Because Warcraft Logs updated and subsequently broke down for me, we’ve got short logs and a shorter Roundup this week
Thursday: 7/8, what a breeze
You can tell that the group is becoming more accustomed to working together as a unit. Taloc went down with few issues – people are getting better about moving when they have debuffs on them. Elevator is still a bit sloppy – in the future, we will likely mark a tank and expect people to stay behind the tanks, rather than expecting someone to stack behind a melee DPS. MOTHER we wiped a few times. There were rough calls on when to go through (sometimes overlapping with wind), but practice over time made this easier. Remember to use your judgement: if you get a call to move through, and wind starts up, hold off until the wind dies down. Everyone did an excellent job stacking up on their markers, though, making dodging fire much easier. Fetid was another instakill this week – I have a feeling he’s going to be a favorite on normal because of the simplicity.
After Fetid came Vectis. Vectis was problematic. We had multiple people getting multiple stacks of the omega vector debuff at once and dying. Raid Leads will work out a new strategy, but remember not to remain stationary within your group. Move around a little to encourage the debuff to bounce between different players, rather than ping-ponging between the same 2-3 people. Zek’voz was a pretty simple fight and was looking to be a 1-shot, but unfortunately we got too intent on the kill and completely ignored a mind-controlled bear tank, thus wiping the raid with his easily interrupted casts. Remember, interrupts are king and we need to focus MCed players. We also had a player confused 2 similar mechanics that need to be run away. Remember: eye beams sideways, Roiling Deceit back or sideways. Focus down those who are mind controlled or they’ll wipe us! For Zul, we employed the same strategy as last week. Tanks still need to clean up the final phase and Rupturing Blood, but the DPS was much better about managing add cleave and boss health.
Mythrax was another toughie. We downed him in 2 pulls, but people are not interrupting, and fewer are focusing on finishing up adds, favoring boss tunnel-vision. These sorts of mistakes lead to wipes.
Friday: Ghuun, Heroic Progression
G’huun is becoming interesting. We wiped at 1% on the first pull, in spite of being down a warlock for portals. Interrupts were good, but could have been better. We made better use of Bloodlust by waiting longer to use it – after the collapsing ceiling and tanks got re-situated gave us a few extra seconds. We’re going to start paying VERY close attention to interrupts / interrupt attempts on G’huun starting this week. Be aware of that.
Heroic Taloc is still messy. Too many people are not reacting quickly to static or blood drops. You should be moving the second a timer goes off. Don’t wait to finish casting. Customize your setup to more easily see these warnings if you must. We’re going to be saving Bloodlust for phase 3, since phase 1 is pretty simple. The elevator strategy we’ll be employing from hereon out is as outlined above – tanks marked, party behind the tanks. Everyone should be CCing the bloods and ranged-killing them asap, while the melee focuses on killing the add stuck to the tanks. We’ll continue to move clockwise, lasers permitting.
MOTHER is getting very close. This week we got unlucky with our healer comp – druid HoTs make for difficult spot-healing on tanks soloing MOTHER on the crossover. Ideally, we’d have a monk or paladin who can keep the tank well-protected during that last crossover, before reaching the safety of other healers. If we don’t, we may be changing the strategy of the last 2 groups.
Thoughts
Next week we’re going to be auditing interrupt and Healthstone usage. If you don’t use either, you’re likely to be sat from Heroic attempts in the future until you improve in normal. These are very simple things that can make the difference between a 1% wipe (or which we suffered 2 on different bosses last week) and a kill. Those who delay on mechanics like like the Taloc or G’huun puddles will also be similarly benched from Heroic attempts. These show a lack of awareness to your surroundings and will hold back a raid as large as ours.
We were very pleased to have gone 7/8 in 1 night. The sooner we breeze through 8/8 in one go, the sooner we will set up an alt / farm night on normal, to focus on pushing heroic progression for our main raid days. This is good for everybody!
This is also the first week we hit max capacity for raid size at 30 people. “First come, first serve” is likely going to start coming into effect here, and we’ll have to start consider split raiding.
Last Saturday was an LFR run. We had 10 people come, and it was a good time. I got lucky and was made leader of the LFR, so was able to use Raid Warnings to talk to the group. You could see where most PUGs followed directions and minimized the wipe chances we had (some ignored it, as they tend to). If you don’t want to LFR during the week, come on Saturday for a guaranteed easy and relaxing run.