Intro to Raiding

How To Become a Raider in Less Than 20 Minutes:
Being a Better Player and Notes on Raiding

To everyone old and new: Welcome! This is Tiraffe, Mythic Raid Lead and person-with-all-hidden-artifact-appearances. It’s also Quetzie, Mythic Raid Lead Raid Mom who “is not mad, just disappointed”.

This is a revamp of Tiraffe’s mythic guide from 8.2. Given the new expansion looming on the horizon, we have rewritten and refreshed it to be a general raiding guide. This is for those who are looking to get their feet wet in Shadowlands, or for those who dove into Ny’alotha mid-tier and want to get a better foundation of understanding and best practices.

For those looking for a mythic-specific guide, check out the Mythic Expectations post.

(Links to mentioned websites/addons and sources listed at the bottom)

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Improving your DPS: Revisited

Updated for Dragonflight Prepatch: 11/20/22

Welcome to “Improving your DPS: Revisited”. Some of you may remember the “Improving your DPS” guide that Quetzie wrote during Uldir to help us improve as we moved into harder fights (remember dipping our toe into Mythic for the first time? Ah, nostalgia!). Consider this the successor guide as we move into a brand-new expansion and hope to hit the ground running as a more well organized group. This guide is co-written by Quetzie (Mythic Raid Lead and Person-Who-Thinks-Alts-Are-For-Suckers) and Tiraffe (Mythic Raid Lead and person-that-did-every-Balance-of-Power).

In the first guide, Quetzie spent most of the time focusing on those who might be new to raiding or who were aware of their faulty DPS. In this guide, we revisit some of the tips that can help new players, but we also want to drill home that every level of player can find a place to improve. Even on the mythic team, nobody is perfect. There are always rotation gaps, mechanical failures, and basic preparation that can be improved upon.

Here are the topics this post will discuss:

  1. Streamline & Optimize
  2. Rotation & Opener
  3. Pre-Combat Preparation
  4. Class Resources
  5. Dragonflight Optimization
  6. Asking and Receiving Help

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Quickguide to Simming

Updated for Dragonflight pre-patch – 11/20/2022

Excitement! Tuesday has rolled around and you’ve opened your weekly chest. But suddenly you’re faced with a problem: you don’t know whether your currently equipped gear is better than what you’ve got. Maybe you have a couple of new pieces from raid, and you’re not sure which stats are better. What now?

One of the easiest ways to determine if a piece of gear is an upgrade is to run a simulation of your current gear against your new gear to see which is the better option. Maybe these pants have stronger single-target stats, or that trinket is better for multi-target fights. What’s “better” changes with talent builds, rotations and any number of expansion specific factors. Below is a step-by-step guide on how to use the Simulationcraft addon in conjunction with raidbots.com to run simulations on gear, talents, stat distributions and dps. Feel free to click on the pictures to make them larger.

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Summer Themed Tmog Contest Results!

Skip to the ‘read more’ or scroll down to see submissions!

I want to thank every member that participated in the summer themed tmog contest! This was such a rough month to judge. For real, we had to bring in an outside judge to break a three way tie. The outfits were fabulous and so much fun!

1st place summer tmog and winner of 10k gold:

Peepo

“This outfit is simply adorable. It reminds me of my daughter wearing her first two piece to the swimming pool. I might have gone with a different pair of shoes.” – Loki

2nd place summer tmog with their choice of 10 flasks and 20 battle pots

Quetzie

“From the bottle to the shark to the board- love it! -Gary

First place Uro mog and winner of 5k gold is: Tiraffe

Thanks to our judges: lokisapocalypse , encyclopedia Hosstannica , and to our tie breaker Ryan (Zextol/Ryzin/Ryblight)

I’ll see you next month for another tmog contest!

– Gary

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First AOTC carry-a-thon a success!

Thanks to all the folks who came out as part of the carries on Wednesday (and to the many more who volunteered but we turned away because we simply didn’t have room!)

We ran through and killed N’zoth 4 times in about an hour, and secured AOTC for the following folks:

Jenazeel, Carnage, Criticalysm, Mauxie, Gioconda, Shamfam, Drift, Deathhoss, Vaelith, Celkian, Ioggas, Hodur, Direlord, Catybrie, Bloodtanuit, and Jarica

This is in addition to several AOTC (free entry) discord raffles and a few officer carries this sunday. It’s likely that we will do one more of these, so if you missed out, don’t fret!

Additionally, if you would rather raid on the heroic team and join the weekly full clears, check out the Raiding Rules and Regulations page for how to get involved!

PPE Donation Drive by Quetzie

Hey everyone!

Regulars around here know that I’ve done a few good / charitable cause donation drives in the last year. My plan was not to do another one until the St. Jude fundraiser again, but something incredibly more pressing and personal is happening.

We are all aware of the effect that COVID-19 is having on the world right now. Some are affected more than others. One of our members is a nurse in New York, not far from where I live. As you may have heard, NY is one of the states most affected by COVID-19. Her facility, like so many others, is hurting for adequate PPE (personal protective equipment) – she had to buy her own N95 mask, she has no face shields, and they have just reached the point of rationing surgical masks. At the end of March, her facility had its first confirmed case of a staff member infected with COVID-19, and it’s only going to get worse.

During this time, I will be splitting donations on my stream between two causes: sending her facility face shields from a group called RIST, and sending washable, reusable surgical masks with filter inserts made by a fellow MoD member.

Your donations, and these supplies, will help ensure not only the safety of one of our own, but those she works with and those she treats. Any funds not used to benefit her facility directly will continue to be donated to RIST; they are sending face shields for free to hospitals across several states in the northeast. If at any point she makes me aware of a particular need for specific PPE at her facility, I will redirect funds to a different group or charity who can help instead (I will be transparent about it if this happens).

Quetzie’s Stream (host)
RIST 3D Printing (medical face shields)
Junky Jewelry (washable surgical masks with filter inserts)
Donate at my streamlabs tip jar (I will be keeping 0.00 funds, and am happy to prove it via receipts to anyone who asks.)

Ministry of Defense Ny'alotha on Twitch Tonight!

I (Quetzie) will be streaming our first guild attempts at Ny’alotha tonight and tomorrow night (and generally speaking, every thursday / friday raid slot). Raids start at 8pm EST.

If you want to see the raid, or see how we’re working out the fights, tune in!

 

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Follow up Q&A from 8.3 Raid Meeting

The Warlords met and discussed some of the questions that came up during the raid meeting that we didn’t have an answer to, as well as nailed down clarifications on others.

Revisited Q&A:

Q: If a Mythic person has a permanent character on the Heroic team, is that character considered an “alt” or a “main” for the purposes of loot rolling?
A: If a Mythic-roster player has a character on the weekend roster that attends at least 66% of the weekend raid days, that character is considered a “main” for the purpose of loot rolling. If the character doesn’t attend at least 2/3 of the weekend raids, they will be considered an alt, and will fall into line on the loot rolls as such. If you want to keep a permanent weekend-roster character, you must let Lineda know that your character is considered a “main” weekend character. Otherwise, mythic players on the weekend team will be considered visitors (alts) and will not have attendance logged and will not be assumed to be main roster for rolling loot.

Q: Can we donate gold instead of raw materials for Vanguard donations?
A: Yes. If you do not want to spend the time farming materials, you can send 5k gold directly to Urostek. This will be used to purchase more expensive items like vantus runes, pricey herbs, etc.

Mythic Clarifications:

Main swapping:

Any character who intends to swap needs to provide performance logs (either from the weekend team or a pug). A character who is ‘visiting’ the weekend team only for the purpose of getting logs is required to pass on loot rolls during this time (it would not be fair to join the weekend group, take BiS loot, and then leave them forever). The weekend team does not exist to feed the mythic team.

There is still a 2-week notice in effect. You must provide performance logs at the time you tell us you want to swap. You can not tell us you want to swap, raid for 2 weeks on the weekend team, hand us logs on Monday, and expect to come to Mythic raid on Thursday. We will need time to look at the logs and analyze that you are performing to a similar standard.

Time / Schedule:

The new raid times are 8-10pm EST Thursday, 8-11pm EST Friday. We realize that not everyone is going to be able to make the 11pm night on Friday, however there will not be a penalty for dipping early. Normal and Heroic are flex, and anyone who needs to leave early during Mythic gives a chance for weekend raiders to get Mythic experience.

8.3 Raid Planning Minutes

Raid Pre-Planning Meeting Agenda:

  • Introduction from the Warlords
  • Rules and Regulations changes
    • DPS Requirements
    • Raid Confirmation
    • Feasts VS Personal Food
    • Requirements for Ny’alotha
    • Sign-up Sheet
    • Moving from Heroic to Mythic
  • Old Rule Reminders
    • Coming on Time
    • Confirming and Coming to Raids
    • Discord / Communication
    • Discord Bots
    • Vanguard status
    • Loot
    • Respect
  • Pre-Ny’alotha reading & videos (WIP)
  • Q&A

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