For those of you who don’t know, our very own PvP Warlord Miatreelefa (aka Pete) streams on Twitch at twitch.tv/nfbprototype. He’s done a number of giveaways, and one of our own was a lucky winner of a signed Blizzcon poster! Congrats to Warvoxi!

Thanks to Pete for giving me (Warvoxi) this awesome poster  #endoftheyeargiveaway

Interested in winning something similar for yourself?

 

This time of year can be tough on some people for so many different reasons so https://www.twitch.tv/nFbPrototype I will be giving 100% of all donations now through December 25th, 2018 to The Brain & Behavior Research Foundation who assist with mental health research!

There will be prizes for top donators; the goal is to reach $1000 dollars, and all the money will be donated on stream on Christmas Day. Donate @ https://streamlabs.com/nfbprototype to be eligible for giveaways, or if you aren’t into twitch streaming but still want to help out, visit their website @ https://www.bbrfoundation.org/home. Please Share!

I’ve received two questions in varying forms since the BfD meeting the other day, so I will add them to the post and here for you!

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!

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

Continue reading →

We will be having a raider’s interest meeting and meeting to discuss the next raid tier, Battle of Dazar’alor, this Thursday, December 20th at 4pm server (7pm est). It will be held in place of our normal mythic run. Please try to attend if you are looking to continue raiding with us, or are looking to start raiding with us. The meeting will take place in the raiding Discord voice channel.

Warbringer Deathhoss shares some of his experience with us!

I joined this guild on a whim. I started a toon on Aerie Peak and happened to see them in the guild finder.

Since then, its been a whirlwind of fun, friendship, and funny memories. Since joining, I’ve met some of the nicest people you could imagine; even though a lot of us are assholes, but in a good way. I’d have to say the most memorable thing for me was the first time i raided with MOD in Uldir, when it released. The nervous buildup to a new raid, and the countless hours grinding for gear and studying fights. But it was all worth it when the yells and cheers of joy happened, when G’huun finally fell.

This guild means a lot to me. Its a place where I can escape for a few hours a day and have fun. Even though a lot of y’all give me a hard time, I honestly love all of you. As I see it, this guild isn’t just a group of people who happen to play the same game. We are a family, even if that means dealing with the crazy cousins, uncles, and aunts sometimes.

We love you, even though you’re a 200 year old man! Thank you for everything that you’ve done to contribute to the amazingness of this guild!

 

Remember to enter into the Social Giveaway before January 1st! We love reading all of your stories and experiences.

So, let’s say you’re looking for a guild promotion and/or want to get noticed. With a guild the size we currently are, it can be difficult to stand out from the crowd. What can you do? Well, for example, at 6pm EST tonight we have a resources farming event. Sign up! Get involved! Put yourself on the map! Also, having a character in the guild that is max level (120) is a huge plus.

As everyone knows by now, we raid… and we raid three times a week. That is definitely a fast track to get a promotion within the guild. All you need to do is attend 5 of our raids. And wham-o! You’ve got Vanguard status. The same policy exists for our PVP section, which usually holds events at 8pm server on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Attend those events, and you’ll be boosted to Gladiator rank. Keep your attendance up, and you’ll remain at your respective rank. In short, attending events and actively participating in them will get you to a status higher than member.

Don’t like to raid or PVP? We run several events throughout the week you can be apart of. Saturday’s at 5pm EST we usually run a guild LFR run. Sure it’s ‘raiding,’ but it is a much more relaxed atmosphere then a normal/heroic or mythic raid. Later that evening, we have a mythic dungeon key event at 7:30pm EST. Jump in!

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Sunday Funday at 6pm EST on Sundays. The rotation of what we do is constantly changing on that day, so check the calendar! Also, we have a non-raiding/non-PVP promotion status called Champion. It is a specific status to recognize guild members that don’t fit the traditional raiding or pvping criteria that attend our other events.

Just don’t find yourself promoted to PITA. Nobody wants that!

Thursday: Mythic

I’ve never seen a turnaround quite like this one, and I think I speak for every raid lead when I say how incredibly impressed we are with our team. We killed MOTHER in 3 tries (2, really, because we had an early wipe-call when people died on a crossing), which is a massive upgrade from the 52 previous tries. Normally when we down a boss, we continue to struggle on it for a few weeks. This was a welcome relief.

As a result we got our first look at a new boss on mythic, Zek’vos.

Zek’vos has overlapping add packs and overlapping darkness with deceit. We’re going to need steady coordination for calling out who needs external healing cooldowns / defensives, and making sure people run as far away as possible (not simply dropping to the side).

We also suggest getting comfortable using a microphone for this fight. It’s highly likely that now more than ever, you will need to call out when you need external heals or when you’re using interrupts.

We’re also going to be auditing interrupts much more closely. What’s important is not whether or not you are interrupting, but whether or not you are interrupting out of turn. If someone calls out they they’ve got “next”, and you cut them off, there’s a potential that both your AND their interrupts go wasted, and a cast might go off next time. Also, don’t interrupt early. They only stand around casting and re-casting, so interrupting them late ensures there’s more time for our interrupt rotation to recover. Those with ranged interrupts (like Balance druids) will be saving theirs for the 3rd add, which overlaps with the darkness (pain donuts).

Tanks did a good job moving the boss around, but he needs to be moved much quicker. Consider starting to move him when the add is at 85-90% HP instead of it being at 90-95% hp.

Little adds are going to need to die faster. If you’re running the same talents you ran on MOTHER, chances are you’re doing it wrong. Certain individuals will be told to instead swap to a full AoE build, even if it means they output less boss damage. (In phase 3, you can probably expect them to be the first people to pick up an orb to go down as well, since they won’t be single-target specced for boss or person damage).

Save displacements like typhoon, ring of peace, etc for when the little adds coincide with the darkness.

Thursday Logs

Friday: Heroic clear

Friday was a pretty decent clear. We downed all the way up through G’huun, which is the farthest we’ve gotten on Heroic in one sitting.

We definitely has issues of boss-tunneling. As a baseline comparison, I had a 316/320 ilvl character in on heroics (it’s a balance druid, because I am the height of originality). Through all of our wipes, I did more damage to the Hexers than 3 other DPS, including one ranged. I did more damage to the crusher than 6 DPS including one ranged (though melee DPS are not able to DPS her for as long as others). I out-DPSd 3 ranged DPS on Ichors. I didn’t out-DPS anyone on crawgs.

Guys, that’s bad. Some of you are in the 360, 370 range. A 320 boomkin without an offhand should not be out-DPSing anybody on priority adds, especially not other ranged DPS (melee get a slight pass, especially on Crushers, but still).

A few of us swapped to our mains to down Zul, but as Zex pointed out, we shouldn’t have to. We shouldn’t have to swap to overpowered 380 geared characters just because some of you have no concept of prioritization on targets and are stubborn.

Now, some folks were new to heroics that night, or hadn’t done the fight with us before even on normal. That’s OK! I expect you guys will get more comfortable with looking around for these adds in the future. However, there are some people who have been around the block who don’t have an excuse. I won’t name names, but you know who you are.

TLDR:

Friday Logs

Saturday / Sunday: Timewalking

We took a few hours instead of LFR and then picked up the remainder on Sunday to kill Illidan for the weekly and do something fun and different. It was a long slog and I think it made some of us appreciate how much trash has been cut out of raids (though if you ask me, Blizz took all the raid trash and threw it in dungeons instead), and how blissfully short modern raids are compared to the olden days.

Monday: Alt Night

On account of some internet issues I missed the first hour of alt night.

Every boss was a 1-shot, including G’huun. We had a few new orb runners and they did wonderfully. People listened well to directions given and we have high hopes for our newcomers.

Monday Logs

Thanksgiving Break

On account of the holiday, no raids on Thursday and Friday. Feel free to PUG, watch videos, or take a week off.

We had a super awesome week this week! It was nice seeing so many new guildies take interest in running rateds with us. Shout out to all of you!

We are still having issues with getting a full group together for these, so I want to remind everyone that if you have an interest, don’t be afraid to message me with any questions that you may have! I promise I’m not going to turn you down, and we will work with you and get you where you need to be. Practice makes perfect, so practice with us!

Play wise, everyone did amazing and even surpassed expectations tonight. I had to step out for a bit, but I heard nothing but good things when I came back. Teamwork makes the dream work, and we have the teamwork aspect near on point!

If you want to start playing with us, but you aren’t sure if your main character is viable or not, I have so many guides and resources pinned in the pvp announcements discord channel. Read up on your class, make your own decisions, and know that with practice, every class can be amazing. If you have a character that you would like to play, but it isnt quite geared enough, just let me know! I will help you and work with you.

Thanks again to everyone that participated tonight, and I hope to see you all again in future events!

Next Tuesday, I will not be seeing any of you, due to work reasons. But I hope to hear continued improvement!