Matticus

I didn’t have time to put together my thoughts from the previous week, but we did get Broodkeeper Diurna this past weekend. We’re on to Raszageth now. It was quite grueling and it took us around 110 tries.

• Healer composition: During week 2, we went with a 4 healer group because we felt we lacked damage. I healed the ad group as we moved around the room and that challenged my abilities in a way that I haven’t felt in a long time. On the day of the kill, we switched back to running a 5 healer group instead because it gave us more breathing room to work with. What’s heartbreaking is that we did get Diurna all the way down to 0.2% (~700k health) before we wiped. Had we been able to live just another few seconds longer, this post would’ve came out a week earlier.
• Transition into phase 2: I struggled on this one for the longest time. Right as we transition, there’s a set of trash that spawns – Dragonspawn Flamebenders. These guys are annoying. With the two that spawn, they put up Flame Sentrys and Cauterizing Flashflames. For Horde guilds, Arcane Torrent solves that. Alliance guilds need a little bit more work. With our setup, we have a Shadow Priest and myself (a Holy Priest). Shadow Priest hit Mass Dispel first, and I would follow up after the second application. I learned early on that if I cast Mass Dispel there, there is a high chance that the Icy Shroud would freeze people in place or in a bad position with the rotating fire beams from the Flame Sentry. I opted to single target Dispel Magic them instead and save Mass Dispel for the Icy Shroud.
• Mana Problems: Speaking of Mass Dispel, it really drains your mana. Ended up using two of the Frozen Focus Mana potions and it took me some time to find the best moments to chug them.

Yesterday was a cornucopia of news, notes, and interviews. Won’t go too in-depth but there are a few things that stood out to me.

• Mythic+ Season 2: Vortex Pinnacle, Underrot, Freehold, and Neltharion’s Lair making a comeback for Season 2. Underrot for whatever reason seems to be remembered fondly, but I still have nightmares of that place in the first two seasons back during BFA. Vortex Pinnacle’s going to be a fascinating one and it’s going to be an exercise in patience to see who remembers how the mechanic on Altairus works since it hinges on the direction of the wind, where the player is standing, and where Altairus is. As long as you’re upwind of Altairus, you get the haste and attack buff.
• No Seasonal Affix: I did not expect this news, but it’s a welcome change. I railed pretty hard against Thundering this season. The absence of a seasonal affix does make me wonder how intense the scaling on the Level 7 affixes will be. If they wanted to be particularly cruel, the number of volcanic spawns could increase on a key level. Or worse, the frequency of quaking occurrences. I’m sure that wouldn’t happen though.
• Nerfs to Halls of Infusion and Brackenhide Hollow: More tuning than anything else. The diseases in Brackenhide still scare me a little. An alchemist might come in handy to help open up those cauldrons that are lying around everywhere.
• Shadow Rework again: I feel bad for my Shadow sisters. They’re being redone all over again. Is this the 3rd time this expansion that they’ve undergone another rework?
• Cross-faction guilds: I’ll admit, I never thought I’d ever see this day ever. I figured I would have quit the game long before this feature came to fruition. I’m still not changing from a Panda, though.

In other news, we had a Diurna wipe with 0.2% remaining. Absolutely heart-wrenching. I expect she’ll go down tomorrow during day 1 of raid. I’ll have to do an internal postmortem of that one after.

Progress started on Diurna for the first time this past weekend. We defined our goals early on here:

• Get comfortable with egg routing and egg breaks
• Control the ads as they spawn
• Move and adjust defensive CDs during big damage points
• Get to phase 2

We actually accomplished most of it. The first night was a challenge as the focus was on survival and moving around the arena. There are so many different things to get accustomed to that wouldn’t be given a second thought on Heroic. Every person’s DPS matters. By the end of the second night, we were getting to phase 2 but we couldn’t do it cleanly because we had two of the fire drakes up. Not having Arcane Torrent to help quickly remove the Cauterizing Flashflames didn’t help either. This week will be spent on refining the rest of our CDs and getting good looks into phase 2.

• I don’t think I’ve seen a longer list of cooldowns in my life. All defensives and Mass Dispels were included. Might have to edit MRT to show just my CDs to shrink down the footprint of the window.
• Mobility problems as a Priest continue to be a bane. With our ad tank being a Demon Hunter, there’s an early set of eggs that involves him leaping across the room. I’m struggling to keep up while navigating the Ionizing Charge and ensuring I don’t run into anyone else.
• Review the tank soaks with the Detonating Stoneslams. It’s been nerfed but it’ll warrant further discussion if we need to provide help with added soaks or defensives. Can’t soak it twice in a row due to a debuff on the first soak which would lead to lethal damage on the second.
• Chugging a channeled mana potion is hard. There doesn’t seem to be a safe time to use it to allow for a full duration. I have to keep experimenting and finding one that will work.
• We entered phase 2 with 61 million health left which is unfortunately too high. We need to enter that transition with about 50 million or so health instead. Lots of options being explored. We could take one player off of the ad group. We could also play with one person focusing on the boss at the start and then rotating to ads after the first wave. Testing will answer that question to see which one’s more feasible.
• Recruiting a Death Knight and a Warlock is next on our priorities list. But we’re at the point in the tier where raid extensions are all that’s left. With spring and summer coming up, I need to make sure we have a solid group of players do that no raids are canceled due to excessive absences and to help rotate breaks.

Looking forward to week 2 though! If we’re lucky, we’ll be in striking range of getting Diurna down. In the meantime, I’ve been grinding the new Diablo 3 season ever since it came out. My altar is almost complete. I’m just hard stuck at this Staff of Herding step. What a grind.

I’ve been surprised again. I did not think this was the weekend that we would get Dathea down. I figured it would’ve taken us longer than 9 hours, but we managed to do it in one raid week. We swiftly cleared Eranog and Primal Council before engaging this giant bag of, uh… air. Even though I didn’t participate in this one, I was still observing from the side and making notes or reminders here and there in the event any cooldowns need to be moved elsewhere.

• We started with 5 healers but dropped to 4. As I was the only healer in the composition without an interrupt, it made the most sense that I was on the sideline for this one. A Shadow Priest took over to ensure Fortitude buff was still in place. I actually felt relieved more than anything as I’m not my strongest in encounters where there are movement-inhibiting abilities or large knockbacks. There were times I would deliberately angle my knockback into a tornado and get redirected upwards. May as well put that Panda fall damage racial bonus to good use right?
• Static Discharge management. On Mythic, Conductive Marks don’t disappear. You need to run it over an inactive Infuser that’s just sitting there. After it gets 10 stacks, it activates and needs to get tanked and then defeated. Whenever a player dumps a Mark, everyone gets a Static Discharge buff for several seconds. Typically, healers can handle 3 to 4 stacks of that DoT without anything else going on (and with a full raid on the main platform). Initial progression was spent learning how to handle the timing for it and how high we could wrestle with the stacks before healers started croaking.
• Masterclass in stun, interrupt, and knockbacks. With 6 Thunder Callers on each side platform, we had to make sure each group had enough control. Interrupt the Thunder Callers and knock them in to maximize the effectiveness of AoE stuns like Capacitor Totems or Leg Sweep. Healers had to commit at least one delayed major healing defensive to survive.
• We completed this encounter without a Death Knight. That is like an affix on it’s own. Death Knights are integral to controlling platform ads and bringing them together. Credit to the DPS units for making this work and mapping out every interrupt and stun.
• Platform efficiency. We settled on going for 4 platforms and then ignoring the fifth. Each group went up twice. We kept two DPS on the boss at all times and they did not join any of the platform groups. We reasoned that if they did so, then boss health would’ve been higher and the encounter would’ve taken longer which meant a higher chance of getting overwhelmed at the end.
• Traffic control. Someone who was on the main platform at all times could issue instructions specifically on when it was safe to drop Conductive Marks and to which Infuser. There are times where it is not safe to spawn an Infuser and times when we needed to accelerate it. This allowed players to focus on their own survival from abilities and concentrate on their DPS rotation and uptimes. It was much more reassuring to have someone confirm your decision-making and timing.
• No more farm. Now that we’re knocking on Diurna’s doorstep, reclears are off the table. We project it’ll take another weekend or two to master the egg breaking routes and the increased damage then the real progress starts with Raz. That might take another 4-6 weeks. With potential nerfs coming, that timing might shrink.
• Roster needs. I have to got to find another healer. We’re about to enter the spring season which means there maybe some additional time away for players on some weekends. We need the added coverage. A Preservation Evoker is high on my list but a Discipline Priest is a close second.
• Cutting Edge is now within striking distance. I’ll admit, I had reservations about getting there after the final season of Shadowlands and the personnel we had then. But we were able to put together a strong, determined roster since Dragonflight debuted. Even though we raid 6 hours a week, most of the raid discussion happens during the week leading up to it. The strategy preparation and contribution from all areas of the raid group played a strong role in minimizing downtime on game days and allowed for big gains in progression pulls.

Mage PoV of the whole encounter: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1742671538

Diurna progress starts this week!