We were 2% away from greatness.
We spent two full nights on Mythic Sarkareth this past week and could not bring him down no matter how close we had gotten.
You can see from the below screenshot how painstakingly close we did get. What really sucks is the Sarkareth nerfs announced over the weekend that went into effect for this week’s reset. I wish we had at least one more week, yet I can’t help but accept that we ran out of time. I feel terrible about this because we exited Season 1 feeling awesome and we wanted to build upon that success here by going even faster on progression in this season. Getting this kill as a team isn’t going to feel as satisfying to me because it’s not as meaningful compared to securing it before the nerfs. One thing I will say is that we are just shy of 200 pulls which is just under where most guilds are at which is a testament to our raid preparation.
When we put together our raid roadmap at the start of the tier, we put down a rough outline of how much time each boss should take and where we would be on a week-to-week basis, including when heroic raids would cease being in the main raid schedule. I think we stopped doing heroic raids after week 3. We were on pace for a Sarkareth kill in week 2 or week 3 of August.
What happened that caused the momentum loss?
- Loss of key players: We had a few players step away from the game during key moments of progression. We lost a player when we were close to killing Rashok, Zskarn, and Echo of Neltharion which added a bit of extra learning time as their replacements coming in had to get caught up. It also sucked that those players requested to leave on the same week received notice that left me no time scrambling to try to find 1 for 1 class replacements.
- Summer vacation schedule: We lost two straight weeks of progression Sarkareth due to vacations and players being away. Can’t be helped. Vacations are often planned weeks if not months in advance. What I could have done better was try to recruit heavier and make sure we had solutions in place.
- Recruiting slowed: I took my foot off the gas entering July. We had a strong roster at the end of June and I didn’t want to go crazy on recruiting. That was on me. I should have done a better job at least keeping the pipeline open and reaching out to promising players.
What could I have done better?
- Keep scouting and recruiting: I didn’t frequent the recruiting discord or the forums as much. I just need to do a better job of maintaining that vigilance.
- More authority and autonomy: Normally, the GM does all of the interviews. There are about three of us who handle messaging potential apps or responding to Discord messages and forum threads. However, since the GM was also away on vacation and other activities, interviews stalled until his return. We need someone else who can keep that line flowing and cover for them. I could do it but it’s been almost a decade since I handled app interviews.
What’s next?
I’m already thinking ahead to what the reclear is going to look like.
There are a lot of trials right now waiting to get some action in and proving their capabilities for season 3 which won’t hit around October or November. Objectively speaking, we’re going to do better this tier than we did last tier because we finished earlier. We killed Rasz with like 3 weeks left, I think. This time we’re going to be well ahead of the game. We’re going to need to look for a new tank, a new healer, and some additional DPS so my hands will be busy for some time. Check us out!