Matt’s Misplays: The Rashok is dead edition

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We got ’em! Rashok has been defeated and that puts us in the 5/9 Mythic club. The first pull of the night was oddly quite close to a kill before we ran out of time (and alive players). It would be another 6 pulls before Rashok fell over. I played my worst that night. An upset stomach throws off your game and focus. This is on top of all the other things Rashok throws at you. As a healer, you have to completely manage your cooldowns. You must remain environmentally aware of the lava waves coming at you and prepare for the big purple cone of death that can crush you. High healing throughput is a requirement with all the absorbs going on. Fade is almost always going to be used on cooldown because there’s almost no wrong time to use it like on a leap or a soak or whatever. It’s a fun encounter to heal but it stretches the synaptic limit of a healer. Credit to the DPS as we were short damage checks on the previous week but we were able to meet and exceed them during the kill week.

  • Join us: Looking for some strong DPS here including Death Knights and Warriors to help us through the summer. Check us out!

Next on our list is Zskarn (and the Z is silent because I was pronouncing it as Zuh-Karn). I’m sitting on the sideline for this one but sheesh if Rashok was bad, this looks infinitely worse.

Only a few misplays made the cut this week, but they’re both me!

This one’s a little sus for me. I thought I cleared the big ol’ cleave, but I didn’t. This has been slowed to 50% speed. But the funnier part is our Windwalker Monk who advanced into it. That was funny. I have to do a better job of stopping my cast and moving closer to Rashok right after that third leap because I know that he’s going to drop that AoE cone somewhere. The best place to be when that goes out is near Rashok since you can simply run through him to get clear of the ability. If there’s one thing FF 14 gets right, it’s the clear lines on where abilities end. Still, this is on me for not anticipating the play earlier and getting into position.

On this play, there was a clearly missed smaller soak on the side here. I saw it too late but I don’t have the jets to get there early enough. Maybe the only thing I could’ve really done was spread out further away from the group before the smaller soaks came out.

That’s all I got. Best of luck in raid, team!

Matt’s Misplays: Diablo 4 Edition

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Hello to the late edition of Matt’s Misplays! It’s getting more and more difficult to find funny highlights and clips. I’m not sure if it’s because we’re playing better as aunit or if it’s because people keep making the same misplays and I don’t want to feature the same thing every week. I trust everyone had an enjoyable early access Diablo 4 weekend. I’ve only started playing myself on a Barbarian amongst a sea of Necromancers that happens to be my guild.

Quick thoughts

  • The gearing system: Is it too fast? I’ve found myself at 441 ilvl on both Priests and my Elemental Shaman. My Ret Paladin is at 436 and my Evoker’s at 432. I’ll have more thoughts on this later, but something to ponder as we’re about 5 weeks into Aberrus and the Catalyst isn’t even open yet even though we’re a week away.
  • Experiments: Secured my first kill on Experiments this past weekend. Honestly, it sucks and is not fun. The Mass Dispels are critical to remove the debuffs and having two Priests handle that is almost a requirement.
  • Rashok continues: Unfortunately, we did not secure the kill this weekend. We got a few solid looks under 20% but we’re short DPS to get over the top. Hoping this week’s vault upgrades will get it done.
  • Morning Mythic bugs: Today was a strange morning as we all opened our vaults to keys with no affixes. Honestly, it’s nice to roll into a naturally high key dungeon without any extra affixes or worry about Tyrannical or Fortified and see how much everything hits harder or lives longer as is.
  • Recruiting: No change here. Still looking to add a Warrior, Death Knight, Balance Druid, or any other big-time DPS player to help reinforce us for the summer. Come check us out.

On to the misplays!

Imagine this. You’re trialling for a new guild and it’s your first day of raid. On the very first pull of Rashok, you get targeted with a Leap and inadvertently Disengage backwards away from the intended direction to go. Embarrassing right? This happened to our newest Hunter and they absolutely got roasted for it but they took it in stride. It did feel a little laggy over the weekend. I blame all the Diablo 4 players.

Everybody has to be prepared to soak a puddle. It is everyone’s job to look around and make sure there’s coverage. Not a misplay, but I just wanted to highlight the speed of this particular Panda. Watch as he splits the initial lava balls that come through and turns around to speed back into the left soak. Two players happened to have gone to the right and double-soaked that one. This pull could have ended badly.

There are two things wrong in this clip of Kazz. We’ve altered our strategy to spread out and utilize more of the room, but aside from that, the breath mechanic does not change in any of the difficulties. You can see boss timers for abilities and there are many indicators and telegraphs that breaths are incoming. At this level of raiding, you cannot tunnel vision and greed your spells because there is always a chance you’ll get punished for it which is what happened here. Our poor Warlock gets burnt to a crisp (extra crispy, even). On the other hand, I was in a good position and was situationally aware enough to recognize that Kazz was about to breathe fire and I tracked the direction that breath was going. I easily could have fished them out with a Life Grip but I simply chose not to. I should have though. I hate having to be in a position where I have to bail people out of easy situations like this because it builds bad habits on their part. Your boss timers should be somewhere prominent on your screen that you can quickly glance at to see what’s coming up next and try to prepare for it, like the rearview mirror on your car. If you find yourself being blind to timers or not checking them regularly, that’s a sign that you need to reposition it to somewhere more in your peripheral vision so that you can catch it. I’ve seen some players (healers) put it above their raid frames. I’m unsure where DPS would place them other than offset or maybe above their class HUD (if they use any).

Speaking of Panda blunders, watch what happens here. It’s quite subtle but makes a big difference. On Experiments, when bombs get dispelled they spawn and generate mobs that need to be killed. Our strategy involves having all affected players stand on circle marker before Mass Dispel gets cast. I’m the one dispelling here. As the time was coming up to get in position for Dispel, there were two things that crossed my mind:

  1. Favouring speed: Get in position (a slightly loose stack) first to stack, then Dispel
  2. Favouring position: Get directly on the mark even if it means taking an extra second or two before casting Dispel

The mistake here is that I went with option 1. You’ll notice that I wasn’t directly stacked on the Diamond or the Circle marks that came in after. I was worried about being too slow or not getting Dispel off earlier in time so that I didn’t go all the way in. The consequence here is that when I did cast Mass Dispel, the AoE circle that I dropped extended closer towards the rest of the raid forcing the other two raiders to either veer off or fight that much harder and use a defensive to make it through without being hit. I learned that the timing wasn’t as important. Another second or two with the debuff wasn’t going to impact us seriously, but my being off position would have snowballed a bad situation into a worse one.

That’s all for this week! Enjoy Diablo 4, everybody!

Matt’s Misplays: Greed is a Sin

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Welcome back to another week of Matt’s Misplays! We progressed further into Aberrus this week after solving Experiments. This puts us at 4/9 Mythic and now the encounters get harder as we put in some work on Rashok. Our best work was just under 30%.

  • Kazzara strategy change: We modified our approach to Kazz. Instead of slowly trying to maneuver the dragon around the room, we opted to keep Kazz in the center and drop pools off to half the room until it was filled before switching to the opposite side and filling up that area. We relied more on damage and bruteforce here instead of finesse which made the kill much more smoother.
  • Experiments kill: Not sure what changed but we polished this one off in a few pulls. The critical part of the encounter is the last phase with both the bomb and dispel management. It’s a balance of knowing when to dispel and kill the ads.
  • Rashok begins: I’d say this is the big healer check that raids will encounter the first time in. So many balls of fire have to be dodged. Just for fun, consider chain running Uldaman to get practice on evading that stuff but there’s so much to move around that you really have to position and plan heals ahead of time. There are also orbs (Shadowflame Orb) where targeted Searing Slam players must go to. Leap eliminates an Orb which means less damage we take and less healing absorbs to power through.
  • Recruiting continues: Summer is coming and it is rearing it’s head. We’ve already lost a few players due to summer schedules and we’re looking to reinforce our roster. To be specific, we’re actively looking for DPS Warriors, Death Knights, Balance Druid, and a Mage. Check us out!

Let’s move on, shall we?

Took me a while to catch ’em, but we have our first tank blunder! Then again, it’s not entirely their fault. Rashok is a bit of a pain to maneuver and move around. We had just finished dealing with the third Leap and are trying to corral the boss into the middle. But he just decides to stop and then we all combust as a result from the Ancient Fury that gets cast to full. Whooooops! Someone cue that Benny Hill, please!

If you look closely, there are actually not one but two blunders being committed here. The major obvious one is the missed Leap. You see those floating orbs on the left and on the bottom right? One of the Searing Slams must get placed there for Rashok to jump on and neutralize it. This was early on in our pulls and our poor Evoker was still operating on muscle memory and habit in trying to take it out of the raid. Big oomph there! The second misplay is a bit more subtle. If you watch my Priest movement at the bottom, you can see that there’s a small lava wave that comes out and I end up running with it instead of away from it subsequently forcing me to evolve into my angel form. As a Panda Priest, I have practically zero mobility or speed so why I decided to attempt to outrace it is beyond me. Dodge these by strafing east-west instead of north-south along with the lava wave.

Not to be outdone by our favourite Evoker, our Warrior decides to actually click off his Intellect buff in an effort to show them who’s better! He gets targeted with Searing Slam and you can see him start cutting towards the orb on the left before Heroic Leaping away from it. I was so stunned that you can see my Prayer of Mending reminder is still up and I just gave up on the pull because I couldn’t believe what I saw and started cracking up. This is hands down my favourite clip of the week.

What an absolute donut of a Warrior though.

I can’t not hear Space Jam whenever I see this clip. Come on and SLAM! And welcome to the JAM! I had a feeling someone was going to make a blunder like this one because they’re so focused on getting the Slam to the right place that they forget that the Slam can’t touch an existing orb on the ground otherwise it just lethals the whole raid like in this example. Thankfully, this was the only such wipe of the night.

For this last one, if you look up the definition of “greedy” in the dictionary, you’ll end up with this clip. Here we are in heroic Sarkareth. Our resident Panda is downstairs gobbling up noodle shaped objects. He has 9 stacks and has seconds to get out. Why not go for 10 right? Except he can’t, because he’s a Priest and he’s super slow. He grabs the 10th (and 11th because not paying attention), and beelines it to portal 2 and promptly gets winked out of existence before even reaching portal 3. The lesson here is you don’t need 10 stacks of the Haste buff. You can get away with anywhere between 5 to 8 stacks as long as you exit the zone in time and don’t die the way this absolute wagon wheel of a Priest did. Someone definitely isn’t getting bubble tea for a week.

Do. Not. Be. Greedy.

Play it safe!

That’s it for the week and I trust you learned something from the various whoopsies shown above! We’re mortal too!

Managing Loot Council in Dragonflight and Beyond

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One of the more controversial loot systems for guilds is Loot Council. There’s nothing wrong with the system. Any issues with Loot Council has always revolved around people. As long as players and loot council understand that decisions are made in the best decision for the raid, everyone can sleep easily. Loot council doesn’t determine who gets what loot, it determines who gets what loot when. The last time I wrote about loot factors was about 14 years ago and I thought it deserved a refresh into today’s climate since we have all these new systems in place.

Depending on how geared your raid is, you can always opt to skip Loot Council for certain items. Some items that dropped from normal started out at 415 but many of our raiders were already wearing 421s or had higher equipped from Mythic dungeons earlier in the week. It may not be worth Loot Council’s time to manually sort those ones out for smaller sized items that offer little to no power gains. 

Resources

  • RC Loot Council (Addon): RC Loot Council is currently the addon of choice here due to Blizzard’s policy of eliminating master loot. This addon will cause every player to pass on loot and the loot master can initiate a loot window popup. 
  • Readycheck.io (Site: For your loot wishlists and spreadsheet)
  • wowaudit.com (Site: Alternative)

Voting options

Selection options can be quite contentious. Each guild I’ve been in has always had some variation on what the options were. In DJs, we have the following and here’s how I’d describe it:

  • BIS: Your best in slot item, period.
  • Main spec: This is an upgrade but it’s expected it will be replaced later.
  • Reroll: Player has the item already but wants to gamble for a socket or tertiary stats.
  • Offspec: Would be used for a different spec or role.
  • Tmog: Entirely for looks.
  • Pass: No interest in it whatsoever.

This encompasses most of our needs. There’s a little note icon on the far right. Most players don’t know about this, but you can leave a note about the item when you submit your selections. Maybe this completes a set bonus for you, as an example. Another case is that the trinket you’d like isn’t something you would use regularly but only in select situations like for Mythic+ or heavy encounters with lots of additional monsters. 

Selecting Council Members

In my previous guild, I tried to rotate people in loot council after every tier just to give everyone a crack at it. The number of people can range anywhere from 2 to 5. I don’t recommend going higher than that. Pick players who are knowledgeable at raiding and gearing, while being able to help prioritize what’s most beneficial for the raid (and yes, it’s possible to have two correct answers). Don’t put too many healers in there (you might need a few healers to help clear trash and it can be cumbersome to vote while healing). 

Let’s look at some of the factors that can influence loot decisions. 

Player Roles

DPS checks are a constant in any encounter. With enough firepower, you can skip phases before they become dangerous to the team. Most guilds that raid at the top level will award gear to DPS players first. The sooner the boss is defeated, the better. This changes when the raid encounters a specific healing check and they have to plan for that accordingly. Even then, this can be offset with another healer. Not only that, mythic plus is an available avenue for healers to acquire gear from. My Priest gets whatever unwanted gear from raid but I resort to camping out in mythic dungeons fishing for upgrades. Does it suck? Yeah, but that’s how it goes. I’ll get my raid upgrades later on in farm when DPS players aren’t in need of it. 

Player lineups

Think ahead to upcoming encounters and which players are most likely to see progression time and which ones aren’t. Are you really going to give a 2H weapon to a Warrior who you’re not going to start on Rashok progression in Mythic? Gear is only relevant if it’s going to be used. If a raider is going to be away for two weeks or they’re not going to be in on a hard boss coming up or for Mythic progression, then it doesn’t make sense for them to get upgrades right away. Send upgrades to the players who are in the starting lineup. 

Power gains

How big of an upgrade is the item in question? Is it from an LFR piece to a Heroic piece? These things have relevance too. Try to identify big power gains for players who haven’t been as lucky from dungeon or raid drops. Heading into Aberrus, we relied on 4-piece tier sims to get a better idea of relative power gains from set bonuses.  Generally, this is what most intermediate loot councils will look for as it’s often the easiest indicator to eyeball. Don’t get fooled though as there are some items which are simply too good to replace. The Mythic version of Seal of Diurna’s Chosen continues to be quite good for some despite other ring options available coming from Aberrus. 

Gear ranking and utility

I tend to use different gear based on what I’m doing. I have different gear for raid and dungeon content with different stats. There are items that will drop from raid which I wouldn’t normally use in a larger raid setting but that I would absolutely equip in a dungeon setting when pushing keys. I’d classify this as an offspec or a sidegrade type. There are some fun utility trinkets that may not be the best for player throughput but offer some neat functionality like Storm-Eater’s Boon or Ward of Faceless Ire. 

Trinkets and weapons

Big-ticket items like these represent huge power spikes. These ought to go to your heavy hitters here. In Aberrus, there are early raid and late raid items which correspond to different item levels. Most raiders will opt for the really good ones later on in the instance as they’re often higher item level than any of the stuff that drops early on. Still, don’t skimp on these. Even if they’re smaller upgrades, every stat helps. Raiders should at least mention that they’re upgrades even if it isn’t a best in slot item because the stats on these could represent the difference between a 0.5% wipe and a kill. Absolutely express interest in these even if it isn’t your best items. Upgrades are upgrades. 

Player seniority

Your raid is going to have its regulars and veterans, but most progression guilds will have a few trials. I would feel extremely uneasy if your big ticket items (late raid weapons, trinkets, tier, or other very rare items) went to a trial player in the raid over a veteran. Trial players are often an unknown quantity and have the potential to be a flight risk. Sometimes things don’t work out in the raid and both decide to part company, and any gear invested in them is lost. That being said, use some discretion and judgment. If it looks like a trial player is acclimating quite nicely with the community, participating often, and being a productive raider, they deserve something (and if this is the case, why are they still a trial?). Be sure to balance that with the veterans who’ve been on your roster for a long time and have been helping the team get to where they are now. Don’t neglect them. 

Set bonuses

Finishing 2 piece and 4 piece bonuses are huge power spikes for the raid for most classes and specs. Some classes have it better than other classes, so be sure to review and identify which ones are bigger gains. I know for a few specs, the 4 piece isn’t actually that great. Try to finish as many bonuses here for players. You’re sort of at the mercy of the raid gods here. Our first week in, we barely got any of the Venerated tokens (Priest token) on either of the two raid difficulties. 

Crafting replacements

We’re at the mercy of the new Sparks here that drop every couple of weeks. Most progression-oriented raiders will be aiming to get their weapons crafted at the highest level. I got my shiny staff upgraded this week even though it took me two sparks (I had terrible off hand luck). They’ll be using them for a while until well into mythic raid progression. Future crafted items will go towards embellishments. If the crafted embellishments are better than raid drops, then they might pass on loot that drops in raid. Tag these as minor upgrades at least because they can still contribute to stat upgrades until you get the crafted stuff made with the desired embellishments.

Error Decisions

Mistakes happen. Trust that your loot council will try to make decisions that benefit the raid. It’s possible that the information they have on hand isn’t accurate or something wasn’t properly updated. Or maybe they just screwed up. Information involves raiders being honest and mindful when they select their loot options. Your loot council is human and they will make mistakes especially when starting out for the first time. It’s a big switch going from DKP or personal loot or need rolling to a loot council system and not everyone is always going to agree.

Story: We had a Mythic Whispering Incarnate Icon drop and the decision was between two players: A Shadow Priest and a Hunter. Based on assorted factors, we assigned it to the Shadow Priest only to realize he was already wearing a Heroic Icon and our Hunter had not received one at any level yet! Oops! Once we were made aware of this, our council team reached out and expressed that we goofed without properly checking. It was too late to make the correction, but the team said they would find a way to correct that in the future. The lesson here is to inspect and confirm what eligible players are wearing before awarding that gear. 

Scenario

Here is a situation that can come up. Imagine there are two Hunters in the guild. You have Haydn on one side, and Pachelbel on the other.

Haydn has been a veteran raider with the raid over four expansions while serving in a leadership capacity. He makes a few odd gameplay mistakes here and there but has been a staple presence in the team offering insight and raid strategy while assisting players with whatever they need like extra gold for repairs, consumables for the forgetful, and stepping in for keys if the group is missing a player. In raid, his damage variance can swing from a top 5 performer to just the average player in the middle of everyone else. 

Pachelbel on the other hand just passed his trial. His decision making is sound, and his damage output is consistently at the top. He adapts to the situation in front of him and picks up new mechanics and responsibilities eagerly. He rarely takes avoidable deaths and has proven to be reliable when given a job to do. Even though he is new, Pachelbel is making a strong impact and helps the team in a big way with individual contributions. 

An extremely powerful cannon drops from the end boss which is the best weapon for both of them. Who would the weapon go to first? You could make strong arguments in favor of either Hunter. Sending the cannon to Haydn is a safe pick even though it may not be maximized to the fullest extent. You know it’ll stay in the raid team and Haydn has more than earned it with everything he does. But you know that if it were Pachelbel’s cannon, it would be wielded with extraordinary effect and fully utilized. Bosses would die that much faster and it would be beneficial with some tough encounters coming up soon in Mythic. Even though Pachelbel has been accepted, what if he decides that the guild isn’t a right fit for him after all and decides to part ways? Any gear gains would have been lost.

There’s no real right answer in this case, and decisions will always be subject to both personal ideology and raid values. Attrition is a constant and any raid can expect loot to be lost over time from players leaving. 

Loot sheets

I mentioned sites like Readycheck and WoW Audit as services that you and your raid team can use to determine what items best represent upgrades. Raiders need to go in there individually and can set which items are best for them (categorized by boss encounter). You can even set what the priority of it is such as your best item or major upgrade. Be sure to regularly visit and update it as you go. Don’t want your raid leader to get cranky with outdated information. Do you really need a weapon here once you’ve crafted your best weapon already? Expect raid leaders to build raid compositions based on need. If you don’t need an item from a boss, you might be able to take a seat and relax until you get called up. 

In an ideal world, when an item drops, your loot council already knows where it’s going to go and that’s where having loot sheets prepared in advance can help save time. 

WoW Audit lets you select which items you’re looking for by item slot or encounter. You can choose how significant of an upgrade a piece is. It even synchronizes with Raidbots. 

Readycheck is a similar idea and you have the option to add a note to any of the pieces you’re looking for. It doesn’t seem like there’s an option to sort the dashboard by item slot so you’ll have to go down the list of encounters. This one synchronizes directly with RC Loot Council. Any loot changes can be imported directly. 

Other tips

  • Never make tanks handle loot. It sucks, but I found more time is wasted if they’re busy handling loot instead of clearing trash. You can get away with healers though since there’s enough of them around that missing one wouldn’t impact trash healing.
  • Take your time, but not too much. It’s okay to ask for clarity if you have questions about item usage. 
  • Test your loot systems before raid. If you’ve never used RC Loot Council before, try it out in test mode. Experiment with the commands ahead of time. Run a small dummy raid with a few people.  
  • Set a chat channel. For loot, this can be done on in-game, in a dedicated community, or on Discord. Any discussion via in-game chat is going to get lost. Having that chatter on Discord can be better because you can refer back to conversations or even pin various spreadsheets and relevant links.
  • Be transparent to an extent. A loot council team does not need to go out of their way to explain every decision and why. They should indicate at minimum who is slated to receive them. It’s up to the team if they want to allow everyone to view the voting frame or not. They can even show which player that council members voted for. This isn’t a good idea because it may invite manipulation or second guessing. 
  • Problem? Talk to an officer. If you an encounter a questionable loot decision or something you wanted to learn more about, ask an officer about it. Express any concerns or misgivings you have. That’s what they are there to do. It’s okay to not agree with a decision, but once one has been made, that’s that. You should be permitted to express your thoughts because that’s the job of loot council.

Loot Council isn’t for everyone and if you don’t like the idea of the fate of your loot being completely out of your hands, then it’s time to move on and find a new guild that shares your loot philosophy. Thanks for reading! I hope this helps illuminate how a well run loot council can affect your raid and it’s progression. When done properly, it can maximize the raid’s output and durability. 

Idea: Could LFR Boss Mechanics Reward Gameplay?

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LFR has a reputation for being a raid mode that’s already mindless and easy. LFR Raszageth was an exception, but we’ll chalk that to a one-off. With today’s release of the second wing of Aberrus, everyone’s queuing in for a shot at tier and trinkets. On a Tuesday morning, I see that many of the players are choosing to ignore some of the mechanics and I’m sure that’s okay to do if you’re already geared and can survive a few things. I do catch the odd player here and there who’s not sure what’s going on or struggling when they’re targeted with certain abilities. What if there was a way to teach and incentivize the players in LFR to do certain things correctly?

At the end of Shadowlands (Season 4), all expansion raids were back in circulation but with some new affixes. If you completed the mechanics, you’d gain a buff whether it’s to haste or throughput or movement speed. That was a neat way to add some extra challenge and reward. Why not take that concept and introduce it to a few bosses and abilities in LFR that are staple mechanics that can be commonly found on other bosses? What I’m suggested is if players execute a given mechanic properly, reward the raid with a positive buff.

On this Rashok screenshot above, you can see Doom Flames is in the progress of being launched. Some of them are soaked, but others aren’t. Normally, any missile that doesn’t hit a player results in the whole raid taking damage per missed attack. If all of the pools are soaked, let’s provide the whole raid with 10 seconds of haste.

In Assault of the Zaqali, players can hurl these boulders over the edge at designated spots with the red column of light indicating there’s a wall climber ascending. One idea could be that if the raid successfully eliminates five wall climbers with boulders, everyone’s attacks has a chance to be duplicated onto one nearby target for 6 seconds.

When raid mechanics get missed, the healers are often punished because it’s on them to heal through what (admittedly little) damage goes out. At least this way, it provides extra onus to the DPS players. Experiments last stage involves Rionthus’ Temporal Anomaly where he gets a shield if the orb doesn’t get booted away and I guess that sort of punishes DPS players a bit as they have to punch through a shield. Anyway, the point here is the idea that proper execution can lead to a small, minor performance boost and players can feel good about themselves in the process. Hopefully, this will encourage better play that could translate to normal raid difficulty and above.