All Stories

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.

This was another strong start to the tier with another fast Ahead of the Curve clear! Wanted to summarize my thoughts from our first week of stepping back into Mythic progression even though I wasn’t necessarily in on it. I also made the dumb decision of joining an additional two raid teams (one in the DJs community and a friend’s team).

• Queen Ansurek: I took a lot of L’s on this one. I was in the wrong soak for the first few pulls (but another player who was assigned to our group was erroneously assigned to popping another green circle so it worked out). There was a definite roster imbalance until we troubleshooted it, but it I should never have been in that situation. I had a hard time finding a right spot to cast Divine Hymn in that first phase. The platform ascending phase felt good except for the one pull when I took a blue beam right up the tail since I was hard-focused on trying to outrun the web pull-in. Phase 3 felt amazing largely because I knew exactly what to expect and how to respond to everything.
• Silken Court: We need to be a lot better in the first phase of this. Absolutely none of our web teams were successful in stunning Anubaresh which meant our kill here did not involve any damage amps. Credit to the healers and raider defensive usage for carrying us through all of the damage coming out here. It’s nice to know that we are able to recover from situations like this, but we as a team need to not place ourselves in this hole to begin with. While I wasn’t assigned to web teams this week, I’ve been practicing for it in our community runs. You can ask anyone I’ve played with, I almost never ask for a mechanic responsibility, but I feel good about this one. I’ve found what worked well for me was verbalizing which web to for facing the boss (Center right, far left, far back left, boss’s back right leg, etc). While pinging is another option, the reality is the ping can get lost in visual clutter especially with two web teams fighting for it. A combination of visual and audibles would work best. The last option is as a Priest. I can grip my partner to me, and call for an Evoker Time Spiral and reset the cooldown for the second set of webs.
• Mythic Ulgrax: I took a seat here and missed the first kill. I deferred to our other Holy Priest (who is a solid 10 item levels below me but has already killed it on her main), and she still crushes me pretty hard on throughput. The big changes here involve extra ads that have to be killed, but otherwise, it does appear to be an easygoing encounter. I expect the 1st boss of Mythic to often be easier than the last boss on Heroic, but this one was a gear and throughput check, especially on the endurance side of things. Our poor Holy Paladin guild leader started the kill with 50% mana because he was distracted. There’s a ready check for a reason! Let this be a lesson: If you’re not ready, don’t hit ready!
• Raid Healing: The current build right now for Holy is Lightweaver. What I’m not accustomed to is sacrificing and not using Circle of Healing and Prayer of Healing. Those have been staples in the toolkit forever. It’s taking me some time to get used to it, but after a few pulls on Ansurek, I had to switch back due to the amount of movement going on.
• Dungeon Healing: I’m switching to Shadow full time for keys. I’m struggling way too hard with healing keys right now, and the amount of focus required constantly from pull to pull is too high in the bigger key levels. At least during raids, I can mentally break after a wipe or a pull.
• Recruiting: Our roster still currently stands at 28 players. Our last addition was a Demon Hunter recently, who is a prototypical meat and potatoes player and has quietly performed well on his first day. Those are the best types of opening performances. We’re still shopping for Warriors though and I did interview two of them. I’m just waiting for the rest of the team to figure out how to best move forward since I’m not the best evaluator. Our biggest need right now is an additional Warrior, but we could look to add a Devastation Evoker as well. If you think you’re an asset, you’re encouraged to apply!
• The Shaman’s Raid: I’m playing an Elemental Shaman in a friend’s one day AotC oriented team. It’s in a fun spot but my damage is just bad. I still have to fight the urge to cast Lava Bursts when it glows, and we came close to take down Princess on Heroic.
• The Last Call Raid: Since all raid teams in the community are full, another community leader and I decided to reboot a 2-day Sunday-Monday raid group. It’s aimed at being a mid-mythic level team. I’m unsure if we’ll get there this season, but the foundation is there. We just need to develop it more. We’re missing a lot of essential classes (Warlocks, Evokers, etc). We did manage to clear 5/8 Heroic (with Princess down). We’re still waiting for the team to be formalized in the community but once it does, I can bring the recruiting up to full speed. It would benefit from having another raid-leading veteran in there who can help with raider development, though. I’m definitely going to need some help on that front.
• Family Just Got Bigger: Speaking of new raid teams, I wanted to wish a warm welcome to a new raid team that’s joined the DJs and ZTH community. Gravity has recently joined us as a CE focused team and I wish them nothing but success for their season. We’re doing what we can to make them and their raiders feel at home.

What an eventful week. In the past, I discussed the value of having a raider orientation for the veterans and new trials joining your raid. We held ours this past weekend on Saturday. Anyway, here’s a small roundup of my thoughts before we jump into Delves and Mythic zero dungeons.

• Orientation Day: The energy in the room felt good. Even being on Discord, I could tell there were hints of quiet anticipation and eagerness in the air. This might be the most prepared we’ve been in a while. We covered the usual expectations and went through some early film of all the raid bosses, plus how we intend to handle specific boss mechanics.
• Roster: We’re standing pat at 27 players confirmed with an additional player as 1 day trials (walk-on trials) to see what they’re made of. Both of those players were referred and recommended to us but the raid experience isn’t at the level we’re expecting so this is a way for us to gauge what their ceiling would be and what their raid fundamentals are. I have a future post planned to address how to handle applicants who are referred to us by players on the team. We’re still looking for some more DPS players, though! This has been a great team though as I’m fortunate enough to raid with players where I’m okay playing with everyone. In some previous raid groups, there were people I would just flat-out avoid socializing with, but I don’t have that impression here.
• Nerub-ar Palace: Went through normal and the first five bosses on heroic on day 1. Day 2 saw us knock out the next 2 bosses (Broodtwister and Silken Court). On Queen, we were able to get to first intermission with most of the raid up before we succumbed. Some of these later bosses do instill FPS issues for me but that’s also because I have a 6 year old PC.
  • Broodtwister: Great healing encounter. So much to do. Might be in the running for the Rashok of the tier.
  • Silken Court: Similar feeling, and there’s definitely a lot going on here. Communication is important here and we had a few players with audio issues that didn’t realize it (Spikes, or poison). Had a heartbreaking 0.55% wipe early on and our newly minted Blood Death Knight could not solo it at the end.
  • Queen Ansurek: Great end boss encounter on normal. Much more accessible then previous tiers, I thought. The tuning and balance team knocked it out of the part here. On heroic, it’s quite a big step up. The first phase is the hardest part of the encounter for sure. Much of our efforts was trying to balance the knockups. We opted for overlapping venn diagrams for the two green circles and having the raid stand in between them. Harder intial learning curve, but we believe it’ll help us out more on the long run.
• Dungeons: With the Mythic season opening up soon, this was a great week to get a feel of all the different dungeons. There’s no real dungeon that I’m dreading.
  • Grim Batol: I like the changes to it. Wish the bombing run part was longer, but I understand why it was shortened. Last boss is a doozy and took us a bit to figure out. I wish the safe zone was a few yards wider. It’s a tight fit for a panda.
  • Mists: I miss this place. It’s like comfort food.
  • Siege of Boralus: Mixed feelings about it, but overall not too annoyed at it yet. First boss is a bit of a challenge for players who’ve never played during this time and aren’t familiar with how it works with the explosives.
• Priest play: I need to get my Prayer of Mending numbers up. I used to have a Sonar ping when it was off cooldown but it was disabled and I forgot to re-enable it. I’ve gotten a little better on Fade usage, and I also need to be more liberal with my Desperate Prayer usage. Pretty satisfied with week 1 healing though on the Holy Priest. Lightweaver spec is the way to go right now and I never thought I’d say this, but I do miss Lightwell. I had grown accustomed to it from last tier.
• Delves: Bit of a yo-yo experience here where the Delves were buffed to an extreme high where groups couldn’t proceed as easily as they could earlier in the week when Tier 8 Delves opened. Then Blizzard rebalanced it back. I’d like to see an extra life per player per checkpoint added though. The damage and health pools of the mobs are fine at this point but extra learning chances would make them more forgiving at the +8 level.
• Exploit bans: This one regarding the renown ban seemed a bit too heavy-handed. Our community was affected as we had players who were issued temporary bans because they had linked accounts amongst different family members. None of them were overturned so they lost out on some playing time. I don’t agree with that ban, but I would’ve gone for delayed rewards and had them not activate for another week or two if the players had over some arbitrary number of Renown (like over 17).

Thanks for taking the time to read and I hope you have great Mythic+ week! If you’re still looking for a team to raid with, you can learn more about us on our Raider IO page and apply using the form link in the profile.

I’m still alive!

My first question after early access weekend was: What year is it?

As usual, I was the first raider on the team to hit max level once early access opened up. It took me 7 hours on the dot, and I cleaned out all of the primary Campaign quests. Levelling as the shadow was great despite everything quick before my dot spells could even kick in. I felt partially useless even running dungeons at level 80 because everything died fast.

After the Priest, I levelled another 5 more characters to 80. There wasn’t much else to do during that period since heroic dungeons weren’t open then. That stacking experience from having alts is great for this.

Real quick impressions (Alts)

• Frost Mage: Frostfire feels fun and visually satisfying but seems to be lacking in firepower. Spellslinger feels a bit clunky. It almost feels like it’s conflicting against itself, and I can’t seem to articulate why.
• Retribution Paladin: Templar is great. Packs a big punch and is also fun. I feel like a justice-dispensing freight train.
• Ele Shaman: Far Seer is the choice for levelling. Shifted to Stormbringer for dungeons, it is a fiesta of Chain Lightning and Earthquakes.
• Dev Evoker: Challenging. Wasn’t the most responsive or fun. I flew off the ledge with a Deep Breath, trying to steer. Can’t seem to corner worth a damn.
• Fur Warrior: Surprisingly enjoyable. Needs a better bind setup on my side. Hurts my fingers after prolonged play.

After I levelled my arsenal of alts, I still had another day of early access and cleaned the map of all side quests. Finished my loremaster achievements (Sojourner).

All in all, it was a great levelling experience. I was pleasantly surprised that there were no server issues during the leveling and questing process. Stormrage did happen to go down for a bit during general release (and somehow, I dodged that by being in a dungeon or something). Unfortunately, the auction house was under immense load and strain during the first week so that made it harder to get professions going or to make gold. Thankfully, it looks like much of that has been resolved and the throttling that was put in place has been lifted.

But aside from that, maybe… just maybe, Blizzard’s starting to get their fastball back.

The Warband feature has been stellar. Alts can farm on quests that offer gear and I can still get the Renown rep from them.

I’ll devote a separate post to the Profession Patron system since it warrants its own discussion.

On the guild side of things, we’ve had a few departures and we thank all the players who have contributed to our squad’s success over the course of Dragonflight. Our roster currently stands at 25 players, and here are our current needs:

• Elemental Shaman
• Shadow Priest
• Warrior DPS
• Havoc Demon Hunter
• Aug Evoker

As always, Mythic and CE experience is greatly valued. If you’re interested, you can learn more about us and apply from our Raider IO page (Look for the recruiting form link).

I don’t know where it went, but my excitement for The War Within has been virtually non-existent.

We’re hours away from the new expansion (early access). I’ve got my shopping all done for levelling (heavy protein build), my routes figured out, and I even hit the gym and did some yoga this morning to start the day.

For reasons I can’t seem to explain, though, I am just not feeling that excited or hyped for it. I’m not sure if that’s a product of having played such a long time or if there aren’t many aspects of the game I’m looking forward to besides the raids. For me, hype levels were often influenced by two factors: Story or Stuff (like systems).

In Wrath, it was Arthas.
In Cataclysm, it was Deathwing.
In Warlords, it was Garrisons (that might’ve been a miss).
In Legion, it was Artifacts and Order Halls.
In Battle for Azeroth, it was Kul’Tiras.
In Shadowlands, it was legendaries and Torghast (Yeah…)

The hype meter was most off the charts heading into Legion. The artifact weapons and the order halls were aspects I anticipated greatly. Battle for Azeroth had all these borrowed power systems (which wasn’t as fun), but we finally got to visit Kul’Tiras, which had been missing forever. As a Warcraft 2 gamer, Kul’Tiras was always a place in the back of my mind that I’d always wanted to visit if I ever got the opportunity to do it. I didn’t feel much hypeness heading into Dragonflight largely because I thought their story concluded nicely at the end of Cataclysm. I feel a similar notion heading into The War Within. Maybe the agency isn’t quite there yet and it might take time for all of it to build up and crescendo into a payoff.

Come to think of it, we’ve visited and pulled upon every story and character beat since Warcraft 2 and Warcraft 3. That might be where my malaise is coming from because we’re entering a new phase in the Warcraft-verse where the lore is now all new since there aren’t many ties remaining to the Warcraft 3 era any longer.

I guess I don’t feel as invested in the story right now. Clearly the solution is to get a Warcraft 4 RTS going now.

In any case, with Xal’atath taking over as the Big Bad Evil Blade for the next arc.

I’m intrigued! As a Priest, she’s always held a special place in my (dark) heart. We’ve had many good conversations over the years. She was always my Jarvis when I was questing and killing bosses.

But hey, the day is finally here, and we’re hours away from early access. My plan is to level my primary Priest first, then Shaman, Paladin, Mage, and Evoker. After that, maybe the rest of my Priests (for cloth cooldowns). Two weeks to get the arsenal of alts up to a readiness level will be plenty of time.

Enjoy the journey!