Raid

These posts are especially relevant to our Raiders!

Coming with stat-squish, pre-patch, and the “off-season”, we’ll be changing a few things in raids. First change will be until Battle for Azeroth drops, and the next will be until Uldir drops.

Raid Pre-Patch Schedule

First and foremost, we’re dropping down to 2 raid nights a week maximum until BfA. We’re dropping the Saturday raid (party animals rejoice!) and keeping the Monday normal night. Keeping our normal night will allow those who want to level alts, those who are returning to WoW, or those who are joining us for the first time, a chance to get gear and get into the habit of raiding with us.

We’re potentially keeping our Wednesday night raids for heroics. Bosses will be done “as requested”. We may not go for agg/argus. Due to stat squish, things on heroic may be way over- or under-tuned, especially as we adjust to our new talents, missing talents, missing artifact abilities, and more.

Keeping our Monday normal night also gives those of us struggling with the class changes a chance to adjust to them in structured content we’re already familiar with.

BFA Raiding Timeline and Schedule

This 1-2 nights continues until BfA launches. When BfA launches, we will be taking a break from raiding until Uldir drops, which will be 3 weeks after launch. Then Mythic will be opening. Around that point, we will be using the information from the BfA Raid Planning Spreadsheet to determine raid dates & times. Then the raid team will start focusing on raid progression again. This means that if you already filled out the sheet, but your schedule changes, you can update the sheet until we start prepping for raids in BfA.

Attendance

66% attendance to maintain Raider status is no longer mandatory until Uldir. I am putting a “freeze” on raid attendance until Uldir drops. This allows those who are burned out or who want to concentrate on other things in the pre-patch ample time to do whatever they please. If you have previously attained Raider status, you will keep it, unless you choose not to raid in BfA. As such, I am going to be wiping all attendance records for current Raiders, and no longer keeping track of them. This will clear up the Raid Attendance page significantly, as well as clean up the back-end for that page. It makes my life a lot easier!

Don’t worry! You can still earn Raider status until BfA launches. If you are a new or returning guild member, attending 5 regularly scheduled raids (not bonus “argus kill” raids – I don’t keep attendance at those) within a 1 month time will net you Raider status. This grants you more daily gold for repairs and greater esteem by others in the guild. Oh, and speaking of Raider rank…

Changes to Titles

Not too long ago, we created a Champion rank, for those in the guild who go above the regular expectations of members but don’t quite commit to, or fall into, the Raider and Veteran categories. Not long after, we created a Gladiator rank for the upcoming PvP team. Our Raiders were jealous – Champion and Gladiator are really cool titles! In order to appease whiners raise the level of badassery in the guild, we’ve renamed many Guild ranks.

Raid Leader has become Warlord
Raider has become Vanguard
Veteran has become Centurion
Officer has become Legati

Guild Assistant may be renamed as well. We’ll keep you updated.

Other Scheduled Activities until Uldir

Burned out on raiding? Bored of Antorus? Here are a few alternatives that can keep you active in the Ministry of Defense family. Being really active could even net you Champion!

Old Raid / Dungeon Achievements

Consider joining Bulborbish for Sunday Funday, and filling out his poll to determine what sort of achievements people would like to chase down.

PvP

Lunzzul is starting a PvP team. Fill out her spreadsheet to help determine what times and days would be best. No experience necessary!

Mythic Keystones

For now, Foxxie (Tiv) is continuing to run Mythic Keystones. After stat-squish, it’s going to be an excellent opportunity to hone your new or changed class skills and work together in small teams to figure out how changes to threat generation effect dungeons, in environments we’re already familiar with.

TLDR

Just a reminder that we will be making our final attempt at downing heroic Coven this Saturday at 2pm server (5pm EST) before the Battle for Azeroth pre-patch launches this Tuesday. Also, a little birdy told me.. well, maybe a Violet Spellwing told me, that everyone who has received AOTC: Argus is welcome to attend a guild photo event at Aerie Peak in the Hinterlands at raid time. Please be on time tomorrow!

This Saturday, at 2pm PST / 5pm EST, we will be taking a photo at Aerie Peak (in the Hinterlands) in front of the large eagle statue to commemorate a successful season.

If you have raided with us and have achieved AOTC (even if you’re not a “Raider” status!), please join us for this little get together to celebrate our successes in Legion.

After we take a group photo, we will be downing Coven on heroic!

Can’t make it? No problem!

Quetzie is willing to add people to the photo later on. Submit a few photos of yourself in the skies above the Eagle, zoomed out, against a plain background, with NO UI OR NAME showing within 1 week.

Acceptable examples:

Here is where to find the eagle:

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)

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.

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

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