Matticus

Yeesh. I haven’t written a post in a month and a half. The stress from work has been taking a toll, and I haven’t been able to keep up. Not only that, my practice time has gone down because I’ve lost some of that motivation. It’s really hard to focus and practice without a private teacher.

Right, but aside from that, Amirdrassil progression is still ongoing. I’ve been resting on the bench ever since Smolderon was defeated. We managed to take down Tindral in about 320 pulls (or 242 if you believe Raider IO). Apparently, that’s quite a feat, especially with some guilds going up to 750+ pulls and then disbanding. It’s received a few more nerfs since then to the HP pool which lets teams with high DPS skip some of the more damaging overlaps towards the end of the encounter. But ugh, the amount of pass fail mechanics in there is insane. We had to really math out when DPS cooldowns were to be used and ask for individual spec changes (from an AoE focus to single target focus) as we were getting through because it wasn’t as needed once our flyers were getting better at dive-bombing roots.

We’ve since started progressing on Fyrakk and I’m on the sidelines but helping with various clipping duties on stream if we need to analyze any wipe causes or catch positional errors. There’s been some Weak Aura issues early on that led to problems with consistency during the first intermission with the orb assignments and everything. We’ve been using Northern Sky’s weak aura set for it but even though we assign one player to the right, sometimes it tells them to go to an orb on the left and they have to haul over there. Our best pull so far has been 53% and it still takes a while to get back there. I notice most of our real progression tends to be on Saturday as Friday is everyone relearning how to play the encounter again.

I’ve also noticed communication has been lazy at times especially when we need everyone to telegraph where they’re standing for their circle drops (usually it’s a left, middle, right). If no one says anything and they stack on top of each other, it’s a death. I can’t believe we’re nearing the end of the tier, and we still have a handful of people who are mic shy. I don’t know what I can do to instill on them that they need to say something. It’s been a process. I’ve also been worried about our tanks, as I can see some of their frustrations visibly boiling up to the surface because they keep getting asked to change things up or modify their movement and their Fyrakk placement.

“Guys, you told us to move <this> and we did it, and now you want us to change it?”

That’s kind of the point. As leaders, the first idea isn’t always going to work. We have to adapt to what’s in front of us, and sometimes new information comes to light that requires a change. I’ll pick on the tanks, but in a case where corrections have to be made, it’s not always their fault. Tanks are high pressure roles and they’ll absolutely carry the brunt of the feedback but that only goes to show how key their positioning and movement is. When tanks are asked to make changes after what could be perceived as unfair criticism, it’s almost one of three things:

1. The tank executed the movement incorrectly.
2. The intended movement or strategy wasn’t communicated properly.
3. Both the tank executed and the idea was clearly stated, but the result didn’t quite pan out.

It happens to us healers as well. We get so used to commiting cooldowns and positioning during a specific part of the encounter but then we have to change it up because it’s no longer needed in that spot or we need it for some other far more dangerous situation that’s about to happen later. I can sympathize a bit that strategies always change, but as CE raiders, we have to be in a position to adapt to situations. It isn’t until we get to the final stages of the last phase that we can finally lock everything in and say there’s nothing else we need to do other than take down the boss. So I don’t really know what I can do to help assuage them. It might just be stemming from weeks of buildup and the toll from constant progression extensions from Smolderon, to Tinderal, and now Fyrakk. We’re getting there, but we need to find some ways to manage our mental fortitude as a unit.

As for recruiting, we don’t have any hard lookout requirements, but we’re just passively scouting for a tank and maybe another healer. Range DPS are always welcome to check us out. We’ve picked up a new Ret Paladin and Rogue lately but we’ve essentially locked our Fyrakk roster. No one new is going to be getting time in until reclears. So if you’re interested, check out our Raider IO page and you can apply from there.

Hey everybody! Can you believe another year has passed us by? I wanted to thank all of you for still sticking with me all these years later. Your being part of this journey means the world here! In DJs, we knocked out two CE clears with Raszageth defeated and Sarkareth crushed we’re well on our way to the third one before we close out this expansion.

Let’s take a look back at some of the posts from this past year, shall we?

We started off the year discussing the Dragonflight Launch Experience, which was a bit rough. A portal had to be spawned in the Stormwind docks just to get us over to the new continent and everything. The initial season 1 mythic dungeon experience wasn’t the greatest either.

On the guild leadership side of things:

1. How to be an Effective 21st Raider: You won’t be like Max right away but at least you can help orient your raid and head in the right direction.
2. How to Advance from an AotC Guild to a CE Guild: If your guild wants to start pushing to that next step, here’s what they need to know.
3. How to Advance from an AotC Player to a CE Player: If you want to progress and be a better player, here’s what you need to know.
4. What Separates CE Players from Mythic Players: The little nuances between Mythic versus CE players.
5. How to Manage Loot Council in Dragonflight: Admittedly, it’s challenging to figure out how to sort out the headache of loot.
6. Traits of an Effective Healing Officer: Stuck with setting up cooldowns for your raid? I understand the feeling.
7. Recruiting the Right Players at the Right Time: Your raid needs different types of players at different points of progression.
8. How to Run Raid Orientation: What you need to do before you begin a new tier with a new roster.

I’m thrilled to see what’s going to happen in 2024. The first expansion in a trilogy is expected to come out later in the year. We’ll have fated raids and dungeons for season 4 which signals the start of the off-season which means players can take time to catch up on other games (like Baldur’s Gate 3, in my case). I snatched it up on the recent Steam sale (although I did end up with a complete party wipe barely 5 minutes into Act 1).

My writing plan for 2024 is to continue to be more consistent. I did get a new job, and it’s severely cut down on my writing time. I have to remain more disciplined here, and that means more days set aside for planning and actually bulk-writing some stuff in advance and then scheduling them. I’ll have more videos coming and various clips with different raiding lessons and laughs, especially from this tier. You can always find me on Blue Sky and Twitter, and let me know what kind of content or advice you’re looking for. You’re better off searching elsewhere for actual healing advice (the class Discords or various guides will make a good start).

Anyway, thanks for being around! Here’s to making the next year even more amazing!

It’s been over a month since my last update and we’re about to enter the end of the year! In terms of guild news, we’re right up against Smolderon after we’ve cleared out both wings on Amirdrassil. It’s certainly been a fun month. Although we started the tier with 29 players in the roster, it’s shrunk to around 22 since opening day (although we’ve recently picked up a few more trials). We ended up pushing towards Nymue first to try to clear that one out before turning backwards and going into Larodar.

The Nymue Experience

It certainly had its ups and downs. The most unenjoyable part for me is staring at spreadsheet assignments and figuring out which players go to which ads while trying to minimize the run distance. Anytime a raider is out at the last minute, it’s another 10 minutes just staring at it until a combination that clicks can be found. The kill we had this past weekend had an error because although we normally ran one Aug Evoker, we instead ran two, and it slipped my mind that both Evokers were assigned to one side, which caused a DPS imbalance. Thankfully, we did end up killing in towards the end of the night. In terms of encounter complexity, I felt this was much more straightforward. There was much more emphasis on individual play, especially when it comes to soaking flowers and dodging lines. If players could do it, the rest of the encounter would fall into place.

The Larodar Journey

From a planning perspective, it is actually much easier compared to Nymue. It’s all about the movement and the synchronized dropping of fire puddles. We ended up having the required damage where we could go with a 2 group fire fighting team strategy instead of 3 groups. This led to a complete restructuring of cooldowns. Even using Salvation on the very first charge meant it would not be up during the transition into phase 2. After that, it was having CC’s established on the incoming treants and just unloading damage while surviving as long as possible. It did get a bit messy towards the end.

As always, we are recruiting as we enter the final stretch of Amirdrassil! Come check us out if you’re interested.

• Augmentation and Preservation Evoker
• Disc and Shadow Priest
• Rogue