Tiraffe and Quetzie spent a good amount of time putting together a number of guides for new and returning raiders in Shadowlands, with input from other officers and outside sources.

To make these easier to find, we’ve compiled them in a simple directory post for your convenience.

Ministry of Defense Pre-Patch Directory:

Intro to Raiding
Quickguide to Simming
Improving your DPS: Revisited
Mythic Expectations
Cool Tricks to Show Your Friends

Additional Pre-Patch Resources:

Official Blizzard Pre-Patch Notes
Biggest Gameplay Changes for All Classes in Shadowlands Pre-Patch
Class Abilities Unavailable in Shadowlands Pre-Patch

 

Updated for The War Within pre-patch – 8/17/24. Mythic Loot section to be updated soon.

You know who it is: Tiraffe and Quetzie, back at it with another raid guide, this time for those looking to join the Mythic team.

Raid Rules

This guide is meant to be an overview of what it’s like to step into Mythic raiding for the first time, or those who are moving from PUG raids into organized mythic raids for the first time.

If you are interested in seeing concrete rules for the raid team, such as loot breakdown, the trial process, or performance expectations, please read the raiding rules and regulations page

So What Does It Mean to be a Mythic Raider/ do Mythic Raiding / do Mythic Progression?

In a general sense, a Mythic raider does all of the things that heroic raiders do, but better. We strive to be the best of the best! We are the best prepared, we are the best communicators, we are the best at mechanics, we are the best reactors, we are the best at our classes, we are the most versatile within our class or role, and – perhaps most importantly – we are the most selfless. We are the most willing to compromise our personal goals to get the job done for the rest of our team and our friends. These aren’t exactly difficult things individually, but taken together it can be difficult and exhausting, especially if you aren’t used to this kind of repeated focus – and failure.

Continue reading →

Here’s all the stuff that doesn’t really fit into the other guides. A lot of this will be techniques and addons to optimize your gameplay to its upper limit. Currently, this post is just a list. Feel free to either google unfamiliar terms, or ping us in Discord for an explanation of what these terms mean. We may come back here eventually and expand upon these ideas over time.

Stuff includes:

  • Maximizing Cooldowns/Minimizing Downtime
    • Optimizing ABC’s
      • Proper Positioning
        • Under ideal circumstances, every player can maximize their dps to their fullest potential when they don’t have to move. Unfortunately, mechanics often get in the way. Proper positioning is a matter of minimizing or eliminating the amount of distance you need to move to safely react to an individual mechanic. Keep in mind that not every mechanic needs to be brought super far out. Refer to the ‘Rotation while moving’ bullet for dancing around the boss or keeping your damage up while dodging.
      • Keybinds
        • Using keybinds will always provide a higher damage output over directly clicking your spells and abilities. You don’t have to aim your mouse and your eyes will spend less time looking at your action bars instead of the fight. Keep in mind for certain specs that it will be necessary to use more than just the 1-6 or even shift + 1-6 keys for all of your rotational spells.
      • Stutterstepping
        • Stutterstepping is an advanced technique used to optimize uptime while moving. To perform a stutterstep, you’ll need to move as soon as the global cooldown starts from you casting an instant cast spell and then start casting as soon as that global cooldown ends. Rinse and repeat until you get to where you need to be. When performed correctly, you are able to split your movement into chunks based on your rotation. The overall movement will, of course, take longer, but it’ll help prevent large gaps in your rotation due to large periods of movement. It won’t be ideal for every fight, but it’ll help you maintain your rotation regardless.
      • DoT Uptime
        • With select classes, maintaining as close to 100% uptime as possible on your DoTs is paramount to your success. If you’re struggling to maintain high uptime, something in the rotation is getting goobered somewhere and no amount of gear will be able to fix it on its own. If you’re having trouble tracking when your DoTs are falling off, there are likely several Weak Auras or addons that can help, especially for fights where your targets are spread apart.
      • Pooling
        • Similarly to DoT Uptime, Pooling affects certain classes in a different way. This mainly applies to specs that naturally generate their resources at a steady rate. To pool means to hold off on pressing buttons so that when you pop your cooldowns, you are able to maximize your output during the entire duration of the cooldown. A major example of this is Feral Druid, you’ll want to be pooling every time your energy every time you use your Ferocious Bite finisher since it’ll deal 100% increased damage if cast at 50 energy or higher.
      • Mouseover Interact
        • Mouseover Interact is an option available in the keybinds that would allow you to interact with whatever your mouse is hovering over, instead of having to click it. Doing this with an @focus macro would allow you to use something like a Warlock’s Demonic Gateway using a keybind, provided that you had the Gateway set as your focus and you used the interact keybind while hovering over your focus, for example.
      • Click to Move (featured on Mythic Carapace)
        • In tandem with the Mouseover interact, the Click to Move option located in the interface settings would make it so that right-clicking would move the character to the location clicked or even interact with an object from a distance (if an object was clicked). This would also have an interesting interaction with Mouseover Interact and something set with your focus. From the previous example, using the Mouseover Interact on your Focus would cause you to walk over to the Gateway and use it, regardless of the number of people standing on it. Click to Move + Mouseover Interact is also handy for open-world movement as well, since it can walk you to lootable bodies.
      • Rotation while moving
        • Stop Backpedaling (very few scenarios where it’s good to do)
          • Backpedaling is best used as a tank where you need to slowly kite something backwards while precisely moving whatever you’re tanking, or any other situation where that precise movement shines.
          • Backpedaling should not be used if you really gotta be somewhere that isn’t your current position. Mechanics attached to players should not be backpedaled slowly out of the group.
        • Be comfortable using your movement keys in the middle of your rotation (remember that clicking both the left and right mouse buttons will run you forward)
          • This mainly involves being comfortable strafing left-to-right and vice versa for melee.
          • For ranged, this involves making sure you’re still able to cast your spells while moving (if your spells require facing the target) or if you need to pool resources so you can fire off instant casts for every global you need to move.
    • Target swapping
      • Tab Targeting
        • Tab Targeting is the quick and easy way to switch between different targets. It’s keybound to your Tab key by default, and it will cycle through targets in a set order. Shift + Tab can be used to cycle in reverse. Do know that some targets may be too high vertically to be caught by Tab Targetting and may need to be manually targeted via clicking them.
      • Focus Macros
        • These are macros that affect your focus target. You can use the [@focus] parameter in macros to enable this. These are best used for when you know for sure a certain target is going to take big damage or for when you need to hit a different target without actually targeting it. Example: /cast [@focus] Blessing of Protection.
      • Mouseover Macros
        • Mouseover macros are often seen on healers and function similarly to Focus macros. These are more suited for hitting multiple targets one at a time instead of just a single target. Example: /cast [@mouseover,exists] Rejuvenation; Wild Growth. This macro will cast Rejuvenation on a single target your mouse is over, or if there is no target, it’ll instead cast Wild Growth on whichever character you currently have targeted.
  • Useful Raid Info (under Interface -> Raid Profiles)
    • Enable Raid-Style Party Frames
    • Group your raid frames (enable Keep Groups Together)
    • Display Main Tank and Assist
    • Make your frames be able to show people in 5-8
    • Show Debuffs
    • Show Health Remaining (in one way or another)
  • See more mechanics
    • Adjust your brightness so everything isn’t dark in Revendreth or blinding on Bastion
    • Go to System -> Graphics -> Projected Textures -> Enabled
      • Adjust the UI scaling so you see more
    • Unclutter your User Interface so you can see what’s going on
  • Unlock Flying
  •  Pre-pull
    • Cooldown Timing
      • Opener (More pve focused)
      • Set-Ups (More pvp focused)
  • Look both ways before taking the brez
    • Check for the small, white circle on the ground; this is where the brez was cast and shows where you’ll be brought back
  • Don’t outrange your healers
  • Update your graphics drivers
  • Important Racial abilities to remember in m+
    • Arcane Torrent (aoe magic dispel)
    • Shadowmeld (personal stealth regardless of class)
  • Don’t cover the lock gateway with your body
  • Traversing sites (know what you’re looking for)
    • Herodamage/Bloodmallet (ideal gear from a bis list, remember to sim)
    • Murlok.io/Lootdistrict (grain of salt, need context of why someone has a certain build, don’t follow to a T)
      • Arena Meta Comp Lists (Can be found on Wowhead and/or Icyveins, check if it’s up-to-date)
  • Addons

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

To everyone old and new: Welcome! This is Tiraffe, Mythic Raid Lead and person-with-all-hidden-artifact-appearances. It’s also Quetzie, Mythic Raid Lead Raid Mom who “is not mad, just disappointed”.

This is a revamp of Tiraffe’s mythic guide from 8.2. Given the new expansion looming on the horizon, we have rewritten and refreshed it to be a general raiding guide. This is for those who are looking to get their feet wet in Shadowlands, or for those who dove into Ny’alotha mid-tier and want to get a better foundation of understanding and best practices.

For those looking for a mythic-specific guide, check out the Mythic Expectations post.

(Links to mentioned websites/addons and sources listed at the bottom)

Continue reading →

Updated for Dragonflight Prepatch: 11/20/22

Welcome to “Improving your DPS: Revisited”. Some of you may remember the “Improving your DPS” guide that Quetzie wrote during Uldir to help us improve as we moved into harder fights (remember dipping our toe into Mythic for the first time? Ah, nostalgia!). Consider this the successor guide as we move into a brand-new expansion and hope to hit the ground running as a more well organized group. This guide is co-written by Quetzie (Mythic Raid Lead and Person-Who-Thinks-Alts-Are-For-Suckers) and Tiraffe (Mythic Raid Lead and person-that-did-every-Balance-of-Power).

In the first guide, Quetzie spent most of the time focusing on those who might be new to raiding or who were aware of their faulty DPS. In this guide, we revisit some of the tips that can help new players, but we also want to drill home that every level of player can find a place to improve. Even on the mythic team, nobody is perfect. There are always rotation gaps, mechanical failures, and basic preparation that can be improved upon.

Here are the topics this post will discuss:

  1. Streamline & Optimize
  2. Rotation & Opener
  3. Pre-Combat Preparation
  4. Class Resources
  5. Dragonflight Optimization
  6. Asking and Receiving Help

Continue reading →

Updated for Dragonflight pre-patch – 11/20/2022

Excitement! Tuesday has rolled around and you’ve opened your weekly chest. But suddenly you’re faced with a problem: you don’t know whether your currently equipped gear is better than what you’ve got. Maybe you have a couple of new pieces from raid, and you’re not sure which stats are better. What now?

One of the easiest ways to determine if a piece of gear is an upgrade is to run a simulation of your current gear against your new gear to see which is the better option. Maybe these pants have stronger single-target stats, or that trinket is better for multi-target fights. What’s “better” changes with talent builds, rotations and any number of expansion specific factors. Below is a step-by-step guide on how to use the Simulationcraft addon in conjunction with raidbots.com to run simulations on gear, talents, stat distributions and dps. Feel free to click on the pictures to make them larger.

Continue reading →

Courtesy of Gary/Elide:

Join us for the monthly tmog competition. This month, MoD will host a ‘Favorite Hobby’ tmog contest. All submissions will be sent to me, Elide, via discord messaging.

Requirements: Your tmog must have a hobby themed outfit. Must be wearing at least 5 pieces of tmogged gear.

The favorite hobby themed tmog will receive 10k gold. Second place will receive a pack of 10 flasks and 20 battle pots of their choosing.

And finally, for the most mixed matched hobby tmog, or what we call a hobby themed Uro mog, they will receive 5k gold!

Submissions must be received by 9/30/20.Winners will be announced on 10/3!

@Hoss Van Wrinkle and @lokisapocalypse will help with judging the contest.

Courtesy of Telanlan:
Get out your naughty Gnome, it is time for another naked Gnome race. The race will start in Stormwind city and finish at a location given prior to the race start. There will be prizes for finishing in the top three and there will be a contest for best Gnome name. Please read the fine print, we do not want you to get caught with your pants down.

Race to take place on October 18th 3pm server 6pm Eastern.

Race:
1st place finish will be store mount
2nd place finish will be store pet
3rd place finish will be 10k gold

Best Name: (Voted on by the Gnomes)
1st 10k gold

Gnomish Fine print:
1. Must be in Stormwind grouped together 10 minutes prior to race. This will be a strict rule. If you are not there 10 minutes prior you will be disqualified. While you are waiting you can chant FOR THE HORDE.
2. Must be a fresh made Gnome, no Gnome will be allowed to race above level 4. You should be able to get to Stormwind without getting to many levels. You will gain levels during the race which is fine.
3. The first person to the goal and /tickle the official at the finish line is the winner. He too will be naked so do not go overboard with the tickles.
4. Discord is not required but encouraged.
5. Cheating in anyway will get you disqualified. This includes the use of Mounts which includes the heirloom mount. Race officials will call disqualifications, so do not cheat. Just run your little ass off.
6. WM off.

Courtesy of Gary:

REMINDER:
Join us for a new monthly tmog competition. This month, MoD will host a ‘Back to school themed’ tmog contest. All submissions will be sent to me, Elide, via discord messaging.

Requirements: Your tmog must have a Back to school themed outfit. Must be wearing at least 5 pieces of tmogged gear AND if you have the Wrathion Backpack from completing visions- you cannot use it. This is to make sure all players have an even playing field.

The best back to school themed tmog will receive 10k gold. Second place will receive a pack of 10 flasks and 20 battle pots of their choosing.

And finally, for the most mixed matched school tmog, or what we call a school themed Uro mog, they will recieve 5k gold!

Submissions must be received by 8/30/20.Winners will be announced on 9/3!

@encyclopedia Hosstannica s and @lokisapocalypse will help with judging the contest.