If you’re a normal or heroic raider that wants to improve your performance, feel free to reach out to Tiraffe and Quetzie anyway, even though this homework is directed at the Mythic team.

Mythic Eval Expectations

Please send Tiraffe and/or Quetzie a self-evaluation of your performance thus far in the tier. Consider what your strengths are, and where you are struggling. Reflect on whether there’s anything you can do as a person to improve as well. You can send this as either a Discord message or a document, as space requires.

  • Tell us 3 things that you can improve on, and how you intend to do so (please be more specific than “die less” or “higher DPS”). These evals don’t have to be long – several sentences each is fine.
  • Send us a screenshot of your in combat UI. This will help us determine if your UI is negatively impacting performance – maybe by blocking parts of the screen, or failing to highlight important buffs / debuffs impacting your rotation. If you can take a screenshot while you have a mechanic (such as Rock Blast or Awakened Earth on Terros, or Meteor Axes on Primal Council) even better.
  • We know that many people are experiencing FPS drops, lagging, etc. This is also not something that should be listed amongst your 3 points to improve, but if you know it’s an issue, feel free to mention it separately and we can try to work with you to resolve some of these issues.

Some thoughts on Gear

It’s very easy to blame gear – ilvl, trinkets, weapons, etc – as a pain point in performance. However, this is (mostly) a cop-out at the mythic level. While it’s true that some specific pieces of gear can make a huge difference in damage or healing, the majority of performance improvements come from mastering your rotation and positional awareness. A good piece of gear could bring your purple parse up to orange, but it won’t be why you’re grey parsing on all bosses.

That being said, stat priority and allocation could be a pain point for some classes; you can acknowledge that you need to target specific crafted gear or dungeons, but this should not replace any of the 3 points of improvement we requested above.

Crafted gear is also a huge resource this tier. You can wear an unlimited number of crafted pieces (caveat: only 2 embellished pieces) with your BiS stats, and you should be taking advantage of that. 405 gear with the right stats might be much better for you than higher ilvl gear with poor stat allocation. Specific combinations of stats (looking at you, haste/mastery rings) can be especially difficult to come by, so supplement with crafts!

Acquiring Primal Focus and Concentrated Primal Focus most easily comes from dungeons than from raids. You need 10 of either to be able to created a crafted piece. Right now, everyone should have 5 or 6 sparks at their disposal, and you should therefore have 5 or so pieces of crafted gear. If you don’t, you should start running more +11s / pug heroic raid (for primal focus) or +16s (for concentrated primal focus). It might be difficult to get into 16s, but if you find you’re struggling to get into keys or struggling to time them, remember to attend the wednesday mythic keystone event – and practice your AoE rotation.

Resources to Help Shape your Evals

Evaluation Expectations

If you’re struggling to know where you can improve, plug some logs into Wipefest or Wowanalyzer, or chat with people in your class Discord.

If you know what you need to improve, but aren’t sure how to fix it, let us know – but be specific.

  • “I have really low casts of Wrath compared to other balance druids, what am I doing wrong?” would be an example of a specific problem.
  • Please do not blindly ask us how you can improve (you’ve had plenty of opportunity to do so until now). This is a time for you to prove that you know your faults, even if you’re not sure how to fix them.
    • Consider chatting with other people of your class/spec/role to see what they’re doing before coming to us with/for feedback.

After we’ve received your evals, we’ll converse with you about how we can help on your actionables. There might not always be something we can do on our end, but we hope to try. It might be as easy as finding (or creating) weakauras and changing addon settings, or as involved as watching you practice your rotation on a dummy and giving feedback.

We may also volunteer other, potentially more crucial, places that we think you can improve. This might be something like a talent choice, spec choice (yes, we may recommend spec swapping), gear or stat priority, trinket usage, etc.

We hope that this exercise will get you thinking more regularly and critically about your performance, both your strengths and your weaknesses.

We expect these evaluations to be sent to us by midnight on Friday, February 24th. This gives you plenty of logs to look over from both end-tier heroic and beginning-tier mythic bosses.

Example

Here is an example self-evaluation from Quetzie. It’s more in-depth than yours needs to be:

  • Terros has so much going on that I find it difficult to make sure I’m using my cooldowns effectively. I’ve had a trend of wasting New Moon charges, or letting Stellar Flare fall off. While I want to save Full Moons for pulsar procs as much as possible, it shouldn’t come at the expense of wasting charges. I should come up with an audio proc that lets me know when I have moon charges close to capping, since the fight is too visually hectic to look at that cooldown.
  • On AoE fights I tend to hold Fury of Elune too long. We have so much burst damage that I don’t need to worry about saving it for when adds are up – padding my numbers isn’t going to help kill the boss, and the damage it does is negligible compared to using it on cooldown or effectively for AP gain.
  • I need to remember when I should be using starfire VS wrath. It’s hard to break the habit of always casting wrath now, even when I should be casting it in AoE situations. Formerly you would only cast it at 5+ targets; I need to learn the new breakpoint and force myself to change it as a result.
  • I need to remember to proc Pulsar with Starfall rather than Starsurge, since starfall will gain buffs from boat/CA and do more damage than a starsurge would, even in single target.
  • TIL: Mushroom’s DoT stacks with itself, so there’s no advantage to staggering them instead of using them over time. Therefore I can pop 3 charges at once for a burst of damage and AP, or save them for movement as needed.
  • Dropping from 3k crit to around 1k crit and boosting up my haste did amazing things for my rotation and ability to keep uptime on Rattle the Stars, but I will have to make sure that I didn’t overdo it. I am very likely lacking in vers!

For a more thorough example, check out this example self-evaluation we handed out with 9.1. Even the raid leads give and get feedback!

Updated 11/16 – added XP bar, Micromenu, and Minimap resizer; added console command to clear action bars
Updated 11/1 – added Exiles Reach console command for edit mode, added SL micromenu addon, changed addon to hide Micromenu

It’s known to many that I have always used the basic stock WoW UI – no bartender, no ElvUI, no Dominos. I did use an addon called ButtonForge that allowed me to create extra, simple actionbars without revamping my whole UI – but now that Blizzard has given us up to 8 action bars, I can get rid of it and go completely clean.

Of course, the new UI still has bugs, and many of those are being hotfixed every day. For example, the stance bar kept centering and changing its size in the first few days; that should now be fixed. There’s a few UI options that can’t be moved by default. The “snap” option in Edit Mode isn’t intuitive. Here’s hoping some of those change over time!

We’ll start by diving into default options in the new UI, move into third-party enhancements for the new UI, and then dive into some lesser-known changes that can be made to it. I’ll also cover where old options have moved to in the new menus.

This post will act as a “living document” for a little while, and I’ll post edits and the dates I’ve added them to keep things tidy.

Sections:

  • Blizzard’s Official Notes on the New UI
  • Addons and Weakauras to Enhance the New UI
  • Addons to Enhance or Fix other Prepatch Changes
  • Enhancement and Changes for other UI Elements
  • Tips and Tricks for the New UI
  • “Thanks, I hate it, Take me Back”
  • Example UIs
  • Closing

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It’s the most wonderful time of the tier!

…or something like that, anyway.

Those of you who have been around for a while know the drill. For those who are new, we ask for our mythic raiders to do a little bit of homework as we move into mythic.

Please send Tiraffe and/or Quetzie a self-evaluation of your performance thus far in the tier. Consider what your strengths are, and where you are struggling. Reflect on whether there’s anything you can do as a person to improve as well.

  • Tell us 3 things that you can improve on, and how you intend to do so (please be more specific than “die less” or “higher DPS”). These evals don’t have to be long – several sentences is fine.
  • Send us a screenshot of your in combat UI. This will help us determine if your UI is negatively impacting performance – maybe by blocking parts of the screen, or failing to highlight important buffs / debuffs impacting your rotation. If you can take a screenshot while you have a mechanic (such as Earthbreaker Missiles on Halondrus) even better.
  • Please do not mention gear. Everyone has 4 set by now – trinkets and weapons are good, but are not going to widely swing your performance issues compared to playing better.

Evaluation Expectations

If you’re struggling to know where you can improve, plug some logs into Wipefest or Wowanalyzer.

If you know what you need to improve, but aren’t sure how to fix it, let us know – but be specific.

  • “I have really low casts of Wrath compared to other balance druids, what am I doing wrong?” would be an example of a specific problem.
  • Please do not blindly ask us how you can improve (you’ve had plenty of opportunity to do so until now). This is a time for you to prove that you know your faults, even if you’re not sure how to fix them.
    • Consider chatting with other people of your class/spec/role to see what they’re doing before coming to us with/for feedback.

After we’ve received your evals, we’ll converse with you about how we can help on your actionables. There might not always be something we can do on our end, but we hope to try. It might be as easy as finding (or creating) weakauras and changing addon settings, or as involved as watching you practice your rotation on a dummy and giving feedback.

We may also volunteer other, potentially more crucial, places that we think you can improve. This might be something like a talent choice, spec choice, gear or stat priority, trinket usage, etc.

We hope that this exercise will get you thinking more regularly and critically about your performance, both your strengths and your weaknesses.

We expect these evaluations to be sent to us by midnight on Sunday, April 24th. This gives you several weeks of logs to look over.

Helpful Tools

NEW: Llorgs – make sure you look at Heroic for current comparisons, and Mythic for looking ahead!
NEW: Subcreation – grabs top info from Warcraft Logs about builds (talents, covenants, etc!)
Where to find your logs: https://www.warcraftlogs.com/character/us/aerie-peak/YOURNAME
Wowanalyzer  (Even if your spec is “not supported” by Wowanalyzer, it will still have many useful insights. Don’t ignore it. See below, but BE CAREFUL for outdated specs)
Wipefest
Warcraftlogs (heroic rankings)
Improving your DPS: Revisited

A Note About Gear

Gear is not performance. These self-evaluations need to be made entirely separate from the gear on your person. If you feel that gear is holding you back, it isn’t and should not be your main concern. That said, if you aren’t taking a visible initiative to get yourself into keys or use pvp to fill in gaps in your gear, you need to do so. No one should be relying solely on raid gear for Mythic progression. Spending more time in keys will also make them less difficult when the only worthwhile gear comes out of 14/15’s, even if it’s just for the Great Vault.

Remember that you can save 278 pieces to use in your creation catalyst, and you can upgrade M+ and PvP gear and catalyze them. You can also buy mythic BoEs for this purpose, if you have the dough for it.

Example

Here is an example self-evaluation from Quetzie. It’s more in-depth than yours needs to be:

  • I don’t know how long it is between Pulsar procs as an average. This means that I might be holding Convoke too long (losing DPS) or sitting on a Pulsar proc too long while waiting for Pulsar (again losing DPS). I should sit in front of a dummy and press buttons on cooldown to see what the average length of time is for a Pulsar proc to come back around.
  • On fights where I am not likely to be taking high damage / where quick movement is a priority, I should swap to Wild Charge instead of Renewal; Lihuvium is a good example of this. I can practice usage on a lower-stakes fight like normal Rygelon.
  • I run Night Fae / Convoke as a comfort pick, because Venthyr timings can swing wildly in a raid group, and we don’t generally need the AoE coverage. I should spend time in WCL and on Llorgs to figure out which fights Venthyr might be more beneficial on for our comp and damage profile.

For a more thorough example, check out this example self-evaluation we handed out with 9.1. Even the raid leads give and get feedback!

Hello Mythic Raiders!

Once again, the raid leads are asking you to be critical of your performance. Those who were around in Nathria remember this; for those who are new, don’t sweat.

We’re asking you to send Tiraffe and/or Quetzie a self-evaluation of your performance thus far in the tier. Consider what your strengths are, and where you are struggling. We ask that you tell us 3 things that you can improve on, and how you intend to do so (please be more specific than “die less” or “higher DPS”). These evals don’t have to be long – a few sentences is fine.

Continue reading

Short sweet, and to the point.

Sanctum of Domination:

Hazelnutty Sanctum of Domination Raid Boss Guides
Mythic Trap Sanctum of Domination Raid Boss Guides (starting at the Tarragrue)
Sanctum of Pineapples mechanic minigame
Wowhead Sanctum of Domination Guides – Wowhead

Tazavesh Megadungeon:

Hazelnutty Tazavesh Guide
Mythic Trap Tazavesh Guide
Wowhead Tazavesh Guide

Mythic+ Guides:

Tormented Affix Preview
Class Specialization Mythic+ Guides – check your spec page for tips on what anima powers to take with the new affix

 

If you want to min-max, want a deep-dive, or are just completely lost, here are some guides that can help:

More will be added as they are deemed useful or relevant.

Tiraffe and Quetzie spent a good amount of time putting together a number of guides for new and returning raiders in Shadowlands, with input from other officers and outside sources.

To make these easier to find, we’ve compiled them in a simple directory post for your convenience.

Ministry of Defense Pre-Patch Directory:

Intro to Raiding
Quickguide to Simming
Improving your DPS: Revisited
Mythic Expectations
Cool Tricks to Show Your Friends

Additional Pre-Patch Resources:

Official Blizzard Pre-Patch Notes
Biggest Gameplay Changes for All Classes in Shadowlands Pre-Patch
Class Abilities Unavailable in Shadowlands Pre-Patch

 

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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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

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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