting feedback when it’s likely you’re not.
  • Example of individual callouts
    • The same people standing in the “driving lane” on Dathea, or the same people 3 stacking us on Dathea, are going to get called out by name.
    • “Tiraffe, you’re standing in the driving lane again” or “Quetzie, that was 3 stacks”.

Other longer responses

Eval feedback, practice, rare loot, M+ keys, and more.

Tier Expectations

Tier expectations will remain similar to the previous one. The following points are some elaborations on an individual’s weekly objectives to maintain in-line with other Mythic Raider peers. Please utilize the audit sheet to track yourself amongst others as posted in discord.

  • Still requiring 4 dungeons, but highly recommend running 8 dungeons early in the season when possible. This is good for practice & in case you pick up a BiS vault item that can be upgraded (more on that later)
    • The more dungeons you run the more you are used to doing your rotation on the move and when hectic things are happening around you
    • You also learn how other people in the raid “act” when they have cooldowns or when mechanics are happening
    • If you are not regularly running dungeons, you will fall behind in gear, and you are more likely to be benched.
    • Key level
      • To start, minimum 11+ keys for heroic-level raid gear and heroic crest fragments (more on that later)
      • 16+ keys ideal ASAP for upgradable gear + mythic GV loot
      • 18-19 give mid-mythic GV and 20 keys give high-mythic GV loot
  • Personal responsibility

Loot System

Still utilizing the last tier’s loot system. (Update Heroic/Mythic BIS items regularly).

Raiders will need to be on loot sheet for the current difficulty to qualify for rolling on item.

Tomatoes + loot sims

  • This accounts for all the rare items that are dropping from raid. Just like Eranog ring, you’ll need to send in sims of the rare items to Tiraffe, another raidlead (who will then send them to Tiraffe), or upload them to the readycheck.io lootsheet (where Tiraffe will grab them and put them in the spreadsheet.)
  • They’ll be handed out in order of dps priority provided that they don’t already have one (and remember that heroic versions can be updated to mythic, see: below).
  • Boss 8 trinkets will be grouped by class.

Prioritize 2/4 set

  • For the purposes of the omniclass/omnislot tier token that drops off the last boss, it’ll follow the same priority as the rest of the tier set rolls, it just won’t be limited by class.
  • Consider holding onto your 2200 (2000?) io heroic token for 4p, if you get 2200 (2000?) early

10.1 Changes

New zone

  • Mostly cosmetic, but – farm flightstones in week 1 (more on that later)
  • Not tied to player power
    • Except for weekly 1/2 of a spark

Great Vault

  • 3 / 6 / 9 bosses
  • If you kill Diurna, your vault for that week includes every boss before Diurna, too.
    • Uncertain how this affects “wing” bosses.
  • Also: loot can be traded for up to 4 hours, not just 2, but that includes offline time.

Crafting

  • New Sparks
    • Guaranteed every 2 weeks! No RNG drops!
    • Check class Discords, but you probably will be upgrading your weapons first.
  • New recipes
  • TONS of buffs to crafted item embellishments. Your crafted BiS might have changed. Again, check class discords.
  • Elemental potions are now BoE
  • Profession recipes have moved to all difficulties of Aberrus (incl normal and maybe lfr)
    • Recipe drops will be kept by officers rather than rolled off. These will be distributed to active crafters, or the guild bank, as needed.
  • Elemental lariat changed
    • Proc duration changed to 5 seconds + 1 second for every socket, which is a nerf start-of-tier and a buff towards the end.
  • Sockets added through the Season 1 Great Vault will be removed when recrafting an item to Season 2 levels

Catalyst

  • Comes out week 6
  • New charge every week, NO QUEST – NO CURRENCY – FREE @Judgefolks

Crest system

  • You can upgrade heroic raid gear to mythic ilvl!
    • This means if you get the equivalent of a heroic eranog ring, you don’t have to feel “put out” that you’ll be last in line to roll on the mythic one. You can just upgrade it!
  • Gear can only be upgraded one “tier” of ilvl
    • Example: normal to heroic, or heroic to mythic.
    • You cannot upgrade from Normal to Mythic.
    • You cannot grind +2 keys for useful loot anymore
  • Upgrading costs Flightstones + Crests
  • Flightstones (the new primal chaos)
    • Come from all content
    • Cap of 2000 at a time, but unlike valor, can endlessly spend/farm
  • Crests
    • Whelpling, Drake, Wrym, and Aspect
      • Think LFR, Normal, Heroic, Mythic
    • Dungeons, raids, etc drop crest FRAGMENTS
      • 15 fragments = 1 crest
      • You get 5 fragments for completing a dungeon, but 12 if you complete in time.
      • Most bosses will drop 10 fragments, but end bosses will drop 15
      • You can make a maximum of 10 crests per type per week
  • To upgrade gear to 437 (Heroic) ilvl:
    • 11-15 end-of-dungeon chests drop heroic fragments
    • Costs 3 crests and ??? flightstones
  • To upgrade gear to 441 (Mythic) ilvl:
    • 16+ end-of-dungeon chests drop mythic fragments
    • Costs 4 crests and ??? flightstones

What to do this week

  • Get 1 spark
  • Farm flightstones
  • Do the dungeon quest for 415 (upgradeably to 430+ilvl) loot
    • Loot spec doesn’t matter 🙁
  • High key as possible – keys drop 9 levels (time a 20 or untime a 21)
  • LFR next Tuesday as a guild! If you need early jump on tier, levelling an alt for mythic raid and need ilvl, etc.

Documents

Raider’s Survival Guide and How to be a Filthy Fucking Degenerate (goes over getting flightstones, crests, etc to minmax. Not required – it recommends running 20s on week 1 lol – but using this as a guideline will give you a leg-up):

Crest & Flightstone upgrade paths / costs (and another way of looking at it)

Raid and M+ Loot Table (wip)

Tier DPS gains (wip)

Raid Guides (more to be added):

SugarVenom

Dungeon Guides:

Cheat Sheet Cards

 

Q&A

Q) Do we get Flightstones from running M+ and raid?

A) Yes

 

Q) How many catalyst per week?

A) 1 per week (not to be confused with shadowflame sparks – one half every week)

 

Q) Crests – is the cap seasonal or weekly?

A) Unsure – we will find source!

 

Q) Change sim to target dummy and removes all buffs!

A) Judge volunteers as tribute to help people sim 🙂

 

Q) Is the tuesday thing required?

A) Nope! Totally voluntary, it’s an option for those who want it

 

Q) Is the Monday thing required?

A) Nope – it’s voluntary, for alts or people who were absent from mythic.

 

Q) Are we starting on Normal or heroic?

A) Normie day 1, heroic after