Thoughts on the Upcoming Raid Renown

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With the next raid, Blizzard is building upon the finery buff that was added in the first season. Raiders would receive a gradually increasing buff over time as they worked their way through the raid, and this week is the final amount where it will cap at an 18% bonus. The Gallagio Loyalty Rewards club aims to build upon this with additional rewards and features while raid teams progress their way through the raid. There are 20 Renown tracks which means there will be at least 20 weeks of raid because you can only progress one Renown level per week. We can easily acquire Renown just by participating in the raid by defeating bosses or knocking out various Lieutenants throughout the raid. If you happen to fall behind, there are catchup mechanics where more reputation will be earned on kills until you get closer to parity.

The big prize that stands out is the return of the bullion currency (Puzzling Cartel Chip) which can be used for a player to redeem to a vendor for any weapon, trinket, or special item from the Undermine raid. Like what we had back in Season 4 of Dragonflight, these are items on their own upgrade track (a maximum of rank 14).

Unfortunately, the two Puzzling Cartel Chips drop at Renown 17 and Renown 19.

I would much rather see the Cartel Chip moved up earlier. For it to be released at week 17 and week 19 is fairly useless because it equates to being at a similar point to where we are right now in Nerub-ar Palace. Seriously, we would get new toys 4 months after the raid releases. I’d prefer to see one come out at week 12 (after 3 months) and the next one at week 16 (after 4 months). It gives us time to enjoy where it might impact progression, especially for any mid to late mythic progression teams.

In terms of other rewards, I would also advocate for another catalyst charge or two in some of the earlier Renown tracks just to help with gear flexibility and bad luck protection, especially for teams who are just unfortunate or who have a slightly imbalanced roster for tier sets.

It’s also odd to me that Enchanted Crests aren’t anywhere to be found in the reward track here, as they were offered in the other Renown reputation tracks outside of the raid. I would add consider adding an Enchanted Heroic Crest somewhere around Renown 10 and then an Enchanted Gilded Crest around Renown 14 just to further help players (and their alts) with crafting pieces as those will continue to maintain relevancy for alts and help out players who are behind on their gear (whether it’s due to playtime or as bad luck protection).

After testing the PTR the previous weekend when it was available for normal bosses, I appreciate the lobby area, which has all of the profession tables, vendors, and craft orders. I can see them coming in handy in the future and it’ll save raid groups time if they need to grab something.

Renown 18 comes with increased movement speed and an Auctioneer, but since we can mount around inside anyway, I feel like this particular reward isn’t as necessary. I suspect many raid teams will have at least one character with some kind of Brutosaur.

The Augment Rune vendor is a great touch, even if it comes in at Renown 14. It might be a potential money machine for those with an army of alts to simply pop in the raid, grab the rune from the dispenser, then resell it (assuming they’re tradeable, to begin with).

I like the innovation going on here with the Renown feature and can’t wait for it to go live in the next patch! But please consider changing the order of that Cartel Chip reward!

Matt’s Notebook: Last Call Clears Broodtwister and is now 6/8 Mythic

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First raid of the New Year had some mixed success. Unfortunately due to attendance and technical issues, we couldn’t get the Queen reclear this past week in DJ’s. It was just the perfect storm of everything happening. A couple of quick hits for this week to start:

  • Last Call is now 6/8 Mythic: With Broodtwister defeated, we start work on Silken Court. The PTR for the next patch has been released, and it looks like it’ll be here to stay for at least another 6 weeks. We have to decide now if we want to make a play and commit to defeating Queen for a chance at CE. If we do, that means no more reclears because that takes up at least 45 minutes of our time per week and for a team that raids 6 hours a week, that’s some serious time. We’ve already accomplished our team’s goals when we formed which was originally 4/8 Mythic. I’m still looking for some more late mythic and CE driven players to join our team. Check us out here.
  • Death Jesters misses a Queen: This one was an unfortunate miss by us. Our bench was missing due to technical issues and absences since it was the first week of the New Year. We came within 50 million HP of killing it, and I feel terrible. The decision was made to put me in as Shadow, but not only was I still not versed on Queen, but playing Shadow is my off-hand, and I haven’t had a whole lot of opportunities to play it in a raid environment. We’re starting to have informal discussions about our season 2 roster, although nothing is official yet because it’s all pending PTR information and testing. We did add 2 more returning players, and this increases our healer roster now to 7. Many of our players have opted to return and continue with us for next season.
  • Season 2: Speaking of season 2, I’ll try to have a post up later talking about roster changes and goals. It’s an interesting variance in philosophy between an already established CE group in Death Jesters and an emerging CE team with Last Call. The PTR looks fantastic though and I’m glad there’s a weekend scheduled with just normal raid testing to try out things and function as a preview.

Matt’s Notebook: Mythic Nerub-ar Palace Cleared!

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It was a big week across the Death Jesters community. We saw the new patch come out with the new rings and a preview of the next patch class changes (which I will have some thoughts on). One of our weekday raid teams defeated Princess, another team conquered Broodtwister, and Death Jesters knocked out Mythic Queen, which is good for US 173. Not to be outdone, Last Call didn’t want to be left out in the dust either, and we enter the holiday week with a Princess kill. That’s four new progression kills in the community. Most of the other raid teams will be on a holiday break since their schedules roll over Christmas and New Year’s, and that gives us a good shot at helping to close the distance with the other teams and put some serious shots on Broodtwister.

  • Death Jesters completely closes out the tier with the Mythic Queen kill. I wasn’t in on this one but I did get a few reps in on phase 1 to help out. The last phase goes really smoothly once you get the hang of it. You can watch our kill video here. I felt the phase 2 platform and portal assignments were the trickiest.
  • Over to Last Call, I was pretty choked about our pulls in the previous week. We took Princess down to 0.2%, which was something like 12 million health remaining in the final intermission. We did have around 3 people dead going into the last phase 1. Had we been able to get through it with everyone alive and not use early battle res’s, it would’ve been an easy win. The fact that we logged over 280 pulls is insane to me especially when the median number is around 100. Thankfully, we walked in there with our rings upgraded and with the gems implemented and that helped put us over the top. Our group dealt enough damage and stayed alive long enough where we didn’t even get to the last intermission at all, with about five or so players dead in the last 20 seconds.
  • Holy Priest thoughts:
    • Loss of Holy Word: Salvation and Circle of Healing sucks. I am going to miss these two, as they played a great part in the toolkit in earlier expansions. Salvation gets partially tied into Divine Hymn.
    • Renew has more involvement as it can proc off a variety of spells and talents with Holy Word: Serenity and Sanctify. Empowered Renew adds a 12 second cooldown to it and reduces the cooldown of Sanctify by an extra 6 seconds (I guess this means you can’t just Renew spam to get Sanctify available earlier).
    • Prayer of Healing changes: Synergizes with Lightweaver is a plus, despite the increased mana cost, cast time, and healing. Prayerful Litany also buffs the primary target of Prayer of Healing with an extra 75%.
    • Divine Hymn changes: Shortened channel time makes it a consideration in high-movement or dungeon environments. Divinity plays with it now where Apotheosis makes the next 3 Prayer of Healing casts instant and an additional 25% heal. The choice node to make it a 2 minute cooldown compared to Gales of Song (with the extra Prayer of Mending stacks) is neat. Faster cooldown compared to a more impactful healing. It’s like stuffing Salvation into a Divine Hymn burger.
    • Need an Interrupt: If we’re going to be expected to help keep our party healthy with the emphasized healing, then let’s go all the way and add the option to prevent the incoming damage in the first place! We’re still the only healer class without the ability to interrupt. At least give us back Shining Force for a displacement, maybe as a choice node or something. I’m sick of watching Ret Paladins, Warriors, Rogues, Shamans, and Rogues completely whiff on big single-target bolts aimed right at me and then instantly die as a result of it.
  • Feat of Strength change: Have you seen this below change in the notes?

Completing the Feat of Strength for achieving Keystone Master, or 1600+ in rated PvP, or killing the final raid boss on Heroic or Mythic difficulty now grants one additional Catalyst charge as a reward.

  • Developers’ notes: This previously awarded a token for one set armor piece. We feel that the time has come to move on from earning and redeeming class set armor tokens at their vendors for a desired armor variant. Players will now want to find an eligible Veteran-track or higher armor piece to convert at the Catalyst, and these can be acquired from many sources around Undermine.
  • Reaction: I am not a fan of this one. It used to be a guaranteed piece of loot. The point of hitting the 2000 rating early on was getting that Hero track set item. Now we have to modify our loot and reward economy to award a heroic track item specifically for it to be catalyzed. This is a terrible change. It feels good getting an omni-token as it’s a flexible piece for the player. As it stands, it will turn into a useless change for our alts later on in the season since we will have enough catalyst charges anyway. I can’t imagine this change being a net upgrade for anyone. A heroic item in the slot of my choice is much more coveted. If the issue concerns where to put the tier vendor, just park them by the Catalyst console. I hope this one gets reversed.

Matt’s Notebook: Silken Court Cleared!

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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.

Matt’s Notebook: Warcraft Direct and Mythic Rasha’nan Cleared

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It was an interesting week with the Warcraft Direct stream taking place just yesterday. I watched it live and had a chance to collect my thoughts. Before we get there though, I wanted to summarize our week so far.

  • Mythic Rasha’nan Down: Last Call is now 4/8 Mythic. The first kill wasn’t always the cleanest and I had to miss out on it since I had a concert rehearsal that same night, but I’m delighted th at the squad was able get it down. Our biggest problem throughout the night was Enveloping Webs. We need to do a better job of avoiding those by sticking together and baiting them properly. There ends up being a few players who just get caught by it and we have to waste time clearing them out.
  • The All In that Almost Didn’t Work: You can see this one in the clip below. I made a call here to get the raid to simply control the ads while we focused the boss. It almost didn’t work. The Hatchlings were coming in closer and I was hoping for more Frost Novas or Typhoons or other assorted knockbacks to control them better but that didn’t quite happen so I ended up bubbling myself and surviving through until the end. Next time, I’ll need to make the kill the Hatchlings then switch to boss.
  • Mythic Silken Court Phase 3: The team managed to get into phase 3 and see a few of the earlier parts there. We’ve gotten a lot of that consistency going on in Court for the first phase, the first intermission, and the second phase. Still need to get a better handle on second intermissions. Our dispels worked a lot better when we switched to the Northern Sky dispel package over Liquid’s. Holiday season’s coming up soon and our attendance is going to be impacted.

Let’s discuss Warcraft Direct now and some quick thoughts.

  • Warcraft 1 and 2 Remasters: That’s nice. Played them when I was a kid, but I don’t see myself replaying them again but it’s great for a newer generation of players to try it out and go back to where it all began.
  • Hearthstone x StarCraft: Completely unexpected and I am here for it. Glad that it’s a miniset and not a full expansion for the Great Dark Beyond. I’m also surprised that Hearthstone announced all 3 expansions in the next year and we get to revisit Un’goro!
  • Warcraft Rumble: Glad that it’s coming to PC as I could never get around to playing it on my phone often at all. It launches December 10th and it’ll give me something to do while waiting for queues to pop up.
  • Mists of Pandaria Classic: Figured this one was going to happen sooner or later. I do like the new introduction cutscene. I’m not planning on playing this one, but again, I’m glad there’s a new generation of players who will get to pull weeds and pick turnips on their farm.
  • Warcraft Classic Classic: Ah yes, new realms! Players can do the grind yet again with a new Hardcore realm.
  • Undermined: I’m sold! A new Goblin raid with 8 bosses, a new dungeon, and we get our own kart! Any chance of a Siegecrafter 2.0?
  • Player Housing: Never thought I’d see the day but it’s been under wraps and under development for over 3 years. Hopefully it delivers something that everyone can agree on. More on this in the future about player housing and what I’d like to see come out of it.

That’s it for this week! We’re still looking for a Warrior in DJ, and Last Call has room for Evokers, a Warrior, and an Enhancement Shaman.