Welcome to this edition of Matt’s Misplays! It’s been quite warm and toasty this past week in my area. This must be what it’s like in Aberrus with all the fire and lava everywhere. Now that we’re progressing into Mythic raid, things are going to get interesting. I’ll start off with a recap and then let’s breakdown some incredible individual effort followed by some amazing lessons to learn. Big gains this week as we advance to 3/9 Mythic!
- The cardinal rule of raiding: Our GM frequently emphasizes this lesson frequently during raid especially if we die to it. In most cases, the best way to survive a mechanic is to not get caught. If I die to a breath, or a puddle, or a fire, I can hear that booming voice in the back of my head, “Position! Position! Position!“. Did you die to an ability? If so, chances are, it could’ve been avoided had you been in a better spot. This goes back to a recent post about climbing up to the CE level raider. Focus on movement and positioning, and everything will become easier.
- Almost in tiers: This was our second week of full clearing normal and heroic. We jammed both raids with 30 players to maximize loot drops. We asked friends and alts from other teams to come in. They get an easy crack at vault slots, but they would have to surrender all dropped gear. Normal was cleared in about 55 minutes and Heroic took us a little over an hour. Every player with the exception of one is now in possession of 4 piece tier. It was impressively efficient.
- Big early progression: We cleared 2 additional bosses on Mythic and we’re sitting pretty at 3/9 with Assault of the Zaqali and Amalgamation Chamber cleared! After these first bosses are cleared, there’s a big step up in difficulty.
- Recruiting: We’re looking to add a Warrior as well as some ranged DPS (Mage and a Hunter). Check us out here!
Anyway, let’s check out some lessons for this week!
Kazzara is the first boss here and we didn’t get any looks at it last week partly because we just blew it up so fast that any errors were just washed over anyway. On Mythic, that isn’t much of an option. Lines that touch other lines or smaller fire puddles will explode so you have to communicate with the team and indicate which direction you’re going.
Here’s the thing. Like I’ve told many an ex, I’m not psychic. If I can’t figure out what restaurant my ex wants to go to, then I can’t tell which player’s going where or which puddle they’re trying to take their beam to. This encounter mechanic will expose players who may have brute-forced their way into mythic guilds in the past by virtue of overloading on gear. This early in a tier, not only does everyone need to play mechanics and survive, communication is just as important.
In this example, range players are instructed to stay further out to draw puddle spawns and lasers away. There needs to be some space between puddles to allow for lasers to get dropped. We have enough raid damage that we don’t need to maximize spawn locations, and yet the team was ingrained in trying to minimize gaps. However, at this stage of the fight, the range players are playing a little too close. Sure enough, the raid gets punished. GM was not happy about that. We all knew better. We’re going to explore a strategy change though to see if we can alleviate some of the positioning stress and give more room for everyone to work with because we can do better. No bubble tea for anyone (yet)!
On Experiments, Neldris has a Rending Charge that will force him to cut through specific players in sequential order. Depending on how they are positioned, it is possible for the same person to get hit more than once. In this clip, 1 goes to the back which forces 2 to get the bleed twice. Although it’s possible that Neldris manages to squeak through both the diamond and the triangle players it looked extremely close. What should happen here is that the first hit needs to be on the mark closer to the middle guaranteeing that each player only gets struck once with one bleed application each. This is a small positional blunder but easily resolvable.
Heroic Sarkareth with 30 people is like healing in a slow-moving Powerpoint presentation with a more fierce-sounding Clippit calling positions and cooldowns. This one was a bit of a brain fart. Our poor Monk gets Infinite Duress but confuses it with a bomb and goes to stand in a puddle! Big oops! Luckily, he realizes his mistake and runs to the edge but it’s too late. The dispel is cast but he takes lethal damage and dies a true Monk’s death – Not with a bang, but with a whimper. This is revenge for all the Divine Hymns that were sniped by Revive!
You absolute ding dong!
I demonstrated this one last week. Can’t get cut off here, even if it’s the phase 2 into phase 3 transition. You’re missing all that damage uptime! C’mon man, you should know better. Good effort by the Mage to blink in but gets bounced off (twice, I think). Really though, the moment the rock walls were reforming, stop what you’re doing, and just get in position ahead of time. Stop being greedy! This is not the time to be greedy!
Most Valuable Panda
But it wasn’t all terrible this week. We’ve got some solid plays as well.
This one might be hard to see, but here’s a look at Amalgamation Chamber. We’ve just entered the second phase and there are individual circles that need to be soaked (left). The Death Knight urgently alerts the team and starts heading over there. He correctly deduces that he has the movement speed of a slug and calls for help, “Need a solo soak, [back side purple]”. Our Demon Hunter quickly pounces on it thereby saving the attempt and preventing a wipe. The combined efforts of these two get a gruff nod and a grunt of approval.
Positive, impactful plays don’t necessarily show up on the meters. Sometimes it isn’t about who blasted out the most damage or who outright crushed healing. An innocuous communication like the above example demonstrates teamwork that is just enough to secure a progression kill. Without that call and that reaction, this is a wipe. Hope you enjoyed the highlights and the lessons from this week!