I’ve tweaked a lot over the last several weeks, but none were important enough to warrant their own post. So, here’s a big post on a bunch of little updates!

Website

Homepage Posts

Previously I was having difficulties getting certain post category combinations to show up on the homepage (for example, Announcements and Member Content). I’ve fixed the issue and now any post tagged Announcement will be on the homepage, regardless of other categories.

Raid Progress Widget

If we’ve killed a boss, it has a white skull. If we’ve killed a boss on heroic, it has a yellow skull. If we’ve cleared a tier on a particular difficulty, the entire tier gains that color skull. Mythic skulls will be red. Previously, kills were green text (no skull) and heroic was white skulls. Mythic skulls were pink. I think this is a little clearer!

Raiding Homepage

I’ve clarified the text and added more links in the “Required to Raid” box. This should hopefully point people in the right direction!

I’ve also added a link to Miatreeleafa’s stream, since he showcases our raids every week. If you’re a streamer, talk to me to get your info on the site!

Raid Team Page

Instead of showing off your gear / artifact weapon (like it used to), the Raid Team page now shows off individual progress within the current raid tier. Incomplete tiers are pink, while complete tiers are green.

Raid Attendance Page

If you select “Antorus: The Burning Throne” from the dropdown, you’ll see a list of EVERYONE who has confirmed with a Warlord. These are the only people who are eligible to raid with us!

Selecting “Uldir” will show you a list of people who’ve attended raids and the % of raids they’ve attended since they started coming. Some people have confirmed and not yet attended, thus the discrepancy. For more information on the raid attendance page, check out this post.

PvP Homepage

Lunzzul has added a number of useful boxes to the PvP homepage: a Calendar, Recruitment widget, link to Miatreeleafa’s stream (he PvPs, too!), and a link to Discord.

Discord

Member Roles

There are two new member roles: Streamer and Artist. You can tag yourself as either in the #member-roles channel. These roles are taggable! Check out this post on how to assign roles to yourself.

Raiding Logs

I’ve added a webhook so any log posted to Warcraftlogs will automatically post itself to the channel. I haven’t tested this yet, but we’ll see tomorrow if it works or not!

Diablo Detachment

A number of our members play Diablo 3, and a new season just started, so there’s a channel in the Discord to discuss and organize that.

Vanguard-Gladiator

Because of the way Discord works, some roles are always going to appear before others, even if they’re on equal footing. A member who’s achieved both Vanguard (Raider) and Gladiator (PvPer) by default will show up in the Vanguard listing, even though they’re also a Gladiator. Some people might want to show up as a Gladiator even though they’re also a Vanguard. Unfortunately, this would mean we can’t tag them alongside other Vanguards if we need to. So, I created the Vanguard-Gladiator rank. People who have achieved both Vanguard and Gladiator have earned the right through effort and dedication to appear before both ranks in the list, separate from the rest. This also allows us to tag either “Gladiator” and “Vanguard” and still hit the person who falls into both roles.

Thursday: 7/8 again

Taloc, MOTHER, and Fetid were 1-shots. MOTHER had surprisingly few deaths – the majority of which were to Cleansing Purge and not moving into the last room soon enough. We need to work on moving sooner.

Vectis was interesting. We had a wipe on him, due to Omega Vector stacking. With 3 debuffs, 3 groups makes the most sense. However, some people are moving around too much in Phase 2 and then the debuff stacks. Other times, people within groups are not getting the debuff. Those with heavy stacks need to remember to step out and wait for others to catch up on stacks. If you have a stack in Phase 2, don’t move!

For Zek’voz, we had another early wipe due to eye beams. Make sure not to re-enter the group too soon, and please be careful to move out! Eye Beam does NOT put a debuff on you, so if you’re relying on debuffs to tell you when to move, find another method! Eye Beam is a 2-mistake kick from hereon out.

Zul was 1-shot. Tanks did an EXCELLENT job in phase 3.

Mythrax had a wipe in the beginning of Phase 2. We simply had too many people taking avoidable damage and clumped far too close together. It can be hard with a melee comp, but the boss is very large. Spread as much as you can! And remember, interrupt often. If you’re not on this chart as a DPS, you’re not doing your job.

G’huun was disappointing. We had wipes at 2 and 3 percent. Mostly, people were not paying attention to Gaze. Raid Leads cannot call Gaze for you. You MUST pay attention on your own. Gaze is going to become a 2-mistake kick from hereon out.  Remember also that interrupting is important on G’huun. Again, if you’re not on this chart, you’re not doing your job.

Thursday Logs

Friday: MOTHER is a MFer

G’huun went down about as well as could be expected (minus fumbles with the orb on first pull) on a fresh day.

Taloc was a one-shot, but…there were problems. People continue not to move fast enough out of the group with blood in phase 1. A lot of people are starting to run to the right and then quickly readjusting to run left. That time means they dump blood in the group. I’m not sure why people run right to start. Here is a simple thing to remember: If you get a mechanic on Taloc and you’re not sure what it is, run left to start. If it happens to be Static instead of Blood, that’s ok! Keep running left if you have room. Don’t double back. As long as you run it away from the raid, Static can go in either direction.

MOTHER…whoof. We tried a lot of different ideas with groups here. Ideally, we SHOULD be moving quickly in groups of 4, staggered. (Move 2, pause, 2 more, heal up, repeat.) Unfortunately, people are not paying attention to others’ healthbars and are making this fight much harder than it is, so we’re moving in groups of 3 and 4 with less organization. Always, ALWAYS wait a second behind someone else before running through regardless. When it is your turn to run through, try to be “on deck” as much as you can (barring mechanics like laser walls). I know we like to avoid running through during winds, but unfortunately, winds may end up being one of the cleaner times we get to run through in the future.

DPS is less important than surviving. I will repeat this: DPS is less important than surviving. If you need to run to the far end of the room away from the fire in order to survive winds and dodge mechanics successfully, do it. Getting an extra swing or two on the boss but dying to fire or her frontal because you were trying to minmax won’t be doing anybody any favors. We need you alive for room 3!

Save your movement mechanics and defensives for when you need to cross between rooms. Especially between rooms 2 and 3. You may be in a group that has to book it from the far side of Room 2 to a safe spot in Room 3 with laser ceiling openings. Use movement mechanics to get across as quickly as possible so we don’t wind up with groups stuck behind.

We “killed” MOTHER, but didn’t get a photo with her. Guess that means we’ll do it again this week for a new photo op!

Friday Logs

TLDR Parse Interpretation

I found this chart on Reddit and shared it in the Raiding Discussion channel, but am resharing it here. This is an easy break down of your at a glance parse numbers when reading logs.

(substitute Legendary for Azerite and you get the idea)

If normally your overall is less than Blue and your ilvl is less than Purple, chances are you have things you can improve. Some of it’s gear / stat priority, some of it’s rotation. Check out this guide to see what the best of your class and spec are doing and see what you can do to improve!

Congratulations to the following people for attending 5 raids and receiving Vanguard status for the first time:

Miatreeleafa
Nighteld

Congratulations to the following members for maintaining Vanguard status from Legion:

Bellelina
Corignis
Harmesi
Treeson

These fine folks have earned additional gold repair bills from the guild bank and access to Vanguard – only access tabs. If you’re curious if you’re close to achieving Vanguard status, you can check on the Raid Attendance page!

In addition, we’d like to congratulate Miatreeleafa for being granted Twitch Affiliate status! This grants him the ability to receive subscribers, custom emotes, cheers, and other benefits. As a regular streamer of both our Raids and PvP nights, we’re happy to see him continue to grow! You can follow him and watch the streams at https://www.twitch.tv/nfbprototype.

With Alliance at 1460 points with 1 base captured and Horde at 1420 with 2, the final match of the Rated Battlegrounds night this week was too close for comfort. Fortunately for Ministry of Defense, Dangerkor got ahold of the flag with no time to spare. Below you can see his team has got his back – watch as Death Grip, Leap of Faith, Cyclone, and more are all used to ensure he pulls out a game-winning capture for the team.

Thanks again to Miatreeleafa for streaming and capturing moments like this. You can follow him on Twitch and Youtube at nFbPrototype. Are you also a streamer or Youtuber and want your content featured? Submit it or contact us on Discord!

Because Warcraft Logs updated and subsequently broke down for me, we’ve got short logs and a shorter Roundup this week

Thursday: 7/8, what a breeze

You can tell that the group is becoming more accustomed to working together as a unit. Taloc went down with few issues – people are getting better about moving when they have debuffs on them. Elevator is still a bit sloppy – in the future, we will likely mark a tank and expect people to stay behind the tanks, rather than expecting someone to stack behind a melee DPS. MOTHER we wiped a few times. There were rough calls on when to go through (sometimes overlapping with wind), but practice over time made this easier. Remember to use your judgement: if you get a call to move through, and wind starts up, hold off until the wind dies down. Everyone did an excellent job stacking up on their markers, though, making dodging fire much easier. Fetid was another instakill this week – I have a feeling he’s going to be a favorite on normal because of the simplicity.

After Fetid came Vectis. Vectis was problematic. We had multiple people getting multiple stacks of the omega vector debuff at once and dying. Raid Leads will work out a new strategy, but remember not to remain stationary within your group. Move around a little to encourage the debuff to bounce between different players, rather than ping-ponging between the same 2-3 people. Zek’voz was a pretty simple fight and was looking to be a 1-shot, but unfortunately we got too intent on the kill and completely ignored a mind-controlled bear tank, thus wiping the raid with his easily interrupted casts. Remember, interrupts are king and we need to focus MCed players. We also had a player confused 2 similar mechanics that need to be run away. Remember: eye beams sideways, Roiling Deceit back or sideways. Focus down those who are mind controlled or they’ll wipe us! For Zul, we employed the same strategy as last week. Tanks still need to clean up the final phase and Rupturing Blood, but the DPS was much better about managing add cleave and boss health.

Mythrax was another toughie. We downed him in 2 pulls, but people are not interrupting, and fewer are focusing on finishing up adds, favoring boss tunnel-vision. These sorts of mistakes lead to wipes.

Thursday Partial Logs

Friday: Ghuun, Heroic Progression

G’huun is becoming interesting. We wiped at 1% on the first pull, in spite of being down a warlock for portals. Interrupts were good, but could have been better. We made better use of Bloodlust by waiting longer to use it – after the collapsing ceiling and tanks got re-situated gave us a few extra seconds. We’re going to start paying VERY close attention to interrupts / interrupt attempts on G’huun starting this week. Be aware of that.

Heroic Taloc is still messy. Too many people are not reacting quickly to static or blood drops. You should be moving the second a timer goes off. Don’t wait to finish casting. Customize your setup to more easily see these warnings if you must. We’re going to be saving Bloodlust for phase 3, since phase 1 is pretty simple. The elevator strategy we’ll be employing from hereon out is as outlined above – tanks marked, party behind the tanks. Everyone should be CCing the bloods and ranged-killing them asap, while the melee focuses on killing the add stuck to the tanks. We’ll continue to move clockwise, lasers permitting.

MOTHER is getting very close. This week we got unlucky with our healer comp – druid HoTs make for difficult spot-healing on tanks soloing MOTHER on the crossover. Ideally, we’d have a monk or paladin who can keep the tank well-protected during that last crossover, before reaching the safety of other healers. If we don’t, we may be changing the strategy of the last 2 groups.

Friday Logs

Thoughts

Next week we’re going to be auditing interrupt and Healthstone usage. If you don’t use either, you’re likely to be sat from Heroic attempts in the future until you improve in normal. These are very simple things that can make the difference between a 1% wipe (or which we suffered 2 on different bosses last week) and a kill. Those who delay on mechanics like like the Taloc or G’huun puddles will also be similarly benched from Heroic attempts. These show a lack of awareness to your surroundings and will hold back a raid as large as ours.

We were very pleased to have gone 7/8 in 1 night. The sooner we breeze through 8/8 in one go, the sooner we will set up an alt / farm night on normal, to focus on pushing heroic progression for our main raid days. This is good for everybody!

This is also the first week we hit max capacity for raid size at 30 people. “First come, first serve” is likely going to start coming into effect here, and we’ll have to start consider split raiding.

Last Saturday was an LFR run. We had 10 people come, and it was a good time. I got lucky and was made leader of the LFR, so was able to use Raid Warnings to talk to the group. You could see where most PUGs followed directions and minimized the wipe chances we had (some ignored it, as they tend to). If you don’t want to LFR during the week, come on Saturday for a guaranteed easy and relaxing run.

Congrats to the guild for getting their first heroic kill on Taloc last night! Remember, if you want to raid with Ministry of Defense, there is actually work you have to do like reading the guilds’ raiding rules, properly confirming you have done so with a Warlord and preparing by watching the appropriate boss fight videos. All the information you need is here:

https://www.ministryofdefense.net/raiding/

Last night, we hit 10 Gladiators in  the guild! I just want to thank Deathhoss and Miatreeleafa for helping out so much lately, with the influx of new members and new content!

Congratulations to Cynicalstaff, Bizatch, Dangerkor, Frostlich, Foxlauncher, Torchwarrior, Warvoxi, and Wendal for getting this spicy new promotion and becoming part of the cool kids!

 

If you would like to join the likes, check out https://www.ministryofdefense.net/pvp/ and read up on the Rules and Regulations, or contact myself (Lunzzul/Judaspriest) or Deathhoss! Everyone is welcome!

If you’ve ever wanted to watch MoD raids, Miatreeleafa (AKA nFbPrototype) streams on Twitch.TV from time to time! We’d love to encourage more of our creative members to stream our content – raids, PvP, M+, and more!

If you missed his stream tonight, check out this highlight featuring Truetype:

Or, you can rewatch the whole vod (and its ups and downs) over at https://www.twitch.tv/nfbprototype. Here’s also got the video on youtube up here. Give him a follow while you’re there!

Are you a streamer who showcases MoD events or play? Feel free to send an Officer a link to your stream and we’ll showcase you on the site on the Raid or PvP pages!

Never raided? Afraid of LFR trolls or PUGs demanding perfection on week 1? No sweat!

We have an event for Saturday 2pm PST / 5pm EST on the calendar for an LFR run!

LFR is a good time to get your feet wet with raiding, and if we can get a decent-sized guild group, it will mean we control the pace of the LFR. We can cover basic mechanics and help pass gear around if it’s needed.

If we get a decent amount of interest, we’ll make this a weekly event (and maybe move the day, again depending on interest). Otherwise, think of this as a one-time go to get drunk and run through LFR with some friends on a weekend afternoon.