We’ve officially started Raszageth’s progression! Technically it’s been after 3 days of pulls with solid, notable progress. A few of the highlights involved getting looks at the first intermission with everyone alive. The nerfs from the previous week made a world of difference. We’re dialed in now. There will be no more reclears until Rasz is defeated so our only upgrades will come from weekly caches.
Credit to our tanks: One of the more challenging parts here is maneuvering this giant freight train of a boss into the correct position and maximizing available space for the pushback. Our newest healer offered a method that worked out productively and Rasz has consistent positioning at the start now. I daresay this saved us a few pulls.
Evoker necessity: Rescue and Time Dilation are crucial. It’s actually why I’m the odd Panda out due to lack of movement. I can’t afford the race change to a Void elf for the gate (even with the sale). Which means I get to sit on the sideline drinking a mojito as I watch the stream.
Damage: Speaking of consistency, we started out getting five sets of pushbacks. Ideally, we want to phase just after four, but at least we can plan for five. With sparks coming up immediately after the fifth, we have to drop them off in the middle instead of at the edge like we normally do.
Survivability: Absolutely a must. The DPS checks are simply too valuable. Can’t afford any deaths in phase one. I’ve been told by friends that this is the hardest part of the entire encounter and it gets easier from there. It’s absolutely distressing to me when players jeoporize their survivability to eke out extra damage when healers are stressed enough as is and not even able to make a play to save them. Things like beams, spark damage, or bomb drops in the right spot all seem little but they all add up. Have to reinforice general usage of health potions and healthstones just to live in the first phase and not be greedy
Intermission: The focus on the next few raid nights is load balancing intermission groups to distribute damage. I wish we had some extra grief torches lying around to help. But already, we’ve made some changes to both sides and switching player spots around.
Roster needs: I’m looking to add a Death Knight (priority), Hunter, and a healer to our roster. It’s unlikely that any would see time on Rasz right now unless they had experience and pulls. But at this point of the tier, we would be looking to augment and reinforce our roster for season 2. Check out more information on our Raider IO page, or apply now.
For now, it’s back to stone farming. Many of them have been buffed recently (multiple times). I haven’t quite figured out the setup I want to get on my Priest just yet.
What exactly is the 21st Raider? Mythic raid sizes only go up to 20! Think of the 21st raider as a coach. No doubt you’ve heard of some of the top end guilds utilizing the position of a 21st raider to help with encounters. We use this extensively in DJs and it’s been beneficial for us. An orchestral conductor will often cue various sections during key entries (like the brass in Raiders March from Indiana Jones) even though they should already know this if they’re keeping time. That emphasis helps ensure that everyone is in sync. Likewise, the 21st raider can function the same way and help remind the raid what’s about to happen and how they should respond. It’s one less mental load that raiders need to keep at the forefront. I remember back during Shadowlands when we were progressing on Stone Legion Generals that there was often confusion between the big shared soak versus the individual solo soak (that involved running out and dropping circles). Having a reminder would have helped cut down on the number of pulls until we had it ingrained.
What you’re not there to do is to tell each player how to play their class unless it’s an integral part of the encounter (like Warlock gates or reminding them of defensive CDs). The big advantage of this is that it removes some of the thinking required for players and allows them to fully focus and commit to their rotation while staying alive. They still have to do some of the mechanics (because you’re not in there to do it for them), but a prompt or a reminder can go a long way, especially when progressing on a new boss. Encounters are getting increasingly complex, especially at the Mythic level.
So what does it take to be effective in that role?
Before we start that, we need to over the setup. Someone needs to stream their perspective to you so that you can see what’s going on.
How to Stream a Point of View Efficiently
Make sure the selected raider has a fast and stable internet connection with a great upload speed. This will allow them to stream at a high quality. They’ll want to stream at least in 1080 or higher with 60 FPS if possible. We use Discord for this.
Screenshot of a UI showing raid timers, ability bars, and available CDs.
Have Raid Notes Displayed: Your MRT window with the note should be displayed on the side somewhere. I like to position mine on the far left portion of my screen.
Show Raid Cooldowns: The raid caller will need to see who has what available in case they need to audible a defensive in the event a player dies or boss ability timing changes partway through the encounter. With MRT, it has the ability to display raid cooldowns. I personally use a combination of Weak Auras for this with Zen Tracker (Zera DF Update), and the ZT Front-End Textual. I can never remember what raid icons correspond with what abilities and I prefer having the names of both players and abilities.
Boss Ability Timers: This one’s obvious. In order for the raid caller to do their job, they need to see what’s about to happen. Place your Bigwigs or DBM bars somewhere prominent. I prefer using the Raid Ability Timeline Weak Aura which condenses all the abilities into a timeline view but it can still be done with bars.
What information is important to call?
As the group progresses through the fight, the 21st raider’s responsibilities might change from phase to phase or as the group gets more progressed in the encounter. Balance important and relevant information with minimalism. Brad Pitt once told Matt Damon to not use seven words when four will do. So channel your inner Brad Pitt!
Critical abilities: Figure out what’s important and what isn’t. As the group first learns about the encounter, certain abilities have to be highlighted to remind the raid what’s about to happen and how to respond. But as they get more familiar, these types of calls can be reduced because of the ingrained muscle memory. After 4 or so pulls, you don’t need to remind people to line up pillars on Terros or to always drop puddles behind Eranog.
Examples
Terros: “Stack for soak, line up pillars” Eranog: “Puddles behind boss.”
Upcoming cooldowns: As your players start learning the damage patterns, it helps to reinforce which players are using raid cooldowns next. All it takes is a gentle reminder. Name the player and the spell so that they know. You may have to be prepared to call an audible in case that healer isn’t able to commit their defensive cooldown to it. Maybe they died early or you phased ahead of schedule and the spell isn’t available yet. Get creative. It’s not just cooldowns here because consumables play a part and even at this level, players often forget they have it available or choose not to use it (I call this the Megalixir effect).
Examples
Council: “Next Fire Axe is an Aura Mastery.”
Raszageth: “First shield in 3, this is DPS potions and Matt’s Divine Hymn.”
Terros: “This tank slam is a Health Potion.”
Raid movement: Another good one to mention is for upcoming player movements. You’re directing traffic and reminding the team where to go to drop off any important debuffs. This might also involve instructing when Warlock gates need to be used. Not just that, but this is great for any stacking or spread-out motions. On specific fights, you can wave off the group from soaking (like Kurog if a Mage has the frost bomb that they can Ice Block).
Examples
Sennarth: “Wait for Chilling, then take gate up the stairs.”
Kurog: “Freezing Tempest, stack in now.”
Dathea (Mythic): “NO MORE dunks on blue, all dunks on green.”
DPS Priority Targets: This one’s an easy one to miss especially for melee players. There are going to be bosses where adds will appear and they can show up in a part of the map that isn’t quite so obvious. On the flip side, it’s also necessary to issue stop DPS instructions in case you want to slow down damage so that you don’t enter a phase you’re not quite equipped for yet.
Examples
Sennarth: “Spider spawn in 3, get ready.”
Dathea: “Need to move Infuser, all stop DPS.”
Battle Res: Not every player that dies has to get resurrected right away. When the group progress is getting close to a kill, it might be better served to hold one in reserve just in case a more critical player dies (like a tank or a healer). This also applies for Shamans because they might have died in a bad spot and they can’t use their own self resurrection. If there are multiple players dead with a limited number of resurrects, it’s time to decide who will be more valuable alive. Maybe you don’t need the extra healer on their feet but you have to have extra DPS instead to help with the final push. Or there’s two DPS players down but one has offensive CDs available and the other does not. Lastly, not only do you want to control who takes the res but also when they should take the res. I’ve seen instances where the res is cast in a bad position or there’s an ability about to occur that makes it unsafe. Be prepared to say wait!
All that being said, work with the raid group to see what information is and isn’t necessary anymore. I hope this helps you become better at helping your raid. Players might find as they’re getting better that specific calls are getting redundant and don’t need to be mentioned. You’re there to function as a guide and to help reduce some of that mental load until it becomes second nature.
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.
Screenshot of Diurna’s corpse
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.
