MoD Notes for Heroic Sylvanas Positioning

Tiraffe here, this post should help those on the weekend team help sort out positioning and finish off Heroic Sylvanas.
Phase 1 Intermission:
Snapshot of pull 5 on Monday night, October 4th.
Healers should want to stand closer to the center of the room when the intermission starts (quadrant permitting) so they can stay in range of the rest of the raid. Doing so will increase the chance that one of the center arrows will end up on them. The center arrows usually die faster since there’s usually a big clump of them; the faster a healer’s arrow dies, the faster they can stand still can cast. It is okay to orient along where the center of the arrows are being dropped rather than the actual center of the room for the sake of staying in range.

Melee should be trying to get into melee range of someone else’s arrow while giving themselves enough slack to get pulled if their arrow is on the outside. Dps in general may want to hold onto dps cds through the 3rd set of chains (if 3rd chains actually go off), so they can quickly blow up the intermission chains.

Put yourself in a position where you can help each other the most.

Phase 2:

  1. Platform 1
    Don’t get hit by Darkness, stack beforehand and stay stacked until it’s called to move; don’t move early. Either use the gateway (if it’s placed, don’t be right on top of it) or pop a mobility (without getting hit). If you don’t have a focus macro set up to hit the gateway, just stand in range of the gateway, place your mouse over it beforehand, and hit it as soon as the call is made to move.

    As soon as Sylvanas casts her Wail, she’ll be immune again.
  2. Platform 2,
    Ranged (and ranged healers) stay on the brdige and need to stay stacked to make Darkness easier to dodge. Any ranged with Crushing Dread (purple circle) need to move up onto the chain and position themselves where the next bridge will be. Melee (and melee healers) continue as usual. Dps focus the Souljudge first, healers can dispel the dreads as soon as the Souljudge dies.

    Don’t forget about interrupting the caster mob, especially as the group leaves this platform.
  3. Platform 3
    Whole raid stacks on tanks and focuses the summoner (+ orbs). Summoner should be dead before the 2nd cast of orbs. The Goliath should then die around the time Darkness is cast. Don’t get hit by Darkness. Stack and Stampeding Roar to run out, preferably in the direction of the new bridge. (Gateway debuff usually comes off cd as well, but the area isn’t usually clean enough to find it when needed). Faster classes should try to get across the bridge as soon as it spawns, so that the group is spread on the bridge when Sylvanas does another Banshee Wail.
  4. Platform 4
    1 person needs to be responsible for getting the kick on Sylvanas, ideally a dh or monk who can get there and wait to kick it at the last moment. Raid stacks on the adds, Dreads will spread near the old bridge is. Dps focuses Summoner first. Mass Dispel the dreads once the Souljudge dies next. Sylvanas casts Darkness and Haunting Wave at the same time here. The raid won’t be stacked for this darkness due to dreads being spread already. Thrall spawns the new bridge shortly after the Souljudge dies around the same time, so dodge Darkness as best you can and get across the bridge asap.

    Healers can dispel Crushing Dread on this platform if someone goes above 7 stacks before the Souljudge dies.
  5. Platform 5
    Same as the last platform, someone will need to rush over and ready the interrupt while the rest of the raid catches up. There’ll be a melee stack on boss and a ranged stack for Darkness. The boss will also cast Haunting Wave while on this chain, where melee and tanks will need to run out. Depending on how quickly Sylvanas is dying, she’ll leave early. The main goal here is to have everyone alive in phase 3, folks with offheals should throw them onto any people with the Darkness debuff once Sylvanas leaves. Use the adds that spawn during the phase change to get some extra resources as well. Any dead in phase 2 will have their corpses brought to the platforms in phase 3.

    Try to refresh dots on Sylvanas right before she leaves; she’ll take damage during the p2 intermission.

 

Phase 3:

Phase 3 Heroic introduces the Banshee’s Fury mechanic, which is a raidwide damage cast Sylvanas does. Fury does additional damage (about 10k) for every instance of puddle dot (Banshee’s Bane) on someone in the raid when Fury’s cast finishes.

Don’t forget that moving between platforms requires walking off the blue edges of the platform, marked in blue here. Lust on 3rd platform. Boss dies once she goes below 50% health. F

or the phase itself, there are 3 goals here:

  1. Tanks manage puddles created by Banshee’s Bane, the rest of the raid avoids them when possible, and healers dispel the tanks once the tanks are in position in a corner (preferably the corner(s) with no jump lines). – This will also require a tank/healer going to the 4th platform to clean up the puddles after Sylvanas casts Banshee’s Bane the 1st time.
  2. Folks with Wailing Arrow need to pop mitigation and jump at the last second with their arrow on the 1st, 2nd and 3rd platform. The tank that gets Wailing Arrow will also need to grab the puddles on the next platform before jumping back (if possible) while popping mitigation. On the 4th platform, Wailing Arrows go to where Skull is, with the rest of the raid near the jumpline by green.
  3. Spread for Darkness/Banshee Wail and Stack for Banshee’s Fury. If the puddles are being taken care of properly, there should be enough space for the raid to comfortable spread. The Darkness targets 2 people each, so everyone needs to be ready to avoid it. For Banshee’s Fury, there needs to be no one with the Banshee’s Bane debuff when the cast finishes. Anyone that picks up the puddle debuff needs to go to a non-jumpline edge of the platform and wait to get dispelled. Priests can finish a Mass Dispel in the back-half of her cast to dispel any stragglers that accidentally grabbed puddles; dispelled puddles have a brief period where they can’t be picked up.
Keep note of the timers for when to spread, stack and pop cooldowns. Don’t pop a dps cd right before she casts Darkness.

 

Mythic Expectations

 

Updated for Dragonflight 10.2 patch – 10/31/2023

You know who it is: Tiraffe and Quetzie, back at it with another raid guide, this time for the Mythic team.

So What Does It Mean to be a Mythic Raider/ do Mythic Raiding / do Mythic Progression?“

In a general sense, a Mythic raider does all of the things that heroic raiders do, but better. Not to stroke our egos, but we are the best of the best! We are the sort of raider that everyone else strives – or should strive – to be. We are the best prepared, we are the best communicators, we are the best at mechanics, we are the best reactors, we are the best at our classes, we are the most versatile within our class or role, and – perhaps most importantly – we are the most selfless. We are the most willing to compromise our personal goals to get the job done for the rest of our team and our friends. These aren’t exactly difficult things individually, but taken together it can be difficult and exhausting, especially if you aren’t used to this kind of repeated focus – and failure.

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Cool Tricks to Show Your Friends

Here’s all the stuff that doesn’t really fit into the other guides. A lot of this will be techniques and addons to optimize your gameplay to its upper limit. Currently, this post is just a list. Feel free to either google unfamiliar terms, or ping us in Discord for an explanation of what these terms mean. We may come back here eventually and expand upon these ideas over time.

Stuff includes:

  • Maximizing Cooldowns/Minimizing Downtime
    • Optimizing ABC’s
      • Proper Positioning
        • Under ideal circumstances, every player can maximize their dps to their fullest potential when they don’t have to move. Unfortunately, mechanics often get in the way. Proper positioning is a matter of minimizing or eliminating the amount of distance you need to move to safely react to an individual mechanic. Keep in mind that not every mechanic needs to be brought super far out. Refer to the ‘Rotation while moving’ bullet for dancing around the boss or keeping your damage up while dodging.
      • Keybinds
        • Using keybinds will always provide a higher damage output over directly clicking your spells and abilities. You don’t have to aim your mouse and your eyes will spend less time looking at your action bars instead of the fight. Keep in mind for certain specs that it will be necessary to use more than just the 1-6 or even shift + 1-6 keys for all of your rotational spells.
      • Stutterstepping
        • Stutterstepping is an advanced technique used to optimize uptime while moving. To perform a stutterstep, you’ll need to move as soon as the global cooldown starts from you casting an instant cast spell and then start casting as soon as that global cooldown ends. Rinse and repeat until you get to where you need to be. When performed correctly, you are able to split your movement into chunks based on your rotation. The overall movement will, of course, take longer, but it’ll help prevent large gaps in your rotation due to large periods of movement. It won’t be ideal for every fight, but it’ll help you maintain your rotation regardless.
      • DoT Uptime
        • With select classes, maintaining as close to 100% uptime as possible on your DoTs is paramount to your success. If you’re struggling to maintain high uptime, something in the rotation is getting goobered somewhere and no amount of gear will be able to fix it on its own. If you’re having trouble tracking when your DoTs are falling off, there are likely several Weak Auras or addons that can help, especially for fights where your targets are spread apart.
      • Pooling
        • Similarly to DoT Uptime, Pooling affects certain classes in a different way. This mainly applies to specs that naturally generate their resources at a steady rate. To pool means to hold off on pressing buttons so that when you pop your cooldowns, you are able to maximize your output during the entire duration of the cooldown. A major example of this is Feral Druid, you’ll want to be pooling every time your energy every time you use your Ferocious Bite finisher since it’ll deal 100% increased damage if cast at 50 energy or higher.
      • Mouseover Interact
        • Mouseover Interact is an option available in the keybinds that would allow you to interact with whatever your mouse is hovering over, instead of having to click it. Doing this with an @focus macro would allow you to use something like a Warlock’s Demonic Gateway using a keybind, provided that you had the Gateway set as your focus and you used the interact keybind while hovering over your focus, for example.
      • Click to Move (featured on Mythic Carapace)
        • In tandem with the Mouseover interact, the Click to Move option located in the interface settings would make it so that right-clicking would move the character to the location clicked or even interact with an object from a distance (if an object was clicked). This would also have an interesting interaction with Mouseover Interact and something set with your focus. From the previous example, using the Mouseover Interact on your Focus would cause you to walk over to the Gateway and use it, regardless of the number of people standing on it. Click to Move + Mouseover Interact is also handy for open-world movement as well, since it can walk you to lootable bodies.
      • Rotation while moving
        • Stop Backpedaling (very few scenarios where it’s good to do)
          • Backpedaling is best used as a tank where you need to slowly kite something backwards while precisely moving whatever you’re tanking, or any other situation where that precise movement shines.
          • Backpedaling should not be used if you really gotta be somewhere that isn’t your current position. Mechanics attached to players should not be backpedaled slowly out of the group.
        • Be comfortable using your movement keys in the middle of your rotation (remember that clicking both the left and right mouse buttons will run you forward)
          • This mainly involves being comfortable strafing left-to-right and vice versa for melee.
          • For ranged, this involves making sure you’re still able to cast your spells while moving (if your spells require facing the target) or if you need to pool resources so you can fire off instant casts for every global you need to move.
    • Target swapping
      • Tab Targeting
        • Tab Targeting is the quick and easy way to switch between different targets. It’s keybound to your Tab key by default, and it will cycle through targets in a set order. Shift + Tab can be used to cycle in reverse. Do know that some targets may be too high vertically to be caught by Tab Targetting and may need to be manually targeted via clicking them.
      • Focus Macros
        • These are macros that affect your focus target. You can use the [@focus] parameter in macros to enable this. These are best used for when you know for sure a certain target is going to take big damage or for when you need to hit a different target without actually targeting it. Example: /cast [@focus] Blessing of Protection.
      • Mouseover Macros
        • Mouseover macros are often seen on healers and function similarly to Focus macros. These are more suited for hitting multiple targets one at a time instead of just a single target. Example: /cast [@mouseover,exists] Rejuvenation; Wild Growth. This macro will cast Rejuvenation on a single target your mouse is over, or if there is no target, it’ll instead cast Wild Growth on whichever character you currently have targeted.
  • Useful Raid Info (under Interface -> Raid Profiles)
    • Enable Raid-Style Party Frames
    • Group your raid frames (enable Keep Groups Together)
    • Display Main Tank and Assist
    • Make your frames be able to show people in 5-8
    • Show Debuffs
    • Show Health Remaining (in one way or another)
  • See more mechanics
    • Adjust your brightness so everything isn’t dark in Revendreth or blinding on Bastion
    • Go to System -> Graphics -> Projected Textures -> Enabled
      • Adjust the UI scaling so you see more
    • Unclutter your User Interface so you can see what’s going on
  • Unlock Flying
  •  Pre-pull
    • Cooldown Timing
      • Opener (More pve focused)
      • Set-Ups (More pvp focused)
  • Look both ways before taking the brez
    • Check for the small, white circle on the ground; this is where the brez was cast and shows where you’ll be brought back
  • Don’t outrange your healers
  • Update your graphics drivers
  • Important Racial abilities to remember in m+
    • Arcane Torrent (aoe magic dispel)
    • Shadowmeld (personal stealth regardless of class)
  • Don’t cover the lock gateway with your body
  • Traversing sites (know what you’re looking for)
    • Herodamage/Bloodmallet (ideal gear from a bis list, remember to sim)
    • Murlok.io/Lootdistrict (grain of salt, need context of why someone has a certain build, don’t follow to a T)
      • Arena Meta Comp Lists (Can be found on Wowhead and/or Icyveins, check if it’s up-to-date)
  • Addons

Intro to Raiding

How To Become a Raider in Less Than 20 Minutes:
Being a Better Player and Notes on Raiding

To everyone old and new: Welcome! This is Tiraffe, Mythic Raid Lead and person-with-all-hidden-artifact-appearances. It’s also Quetzie, Mythic Raid Lead Raid Mom who “is not mad, just disappointed”.

This is a revamp of Tiraffe’s mythic guide from 8.2. Given the new expansion looming on the horizon, we have rewritten and refreshed it to be a general raiding guide. This is for those who are looking to get their feet wet in Shadowlands, or for those who dove into Ny’alotha mid-tier and want to get a better foundation of understanding and best practices.

For those looking for a mythic-specific guide, check out the Mythic Expectations post.

(Links to mentioned websites/addons and sources listed at the bottom)

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Improving your DPS: Revisited

Updated for Dragonflight Prepatch: 11/20/22

Welcome to “Improving your DPS: Revisited”. Some of you may remember the “Improving your DPS” guide that Quetzie wrote during Uldir to help us improve as we moved into harder fights (remember dipping our toe into Mythic for the first time? Ah, nostalgia!). Consider this the successor guide as we move into a brand-new expansion and hope to hit the ground running as a more well organized group. This guide is co-written by Quetzie (Mythic Raid Lead and Person-Who-Thinks-Alts-Are-For-Suckers) and Tiraffe (Mythic Raid Lead and person-that-did-every-Balance-of-Power).

In the first guide, Quetzie spent most of the time focusing on those who might be new to raiding or who were aware of their faulty DPS. In this guide, we revisit some of the tips that can help new players, but we also want to drill home that every level of player can find a place to improve. Even on the mythic team, nobody is perfect. There are always rotation gaps, mechanical failures, and basic preparation that can be improved upon.

Here are the topics this post will discuss:

  1. Streamline & Optimize
  2. Rotation & Opener
  3. Pre-Combat Preparation
  4. Class Resources
  5. Dragonflight Optimization
  6. Asking and Receiving Help

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Guild Clear of Tomb of Sargeras (Full Guild Run)

Tonight, March 19, 2018, The Ministry of Defense slapped Kil’Jaden in the face with a Tomb of Sargeras Guild Run. There were some moments where things looked grim, but through our perseverance and hard work we downed him. Good work to everyone and congrats on your new Legendaries to Lunzzul (http://www.wowhead.com/item=137040/chatoyant-signet) and Brassica (http://www.wowhead.com/item=137054/the-walls-fell). Keep up the good work and I look forward to our next raid clear.