Notebook

Matt’s Notebook: Bumpy Reclears

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Why are reclears so damn hard? Mug’zee took us all night!

We switched to a 3 minute Mug’zee strategy. We had enough firepower to overwhelm and skip the 3 Gaol set altogether.

We had to bring in a DJ’s alt because of some absences and technical difficulties. One player whose power went out earlier than our tank’s internet went down. We ended up killing Mug’zee on the last pull. I felt it shouldn’t’ve taken that long. We were still making some questionable mistakes, and these are mistakes I don’t want to see. These are things like hitting the wrong button, or being out of position, or not knowing where front left and front right are on the 4 Gaolset despite having the diagrams shared ahead of time. It’s people panicking and not understanding their assignments. We had a Paladin who hadn’t done the mine pops before, so that took some learning with the cadence of the bomb pops.

Healing wasn’t ideal as I didn’t have enough externals for the second rocket target, so sometimes they would die if they didn’t have a personal defence available. I know we ended up killing it in the last pull of the night, but we have to be better. Even some of our veteran players who did kill it with us the first time made some mistakes too. It’s a struggle for me to get things through and get them to stick in people’s minds. There’s a lot of stuff going on everywhere, but I try to keep it simple, even if it isn’t easy. The reclear nights have really exposed the inconsistency and the overall skill ceiling that players have.

This made me worried about how our Gallywix reclear is going to be like. Thankfully, yesterday night we were able to get cleared within 15 pulls. We had some new people who hadn’t killed it with us but learned alongside us as well. Had to get a new bomber assigned, which meant a lot of new and unfamiliar roles for a few players.

We’re still in the process of finalizing our roster and the last few pieces I need are a strong healer and a DPS Death Knight to round out our roster for next season.

Matt’s Notebook: Notes from the Frontline

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Now that we’re officially entering summer, all eyes are on the upcoming raid. Over in Death Jesters, we spent part of our raid night diving into PTR testing and previewing boss mechanics for the new tier. If you missed it, check out the full preview post here.

  • Last Call had a heartbreaking 1.3% wipe on Gallywix last night due to a missed interrupt (on a VIP, no less). I’ll take full ownership of that one. Originally, I was assigned to interrupt the edge add and it was working fine. But we decided to try having a Warlock pet handle it instead to align with our range DPS ad assignments. In hindsight, that swap was unnecessary. I’m floating left side anyway and saving Ascendance for that group. Should’ve just kept things simple.
  • I’ve been wrestling with whether I’m micromanaging too much or not giving players the freedom to make their own judgment calls. We tend to thrive on heavily scripted fights (Sprocketmonger comes to mind), but really stumble when a boss demands individual decision-making and fast adaptation (like Stix, or now Gallywix). Watching players get knocked out of soaks or misstep simple mechanics is rough. It’s not just performance disappointment, but it’s realizing that not everyone has years of CE raiding reps under their belt, and this might be their first time at this level.
  • Honestly, I might be more frustrated with myself than anything else. Am I communicating the plan clearly enough? Am I making the strategic vision obvious to the team? Smart players don’t always need to be told what to do every second, but they do need to understand why. If we get that right, they can often figure out the how on their own. Right now, it takes us about 20 pulls to bake a mechanic in. I’d love to bring that number closer to 10. For comparison, DJs usually lock things in under 5.
  • Offseason planning is on hold until we clear Gallywix. I want a clear view of where we stand before evaluating roster changes and free agent targets. That said, we’ll likely backload raid nights to farm later bosses and get people their mounts and achievements, with earlier boss cleanup afterward. We’ve already got a few strong recruits waiting in the wings, especially from teams that couldn’t finish out the season or players looking to move up.
  • Last but not least, another raid-wide buff drops today, and we’re seeing an upgrade to the D.I.S.C. belt. That extra push might just be the edge we need to skip the fourth set of adds and finally bring down Gallywix once and for all.