Raiding

Anxiety in Tanking and Healing Mythic Dungeons

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Happy Wednesday and I hope you all had productive vaults this week! My Priest has gone dark and heavy on Shadow and DPS gear for the first week (up to 503 ilvl now). I was able to 2 chest a +10 with some guildies and stocked up some 8s. As a raid team, we completely cleared out normal and heroic before finishing out with 3 bosses in Mythic (Terros defeated). This week, we’ll be revisiting Aberrus.

I have a story here about a recent tank applicant to Death Jesters. On paper, the player looked like a fit. Their logs were on target, the defensive usage lined up, and it didn’t seem like there were many mechanical issues until I came across the below (Paraphrased):

“I’ve always found Mythic Plus content challenging and it tends to make me quite anxious, as it’s not my main focus in the game. My primary objective for this fated tier is to improve in this area. While this issue hasn’t impacted my performance in raid progression—I make sure not to be the weak link—it has caused some tension in previous guilds. I’m actively working to overcome this, though I expect it will take a bit of time. Fortunately, the fated tier presents a good opportunity for this.”

This admission does highlight a common feeling among players, especially tanks and healers, in the opening weeks of a new tier. Heck, this level of anxiety is even more pronounced during patches that introduce new dungeon content, where players have to learn new routes and strategies for handling enemies (and whatever abilities that might wipe the party). While this tier is already familiar to many of us with revisiting previous dungeons, the challenge of re-learning still looms, although that’s been mitigated by the various nerfs and tuning changes (Season 1 Ruby Life Pools was a nightmare).

However, avoiding Mythic Plus dungeons in the early stages is unacceptable at the Cutting Edge (CE) Progression or even a mid-level mythic raiding guild. Tanks are expected to step into these keys from the get-go. This early dungeon running is crucial not only for personal gearing but also for the success of the entire team. In guilds like ours, the majority of loot is allocated to favour DPS players, meaning that tanks and healers have to obtain upgrades predominantly from dungeons to supplement the raid.

As a tank within a raid team, one assumes the role akin to Atlas—a Titan doomed to bear the weight of the world on his shoulders. Like Atlas, tanks have that responsibility and must be both resilient and proactive in ensuring that all team members complete their keys with minimal reliance on outside players (pugging). Some players may have friends or other communities they can tap into, but others might be reluctant or unable to do so, requiring help from guild tanks and guild groups to step in and help with a smoother key experience.

With us, our tank expectations are clear — Step into mythic raid content feasibly early while simultaneously supporting the team’s collective needs. A tank that just logs in to update their gear and achieve our dungeon minimums before disappearing just barely meets the guild’s standards. Tanks are just such a bottleneck role at the start. We have a few healers and other DPS that are diversifying and collecting tank pieces to help address that and add more variability to schedules (and their goal isn’t to push high, but to get to a point where +8’s are reasonably comfortable). The role demands extensive involvement, a commitment to team progression, and an unyielding dedication to overcoming personal and collective challenges. I can certainly understand and sympathize the level of anxiety for pushing keys beyond the 10 (or even the 8 range) early on. I feel the same way. I did not feel confident at all healing anything past 8, that’s why I decided to give Shadow a go and get healing gear that way to help be available for raid needs.

Symptoms and Addressing Tank or Healer Anxiety

Anxiety experienced by tanks and healers can come about in different ways. This includes hesitation to join groups, fear of criticism, performance stress, and making decisions under pressure. This anxiety not only diminishes personal enjoyment but can also impact team dynamics and success. Tanks are also the ones dictating the pace of the dungeon (since they’re the ones tackling pulls). Is it time for a big monster pull? Go slower, and steadier at 1 or 2 pulls at a time? Are there DPS cooldowns up and available?

Our tank takes preparation to a bit of an extreme with this multi-monitor setup

Addressing these issues would take multiple approaches (and this list isn’t exhaustive either):

  • Education and Preparation: Knowledge of dungeon layouts, boss mechanics, and optimal strategies can ease some of the uncertainties that fuel anxiety.
  • Communication: Talking it out with the party can foster a supportive environment where fears can be shared and addressed collectively. Before big pulls, I’ll try to remind the team of key interrupts or things that can smoke the party if left unchecked. Tanks can call for personals or any extra externals (“Gotta kite, drop an Earthbind!”).
  • Incremental Progression: Slowly increasing the difficulty of dungeons can help build confidence in a controlled and manageable manner (I started from 4s and worked my way up).

Lastly, it also helps to play with people you know and trust who are familiar with each other.

If the root causes of anxiety can be addressed, raid teams can ensure that all members — regardless of their role — feel both competent and confident in their abilities to face the challenges of Mythic+ dungeons. It helps ensure that the game remains a fun and rewarding experience for everyone involved. The best step might be to join a more relaxed, less focused raid team to start where the pressure of grinding all those keys isn’t a factor. A competitive CE raid team isn’t the best environment to help properly support a player like that from the start. It’s not an easy journey, but it’s not impossible to work through and help control.

Anyway, back to Aberrus this week! If you’re looking for a raid team for Season 4 and the next expansion, come check us out! We’re looking for a Mistweaver Monk, assorted range DPS, and another tank!

7/9 Mythic Amirdrassil Recap

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We did it! On exactly 100 pulls, we managed to smash Smolderon back into the ground. Progress on Smolderon started in earnest during the first weekend of 2024. We still had a few players who were away and missing some key pieces. Much of our work on the first night was getting accustomed to handling orbs and both the Weak Aura and the macro. For us, we’ve been using the Northern Sky ones for Amirdrassil with the below macro for orb handling:

/run WeakAuras.ScanEvents(“NS_PA_MACRO”, true)

I had a really rough Friday night this past week with a lot of deaths. Nothing seemed to go right (or left) for me when they needed to. I was asked to pick up a speed enchant for my boots, but with natural 7% speed (My Pips trinket has a speed bonus on it), I felt the extra stamina enchant on my boots remained the better choice to help buy me extra time to live against the various ticking damage throughout the fight.

Spatial Paradox from Evokers are amazing here. Being able to move around while channelling Divine Hymn with tornados flying in my direction was a big bonus. We had to incorporate Paradox into the cooldown setup.

Here’s the video below! I had two deaths in there. One was from a tornado that caught me off guard, and I just lost track of it. The last one was a gate back that I completely forgot about. Both were just mental lapses. Ultimately, we were able to secure the win, and now we move on to a post-nerf Tindral.

By the way, we’re still recruiting for our final push into the last bosses of Amirdrassil! What we’re looking for:

  • Rogue
  • Disc Priest
  • Demon Hunter
  • Any amazing DPS

Come check us out!

The Crucial Skill Separating CE Players from Mythic Players

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“I’m so dead.”

Three magic words.

That’s all it takes for every player in the raid to overwhelm that raider with defensives and support to help them stay alive. It’s almost always a tank too! Here’s the sequence of events that inevitably follows.

  • Holy Priests casts Guardian Spirit
  • Paladin casts Hand of Sacrifice
  • Evoker casts Time Dilation
  • Resto Druid casts Barksin
  • Enhancement Shaman casts Ancestral Guidance
  • Demon Hunter burns Darkness
  • Warrior Intervenes
  • Rogue… uses a bandage (okay, this one’s not realistic)

But really, this is the technique that tanks tend to use when they absolutely need something because they’ve run out of tools to survive. The best tanks use an addon like OmniCD which shows what defensives are available and displays them all under the player frame or somewhere else readable so they can specifically call for it. To me, that’s the mark of a reliable tank who knows how to layer not just their own defensives but those of other players around them.

What about non-tanks? Surely DPS and healers can exhibit this behaviour as well. If you haven’t realized it yet, it’s called communication. It’s practically expected for CE players to have mics of their own and to actually use them.

Back when we were progressing on Echo of Neltharion, I vividly remember one play that stood out to me. Our Shadow Priest had to traverse from oneside of the room to the other. His feather charges were all gone and he was seconds away from getting lethaled by a Volcanic Heart. Warlock gate chages were already used. He said, “Help! Liszt* needs a grip now!”

*Not his real name.

One of our Evokers managed to swoop in and lift him to safety keeping the pull going and sparing a much needed Battle Res for phase 3. This was learned behaviour because he ran into this same situation early on in previous pulls and ran out of solutions from his own toolkit. The coaching takeaway during the post-wipe review was that he needed to prepare for this situation in the future and ask for a lift if he didn’t have any remaining movement speed abilities left.

I’ll give you another story.

On Zskarn, we hit one of the overlaps where bombs spawned right before a knockback. One of our raiders was unable to evade it fast enough which pushed him into a bomb. He recognized it early and managed to use a defensive right before impact to slow it down, but he was also quick enough to ask for help and managed to survive the subsequent damage with a Hand of Sacrifice and focused healing until it wore off. Had he not said anything, he most likely would’ve taken lethal damage.

Here’s a story of a player error and what the coaching remedy looked like.

This is the same boss fight on Zskarn and one of our hunters was assigned to bomb duty. In this situation, a Tactical Destruction had gone off and the bombs were located within the Tactical Destruction affected area. Unfortunately, the Hunter had no way to safely get it. We ended up wiping and during the post-wipe discussion, we dissected the cause. When we found out it was due to blown Hunter coverage and a lack of personal immunity, we asked what could’ve been done differently and he didn’t know. I was upset at that remark but I kept that to myself. Our raid composition happened to include a pair of Paladins (one Protection, one Holy). He could have asked for a Hand of Protection and safely gone in for the bomb. Failing that, he could have also said, “Help! Can’t get bombs, need backup in Tactical”. This indicates the urgency of the situation that he’s not in a position to absorb a bomb hit and that someone else needs to do it right away. The Holy Paladin could’ve bubbled and used their movement speed horse or cast Blessing of Protection to get in there and neutralize the bomb. In that situation, no one is going to ask Hunter, “Well why can’t you get the bomb?”. That would be ridiculous.

The lesson I want to impart here is that when you’re caught in a situation with a blown assignment, it’s okay to ask for help and backup. Raid leaders will mostly have built this into the plan ahead of time. If they didn’t, they will now. Delicate parts of an encounter tend to be things like soaks or interrupts, and there will be times on progression where you as a player will miss it because you’re dead or you accidentally used an ability at the wrong time or you’re completely out of range and out of position. That is okay. CE Players have to be comfortable asking for help backup. Someone else will bail you out to keep the pull going because that’s what needs to happen. There are 20 players in the raid and chances are someone can step in to cover you. If they can’t, then the raid leader needs to find a solution in case that situation happens again.

However, you don’t want to make this a habit of missing a mechanic repeatedly or you might get viewed as unreliable.

In other words:

  • If you’re going to miss an interrupt, ask for help.
  • If you’re going to miss a soak, ask for help.
  • If you think you’re about to die from big damage, ask for help.
  • If you think you’re not fast enough to get safety, ask for help.

There’s no reason to hesitate in these situations whether you’re a trial or a veteran raider.  Can’t always expect to do everything on your own. Learn to rely on your team.

 

How to Recruit the Right Players at the Right Time

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Building an elite raid guild can either be super exciting or a massive headache? I want to dive into the world of guild recruitment and explore how different player types can fit into your team. It’s not just about recruiting the right player, it’s about recruiting the right player at the right time. You don’t want to pick up someone who is starting the gearing process when you’re halfway through Mythic. Conversely, it’s a bad fit to pick up someone who’s on the verge of clearing the whole instance when you’re also halfway through Mythic (they’re going to get impatient fast).

Let me highlight some of the player types I’ve come across and help you determine if they’re the right fit.

The Project Player

Think of Project Players as the potential future of your guild. These are the players who aren’t necessarily in a rush and are all about long-term gains for the team. They’re ready to put in the work, learn the ropes, and become a force to be reckoned with. They might have hidden talents that, once unleashed, can totally transform your raid even though they’ve never set foot in a serious progression raid before. Spotting these gems takes a sharp eye and a knack for mentoring. They could be a player who is new to a specific class (even though they’ve raided at a high level before on another class). An example I’ve seen is someone who played a Mage for the longest time but no longer enjoyed the class and decided to switch to something more satisfying like a Ret Paladin. Range and melee often have slightly different areas of focus (like cleaves and frontals)! Another good example of this is a player who just started playing World of Warcraft and stepped foot into a Normal raid, but wants that dopamine hit of Heroic (or even Mythic).

The best time to pick up a player like this is when your raid is preparing for the next raid season. When activities are slow or your raid is working on reclears, and progression has stopped, they can be brought in on farm stuff. To provide context, for a CE guild, this would be a player who’s done some low-end Mythic raid content currently (like 2 or 3 bosses in) or has done some CE raiding before in previous expansions (instead of previous tiers) and is just coming back to the game after a break. For an entry Mythic guild or a mid-level Mythic guild, this would be a player who’s earned Ahead of the Curve or just shy of it. It’s certainly possible to pick up someone who’s completely fresh to the Mythic environment, and the team will learn fast if that player fits in (or conversely, if that player enjoys it).

The Win Now Player

These are junkies who thrive on progression now and progression fast. They have a wealth of experience and are all about achieving their raid goals immediately. Having these players on board can fast-track your guild’s progress, but it can also bring in some high-pressure situations. Gearing is not a problem because they’ve already acquired most of their gear from dungeons or raids. Maybe a small handful of upgrades are wanted but not necessarily required. They already have their trinkets and weapons but want to start finishing out the rest of the tier.

Look for these players when you’re deep into progression. You want someone who’s at or near your progression level. For example, since DJs is working on Sark, we need someone who can immediately step in right away. That means someone who has Sark experience, but not necessarily the kill. Maybe they’ve seen phase 2 a small number of times but have clean phase 1 pulls. That’s something the group can work with. If I’m in a guild that’s working on Rashok, I’d also want someone who’s done a few pulls on it, has defeated it, or has at least cleared Amalgamation and Experiments.

The Depth Player

These players are your rock, always dependable and keeping things steady. The depth player is a class you don’t necessarily need. Maybe your raid team has an abundance of melee and you don’t need another Rogue but their raid history is too strong to pass up. A player like this can easily fill in for someone else if they’re playing poorly or if you’re running into attendance problems (like the summer months). Someone like this has great experience in the current expansion but didn’t quite accomplish their raid goals and are looking for another opportunity somewhere.

An example type is a player who didn’t quite get CE in Vault of the Incarnates but got Broodkeeper down. Perhaps their guild collapsed or something came up and they had to stop raiding for a while. Their raiding knowledge and gameplay sense is recent enough because it’s still the current expansion, but for various reasons, they took a break and stopped raiding only to try to make a comeback. They’re okay taking a back seat on progression and are happy to get rotated in until they’re comfortable again. This is the player who’s still skilled at the game and isn’t as new or as unfamiliar as the Project Player, but they’re also not fluent in current content to help the team immediately.

Exploring Other Player Types

But wait, there’s more! Aside from Project, Win Now, and Depth Players, there are other hidden gems you don’t want to miss:

  • The Innovator: These players bring a fresh breeze of strategies and creative solutions to make your raid that much more efficient.
  • The Mentor: Need someone who’s all about sharing knowledge? They’re your mentors who function like a walking WoWHead because their class and raid knowledge is just unsurpassed.
  • The Officer: Former GMs or former officers. They’ve done what you’ve done before and they need a break from it. These are potential future raid leaders, but right now they just want to press buttons and kill bosses.

Each of these player types adds a different flavor to your guild’s dynamics, making your raid team even more stronger. They’re not exactly people who reveal themselves right away on the Recruiting forums or other communities, but as you get to know them, you might find interesting information about them as they contribute to your raid’s goals.

Talk to the rest of your raid leadership when looking to address roster needs. Figure out what your immediate goals are so you can start picking up players that can help out with that.

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!