It’s been a while since I last updated everyone on our progress. Over in Last Call, we succeeded in clearing Silken Court on Mythic. Each attempt was getting progressively cleaner, and before we knew it, we were pushing consistently into phase 3, and we were able to clear the stuns and dispels successfully.
When we got to Queen Ansurek, we spent some time working on phase 1. My own experience taught me that phase 1 would be the most challenging part to master and understand since in DJs it took us a few pulls to get through. Ultimately, when Blizzard announced the patch drop and raid release date, we had only begun getting over intermission and just starting work on platform phases. Based on the time remaining, we felt that we wouldn’t have time to challenge for a Race to World Last kill of Queen. I’m sad because with just a few more weeks, we would’ve had a real shot at getting CE in our first tier together as a team and I felt like I let them down. There was simply too much to overcome. We also ran into our share of roster issues and skill issues. Concepts weren’t being properly handled and abilities were just running over our team. Silly mistakes were happening repeatedly on pull 90 when it should’ve been second nature like avoiding those poison waves or web wraps. At the same time, the initial goal for the team was to claim 4/8 Mythic. Securing a 7/8 Mythic kill when we formed almost a month after the season began is in itself a feat.
And yet, I feel as if I didn’t do enough despite all the preparation and recruiting I tried to pour into the team, it wasn’t enough. I spent the past week on a massive recruiting binge and we were able to staff back up to 26 players. We still have room for a mage and some other range DPS. Our roster compliment is sitting at two tanks (with two additional tank backup players from other roles who can fill in), 6 healers, and assorted melee and range DPS. We did recruit another tank (a Demon Hunter) who was a referral, and this moves our current Death Knight tank to a DPS role. Normally, I’m not a fan of this because I don’t like walking into a complete brand new tier with an unknown variable (a trial tank, essentially), but since it’s a referral, we can roll with it. This also puts us at three total Demon hunters. Our healers are in an okay position, and we added a second Mistweaver Monk. This might be the first time in my personal history where any raid team I was in would feature two healing Monks, and I confess, I’m not quite sure how to best maximize them. Did I mention that I wanted more mages?
As we enter the first week of the patch, there are so many things at a leadership level that still need to be done.
- End of Tier Survey
- We wanted to get a raider sentiment of how the team felt overall. Were there any strengths they thought of as a whole? Any weaknesses? Is there anything the leadership could’ve done better or should improve on for the next season? These are all answers that will help govern the last bullet point. It’s a good way to take the temperature of the raid group.
- Boss strategy raid threads
- This includes videos, raid plans, and other material for the upcoming raid bosses.
- Team Patch Notes
- This would be a list of any policy changes or other significant moves that will affect the team going forward. For instance, we’re changing up from a one required key per week to at least four required keys to make sure that the team’s character progression is moving up. Some of your changes might be influenced by the results of the End of Tier Survey above.
- Orientation
- Ours is scheduled for next weekend. In our case, orientation is a giant Discord call and presentation where we go over some of the answers listed in the survey. We’ll follow it up with team patch notes and then reminders for what players are responsible for in the upcoming season (including getting their Wishlists and WoW Audits updated weekly). It’s also a good way to list any leadership or officer vacancies for responsibilities. I’d love to get a few more players involved with Loot Council, so we will have a slide on that and what it involves. Depending on the length of orientation, you can also include quick boss summaries for each encounter in terms of broad concepts. Deeper boss dives can be done later or in boss threads themselves.
I would recommend every raid team (at least, the ones with a foot in Mythic) to go through a similar exercise and audit for their teams.
With Death Jesters, we finished the tier and secured mounts for all of our regular raiders. We had a few trial players just start out with us and we weren’t able to help get them mounts. Because of the time remaining in the season, we felt it best to trial new players anywhere in the first six bosses. Due to the complexities of the last two, we shortened the bench to just our veteran players (plus, they still needed to get their mounts). This also had the added benefit of shortening our raid week to just one day. It was a nice relaxing reprieve heading into season 2 that was capped off with a week off from raid. This upcoming week with the new patch, we’re going to head back into raid again. Our suspicion is that some of the classes (or the raid itself) are going to be broken. Our recruiting is done and there are no more classes for us to add. We’re standing ready at this point and just waiting for the raid to open.
Enjoy patch week!