Thanks everyone for coming out! We’d like to thank everyone who listened to us and asked good questions about the plans we have for raiding in Battle for Dazar’alor.

Below is the agenda and the meeting minutes!

Raid Pre-Planning Meeting Agenda:

  • Introduction from the Warlords
  • Raid Schedule until BfD Launch
  • Qualifying for and Coming to Raids
  • Vanguard
  • Discord  Lines of Communication
  • Loot
  • BfD Roles
  • Improving your Gear and DPS
  • Other Events
  • Discord Bots
  • Q&A

Warlord Introduction

Zextol (Ryzin):
Lead Warlord. Organizes groups, raid comp, etc. He makes the most mechanic calls. He will call who lusts, battle rezes, etc. He has final say in all things raid!

Telann (Telanlan):
Loot distribution master. Backup for invites.

Quetzie:
Attendance and invites. Website/discord/general tech guru.

Foxxie (Tiv, Kelara, and more):
Point man for questions about classes and mechanics.

Urostek:
Guild Leader (above the Warlords!). Recruiter, raffle master, smoother-of-issues, final say in all things period.

Raid Schedule until Battle for Dazar’alor

Thursday: 2 hours, Taloc and MOTHER, then moving to Heroic
Friday: 3 hours, finish the remainder of Heroic
Monday: 2 hours, blast through normal

I will be implementing an attendance freeze until the launch of BfD. If you decide not to raid for the remainder of the Uldir tier, you will not be penalized and will not lose Vanguard status. However, if you hit the minimums for earning Vanguard, you will be able to earn Vanguard.

Qualifying for and Coming to Raids

Everyone, even those who previously confirmed with us, will have to re-read the Rules & Regulations and confirm that fact with us. Please note that ilvl requirements will be changing, and we will let you know when we have that determination.

After you’ve confirmed, you will receive an invite automatically as long as you are signed into the game. If you don’t receive an invite (maybe you’re on an alt, or Quetzie has forgotten), speak up in the Raiding Channel and we’ll add you. We do not pay attention to folks who are signed up on the in-game calendar; the calendar exists purely for your information on what we are doing on a given day.

In the future, we will be requiring someone to come to Normal raids before coming to Heroics…coming to Heroics before Mythic…etc. Even if you come in with a full clear, you may not know how we do a boss, and we want to evaluate how you do the basics with us before moving onto more difficult bosses. 

Vanguard:

After a guild member has attended a total of five (5) individual Raid events in one month they will be promoted to “Vanguard” in the guild. This feature will grant you access to the Raiding Equipment tabs in the guild bank, a higher guild bank repair bill, a spot featured on the Raiding Team page, and qualify you for special events such as progression boss raffles and celebrations. In order to keep this status, the Vanguard is asked to make at least 66% of raids per month. Attending a raid for 2 of 3 hours will net you partial attendance for the day. You can track this on the Raid Attendance page. Vanguards are also required to donate once per month. These donations provide the free foods & flasks. Check the sheet after you hit Vanguard to keep it!

Discord / Lines of Communication

If you know you’re going to be missing a night, please let us know in the Raiding Attendance channel.

Change your discord name / add your character name to your Discord name (for example Raef (Quetzie)).

We’ve been getting lax to the end of the tier about busy comm lines (talking too much during boss fights). Sorry! We’re going to start to be more strict on comms, especially talking over raid leads or trying to make calls instead of raid leads. Additionally, tanks and healers should be using mics. It’s important to have tanks that can call out taunt-offs, healers gotta coordinate big CDs / dispels / etc. If this is your intended role, please acquire and become more comfortable using a microphone. (DPS keep comms clear unless necessary, calling out movement etc).

The Discord channels will be our primary source of notification for all of the following.

  • Raiding Announcements: General updates such as raid cancellations, time changes, current progression boss encounter videos and special events being offered to Vanguards
  • Raiding Discussion: Discussion on any of the mentioned notes in Raiding Announcements. If you cannot attend a raid, will be late, etc, post it here.
  • Raiding Attendance: If you’re going to be late or absent, please let us know. This is especially important for Mythic nights, as we have only 20 slots available.
  • Raiding Logs: Warcraft Logs posts for the night

Other places to find important information are the in-game calendar / website calendar and the Raiding Site. Every week (usually) Quetzie will do a “Raid Roundup” (past examples) for those who missed and want to see how the guild handled mechanics.

Loot

Once loot has been received, players who wish to offer up an item for roll will whisper the item to Telann. All loot rolls will be posted and closed by him (highest roll from 1-100 wins). Main spec rolls will be offered first, followed by off spec, and lastly character alts. Transmog and Disenchants are allowed after those priorities. BoE items belong to whoever receives them and may also be offered to others for roll at that players discretion. You are not required to offer an item up for trade.

During Uldir, we required that a portion of Mythic BoEs sales be given to the guild because of how much money guild repairs were draining from the bank. We also routinely farmed trash to get BoEs to add to the guild bank repair fund. We’re not sure how we’ll be handling BoEs in BfD; trash farm opportunities may not be available, so we will determine how that works at the time.

BfD Roles

We are looking for people to be more versatile for higher levels of heroic and mythic raiding. We often had too many melee DPS this tier, with not enough able/willing to play other roles. We don’t need 4 DKs, 4 warlocks, etc etc every fight.

However, we don’t want to sit anyone from normals and early heroics because of roles. Obviously we can only have 2 tanks and only a few healers, so we’ll have to rotate roles as best we can. You won’t always get your main spec / role, especially if it’s tank/heal. On the off-chance that you get sat or need to play an off-spec, we will prioritize you getting into your main role either the next week or on an alt night.

We have a Google Docs sheet available to help us plan the first few weeks of raids.

Improving your DPS / Gear

Check the player performance category on the website.

Don’t skip Mythic+ during the week! We do a key night every Saturday, but also have a ton going on throughout the week. Always check in guild chat or the keystones channel in Discord for groups! The more M+ you do, the better gear you will get. Don’t just come to raids and then complain if you’re not getting drops. You get out what you put in! If you need help or have limited playtime, let us know! We’ll try to make same-same mythic+ groups to help you out.

We may do class think-tanks / forums to work on class traits, talents, mechanics, etc. Hunters could get together and discuss what works for them in different dungeons or raid bosses, etc. If this is something that interests you, let us know!

Tiv and Quetz can help with class resources and reading Warcraft logs if you’re having issues. There are also a number of good resources in the player performance category, above, to get you started.

Other Events

THERE ARE TONS OF EVENTS GOING ON – Sunday Funday, PvP, check the calendar! There are always additional event opportunities, you don’t have to be an officer! If you’re interested in running events, please reach out to an officer to discuss your idea. We can help promote on the guild calendar, website, discord channels, etc.

Discord Bots

– simcraftbot channel (raidbots quick sim channel)
– keystone bot channel (set keystones that you and your alts have; can also use the addon astral keys)
market channel

khadgar bot
– !website: spits out the website URL
-!raid: spits out raid times and raid URL
– !pvp: spits out PvP times and PvP URL
– !calendar: spits out calendar URL

memer-roles: set your role (tank, dps, druid, monk, herbalist, etc)

Q&A

Q: If we need alts, who makes the decision on swapping to alts?
A: Once the info is gathered we will be making calls on that. However, Vanguards get priority on role choice VS those who do not attend regularly. If we are looking for a specific role to fill (if we need a hunter, another healer, etc) we will help you gear alts as best we can if you are filling a needed role! You can track your characters on the main raider and alt audit sheets – talk to Quetzie to get added!

Q: If we have a huge roster, what are we doing about benching during Mythic?
A: We will try to communicate benches ahead of time. But that means YOU have to tell us ahead of time if you will not be able to attend! If we have a group of 20 in mind, and you tell us on Thursday at 6pm that you can’t attend, that screws with our comp. Both sides need to be more open in communicating their intentions.

Q: How serious are you about Mythic raiding?
A: We are currently 2/8 and we’re content with that until BfD. We want to be more serious (twice a week Mythic instead of once a week) – but that depends on YOU. What raid difficulty we do depends on what people want to do. We want to cater to the majority! On the other hand, we do not want to be a more hardcore guild than twice a week. We’re not interested in doing Mythic raids 4 nights a week and hitting Cutting Edge after a month!

Q: How will we know if we’re getting Vanguard?
A: Quetzie will be updating the Raiding Attendance page with that information. Once you’ve gone to 5 in a month, you get Vanguard! Then you need to come to 2/3 of the raids per month to keep it. (Please note that she’s pretty behind right now – attendance will be updated by the weekend, hopefully. it’s a busy time of year!)

Q: Where can I find information?
A: Discord Raid Announcements channel, Raid News feed on the website. Required Videos will be posted in Raiding Homework. TLDR: “I didn’t see it” is not an excuse.

Q: How upwardly mobile is MoD?
A: We try to have many paths for advancement. Vanguard (raid) and Gladiator (PvP) have clear-cut paths. Less obvious is Champion (very active in guild events but neither a raider nor a PvPer). Centurions are long-standing members who have made great contributions to the success of the guild and contributed to its well-being over time. Officers fill a role / niche that is currently left unfilled. If you regularly form events or provide services to the guild that others cannot, you may eventually find a promotion your way.

Q: Tell us a little about MoD!
A: Ministry of Defense has been around 9 years in February. We are very high pop and constantly kicking inactives! We have an average of 30 people on during the day, and 50+ on at night. We are a casual guild, focused on building an active and friendly community of fun individuals. We started raiding in Legion and started PvPing in BFA. We run a lot of different events besides raids and PvP, so be sure to check the calendar! We’re always accepting any class and experience level! For specifics on raiding and PvP recruitment, check the Raiding and PvP pages for more information.

Thank you to the members of Golden Chariots for joining us in our meeting tonight. Their membership potentially could join us, so we wanted them to come to the meeting to get a feeling for how we are.

Have a good holiday! We’re looking forward to seeing you in Dazar’alor!

UPDATE 12/22:

Q: What if I can’t make both progression nights? Can I still raid with you guys?
A: For normal and heroic – of course! We have a number of people who can only make one of the two days, whether because of conflicting raid times or because of IRL conflicts (school, children, etc). We’d never penalize you for having a life outside the game. That said, Mythic is a bit iffier. If we have one healer that can’t attend Thursday, and one that can’t attend Friday, that works out well. But we’d prefer to keep tanks the same both days, for example, and there’s no guarantee that you’d have a spot if you can only attend one day or the other. We will cross that bridge when we reach it.

Q: What’s this about taxes for Vanguards?  Do I have to send goods for giveaways, donate IRL money, or something?
A: No, that would be ridiculous of us, and unfair to everyone who wanted to raid. We mentioned Donations offhand, and I’ll go into it a bit more thoroughly here. We first decided to do this in early October. Our feast and flask makers are having a hard time keeping up with raid demands for providing these materials. To help offset we’re asking for a small donation to the guild to cover expenses. This ranges from a stack of 200 fish, 200 herbs, a bunch of green BoEs (for expulsom for flasks), to vantus runes, and more.

Because of the insane costs of feasts and cauldrons and the fact that they’re provided for free, we’re going to ask Vanguards (and officers who raid) to donate materials to the guild each month. You can always donate more, but we request a bare minimum. This is a MONTHLY donation, so it shouldn’t stress you too hard, and you shouldn’t need to purchase anything. Each month there will be different things on the list, and we may adjust amounts depending on what we need or how hard it is to come by them.

List of donations

You only have to sign up for ONE spot; if you choose to donate extra, you don’t need to sign up for it. Try to spread the signups around as much as you can. Once you’ve mailed your donation, the officer who received it will check off that you completed it (do not touch the pink columns yourself).

Currently in December we do not need any donations. Officers are still discussing if we need anything for January. We’ll let you know!