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Every story, article, column, piece, and so forth on World of Matticus ever published.

A Triumphant Roar Echoes

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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!

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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

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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!

An Eventful Week: Knocking on Sark’s Doorstep (8/9 Mythic)

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I know, I know, I’ve been slacking on the writing. It’s been a busy time. I’m not getting as much ice time due to a slightly busier weekend schedule so it doesn’t make much sense for me to log progression hours into Echo or Sark, but hey we did it! Echo of Neltharion has been crushed and we’re now officially 8/9 Mythic.

Pretty good loot right?

Okay, let’s get into the highlights. There’ll be a lot of them since I’m in many different raid groups.

  • Echo of Neltharion thoughts: I hate this encounter. Not really for the mechanics but the requirements for it. I’m usually in favour of Weakauras to help with information management but this exceeds it. The primary keys to Echo is tracking your debuff number, the location assigned to each debuff, and then getting yourself over there (see below). All of that mental calculation needs to be done in under a second. That’s just phase one. Once you get to the last phase, players are all assigned grid locations. You have to run to your corresponding number and if it isn’t there, you take a letter as a backup. It was so frustrating because we had issues with people not calling their plan B locations and we’d miss certain grids to the point where our raid leader yelled at someone for messing up multiple times (More on this another time). I’m just relieved we managed to get it down. Now it’s full speed to Commander Sark and we finish the tier!

  • Raid Departure: No, not DJ’s. On a more sombre note, my weekday raid team transferred off and switched servers. They were part of a guild. I don’t know the full story or details and don’t really need to. These guys took me in during Shadowlands when Proper Villains ceased raiding and gave me purpose before I moved to full-time commitment to DJ’s. During Dragonflight, I levelled a second Priest to raid with them during the week because I was grateful for what they had done for me and I wanted to pay it back by contributing to Mythic raid goals with raid strategy and diagnostics help. Once I discovered they had left and they didn’t tell me about their plans or asked me if I was still interested in raiding them, I felt kind of abandoned and maybe a little hurt. The reality is that I knew I was on borrowed time. After all, once I secure a full-time job, I would have to step back. I still felt that I could have at least served as a bridge healer option until the team found a stable healing replacement. I would have committed to staying until the end of the tier. It was my fault though. I was showing disinterest in constantly heroic raiding with alts, but I wanted to be there for Mythic content. I’m sure they’ll do fine. In any case, I want to find another weekday Mythic raid team so I can maintain a state of readiness. Since DJ’s is all-in on Sark, it’s unlikely I’ll see any first-team reps as I’ll be away 2 out of the next 4 raid nights and I don’t want to get too rusty from not healing anything challenging.
  • New raid team: A new raid team joined the DJ’s community making it our 9th Warcraft raid group. That’s a lot. I ended up joining them last night because they needed an extra body and I was able to help get them two new progression kills on mythic Assault and Amalgamation Chamber. Great bunch but not a long-term fit since one of their raid nights happens to correspond to a rehearsal night for me.
  • Raid attendance: This is going to be hard to keep track of, but my third raid team (they raid Sunday/Monday nights) is on the verge of just sticking to Heroic and calling it for Mythic progression for the remainder of the tier. Summer attendance has been impacting them too much. Every raid night has led to a shortage of anywhere from 5 to 2 players. I wonder if Sunday and Monday raiders are just hard to come by. I’m also questioning people’s devotion to pursuing Mythic or if they’re just along for the ride. I wrote about making the jump from Ahead of the Curve to CE a while ago, but the intermediate step is making some kind of progress in Mythic. The worst thing that can happen is stalled progression. Once you start stalling, players start asking questions or decide to flat out leave the group to find another raid team that can help them. You can only run so many heroics with player alts sprinkled in before people get sick of it and annoyed. For me, I set aside my time and decline certain social obligations because I commit to raiding with my designated character. I got frustrated when I showed with my Elemental Shaman to discover there’s a few alts in there because “players don’t need stuff on their main”. Great, I don’t need stuff on my main either. I’d rather take the night off and catch up on keys or help the team run some keys if they haven’t been able to get their weekly dungeons in yet. I haven’t quite figured out what to do yet. I’ll still keep my Shaman in there but if we can’t get at least 3/9 Mythic done, I may just stop raiding on the Shaman altogether or find a different group. Hard for me to justify setting aside Sunday and Monday nights that could be time spent doing other things.
  • Recruiting: We said goodbye to one of our hunters this past week as he received a raiding opportunity he couldn’t turn down. Check us out and apply! You may not get in much action until we start reclears however. We’re looking for the following:
    • Hunter
    • Shaman (DPS)
    • Warlock
    • Mage
    • Warrior
    • Balance Druid

Thanks for joining me this week! I’ll try to get back to more frequent updates when I can.

Zskarn and Magmorax Cleared!

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DJs made some big strides this past weekend. One small step for Gnome, and one giant leap for Panda. DJs defeated Zskarn after a few pulls on Friday after some much-needed nerfs and consistency was added. I was only in for a few pulls pre-nerf and I could tell how chaotic it was. We put in a few pulls on Magmorax before calling it a night. The next day after that, we added Magmorax to our kill list. It’s incredible the stark difference in difficulty between these two bosses. Now we’re in the final home stretch that is Echo of Neltharion. The rest of the raid night was spent getting accustomed to Weak Auras and ensuring functionality while familiarizing ourselves with the updated, mythic mechanics. I don’t know about you, but that’s a pretty productive long weekend for us. We’re extending from hereon out until Sark is down.

It’s not likely I’m going to be in for any of the remaining kills on Echo and Commander Sarkareth. I’ve made peace with that, especially with a turbulent weekend schedule coming up that will see me away for 2 out of the next 8 raid nights for the rest of the month. Doesn’t make sense to put me in for progression. I still have to maintain some semblance of readiness in the event I do need to step in but at this point in my raiding career, I’m comfortable in a stable, relief position and not someone that has to be a starter all the time. I’ve basically entered my raiding Clooney years on an NFL veteran minimum salary! I just have to find other ways to contribute. This is why I’m on 3 other raiding teams just to keep my raiding and gameplay awareness up.

Summer months for recruiting continue to be a pain. The past several weeks saw the departure of 5 players. Our roster at some points was down to a perilous 22 raiders overall which is dangerous in the summer. Players often have obligations or travel commitments. Fortunately, we’ve been able to replenish the recruiting pipeline and did pick up some new trial players. I’m optimistic that they’ll work out (which is weird since I’m usually the pessimistic one). The burnout is real and definitely taking a toll. For guilds, the focus should be on keeping an eye on everyone and checking with them to see how they’re feeling. Start rotating some players in if you can afford it, and get some fresh hands and eyes.

At the moment, we’re looking to add a Warrior, an Evoker, a Warlock, and a Balance Druid. I missed out on picking up an Evoker especially with Augmentation coming up quite soon. It’s been identified as a must-have. I think we’re going to need two. Check us out!