EST:
Saturday 5pm – 8pm (4:30pm – 4:50pm invites)
PST:
Saturday 2pm – 5pm (1:30pm – 1:50pm invites)
EST:
Thursday & Friday 7pm – 10pm (6:30pm – 6:50pm invites)
PST:
Thursday & Friday 4pm – 7pm (3:30pm – 3:50pm invites)
All raiding events will be posted on the in-game calendar as PST / Server time; all events on the websites will be EST.
Hey guys, Tiraffe here with another guide. This guide was originally written back in September/October during patch 8.2, but school got in the way and was eventually posted near the start of 8.3. For credentials, I hit 2400+ once in BFA season 2 and got the gladiator mount/title for that season, for those that care about that sort of thing.
In BFA, the goal of this guide was to help folks get Combatant or get the rank 2/3 of the Conflict and Strife Essence, with this being a ‘short’ guide to go over some basics. In Shadowlands, the goal of this guide is largely the same, introduce and familiarize those new to PVP to make their way to Combatant and beyond. Rated PVP in Shadowlands is less mandatory for those focused on PvE, as essences don’t work in the Shadowlands, but can still provide an alternative method to gearing and acquiring certain conduits and legendary recipes.
Arenas can be hard to get into, since pugs are usually looking for specific team comps, even if they’re looking to just get the conquest cap; pugs are are usually looking for someone that has similar or greater experience, similar to Raider.io scores for mythic+ dungeons. In addition, arenas have much smaller team comps consisting of either 2 or 3 players per team, so individual performance is just as important as knowing class matchups. This guide can help give some names to things you may have already seen in rated PVP.
Disclaimer: Reading a single guide won’t instantly guarantee success. Once you think you’ve got a handle on the concepts, go out and give them a try in a match.
If you’re new to rated pvp, make sure to get familiar with some of the pvp terms beforehand: https://www.wowhead.com/glossary-to-wow-pvp-terms
The requirements for the goals above are listed as follows:
8.3 releases on January 14th, and with it comes a bunch of game-changing mechanics, zones, and scenarios. Although 8.3 took a while to get here, it brings a huge amount of content. It can be a bit much to process all at once, so this guide will give a TL;DR of all the new stuff coming in Visions of N’zoth, along with general tips along the way for raiders who want to maximize their efficiency when the new raid becomes available.
January 14 – Visions of N’zoth Goes Live
January 21 – Normal and Heroic Difficulties
January 28 – Mythic Ny’alotha, Raid Finder Wing 1 (Vision of Destiny)
February 11 – Raid Finder Wing 2 (Halls of Devotion)
February 25 – Raid Finder Wing 3 (Gift of Flesh)
March 10 – Raid Finder Wing 4 (The Waking Dream)
When you’re going through the 8.3 questline, you will eventually get a 470 ilvl legendary cloak, Ashjra’kamas. This cloak will most definitely be an upgrade of whatever you have on, and it gives two major bonuses; corruption resistance and reduced sanity drain. The corruption resistance helps you negate the negative effects on corruption gear (more on that later), and the sanity drain reduction helps in Horrific and Lesser Visions of N’zoth. To upgrade the cloak, you have to complete certain sections in Horrific Visions based on how much your cloak has leveled up. When you start off with your cloak, you’ll want to always make sure you kill the “major” boss in the Horrific Vision in every run. If you don’t kill the major boss, even if you defeated bosses in side zones, you will NOT get the items to upgrade your cloak. When your cloak reaches rank 6, it gains an active effect that allows you to remove all corruption debuffs on you currently and for the next 6 seconds. Rank 12 gives a mainstat proc.
More information on the legendary cloak can be found in Wowhead’s legendary cloak guide.
Tonight, the Mythic Raid Team will be going after Lady Ashvane on Mythic difficulty! You can watch all the action here at 7pm EST: https://www.twitch.tv/RaefWolfe
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.
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
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
Self Reliance (ranged)
Death Knight – March of the Damned
Mage – Quick Thinking (fire)
Rogue – Shrouded Mantle
Warlock – Lifeblood (you can prepot these!)
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
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
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.
Good: Comfortably meeting dps/hps requirement on Heroic.
Bad: Folks still dying to Overflow mechanic. This is happening for 2 reasons:
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
Congrats to the progression team for getting AOTC Queen Azshara last night….. the first horde guild on the server to do so. But…. not only that…. the raid team also scored a kill against a ‘famous’ WoW streamer!
Congrats and welcome to Lineda, aka Peepo, for agreeing to help raid lead the Sat/Mon raid team!
She is also our main tank for those raid nights!
Hip Hip Hooray!
I’m leaving behind the “Raid Wrapup” posts with last tier. More info at the end of the post!
I’m still going to refer to Mythic as “Black” team on occasion, because…we’re not always doing Mythic.
This week, Black team ran through 7/8 bosses of normal in 1 night. This is the first time we’ve cleared that many bosses on a difficulty in a single night. The success of Black team the previous tier, and the decision to keep us together, really let us hit the ground running. The Warlords wanted to blast through Normal just so we got the basic feel of the fights before hopping into heroic. Many of our normal kills were a bit of a mess, so we think it was a valuable experience to see before heading into Heroic. We took a few looks at Aszhara, but opted not to spend too much time on her. Instead, we downed the first 3 heroic bosses (staying late to do s0), getting everyone the Reliquarys they needed for the Condensed Life-Force essence.
I’m still going to refer to Heroic as “Red” team on occasion, because…they’re not always doing Heroic.
The Red team did excellent. The many new faces worked together beautifully with the old, and it was a very relaxed weekend. The group pulled 6/8 on the first day, one-shotting everything except Queen’s Court. Monday they downed Za’qul and popped into Heroic to start their serious progression efforts. That said, the Red team does need additional healers as well as 2 permanent tanks. We currently have multiple alts from Black filling in, and while that’s fine for a while, it will quickly burn out those who don’t want to raid 4 times a week. Anyone who has a tank or healer, or knows a tank or healer, talk to us! We’ll get you or them up to speed.
Life gets busy, and summarizing 2 raid teams takes a lot of effort (especially when I am not present on both teams). As a result I will be “discontinuing” my raid roundup posts.
But never fear! The analysis won’t be stopping. Two of our more active members will be stepping up to the plate to provide insight, analysis, guides, tips, and more on the raid as well as other competitive areas (like Mythic+ or Operation: Mechagon).
Please welcome Fokola and Tiraffe to the posting privileges on the site. They’ve both provided helpful guides and co-written a number of things that I’ve copied onto the site anyway. In essence I’m cutting out the middle man and giving them direct access to the site, for your benefit.
Whether they choose to continue weekly analysis or simply opt to discuss strategies and changes as-needed is on them. We’re giving them the freedom to choose what they want to do, and we think that will benefit everyone.
Limit’s Eternal Palace guide: https://www.azsharaguide.com/
Questionably Epic’s EP Boss Guides: https://questionablyepic.com/eternal-palace/
Azhara’s eternal palace boss info cards: https://imgur.com/gallery/GlsWKxp
Wowhead Raid Gear / Boss Loot: https://www.wowhead.com/guides/azsharas-eternal-palace-raid-gear-azerite-armor-boss-loot
Wowhead AZ loot guide: https://www.wowhead.com/news=292651/find-your-best-azerite-essences-class-guides-updated-for-rise-of-azshara?webhook
Tiraffe & Fokola AZ loot guide: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/19iRol05iiEAOqht6uOvgNrbDj1CDfwLOzGdL5f3RSVw/edit?usp=sharing
Droptimizer / raidbots BIS writeup: https://medium.com/raidbots/droptimizer-4f9c179d2f1
Fatboss: video guides, wowhead writeup, another wowhead writeup
