Officer Bio and Content

QuetzieQuetzie

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

Quetzie

Hallow's End Transmog Contest 2022 Winners!

The votes are in and the winners have been decided!

We had a whopping 158 votes across all categories this year!

As previously mentioned, the prizes per category are as follows:

BEST IN SHOW and THE UROSTEK will have in-store mount or gold prizes.

DRAGONS will have in-store pet or gold prizes

SEASON’S GREETINGS and “I KNOW HOW TO DO THAT” will have gold prizes

Without further ado…!

Continue reading →

Quetzie

Hallow's End Costume Contest 2022 Voting

Submission time has run out, and voting is open! Voting will remain open until November 21st at 11:59pm EST. We will announce the winners Wednesday the 23rd in Discord, in game, and other announcement channels we have.

You may vote once over the course of the voting period per category, regardless of whether or not you partook in it. You may cast 2 votes per category, or 3 votes for Best in Show.

Vote now in the Hallow’s End 2022 Transmog Contest!

Quetzie

Customizing the new UI - Tips, Tweaks, and Addons

Updated 11/16 – added XP bar, Micromenu, and Minimap resizer; added console command to clear action bars
Updated 11/1 – added Exiles Reach console command for edit mode, added SL micromenu addon, changed addon to hide Micromenu

It’s known to many that I have always used the basic stock WoW UI – no bartender, no ElvUI, no Dominos. I did use an addon called ButtonForge that allowed me to create extra, simple actionbars without revamping my whole UI – but now that Blizzard has given us up to 8 action bars, I can get rid of it and go completely clean.

Of course, the new UI still has bugs, and many of those are being hotfixed every day. For example, the stance bar kept centering and changing its size in the first few days; that should now be fixed. There’s a few UI options that can’t be moved by default. The “snap” option in Edit Mode isn’t intuitive. Here’s hoping some of those change over time!

We’ll start by diving into default options in the new UI, move into third-party enhancements for the new UI, and then dive into some lesser-known changes that can be made to it. I’ll also cover where old options have moved to in the new menus.

This post will act as a “living document” for a little while, and I’ll post edits and the dates I’ve added them to keep things tidy.

Sections:

  • Blizzard’s Official Notes on the New UI
  • Addons and Weakauras to Enhance the New UI
  • Addons to Enhance or Fix other Prepatch Changes
  • Enhancement and Changes for other UI Elements
  • Tips and Tricks for the New UI
  • “Thanks, I hate it, Take me Back”
  • Example UIs
  • Closing

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Quetzie

Quetzie streaming for St. Jude PLAY LIVE 2022

It’s that season again!

I stream for St Jude almost every year (3 out of the last 4 years, in fact).

Because I’m in in the final stages of buying a house, the stream will be a bit more moderate than last year. I won’t be streaming every day like I was last time; in fact, I’ll probably only be streaming during mythic raids & select other nights when available, at least until we’ve moved into the new place. More streams are likely to crop up at the end of the month, with more games and incentives showing up after our move, too (if you’re looking forward to cat cam and cat treats, that’s coming after the move!)

2022 Incentives

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Quetzie

9.2 Mythic Raider Self-Evaluations

It’s the most wonderful time of the tier!

…or something like that, anyway.

Those of you who have been around for a while know the drill. For those who are new, we ask for our mythic raiders to do a little bit of homework as we move into mythic.

Please send Tiraffe and/or Quetzie a self-evaluation of your performance thus far in the tier. Consider what your strengths are, and where you are struggling. Reflect on whether there’s anything you can do as a person to improve as well.

  • Tell us 3 things that you can improve on, and how you intend to do so (please be more specific than “die less” or “higher DPS”). These evals don’t have to be long – several sentences is fine.
  • Send us a screenshot of your in combat UI. This will help us determine if your UI is negatively impacting performance – maybe by blocking parts of the screen, or failing to highlight important buffs / debuffs impacting your rotation. If you can take a screenshot while you have a mechanic (such as Earthbreaker Missiles on Halondrus) even better.
  • Please do not mention gear. Everyone has 4 set by now – trinkets and weapons are good, but are not going to widely swing your performance issues compared to playing better.

Evaluation Expectations

If you’re struggling to know where you can improve, plug some logs into Wipefest or Wowanalyzer.

If you know what you need to improve, but aren’t sure how to fix it, let us know – but be specific.

  • “I have really low casts of Wrath compared to other balance druids, what am I doing wrong?” would be an example of a specific problem.
  • Please do not blindly ask us how you can improve (you’ve had plenty of opportunity to do so until now). This is a time for you to prove that you know your faults, even if you’re not sure how to fix them.
    • Consider chatting with other people of your class/spec/role to see what they’re doing before coming to us with/for feedback.

After we’ve received your evals, we’ll converse with you about how we can help on your actionables. There might not always be something we can do on our end, but we hope to try. It might be as easy as finding (or creating) weakauras and changing addon settings, or as involved as watching you practice your rotation on a dummy and giving feedback.

We may also volunteer other, potentially more crucial, places that we think you can improve. This might be something like a talent choice, spec choice, gear or stat priority, trinket usage, etc.

We hope that this exercise will get you thinking more regularly and critically about your performance, both your strengths and your weaknesses.

We expect these evaluations to be sent to us by midnight on Sunday, April 24th. This gives you several weeks of logs to look over.

Helpful Tools

NEW: Llorgs – make sure you look at Heroic for current comparisons, and Mythic for looking ahead!
NEW: Subcreation – grabs top info from Warcraft Logs about builds (talents, covenants, etc!)
Where to find your logs: https://www.warcraftlogs.com/character/us/aerie-peak/YOURNAME
Wowanalyzer  (Even if your spec is “not supported” by Wowanalyzer, it will still have many useful insights. Don’t ignore it. See below, but BE CAREFUL for outdated specs)
Wipefest
Warcraftlogs (heroic rankings)
Improving your DPS: Revisited

A Note About Gear

Gear is not performance. These self-evaluations need to be made entirely separate from the gear on your person. If you feel that gear is holding you back, it isn’t and should not be your main concern. That said, if you aren’t taking a visible initiative to get yourself into keys or use pvp to fill in gaps in your gear, you need to do so. No one should be relying solely on raid gear for Mythic progression. Spending more time in keys will also make them less difficult when the only worthwhile gear comes out of 14/15’s, even if it’s just for the Great Vault.

Remember that you can save 278 pieces to use in your creation catalyst, and you can upgrade M+ and PvP gear and catalyze them. You can also buy mythic BoEs for this purpose, if you have the dough for it.

Example

Here is an example self-evaluation from Quetzie. It’s more in-depth than yours needs to be:

  • I don’t know how long it is between Pulsar procs as an average. This means that I might be holding Convoke too long (losing DPS) or sitting on a Pulsar proc too long while waiting for Pulsar (again losing DPS). I should sit in front of a dummy and press buttons on cooldown to see what the average length of time is for a Pulsar proc to come back around.
  • On fights where I am not likely to be taking high damage / where quick movement is a priority, I should swap to Wild Charge instead of Renewal; Lihuvium is a good example of this. I can practice usage on a lower-stakes fight like normal Rygelon.
  • I run Night Fae / Convoke as a comfort pick, because Venthyr timings can swing wildly in a raid group, and we don’t generally need the AoE coverage. I should spend time in WCL and on Llorgs to figure out which fights Venthyr might be more beneficial on for our comp and damage profile.

For a more thorough example, check out this example self-evaluation we handed out with 9.1. Even the raid leads give and get feedback!

Quetzie

Weekly / Daily / Things to do in 9.2

Expected

Weekly

  • 4 mythic dungeons
    • Week of 2/22 – 2/28
      • As high as you can go, ideally 18 timed or 19 untimed
      • Fill out the rest with 10s
    • Week of 3/1 – 3/7
      • As high as you can go
      • To max your GV for the week:
        • One 15+
        • Three 10s
    • In the future: 4 dungeons
      • 8: 262 (heroic GV)
      • 12: 272 (last 2 heroic GV)
      • 15: 278 (mythic GV)
      • Spam highest comfortable for EoD loot (see chart below)
    • “Patterns within Patterns”
      • Will be weekly on the 3/1 reset.
      • Grants rep, anima, renown, cosmic flux, cyphers, progenitor essentia

Daily

  • Dailies
  • World Quests

Other Important Bits

Quetzie

Hallow's End Costume Contest 2021


From now until midnight on November 6th, submit screenshots of your character in costumes according to theme! At the end of the submission period, we’ll hold a public vote on this page all throughout Hallow’s End. On November 18th, we’ll reveal who the winners of each category are, and who will walk away with the top prizes!

Best in Show
Pull out all the stops and show us the costume you think will impress us most!
The Urostek
Scar us with the ugliest, mish-mashiest, or gaudiest transmog you can come up with.
Vampire
Show off your class with the Venthyr!!
Hippie
Blend in with the nature lovers over in Ardenweald!
Grunge
Get dirty and grimy with the Necrolords!
Divinity
Ascend into the skies with the Kyrians!

For full details, including rules and how to enter, check out our Hallow’s End Costume Contest site.

Quetzie

MoD Notes for Heroic Sylvanas Positioning

Tiraffe here, this post should help those on the weekend team help sort out positioning and finish off Heroic Sylvanas.
Phase 1 Intermission:
Snapshot of pull 5 on Monday night, October 4th.
Healers should want to stand closer to the center of the room when the intermission starts (quadrant permitting) so they can stay in range of the rest of the raid. Doing so will increase the chance that one of the center arrows will end up on them. The center arrows usually die faster since there’s usually a big clump of them; the faster a healer’s arrow dies, the faster they can stand still can cast. It is okay to orient along where the center of the arrows are being dropped rather than the actual center of the room for the sake of staying in range.

Melee should be trying to get into melee range of someone else’s arrow while giving themselves enough slack to get pulled if their arrow is on the outside. Dps in general may want to hold onto dps cds through the 3rd set of chains (if 3rd chains actually go off), so they can quickly blow up the intermission chains.

Put yourself in a position where you can help each other the most.

Phase 2:

  1. Platform 1
    Don’t get hit by Darkness, stack beforehand and stay stacked until it’s called to move; don’t move early. Either use the gateway (if it’s placed, don’t be right on top of it) or pop a mobility (without getting hit). If you don’t have a focus macro set up to hit the gateway, just stand in range of the gateway, place your mouse over it beforehand, and hit it as soon as the call is made to move.

    As soon as Sylvanas casts her Wail, she’ll be immune again.
  2. Platform 2,
    Ranged (and ranged healers) stay on the brdige and need to stay stacked to make Darkness easier to dodge. Any ranged with Crushing Dread (purple circle) need to move up onto the chain and position themselves where the next bridge will be. Melee (and melee healers) continue as usual. Dps focus the Souljudge first, healers can dispel the dreads as soon as the Souljudge dies.

    Don’t forget about interrupting the caster mob, especially as the group leaves this platform.
  3. Platform 3
    Whole raid stacks on tanks and focuses the summoner (+ orbs). Summoner should be dead before the 2nd cast of orbs. The Goliath should then die around the time Darkness is cast. Don’t get hit by Darkness. Stack and Stampeding Roar to run out, preferably in the direction of the new bridge. (Gateway debuff usually comes off cd as well, but the area isn’t usually clean enough to find it when needed). Faster classes should try to get across the bridge as soon as it spawns, so that the group is spread on the bridge when Sylvanas does another Banshee Wail.
  4. Platform 4
    1 person needs to be responsible for getting the kick on Sylvanas, ideally a dh or monk who can get there and wait to kick it at the last moment. Raid stacks on the adds, Dreads will spread near the old bridge is. Dps focuses Summoner first. Mass Dispel the dreads once the Souljudge dies next. Sylvanas casts Darkness and Haunting Wave at the same time here. The raid won’t be stacked for this darkness due to dreads being spread already. Thrall spawns the new bridge shortly after the Souljudge dies around the same time, so dodge Darkness as best you can and get across the bridge asap.

    Healers can dispel Crushing Dread on this platform if someone goes above 7 stacks before the Souljudge dies.
  5. Platform 5
    Same as the last platform, someone will need to rush over and ready the interrupt while the rest of the raid catches up. There’ll be a melee stack on boss and a ranged stack for Darkness. The boss will also cast Haunting Wave while on this chain, where melee and tanks will need to run out. Depending on how quickly Sylvanas is dying, she’ll leave early. The main goal here is to have everyone alive in phase 3, folks with offheals should throw them onto any people with the Darkness debuff once Sylvanas leaves. Use the adds that spawn during the phase change to get some extra resources as well. Any dead in phase 2 will have their corpses brought to the platforms in phase 3.

    Try to refresh dots on Sylvanas right before she leaves; she’ll take damage during the p2 intermission.

 

Phase 3:

Phase 3 Heroic introduces the Banshee’s Fury mechanic, which is a raidwide damage cast Sylvanas does. Fury does additional damage (about 10k) for every instance of puddle dot (Banshee’s Bane) on someone in the raid when Fury’s cast finishes.

Don’t forget that moving between platforms requires walking off the blue edges of the platform, marked in blue here. Lust on 3rd platform. Boss dies once she goes below 50% health. F

or the phase itself, there are 3 goals here:

  1. Tanks manage puddles created by Banshee’s Bane, the rest of the raid avoids them when possible, and healers dispel the tanks once the tanks are in position in a corner (preferably the corner(s) with no jump lines). – This will also require a tank/healer going to the 4th platform to clean up the puddles after Sylvanas casts Banshee’s Bane the 1st time.
  2. Folks with Wailing Arrow need to pop mitigation and jump at the last second with their arrow on the 1st, 2nd and 3rd platform. The tank that gets Wailing Arrow will also need to grab the puddles on the next platform before jumping back (if possible) while popping mitigation. On the 4th platform, Wailing Arrows go to where Skull is, with the rest of the raid near the jumpline by green.
  3. Spread for Darkness/Banshee Wail and Stack for Banshee’s Fury. If the puddles are being taken care of properly, there should be enough space for the raid to comfortable spread. The Darkness targets 2 people each, so everyone needs to be ready to avoid it. For Banshee’s Fury, there needs to be no one with the Banshee’s Bane debuff when the cast finishes. Anyone that picks up the puddle debuff needs to go to a non-jumpline edge of the platform and wait to get dispelled. Priests can finish a Mass Dispel in the back-half of her cast to dispel any stragglers that accidentally grabbed puddles; dispelled puddles have a brief period where they can’t be picked up.
Keep note of the timers for when to spread, stack and pop cooldowns. Don’t pop a dps cd right before she casts Darkness.