I love this time of year where the expansion is winding down. We’ve cleared all the content and we’re in a position where we’re recruiting for Shadowlands. We’ve picked up some new players as well as some returning players so that we have the numbers to sustain ourselves going into the next expansion. It’s a decent sized roster ranging from 24 to 27 players at any given moment.
Mythic Xanesh is like the 4th boss or something in the final raid tier but it is completely a coin toss when it comes to consistency in defeating it. One missed interrupt? Almost a wipe. One missed kick? Definitely a wipe.
We had a few new and inexperienced players in for Xanesh. In fact, they were assigned to the 1st and 2nd kick teams respectively (either in the 2nd position/passing position or 3rd position/scoring position). I understand the logic in giving trials an opportunity to demonstrate what they’re capable of.
Believe me, I get it. We want to know if they can handle these types of mechanics. Can they aim? Can they find the lanes?
If the answer is no, then that kicking team needs to change and resort to the best possible proven players. I was quite livid when we were something like 6 or 7 wipes deep and no change was made. I kept insisting on changing it up, or moving me into a different position. In cases like this, we should’ve given trials 3 attempts to show what they can (or can’t) do. After that, send in the veterans so we can kill this boss and move on to the next one.
One hour. That’s how long it took to clear it.
Sigh.
At least we were able to power through Vexiona, Shad’har, and Drest’agath afterward. The only thing left is Il’gynoth. Thankfully, we took down N’zoth earlier tonight. Had we made changes earlier, we would’ve had a real shot in clearing the whole instance and taking Sunday night off from raiding.
For the most part, we’re gauging trial players on their DPS, their survivability, and their personality while they’re raiding with us. I doubt that ball kicking is an essential skill going into Shadowland raids anyway (although, I wouldn’t be surprised if it gets converted into a dungeon mechanic on a boss). DPS and survivaibility are both always going to be relevant on nearly all encounters related to damage dealing classes. Ball kicking is like bonus marks in a test. If they succeed, great, it goes in their notes and it bumps up their grade. No way in hell should it be the standard.
I was so frustrated I ended up voluntarily muting myself on Discord. It takes time for players to learn how to do that mechanic properly but why do they need to learn that now at this point in summer when we have others in raid who have a higher probability and level of consistency and scoring? Now if this was months ago and we were still learning the fight, I’d say otherwise and give everyone a turn at getting the mechanic down. I don’t like it when we’re artificially restricting ourselves like that and willingly putting in that guy. Give new players a set amount of chances and then bring in the veterans. Your raid will thank you for it.