Raider Homework

Videos, writeups, and more that the raiders have to do in their downtime

Almost every group handles bosses slightly differently. As we progress through the tier we may change strategies. But we expect everyone to start out on the same page.

In the past we’ve recommended popular content creators like FatBossTV or Hazelnutty for our raiders to get a good understanding of mechanics. That said, we’ve really noticed that two new faces in the game have created resources will be excellent strategy builders and introductions for raiders both new and experienced.

Mythic Trap 

Mythic Trap has mechanic-by-mechanic breakdowns for each boss fight. The dev has filters what’s important to specific roles, and highlights the differences between normal, heroic, and mythic. It uses small, repeating video loops of each mechanic, rather than the whole fight. Clips have been provided by Ready. Check? Pull! and each fight also has a complete kill-vid at the end if that’s your sort of thing instead.

Shriekwing
Huntsman Altimor
Hungering Destroyer
Artificer Xy’mox
Sun King’s Salvation
Lady Inerva Darkvein
The Council of Blood
Sludgefist
Stone Legion Generals
Sire Denathrius

Side note: Mythic Trap has similar breakdowns for dungeons. Check them out for M+ tips!

Tactical Air Horse / Castle Pineapplia

Tactical Air Horse built a minigame, Castle Pineapplia, that you can play in your browser that teaches the basic mechanics. It gets you playing the game before you play the game, and drills repetition of important mechanics – dodge donuts! Don’t stand between allies! Drop puddles against the walls! Combine with Mythic Trap’s guides and you should have a good memory and understanding of the basics for each fight!

You can download the game from the web

Or, play it directly in the browser

This evening, Tiraffe and I peeled through the various defensive azerite traits available for the Mythic raiders for Sivarra. Many (most) of these are great across the board for the raid – many of these are also amazing in M+. Some of the poorly ranked ones may be better for other fights, or for M+, or for PvP. It’s important to be familiar with your spec when making these decisions.

It’s also important to note that many of these abilities require you to actively use specific spells – for example, Ursoc’s Endurance is useless if you’re not using Barkskin! Therefore, if you’re not using some of these abilities either on cooldown or as when is most effective, you may want to stick with the more passive traits listed, even if they’re in a lower tier.

Azerite Traits

A+ Tier:

Resounding Protection (stack when possible – this should be the default trait you look for)
Impassive Visage (excellent for constant damage fights like this one)
Death Knight – Runic Barrier
Demon Hunter – Thrive in Chaos (tank spec)
Paladin – Gallant Steed

A Tier:

Gemhide (tanks)
Death Knight – Cold Hearted
Demon Hunter – Soulmonger (Tank)
Druid – Ursoc’s Endurance, Switch Hitter (resto aff. only)
Hunter – Duck and Cover, Nature’s Salve (IF TALENTED)
Mage – Eldritch Warding
Priest – Sanctum
Warlock – Desperate Power
Warrior – Moment of Glory
Engineering – Personal Absorb-o-tron

B Tier:

Self Reliance (ranged)
Death Knight – March of the Damned
Mage – Quick Thinking (fire)
Rogue – Shrouded Mantle
Warlock – Lifeblood (you can prepot these!)

C Tier:

Longstrider
Hunter – Shellshock, Nature’s Salve (not talented)
Mage – Quick Thinking (frost), Cauterizing Blink
Monk – Strength of Spirit
Shaman – Serene Spirit, Ancient Ankh Talisman?
Engineering – Auto-Self-Cauterizer

F Tier:

Gemhide (everyone else)
Vampiric Speed
Self Reliance (melee)
Bulwark of the Masses
Demon Hunter – Thrive in Chaos (dps), Soulmonger (dps), Burning Soul
Druid – Reawakening, Switch Hitter (any except resto aff.)
Mage – Quick Thinking (arcane)
Monk – Exit Strategy, Sweep the Leg
Paladin – Stalwart Protector, Empyreal Ward
Priest – Death Denied, Twist Magic
Rogue – Footpad, Lying in Wait
Shaman – Pack Spirit
Warlock – Terror of the Mind
Warrior – Intimidating Presence, Bury the Hatchet

Defensive Talents

If you’re not sure what defensive talents to use, you should check Warcraft Logs and see what the top talents for your spec are. While the mythic raiders should already know what offensive talents are the best overall on a per-fight basis, a mythic progression boss might have different defensive requirements than you’re used to. This is also useful for the non-mythic raiders who may be unfamiliar with how to check their class’s top talent builds

Warcraft Logs Mythic Abyssal Commander Sivarra Reports

From that page, select your class and spec from the dropdown. At the top of the list, you’ll see “Top Talents”. You can look on a ‘row by row’ basis to see what most people take. Then, you can look on the right-hand side of the long list to see any variants. Perhaps some people are taking a slightly different talent. You can investigate further as to why. Maybe their group comp requires it, or maybe it’s personal preference.

You can also look at the top azerite essences (which follow the azerite powers, though are on the same row).

For non-mythic raiders, you can also change ‘mythic’ to a different difficulty. You can also change it to another boss (not marked on the image, but should be pretty obvious).

Finally beating the past couple of weeks of procrastination, Tiraffe and Fokola put together a weekly raid roundup for both teams to review. The roundup contains 3 sections; 2 for each raid team and a section for improving an individual’s dps and some other small things to note.

Thursday/Friday Raid Roundup

Sivara (H/M)

Good: Comfortably meeting dps/hps requirement on Heroic.

Bad: Folks still dying to Overflow mechanic. This is happening for 2 reasons:

  1. Not enough people stacking on the Overflow target. 3 or more is recommended for heroic. We should have enough healers/ranged to cover this without having to have the rest of the melee move.
  2. Heavy Defensives/Immunities not being used when there’s mechanic overlap and/or 2 or less people are soaking. This is a direct result of not enough people stacking, since the teams lack a lot of immunity classes.

For Mythic, people need to dodge the overwhelming barrage to avoid getting unnecessary stacks and need to make sure they pop Unstable Mixture at 3 or 4 stacks. Overall damage could be higher. Azerite defensive traits should also be used instead of mobility to increase survivability.

Note: Outside of the start of the fight and whenever Inversion occurs, people should be better on stacking with their respective marks instead of being a continent away. Since Overflow happens more often than Inversion, it should be better to stack until it’s time to spread instead of the other way around. There’s also something about having more than 4-5 stacks at once, but it probably won’t kill by itself on heroic. Everyone that died last week was either soaking by themselves without a heavy defensive or stacked with just 1 other person and still died due to not using a defensive. Continue reading →

First up: Normal Battle for Dazar’alor will require 370 ilvl. Heroic likely 385, unless we blow through normal, then we’ll keep it lower.

Second up: Watch these videos and have a basic understanding of each boss come next week!

Third: Team Red (post incoming soon!) should fill out their planning sheet ASAP so that we can plan on when Red Team will be raiding.

Red Team Planning Sheet

I updated the Vanguard Donation document.

New this month:

  • 75 Crimson Ink
  • 30 Viridescent Ink
  • 200 Slimy Mackerel
  • 200 Akunda’s Bite
  • 5 Vantus Runes

I removed a few donations and slightly reorganized the page as well.

Note that Blue items are currently being sent to Urostek, and Yellow items will be sent to Quetzie. Green items remain Lineda donations.

Remember: You only need to sign up for 1 spot, but you can always send multiple stacks of items anyway.

If you’re ever unable to find the link to this document, remember that you can find it on the left-hand box on the Raiding Home page under the “Required to Raid” heading.

For 9/7, please thoroughly watch the last bosses of Uldir. We’ve included some more complete videos, since Fatboss has not added all bosses for live videos yet. However, feel free to watch whichever videos you please.

Please also concentrate on the Heroic mechanics of Taloc in case we decide to go for him.

For Tuesday, make sure to run a +5 mythic to get sweet M+ loot!

Continue reading →

Here’s a list of strategy guides, cheat sheets, quick facts, and more. These aren’t required reading, but it may help you to parse the information. Keep in mind things change between beta and live so things might wind up different when we do it.

Yunosee’s Uldir Cheatsheets – images with diagrams

Phoenix’s Minimalist Fight Guide – images with diagrams but more text

Xora’s Uldir Guide – written document with diagrams
Xora’s Uldir WeakAura Package

Uldir Minimalist Guide – truncated boss mechanics

Questionably Epic’s Uldir Boss Guides – website with diagrams

Sairy’s Uldir Tactics 1.0 – bulletted list rundown of boss mechanics

Crzypck’s Uldir Raid Strategy Guide – heroic and mythic

How to kill fellow raid members in Uldir – if we catch you doing things in this thread, you’re in for it.

 

This is the first Raider Homework post for Uldir and BFA. Raiders both new and old should pay a lot of attention!

Focus: Normal

For now, we’re going to be focusing on normal bosses for Uldir. Many videos (like FatbossTV) cover both Normal and Heroic in the same video. Please cross-reference videos with Uldir Abilities to see which abilities are not in normal mode so you don’t get overwhelmed by excess mechanics you don’t need to know right now.

Many videos (such as fatboss) also cover theorycrafting of each boss, how Blizzard could change the boss, etc. Don’t worry about that information. We want you to know the mechanics as they are, not what they could be. Also, assume bugs will have been smoothed out before the raid drops. We are not going to penalize you if abilities have changed or are different as a result of bug fixing between beta and live.

Continue reading →