Mythic Conclave goes down!

With almost record timing on the kill, the gang tore through Mythic Conclave last night. We had 3 pulls the previous week after killing Opulence, and last night we got in 14 pulls including the kill. Considering it took us over 100 pulls to kill Opulence, this is an almost record-breaking feat. Congratulations to everyone involved!

…and it would appear our members are incredibly excited about it:

World of Warcraft Reputation Calculator

Lokisapocalypse (Lokiwise, Thanos, Lightchylde, and many others) is a very active member of the Ministry of Defense Discord. He’s also a crackshot programmer who created an amazing tool for tracking World of Warcraft reputations – the World of Warcraft Reputation Calculator.

The World of Warcraft Reputation Calculator was created as a way to easily track earning reputation in World of Warcraft. As someone who’s played since Vanilla, I often found myself asking, “How many more daily quests do I need to hit Exalted?”, “How many Emissary Caches will it take to get Revered?”, “Why should I bother getting Hydraxian Waterlords reputation in Battle for Azeroth?”.

With that idea in mind, I created a tool that would display your current reputation score in a more meaningful way. By entering your character’s name, server, and realm, you can see a page that shows you how close you are to the next rank for each reputation.

By clicking the To Next Rank, for a given expansion, you can see how to earn reputation for that faction and how many more of that activity you need to do. This will allow you to see exactly how many more Emissary Caches you need to turn in to unlock Zandalari Trolls as a playable race.

I’ve also created faction pages with more details into the history of each faction. Each faction page also contains all of the repeatable ways you can gain reputation for that faction as well as what rewards you can earn at each level.

Continue reading

Uu'nat AOTC!

I’ve been generally too busy to post wrapups for a few weeks, but I’ll catch up on them shortly. In the meantime, congratulations on everyone who got AOTC for Uu’nat this week! It is unlikely to be our only attempt at him, so if you missed out, don’t worry, there will be more. In the meantime, Mondays are back to Heroic Battle of Dazar’alor, since a lot of people are still missing Jaina on their mains, and it gives us a break from Uu’nat for a little while.

Killing Uu’nat brought us up to #1 Horde and #14 overall on Aerie Peak for Crucible of Storms. Considering that we’ve only been doing it one night a week without a chunk of our main progression team, I’m happy with how we did on the overall!

St. Jude PLAY LIVE Charity Streaming

I previously mentioned this in Discord, but now that the official donation season is upon us, I wanted to give everyone a more thorough explanation. Throughout May I will be doing a charity stream for St. Jude PLAY LIVE, during which all funds donated go directly to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. You can scroll down to the bottom of the post to see what they’re about.

Quetzie’s Stream & Goals

Since I never streamed outside of raids for the guild and I never did this before, I gave myself a modest goal of $150. In order to reach this goal I’ll be streaming my alt-levelling, Mythic+ runs, Island Expeditions, etc more regularly as well.

There are a few rewards and incentives to donors, most of which center around raids and the guild.

$10 Donation

Anyone who donates $10 or more can sign up for a custom innervate message. These messages will be used during Saturday and Monday raids. You can use song lyrics, flirts, dad jokes, or even use as advertising space. Since I block chat on my screen, there will also be a /say message over my head so that those watching at home can see your message. I will also screencap the message and post it in Discord, in case it gets used when you’re not around. If I receive any interesting responses, I’ll be sure to add that 🙂 Remember, messages cannot be explicit! This is for children! If you donate over $10, send me a message on Discord with the message you’d like.

Top Donor Reward

The top donor* will receive a FREE custom Ministry of Defense hoodie with their character name of choice on it! The MoD logo, character name, and “Ministry of Defense” will appear splashed across the center back and front left breast area of the hoodie. If you win, I’ll be in touch to get a shipping address.

* In the event of a tie, both parties get one!

$50 Milestone: Healing Normal Battle of Dazar’alor

When I reach $50, I will consult with the resto goddesses* to set myself up right to heal a normal run of Battle of Dazar’alor. I may or may not heal Jaina depending on how craptastic I do. But I will absolutely give it my best shot!

*Meevs and Shay

$150 Milestone: First Person battle of Dazar’alor

Blame Corignis for this one! If we hit my stream goal of $150, I will play the entirety of Battle of Dazar’alor in first-person. I fully expect to get hit by fire in Opulence and frozen into a block on Jaina. But at least you won’t have to see the back of the head of an ugly chicken-lizard, right?

Future Milestones

If we wind up surpassing $150, I’ll think of something else fun or interesting to do. (I’m not saying I’ll get a MoD tattoo, but I’m not saying I won’t either!) Submit your own ideas if we reach that point – I’d love to make this fun for you guys.

Quetzie’s Tiltify page

DAM BUG Team & Goals

My stream is part of the DAM BUG team, which has a goal of $1200. We’re a handful of small streamers looking to make a big impact. There’s only a few of us signed up right now, with more expected to sign up throughout the duration of May. Last year, the team leads raised $1200, so that’s our goal as a team this year. Any one can join the team and help us reach – and surpass – that goal!

Are you interested in joining us? Boter, one of the team leads, set up a YouTube video tutorial on how to join. There is a link in the video description to art / streaming assets and a document walking you through the process if the video doesn’t help. You can also ask me for a hand.

DAM BUG PLAY LIVE page

About St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital

  • Treatments developed at St. Jude have helped push the overall survival rate for childhood cancer from 20% when the hospital opened in 1962 to more than 80% today
  • Families never receive a bill from St. Jude for treatment, travel, housing or food
  • 82 cents of every dollar received from donations, research grants, insurance recoveries and investment returns goes to support the current and future needs of St. Jude
  • St. Jude treats about 8,500 patients each year. Most patients stay in one of four housing facilities specifically designed and managed for families of children with cancer and other diseases. Construction of a fourth housing facility began in 2018.
  • St. Jude has an onsite school allows patients to keep up with their school program back home.
  • More than 75% of St Jude’s operating cost come from donors

More information about St. Jude

About St. Jude PLAY LIVE

PLAY LIVE has raised over $11,000,000 for St. Jude over several years.

Basic rules: Anyone over 13 can stream; games streamed must be rated “TEEN” or lower by the ESRB; streamers may not use language or visuals that are bigoted, sexually explicit, or profane. (I’m not sure they’re really pressuring about the profanity thing). Streamers cannot be drunk or partake in drug-related activities on stream (which is also within Twitch rules anyway). ALL money donated goes directly to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

Streamers who raise a certain amount of funds will receive prizes based on how much they raised; $100 nets you a free PLAY LIVE t-shirt, while $5000 or more gets you a gaming chair!

More information about St. Jude PLAY LIVE

Thanks

Thanks to anyone who shares the link, watches the stream, and who donates (or has already donated!).

Weekly Raid Roundup April 9 - 15

Mythic Night 1

Champions was another one shot loot pinata this week. We’re getting cleaner about add kills and dodging hammers.

Grong was problematic and from talking with other guilds, Grong is one of the hardest reclears even after everything else is on farm. Poor RNG on bots (including a bot placement we’d never seen before), as well as a mess of fears making for missed interrupts, made Grong a burden again. Towards the end we adopted a new strategy on interrupts, and both of our orb collectors are getting more comfortable with their roles.

That said, if you are not an orb collector, please do not pick it up, even if things look hairy. We know the timers on them, we know our cooldowns, we know what we’re capable of. Multiple times we were planning on waiting for damage and mechanics before fetching an orb, only to find someone else had grabbed it…and then subsequently died with it. Leave us to our job, and we’ll leave you to yours.

We finally killed Grong with just enough time to clear trash and get a pull or two on Jadefire. After the issues with Grong we were feeling a bit down. Fortunately, the only DPS who wasn’t with us last week – Grim – was a tank main already familiar with the hardest mechanic, which is the multi sided strike. Therefore we didn’t have to explain this to him. The rest of the fight – gunning down explosives, killing the adds, navigating the maze – were a cinch. The group stacked wonderfully when Manceroy became a phoenix, and we 1-shot the boss with minimal losses.

Thursday Logs

Mythic Night 2

Unfortunately for us, Blizzard decided to be screwy and anyone with a Cox ISP had serious connection difficulties. Some of our main roster and some of our subs wound up suffering the whole time, so we wasted between 1 and 1 and a half hours until we could get real progression going.

Left-side fire room has a slight change; we’re now tanking the boss in the middle as opposed to near the gate, which makes it easier for people to deposit orbs safely.

We swapped healers on different sides and may continue to tweak healers over time.

Both sides reached the Gem room at various times, though we never had an attempt with both groups reaching the end room. We’re quite pleased with how the latter half of the night progressed.

This week we will continue to reclear bosses 1-3. Depending on how the group feels we may save the lockout on Opulence for next week, or we may reclear again.

Friday Logs

Saturday: Heroic

I was again not present for the Heroic run, but it looks like things went really well. Conclave was a 2-shot and Mekka had some issues, but otherwise things looked good. We welcomed a couple new people on Saturday, and we look forward to them continuing to raid with us.

Saturday Logs

Monday: AOTC and Normal

With a blockade lockout available on Heroic, we decided to see if we could get some people AOTC that need it. Blockade had an annoying wipe at 0% HP and then we killed it. Jaina was surprisingly a 1-shot, netting 6 AOTCs, 3 of which were new to the player.

After that, we swapped around and ran through normal. Much like last week, we 1-shot everything there, too. For those of us running on out Mythic tons, it was almost laughable to realize how far we’d come. Corignis decided to /sleep in fire on Grong for 20 seconds and barely took damage; others played similar games with damage taken, or simply ignored mechanics in favor of DPS output.

The combination of 2 heroic bosses and all of normal came in at just under 3 hours. We’re making good time on alt nights.

Monday logs

AOTC Achievements

As we continue to perform in Mythic and have raid opportunities for heroic on Saturday, the chances of us getting more AOTC events is very high. If you’re interested in AOTC and don’t have it, check the Raiding Announcements channel in Discord. You’ll see a signup post.

Crucible of Storms

This week will be our first look at the new raid. Saturday will have Normal and Heroic runs. Vanguards get dibs on spots. If we have too many people showing interest, we will either trim or split into 2 groups (to be determined). After the first clear, we will determine how to add it to the rotation. It’s possible that CoS will be added to Monday nights, after finishing heroic BoD or before clearing normal.

Mythic CoS will likely be handled by Jibbles, who organized his “Gob Squad” runs of Champions early on. We’re not looking to add Mythic CoS to our normal Mythic BoD time slot. As Jibbles’ runs are unaffiliated with the official Ministry of Defense Mythic runs, you’ll have to contact him if it’s something you’re interested in.

Weekly Raid Roundup: April 2 - 8

Mythic Night 1

Champions of the Light

Most people on the Mythic team have already seen and/or killed Grong as a result of Jibbles’s Gob Squad runs on Sundays. That said, a number of new people were with us for the kill, and there were only 3 deaths. No Angelic Renewal casts got off, and Divine Mallet damage was comfortably low. That said, Atesies and Coldryder were (I believe) the ones with new Champion kills. We forgot to take a picture. Whoops!

Grong

Grong was fun, but challenging. Everyone we spoke to suggested it was a 5-healer minimum. But since we hate listening to directions and hate the easy route we stuck with 4. (This also means we either hate or love our healers. Use your own discretion.)

We had a few problems. Initially, our second orb holder kept dying because he wasn’t receiving enough direct heals. We assigned a specific healer to watch him during tough spots, which solved that issue wonderfully. Another problem was syncing when to use the item to cancel Throw while also draining his tantrum as low as possible. A third was part of the common Heroic issue: people not running out far enough with Throw, while also remaining stationary long enough for the tank to land and not be horrified. We improved communication as the fight continued. Myself and Kamahl (orb holders) got better about recognizing when we would need externals (without memeing BIG HEALZ); tanks got better at recognizing when they would be in trouble during Throw; the group coordinated interrupts smooth like butter.

In the end, we only needed 13 pulls for the kill.

Jadefire Masters

After Grong, Jadefire felt…easy, really. The hardest part of Jadefire is staying alive during multi-sided strike. However, once it was pointed out that the pattern of colors always remained the same (BLUE GREEN RED GREEN BLUE) and I threw together a quick Weakaura to show the color order, most people were able to survive the transition. There were still problems, of course – it’s mythic! We initially killed one explosive orb to start, baited magma traps, then moved on to the second explosive orb. Unfortunately, there was simply too much damage and bad timing with the third explosive, multi-sided strike, and the transitional phase. We eventually evened out timing, but still only managed to just down Mestrah twice – once with Manceroy around 30%, and later, with 19 total people, Manceroy around 18%.

Thursday Logs

Mythic Night 2

We had a rough start to Jadefire as new people joined us for the night and had to re/learn how to do multi-sided strike. However, we overall had better damage to orbs and got a new strat: we burn both the first two explosives, THEN bait magma traps, then kill the third explosive. By that time the third explosive was either dead or close to it before the transition happens.

We had 14 pulls total between both nights for the kill.

Opulence

Opulence will be our first real problem and the first boss we spend a lot of time tinkering and restrategizing on. It’s likely that we will swap healers around going into this week, as certain specs are better at dealing specific types of damage / situations. We’ll also be reinforcing a useful graphic that we pulled from <Am I Muted>’s discord, which will help with the lightning orb drop points significantly.

We also don’t want anyone running 3 stacks of Treacherous Covenant on Opulence or onwards until we have them downed a few times. The extra damage taken and loss of DPS, especially in poison room / dot situations, is enormous.

Downing Jadefire put us at #7 on the server. In order to gain ranks, we have to defeat Opulence, Conclave, AND Rastakhan.

Friday Logs

Heroic and Normal

I was not present for the Saturday Heroic run, but it looks like everything went well and the run was slightly over 2 hours. In the future, we may decide to do either 2 or 3 hour runs, depending on what people feel like. We may also save lockouts from the previous weeks to try to push AOTC for those that need it. We will try to announce this ahead of time.

Monday we originally planned to concurrently run heroic and normal. In the end we opted to run only normal, as a number of people who were originally going to do heroic either could not make it or didn’t feel well enough. In true alt-night fashion, we 1-shot every boss including Jaina, and came in at just over 2 hours. This is an excellent return to form and we know it boosted some spirits. It was nice to see people able to gear alts and run characters they haven’t been able to during progression runs.

Saturday logs
Monday logs: 1, 2, 3

Loot Rules

In the face of a Mythic team and the return of alt nights, we’ve tweaked the loot roll rules for alt nights and clarified what to do with loot we don’t need.

Check out the updates to Loot rolls.

Mythic Team

After much deliberation amongst one another and a vote on time slots, the Warlords chose Thursday and Friday for Mythic progression, replacing Black Team raid times.

The following individuals are part of the Mythic roster:

TANK:
Telann
Rip

HEALERS:
Corignis
Phallamore
Liv
Ubernuts

DPS:
Zextol
Lillithh
Quetzie
Kamahl
Foxxie
Harmesi
Fokolamagexd
Lineda
Niraffe
Donkay
Demonestra (transitioning to Houndmaster)
Grimmbrew
Jibbles
Cameltotem

BACKUP/FLEX:
Coldryder
Urostek
Atesies
Bulborbish
Bellelina
Shaynanigans

These individuals were chosen based not only on the numbers performance of their main spec, but also on mechanics, listening to directions, flexibility to other roles / classes, communication, availability for times, and most importantly, attitude.

This is NOT a permanent roster. If you think you were unfairly excluded (example: maybe you can make the times and we didn’t think you were able), please feel free to reach out to us. If you are on the roster but wind up benched because of underperformance or attendance issues, please don’t take it personally. We’ll work with you to show where you can improve as best we can.

If you’d like to try out for the Mythic roster but haven’t raided with us before, please get ahold of a Warlord. We’ll run you through Heroic and M+ to evaluate your performance and where you might best fit on the team. Assuming you’re approved, you’d start as a fill / bench before being placed on the main roster.

We’re looking to have fun but also be successful. If you think you can provide a class / role / functionality we’re missing, please reach out. We’re going to work hard in the coming weeks to gear people’s alts / off specs in M+ and heroic / normal raids, practice rotation, provide WAs, etc.

That said, we’re still a casual guild. Nobody expects Cutting Edge, and we’re not looking to recruit hardcore mythic raiders to replace the friends we’ve been playing with for months or years. When we reach a point where the best of our best can no longer proceed, we’ll likely halt progression to simply farm lower bosses or do other fun activities as a group, catch up AOTCs, etc.

If the stress of Mythic becomes too much and you stop having fun, there is no shame in sitting out. We chose the above individuals because we think they can take the stress of Mythic raiding, but this is a game and everyone should enjoy themselves. If you find it’s not what you expected, don’t feel that you have to keep coming for our benefit. We’d rather everyone have fun, and we can find someone to fill your slot in the future.

Current Teams / Names / Designations

At some point I need to update the Raid Team Roster page. I can separate the Mythic group out from the rest of the Vanguards; move the Mythic team to Black team and move everyone else to Red; keep Red and Black roster the same but add a separate Mythic roster; combine our (incredibly large) roster into 1 listing; give the Mythic team a brand-new designation; or any other number of things. If anyone has suggestions, please get ahold of me. Otherwise I will use my best judgement, and then nobody is allowed to bitch about what I choose :^)

Loot rule changes / clarifications

As some of the raiders move into Mythic, the Warlords decided to adjust the rules regarding loot rolls. We also added some rules we’d mentioned in Discord that never made it to the online sheet, some from way back in Uldir!

Old Loot Roll Rules:

Once loot has been received, players who wish to offer up an item for roll will whisper the item to Telann. All loot rolls will be posted and closed by him (highest roll from 1-100 wins). Main spec rolls will be offered first, followed by off spec, and lastly character alts. Transmog and Disenchants are allowed after those priorities. BoE items belong to whoever receives them and may also be offered to others for roll at that players discretion. You are not required to offer an item up for trade.

New Loot Roll Rules:

Once loot has been received, players who wish to offer up an item for roll will whisper the item to Telann. You are not required to offer any item up for trade. Telann will then call for rolls in order of roll priority (below). If you win the roll and find you don’t need/want the loot, it then goes to the next runner up.

Roll Priority:
Main spec upgrade, Azerite or Trinket side grade *
Side grade for main spec
Off-spec
Transmog
Disenchants

* If a raid night is an “alt night”, alts / newbies are given main-spec priority rolls over those characters who are in main progression runs, as higher-geared characters have more opportunities to get the pieces they need. During alt nights, progression characters are considered “off spec” in the loot priority listing.

Note: BoE items belong to whoever receives them, but may also be offered to others for roll at that players discretion.

Reasons Why

Azerite and Trinkets may be ilvl side-grades for many classes, but the difference between a BiS trinket or trait is phenomenal (as an example, my BiS azerite trait does more damage than my spam / builder spell).

Characters who are not in the core progression groups (whether we’re on Mythic or Heroic for a given tier) have fewer opportunities for upgrades; it’s important that we give everyone opportunities to get gear. Progression characters going to alt runs are generally there to supply loot to alts / newbies who need it. We may make an exception for incredible titanforges above Mythic-level loot drops.

If you win an item and find you no longer need it (maybe it wasn’t a good upgrade via sim), please return it to the original owner or pass it off to the next-highest roll, rather than a friend or someone you “think” should get the item. You are also more than welcome to cancel your roll and say “No, I don’t really need it, give it to [person who rolled next highest]”. (As a one-trick, I do this all the time if I see the next-highest roll would be getting a massive upgrade, or if someone is gearing a new progression toon.)

If you’re going to roll on a piece for transmog / disenchant, hold off until you’re sure there are no upgrade rolls. Telann will call for “need” first, and then for “transmogs and DE” if nobody rolls on upgrades/sidegrades.

This is going to be a slight change for everyone, so it’ll take some time to get used to. If someone rolls out of turn, don’t get mad at them.

Take a refresher on all the Rules and Regulations, but you don’t need to re-confirm them with us.

Monthly Raid Roundup: March 2019

Let’s just skip the part where we all know I’m behind.

Heroic Boss Kills

Geeks and Freaks:

Geeks and Freaks – Mekkatorque – 3/11/2019
Geeks and Freaks – Stormwall Blockade – 3/16/2019
Geeks and Freaks – Jaina – 3/18/2019

Masters of Mayhem:

Masters of Mayhem – Mekkatorque – 3/01/2019
Masters of Mayhem -Stormwall Blockade – 3/14/2019
Masters of Mayhem – Jaina – 3/21/2019

Mythic

There is / will be some restructuring as we move into Mythic. More on this will come in tomorrow’s roundup.

Mythic nights will be taking place on Black Team times, though the Mythic group will comprise both Red and Black team members. We haven’t decided whether to keep the team names / identifiers the same, change them, lose them entirely, or something else. If you have opinions, let us know!

Raid Roundups will likely majority cover the Mythic raids, though will mention saturdays and mondays here and there.

Vanguards and AOTC

Vanguards who wish to keep Vanguard status but are not on the Mythic team will only have to come to 50% of the remaining raid dayss (saturdays and/or mondays) until the next full tier to keep Vanguard. The requirements for new raiders to earn Vanguard are the same (5 raids in per month).

That said, we still have a number of guild members and raiders who need AOTC. Keeping on top of raid mechanics, continuing to run M+, etc, will help ensure that we can get AOTC for them before the next tier. We had 6 successful AOTC runs in Uldir. We’ve already done AOTC twice on Jaina. Let’s shoot to get everyone AOTC who needs it, just like Uldir!

Crucible of Storms

Once Crucible releases we’ll be running that on Saturdays and Mondays instead of Heroic BfD, at least until it gets cleared or people get bored of it. The Mythic group may run it during their time as well, or we may decide to split into 2 groups on saturdays / mondays. Essentially the schedule for the Mythic group doing crucible is TBD, but everyone else can plan for Saturday / Monday to be Crucible runs when it releases.

Mythic Raiding Writeup: Tiraffe Teachings

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

Hey guys, Mythic raider and card game enthusiast Tiraffe here. Given the recent announcement from Uro about looking at the possibility of pursuing Mythic Progression, I figured I’d whip up a guide to help out those that are looking to improve their play or are afraid that they wouldn’t make the cut for a Mythic roster now or in the future.

Continue reading

Ministryofdefense.net anniversary

Can you believe it’s been over a year since we launched the guild website? (It launched on March 17th, 2018)

We’ve seen a lot of changes over time. The original site didn’t even have a search function. We didn’t have a PvP section, either. We didn’t have a way of tracking raider attendance, or even showing off our raid team. We changed the way the menus work on mobile, and added submenus to the raiding and PvP pages. We changed a page about discord bots into a page for our social media. We added a calendar and, briefly, a page to vote on the guild Halloween contest. We have an updated tracker for our raid rankings, and dozen of other tiny tweaks.

What’s your favorite website functionality? What would you like to see from us in the future?

Quetz is back! Yay! You can expect Raid Wrapups to return, as well as a brief overview of the screenshots from previous boss kills that we didn’t cover in March. I currently have a huge backlog of changes to make on the site as well, obviously. The Attendance and Raid Team pages need to be updated, as they’ve been outdated since February. There are a full 18 plugin and WordPress updates. Expect the site calendar to be brought up to speed as well. I’d like to thank everyone for being patient with me during a very difficult March, and am looking forward to a much more fun April and beyond.