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For those who didn’t see: We went 7/8 on Friday!
As stated on Discord the other day, on account of this we’ll be looking at Heroic G’huun at 4pm PST / 7pm EST tonight. We want to get a sense for how the different phases work, so we’ll probably be at this for a couple hours. If we down him, awesome – if not, we’ll have plenty of experience for raid this week!
(I have been so busy I didn’t think to post this until today. Whoops!)
First, I want to start off by apologizing for being four days late posting this up. We’ve been pretty ill around these parts this week.
Secondly, I want to tell everyone how awesome you all are and how amazing we are all progressing in our weekly RBGs.
Third, here is our overview, from the lovely Miatreeleafa.
Ministry of Defense’s Rated Battleground’s Team began the week 3 – 3. We continued to see week over week improvement with some team members hitting 1500+ and 1600+ CR this week! Congratulations to them!
Wins: Battle for Gilneas, Temple of Kotmogu, Twin Peaks
Losses: Battle for Gilneas, Arathi Basin, Seething Shore
Quick shout out to Bizatch and Psychoshift who stepped up to assist as flag carriers this week sealing the victory on Twin Peaks!
The teams overall communication continued to improve this week, especially in critical situations. Although, this is something we are going to continuing working on week over week the team continues to improve by leaps and bounds. Target focusing and crowd control usage were something that all the losses had in common this week. That being said, target focusing and CC usage will be a priority going into next week. Additionally, communication as a whole will continue to be a focus of the PvP Leads.
On Friday, at 8pm server we have arenas scheduled and will be working on some areas that we struggled in this week during RBG’s. Reminder: If you don’t already have the Reporter addon, you need to.
Thanks to everyone that came out to RBG’s and the PvP meeting today, and we will see you next week at the same time.
Recruiting: Does this sound like fun? Well, you’re in luck. We are still looking for players that meet all requirements and have a reliable attendance history. The PvP Leads would love to see a full 10 man guild group running RBG’s each week. We are specifically recruiting one healer, 2 ranged DPS and a Havoc/Vengeance Demon Hunter for Flag Carrier.
Have questions? Message any of the following officers: Miatreeleafa, Bizatch, Lunzzul or Bighoss on discord so we can assist you.
This week we started our usual schedule: 2 progression days and 1 alt night.
Taloc was a return to messy execution of basic mechanics. Not enough tight grouping, people were too close to the edge on the elevator. The kill was still messy, but we downed him in 2 attempts.
MOTHER is one we can see that we are getting stronger every week. We had a really good first pull that fell apart on the 3rd room crossover. Our second attempt saw deaths due to interrupt problems. Our 3rd attempt also saw a lot of people dying to sanitizing strike, but we persisted, since so many had already made it to the 3rd room. We need to work out our strongest AoE interrupters to cross in the first group to save time on pulls. The timing of crossings is generally getting much better. Raid Lead thoughts: Demon Hunters, moonkins, and other AoE stuns should be high priorities for groups 1 and 2. We accidentally had a warrior with a ST stun in once. Whoops.
Fetid saw one near miss on the second attempt, but in general, DPS are not switching to the adds soon enough. We also had something going on where the tanks and DPS were just taking huge outputs of damage. Maybe it’s a tank positioning issue? Maybe DPS are standing too close? Once we got the damage mitigated reasonably, we were able to kick him down. DPS did reasonably well switching to adds.
Zek’voz was a great fight and the RLs are proud of how we took him down. We had an early mishap with eye beam-donuts crossover causing some deaths, but the next two attempts were great. We’ve got a rotation down for caster adds andthe little bugs aren’t so bad as long as you prepare for them. We’re finding the orb is really hard to track, however. Raid Lead strat comment: We’re going to be spreading out as much as possible in P3 to be able to see the ball dropping. Ideally, people who are closest should be going for it – but we can’t afford to lose our top DPS (who are most likely to be mechanically sound and watching for it) to the debuff. We want some of our bottom numbers to pick it up to start, and our top numbers to pick it up after. Also try not to run too fat past the boss when you have the debuff about to expire. We chased a lot of melee who ran to the wrong far side of the room, costing us precious time on a very close kill.
By contrast to some others, Vectis was a walk in the park. We had a decent starting pull of 50% and downed him next try. In the future, we will be triangulating in spots around the boss rather than in an arrow pointing at it, especially if we’re melee heavy. Also, please rearrange and pay attention to debuff locations, and don’t move if you have omega vector stacks. Also, take a look at this graph, select the 3 “omega vector” from the “ability” dropdown at the top. If your name is either very low or nonexistant between all 3, you’re not taking enough debuffs. Hopefully our new strat will make it easier to share the love.
Zul was a stone wall, as anticipated. He is the second DPS check we’ve run into (Fetid being the first) and the second mechanics check we’ve run into (MOTHER being the first), but the first combination of both we’ve hit. We need to be on-point with interrupts. We need to be on-point with Crusher focus. We need to mitigate our aggro on Crawgs (sorry, Jibbles). We need to clean up the transition between phases 1 and 2 (which fortunately became easier with bloodlust). This is the second boss we’ve benched people on and we will be benching much sooner than later in the future. Unfortunately, too many people is going to make the next 3 bosses incredibly difficult. We’re also going to be rewarding good mechanics more often than not. A person who is interrupting a lot and who is CCing a lot is more likely to remain in the fight than a person who is not, because the person with low DPS but high mechanics is making the raid easier for everyone (and therefore making it easier for everyone else to DPS). A person focused solely on their own numbers wipes the raid.
That said, we made significant progress every pull. We’re proud of how the raid worked together and can smell a kill this week.
As a reminder, getting benched on a boss because of DPS does not count against your attendance for the night and does not bar you from coming to raids in the future. The only thing lost from being benches is the potential for loot from a kill, but if we down a boss without a low DPS the chances are higher that we’ll down it with them the next time.
Congrats to Jibbles and Wendal for hitting Vanguard! Wendal is also a Gladiator, so he’s extra involved in Guild events.
What is there to say about alt night? We had a lot of people gearing up their new characters for the first time. I secured a lockout with Taloc and MOTHER already down, and will likely do so again in the future. We downed all bosses (in spite of some messes) by the end of our 2 hour time limit. Mythrax we had DPS issues on adds. G’huun saw problems with inexperienced orb runners, but that’s OK! We want as many people as possible practicing orbs on this fight.
If you’re interested in coming to alt / normal / boss farm night, make sure to talk to a Warlord! (that goes for Heroic, too!)
Congrats to Qwaylas and Ripblade for hitting Vanguard!
There is still far too much downtime between pulls. Wipe -> “What went wrong?” -> try again. RLs will try to be better about asking pointed questions and members should be prepared with their own, rather than general questions.
There were 14 wipes on Zul. Try to improve your Healthstone usage next week. Yep, I’ll be watching. Which reminds me…
IMO if you’re not using WeakAuras you’re making your life more difficult. I posted a writeup on how to track different kinds of cooldowns or buffs, and even one that pops an ideal time to use a Healstone. Read about weakaura setups and come at me with questions!
I’m going to post this again because I’ve received good feedback. If your DPS feels low and you’re not sure how to fix it, check out this handy post! Just check out the real reviews from real, satisfied customers!
A note from Urostek:
As some of you might have heard, Ministry of Defense has spent over 500,000G on guild repairs since the release of Battle for Azeroth. This is unprecedented in this guilds’ history. There has not been an expac release, to my knowledge, that has had such involvement by guild members and playtime and repair usage. However, the current rate of guild repair expenditures is not sustainable. Partly because of changes Blizzard has made (by eliminating the Guild Perk: Cash Flow and by increasing the general costs of repair), guild repair expenses have gone up. A lot. Because of this, the guild repair amounts have been reduced by ~50% the past few days for all levels of membership. Hopefully this change will ensure a situation that maintains the ability of the guild to have repairs at a fair level for all… members / vanguard / gladiators / officers / etc. Hopefully, you all have fun in the guild and have found the people you have met here to be enjoyable, fun, and a pleasure to be associated with! I know I have! I want to thank all of you for making the guild the success it is.
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 (for example we’ll likely lower the flasks next month).
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).
Thank you to everyone that came! This was a relatively short meeting that just went over some changes and some new things!
Reminder that there is a Rated PvP meeting tonight (at the regularly scheduled PvP time; 5PST / 8EST) and if you’re interested in Rated PvP you should attend. It covers a few new rules, attendance information, future plants, and event information. If for some reason you can’t attend, please talk to one of the PvP Officers.
Hoss (Deathhoss, Bighoss) is one of our PvP Officers and is taking on some extra duties by updating the events calendar on the website for myself and Lunzz. This information shows up on several pages in addition to the Calendar page. I’ve added him the the About Ministry of Defense page (and rearranged the page a bit to represent those who add the most on the site). You likely won’t see Hoss’s name a lot, but it’s thanks to him that we’ll have a list of events on the website that accurately reflects the activities we have going on in game.
Check out this super awesome graphic that a guild streamer, raider, and PvP lead, has made for his Twitch channel! It features his two mains (Miatreeleafa and Sashaflay). Follow him on Twitch!
There’s always been a lot of questions about how to get started with Weakauras. It’s one of the most versatile plugins available, but can be incredibly intimidating to work with for the first time!
In this post I’ll walk you through making a few different types of weakauras: One that tracks a buff duration, one that tracks an ability cooldown, and one that pops up an icon for Healthstone usage when you’re low health.
No, I’m not sorry for the lame meme. Not much to say about Thursday, though. We 1-shot everything except for G’huun!
MOTHER only had 1 death, to the wind flames. Overall, people were much smarter about using their defensives, and our healers were much more able to boost HP losses after a wall crossing. We had a full raid group once again, so this was an even more impressive feat.
Fetid was our fastest kill yet, at 2:19. Not even enough time for a full DPS rotation!
Vectis is still causing issues with Omega Vector. Nobody died, but people are being too stingy about sharing stacks. If you get over 5 stacks early, step out so someone else can take over. Likewise if you’re under 5, step in! Later we’ll comment about having 10 stacks – again, if you’re over that, step out; if you’re under, step closer. People are creating too many problems for healers by avoiding stacks or letting some player soak too many. Tusker had 48 hits from Omega Vector. A number of people only had 6. This is a problem, especially moving forward into heroic.
Zek’vos was another good run. With only 1 DK, we struggled a bit to get adds in, but coordination on the part of the monks and druids made cleaving the caster adds simple.
Zul was one of our strongest kills yet. We had an excellent balance of add cleave and boss damage, and the boss was moved relatively well in phase 3. Things got a little hectic before and after a tank death, but we took Zul down pretty fast after that.
Mythrax is still suffering a bit from boss-tunneling and lack of interrupts. If you’re not casting any, you’re not coming into Heroics in the future.
G’huun was frustrating. We had a 0%, 36k HP wipe on him. What’s truly frustrating is the number of people – SEVEN – who did not use a healthstone. Imagine 7 people living for an additional, say, 4 seconds. Do you think they could contribute to another 36k damage? Absolutely.
If your name is on the top of that list, but not in the list beneath it, ya done fucked up A-a-ron. It’s a good idea for everyone, regardless of presence on the list, to get yourself something…a weakaura, an addon, I don’t care – that blips that you need to use a healthstone when you go beneath, say, 50% hp. That will get you into the habit of using them routinely.
Taloc was the cleanest we’ve had him on heroic. We had very few deaths and everyone moved well together during the elevator phase. However, many people have some low DPS output. Consider whether you should change up your talents or if you’re positioning yourself effectively in the boss fight.
MOTHER was much smoother than last week. We’re starting to get a system down for moving between rooms most effectively and when to start transitioning. People are being smarter with their use of defensives, too. Consider taking extra healing talents, defensive azerite traits, etc, during this boss fight. Staying alive in rooms 1&2 outweighs DPSing!
Since we missed a kill pic last week, enjoy our kill pic this week!
Fetid Devour is a huge DPS check. Our strategy is to only kill 1 of the 2 eggs available at a time. Killing both just wasn’t feasible at this time. This was also the first time we’ve had to bench underperformers to get through a kill, which should be an eye-opener to a lot of people. However, we managed to get him down within 2 tries after the benches. No kill pic again…whoops.
Zek’voz looks like a VERY doable kill. Instead of clumping and having eyes run out (because people and latency make it unreliable) we spread wide in a crescent for eye beams (cheers to Treeson for the idea!). Then we group back together for adds and other mechanics. We got him down to 10% in 4 pulls and could easily have had a kill if we didn’t bungle add management in the last phase. We raid leads will have to be a bit more aware of Zek’s health and the health of adds so we don’t push phases poorly!
Starting October 4th, we’re requiring 355 ilvl for heroics. We may even implement a DPS minimum since frankly, ilvl is easy to acquire given M+ runs, and it’s not a determination of skill. Ideally, you’ll also run with us on normal before heroic, but that’s also not a requirement (yet?).
Speaking of normal, alt runs on Mondays are starting back up. These will be 2 hour runs rather than 3. These will not count against your attendance for Vanguard, but they will count for it, so attending one can only help you. Depending on interest, one of the raid leads might get a lockout so we can skip MOTHER and Taloc and get right into the interesting bosses. Reminder that you’ll see need to follow all the rules & regulations for raiding!
LFR continues to be a success on Saturdays. A lot of people are learning the basic mechanics and we’re all having a good time. Zul trash is easy when you’re this coordinated!
If you don’t read this post I might pay Blizzard to delete your characters.
Congrats to Neocide, Rwandarousey, and Tusker for making Vanguard!
“This weeks Ministry of Defense Rated Battlegound’s Night was a win. The team ended the night with a 3-2 winning record.
This first match on Temple of Kotmogu began with a swift wipe of the opposing team. The opposing team quickly decided that they had chosen the wrong temple to tango in leaving within just a few minutes following the start of the match.
We struggled the following two matches on Seething Shore and Arathi Basin with following directions of call outs therefore losing unnecessary team fights. The matches were close but we were unable to walk away with a win.
Then, the team rallied on Twin Peaks in a 3-2 comeback victory with improved communication and strong team fight wins sparking a change in momentum.
The night was ended on a overwhelming victory on Temlpe of Kotmogu.
The team is seeing week over week improvement in strategies and communication. Make sure if you are on the team or plan to be that you are running the reporter addon. Also, be on the lookout PvP meeting later this week to discuss future plans. As a side note, we are looking for a dedicated flag carrier who can offspec when needed (Vengence/Havoc Demon Hunter perferred). Please message any PvP officer if interested. Thanks to the great group of guildies that came out this week and if you are interested in joining make sure to check out the PvP page on the guild website for more info.”
