Name: Quetzie (ket-zee)
Alts: are for suckers
Aliases: Raef, Jen
Role: Raid Mom, Web Master
Claim to fame: Former #1 Horde AP collector on the server
Likes: Herding cats, terrible puns
Check her out on the WoW armory!
Submit a bug report
Thanks everyone for coming out! We’d like to thank everyone who listened to us and asked good questions about the plans we have for raiding in Battle for Dazar’alor.
Below is the agenda and the meeting minutes!
I’ve never seen a turnaround quite like this one, and I think I speak for every raid lead when I say how incredibly impressed we are with our team. We killed MOTHER in 3 tries (2, really, because we had an early wipe-call when people died on a crossing), which is a massive upgrade from the 52 previous tries. Normally when we down a boss, we continue to struggle on it for a few weeks. This was a welcome relief.
As a result we got our first look at a new boss on mythic, Zek’vos.
Zek’vos has overlapping add packs and overlapping darkness with deceit. We’re going to need steady coordination for calling out who needs external healing cooldowns / defensives, and making sure people run as far away as possible (not simply dropping to the side).
We also suggest getting comfortable using a microphone for this fight. It’s highly likely that now more than ever, you will need to call out when you need external heals or when you’re using interrupts.
We’re also going to be auditing interrupts much more closely. What’s important is not whether or not you are interrupting, but whether or not you are interrupting out of turn. If someone calls out they they’ve got “next”, and you cut them off, there’s a potential that both your AND their interrupts go wasted, and a cast might go off next time. Also, don’t interrupt early. They only stand around casting and re-casting, so interrupting them late ensures there’s more time for our interrupt rotation to recover. Those with ranged interrupts (like Balance druids) will be saving theirs for the 3rd add, which overlaps with the darkness (pain donuts).
Tanks did a good job moving the boss around, but he needs to be moved much quicker. Consider starting to move him when the add is at 85-90% HP instead of it being at 90-95% hp.
Little adds are going to need to die faster. If you’re running the same talents you ran on MOTHER, chances are you’re doing it wrong. Certain individuals will be told to instead swap to a full AoE build, even if it means they output less boss damage. (In phase 3, you can probably expect them to be the first people to pick up an orb to go down as well, since they won’t be single-target specced for boss or person damage).
Save displacements like typhoon, ring of peace, etc for when the little adds coincide with the darkness.
Friday was a pretty decent clear. We downed all the way up through G’huun, which is the farthest we’ve gotten on Heroic in one sitting.
We definitely has issues of boss-tunneling. As a baseline comparison, I had a 316/320 ilvl character in on heroics (it’s a balance druid, because I am the height of originality). Through all of our wipes, I did more damage to the Hexers than 3 other DPS, including one ranged. I did more damage to the crusher than 6 DPS including one ranged (though melee DPS are not able to DPS her for as long as others). I out-DPSd 3 ranged DPS on Ichors. I didn’t out-DPS anyone on crawgs.
Guys, that’s bad. Some of you are in the 360, 370 range. A 320 boomkin without an offhand should not be out-DPSing anybody on priority adds, especially not other ranged DPS (melee get a slight pass, especially on Crushers, but still).
A few of us swapped to our mains to down Zul, but as Zex pointed out, we shouldn’t have to. We shouldn’t have to swap to overpowered 380 geared characters just because some of you have no concept of prioritization on targets and are stubborn.
Now, some folks were new to heroics that night, or hadn’t done the fight with us before even on normal. That’s OK! I expect you guys will get more comfortable with looking around for these adds in the future. However, there are some people who have been around the block who don’t have an excuse. I won’t name names, but you know who you are.
TLDR:
We took a few hours instead of LFR and then picked up the remainder on Sunday to kill Illidan for the weekly and do something fun and different. It was a long slog and I think it made some of us appreciate how much trash has been cut out of raids (though if you ask me, Blizz took all the raid trash and threw it in dungeons instead), and how blissfully short modern raids are compared to the olden days.
On account of some internet issues I missed the first hour of alt night.
Every boss was a 1-shot, including G’huun. We had a few new orb runners and they did wonderfully. People listened well to directions given and we have high hopes for our newcomers.
On account of the holiday, no raids on Thursday and Friday. Feel free to PUG, watch videos, or take a week off.
This weekend, the usual Saturday LFR is cancelled and we will be doing Black Temple timewalking instead during that time slot. Since this only comes up once every six months or so, it seemed like a great idea!
Come get your transmog, Demon Hunters 😉
We’re going to ignore Oct 30 – November 5 and pretend it never happened.
It took us a few tries to get Taloc down. We had some problems with lasers or getting knocked off by the bloods. Generally however, Taloc is as easy on Mythic as it is on other difficulties.
We had some very good pulls on MOTHER with very little downtime between them. We also adopted a new strategy of pulling the boss, resetting, and running into the room to stack right next to the wall. This made the initial transition much cleaner. Crossing became easier over time as we settled into the specifics of knowing when to cross, how, and making sure not to move too far after crossing over.
We still had mishaps caused by lag or improper use of defensives, but we’re really getting the “step 1” part down. Arguably, this is the second hardest part of the fight.
After crossing, we need to kill adds. I will say that this week was generally pretty good. We had casts get off on occasion, but on account of smoother crossings we also had smoother add kills.
We also got better about standing near the wall to melee MOTHER through it. Pets will harmlessly cross through, treants and other summoned abilities can do damage, and of course even casters can safely whack her with a staff! This smidgen of DPS may not seem important now, but you’d be surprised how much it helps later…
After crossing MOTHER into Room 2, dodging mechanics there is pretty easy for us. Then, it becomes a waiting game of knowing when Spirit Link is back off cooldown and making sure we’re ready.
The transition from Room 2 into Room 3 is the most dangerous transition and the hardest to achieve. We need a good setup and we need everyone on the same page.
The yellow line on the left is the wall between rooms 2 and 3. The unhappy face is MOTHER. The silver crescent is Quetzie, marked with the Moon over her head to people know where to stack in Room 1 and now.
During the final Wind phase of room 2, players need to be nearby – but not directly against – the wall of Room 3. Many times, players are spread incredibly far across the room – even close to the wall of Room 1! They’re never going to make it to the Room 3 wall in time. Instead, during the final Wind phase, drag your character over to Quetzie. Line up with her. She’ll be standing nearby the Room 3 wall, with MOTHER between her and the wall. After the final fire is cast (not before!), the group books it to the wall, throws down all defensives and heals, and crosses as a quick succession – ONE, TWO, THREE, FOUR – just like we do in Transition 1.
If all goes well – and so far it only has a small handful of times – we’ll be in Room 3, casting lust, and gunning down the adds, then treating Room 3 just as we did Room 2.
It all came together, however – in the nick of time.
We moved up to #11 on the server and remain #1 Horde.
By the way: Remember what I said earlier about DPSing through the wall? We killed MOTHER when her room was at 94% full. That left us with mere seconds left for a kill.
Or, as expressed by Miatreeleafa on stream seconds before we got her:
Also, congrats to Tusker for hitting a gold parse on the kill:
For those curious: we had 51 wipes on MOTHER, or 45 not counting the “week we don’t speak of”. We really only had 2 nights spent working on her, so that’s not so bad!
Because we had a saved lockout from last week, we jumped right into G’huun.
We only had 5 pulls that were what I will call “net garbage” as a result from orb mishaps in phase 1. We had many pulls reach well into phase 2 and 5 into Phase 3, with 3 pulls at 90 and higher. We comped down and swapped some people around due to mechanic failures, and had a few missteps but not many. Our kill was clean, however – once again we had nobody die until Phase 3.
Congrats to our new AOTC title holders: Deathhoss, Eviandrae, Avianne, Nari, Lillithh, and Sylvvannas.
After G’huun, we went to Ripblade’s lockout: he had an opening on Zul and Mythrax.
Zul was a 1-shot, which has never happened before. Everyone was very clean. Interrupts on Hexers, downing Crushers fast, the tanks did a good job at dropping their debuff, and ranged stacked mid. We had a good transition, too. Hopefully we can emulate this in future weeks.
Mythrax was a little less clean (to say the least). We actually had both tanks die, resed one, and he dies again. Fortunately, we had enough DPS and HPS to keep the fight going for a kill.
Alt night is slowly but surely transitioning into more and more Heroic bosses. We went on Normal first, skipping the first three bosses. In future weeks we’ll be continuing to up this number.
Normal is almost boring at this point, even 2 healing it as we were sometimes. G’huun we needed more healing and had a few problems with orb runners (mostly healing issues and a miscommunication with new runners). But it only took us 3 tries.
Taloc and Mother on Heroic were 1 shots. We did move MOTHER into room 3, which is unusual for us on heroic, but we needed the practice transitioning.
On account of having a post-MOTHER lockout, we spent some time Sunday and after alt night on Monday farming BoEs. We’re happy to announce that we got 5 Mythic BoEs and 1 random-drop BoE. This windfall ensures that we will have plenty of money in the guild bank, and thus the repair allocation for Vanguards and Gladiators has been increased. Hopefully we can make this a recurring event as we continue to kill bosses on Mythic, and then will be set for quite a while.
As you might be aware, MoD is now on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. We’re holding a contest for anyone who follows us and submit their MoD stories! You may have already read Deiselboy’s account, so it’s time to share yours!
Plus, who wants to miss out on this sort of quality content:
Do she got the booty? Urostek says she doooo! #WorldofWarcraft #forthehorde #modaeriepeak #uldir pic.twitter.com/k90bO4Q8jh
— Ministry of Defense (@MODaeriepeak) November 11, 2018
I love endorsements!
Posted by MODaeriepeak on Sunday, November 11, 2018
There’s a micro-holiday today, and it’s Talon Queen Quetzie’s favorite day of the year. Here are some of highlights of her day spent with the Moonkins!
Hanging with Makkaw, who organizes the chance to watch the baby Moonkins!
First assignment: Observe the babies dance lessons from Astralaire. And of course, show them a thing or two while I’m at it!
Second Assignment: Watch them practice moonfiring under the tutelage of Pewkew.
Of course, myself and other experienced Moonkins joined in to show them what their power could be like in a few years!
Third Assignment: Observe them napping with Dramock. Of course there’s always one little troublemaker who doesn’t want anything to do with naptime!
After I spent some time watching and reminiscing, a baby decided to follow me around. But his friends were in trouble! So I set out to vanquish the evil infringing upon Moonglade.
Along the way, I saved a friend of theirs, Clookle!
After vanquishing evil and saving the day, a total of 5 Moonkin babies decided to follow me around for the week. I hope I can teach them a thing or two about how to be a moonkin! And I know my very own Moonkin Hatchling will make them feel right at home.
If you want your own creche of moonkin hatchlings for the week, you can visit Moonglade and embark on a fun journey to save the day yourself!
Sunday at 3pm PST / 6pm EST, we will be farming Mythic Uldir trash for BoEs.
This is not a “personal farm day”.
All BoEs that drop during this time are to be given to Urostek so that we can deposit all funds into the Guild Bank. As it’s been previously mentioned, we are tearing through guild repairs at an alarming rate. Selling some Mythic BoEs will help stave off the slow drain that happens in an expansion where gold is hard to come by.
We will be forming at least one, preferably two groups, and farming over the course of several clears. Kill all trash, walk out, reset, repeat, until we either lose our minds or enough BoEs drop that we feel good about our potential bank deposits.
Because we are only clearing trash, anyone who feels they can survive the trash is welcome to come. You don’t have to be Mythic or even Heroic geared to join in. We encourage everyone to join us, regardless of whether or not you intend to raid. Guild Repairs benefit everyone!
As you may have heard, the guild bank is slowly losing funds over time, and we’re trying hard to keep guild repairs for everybody while not spending too much of Urostek’s money keeping the bank topped off. An idea that got tossed around was of setting up a guild marketplace: somewhere to buy items, wherein the sales can go directly into the guild bank.
After a week or so of testing, we’re reading to launch the Ministry of Defense Discord Market!
Every week, officers (currently Lineda) will list market items according to auction house trends. However, we will be under-pricing the auction house! The idea is to sell goods to MoD members at a discounted price, while depositing all profits into the guild bank. MoD members benefit from cheaper supplies, and we all benefit from increased funds into the bank!
I updated the Vanguard Donation document.
New this month:
I removed a few donations and slightly reorganized the page as well.
Note that Blue items are currently being sent to Urostek, and Yellow items will be sent to Quetzie. Green items remain Lineda donations.
Remember: You only need to sign up for 1 spot, but you can always send multiple stacks of items anyway.
If you’re ever unable to find the link to this document, remember that you can find it on the left-hand box on the Raiding Home page under the “Required to Raid” heading.
The votes are in!
Thank you to everyone who participated and everyone who voted. Some of these races were amazingly close – we have SEVERAL ties for placements and there are very few categories with one “stand out” winner!
As mentioned, the prizes per category are as follows:
BEST IN SHOW and THE UROSTEK will have in-store mount prizes.
RACIAL PRIDE and CROSS-DRESSED CLASS will have in-store pet prizes
MOUNT/PET and OFFICER will have Sting Ray (mount) and Corgi (minipet) prizes
However, there is a bonus: I (Quetzie) was personally so impressed with the entries that I am throwing in 5000g to any second-place winners and 1000g to any third-place winners. This includes tied entries!
Without further ado…
All the images are submitted and the voting pages are up!
You get 3 votes per category, but you can only vote one time – no take-backsies!
Navigate to the individual pages below, or head to the Hallow’s End Costume Contest main page and click the headings.
Best in Show
The Urostek
Racial Pride
Cross-Dressed Class
Mount / Pet Matching
Officer Best
Voting ends at 1pm PST / 4pm EST November 1!