Mythic Argus. It’s been a long time since I’ve been at an end boss of an expansion with so much time before the next expansion release. We did reach him a few weeks ago and have slowly chipped away to the point where we’re consistently-ish getting into phase 3. Our struggle now appears to be in mastering the movement of Argus slowly around the perimeter of the room — With everyone alive. Raid extensions are now in full swing. We haven’t done a Mythic re-clear since the first time we killed Aggramar and we’ve committed. With the gear options from Mythic+ and titanforging chances from Heroic or Normal, we haven’t had much of a real need to go back and spend that week on re-clears.
Right, I forgot to mention, I passed my trial. I didn’t think I was going to make it.
I find myself in the precarious position of splitting healing time on Argus. There are five healers on the roster but only four can be taken into the encounter. There are essentially two ways to go about approaching progression here rosterwise:
Option A: Shorten the bench significantly. Pack 4 healers and use them as often as possible. Now each healer gets the same amount of practice and experience with opportunity to learn. If all goes well, they’ll be well-versed in the different timings and nuances of Argus. Though depending on the personality of the benched healer, they might not take kindly to that which could result in a departure.
Option B: Rotate and split healers throughout the night. Alternate players during the raid night. Healers now have a varying degree of experience against Argus, and some will have more than others. By diversifying though, no healer is left too far behind in case a player is unable to attend a night which could severely hamper progression.
The longer progression attempts go, the better option B looks. That’s ultimately what we decided to do. I would have been prepared to go with option A and set up camp on the bench just to speed progression attempts along and get the kill quicker. I just want to see Argus dead. Maybe I don’t get in on the first kill or two, but as long as I can secure it later, I’ll be satisfied with it. If this was years ago, I would’ve been disappointed at not being involved in the first guild kill. Now I’m at a point where I’m comfortable getting in on it later.
What happens once Argus is down? I suppose I could relax a bit and come back to Battle for Azeroth later or stick to a lowered raiding schedule. But now I’m getting ahead of myself. We need to crush Argus first.
In my mind, Option A is the way to go – provided that all 4 healers can reliably show up to most if not all raids. Rotating players throughout the night results in lost time with people hearthing/entering, not to mention it prevents building a very strong synergy between the 4 healers. It’s a tradeoff between time lost by the raid overall vs. time lost from one healer’s learning curve. In my previous guild, our main barriers to P3 progression were people hitting orbs and other individual player mistakes – shuffling healers around did nothing to change the situation.
One thing also I try to do is stream progression for the bench, so they’re not completely out of the loop if/when it’s their turn!