Opening Night

Both teams started with very solid reclears, 1-shotting bosses that made us struggle and squirm last week. Nothing to cover here – we simply refined strategy and honed in on what works and what doesn’t. Black had 1 extra pull on Conclave due to tank damage using battle-res’s.

Mekkatorque

Surprisingly, both teams had to have additional pulls on Mekkatorque. We have people who are not moving the raid-wide damage close enough to the wall, and others who are not helping themselves with the robot mechanics. We wanted only those inside robots to be calling out colors (as that’s what’s going to happen in Heroic), but people either couldn’t find another robot, or they completely forgot. We only had 1-2 times that was successful in each group.

We’re asking that people start by using https://wago.io/wT9PCFmVW to help callouts. Hopefully as time goes on there will be other auras that will help callouts. In the meantime, if you do not have a microphone when we get to Heroic Mekkatorque, you either: a) need to get one b) need to be fast with typing c) need to sit.

Stormwall Blockade

Both teams reached Stormwall Blockade with only a few pulls left in them. Black had more practice on the pier, and thus downed the boss in 3 pulls. We wound up completely ignoring adds eventually and just burning the boss down while the timer ticked (if anyone remembers our first MOTHER kill, it was a lot like that).

Red reached the pier every time, but only had enough time for 2 pulls. Much like Black’s previous week, Red had a practice day on Sunday to work on the mechanics of the stormwall fight. It was a relaxed atmosphere and we spent a good amount of time discussing what worked, what didn’t, what each buff/debuff did, and expectations of individuals within the fight re: soaking, slows, etc. We were missing some key players (all of our hunters, for example) but had some very solid pulls. We also had a new strategy of having a side-soak group to pick up any Ires on the far side of the dock.

Masters of Mayhem Thursday logs
Freaks and Geeks Saturday logs part 1, Freaks and Geeks Saturday logs part 2

Closing Night

Masters of Mayhem

Black Team spent the night progressing on Jaina. We were missing a few key players here, but we worked around their absence. We learned before the start of the fight that the adds in the boat phase can be Mind Controlled and walked off the boat, so we had our priests hop to. This left the DPS with more damage on the boss. We organized specific ranged DPS to have specific cannons to fire (for example, I was always the front-right cannon).

When we got to the second phase with barrels, we marked specific barrels and moved clockwise from barrel to barrel. We also assigned specific people to get to Jaina first and interrupt her, while the rest of us sat back and just dodged mechanics (speedy rogues and shamans worked well here).

We opted to lust when we got the first or second mirror image add, depending on who was up and how we were progressing.

RLs made some mistakes with jaina’s health percentage (she needs to get to 30% and we kept thinking 40%) but recovered well.

In order to down her, we had to comp down significantly – we simply had too many bodies on the field, causing a number of problems that wouldn’t arise otherwise. We went with 3 healers and 8 DPS, which dropped Jaina’s health a significant amount.

Our kill was our cleanest pull – only lost 2 people right at the end, and had incredibly few people be frozen solid.

Masters of Mayhem Friday logs

Freaks and Geeks

Red Team spent most of their night progressing on Blockade. We were missing some key players again, so we had to make due with some fills. There were a number of really well-done pulls on the pier. Cleaning up the sea swells is becoming easier as people group and re-orient themselves back to where they need to be more often. More people are remembering to use CC to slow the adds. All in all it came down to a question of when to lust, and when to hold off. We wound up with a cleaner Blockade kill than black team because of persistence and practice.

Jaina

Because we downed Blockade with time to spare, we also wound up getting to look at Jaina. We again assigned ranged DPS to specific cannons, and had groups rotate around the room barrels to clear stacks. Our reaching Jaina went about as expected- too many people got frozen. We need to find some specific people who can reach her fast. However, we reached her phases pretty quickly, so I suspect it won’t take long to get a kill on her.

Freaks and Geeks Monday logs

This Week: Heroic

Both teams will begin progressing Heroic this week. If anyone who missed a Jaina kill from Black, or those from Red want to give her a shot, we will consider doing that on the second night (or when we hit a wall on heroic, whichever comes first). But it hasn’t yet been decided. Feel free to PUG normal regardless. We’re heroic progressing full-time now!

Because Heroic is more tough than normal (duh) we’re going to start being less lax about benching people for repeated mechanic failure. If you mess up because you’ve never seen a mechanic before, that’s fine! Don’t worry. Nobody expect perfection. But if you mess up after seeing the mechanic a 5th time…well…that’s a problem. Raid-wipe mechanics are more prevalent in Heroic and if the same people are causing them we’ll sit you temporarily until something can be figured out to help you improve.

Attendance and Breaks

No-call no-shows are starting to hurt the groups. If you cannot attend regularly, please consider bowing out and moving to our backup roster. There are going to be people that we are going to start doing that to this week because we are simply not receiving communications from them. If you know that you will be absent, let us know ahead of time so we can plan for it. We will never penalize someone for known absences, or if something extraneous comes up (illness etc).

Stop taking breaks at unassigned times. We’re losing valuable time to people getting up to pee, getting drinks, etc during non-break times. Some nights it seems like every pull that someone has to leave “for just a minute” (could be upwards of five). Pee during trash, get drinks when you’re dead (and unlikely to be resed). The more this happens the more likely you will find yourself losing your spot. We understand, again, if something extraneous happens (internet goes out, kid fell), but we’re noticing a trend that’s causing us to take too much time between pulls.

At the moment, both teams are lacking reliable attendees of some classes or specs. We’re going to start looking into recruiting reliable people to come to raids and benching the no-call no-shows. This will be a bit of a transition. If you know hard-hitting, mechanically-oriented players who would do well on either team, have them reach out to us. We’re not looking for all specs, but we’ll take names down anyway.

Complaints and Concerns

I’ll start by saying that your complaints aren’t falling on deaf ears and your voices aren’t unheard…provided we get a chance to hear them. If all you do is complain in private or make snippy comments in discord text channels, we won’t be able to properly address your concerns (many of which are likely valid). If you’re afraid to reach out to a Warlord, you are always welcome to reach out to Urostek. He’s a pretty chill bro.

Moving to two teams has been rough. It’s been stressful for you and it’s been stressful for the raid leads. I haven’t had a night off in over 2 weeks, between raiding 5 nights a week (including pickups) and bowling for 2 nights a week. 6 hours per group + pickups = 15 hours a week raiding. And that is not even counting the pre-planning, review, followups, and more than the raid leads do for each group, separately. That’s a lot of hours – basically a part-time job. Chances are I’ve been unduly unkind as a result, and I know the other raid leads have snapped as well. We apologize if we’ve been rude to anyone. We’re trying to make this work the best we can, but we’re only human. That said we’ve all taken some time to step back and breathe and be less intense about our feedback mid-raid. Hopefully it smooths out over time.

At the moment we’re somewhat resistant to change because we want everyone to give this time to work, and we want people to be patient as we work through the kinks. If it seems like we’re being stubborn, it’s because we want you to give us a little slack right now. We’re doing this for fun, and for you guys to have fun.

That said, we’re open to suggestions and are happy to work with you on what you think we can do to improve. Resulting from discussions, we’ve halted the search for an extra healer for Black team; we added a pickup day for Blockade for red; we posted a poll about the Saturday times (a time that is inconvenient for the Warlords won and we stuck with it); we’ve spoken to people comparing the teams unfavorably or too competitively;  we’re bringing back alt nights (soonTM).

We’re getting a lot of negative, hurtful comments about our character as a result of how we’ve chosen to run things. It really stings to be called names when I and the other Warlords doubled up our time and energy to provide a fun environment for the largest group of people we could. If you have any feedback on the way things are run or how things are going, please take a breath and try to come up with a viable solution before reaching out to us. If you can’t come up with one, at least be patient when you talk to us, because we may not have a way to address your concern immediately, either. But I can promise we’ll try.

We know that not everyone is happy we moved to two teams. Unfortunately the alternative was to bench 30+ people, including some of our longtime friends. We’re not changing this decision. Everything else is open for discussion.

For those who haven’t see the calendar, today marks the return of Guild LFR, and the first LFR of the season.

Harmesi took over LFR from me at the end of Uldir and has been doing an excellent job.

This is a good opportunity to get in gear for alts or hope for titanforged trinkets and weapons for mains. Any loot you don’t need, save until after the run is over – we will be doing loot rolls as a group at the conclusion of the LFR wing. Harm runs a tight ship and rolls fly by fast, so pay attention if you think you may need something!

For those who haven’t raided with us before, it’s a great opportunity to get your feet wet. While both main raid teams are pretty full right now, we’ve always got an eye out for those who can fill roles in case of absences or join the team when someone quits raiding.

Harm will be running LFR on a weekly basis. Wing 1 is the only one out right now, but when wings 2 and 3 release, they’ll be on the list as well.

This week’s LFR starts in about half an hour, 3pm EST. We hope to see you there!

Welcome back to the weekly raid roundup! For the new folks joining us, every week I take a look at what we did right and wrong on each boss we faced. Sometimes the roundups can be lengthy, while others are blissfully short. I include notes about what we need to watch for and what we should remember from the Warlords, so keep an eye out! There’s also a link to the Warcraft Logs for each session, so you can refresh your memory or follow along.

I used to do Roundups on a per-night basis. As a result of the two teams, for now I’ll be sort of combining nights / boss fights, as each group is progressing similarly and learning similar lessons along the way.

As a reminder, teams are Geeks and Freaks (Red Team) and Masters of Mayhem (Black Team). I may use names or designations interchangeably as I write.

Opening Night

Champions of the Light

This is a deceptively simple boss on paper. However, Black Team struggled to keep its adds under control.  Black team adds ran crazy and often stood either inside the DPS area, or in consecrate. Red Team, perhaps learning from Black’s mistakes, fared better in that regard. However, Red Team struggled to dodge blinding in spite of having better add management. Most of Black Team’s mis-steps came as a result of tank wrangling; most of Red Team’s were a result of DPS not paying attention.

Warlord thoughts: If you’re not using https://wago.io/bfaraid2 then all you’re doing is making your life difficult. Speak with Tiv or Quetzie to get Weakauras up and running for the first time, including using the new Weakauras Companion to keep your WAs up to date.

Masters of Mayhem: 1 attempt
Geeks and Freaks: 2 attempts

Masters of Mayhem pulls ahead by 1 fight

Grong

Grong can be a bit hectic if you’re not careful. Ranged need to stack on a marked player and move in a clockwise fashion to dodge the fire-bombs. Adds should be interrupted (call outs, please!) and nuked. Designated players will take the orb to force the boss to Tantrum. We had an unfortunate mishap on Red Team where an orb didn’t get used (it only has a 20 second cooldown) and caused a lot of raid-wide damage. Lesson learned! Black Team found success in having only 1 DPS go for the orb and use it every time, for consistency. However, Black Team lusted at the start of the fight, when they should have lusted at the end like Red Team, as he hits 40% or less HP. In spite of mis-steps, both teams 1-shot Grong.

Masters of Mayhem: 1 attempt
Geeks and Freaks: 1 attempt

Masters of Mayhem is still in the lead by 1 fight

Opulence

Opulence is a really fun fight when it goes well, and a frustrating fight when it doesn’t. Black Team suffered terribly from 2 accidental boss resets (lesson learned: tank minibosses by the door), and from twice having their topaz carrier die to lack of healing buff (hint, hint). Black Team had issues with CCing the adds properly. Rotations of cooldowns and knowing when to use them is crucial. Red Team’s right side struggled with the add turning and movement, causing all but one of the team’s wipes in the process. Red team also allowed one of their Topaz bearers to die to the lack of healing buff. However, Red Team had the most successful-looking of the groups’ kills; they were able to properly rotate their Topaz buffs to coincide with when adds spawned, because they were more successful at keeping Topaz players alive then Black.

Warlord thoughts: We’ll probably get a weakaura that tells you if you have the healing buff or not when the boss casts and share it with our topaz-bearers, so you don’t die quite as easily.

Masters of Mayhem: 7 attempts
Geeks and Freaks: 5 attempts

Geeks and Freaks comes up from behind and pulls ahead by 1 fight

Conclave of the Chosen

Conclave is the start of the hectic bosses, and the start of where we get dirty with alliance bodies and racials (eugh). Black Team bore the brunt of the learning curve here: we started going in a different boss-order than we ended on, we learned the hard way about timing the boss deaths, and we picked up strategies for stacking and unstacking along the way. Red Team suffered from people simply not paying attention: too many people keeping Hex in the group (or dispelling Hex early), and especially too many people allowing Kimbul’s stun to hit multiple people in a stack.

Masters of Mayhem: 4 attempts…but not yet down.
Geeks and Freaks: 6 attempts…but not yet down.

Masters of Mayhem Thursday logs
Geeks and Freaks Saturday logs

Act II: Akunda Boogaloo

Conclave, continued

Both groups benefited from overnight resting and reorganizing between fights. However, Red Team had an unfortunate overlap killing Gonk at the same time the tail-end of the Paku active effect was going. This resulted in a lot of deaths, with a messy (but successful!) kill in the end. Black Team only had 4 deaths on their successful kill, which was a full three minutes shorter than Red Team’s. Whoof.

Warlord thoughts: Yeah, remember that weakaura pack? Go ahead and download it. The timer on Kimbul is very short. You cannot finish your cast – cancel your spell and move move move! Don’t call out every time you are silenced unless you have been silenced for over 10-15 seconds or so. The healers can see you. Take a breath, move to the center, and wait for the rest to catch up.

Masters of Mayhem: 3 attempts
Geeks and Freaks: 2 attempts

Masters of Mayhem pulled itself up and teams are tied again

King Rastakhan

The King is a very interesting fight, with multiple phases, multiple rooms, and multiple strategies all involved. Black Team again suffered through experimentation and the learning curve. They realized that tank swaps should happen during the Scorching Detonation, when Rasta is standing still. Red Team had all ranged characters sit on the far side of Rasta as opposed to anywhere Bwonsamdi. Neither team was very successful at stacking both tanks for phase 3 transition. Both teams have issues of spreading fire killing people (seriously, pay attention – don’t move unless you HAVE to, and move early if you do!)

Warlord thoughts: Unless your circle overlaps another person with fire, or the boss, sit still! Much like eye beams on Zek’vos, people without the effect should move away form you, not vice-versa.

Masters of Mayhem: 5 attempts
Geeks and Freaks: 4 attempts

Geeks and Freaks squeaks into the lead by 1

Mekkatorque:

Ahh, back to our lovely Horde racials! Mekkatorque is a pretty simple boss, as long as we keep comms clear and bring debuffs behind the rocks we’re supposed to. Black Team had a cleaner kill in less time, at 7 and a half minutes, with majority deaths in the last 40 seconds; Red Team lost more people (averaging 2 per minute) and spent over 10 minutes on the fight. On Red Team, there were two major issues: people not dodging Buster Cannon (it’s a pretty big radius), and people getting hit by Gigavolt Blast. Pop a defensive, stay out of sight for the last 5 seconds (fuck your DPS, nobody cares), and wait for the debuff to drop.

Warlord thoughts: Everyone did a great job keeping comms clear and standing still so they didn’t run over the people who’ve been shrunk down.

While we broke tradition of taking pictures with dead bosses (we’ll do it for Jaina and for heroic, of course!), Quetzie got a lucky drop Friday of the G.M.O.D. and took an appropriate photo on Monday:

Masters of Mayhem: 1 attempt
Geeks and Freaks: 1 attempt

Geeks and Freaks is still in the lead by 1 fight

Stonewall Blockade

Blockade is a true Blockade at this point. I don’t have any intel on the left side boat. Right side, we need to spread out more and swap harder to the add. We may want to change DPS around for normal – fewer but stronger on right boat, since we have to work harder with the add spawning and all that. Black Team made it off the boat every time and had a lot of problems with managing adds, pools, and other garbage. Red Team only made it off the boats once or twice (in spite of Black’s practice session on Sunday). We also faced frustrations with the adds teleporting to the middle of the pier in spite of dropping them far in the back. Hopefully Blizzard fixes this.

For anyone unfamiliar with the strategy for clearing sea swell puddles, here’s a handy drawing from Quetzie, by popular request:

Everyone should stack on moon and x to start. After Sea Swell, move right fast. Those with the clearing debuff should follow approximately the path in green (including purple warlock portal) to clear out safe spots for others to stand. As soon as spots are cleared, the raid should “reset” back to moon and x.

Warlord thoughts: Less is more. We’re going to have to bench underperformers here because too many bodies, especially underperforming bodies, will set us back more than on any other fight. Proper strategy on the pier is to have ranged face the adds until the add gets close to the boss. Warlock portals will be indispensable for clearing goop and making it to the back of the room. Using blinks, dashes, etc is especially useful as well. Any slows work on the adds, but stuns, knockbacks, roots, etc do not.

Masters of Mayhem: 4 attempts…so far
Geeks and Freaks: 5 attempts…so far

At the end of week 1, both teams are tied up at 26 fights on the path to the first Jaina kill of the season

Masters of Mayhem Friday Logs
Freaks and Geeks Monday Logs

Overall thoughts:

The Warlords are all very pleased with how both groups did. Neither pulled too far ahead of the other and both progressed pretty much equally. If not for the add TP bug on Blockade, Black Team might have gotten to Jaina; with fewer bodies, Red Team could have said the same. Hopefully a weekly M+ chest and some experience (more info vids are releasing all the time) will help us down this boss and bring us closer to downing Jaina.

If Blockade is still bugged, we could potentially look at the first pair of bosses on Heroic this week. That said, feel free to run them on your own time. It’s not part of our schedule, so don’t worry about the lockout. You won’t get penalized for it.

I’m especially impressed with the problem-solving capability of Black Team and the tenacity of Red Team. Black team banged their heads on boses in many different directions to hone strategy, even when it might cost a kill. Meanwhile, can we rename “Red Team” to “Res Team”? Losing 10 people to Inevitable End (including both tanks), resurrecting both tanks, and still downing Rastakhan for the kill, is pretty wild. And that’s not counting the crazy kill we experienced on Conclave – maybe we should call ourselves “The Long Haul”!

In other news, I’ve updated the Raid Team page to reflect having two groups, and updated the Raid Attendance page for Battle of Dazar’alor. You can now track your Vanguard status and marvel at your wonderful transmogs (or…fix the shitty ones).

Let me know how you liked the format of this Roundup. If you’d like me to separate the groups more, I can do that next week.

Uldir, as much as we’re all sick of it now, was a big milestone for us. Let’s take a look back on it and reflect a little.

Uldir was the first time we’ve hit the ground running on a raid when the expansion started. It’s the most confident we’ve felt and the most prepared we’ve been going into a raid tier. We had ton of pre-planning going on – info sheets, boss videos a plenty, etc.

This was the first time we cleared a tier in one week. It took us 2 nights to down 7 bosses, and we took 2 more nights to kill G’huun, netting 8/8 off the get-go.

The following people earned Vanguard and / or a spot on the Raid Team page during Uldir (I may have missed some):

Anukhet
Arianrhod
Avarkus
Beastthuntt
Bellelina
Bulborbish
Choochoobear
Corignis
Deathhoss
Eviandrae
Foxxie
Grimmshock
Harmesi
Haromuk
Harvesting
Ibrokewind
Jibbles
Jimlahey
Julifton
Kamahl
Konflic
Lillithh
Lineda
Livre
Miatreeleafa
Nekoluna
Neocide
Nighteld
Orektarg
Pickpocket
Psychoshift
Quetzie
Qwaylas
Ripblade
Rowdyrival
Rwandarousey
Shaynanigans
Sheekey
Sylvvannas
Telann
Tiraffe
Treeson
Tusker
Uncletouchhy
Urostek
Vermin
Wendal
Widrickina
Xazzan
Xuxun
Yazza
Zextol

 

Our total boss kills are approximately as follows (n / h / m):

Taloc (14 / 16 / 11)
MOTHER (14 / 15 / 5)
Fetid (15 / 14)
Zek’vos (17 / 12)
Vectis (16 / 13)
Zul (17 / 10)
Mythrax (17 / 9)
G’huun (17 / 6)

There’s a few missing (this is based off of my armory kills + a few nights I remember being on my alt or missing; I rarely if ever pugged the raid) but it gives a good general sense 🙂

First Normal kill: Thursday, September 6
First G’huun kill: Monday, September 10
First Heroic kill: Friday, September 21
First full Normal clear: Thursday, September 27
First Heroic G’huun kill: Friday, October 19th
First Mythic Taloc kill: Thursday, October 25th
First Mythic MOTHER kill: Thursday, November 8

Total mammoth conga lines: 1

Total Corgi raids: 1

Total high-quality Quetzie drawings: 4

Raiding with y’all: Priceless

Yup, you read that right. For those who missed it…raid teams, plural. Starting in Battle for Dazar’alor, we’ll be running two raid teams. It’s possible that we’ll hit a slog in BfD and combine back into one, but for now, we’d rather run two teams and cross that bridge when we reach it, instead of bench 20+ people.

The Warlords referred to each team by an assigned color during the creation process (Black and Red – Lok’tar ogar!), and the main tanks in each group decided on team names beyond the color designation.

We proudly present…

 

The teams will be in flux, and we will attempt to balance them. That means that if one team pulls way ahead of the other, we’ll mix them up so they both proceed at a comfortable pace. We’ll do our best to match skills, class needs, etc across the raid groups.

Red team should fill out the sheet determining what days of the week they will be raiding on. We will let Red Team know asap, hopefully by the end of the week, so the group has plenty of time to prepare.

Raid leads do not appear on either list (except Telann as tank one side and Zex (Ryzin) as healer the other). If teams run concurrently, we will split 2 and 2. If they go on opposite days, we will fill roles (dps, heal, etc) as needed.

If you do not appear on either list, it is because of several of the following…

1. You did not confirm the rules with a Warlord yet
2. You have not attended raids yet
3. You attend raids too sporadically to find a niche or guarantee a spot for you yet
4. You’ve not spoken to a Warlord at length to get a spot in spite of the above – make sure to reach out to us! We will likely have you fill out a line on the Red Team sheet to help us decide which team would be best to fill you in on.

We might make very small adjustments to teams before  BfD launch, depending on comp needs and who will be available as backups or not. We will reach out to anyone affected by changes.

Be sure to check out the Raider Homework before start. It has a video list of the first 8 bosses!

Congratulations to all of our new Vanguards this week:

Tiraffe, Julifton, Rowdyrival, Shaynanigans, Uncletouchhy and Livre!

We’ve also had a number of new AOTC holders this week:

Atesies, Anukhet, Grooverider, Tivie, Grimmbrew, Uncletouchhy, Telanlan, and Auluriya!

For the Vanguards, we’ve updated the monthly donation sheet. If you are a Vanguard or will be one before the 15th, please donate by February 1st. These fund our feasts and flasks!