From the desk of Huge & Sparkles LLC:

Hey team! A very impressive first two weeks as we find our footing in Aberrus! Some highlights include

  • Full Normal Vault slots week 1!
  • Earliest ever team heroic kills week 2!
  • One Mystic (Mage/Hunter/Druid) Tier Token dropped!
  • And many more!

Kidding aside, it’s been a fun start and we just wanted to drop some notes about our plans for the next few weeks so you can chart out your gameplay including mid-week homework and other hobbies, etc.

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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!

Hello Mythic raiders!

In lieu of our traditionally longer-form meeting for most pre-patch events, we’ve decided (because of holidays + launch + dungeons this week) to write up the usual minutes as a post for you to read at your leisure. That being said, we expect you to read this – so don’t come to us with a bunch of questions already in the posting.

That being said, THERE WILL STILL BE A SHORT MEETING AT 7PM ON THURSDAY, DECEMBER 1. Please plan to attend this even if you’re not available for dungeons.

Heroic raid meeting is on Saturday, 5pm eastern.

Agenda:

Introduction
Expectations
Rule Updates
Weekend Heroic Raiding
Dragonflight Info (some spoilers)
M+ / Dungeon Information
Q&A / Missing info

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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!

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

 

Expected

Weekly

  • Max renown
  • 4 mythic dungeons
    • Week of 6/29 – 7/5
      • As high as you can go, ideally 18 timed or 19 untimed
    • Week of 7/6 – 7/12
      • As high as you can go
      • To max your GV for the week:
        • One 15+
        • Three 10s
    • In the future: 4 dungeons
      • 8: 236 (heroic GV)
      • 12: 246 (last 2 heroic GV)
      • 15: 252 (mythic GV)
      • Spam highest comfortable for EoD loot (see chart below)
  • Korthia weekly
  • Covenant Assaults / Maw Invasions
    • Once Tuesday – Friday
    • Once from Friday – Monday
  • Tormentors of Torghast
    • Soul cinders
    • Check if you’ve completed it for the week:
      • /run print(C_QuestLog.IsQuestFlaggedCompleted(63854))
  • Torghast

Daily

Korthia Dailies

  • All 3
    • Korthite Crystals
    • Catalogued Research

Sweaty Grindy Optional

Daily

Korthia Rares & Treasures

Alt Korthia Dailies

  • Korthite Crystals
    • These are BoE and can be funneled from alts into mains

Tormentors of Torghast (every 2 hours)

  • Soul ash
  • Rep

Callings

  • Small amounts of Valor

PvP

  • Alternate gear
  • Very sweaty

Whether you were able to make it, or whether you weren’t (BULBZ, on a BEACH in FRANCE), we’ve added these minutes to the website per usual so that they’re easy for people to read through or review, especially as we made the meeting as quick and efficient as possible.

Agenda

Introduction
Raider Expectations
Finalizing Mains
AOTC Carries
9.1 Prep
Loot Rules
Weekend Filling
Raid Materials / Donations
Mythic + Requirements
9.1 Launch Activities
Raider Evals
Q&A
Stuff We Forgot

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Hello Mythic Raiders!

As we move into heroic full time, we want to make sure everyone is putting their best foot forward! As such, 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

Almost every group handles bosses slightly differently. As we progress through the tier we may change strategies. But we expect everyone to start out on the same page.

In the past we’ve recommended popular content creators like FatBossTV or Hazelnutty for our raiders to get a good understanding of mechanics. That said, we’ve really noticed that two new faces in the game have created resources will be excellent strategy builders and introductions for raiders both new and experienced.

Mythic Trap 

Mythic Trap has mechanic-by-mechanic breakdowns for each boss fight. The dev has filters what’s important to specific roles, and highlights the differences between normal, heroic, and mythic. It uses small, repeating video loops of each mechanic, rather than the whole fight. Clips have been provided by Ready. Check? Pull! and each fight also has a complete kill-vid at the end if that’s your sort of thing instead.

Shriekwing
Huntsman Altimor
Hungering Destroyer
Artificer Xy’mox
Sun King’s Salvation
Lady Inerva Darkvein
The Council of Blood
Sludgefist
Stone Legion Generals
Sire Denathrius

Side note: Mythic Trap has similar breakdowns for dungeons. Check them out for M+ tips!

Tactical Air Horse / Castle Pineapplia

Tactical Air Horse built a minigame, Castle Pineapplia, that you can play in your browser that teaches the basic mechanics. It gets you playing the game before you play the game, and drills repetition of important mechanics – dodge donuts! Don’t stand between allies! Drop puddles against the walls! Combine with Mythic Trap’s guides and you should have a good memory and understanding of the basics for each fight!

You can download the game from the web

Or, play it directly in the browser