We’ve been firing on all cylinders this past week as we added another 3 new mythic bosses to our kill count. I didn’t think we’d be in this position already in two weeks of mythic progression, but here we are. The hard work is going to be in maintaining and getting these rekills again. Broodtwister, despite the nerfs, is going to be our first big wall here, and I don’t even know if we have the composition to tackle it appropriately.
- Mythic Skiran: I was tapped to help heal this one. It did feel a bit tricky since there were now more images being placed compared to images being broken. We basically drop two sets of four images now before they would get cleared by lines. Tanks did a fantastic job maneuvering the boss around although the last section on our kill attempt was a bit tight. I ended up straying too close to someone and dropped. We can’t stack our images or be too close to another player with them because it would inflict extra damage. Pretty fun encounter to heal since there’s a ton of incoming damage and placement absolutely matters.
- Mythic Rashanan: We started our first set of attempts here with 4 healers before we realized early on we needed another one and I was slotted in again to help keep the raid healthy. Lots of position specific things had to happen here which meant players with web drops and the raid needed to move into opposite directions. Those green line waves now occur in 3 different directions and you have to be able to process them real quickly to move to the assigned spots. We did have raid leader designate big moves or big space (if a green line drop had to be even further out) to ensure we had room for any nasty overlaps.
- Mythic Broodtwister: Even with the nerfs that’s come out, this is going to be a bigger challenge since we’re missing a few of the group compositional pieces to really challenge it. We might be stuck here for a while. Most of the time spent on the last hour of raid night was spent ensuring our WAs and tech was functional (especially with markers, callouts, and maps).
- Trial Stories: Sometimes, we get an applicant who seems like a possible roster candidate but is missing a few things (like recent logs). Maybe they are a long time returning player who had raided at a high level but took an expansion or several tiers off and don’t have recent, applicable logs. In situations like that, promising players are extended a 1 day walk-on trial where they can come in and raid with us on a Heroic clear. It gives them and us updated logs and provides them a glimpse as to our raid environment. It can be thought of as a pre-trial trial, so to speak. We had a Druid come in recently and they performed above average, but once we got to Queen Ansurek (who is still a challenge even though we cleared it last week), we ultimately had to trim the raid again (including both the trial and a few of our other players who hadn’t been playing that well). We did defeat her and managed to get another set of Ahead of the Curve clears for the ones that missed out last week. Of course, in my follow-up communications with the trial, where I thanked them for coming in, they didn’t respond the first time. I tried again today and they said it was “crraazzy [getting dropped from raid] when our raids were the ones causing the wipes”. Which is true, but we drop a few of our raiders who weren’t performing. Not the response I was hoping for. Ideally, what I wanted to see was some reflection or questions on what they could’ve done to improve or any ownership on some of their mistakes and how they could get better for the future. But that’s okay, that time and effort was saved when I was immediately removed from their friends list. But that’s how recruiting goes, y’know? Sometimes not everyone is willing to put in that time to worry about their own play — instead, they worry about how others play. How caring, right? I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again for all new applicants and trials. Shut out the other people and work on your own gameplay first and foremost.
- Dungeons: Still a massive pain. I’m not sure how people are timing 10s, but I’m definitely stuck in another week of no leavers just to get my four Mythic 10s in for the week. I did get a Mythic Unbound Changeling out of my vault this week so there’s that at least.
- Last Call Raid Team: A new raid team has been formally submitted. It’ll operate on Sunday and Monday from 5 PM to 8 PM Pacific. I’m assisting with several of its leadership aspects. There’s definitely a diverse skill gap among the current players, though, ranging from people who have never stepped into heroic before to mythic-level players. Our goal for the first season is to just get to 4/8 Mythic, and long term, we want to push and get CE once this expansion. We’re looking for everything right now (except tanks). Right now, I’m playing a Priest on this roster, but I’m entertaining the idea of changing classes to something else like an Evoker or a Ret Paladin. I need something where the rotation is easier so I can shift mental bandwidth to other raiding duties.
- Personnel Updates: On the DJs side, we said goodbye to two of our players who felt they could not keep up with the expectations for raid (since they also raid on other teams), and consequently have both stepped down. This frees us up for some room as we’re looking to add another solid Evoker to the mix (Devastation or Aug). We remain capped at melee, though, since we just don’t have any more room.
It’s going to be another busy week, that’s for sure.