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…

BLACK TEAM
“Masters of Mayhem”

TANKS:
Telann
Atesies

HEALS:
Corignis
Arianrhod
Livre
Harvesting (th) / Treeson (fr)
Rollyboi

DPS:
Urostek
Jibbles
Anukhet
Kamahl (th) / Tiraffe (fr)
Lillithh
Azziria
Avarkus
Bellatori
Uncletouchhy
Deathoss
Rowdyrival
Coldryder
Briannda
Hospitalfood

RED TEAM
“Geeks and Freaks”

TANKS:
Grimmbrew
Ripblade

HEALS:
Julifton
Bellelina
Shaynanigans
Ryzin
Throatshock

DPS:
Lineda
Harmesi
Vermin
Bulborbish
Beastthuntt
Vellitha
Eviandrae
Konflic
Sylvvannas
Xuxon
Haromuk
Vaughna
Sashaflay
Zuldrat
Lackasack
Torchwarrior

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!

Tonight we had a pick-up from where we left off last night for G’huun. Congrats to Ministry members new and old: Beastthuntt, Shaynanigans, Nighteld, Livre, Gnardawg, Jynxx, and Harman!

Composition for 1/11 and 1/18

Next week, those who got benched on Friday or missed the Saturday group that lack AOTC will have priority to remain in-group to get AOTC (for example: Uncletouchyy got sat on Friday when we trimmed people, and Yarzza missed Saturday).

Continue reading →

I apparently never announced these promotions on the site or in Discord when they received them in November sometime:

Eviandre
Sylvvannas

Congrats to the following people who’ve received Vanguard promotions in December:

Arianrhod
Haromuk
Jimlahey
Konflic
Vermin
Xazzan
Xuxun

These folks get a special spot on the website as well as access to raider tabs and more gold repairs.

Remember: Attendance is “frozen” right now so you won’t lose Vanguard, but you can still earn it before BfD by attending regularly scheduled raid times!

I’ve received two questions in varying forms since the BfD meeting the other day, so I will add them to the post and here for you!

Q: What if I can’t make both progression nights? Can I still raid with you guys?
A: For normal and heroic – of course! We have a number of people who can only make one of the two days, whether because of conflicting raid times or because of IRL conflicts (school, children, etc). We’d never penalize you for having a life outside the game. That said, Mythic is a bit iffier. If we have one healer that can’t attend Thursday, and one that can’t attend Friday, that works out well. But we’d prefer to keep tanks the same both days, for example, and there’s no guarantee that you’d have a spot if you can only attend one day or the other. We will cross that bridge when we reach it.

Q: What’s this about taxes for Vanguards?  Do I have to send goods for giveaways, donate IRL money, or something?
A: No, that would be ridiculous of us, and unfair to everyone who wanted to raid. We mentioned Donations offhand, and I’ll go into it a bit more thoroughly here. We first decided to do this in early October. Our feast and flask makers are having a hard time keeping up with raid demands for providing these materials. To help offset we’re asking for a small donation to the guild to cover expenses. This ranges from a stack of 200 fish, 200 herbs, a bunch of green BoEs (for expulsom for flasks), to vantus runes, and more.

Because of the insane costs of feasts and cauldrons and the fact that they’re provided for free, we’re going to ask Vanguards (and officers who raid) to donate materials to the guild each month. You can always donate more, but we request a bare minimum. This is a MONTHLY donation, so it shouldn’t stress you too hard, and you shouldn’t need to purchase anything. Each month there will be different things on the list, and we may adjust amounts depending on what we need or how hard it is to come by them.

List of donations

You only have to sign up for ONE spot; if you choose to donate extra, you don’t need to sign up for it. Try to spread the signups around as much as you can. Once you’ve mailed your donation, the officer who received it will check off that you completed it (do not touch the pink columns yourself).

Currently in December we do not need any donations. Officers are still discussing if we need anything for January. We’ll let you know!

Thanks everyone for coming out! We’d like to thank everyone who listened to us and asked good questions about the plans we have for raiding in Battle for Dazar’alor.

Below is the agenda and the meeting minutes!

Raid Pre-Planning Meeting Agenda:

• Introduction from the Warlords
• Raid Schedule until BfD Launch
• Qualifying for and Coming to Raids
• Vanguard
• Discord  Lines of Communication
• Loot
• BfD Roles
• Improving your Gear and DPS
• Other Events
• Discord Bots
• Q&A

Continue reading →

We will be having a raider’s interest meeting and meeting to discuss the next raid tier, Battle of Dazar’alor, this Thursday, December 20th at 4pm server (7pm est). It will be held in place of our normal mythic run. Please try to attend if you are looking to continue raiding with us, or are looking to start raiding with us. The meeting will take place in the raiding Discord voice channel.

Thursday: Mythic

I’ve never seen a turnaround quite like this one, and I think I speak for every raid lead when I say how incredibly impressed we are with our team. We killed MOTHER in 3 tries (2, really, because we had an early wipe-call when people died on a crossing), which is a massive upgrade from the 52 previous tries. Normally when we down a boss, we continue to struggle on it for a few weeks. This was a welcome relief.

As a result we got our first look at a new boss on mythic, Zek’vos.

Zek’vos has overlapping add packs and overlapping darkness with deceit. We’re going to need steady coordination for calling out who needs external healing cooldowns / defensives, and making sure people run as far away as possible (not simply dropping to the side).

We also suggest getting comfortable using a microphone for this fight. It’s highly likely that now more than ever, you will need to call out when you need external heals or when you’re using interrupts.

We’re also going to be auditing interrupts much more closely. What’s important is not whether or not you are interrupting, but whether or not you are interrupting out of turn. If someone calls out they they’ve got “next”, and you cut them off, there’s a potential that both your AND their interrupts go wasted, and a cast might go off next time. Also, don’t interrupt early. They only stand around casting and re-casting, so interrupting them late ensures there’s more time for our interrupt rotation to recover. Those with ranged interrupts (like Balance druids) will be saving theirs for the 3rd add, which overlaps with the darkness (pain donuts).

Tanks did a good job moving the boss around, but he needs to be moved much quicker. Consider starting to move him when the add is at 85-90% HP instead of it being at 90-95% hp.

Little adds are going to need to die faster. If you’re running the same talents you ran on MOTHER, chances are you’re doing it wrong. Certain individuals will be told to instead swap to a full AoE build, even if it means they output less boss damage. (In phase 3, you can probably expect them to be the first people to pick up an orb to go down as well, since they won’t be single-target specced for boss or person damage).

Save displacements like typhoon, ring of peace, etc for when the little adds coincide with the darkness.

Thursday Logs

Friday: Heroic clear

Friday was a pretty decent clear. We downed all the way up through G’huun, which is the farthest we’ve gotten on Heroic in one sitting.

We definitely has issues of boss-tunneling. As a baseline comparison, I had a 316/320 ilvl character in on heroics (it’s a balance druid, because I am the height of originality). Through all of our wipes, I did more damage to the Hexers than 3 other DPS, including one ranged. I did more damage to the crusher than 6 DPS including one ranged (though melee DPS are not able to DPS her for as long as others). I out-DPSd 3 ranged DPS on Ichors. I didn’t out-DPS anyone on crawgs.

Guys, that’s bad. Some of you are in the 360, 370 range. A 320 boomkin without an offhand should not be out-DPSing anybody on priority adds, especially not other ranged DPS (melee get a slight pass, especially on Crushers, but still).

A few of us swapped to our mains to down Zul, but as Zex pointed out, we shouldn’t have to. We shouldn’t have to swap to overpowered 380 geared characters just because some of you have no concept of prioritization on targets and are stubborn.

Now, some folks were new to heroics that night, or hadn’t done the fight with us before even on normal. That’s OK! I expect you guys will get more comfortable with looking around for these adds in the future. However, there are some people who have been around the block who don’t have an excuse. I won’t name names, but you know who you are.

TLDR:

Friday Logs

Saturday / Sunday: Timewalking

We took a few hours instead of LFR and then picked up the remainder on Sunday to kill Illidan for the weekly and do something fun and different. It was a long slog and I think it made some of us appreciate how much trash has been cut out of raids (though if you ask me, Blizz took all the raid trash and threw it in dungeons instead), and how blissfully short modern raids are compared to the olden days.

Monday: Alt Night

On account of some internet issues I missed the first hour of alt night.

Every boss was a 1-shot, including G’huun. We had a few new orb runners and they did wonderfully. People listened well to directions given and we have high hopes for our newcomers.

Monday Logs

Thanksgiving Break

On account of the holiday, no raids on Thursday and Friday. Feel free to PUG, watch videos, or take a week off.