Weekly Raid Roundup: July 3 - 9

On account of the holiday and my absence from Heroic night, enjoy a short roundup this week.

Wednesday: Normal Bosses (Holiday!)

On account of the July 4th holiday, we opted to clear through Normal instead of Heroic. it gave our regular Raid Team a night off if they wanted, and ensured that those who had chosen to partake in drunken hijinks wouldn’t have to feel bad about potentially slowing things down.

As per usual, Normal was a breezy night. We had a few newcomers and all seemed to do pretty well, though it’s important for those with DBM or Big Wigs to please pay attention to your addon callouts. It’s good to have addons to help you, but they do you no good if you don’t pay attention!

We had a couple minor mishaps with tank swaps on Aggramar, but he went down smoothly after that got figured out (except for one poor hunter memorably launching himself off the edge with a disengage).

Wednesday Logs

Saturday: Five Hour Frenzy

Unfortunately, I was absent for Saturday’s raid…sort of. I came online at 10pm and found our raiders still going. That’s five hours of raiding. I joined for two pulls before they called it for the night (and I don’t blame them). If one of the other raiders wants to give a rundown on what happened, I’ll include it here. I do know that they downed Aggramar and were banging on Argus for a little while.

Sunday: Bonus Argus Kill

On Sunday, we decided to take advantage of the “at Argus” lockout to give it another crack. In only 3 pulls, with our own tanks (no 970 external carries!) we killed him. And we only had 1 PUG drop from start to finish. It’s hard to gauge what can be improved with so many PUGs involved, but I’m proud of us for getting another Argus kill, and getting a few AOTC for those who didn’t yet have it.

Sunday Logs (Please forgive the inclusion of a Ulduar run, as I forgot to turn off combat logging after we were done)

Monday: Finishing Up Normal

On account of the holiday, all we had to do was finalize the remaining 5 Normal bosses. We had 2 wipes on Vari but otherwise smooth sailing. It was great to once again see a few new faces, even so late in the xpack. Hope to see you Wednesday!

Monday Logs (Sorry again for forgetting to turn off logging for Pandaria bosses)

Second Heroic Argus Kill

After a grueling 5 hour grind on bosses yesterday, the Raid Team took another crack at Argus today with a good night of sleep and some fresh faces. We downed him in only 3 pulls, and this time we used our own tanks for the kill! We also got AotC for a number of guildies – Allegedly and Walterific on their mains, Kelara and Halkbirt (Foxxie and Telenlan) on their alts. Congrats again!

Drunken Panty Raids

I got a fun submission this week from Deathhoss!

“All great stories start with “so there I was”. This is no different. So there I was, thinking to myself, and I said “Self, we should have fun”. I conscripted Fistlok first to help and have a little fun. We started with molten core to throw a kegger with Ragnaros, but in the process the heat caused much discomfort. After stripping to our skivvies we continued in. After many laughs and drunken mishaps we finally arrived to what I shall refer to as the “party zone”. Poor rag just couldn’t hang.”

The party doesn’t end there:

“The next night we attempted Sunwell to see if Kil’jaedan could hang – this time with a few more people to enjoy in the fun. But again, our party spirit was too much for the Eradar Lord, and he too passed out. It has been a hoot and a half doing naked, drunken raids and anyone who has done one will say the same.”

Sound like a good time? Deathhoss had this to add:

“I am planning many more and will be adding some to the calendar. Any characters of level for the picked raids is welcome. Talking on discord is not required but it is totally worth it. To Fist, Gerunas, and Bloodwolf. Thank you for joining in hope for many more on the next one. So come join us its the second most fun you can have with your clothes off!”

Last-Minute Argus Attempt Tomorrow (7/8)!

I missed today’s raid, but I just want to give a huge shoutout to the group that endured a grueling 5 hour attempt to down bosses all the way to Argus tonight. In the spirit of their attempts and so as to not waste such a precious lockout, we’ve scheduled another attempt to down Argus at the usual weekend raid time (5pm EST / 2pm PST). This should hopefully not interact too much with the all-day Draenor Flying grinding, or the Herald of the Titans attempt later in the evening. Perhaps, with a good night’s sleep and a fresh attempt (and some different PUGs), we’ll get him down for some of our guildies missing AOTC.

Weekly Raid Roundup: June 27 - July 3

Wednesday: Heroic Lower

We decided to kill more Heroic Lower bosses to start the week, in another attempt to get set pieces for Raiders before a hopeful Aggramar clear. We had the typical 3 wipes on Kin’Garoth and a few wipes on dogs…but, this was also the first time that Qwaylas was able to down Dogs with the guild on Heroic, and we’re all proud to have him in our ranks.

Wednesday Logs

Saturday: Annihilating Aggramar, Aggravating Argus

We worked harder and figured out some more tweaks necessary on Aggramar. It may be beneficial for tanks to move Aggramar a bit away from certain little adds. Likewise, we may want to let the add in the back “drop” sooner, so that it doesn’t get as close to larger adds or to Aggramar and risk having a double explosion.

And we downed him! In only 4 pulls that night, too. Overall, it took us 14 pulls and under 2 hours to take him down. Not too shabby!

We forgot to take a kill pic, so please enjoy this recreation with Uro:

After that, we pounded on Argus for a while. Our first pull was pretty good on Phase 1. After that, subsequent Phase 1 pulls have been rough. Raid Leader Thoughts: People need to keep aware of the effects of Blight and Cone at the same time. Similarly, people with Blight need to stay spread out and not be adjacent to one-another.

Monday: Heroic Argus Only

On account of the upcoming holiday and excitement over a potential kill, we moved Alt Night to July 4, and Heroic to July 2nd.

More messy Phase 1 Blights were the problem for us, but we did manage to get in to Phase 3 on our own. We also pulled in a variety of returning Raid Team members in an attempt to get a kill, welcoming back both Khaanatra and Orektarg for the guild DPS. Eventually, our luck came through, and a pair of 970 tanks queued up. We quickly scrambled to move our tanks into DPS roles, and the tanks added an additional DPS and Healer. We got another pull and then a bad bomb explosion wiped us at 93%. To no-ones surprise, we then downed him for a kill!

Overall, it took us 9 pulls in 1 and a half hours to down Argus.

We have a new banner on the Raiding Team page to commemorate our Heroic Argus Guild Kill.

Congratulations to everybody who helped us achieve this goal. We’ll take a commemorative picture at some point for those who have AOTC with their Violet Spellwing mount at the Aerie Peak eagle statue. Stay tuned in Discord for more information on when that will be happening.

Monday Argus Logs

Weekly Raid Roundup: June 20 - 25

Yes, I’m a week late on this. I’ve been too busy in Pandaland. Whoops!

Wednesday: Lower Heroics

On Wednesday, we decided to go for a little “back to basics” and clear as many lower heroic bosses as we could for tier pieces. And you know what, we did pretty well! With 1 wipe on Felhounds and 3 on High Command, we downed 5 bosses in one 2 hour block. High Command had the usual bomb issues of people not moving, and Felhounds we swapped a tank out after the first wipe.

Wednesday Logs

Saturday: Aggramar Aggression

Saturday we finished out the rest of the bosses and headed to Aggramar (skipping Coven, of course). Prior to that we wiped 3 times on Kin’Garoth (including one at 97%…sigh…), but we were otherwise in good shape and good spirits.

Aggramar was a surprisingly easy fight, as far as “second to last boss in the tier” fights go. We had 3 very good attempts on him, at 60% or so each time, plus a smattering of other fights. Better control over releasing of the adds, and better usage of defensive cooldowns, is required to make this a smooth experience in the future. He’s not RNG like Coven, and so is an easier fight to control and practice for perfection on.

Saturday Logs

Monday: Plowing Through Alt Night

Taking a leaf from Wednesday’s book, we decided to down as many bosses on Normal as possible. We did Coven for practice before going to Aggramar, but overall downed 8/11 bosses (no wipes!) all in one night, with both new folks and alts in the group.

Monday Logs

Maneki-neko!

Lunzzul got lucky this week! On top of getting the Fiery Warhorse from Attumen in Karazan, AND Deathcharger from Rivendare in Stratholme, she also picked up Invincible from Lich King in Icecrown Citadel. All because she has a good friend in moose-man TrueType!

“WHEW

I need to shout out Truetype for LITERALLY PASSING UP INVINCIBLE. Even though I would have liked if you had rolled on it, thank you tons. You’re the best <3 Love you, bud”

Two things pop into mind: this ditty from The Beatles, and of course the theme from Toy Story. Good luck, good friends, and good times are what World of Warcraft and the Ministry of Defense is all about!

(And that’s after getting 3 pieces of tier within a day last week. Somebody rub that cat for good luck!)

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Weekly Raid Roundup: June 13 – 19

Wednesday: Refining Strategies

Wednesday was rough. We usually treat it as a farm day, but we struggled as a group with basic mechanics on account of a number of new faces to heroic and a number of silly mistakes. We can usually get by basic mistakes on account of sheer ilvl and brute force of will, but it became apparent that we needed more tact to down the bosses.

On Imonar, phase 1 now has a more organized strat for ranged and healers for sleep canister. We will continue to use this strategy in the future. In essence, range and healers will bunch into 2 groups. When you have sleep canister, run to the middle. When you don’t, you run away from the middle – you only need to strafe a little bit for this to be effective. 2-3 seconds is NOT a long period of time to run out of the group, so it’s equally important for the group to run away at the same time. This is especially true when we have 20+ man groups!

In between phases 2 and 3, people continually blow one another up on bridge crossings by not being careful when walking around. You really need to be careful, as this is a primary reason for our wipes.

Kin’Garoth was a struggle as well, mostly because people are screwing up the rolling purple orb mechanics. DPS all need to be standing on the proper side of the adds in the add phase. Healers will need to pay attention as well (unless you are the healer in charge of ball soaking).

When it comes to the add phase, make sure that you are past the add, and facing your camera towards where the balls are coming from (stand at “Blue” side, or the upper-left side of this photo). This will make it much easier to see and dodge mechanics! You can either achieve this by running past the add on your way from “Yellow” (right-hand) side, or run the long way around, passing Blue and then coming around to Skull (where the add is in the above photo). This is to prevent DPS and Heals from getting slammed in the back with rolling balls. The only people who should be towards Yellow side should be the tanks and the ball-soaking healer. Any DPS or non-ball-soaking healers on the red-cicled portion of the above image are standing in the wrong spot and could potentially cause a wipe. This will also help the healers, as people will be more closely grouped together, with nobody spread all the way back at yellow while DPSing adds.

Raid Leader Commentary: We’re going to become more hard-assy about people making mistakes that are basic and causing raid wipes. With 20+ people we need to start coming down hard on time wasters. You still get 3 chances before you’re sat, but we’re keeping a much closer eye on those 3 chances now.

Wednesday Logs

Saturday: It’s not Digiorno, it’s Destruggle

More Kin’Garoth struggles. Some of the struggles of the week were due to an up-and-coming tank who is still getting solid gear (but you’re doing a great job and learning fast, so don’t feel bad!). We swapped tanks and had an easier – albeit not easy – time on Kin’Garoth, again because people are failing basic mechanics like balls avoidance.

After a one-shot on Varimathras, we decided to bang against Coven some more. We’re seeing better mastery of many basic mechanics from some, while others are continuing to get hit by daggers or fire blades.

Saturday Logs

Monday: Back to Basics and Heroic Lower Bosses

On account of our colossal screw-ups, we opted to dive into Coven before doing Aggramar. It was disheartening even to see seasoned raiders continually getting hit by daggers and blades in even normal Coven. It’s one thing to get caught out when there’s a Storm on heroic, but there’s no excuse for heroic Raiders to be caught out in normal. Sadly I don’t have logs for Coven as I got a later start before joining the raid than I intended.

Aggramar had a minor “oopsie” moment with tank swaps again, and then was downed easily. Argus was one-shot, too! We then took a quick break and decided to down heroic Garothi and look at some of the other lower heroic bosses as practice and loot chance. Unfortunately, we only took down Garothi due to some gear-checks on heroic Hounds, but that’s ok. Alt Night is all about learning, and we’ve definitely seen progress!

Monday also saw the promotion of Symderella to Raider rank, as well as Treeson fast-tracked to Raider rank (Treeson was formerly on Bloodscalp, but transferred to join the cool kids on Aerie Peak). You can check them out on the Raid Team page! I’ve also added Symderella, Treeson, and Qwaylas to the Wow Audit Spreadsheet to help them track their gear and progress.

Monday Logs

Other Thoughts

In order to make things easier for Zextol, the raid leaders are going to be splitting up more of the chores and tasks that he has been handling previously. Quetzie will be the primary point of contact for Raid invitations and pre-raid questions (think qualifications, rules, confirmations, etc). Telanlan will be the Loot Master in all senses, dealing with not only Master Loot distribution but also personal loot trade rolls – you’ll be whispering him, not Zex, when you have a piece of gear you don’t need. Foxxie will be your general point man for more targeted questions about fight mechanics, class rotation, talent choice, and more.

Of course, none of the raid leads are locked into a particular role. Sometimes Telan may take over invites, Foxxie might have a better grasp on loot needs, and Quetzie is known for routine fight analysis. Overall, this is done to help Zex be able to focus more thoroughly on calling timers and explaining mechanics while also giving him more down-time before raid and in between fights to catch up on Real Life business.

Finally, always remember that if you have a question or a concern, you can contact any of the Raid Leads or officers within the guild to help you resolve the situation.

Also since I didn’t have a relevant meme for raiding this week, please enjoy this gentle reminder from our priests: