It’s finally over! Death Jesters has cleared Midnight Falls and finished the tier at US 324. That’s a big drop from our previous tier (Manaforge Omega), when we were in the US 190 range.
What a relief to finally get it done and over with. In the end, it took us exactly 404 pulls. We can jump into the details below.
- Our Raid Leader didn’t have internet. He tried to play by hotspotting his phone, but the connection was too slow, so we had to sit him. Poor guy missed the very first interrupt. Raid calling duties were split.
- Roster boss was real for this last boss. I firmly believe if we had a consistent 20 (or even 22), we would’ve killed it earlier. We went through two Evokers before mine was brought in. I’m fortunate enough to have had crystal reps earlier on when we were learning the fight. Might even make the Evoker a change for me next season. Less emphasis on keeping damage up, so I can just focus on buffing the raid and addressing mechanical needs that the encounter demands.
- With this week, we have some players that will be stepping down and moving on. Some are looking to pursue higher ranks, and others are retiring from raiding altogether. Ultimately, this will be the largest roster turnover we’ve had in quite a few years. We’re looking to recruit a Warrior, a DPS Death Knight, and some any ranged DPS or healers. Come apply here!
- Over in Last Call, we too have been struggling on a week-to-week basis playing roster roulette. It’s not fun. Every single substitution leads to around 30 minutes of additional work. It means positions changed, new interrupt macros need to be made, and other cascading effects that lead into intermission, phase 2, and phase 3. Even something as minor as switching a range DPS for a melee DPS throws things off. Now I have to move a healer back from the inner ring on intermission to the outer ring so that the melee DPS can take that spot over.
- The overall raid preparation has been okay, but I’m a little frustrated with some of the individual aspects. We had a healer who kept scooping up crystals on phase 2 when the crystals were deliberately dropped in the middle after I previously emphasized that players (non-crystal holders) had to fight the pull-in to not accidentally pick them up. Over the span of 8 pulls, it was picked up 5 times by the same player. Naturally, this led to unnecessary splashes that needed to be soaked. But still, I can’t help but be annoyed. It’s no longer enough for CE players to have an intimate understanding of what they need to do at an individual level, but they have to have a larger comprehension of what is happening at a phase-by-phase level. A bigger picture, if you will. Even if they’re not assigned a crystal, they need a fundamental understanding of why and when crystals are dropped so they don’t put themselves in positions where they won’t get it. This is an area of comprehension that separates mid-level mythic players and CE players.
- I haven’t started deep diving into the next season’s roster yet, but by all accounts the next tier is rumoured to come out in early August. We’re going to have some turnover ourselves in Last Call with some players whose schedules are changing and others who also want to move up. I’m planning to open recruiting for another healer, some extra ranged DPS, and maybe one more melee. But I’ll need to schedule end-of-tier talks with everyone to determine their intentions.
- It’s too early to say right now, but if I were to do a post-mortem, Bel’oren is where we lost some time and progress overall. I benched myself for the first few nights because of my damage (or lack of). I wanted to give more reps to the others that were there, and I focused more on the 21st man side of things, calling the raid. I can’t help but wonder if we would’ve killed it faster if I was in there instead. Ultimately, the raid buffs and other things pushed character power to the point that we had to fundamentally change our start. We used to hold 2 minutes for the first egg phase, which felt really bad. Instead, we decided to go with lust on the 2nd egg phase instead (and just use CDs as they came up). We found that we struggled a lot if we got to the third dive on the second phase 1.
Normal PTR testing will be starting up this weekend, and we’ll be stepping into it. Can’t wait to give it a go!