Words of “wisdom” from Guild Master, Officers, or other leaders within the Ministry of Defense. ONLY posts including this category will show on the homepage!
Congrats to everyone who participated in Sunday Funday the past couple of weeks. They were rewarded with new mounts, the Grove Defiler, which can be gotten by doing Legion Raid Achievements.
This upcoming Sunday Funday will be devoted to leveling alts to 80 for the eventual Herald of the Titan achievement run. Contact Bulborbish or Orektarg for details.
“Saturday night progression we will be SKIPPING Coven and attempting Aggramar. Aka watch the posted videos in discussion and PM a raid leader if you have any questions.” – Zextol
Can I get a hell yeah?
And congrats to Symderella for making Raider this week! You get to be part of the Raid Team page, have more money to spend on repairs, and access to Raider tabs. There are a number of other potential raiders “on deck” for promotions soon, so be sure to keep your attendance up and you’ll get to be part of the team, too!
Well, not really a ceremony… but we can dream!
Anyways, there is a new guild rank, the ‘Guild Champion’. Think of it as being double the MoD member! Just show up to guild events regularly like Alt Raid Night, Tiv’s Key Night, or Sunday Funday with Bulb, and you are on your way to a new status and guild promotion in game and on Discord! You’ll even get 400G a day repair withdrawal!
Wednesday was a generally successful run. We downed 5 bosses in relatively quick succession with one another before banging our heads against Kin’Garoth. We almost 1-shot High Command due to sheer numbers, but we do still need to manage our bombs better. It gets hectic on the second loop through.
Kin’Garoth, of course, gave us some trouble. DPS need to be smarter about moving sooner. Those assigned to purple add also need to remember to switch to red in the second add phase.
Regarding the Master Loot changes, you can see updates to the Rules & Regulations page with a clarification on Master Loot for tier bosses. We’ve also made a few other changes that retain the heart of the rules, while paring down excess verbiage.
Kin’Garoth was a big struggle for us again. It’s important for tanks to use proper mitigation and save cooldowns for those big hits of Forging Strike. Thanks to Grim for taking over as the healer on ball-duty!
Varimathras was a struggle as well. Tank swapping became an issue. Remember, DBM timers are likely to be off – you can’t trust them entirely. Communication with the other tank is crucial.
We ended the night slamming our heads into Coven again. This boss is becoming a combination DPS and RNG check. Please practive Heroic Coven in your downtime!
Raid Lead Comments: Please keep the comms clear. We’ve had 20+ raids multiple times now, so commentary during fights is absolutely problematic. We’re going to start coming down on people who keep talking even when told to be quiet. Tanks need us to be quiet unless it is a Raid Lead making calls! If you are not a Raid Lead, do not make calls or talk over the raid leads unless directed to do so.
Props to Wyte for coming to lend us a hand on heals and for killin’ it in spite of being “undergeared” and not having joined us previously. Thank you to the PUG who put up with our many wipes for so long as well.
We welcomed Tiv as a new Raid Leader and Lunzzul as a new Raider. Congrats to you both!
Monday was a big raid for us – 23 people! Lots of new or returning faces, which was great to see.
Garothi Normal has Decimation issues, but was otherwise an easy kill. Aggramar and Argus we each wiped once. Agg had an initial “whoopsie” for tanks, but after understanding the mechanic, we took him down easily. Argus wiped us once and we took him down the second time. Raid Lead Comments: please be paying attention to the markers on your head. Match them to the marker on the ground in Phase 2. Please move the buffs in phase 1 to the right, and move blight to the back.
Next we tackled heroic Garothi. Raid Lead Comments: Please move Decimation out of the group. DBM is a great tool, but only if you bother to use it!
We actually had three legendaries drop on Monday. Most notably, Zextol got the Amanthul’s Vision trinket.
We’ve got a number of new things posted this week on the site to help our raiders!
First, we have a new Raid Attendance management system. Take some time to read about what it means and how we track your attendance for Raider status.
I wrote up an in-depth look into Warcraft Logs for DPS (though I suggest tanks and healers reading it, too!). This will help you determine the proper talents, trinkets, and rotation to increase your output.
We’ve updated the Raiding Rules and Regulations so please take a look.
Finally, we have a few Website Changes that include a new Raiding sub-menu to make the raid-related pages easier to navigate, and added a Roster to show off our illustrious Raiding Team. I will be tweaking these two features for the next several days to improve their use.
Made 2 changes to the website today – one functional, one fashionable.
First, I’ve added a new submenu to all Raid-related pages. The raiding homepage, NEW Raid Team page, Raiding Rules & Regulations page, and the Raid Attendance page are all easily accessed from one-another. When you’re on a non-raid page, the submenu disappears to conserve space.
Second, and more exciting, I’ve added a Roster page. This page has a small badge for each Raid Lead, Raider, and their Alts. Raid Leads have red backgrounds (just like in Discord), Raiders have orange background (like in-game and in Discord), and alts have grey backgrounds.
Different classes have matching color names, avatar border, and ilvl text. Clicking on a character’s image will bring up a full view of their transmog in their class hall. Clicking their name will bring you to their WoW Armory page. Hovering over the items will show you their name, stats, etc.
Now, our Raiders have an extra incentive to maintain their status – and up-and-comers have an extra incentive to keep coming.
(Note: This page may load slowly from time to time as a result of API calls to Blizzard servers. This is normal.)
Over the weekend I updated Uro’s transmog on the About the Ministry of Defense page, and added Telanlan and Foxxiê. They now have access to the site to post content of their own.
I continue to try to push out quality of life changes and add new, useful, and fun features to the website for the guild. If you have an idea or a suggestion, fill out the Feedback form and let me know! Is something broken? Submit a Bug Report!
We took some time to tidy up, clarify, and trim down (yes, trim down) the Raiding Rules & Regulations page. We’ve also added a new section on Master Loot for Tier Bosses and made mention of new website features.
Make sure you read over the rules. The heart of the rules remains the same, but it’s always worth going back and making small changes to the verbiage over time.
Just to get everyone up to speed, Tiv was promoted to one of the Raid Leaders tonight. He joins Zextol/Ryzin, Quetzie, and Telanlan as the raid leader team. If you have any questions or concerns regarding raiding, please contact them. This includes questions about how you could perform better, questions about raid add-ons, questions about getting started with raiding… anything regarding raiding in general.
Also, congrats goes out to Lunzzul who was promoted to raider status as well this evening.
Most of the time when we raid, someone ends up running a Warcraft Log (WCL) for us. We’ll paste the link in the #raiding-logs channel and discord, people will glance at their parse number, and move on. But WCL is an amazing tool that can help boost your damage and survivability, if you spend the time to dig around in it. Today I’ll dig into how read the charts to improve your DPS. For Healers and Tanks, you’ll want to pay attention to Method 1 to see how your talents and trinkets stack up with others. Otherwise, feel free to take a nap during today’s class.
Just a reminder about some upcoming events you should sign up for on the in-game WoW calendar:
Tiv’s Weekly Mythic Keys: Friday at 3pm server
Sunday Funday with Bulborbish: Sunday at 3pm server
Heroic Tomb of Sargeras Clear with Symderella: this Thursday at 5pm server
As always, Raids continue to operate on Monday/Wednesday at 4pm server and Saturday at 2pm server!
(Author note: This post and the page this post discusses are best viewed on desktop rather than mobile due to the size of the content)
In light of some recent changes and to keep our Raiders better informed, I’ve taken all of the attendance information from May and June and added it to a Raid Attendance page. You can access this right from the Raiding homepage, under the basic rules and to the right of the raid times. This new system has a few bells and whistles, so let’s dive in and see what you can do!
