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Season 1 Last Call Postmortem: So Close to Midnight Falls

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We threw everything we had at Midnight Falls this last week. Extra hours, an extra day, and on Monday we got Lura down to phase 4 more than once. Our best pull took her to 14%. We didn’t get the kill.

It’s the closest thing I can compare to a Game 7 loss in overtime. We did everything right to get there. We gave it our best shot when it mattered most. And it still wasn’t enough.

By the time we called it, we’d logged 560 pulls on Midnight Falls. For comparison, Death Jesters killed the same boss in 404 pulls. That gap tells its own story about how this season went for Last Call, and it’s worth sitting with before I get into the why.

A Season of Constant Turnover

Over the course of our Lura progression alone, we cycled through roughly 32 different characters. Not 32 pulls with a few swaps here and there. Thirty-two different characters who sat in a raid slot at some point during that fight. One of our locks switched to a Disc Priest because we were down a healer. A Hunter couldn’t make it, so we had to pull in a hunter alt from DJs. A crystal carrier had power issues, so I had to ask for someone else to get it while we grabbed a Ret Paladin.

We never had back-to-back weeks with the same roster walking in the door. Every single time I had to sub a new player in, it cost us about 20 minutes of problem-solving just to get phases 2 and 3 re-assigned and moving again. That’s not a one-time tax. That’s a recurring tax we paid over and over, week after week, on top of actually learning the fight.

I’m genuinely proud of the team we had. But it’s hard to build momentum on a fight that demands precision when you’re constantly rebuilding the roster around it.

Where We Excelled, and Where We Didn’t

Progression-wise, this team is really good at fights that reward preparation. Crown of Cosmos went down in a reasonable number of pulls because that’s the kind of encounter where our strengths show up: strict timelines, scripted assignments, everyone knowing exactly where to be and when.

Beloren was a different animal. That fight demands individual accountability in a way our other kills didn’t. Ball soaks, quill soaks, interrupts, all resting on players managing their own responsibilities in real time instead of following a script. It exposed the skill ceiling of some of our newer mythic raiders, several of whom were tackling serious mythic progression for the first time in their raiding career. We got through it, but it took longer than I wanted, and it was the first real sign of what was waiting for us in Midnight Falls.

The GM Introspection

This is the part of the postmortem that’s less about the boss and more about me.

Every season, it comes back to personnel. Did I have the right players in the right roles? Did I hold onto players too long instead of cutting and evaluating quickly enough? Those are the questions I ask myself every time a season wraps, and this one is no exception.

Recruiting doesn’t make this easier. We raid Sunday and Monday, the last two days of the week, which is not exactly a popular slot for players shopping around for a new guild. It narrows the pool right when we need it widest.

On top of the roster churn, we lost one of our top healers right before Midnight Falls progression started. I also changed my own class mid-season, moving from Shaman to Evoker. Any one of those changes on its own is manageable. Stacked together in the same season, they added up.

A handful of our weaker performers joined midway or late into Season 1. They’ll get another look in Season 2, but with expectations set clearly from the start this time. That’s on me too. Clear expectations from day one would have saved us some of the harder conversations we had later.

Heading Into Season 2

Here’s the strange part: I’m much more optimistic heading into Season 2 than I probably should be after a season like this.

We’ve parted ways with a number of players and brought in some new faces. Some of the new additions are what I’d call project players, people who’ve historically capped out around mid-mythic and are looking to push past that ceiling. That’s exactly the kind of mentality this team needs more of.

Our systems and strategies are already in place. We know how we prepare, how we assign, how we approach a new tier. What’s left is execution. Season 1 taught us where the cracks are. Season 2 is about not letting the same ones open back up.

We fell short of Midnight Falls. But a Game 7 loss doesn’t mean the team is broken. It means you know exactly what to fix before next season starts.

Matt’s Notebook: Midnight Falls Over!

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It’s finally over! Death Jesters has cleared Midnight Falls and finished the tier at US 324. That’s a big drop from our previous tier (Manaforge Omega), when we were in the US 190 range.

What a relief to finally get it done and over with. In the end, it took us exactly 404 pulls. We can jump into the details below.

  • Our Raid Leader didn’t have internet. He tried to play by hotspotting his phone, but the connection was too slow, so we had to sit him. Poor guy missed the very first interrupt. Raid calling duties were split.
  • Roster boss was real for this last boss. I firmly believe if we had a consistent 20 (or even 22), we would’ve killed it earlier. We went through two Evokers before mine was brought in. I’m fortunate enough to have had crystal reps earlier on when we were learning the fight. Might even make the Evoker a change for me next season. Less emphasis on keeping damage up, so I can just focus on buffing the raid and addressing mechanical needs that the encounter demands.
  • With this week, we have some players that will be stepping down and moving on. Some are looking to pursue higher ranks, and others are retiring from raiding altogether. Ultimately, this will be the largest roster turnover we’ve had in quite a few years. We’re looking to recruit a Warrior, a DPS Death Knight, and some any ranged DPS or healers. Come apply here!
  • Over in Last Call, we too have been struggling on a week-to-week basis playing roster roulette. It’s not fun. Every single substitution leads to around 30 minutes of additional work. It means positions changed, new interrupt macros need to be made, and other cascading effects that lead into intermission, phase 2, and phase 3. Even something as minor as switching a range DPS for a melee DPS throws things off. Now I have to move a healer back from the inner ring on intermission to the outer ring so that the melee DPS can take that spot over.
  • The overall raid preparation has been okay, but I’m a little frustrated with some of the individual aspects. We had a healer who kept scooping up crystals on phase 2 when the crystals were deliberately dropped in the middle after I previously emphasized that players (non-crystal holders) had to fight the pull-in to not accidentally pick them up. Over the span of 8 pulls, it was picked up 5 times by the same player. Naturally, this led to unnecessary splashes that needed to be soaked. But still, I can’t help but be annoyed. It’s no longer enough for CE players to have an intimate understanding of what they need to do at an individual level, but they have to have a larger comprehension of what is happening at a phase-by-phase level. A bigger picture, if you will. Even if they’re not assigned a crystal, they need a fundamental understanding of why and when crystals are dropped so they don’t put themselves in positions where they won’t get it. This is an area of comprehension that separates mid-level mythic players and CE players.
  • I haven’t started deep diving into the next season’s roster yet, but by all accounts the next tier is rumoured to come out in early August. We’re going to have some turnover ourselves in Last Call with some players whose schedules are changing and others who also want to move up. I’m planning to open recruiting for another healer, some extra ranged DPS, and maybe one more melee. But I’ll need to schedule end-of-tier talks with everyone to determine their intentions.
  • It’s too early to say right now, but if I were to do a post-mortem, Bel’oren is where we lost some time and progress overall. I benched myself for the first few nights because of my damage (or lack of). I wanted to give more reps to the others that were there, and I focused more on the 21st man side of things, calling the raid. I can’t help but wonder if we would’ve killed it faster if I was in there instead. Ultimately, the raid buffs and other things pushed character power to the point that we had to fundamentally change our start. We used to hold 2 minutes for the first egg phase, which felt really bad. Instead, we decided to go with lust on the 2nd egg phase instead (and just use CDs as they came up). We found that we struggled a lot if we got to the third dive on the second phase 1.

Normal PTR testing will be starting up this weekend, and we’ll be stepping into it. Can’t wait to give it a go!

Matt’s Notebook: The 7 of 9 Edition

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It’s been another busy but productive week here. Both teams have made massive progress gains. Let’s jump into it though!

  • Death Jesters have been grinding away on Midnight Falls, and this week we finally started seeing what the fight really has in store. We got a look at phase 2 a handful of times, which is always that turning point where a boss goes from “we’re learning the pull” to “okay, now we’re getting somewhere.” Phase 1 and intermission are also starting to feel more consistent, which is the backbone you need before phase 2 ever becomes a genuine kill attempt. I jumped in on both my evoker and my shaman this week to help cover some key roles. Grips were one of the main things the team needed, and being able to flex between two characters to fill those gaps is exactly the kind of utility that keeps progression moving. There’s something satisfying about showing up to a prog night in a different spec and still feeling useful. Even though I felt my damage was still insufficient. We saw the second set of beams in phase 2 just once. Intermission is still hectic with the stars and the beams. I caught myself holding my breath a few times during that phase, especially when I was in charge of holding a crystal.
  • Last Call Clears Crown of Cosmos! We finally cleared Crown of Cosmos this week, which puts us at 7/9 Mythic. That’s a huge benchmark, and the team has earned it. We’ve since moved straight into Belo’oren progression and got through the egg phase in our early attempts. The egg phase is a straight-up burn phase. It’s send every CD, potion, and kitchen sink to get this thing down as fast as possible. I have to rework our second phase 1, with the orb soaks. The extra set of Quills is throwing the team for a loop. We pushed it to 38% on the egg phase. Best egg damage: ~38%. With Vantus next week, it should go down even more.
  • Abundance shards get more convenient. This one is for anyone who has spent more time than they’d like chain running Abundance and investing one Shard of Dundun everytime. An upcoming patch is adding the ability to deposit abundance shards simultaneously rather than individually. Thank goodness. Big ol’ quality of life change and I can get my time back.
  • Guild Wars 3 rumours are circling. I’m actually stoked about this. There’s buzz ahead of PC Games Fest later this week that a Guild Wars 3 announcement could be coming. I’ll be watching that one closely. Guild Wars 1 was a an early favourite for me and one I have a lot of affection for. I never got deep into Guild Wars 2, so there’s been an absence in my time with the franchise, but the idea of a third entry is exciting. It’s a rumor for now, and PC Games Fest has a way of generating speculation that doesn’t always pan out. Still, if there’s even a trailer or a teaser, it’ll be worth paying attention to. Fingers crossed. I really hope it’s not some card game.

That’s all for this week!

What If: NHL Coach John Tortorella Became a Raid Leader?

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When John Tortorella retired from coaching hockey, everyone assumed he’d find his way back to a bench eventually. Maybe as a consultant or a TV analyst. Maybe some vague “special advisor” role that lets the front office say they have him without actually having to listen to him.

Yet, nobody bought the idea that he was actually done.

Least of all Torts himself.

The problem was simple. He still had the itch. The hunger for preparation. The desire to hold accountability. The specific, unrelenting challenge of taking twenty different personalities and pointing them all in the same direction at the same time. Without that, what was he supposed to do with himself?

He looked around. The NBA felt too soft especially with the flopping, and he would never stand for that. The NFL had too many coaches coaching other coaches. Baseball season was way too long that he’d have aged out before anything meaningful happened.

Then one night, his son pulled up a Mythic raid stream on the TV.

Torts watched for about ten minutes without saying a word.

Twenty players. A single boss that had skewered them hundreds of times. Hours of reviewing the same mistakes. People arguing over positioning. Everyone searching for any possible edge.

He leaned forward and murmured, “Why isn’t anyone holding these guys accountable?”

His son didn’t have a great answer.

Three weeks later, John Tortorella created a World of Warcraft account. Two months after that, he joined a guild. Six months in, he was raid leader.

Mythic Crown of the Cosmos: Pull 43, 9:14 PM

“Alright, everyone shut up for a second.”

Discord goes quiet. You could almost hear him push up his glasses.

“We are forty-three pulls into this boss. Forty-three. And I’m still watching people move like they just downloaded the game this morning. That stops tonight.”

Ready check goes out.

One icon stays shows a question mark.

“Where’s our Mage? Where’s Bicsy?”

A sheepish voice filters through.

“Sorry. Bio break.”

“Are you serious? We called a break fifteen minutes ago. You picked now to discover human biology?”

No response.

“Get settled. We’re pulling.”

The pull timer appears.

“Five. Four. If you are holding defensives like they’re collectibles, I want you to think hard about your choices. Two. Everyone breathe. One.”

Pull.

It actually looks decent. Nobody dead. The first set of adds were going down nicely. For a brief moment, it feels like maybe tonight is the night.

Then a Monk with an Obelisk rolls and overshoots causing lines to lance into the rest of the melee team.

Raid over in seconds.

Silence on Discord. Complete, total silence.

Torts exhales slowly into his mic. The kind of exhale that says he is choosing his words carefully and it is taking real effort.

“Unbelievable.”

Nobody moves. Nobody types in chat. Someone’s dog barks faintly in the background.

Finally, the Monk:

“My bad.”

“Your bad.”

Torts lets that sit for a moment.

“You just turned twenty people into a loading screen. ‘My bad’ is what you say when you spill someone’s beer.”

One of the players tries to help.

“I think there was some overlap with the—”

“No. Stop. There’s no we in that sentence. Everyone else was positioned correctly. Everyone else read the room. You were out of position, and you panic rolled.”

The healing officer, bless his heart, tries to smooth it over.

“It’s okay, guys. Early pulls are for learning. We’ll get it cleaned up.”

“We’re on pull forty-three.” Torts says it quietly, which is somehow worse than yelling. “If we’re still figuring out where to stand, we’ve got a much bigger problem than this boss.”

Uncomfortable silence.

“Alright, let’s go.”

Pull 51, 9:47 PM

They reach phase 2 for the first time all night.

A healer dies without a defensives used. Not a single one.

Wipe.

“Okay. Timeout. Timeout.”

Torts sounds less angry than genuinely baffled, which is its own kind of terrifying.

“Moses. Talk to me.”

Nervous energy in the voice. “Yeah?”

“You have Pain Suppression. Desperate Prayer. Healthstone. Health Potion.” A pause. “You died with all four of those sitting in your bars completely untouched. Walk me through the thought process there. I’m genuinely asking.”

Silence.

“Were you saving them for a special occasion? A birthday? New Year’s? Anniversary?”

More silence.

“Use. Your. Defensives.” He says each word separately, like he’s reading them off a sign. “That’s not optional. That’s not a suggestion. That’s the job.”

Pull 63, 10:31 PM

The raid is really fraying at the edges now. You can hear it in the shorter answers, the longer gaps between pulls, the way nobody’s cracking jokes anymore.

A Balance Druid says something into the void:

“I don’t know, damage might just be a little low overall—”

“Damage isn’t the problem.”

Nobody pushes back.

“You want to know what the problem is? I’ll tell you what the problem is.” Torts doesn’t sound angry anymore. He sounds like a man who has thought carefully about something and arrived at a conclusion. “We’ve got passengers in this raid. Guys or gals who are technically present and physically moving but mentally checked out. Raiders who are hoping the pull works out without them having to be the reason it does.”

A long pause.

“I’ve coached good teams. Good teams are boring to watch. You know why? Because they do the same thing every time. Consistently. Correctly. On purpose. Over and over until they can’t do it wrong anymore. Until it’s completely ingrained into their muscle memory.” Another pause then. “Right now, we’re freestyling Mythic mechanics like it’s jazz night. It’s not jazz. There’s no improvisation on this boss. There’s one way to do it, and we already know what it is.”

Nobody says anything.

“Let’s go.”

Pull 75, 11:18 PM

The raid is running on fumes. Answers are coming in single syllables. The jokes stopped a long time ago.

Torts is quiet for a moment before the ready check goes out. Longer than usual.

“I want to say something.”

The raid waits.

“I’ve been watching every single one of these pulls. Every wipe. Every reset.” A pause. “And I can see it getting better. I can see progression. Moses, you’re climbing the defensive usages charts. Draxy, your positioning is fantastic. I know it doesn’t feel like that right now. When you’re in it, all you can see is the wipe screen. But I’m telling you, that phase three we just ran was cleaner than anything we’ve done all night. The back and forth movement in phase two with the obelisks and the bait is automatic now. You’re not even thinking about it anymore and I don’t have to say anything about it, you’re just doing it.”

A few people unmute to breathe. Someone types a single “fr” in raid chat.

“That’s how it happens. Not all at once. You just keep grinding the edges down until there’s nothing left to fix.” Another pause. “We are close. I don’t say things I don’t mean, and I’m telling you right now — we are close.”

He sighs, and initiates a ready check.

“Everyone wants Cutting Edge. Not everyone wants to do what it actually takes to get there.” He clears his throat. “But tonight you’re doing it, and I can see it.”

Green checks light up across the raid frames, one after another.

Pull 81, 11:52 PM

Clean opener. Mechanics landing exactly where they’re supposed to. Healer cooldowns are rotating properly, timed and deliberate. Intermission and phase two go by smoothly enough that the team enters phase three ahead of schedule by pushing the boss down to 40% before Alleria’s energy even reaches full.

Final phase.

7%.

5%.

Someone dies due to a mistimed tether snap. Nobody says anything. Nobody panics. The healers adjust and keep moving. John barks, “Get him up.”

3%.

2%.

1%.

The boss falls and the Cutting Edge achievement flashes on their screen..

For a half-second there’s nothing as the game freezes for a moment. Then the cut scene starts and twenty people realize what just happened. Discord erupts. Screaming. Actual screaming. Someone’s holding down their push-to-talk and just making noise. The Warlock is playing some kind of victory song through his mic. The Druid is typing in all caps in raid chat.

Torts doesn’t say anything for a while, and just lets it happen.

When the celebrations die down, he starts speaking

“There it is.”

More cheering.

Someone, laughing: “Torts, are you proud of us? Like, actually?”

A long pause. Long enough that a few people start to wonder if he’s going to answer.

“Ask me again after you’ve cleaned up that phase three positioning.”

Laughter.

“Same time next week?”

“Same time next week. And whoever died at 3%, pretty sure it was Bicsy — I saw it. We’ll talk. Your timing was off.”

The raid starts to break up, people start trickling offline, the Discord slowly going quiet. Somewhere in the background you can hear someone still doing a victory lap in raid chat.

Torts sits there for a moment.

Then he opens up the raid plan for Bel’oren.

He’s one step closer to the raider’s version of the Stanley Cup finals, but he’s not done yet.

There’s still work to do.

Matt’s Notebook: We’re on to Crown!

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I can’t believe it’s May already. This last week just flew right by. Between the Diablo 4 expansion and Heroes of Might and Magic early access, there was so much for me to do. I didn’t even play any Battlefield this past week. It was another solid progression week, though. Let’s dive into it, shall we?

  • Death Jesters just started working on Crown of the Cosmos this week. We had one look into phase 3, which is the furthest we’ve gotten. There are a few scary overlaps, but with the upcoming nerf this week, we’ll most likely defeat it and start work on the big firebird soon.
  • Last Call makes some big strides this week and overcomes the dragons, putting us officially at 5/9 Mythic, and we’re over halfway to our goal of getting that CE for this opening tier. I felt that we should’ve killed it earlier. We came close to it a few times on Sunday night, but had some consistency issues. There are a few players who need to work on just general game sense and survivability. Having the awareness that not only is a fear breath coming and they have to get it out of the raid, but they have to find a spot to safely get to where they can be dispelled within range of healers. Our gloom positionings were great, and even if we had players go down, we were able to audible with backup players stepping in to help with those soaks.
  • We’re on to Paladins now, and we spent the better part of our second raid night just working on taunt swaps, positioning, and getting a feel for dispels. Our best pull was about 40%. Logs are showing that about a third of the kills here use six healers, while the rest are done with five healers. I’m a bit torn as to which way to go. We don’t have a dedicated sixth healer, and if we were to do that, I would have to step in and switch specs on my Shaman (who doesn’t have the stats or the trinkets to really go healing). My damage is fairly low here, so I’m just thinking about it. I don’t need to play at the absolute best, but if I can manage to help stay on top of dispels while contributing healing, that might be enough. I also wanted to give some well-deserved flowers to our bait team. They did a commendable job baiting out the charges once they got into a rhythm. There were a few charges that were missed, but they got the idea.
  • Now, the next question is at what point should we start considering raid extensions? I don’t know if we’re quite there yet. There’s still some lucrative gear. We didn’t even get any trinkets from Dragons today, even with all the bonus rolls that were used, which was disappointing. Maybe once we clear Paladins, we can start doing lockout extensions.
  • In Diablo 4, I made a Spiritborn. Campaign was great, probably one of the better storylines I’ve played in a long time. The end game is much more enjoyable. My only struggle is in finding a build that I like playing. I might switch classes and reroll to a Paladin or something instead.
  • Last thing I want to touch upon is Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era. Reminds me of when I was a kid again playing Heroes 3. Such a fun game and this new version is a lot of fun. Highly recommend it if you’ve played it before. The early access grants six factions.

I’m still looking to add some Aug Evokers to the team!