Silken Court has been finally cleared and we are now 7/8 Mythic! It’s time to knock over the Queen herself. It was a much needed positive week since we endured roster turbulence the past few weeks due to tech issues and travel for the US holiday season.
- Court Thoughts: The last finery buff helped pave the way to a win by allowing us to skip the lethal charge into dispel combination in phase 3, but just barely (You can watch it in the video below). Court is one of the more complicated raid encounters of all time to execute, and it’s not exactly a fan favourite for me. But it serves it’s just as the gatekeeper boss quite well (amongst such previous titans like Tindral and Echo of Neltharion). There are so many different ways to wipe or for the pull to go wrong at any point and you have to play with absolute precision. Intermission is my least favourite as I hate having to move and heal. I have to keep spacing in mind due to the blue ball drops and ensure we don’t double up in one spot while spreading out at a speed where I wouldn’t fall behind. The second intermission wasn’t as bad since speed is not a considerable factor, just survivability. You can check out the full kill video below with both the red and blue side. The red side is from a Ret Paladin’s perspective. I figured we didn’t need a two-healer look. The loot was pretty good as we scored a Mythic Spymasters that I clearly did not receive.
- Court Dispels: There are five dispels that need to go out and we are not consistent enough with the second one since this occurs around when the boss teleports to the middle. This means the second player gets sidpelled during that move transition and risks a dispel bounce. In other cases, it’s a healer that whiffs and misses their dispel call to begin with.
Here’s an example of what that situation will look like when we enter this part of the fight. We have a series of five dispels. We’re using Liquid’s WeakAura package for this, but we extracted Northern Sky’s version of debuff management instead because we felt it was just better. On the left, you can see how each afflicted player has a healer’s name next to it that shows which healer is dispelling which player. In this situation, I need to know who my dispel target is and be ready for them when it’s their turn. The second thing I need to do is assess the field and keep the debuffed players healthy. I need to prioritize 3 since they’re a little weak. 5 is not in my range, and 1 should be in position to get dispelled momentarily anyway. This is where I would unload Serenity’s and boosted Heals. Once the first dispel goes off, I wait or cast maybe one instant spell because I don’t want to risk a GCD lock. I’m waiting for the count down to go because these players have 3 seconds to get into position.
- Onward to Queen: Our first full night of progression went well. We did get a few good looks at intermission and are at the point where we have moved Heroism to try to bust the shield. Our focus now is on web drop placements during that shield phase while staying healthy. I’m inactive for the pulls here since I don’t have a lot of reliable ways to break roots.
- Shadow Arc: I did finally score a Heroic Spymasters out of my vault. This means my villainous Shadow side can begin! Look out, world. I’m about to deal some consistent damage!
- Princess Ky’veza: On the Princess front, our learnings here have been slower than I’d like. Players didn’t quite pick up the concepts of standing on the marks or running behind their images. I fear we’re close to hitting the ceiling with the group. To top it off, I had a player who left the Discord server and ghosted us without saying anything. Yes, I’m frustrated by it, but I can’t well on it too much so now I need to go look for a Death Knight or an Enhancement Shaman. We did add a new Warrior and a new Ret Paladin (who will be switching to an Enhancement Shaman). Yesterday was much more promising as we were starting to cleanly enter intermission 1 and had more looks at the second phase 1. It feels like we have eclipsed 150 pulls now. I do need to take a step back because we’ve achieved our goals that we initially laid out when we first formed the team. Our position was that a 4/8 Mythic team was quite doable for a first time raid group and we’ve accomplished that. Anything beyond that is a bonus. Our next steps now is reinforce the foundation for what the group should look like entering the next raid season.