In both Death Jesters and Last Call, we’ve been progressing through Normal and Heroic Manaforge Omega since the start of the season, and we’re officially hitting that crossroad every raid team eventually reaches: Do we keep farming Normal for loot? Or pivot fully into Heroic, even if it means some players are missing pieces?
In DJs, we’re still continuing to certain normal bosses (not a full clear). If we really wanted to, all of normal can get cleaned out in 45 minutes. We actually need that gear to help us on Mythic Forgeweaver and onwards.
In Last Call, the answer is crystal:Time matters more to us than gear. We’re not at the point where our gear is impeding our progress.
Making the Shift
It’s tempting to keep clearing Normal every week just to get that one trinket, that one weapon, or the last few tier pieces. In Last Call, we only raid six hours per week. Our biggest bottleneck right now isn’t item level. Our bottleneck is time spent seeing, pulling, and learning bosses.
While other teams can double-dip and run full clears across multiple nights, we don’t have that luxury. Every hour we spend reclearing Normal is an hour we’re not progressing on Heroic, or practicing mechanics that we’ll eventually need to execute cleanly on Mythic.
We benefit more as a team by:
Pulling Heroic bosses more often
Learning encounter pacing and clean transitions
Practicing cooldown timing, and both positioning and movement consistency
Giving raiders more time to develop confidence and reps
Addressing the Gear Gap
It’s true that some raiders still have gaps in their gear like a missing tier piece, a low-stat trinket, a weaker weapon. But we’re not losing fights due to gear. We’re losing because of missed interrupts, poor positioning, or phase transitions that could be smoother with more reps. Sometimes we applied cooldowns in the wrong area when we needed them in some other stage of an encounter.
There are other gearing methods:
Mythic+ is fully available between crests, vault rewards, and hero track gear upgrades.
Players can run Normal in pugs or our open community runs if they still need specific pieces.
Crafted gear and sparks are already in play.
Champion-level gear can now be upgraded fairly easily via dungeons and crest farming.
The raid doesn’t need to carry this load. Each raider can take charge of their own gearing path while the team focuses on progression.
Informing the Team
I know that not everyone’s going to agree with the approach. Some players will feel left behind if they’re still missing key gear. It’s important to frame this as a strategic team decision, not a punishment.
Here’s how we’re approaching it:
Clear communication ahead of time — not the day of the raid. This gives everyone the time to run it on their own.
Outline the why: More reps lead to more kills. We’re no longer wiping to damage.
Some players will be frustrated. That’s okay. But the path forward needs to be clear, and the longer we delay that pivot, the longer it’ll take to reach our full potential.
A Final Reflection
In the last Notebook post, I mentioned that Last Call reached Phase 3 on Dimensius several times. We didn’t kill it because we lacked gear. We just needed a little more time.
That’s what this is all about! I have to maximize the time we have to give ourselves the best possible shot. We’re trying to hit Cutting Edge, and that takes reps, not just gear.
If there’s still certain pieces that are needed, it’s time to pray or make a generous donation to the vault gods!
Today’s post has nothing to do with WoW. There are no raid pointers, strategy, drama, or healing optimization. I wanted to sit down and put some thoughts on paper, and there’s no better place than the void to do so.
If you’ve been reading my blog for a while (what’re you doing here anyway?), you’ll know that I’ve been playing in a community orchestra for the better part of eight years. I show up to weekly rehearsals and perform once every four months in a large auditorium to perform pops stuff (movie music, Disney, Broadway, etc). I’m not a first violin player. Those are the ones that play the more interesting melodies. I’ve always felt more at home in the second violin section, which largely adds the harmony or other elements. The job there is to support and be reliable. Not a lot of glory, but that’s all I’ve wanted.
The orchestra leadership has recently decided to restructure. The group’s been split into different ensembles based on skill levels, and I’m in the lower level (or junior) group. I get it. It makes sense. I never had that training when I was younger. I started from scratch in my late 20s, and pairing with kids now who are a third my age who may as well be prodigies or something. I still have a lot of technical growing to do. During concerts, I would play 2 or 3 pieces out of a repertoire list of maybe 7. I’d be playing from the rear in the 6th row behind the more advanced players. It would be a safe and sheltered environment.
With this split, I’m much more exposed.
The group of players I used to rehearse with, which included violinists, violists, and cellists, would share growing pains together as we laughed and shared frustrations about what we were struggling with from our concert repertoire. Sometimes we’d hang out with each other outside of rehearsal, just trying to drill specific measures or work on listening and cuing based on our parts. That’s gone now. They’ve either advanced upwards or departed entirely. The ones that stayed get to work on cool movie, anime, and game scores. I’ve been left behind with a few other musicians I barely know, spread out across generational gaps that I struggle to bridge.
I’m still showing up, and I haven’t missed a rehearsal so far. Yes, my motivation is completely shot. Discipline is the primary reason that I’ve stuck to this schedule. That’s a little scary, right?
I don’t know what I’m working towards anymore. That goal has evaporated.
When that support structure is gone, and those friendly, familiar faces aren’t there to share the grind with you, those hard questions and realizations start to surface. I’ve been left behind and abandoned. Is my progression just not fast enough? Is the effort not there? Even though I have a teacher from whom I’m taking weekly lessons, maybe it’s not enough. I’m more surprised that I didn’t even get so much as a shoulder tap.
Rationally, I’m sure people are busy. I’m sure there was no intent to exclude or abandon. I miss my friends more than anything.
This new structured setup has put me in an unfamiliar setting. For once, I’m not buried in the back anymore. I don’t have a wall of stronger players to shield me. I have to sit in that front row under that spotlight, sweating like crazy. That level of visibility is absolutely terrifying, even though it’s challenging me to figure out what I really want out of this hobby.
I know I don’t want to be a soloist. I know I don’t want to be a first chair or a section leader. All I really want to be is a decent, competent second violinist. That’s it.
Outside of orchestra rep, I just want to be able to play Bach’s Double. I don’t really need it in me to play for anyone. I just want to be the type of musician who can play it with certainty and confidence without any technical errors. Style and musicality errors can always be fixed later.
This realization does reframe a few things. I don’t need to measure my musical value by who my stand partner is or the number of pieces I can perform. Even though I can audition for music I’m not enthusiastic about, I don’t need to chase it. I can still practice for my own sake without the pressure of the orchestra’s skill rubric.
No one told me this, but staying pat can be harder than moving up (just like in Blackjack). Being out front under the glare of lights can be way scarier than hiding.
The road my friends and I shared to get here was fun and memorable, but this is where our roads diverge. Maybe I’m exactly where I need to be for now.
Productive week 2 for both of my teams. It’s also been crazy hot outside, and I’ve just been raiding in sauna-like conditions.
Death Jesters crushes three mythic bosses this week. Loom’ithar took a bit longer as we were wrestling with the final phase. I was surprised at the simplicity of both Plexus and Soulbinder. They didn’t take us more than a couple of pulls each.
DJs is looking to add another ranged DPS. We tried out a new Death Knight last week, but we just have too much in melee right now that it makes it difficult to add anymore melee classes into the roster.
In Last Call we made some great strides. We cleared our previous week’s progression in a day, which gave us more time to work on Nexus King and Dimensius. Nexus King Saladbar took us extra shots, and I had to readjust our placements of the stars.
We’re still trying to optimize our timing when it comes to loot distribution. We used to loot as we go, but some items took up more discussion than others, which led to dead time while waiting. Then we tried a different method where we would scoop up all the heroic loot drops and hold it until there were about 20 minutes left in the raid before distributing it then. That still took us around 30 minutes. This is a process that should get faster over time. I prefer this method of waiting to the end because, realistically, we don’t need that loot to help us kill the first six bosses. Plus, knowing the entire pool of drops available, we can make a more educated decision when it comes to completing set bonuses (especially with non-set pieces and catalyst charges), distributing trinkets, and pairing any weapon and trinket combinations together.
We did not have a good on Dimensius progression. We saw Phase 3 a handful of times, but didn’t really get enough pulls into it. We had one really healthy pull with almost everyone alive (one of our Evokers was dead), but we seemed to have rotted out mostly in phase 3 due to a handful of positioning issues, such as players not playing the rings properly, or getting dragged through Dimensius (or a Black Hole).
The biggest factor that stood out to me was that I felt our healing wasn’t where it needed to be. A few struggles were had in phase one just keeping the different sides alive. I had to ask one of our DPS players to switch to a healing role to help stabilize it. I just knew we were going to lose a healer somewhere between phase 2 and 3, and this was my way to hedge and keep an extra healer around. I think last night definitely exposed our healers significantly. I need to look at moving them around (I had two on one side, and three on the other, and it was the side with three healers that seemed to struggle with deaths). I’ve got to find another one to add. I am not happy about that, and I need to find a way to fix it.
I could have done a better job of trimming the raid size to make it easier. 5 healers with 25 players might’ve been too much of a stretch, and our bottom-end damage was too low. This would’ve helped accelerate our Nexus King and Dimensius progression. I ended up dropping one DPS player and switching another to healing, but that might’ve been too little too late. I actually lost some sleep over this, as I kept second-guessing my decisions after the raid last night, knowing it cost us a week, ahead of the Curve. I have to be more aggressive with raid size trimming, especially if I feel it’s going to help us progress. It sucks for the players who get sat. I’ve been there, and it’s an awful feeling, but it just makes the fight easier for reclears on the following week. Instead, I tried to do the “right” thing by hoping for a team victory with everyone involved and it was insurmountable. Even in DJs on our first AotC week, we ended up sitting some of our helpers and weaker players to get Dimensius. Now, though, we have a 3% buff entering this week, plus assorted upgrades from the vault, and a Catalyst token.
Is it time to take Normal off the rotation? It seems like the upgrades there are getting fewer. It takes us about an hour to cut through normal. I’m of the opinion that the hour is better spent on learning and on progression because while the gear upgrades help, the repetitions on the boss are much more valuable.
Still a lot of work to do for this week. Good luck in your vaults!
Dimensius is the final encounter of Manaforge Omega and easily the most mechanically intense fight of the tier so far. From multidimensional knockbacks to skyriding soak mechanics, this fight will demand a blend of high throughput, smart positioning, and clutch movement reads. As a Holy Priest, your abilities will shine here, especially with well-timed usage of your cooldowns and game awareness.
Let’s walk through what to expect and how to best prepare from a healing perspective.
Pre-fight Setup
Before you even start, make sure your raid is divided into two equal groups on both the left and right sides.
Phase 1: Critical Mass
The fight begins when everyone takes the portal using the extra action button. Our group typically hits the button at the 1-second mark on the pull timer. Once inside, each side needs to burn down the Living Mass. Ideally, a ranged player or healer should pick up the Excess Mass when it drops. Avoid having a melee do it, since they’ll lose uptime and might be needed to pull people down during Gravity later.
The two Excess Mass players will come together and combine their debuff to drop a large puddle that helps keep the raid rooted, preventing them from getting inhaled by Dimensius.
After that, the raid splits up again. Watch for the tank smash, which knocks everyone back. Position yourself to the sides and outside the blue circular smash zone. Avoid standing behind the boss, or you’ll likely get launched off the platform. Let the knockback carry you sideways to help place your puddle at the edge as this pool remains for the rest of the phase.
We Dragon Priests have it pretty easy!
After the puddles, each side gets a group soak mechanic. You don’t have to be in it as a healer, but jumping in helps smooth things out. I like using Divine Hymn on the first set and Apotheosis on the next to stabilize the group. Once the new Living Mass is killed, ranged DPS must stand underneath the Reverse Gravity players to pull them down from the air.
When Dimensius hits 0% HP, it’s time for liftoff.
Intermission 1: Event Horizon
This first intermission sends you flying through space. I recommend using Squeakers, the Trickster or Red Flying Cloud mounts for visibility.
You’ll fly through rings and dodge obstacles like meteors and black holes. Skilled players can aim for the mini spheres in the sky, which deal around 6% damage to the large Voidwalker add when you land. Three of them spawn per ride and only one person can grab each.
Every ring you pass through refreshes your debuff timer to 9 seconds. Make sure you’re always within reach of the next one.
Phase 2A: The Dark Heart
After landing, group up in the front-left quadrant of the platform (triangle marker) on the map below. This phase is all about triage healing, light movement, and add control.
Key enemies:
Artoshion is the named mob here. This phase ends upon his death.
Voidwardens form a wall that cut off access to the rest of the platform.
Nullbinder‘s will have a cast ability called Nullbinding. On heroic, they deal 3.7 million damage plus a 1.2 million damage Shadow damage every 2 seconds, and it reduces movement speed. It’s a stacking effect.
Your first goal is to punch a hole through the Voidwarden wall, starting with the one closest to the middle. This gives your team travel access to the opposite side of the platform.
The raid needs to focus on punching a hole through the Void Wardens. Target the one closest to the middle that allows you to travel to the far side of the platform.
Watch Dimensius’ fist to predict meteor throws. If he pulls it back, that side is not safe. Move to the other edge accordingly to avoid the incoming pushback.
Once the meteor resolves, run up to Dimensius and get ready for a massive pushback. Use Wind Rush Totem, Stampeding Roar, or a Warlock Gateway to resist. If your group lacks movement options, you may need to break another hole through the Voidwarden wall to buy space.
The cycle continues until Artoshion dies. If he lives too long, Voidwardens regenerate and your DPS needs to refocus.
Once Arthosion is slain, it’s time to mount up and fly to the next platform!
Healing tip: AoE healing is steady, not bursty. I use Divine Hymn right before the pushback to top everyone off. Commit one of your 2-minute cooldowns here so it’s ready again for the final phase.
Get ready to mount again, because you have another set of rings to weave through.
Intermission 2: Event Horizon Bugaloo
Same concept, just without the massive meteor wall from before. Fly through rings, collect spheres, dodge hazards. You know the drill.
Phase 2B: Pargoth Platform
Pargoth is another named Voidwalker. Melee players need to watch out for his AoE ground slam, which has a wide blue circle indicator.
This phase mirrors Phase 2A:
Burn a hole through the Voidwarden wall.
Keep Nullbinders stunned or silenced. Never ever let a cast go off.
Be prepared to kill two sets of Voidwardens.
Don’t get baited by low Pargoth HP. Focus on the wall first to ensure safe positioning.
Once Pargoth falls, you’re in the home stretch.
Phase 3: Singularity
Upon landing on the last platform, pop Heroism/Bloodlust immediately. Healers can help DPS here, as there’s a brief downtime before Dimensius fully activates.
Keep the raid stacked and dodge the initial falling rocks. These will start moving around the platform and deal rot damage over time.
Healing tip: With all the movement required, Divine Hymn might be hard to use effectively. Rely on Oracle buffs and instant-cast tools to keep up.
The Rings: You’ll see a series of rings pulsing out. When the first one activates, stand close to it to apply the debuff. You have a 3-second buffer to pick up the next one. Don’t overlap or it’ll be lethal.
I recommend standing beside the first, then visually tracking the second as it charges up so you’re ready to move into it. Repeat for the third.
Devour: Dimensius casts Devour, and you’ll need to hide under a rotating rock. Pop a defensive like Fade and stay near the front of its rotation to maximize casts. Heal lower HP players first. Once Devour ends, that rock becomes a Black Hole, killing anyone it touches.
Keep using your Holy Words on cooldown. There’s lots of ticking damage here.
The raid should move left while tanks rotate right. Don’t stack on the tank. Cosmic Collapse will knock back anyone inside their blue circle (more on this next). This is followed by a pull-in. Make sure you have a clear line of sight to the tank, free of rocks and hazards.
You’ll want to meet up with the tank on the opposite side but do not stack with them just yet. The tank will have a giant blue circle around them, and this is the Cosmic Collapse ability. Anyone in that could get knocked backwards (and off the platform). On heroic, this is followed by a pull-in mechanic. Make sure you position yourself in such a way that you have a clear path to the tank and that Dimensius or any of the rocks (or Black Holes) aren’t in the way. You can fight and resist it slightly.
This pattern repeats:
Move with the tank rotation.
Handle another set of Rings.
Rotate again after Supernova.
Continue until Dimensius is down.
As the fight progresses, the platform will shrink. Space becomes limited. Save a Battle Res for a tank. Healing isn’t too intense here, so if a healer dies early, you can delay the rez or use it on a DPS instead.
Wrap-Up
Heroic Dimensius is chaotic, but conquerable. It’s a fitting end to the expansion. Once you bring him down, sit back and enjoy the final cinematic. You’ve earned it.
It’s been quiet here over the past few weeks. I’ve been doing everything I can to prepare both raid teams for Season 3. I’ll share a few updates on our progression along with some of my thoughts on the Gamescom information that came out earlier.
As expected, Death Jesters completely cleared all of Normal and Heroic in week 1. Dimensius took us about 17 tries before we finally got him down. Phase 1 wasn’t bad at all, but phase 2 platforms was where we were trying to figure things out the most with the movement patterns. That is a part of the encounter that will require people to take reps to experience so they can understand what they need to do. We did end the second night with some pulls on Mythic Plexus but we just fell short. Lots of key activity has been happening as everyone’s trying to get equipped. I made one error on Nexus King where I stacked my debuff circle in the wrong spot causing two stars to rotate in directions that they should not have. Whoops. Managed to assemble 2 piece on the Priest and I’m hopeful I can finish it off this week with my remaining catalyst charge.
On the other team, Last Call only managed to get to 6/8 Heroic with a normal clear. We were quite a few ways away from getting Nexus King down. The percentages entering the final phase were too high for us to overcome. We have a lot of work to do on the bottom end of our roster to help raise the floor.
Last Call is still in a bit of a rocky shape to start the season. I’ve invited some of my friends to join the team who have previously raided with me in my time from my old guild Conquest and Proper Villains (as well as a friend from another casual raid team). They’ve all acclimated well and performed as I expected them to. However, all of the Priests have been challenging just trying to get them to get along or at least be civil at times. It’s been enough to give me a headache, and we almost had a situation before our raid was supposed to start. So I had to do my best to smooth things over. But really, sometimes people just need to take a step back and keep their thoughts inside. Not every opinion needs to be voiced. Not every point of feedback needs to be delivered. Not every question needs to be asked. Newer players that come in may not be aware of the atmosphere or the social dynamics of everyone, so there’s no need to antagonize or troll because everyone has different tolerance levels of bullshit (mine is actually quite low, and I just don’t react to it or I ignore and dismiss it). Some of my favourite keys are the quietest ones where we’re enjoying each others company and only calling out kicks or cooldowns with lots of silence in between.
We also have a fresh Loot Council in Last Call that’s working together for the first time. Even though we’ve had a blunder, I’m sure they’ll learn from it and move on. The Reshii Wraps boots were awarded to the same person twice (Normal, then a Heroic upgrade). It was missed due to time pressures. I’ve made a note to remind the team to review gear, but also to convey the option that we can always defer loot decisions till later when there is more time to breathe. Things like bracers or lower ticket items can be handed out right away since there’s not much interest in them. But bigger items like weapons, trinkets, and other cantrip items can always be held for more discussion and distributed later in the night. We’re not really coming up on any bosses where the DPS check requires that one specific item to get equipped. Plus we can always end the night a few minutes early to help distribute the remaining loot. In DJs, on the first night, we finished our pulls 30 minutes before the night ended and it took us that long to go through and hand out 8 normal and 6 heroic bosses worth of loot and tier tokens. I wanted to implement a similar system here but faced resistance. My worry is I’m going to burn out and exhaust my current loot master. I’ll either have to find another one, or potentially take it over myself.
Gamescom presentation was fun to watch. The Warcraft Youtube channel has some new gameplay reveal here. I was not expecting multiple raids to start the opening tier. It’ll be fun to back and revisit a refreshed and updated Quel’thalas and Zul’aman. Demon Hunters get a new spec (and I’ll play it for Legion Remix, if it’s an option – I hope). I don’t know enough about the new Harandir allied race since it seems like we haven’t interacted with them that often except for the Azj’kahet zone.
Last Call is still recruiting a strong healer and assorted DPS to help us move forward in the tier. Check us out and apply! If you’re looking for something more at the top, there’s also Death Jesters! We’ve got an opening for a stellar DPS player (no specific class), and you can also apply here.
Have a great week 2 everyone! I’ll share some more posts throughout the week. I want to put together some Dimensius pointers for Heroic because it can be quite difficult.
