Archimonde 2.0

I remember the first time my old guild breached the Mount Hyjal raid back in Burning Crusade. It was breathtaking to play that iconic mission finale of Warcraft 3 from an MMO perspective. Instead of being the base commander, I was in a position where I had to repel the attacks as a character. We faced hundreds of wipes during the period working on Archimonde. Every time, we started our initial position on that little rocky outcropping facing west where Archie was. We lost a ridiculous amount of time because players would sometimes forget to get their tears. I’m glad that tears aren’t a thing this time around.

We ran into an issue last week with Archimonde that had nothing to do with the encounter itself. Last week was the first time players could kill Gorefiend and complete the quest to jump the instance. I joined a pug earlier in the day just to get the quest completed so that when raid time rolled around, we could skip ahead and start on Iskar. That part worked and we secured our first Mannoroth kill that night. We made a fun pull on Archimonde since we only had but a few minutes left.

The problem occurred the next night. We were hyped to enter the instance and put in some serious work on him again but there was no portal to Archimonde. There was a portal to Mannoroth but nothing leading us there. A ticket was opened to Blizzard’s support teams but no resolution was made until the next day (which meant spending Wednesday night on heroic content instead). Thankfully, whatever they did worked and we were able to pull Archimonde on Thursday night. Managed to see phase 3 a few times though (under 40%) so it was quite a productive night. If only we weren’t locked out earlier in the week, we might’ve even seen a kill. Our primary strategy involves stacking and slowly working our way around the room to control the fires.

Never thought I’d ever have to contend with Doomfires again.

Now the next question is to figure out how many players to send in those portals on that last phase there.

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Great news, Good news, Bad news

Quick hits here, guys. Had an extremely eventful Sunday.

Great news: I’ve acquired my Stanley Cup Rings (RE: Band of Karabor) x 2. They’re both fully enchanted.

Good news: My Guild apparently killed Archimonde.

Bad news: I wasn’t there when they did it.

Really bad news: Apparently the Apostle of Argus dropped.

Just when you think it can’t get any worse: It got disenchanted.

EDIT: My Guild’s a bunch of practical jokers. *whew*. What’s worse is that now I’ll have to endure the gloating from that OTHER healer. Yeah, you know, the furry one. To which I’ll retaliate with songs from West Side Story.

 

 

 

Excuse me while I go cry myself to sleep.

6 Reasons Why I Haven’t Killed Archimonde Yet

archie-sad
Image courtesy of KLatham

Note: If you are against WoW players with elitist attitudes, don’t read this post.

"No sacrifice, no victory!"
Sam Witwicky (Transformers, 2007)

I’m sure you’ve read about some of the frustrations that I’ve had with Archimonde in the past few weeks that we’ve worked on him. I wrote off the first few wipes as attempts on learning. Following one of our recent raids, a raid leader asked me for my thoughts on the issue. At the time, I did not know what to say because I did not put a lot of thought into it. After a few days of reflection, I’ve come up with a list of reasons about what our Guild is missing and why we aren’t getting things done.

Willingness to bench players

Remember Bruce? He’s an active member of our 25 man teams. When I mentioned to my raid leader that we should be switching out players that aren’t cutting it, he responded by saying that it isn’t going to work all the time. This is true, I will admit. But this is a progression encounter and we need to bring our best players in at all times. The fact is, Bruce doesn’t qualify as that yet. I respect the fact that he decided to go hemo spec to further help the raid. Unfortunately, I don’t for a second believe the DPS output of the raid has increased to offset the amount of potential damage he can do if he’s not hemo. For a melee player on Archimonde, he has to perform more damage then that.

When we first started on Archimonde, the raid leader said he was going to keep a list of names on who was dying and why. Enough is enough. It’s time to put that list to good use and bench the players that are at the top of the list. I don’t care how good or reputable that player is. If you’ve died many times, then you’re only gimping the raid. Hell, if it were me holding up the raid, I would voluntarily sit out because I know that I suck.

But there are certain players who make me groan to myself everytime they raid with us. It’s because they’re stupid or they don’t listen or they don’t pay attention. I’ve had to mute myself on numerous occasions because I have one hell of a temper. I don’t mind occasional wipes as long as we learn from them and it doesn’t happen again. Those are called progression wipes, and we learn best by experience. Yet if the same players continue to die for the same reasons, why are we bringing that player to a progression raid?

Examples:

  • Players unable to time their air burst tears
  • Shamans who don’t stay with their group for decursive purposes
  • Paladins who can’t seem to listen or understand their assignments

Lag cannot continue to be an excuse

Several of our players were affected by lag issues (no doubt stemming from 2.4 patch related problems). But even before then, some players were complaining about lag affecting their timing. Those players have got to go. We cannot blame all problems on lag. If you cannot compensate for lag, then the law of probability dictates that sooner or later you will get air bursted, die, and subsequently wipe the way. In fact, based on the amount of players that were lagging that day, we should have done something more lag friendly instead. But my point here is the fact that if you’re experiencing connection problems, bow out of the raid and watch some TV.

Healers are being blamed

The whole blame healer excuse also needs to stop. Every once in a while, if it genuinely is a fault of one of ours, I know that our healers are man enough to accept that they had a brain fart and lapsed. But in an encounter with Archimonde that has Doomfires that snake out from Archimonde at a slow speed? We have the best healing corps, in my opinion. Yet a lot of pressure has been directed at us. Statements like "I need heals through doomfire" or "I wasn’t getting any heals" don’t cut it here. As a survival fight, there is no reason for any player to be suffering through doomfire. Healers might be able to compensate for one player getting it, but not when multiple players are getting hit. And they have the audacity to say that they’re not getting the proper heals? Why are you eating doomfires in the first place?

Consistency

In hockey, goalies that are on fire continue to play. Goal scorers that continue to score are paired with the same players. Why? Because of this magical thing we call chemistry. Those same players continue to deliver the same results night after night.

We’ve had nights where we one shot the first 4 bosses in Mount Hyjal with absolutely no problems on trash within the first 90 minutes.

If that’s the case, why do we change up our roster when we get to Archimonde?

The raid leaders said it themselves. This is not a DPS fight, this is a survival fight. We can afford to keep certain classes that might not boost our DPS up a lot because we know they’re not stupid. Instead, we bench those players to bring in players who aren’t as good but we unfortunately need their buffs that they bring to the table. I’d rather take an extra Shadow Priest or a Ret Paladin instead of an Elemental Shaman or Holy Paladin. I know it’s extremely hypocritical for me to say that after I mentioned Bruce earlier above. But that case is an exception. Melee players are the rare few who get to go all out on Archie without much fear of anything happening to them.

I will take veteran experience over buffs any day.

Where’s the focus?

Everyone needs to be present and on the same page. I downshift my focus on trash, but I still go through the motions. However, when we get to bosses, my back is straight, my door is closed, and my cellphone is off. One small mental slip in concentration will result in a wipe. In an area like Hyjal, it is often disastrous.

One of our Warlocks once pulled aggro on Azgalor without realizing it. The raid promptly died and it was 5 minutes to the end of the raid which lead to the raid being called. That’s 30 minutes wasted. For a guild that only raids 11 hours a week, every minute is precious.

One voice

It’s nice to have 2 or 3 authority players who are leading the raid. But there are times when too many cooks spoil the broth. I’ve seen times where one person said to do this, and another player told that same person to do something else. Both players hold rank in our Guild. We cannot afford to have more than one person directing the play. Uncertainty is going to kill us. Those raid leaders need to get together and pick one person to lead quarterback that play and be done with it. If he’s wrong, then it’s another lesson to add to the playbook. The point is that he picks a clear direction for the player to proceed in with no hesitations.

This is one of my harsher posts and it’s for good reason. But the tone of this post pales into comparison to the moods I’ve felt after some of the recent raids. I’ve tried to structure this post in a way that can reasonably convey how I feel about our Archimonde attempts with some reason and thought behind it. My tolerance level is quite high. I’m not at the point where I’m openly going to criticize my raid leaders (yet). This is just what I think and my vantage point is different than everyone else in the raid.

In review, I believe my Guild needs to :

  1. Toughen up and crack down on underperforming players
  2. Stop subbing out players
  3. Not blame lag
  4. Bring back the focus and turn off the distractions
  5. Have one leader that’s clearly in charge of the operation

The Matticus Hypothesis

Even if instructions are explained over vent, there will always be someone who claims that they didn’t hear it.

As I write this, it’s a sunny sunday afternoon and we have just finished wipe one of a night that will be full of many wipes, I am sure.

This is what happened 5 minutes ago. The target is Archimonde. Our objective is to survive. Killing him would be nice. But our main goal is to practice airbursts and doomfires. The Guild QB starts speaking:

"If you see Doomfire coming in your direction, run in a straight line behind you. If you’re a healer, make sure other healers know that you’re running so that someone can keep a close eye on Lang. He’s going to be tanking this guy."

Another lead speaks up at this point, "We don’t want doomfires to encircle and isolate the raid and box them in. It is absolutely imperative and important that you run in a straight line behind you. Remember that we’re setting up compass positions for this one and we’re cheating slightly towards the cliff. I’m going to say again. If a doomfire comes towards you, run in a straight line behind you."

"Lang, call the ball."

Our MT then proceeds to pull.

30 odd seconds later, Doomfire appears. The affected run back in a straight line. So far so good, I think to myself. Archimonde is very much a survival fight.

Things suddenly turn from good to bed. Out of the corner of my eye, I notice a fire that’s chasing a player who is doing twists and turns throughout the raid. He cuts towards the world tree then back towards the cliff face where we initially started.

I managed to smite Archimonde for a cool 6000 damage before I drop.

The friendly sounding raid QB is gone. His voice changed to that of a stock trader wanting to know why he’s losing money.

"Why was that doomfire chasing someone into the raid? Wait, more importantly, why did that person turn into the raid causing it to cut off players?"

He proceeds to single out one of the players and asks, "Why did you not run in a straight line?"

"I didn’t hear it."

There is stunned silence. It is so quiet that a library basement would have been more noisier.

"Okay then," the raid leader says quietly, "make sure it doesn’t happen again."

Thank goodness the legal drinking age in Canada is 19.