Matticus

Matticus is the founder of World of Matticus, a World of Warcraft blog.

Mythic Sarkareth Nerf: We Choked

by

We were 2% away from greatness.

We spent two full nights on Mythic Sarkareth this past week and could not bring him down no matter how close we had gotten.

You can see from the below screenshot how painstakingly close we did get. What really sucks is the Sarkareth nerfs announced over the weekend that went into effect for this week’s reset. I wish we had at least one more week, yet I can’t help but accept that we ran out of time. I feel terrible about this because we exited Season 1 feeling awesome and we wanted to build upon that success here by going even faster on progression in this season. Getting this kill as a team isn’t going to feel as satisfying to me because it’s not as meaningful compared to securing it before the nerfs. One thing I will say is that we are just shy of 200 pulls which is just under where most guilds are at which is a testament to our raid preparation.

When we put together our raid roadmap at the start of the tier, we put down a rough outline of how much time each boss should take and where we would be on a week-to-week basis, including when heroic raids would cease being in the main raid schedule. I think we stopped doing heroic raids after week 3. We were on pace for a Sarkareth kill in week 2 or week 3 of August.

What happened that caused the momentum loss?

  • Loss of key players: We had a few players step away from the game during key moments of progression. We lost a player when we were close to killing Rashok, Zskarn, and Echo of Neltharion which added a bit of extra learning time as their replacements coming in had to get caught up. It also sucked that those players requested to leave on the same week received notice that left me no time scrambling to try to find 1 for 1 class replacements.
  • Summer vacation schedule: We lost two straight weeks of progression Sarkareth due to vacations and players being away. Can’t be helped. Vacations are often planned weeks if not months in advance. What I could have done better was try to recruit heavier and make sure we had solutions in place.
  • Recruiting slowed: I took my foot off the gas entering July. We had a strong roster at the end of June and I didn’t want to go crazy on recruiting. That was on me. I should have done a better job at least keeping the pipeline open and reaching out to promising players.

What could I have done better?

  • Keep scouting and recruiting: I didn’t frequent the recruiting discord or the forums as much. I just need to do a better job of maintaining that vigilance.
  • More authority and autonomy: Normally, the GM does all of the interviews. There are about three of us who handle messaging potential apps or responding to Discord messages and forum threads. However, since the GM was also away on vacation and other activities, interviews stalled until his return. We need someone else who can keep that line flowing and cover for them. I could do it but it’s been almost a decade since I handled app interviews.

What’s next?

I’m already thinking ahead to what the reclear is going to look like.

There are a lot of trials right now waiting to get some action in and proving their capabilities for season 3 which won’t hit around October or November. Objectively speaking, we’re going to do better this tier than we did last tier because we finished earlier. We killed Rasz with like 3 weeks left, I think. This time we’re going to be well ahead of the game. We’re going to need to look for a new tank, a new healer, and some additional DPS so my hands will be busy for some time. Check us out!

How to Recruit the Right Players at the Right Time

by

Building an elite raid guild can either be super exciting or a massive headache? I want to dive into the world of guild recruitment and explore how different player types can fit into your team. It’s not just about recruiting the right player, it’s about recruiting the right player at the right time. You don’t want to pick up someone who is starting the gearing process when you’re halfway through Mythic. Conversely, it’s a bad fit to pick up someone who’s on the verge of clearing the whole instance when you’re also halfway through Mythic (they’re going to get impatient fast).

Let me highlight some of the player types I’ve come across and help you determine if they’re the right fit.

The Project Player

Think of Project Players as the potential future of your guild. These are the players who aren’t necessarily in a rush and are all about long-term gains for the team. They’re ready to put in the work, learn the ropes, and become a force to be reckoned with. They might have hidden talents that, once unleashed, can totally transform your raid even though they’ve never set foot in a serious progression raid before. Spotting these gems takes a sharp eye and a knack for mentoring. They could be a player who is new to a specific class (even though they’ve raided at a high level before on another class). An example I’ve seen is someone who played a Mage for the longest time but no longer enjoyed the class and decided to switch to something more satisfying like a Ret Paladin. Range and melee often have slightly different areas of focus (like cleaves and frontals)! Another good example of this is a player who just started playing World of Warcraft and stepped foot into a Normal raid, but wants that dopamine hit of Heroic (or even Mythic).

The best time to pick up a player like this is when your raid is preparing for the next raid season. When activities are slow or your raid is working on reclears, and progression has stopped, they can be brought in on farm stuff. To provide context, for a CE guild, this would be a player who’s done some low-end Mythic raid content currently (like 2 or 3 bosses in) or has done some CE raiding before in previous expansions (instead of previous tiers) and is just coming back to the game after a break. For an entry Mythic guild or a mid-level Mythic guild, this would be a player who’s earned Ahead of the Curve or just shy of it. It’s certainly possible to pick up someone who’s completely fresh to the Mythic environment, and the team will learn fast if that player fits in (or conversely, if that player enjoys it).

The Win Now Player

These are junkies who thrive on progression now and progression fast. They have a wealth of experience and are all about achieving their raid goals immediately. Having these players on board can fast-track your guild’s progress, but it can also bring in some high-pressure situations. Gearing is not a problem because they’ve already acquired most of their gear from dungeons or raids. Maybe a small handful of upgrades are wanted but not necessarily required. They already have their trinkets and weapons but want to start finishing out the rest of the tier.

Look for these players when you’re deep into progression. You want someone who’s at or near your progression level. For example, since DJs is working on Sark, we need someone who can immediately step in right away. That means someone who has Sark experience, but not necessarily the kill. Maybe they’ve seen phase 2 a small number of times but have clean phase 1 pulls. That’s something the group can work with. If I’m in a guild that’s working on Rashok, I’d also want someone who’s done a few pulls on it, has defeated it, or has at least cleared Amalgamation and Experiments.

The Depth Player

These players are your rock, always dependable and keeping things steady. The depth player is a class you don’t necessarily need. Maybe your raid team has an abundance of melee and you don’t need another Rogue but their raid history is too strong to pass up. A player like this can easily fill in for someone else if they’re playing poorly or if you’re running into attendance problems (like the summer months). Someone like this has great experience in the current expansion but didn’t quite accomplish their raid goals and are looking for another opportunity somewhere.

An example type is a player who didn’t quite get CE in Vault of the Incarnates but got Broodkeeper down. Perhaps their guild collapsed or something came up and they had to stop raiding for a while. Their raiding knowledge and gameplay sense is recent enough because it’s still the current expansion, but for various reasons, they took a break and stopped raiding only to try to make a comeback. They’re okay taking a back seat on progression and are happy to get rotated in until they’re comfortable again. This is the player who’s still skilled at the game and isn’t as new or as unfamiliar as the Project Player, but they’re also not fluent in current content to help the team immediately.

Exploring Other Player Types

But wait, there’s more! Aside from Project, Win Now, and Depth Players, there are other hidden gems you don’t want to miss:

  • The Innovator: These players bring a fresh breeze of strategies and creative solutions to make your raid that much more efficient.
  • The Mentor: Need someone who’s all about sharing knowledge? They’re your mentors who function like a walking WoWHead because their class and raid knowledge is just unsurpassed.
  • The Officer: Former GMs or former officers. They’ve done what you’ve done before and they need a break from it. These are potential future raid leaders, but right now they just want to press buttons and kill bosses.

Each of these player types adds a different flavor to your guild’s dynamics, making your raid team even more stronger. They’re not exactly people who reveal themselves right away on the Recruiting forums or other communities, but as you get to know them, you might find interesting information about them as they contribute to your raid’s goals.

Talk to the rest of your raid leadership when looking to address roster needs. Figure out what your immediate goals are so you can start picking up players that can help out with that.

A Triumphant Roar Echoes

by

I can see the bad luck protection is starting to kick in. Nasz’uro dropped for me on Tuesday morning in a pickup raid group that had like 15 Evokers in it. 3 of us scored it in that run. Of course, I never assumed I was going to get one so I never took the time to accumulate all the materials to begin with. All im all, the cost for me was just under 230k gold. I remember all of that stuff being more expensive at the start of the season, so I gambled that the price of everything would slowly go down over time. Illimited Diamonds were being sold for about 120g apiece and Awakened Orders were also much more affordable.

In terms of the acquisition system, it’s a bit of a new one. After going through it myself, I found it to be accessible minus the random element of the actual drop item. That chance to drop component kinda sucks and it’s really annoying to keep killing the same thing hoping it to drop. I’m glad I didn’t have to go after Sarkareth on every difficulty. What’s really annoying to me is hearing the same people complain and whine about the lack of drop for them every night along with their loathing of other Evokers in the guild and community who’ve gotten theirs.

Seriously, we get it. We know you’re annoyed and we’re annoyed for you too. I guarantee you that after 8 weeks of Sark, there aren’t many people that are still in there who want to kill him again and would rather move on to Mythic or something. After 9 weeks of incessant complaining, I get tired of hearing about it day in and day out.

Ideally, I wish the bad luck protection would’ve started kicking in earlier.

The construction part involving all of the professions and relying on other players to help is a fun idea. Aside from Legion and Shadowlands, Legendaries have always felt as a collaborative effort for the raid group and the guild. I remember farming those components in raid for Val’anyr and Dragonwrath. So having to acquire raw materials and getting professions to assist makes it seem like it’s our legendary.

This is the second Evoker in DJ ‘s to get a legendary and none of our mains has acquired one yet. In the mean time, it’s time to make the climb to 3000 rating after hitting 2800 this past weekend.

Back to Mythic Sark action this weekend! Still looking for players to join the team, check us out!

 

Augmentation is Fun!

by

Have you tried the new Augmentation spec for Evokers? It’s been out for a few weeks and I’m really enjoying playing the spec. It’s something different. Can’t quite put my finger on as to why. I appreciate that it’s a relatively low pressure spec. I don’t need to be constantly aware of my party’s health bars like I would when healing a key on my Priest. At the same time, I’m not as dismayed if I’m not doing high damage in the key either. I feel much more confident pushing higher keys on the character compared to my Holy Priest. That might be because I’m not responsible for everyone’s health! I’m tempted to make a run to 3000 rating, even.

In a raid setting, I don’t feel quite as impactful or active but that might come with more raid reps. With more players in a raid, it just didn’t seem critical and I’m just mashing buttons letting buffs get auto’d to people. I could be more picky and choosy though.

I’m really bad at maintaining my Blistering Scales uptime though. Whoops.

Anyway, it’s been a fun side distraction away from my Priest(s). As of today, I now have all portals on this Evoker. Makes it my third character (after my Ele Shaman and Holy Priest).

In other news

I met up with Subastian who was in town for an event. He was the raid leader in Conquest for a good portion of the time. We got to chatting about the game and it turns out he raids during the weekdays on a Wed and Thurs team. Since I was looking for a weekday group, I signed with them last week to help them out on the healing end with my other Priest. They had been working on Mythic Experiments for some time and after a few tweaks to Dispel timing and coordinating defensive usage, we defeated it last night. Now we’re onto Rashok prog! I forgot how much I missed the encounter. It’s one of my favourites to heal. For the first night, we managed to push Rashok down to 38%. Healing comp here is Holy Priest (me), Evoker, and two Paladins. I’m not quite sold on having a second Paladin, but it’s all we have to work with. Now the next step for the team is ball dodging!

It’ll be another quiet weekend for DJ’s due to scheduled vacations this week which means no Sark progress, unfortunately. But the good news is after this week, there are no more scheduled absences so we should be back on the Sark train. We’re still looking to pick up a healer and some DPS. Come check us out!

Matt’s Misplays: The Substitute Raid Leader Edition

by

It’s been a few weeks since the last one, but welcome back to Matt’s Misplays! We’ve just gotten to Sark this week and progression has begun. Due to a certain GM being absent, I got called up to step in and heal. Like a good on-call raid leader, I walked in with nary a clue! Our Mistweaver Monk was supposed to be running the show but work kept him late so it fell on me and I had to wing it. Even though I didn’t do many of the calls, I still had to make a few of the decisions since I was the ranking officer in the raid. That meant things like roster swaps, setting break times, battle res calls, confirming wipe calls, and so on. Thank goodness our other Holy Priest was in there to help with playcalling. It’s different running the raid on a new progression boss compared to a farm boss, because when you’re on farm you know exactly how things are supposed to go, but when you’re on progression there’s much more ambiguity and uncertainty.

For example, one common situation is determining what to do with four players dead: Do you keep going or call an immediate wipe?

Sometimes we choose to keep the pull going so we can gain more information or gain more familiarity for those that are alive. Other times we snap-call a wipe to get back in and try again. I can’t remember if I touched upon this topic here before or not, but it’s worth revisiting on its own.

In other news, I’m sad to say that Nomi’s (my Sunday and Monday raid team) have decided to stop raiding. The leaders are all changing schedules and it was no longer tenable to keep that raid group going. I would have considered taking it over but I don’t have the patience or the desire to run and orchestrate a raid team again. There are so many things that need to happen and finding the necessary staff to keep it going. I work better when I can help out in certain areas. With so many characters and alts I want to play and raid on, the time to commit just isn’t there. I just want to raid, man!

Anyway, let’s get to it! I’m sure you’re all excited to see some of the fun and exciting differences. Remember, we’re here to find new ways to die!

One of the first mechanics we encounter in the transition is these holes! When you’re in the intermission phase, you’ll drop a hole that stays both down in the shadow realm and up top in the main platform so it’s crucial to stack them all together in a tidy spot so it doesn’t impact positioning on the main platform. Of course, if you’re too slow like this Panda, you fall right through to your death. Position and timing are crucial. I’m actually surprised I even fit through the hole as a Panda.

Do you know why slippers are sold in pairs? So we can throw one each at these two absolute Fluffernutters who did not drop their circle on the Moon stack! We just established this previously. Those circles have to be stacked together and that’s what our Moon marker is for. In this case, we had what appears to be a Demon Hunter drop their circle away from the Moon and I wasn’t able to accurately determine the other class. Of all the mechanics I wanted to emphasize to the raid team and iron out, this was it. I know for a fact that when the teacher comes back from vacation and people are still farting this mechanic up, someone’s going to get a magazine to the back of the head and I don’t want that to happen. I did my best to dial in and get these mistakes fixed and it worked out as no one ended up to the side in all of the later pulls.

This one’s a Heroic mechanic that should not have happened. Our Demon Hunter gets debuffed with the Infinite Duress and flies out except his angle is off. He should be placed further back because our ranged group wants to be knocked right along the rim of the platform. Instead, some of us get knocked off of the platform altogether. Whoops!

I’ve been guilty of this one. Sark does do a sweeping breath attack periodically and if you don’t move fast enough, you get cut off on the wrong side. In this case, our precious Evoker was a little too greedy and tries to leap but ends up falling short and taking lethal damage. Some things are worth greeding, but this isn’t one of them.

Ultimately, we did end up getting pretty far this weekend. Seeing phase 3 a few times was huge. Now we just need to clean up our phase 2 and get everyone alive. In this second intermission phase, we’re dropping our pools in the middle of the circles except we stayed still too long. What we should be doing is moving forward so that we don’t end up in a potential hole that spawns.

Undoubtedly the misplay of the week, this one’s a Greek tragedy for our resident Shadow Priest. Here we have a Warlock gate established for one of the Infinite Duress knockbacks. The plan is to get knocked to the side and immediately hop the gate back to our starting position. However, what happened here was we had an errant Warlock gate that was online from phase 1 that didn’t get removed. Our Shadow Priest ends up taking the wrong gate and falling to his doom.

This one has my vote. It’s going into the end of year blooper reel.

Thanks for reading, that’s all for this week! By the way, DJ’s is recruiting for the end of tier and heading into the next season. Come check us out!