This was another strong start to the tier with another fast Ahead of the Curve clear! Wanted to summarize my thoughts from our first week of stepping back into Mythic progression even though I wasn’t necessarily in on it. I also made the dumb decision of joining an additional two raid teams (one in the DJs community and a friend’s team).
- Queen Ansurek: I took a lot of L’s on this one. I was in the wrong soak for the first few pulls (but another player who was assigned to our group was erroneously assigned to popping another green circle so it worked out). There was a definite roster imbalance until we troubleshooted it, but it I should never have been in that situation. I had a hard time finding a right spot to cast Divine Hymn in that first phase. The platform ascending phase felt good except for the one pull when I took a blue beam right up the tail since I was hard-focused on trying to outrun the web pull-in. Phase 3 felt amazing largely because I knew exactly what to expect and how to respond to everything.
- Silken Court: We need to be a lot better in the first phase of this. Absolutely none of our web teams were successful in stunning Anubaresh which meant our kill here did not involve any damage amps. Credit to the healers and raider defensive usage for carrying us through all of the damage coming out here. It’s nice to know that we are able to recover from situations like this, but we as a team need to not place ourselves in this hole to begin with. While I wasn’t assigned to web teams this week, I’ve been practicing for it in our community runs. You can ask anyone I’ve played with, I almost never ask for a mechanic responsibility, but I feel good about this one. I’ve found what worked well for me was verbalizing which web to for facing the boss (Center right, far left, far back left, boss’s back right leg, etc). While pinging is another option, the reality is the ping can get lost in visual clutter especially with two web teams fighting for it. A combination of visual and audibles would work best. The last option is as a Priest. I can grip my partner to me, and call for an Evoker Time Spiral and reset the cooldown for the second set of webs.
- Mythic Ulgrax: I took a seat here and missed the first kill. I deferred to our other Holy Priest (who is a solid 10 item levels below me but has already killed it on her main), and she still crushes me pretty hard on throughput. The big changes here involve extra ads that have to be killed, but otherwise, it does appear to be an easygoing encounter. I expect the 1st boss of Mythic to often be easier than the last boss on Heroic, but this one was a gear and throughput check, especially on the endurance side of things. Our poor Holy Paladin guild leader started the kill with 50% mana because he was distracted. There’s a ready check for a reason! Let this be a lesson: If you’re not ready, don’t hit ready!
- Raid Healing: The current build right now for Holy is Lightweaver. What I’m not accustomed to is sacrificing and not using Circle of Healing and Prayer of Healing. Those have been staples in the toolkit forever. It’s taking me some time to get used to it, but after a few pulls on Ansurek, I had to switch back due to the amount of movement going on.
- Dungeon Healing: I’m switching to Shadow full time for keys. I’m struggling way too hard with healing keys right now, and the amount of focus required constantly from pull to pull is too high in the bigger key levels. At least during raids, I can mentally break after a wipe or a pull.
- Recruiting: Our roster still currently stands at 28 players. Our last addition was a Demon Hunter recently, who is a prototypical meat and potatoes player and has quietly performed well on his first day. Those are the best types of opening performances. We’re still shopping for Warriors though and I did interview two of them. I’m just waiting for the rest of the team to figure out how to best move forward since I’m not the best evaluator. Our biggest need right now is an additional Warrior, but we could look to add a Devastation Evoker as well. If you think you’re an asset, you’re encouraged to apply!
- The Shaman’s Raid: I’m playing an Elemental Shaman in a friend’s one day AotC oriented team. It’s in a fun spot but my damage is just bad. I still have to fight the urge to cast Lava Bursts when it glows, and we came close to take down Princess on Heroic.
- The Last Call Raid: Since all raid teams in the community are full, another community leader and I decided to reboot a 2-day Sunday-Monday raid group. It’s aimed at being a mid-mythic level team. I’m unsure if we’ll get there this season, but the foundation is there. We just need to develop it more. We’re missing a lot of essential classes (Warlocks, Evokers, etc). We did manage to clear 5/8 Heroic (with Princess down). We’re still waiting for the team to be formalized in the community but once it does, I can bring the recruiting up to full speed. It would benefit from having another raid-leading veteran in there who can help with raider development, though. I’m definitely going to need some help on that front.
- Family Just Got Bigger: Speaking of new raid teams, I wanted to wish a warm welcome to a new raid team that’s joined the DJs and ZTH community. Gravity has recently joined us as a CE focused team and I wish them nothing but success for their season. We’re doing what we can to make them and their raiders feel at home.