Currently updated for The War Within prepatch 11.0.2

For more information about what roles we’re looking for, check out the Recruitment page.

Basic Rules:

• Be on time
• Don’t stand in fire
• Use the Discord
• Be kind

Attendance:

Raiders are required to be punctual. If you are going to be late or will be unable to attend, please let us know in the Raiding Attendance Discord channel as soon as you can.

Invites start going out at half an hour before the raid start time. Please show up at the half-hour pre-raid start time.

• For Mythic raid, this means showing up at 6:30 eastern time on Thursday and Friday.
• For Heroic raid, this means showing up at 4:30 eastern time on Saturday.
• You are considered late after 15 minutes before pull time
  • If you are going to be late, please use the raiding-attendance channel to lead the raid leads know.

No “let me finish doing my world quests”, no “I’m on an alt I’ll log onto my main at 6:55”, no delays. This time buffer allows for trash clear time and allows people to get gems, enchants etc from the bank in the process. If everyone logs in at 6:59, we cannot pull the boss at 7. Obviously if you can’t be online early because of work / school / etc, that’s understandable – but if you’re online, you’re expected to be in the raid.

Anyone who is late after raid begins should quietly join the voice channel and communicate via discord that they are available. We will let you know if a spot opens up for you after the current boss fight is over.

If you are leaving early, please whisper a raid lead at least one boss pull before you need to log off so we can find a replacement if necessary.

Qualification

Please help us to make our guild’s raiding experience enjoyable for all and ensure you meet these requirements before attending any progression scheduled run.

We will be requiring some to come to Normal raids before coming to Heroics. Even if you have killed the boss on heroic before, you may not know how we do a boss, and we want to evaluate how you do the basics with us before moving onto more difficult bosses.

Furthermore, anyone that is currently planning on raiding is expected to do mythic+ keys and other content outside of raid to maintain enough gear to pass survivability and DPS/healing checks.

Sunday Normal

The Sunday normal raid group is a “learner” raid. You are expected to show up willing to learn (or help others learn). We recommend a basic understanding of your class and general raid mechanics. We will provide feasts, but it is up to you to provide your own enchants and gems. Most of this document is going to be relevant for the Heroic and Mythic teams, not the Normal raid group.

Heroic

The heroic raid team will require a minimum item level (posted in Discord) and a deeper understanding of boss mechanics. You should be using high-level gems and enchants. For end-tier heroic bosses you should be using battle potions.

• Anyone on the mythic team who is interested in joining the weekend team on an alt must get in contact with Huge or Sparkles at least a week before the Saturday you’d like to start. You should be prepared to show up weekly, and to generally over-perform in your role. You are there as a member of that team, not to gear your alts or a new Mythic character. The heroic raid team is not a farm group for gear for the mythic raid team.

Mythic

The mythic team is tryout / trial only, and has very specific requirements. We do not always have openings or availability for your class or spec. You should have the highest level gems and enchants, be using potions and augment runes, and be held to a higher standard of play due to the difficulty of the content. You will also need to be doing additional work outside of raid – more on that below. If you’re interested in mythic you can read the Mythic Expectations Guide and THEN contact a warlord.

Extra Raid Nights

Extra raid nights are extremely uncommon, though they do happen. Most often this will be a Tuesday or Wednesday raid night that is used to clear early mythic bosses (rather than just extending every week). If you are interested in this, we will let you know at the time. These are entirely optional, and very rare. The last time this happened was in Shadowlands.

Communication

The Discord channels will be our primary source of notification for all of the following. You are expected to read all the Discord messages and be up to date on the information throughout the week, not just on raid nights (this doesn’t mean every day, but 3 times a week is a good number to start).

• Raiding Announcements: General updates such as raid cancellations, current progression boss encounter videos, mythic raid rosters, and special events being offered to Vanguards
• Raiding Discussion: Discussion on any of the mentioned notes in Raiding Announcements. Normal and Heroic raiders should keep an eye out here.
• Raiding Attendance: If you’re going to be late or absent, please let us know. Remember: 15 minutes before pull is late! This is especially important for Mythic nights, as we need at least 20 mythic raiders ready and in-game.
• Raiding Logs: Warcraft Logs posts for the night
• Mythic Progression: Only relevant to the mythic group – generally discussion of high-level strategies or progression relevant only to the Mythic group.
  • Mythic Boss threads are contained within the Mythic Progression channel and will include weakauras, raidplans, and videos of boss strategy.

Raids and other events will still be posted on the in-game calendar with a brief summary, but please see the aforementioned channels for the most information. We do not pay attention to whether or not someone has “signed up” on the in-game calendar. Any immediate in game questions may be whispered to one of the Warlords and we will do our best to help you, provided it is not during raid times.

Discord, DBM or Big Wigs, and Weakauras are required for all new raiders.

Please limit voice conversation before and during encounters so the boss strategy may be clearly explained. Important raid features (ie. Battle Rez and Bloodlusts) will be directed by the Warlord. If you are not included in any special direction, please allow the designated person to do so. Please pull bloodlust off your bar or move it to a location you will not hit it accidentally.

One five minute break will be issued after approximately each hour.

Normal Raid Loot Rules and Rolls

Once a boss has been killed and loot has been received, players must “pass” on all the loot windows that pop up. Players who do not “pass” on the loot rolls (aka ninja looting) may be subject to immediate removal and suspension from raiding.

The normal raid will be using a designated “Master Looter” (usually Urostek) to handle all loot rolls fairly. This ensures people aren’t /needing on gear that isn’t an upgrade for them.

Loot Roll Priority

• /roll or /roll 100 – Actual ilvl upgrade to the main character’s main spec (i.e. gear that will be used 100% of the time on that character)
• /roll 50 – Everything else (including, but not limited to: sidegrades, main character’s off spec, gear on the same upgrade track (ie – champion/heroic/mythic), and tmog

The Master Looter will start linking the items in a raid warning and will announce what is being put up for roll in voice. They will say what armor class, stats, any special stats, and if there is more than one being put up for roll. If there is more than one of the same item up for roll the winner will get first pick at which variety they get, if applicable (ex: sockets, tertiary stats).

Loot Rolls will be handled before clearing trash. Handling loot can get hectic on its own, even more so when in combat. Doing loot rolls before trash will help make sure that no mistakes are made, that everybody can see what is being put up for roll without distractions, and that it moves quickly so the whole group can be ready to fight the trash when rolls finish.

Tier Sets

Tier tokens dropped from bosses have their own priority on top of the loot rolls. A character rolling on tier tokens will have priority on them if that next tier token will complete a 2-set or 4-set bonus when rolling for an upgrade. Due to the power gained from completing set bonuses, this priority holds true even if the character is rolling for a Normal ilvl tier token when they are already wearing a Heroic non-tier piece, if it means completing that set bonus. Note that tier tokens will drop as extra loot on top of regular loot for applicable bosses.

Raid drops are not the only source of tier set pieces. Any unlocked box in the Great Vault has a chance of a tier set piece appearing in it, at the ilvl of the unlocked box, including the mythic+ and rated pvp boxes. Furthermore, the Inspiration Catalyst system in the new zone can be used to turn non-tier-set pieces into tier set pieces. As a recommendation for all difficulties, prioritize picking tier set pieces from the Great Vault when possible.

Discretions and Restrictions

The loot priority will be mentioned in a raid warning or in raid chat several times throughout the night. Failure to roll correctly / honestly will result in your roll being ignored, so don’t get cheeky and /roll 100 if you’re on an alt or if it’s not an item your main spec can use, otherwise you might miss your chance at getting it entirely.

After everyone has the chance to roll, the designated Master Looter will then distribute the loot. Please reach out to Urostek or a Warlord if you feel like something was overlooked.

Note: BoE items belong to whoever receives them, but may also be offered to others for roll at that players discretion. They may also be sent to Urostek to help with the guild’s events expenses.

Finally, utilizing guild raids to gear multiples of the same class will not be allowed. For example, if you run a death knight through guild raids to gear it up for the heroic or mythic team… that’s it. You will not be able to use guild normal or heroic raids to gear up a second death knight. This is to be fair to people leveling multiple alts, which in the end, will aid the heroic or mythic team by allowing greater flexibility of characters to fill in specific roles.

Conduct and Infractions

It is a given that raids require a lot of folks to run smoothly. As such, the Warlords limit the use of toys in raid except during breaks, in order to cut down on unnecessary noise and distractions during combat. Extremely disruptive toys, items and actions, such as Swapblasters, Toy Train Sets and deceptively placed Mage portals (i.e. don’t place portals inside of other clickable objects or to destinations that are extremely out of the way of current content) are prohibited and will result in an instant kick. If a Mage portal is placed, the Mage needs to state the destination of the portal. The use of eating macros/weakauras will also be prohibited during raid in order to make it easier for raiders to converse and ask questions as well as finish loot rolls. It is important to respect everyone’s time when it comes to raiding.

Furthermore, the Warlords expect everyone in raid to follow the rules as mentioned in the general-guild-info and code-of-conduct channel in the Ministry of Defense Discord. For the sake of convenience, they are also listed in full below (from the general-guild-info channel):

• Ministry of Defense’s Discord voice channels, Discord text channels, and in-game chat are not a venue to spout out racist, homophobic, sexist, ‘gamer words’, or vile epithets. That rule goes for everyone in this guild. If you have infraction(s) of this policy, you can be server-muted to start and penalties go up from there; to being removed from the guild, if necessary. Please be considerate of others within the guild and definitely refrain from even thinking about using such language in any of the voice communication and text channels. Any form of harassment/unwanted sexual advances or topics is also not allowed. As a general rule, there is no yelling in the guild voice channels EVER. If you feel the need to yell at someone, mute yourself, or MOVE yourself into the ‘Yelling at Clouds’ channel.
• Ministry of Defense is a VISAGE featured guild that is inclusive and supports all gender minorities and marginalized groups. Our mission is to attract good people to play World of Warcraft. We prefer to attract members with a good gaming and life attitude. We also all work together as a team in the guild; assholery will not be tolerated. The guild is also not into drama or toxic behavior. We are a positive attitude focused guild.
• If you attend any guild events high or drunk, you may be removed from them so that you don’t ruin the event for everyone else. Discussion about illicit drug use will not be tolerated in the voice or text channels.
• Porn is not allowed in any of the discord channels… not even in the 18+ wholesome-zoomer-memes channel.
• We are an inclusive community here. No racism or sexism.
• We are a safe environment for those with mental health issues.
• We are also a LGBTQ friendly community.
• This guild has about 1000 members that are active. Please be respectful of each other.

Lastly, if you are bringing along a friend or acquaintance from outside the guild for raiding activities, please be aware that you are responsible for their actions during the event and on discord. Please be aware that guild raids will be guild-members only at the start of the tier, and may open up to friends as the tier gets longer.

Depending on the severity and frequency of an attendee’s infractions, Warlords may decide to temporarily or permanently bench a player from attending raid nights. Certain circumstances at Warlords discretion will be considered.

Heroic and Mythic Shared Rules

Addons

In addition to DBM / BigWigs and Weakauras, the Heroic and Mythic raiders are REQUIRED to have Method Raid Tools and rclootcouncil installed.

Please use an addon manager (like Curseforge or Wowup) to keep addons up to date.

Please use the Weakauras Companion App to keep weakauras up to date (this is different from the Wago app).

Vanguard status

After a guild member has attended a total of 50% of the expected Raid events in one month they will be promoted to “Vanguard” in the guild. This feature will grant you access to the Raiding Equipment tabs in the guild bank and a higher guild bank repair allowance. In order to keep this status, the Vanguard is asked to make at least 66% of raids per month.

Vanguards will also be required to donate some sort of material to the guild. This will be a once per month donation and the options change each time. You can view the available options on the Raid Donations Sheet. These donations go towards the feasts and cauldrons that we provide; monetary donations go towards the guild repairs that everybody enjoys. Vanguards are expected to participate in any guild mythic BoE farming events to help with guild repair costs and the costs of raid materials.

Abuse of the guild bank tabs may result in raid suspension or removal from Ministry of Defense. Vanguards missing two weeks’ worth of runs without any prior notice to a Warlord will have their Vanguard status removed and will need to repeat the original steps to restore it (please let us know of any vacations, leaves of absences, operations, etc. and we will do our best to pardon the situation). We have a raiding attendance channel in the discord to make this easy, please use it!

Consumables

Raid attendees are required to utilize all of the following buffs as directed (many of which we provide):

• Food
• Phials
• Augment Runes
• Buff Potions (e.g. Battle potions)
• Enchantments
• Gems
• Weapon Runes/Sharpening Stones

Mythic Raiders can track their gems, enchants, and more on the Mythic Audit Sheet. Heroic raiders can track this information on the Heroic Audit Sheet. If you are not on the sheet you’re supposed to be, please message one of the Warlords.

Many of these items will be available in the guild bank and distributed on raid nights. Feasts / Soups will be provided only after full wipes; individual character deaths will be expected to utilize personal items. Contributions of items and gold to help with raiding expenses are always welcome!

Congratulations on making it this far in the rules. In order to attend raids, make sure that you private message a Warlord (via Discord, NOT in-game whisper or in-game mail) a confirmation that you’ve read them. Be sure to include the phrase “cranberry jalapeño dip” alongside your comment so that we know you’ve actually read the rules and aren’t just saying you’ve read them. If you send us a message saying you’ve read them, but haven’t sent us “cranberry jalapeño dip”, you will not be attending. Please don’t discuss the secret phrase with others – it is ridiculous on purpose. Signing up on the in-game calendar isn’t enough to receive an invite! You must confirm the rules one day prior to the raid starting for the week. Confirmations the day of a raid or after the raid has started for the week will count towards the next week.

Gateway Control Shard

It is required for raid attendees to purchase a Gateway Control Shard from any of the 40+ vendors that sell it. It’s a reusable item that allows the user to activate the nearest warlock gateway and is extremely useful for handling certain boss mechanics. You can find one of the vendors in Valdrakken in the Artisan’s Market – his name is Dothenos <Trade Coordinator>, located to the left when looking at the crafting order vendors platform.

Heroic Rules

Communication

Heroic Raiders do not have to speak in voice but will be asked to join in on the voice “HEROIC RAIDING CHANNEL” to listen to instructions. Tanks and healers are strongly encouraged to have microphones and be communicative. Role priority will be given to those who are able to communicate on microphones, to make call-outs for healing cool-downs, tank swaps, etc more effective. Two five minute breaks will be issued approximately every hour through the night.

Loot

Starting in TWW, the Heroic raid team will be using RCLC for rolls.

Mythic Rules

Mythic raiders are expected to have a general grasp of the Mythic Expectations guide. That guide is mostly aimed for heroic raiders stepping into Mythic for the first time, or those moving from PUG mythic raids to an organized guild raid. Experienced end-tier mythic raiders are likely familiar with those concepts already.

Communication

• Read the raiding announcement channel and the threads present in the mythic progression channel.
  • Get used to looking multiple times a week. Rosters are Wednesday; boss information may be updated post-raid, or when rosters are dropped.
• Mythic raiders in MoD are required to have a working microphone
  • We recommend push-to-talk, but it is not required. We may mute you if there is too much background noise.
• Rosters will be up on Wednesday at the latest (for Thursday) and may go up Friday night or early Friday afternoon (for Friday)
  • If you have a question, concern, or complaint about the roster, please reach out to us in private.

Mechanics

• Anyone in the group should be ready to fill in for assigned mechanics. Those filling in should follow the lead of the folks that have been doing the mechanic.
  • Check the threads or MRT note
• For healers, the onus is on you to know where to have your healing cds for that boss.
  • Check the Viserio spreadsheet to make sure, especially if you’re new or filling in for another healer.
  • MoD also has a healer chat to organize healing cds
• Certain groupwide CDs may or may not be assigned by the raid leads. This includes things like Darkness, Rallying Cry, stampeding roar, etc. Please follow the MRT notes for these CDs.

M+ / Great Vault

• 4-8 dungeons of the highest loot drops you can get per week for Great Vault
• At the start of the season we want to see full vaults from everyone, barring work / vacation / etc
• You do not have to “push”, just do the minimum viable key to get the gear
• We will reach out if we see people are not doing “enough” per week and starting to fall behind.

Player Performance

Look at your performance outside of raid nights.

• We recommend an hour / week of self-reflection as an average. If you’re underperforming, more may be useful.
• Don’t just look at parses. How much damage did you take from avoidable mechanics? When you compare to your sims, does your damage profile look off?
• Ask us for help, do “log parties” with friends, use the discord, etc.

Mythic raiders should use any or all of the following to improve their performance

• VISAGE mentorships
• Raidbots or Questionably Epic
• Warcraftlogs
• Archon (formerly subcreation)
• Llorgs
• Wowanalyzer
• Bloodmallet
• Class Discords, class guides, etc.
• VoDs of your class on specific bosses

Choosing your class / changing classes midtier

Generally, the raid leads are not going to tell you what class or spec to play. Play what you enjoy.

If you find your current class isn’t making you happy, please discuss with us so we can find an alternative. If you’re our only battle shout, mystic touch, or mark of the wild, we will have to coordinate a replacement. Similarly, if we already have 3 warriors and you want to main a warrior, that’s going to be a problem. If we do give you the go-ahead to start up a replacement character, you should spend several weeks getting heroic raid logs on that character to prove to us that it is at least equally as capable as your current one. We don’t want to see someone doing 150k dps on their evoker switch to a 100k dps warlock.

Loot

Everyone on the mythic raid team, including trials, MUST have RCLC installed.

Everyone should have a “BiS loot sheet” up and ready before raid night starts on readycheck.io. If your loot sheet is not updated, you will not be eligible to roll on the items. For managing who needs which bosses for loot, MoD uses Readycheck.io. Raid Leads will be using RC.IO to determine what a main spec or off spec is per character, as well as doublecheck who should be rolling on which pieces. Members of the mythic team are expected to keep Readycheck updated every week, including both the heroic and mythic sheets.

BiS items shouldn’t be shifting much week to week, unless there have been major changes to things like trinket tuning or class changes that would affect your stats. Raidbots will do a generally good idea of telling you your BiS items as far as non-weapon non-trinkets, but you should go into Mythic knowing what your BiS are, and they should remain consistent.

If you plan on building up multiple specs, whichever spec you’re playing on the most bosses will be your primary spec when it comes to loot

Tier 1: BiS

• BiS is for raid specifically.
  • Do not put your M+ BiS under BiS
  • These items will never be replaced except by a higher item level.
  • You may have only one item per slot marked as BiS, but if there is a better drop for you in that slot from M+, it is NOT BiS.
    • For example: Quetzie’s BiS rings are Archdruid’s Tainted Seal (from M+), Band of Burning Thorns (from raid). Her BiS trinkets are Mirror of Fractured Tomorrows (from M+) and Pip’s Badge (from raid). Quetzie can only list one ring (band of burning thorns) and one trinket (pips) on the loot sheet. Once she has acquired those, she will not have any more trinkets or rings on the loot sheet.
• Armor tier slots that won’t be catalyzed count as BiS. So if you are using pants and they are your non-catalyst slot, those are BiS.
• If your BiS is a staff, then you may mark main hand + offhand as an upgrade instead.
• Tier tokens are assumed BiS
  • If you already have a mythic tier helm, and you want a socket on your mythic tier helm, that is a sidegrade, not BiS.
• Rare, Very Rare, and Legendary items do not count against your BiS slots.
  • If your BiS is a rare, very rare, or legendary item, please select something else as your BiS. It is possible we may go the entire tier without you seeing a very rare item.
  • We will be using a loot council for certain Very Rare items. The LC will change every week.

Tier 2

• Upgrades / catalyst
• Visiting: offcharacter / trial / offservers
  • Visiting characters roll both BIS & Upgrade at 75 (current role takes prio as main role) (Ex: If we ask someone to heal on another char, offspec roles will be dps for the night for that person)

Tier 3

• Offspec (regardless of character)
• Sidegrade
• Token terts, including sockets.

Tier 4

• M+ items
• Tmog
  • Tmog rolls may only be made if your active character can use the tmog themselves. Warriors should not roll on daggers or bows, for example, nor should druids roll on cloth.

Trialing

• You do not have to be in-guild during your trial, but we recommend it, since it makes grouping / distributing consumables easier.
• Trials officially begin on the day of the first prog raid, and last 4 weeks.
  • During this period you can expect us to regularly check-in with regards to performance and making sure you feel “at home”
  • Trials work both ways! Always feel free to reach out to the RLs or to Uro if you ever have questions or concerns.
• You are of course free to explore other options / guilds, but you may not loot-lock yourself during the trial period. Loot-locking yourself once is an accident; on multiple occasions it’s going to be viewed as griefing progression.

Thanks all

Our goal is to progress through current content while still offering a fun experience for everyone attending. Please refrain from any disrespectful comments, either written or spoken to one another, and the obligatory bragging posting of recounted data. This is a learning group and mistakes are expected, but will certainly be worked to be corrected. For any additional questions, feel free to ask a Legati or Warlord or Urostek.

~Urostek

~Quetzie

~Tiraffe

~Auntmay

~Huge

~Sparklefarts