This will be my last wrap-up until BfA and Uldir. pre-patch is going to be hectic, and we’ll be focusing more on personal changes to classes and how to raid with those changes, than on raid mechanics.

Wednesday: Heroic Lower

We had a few new & returning players to our heroic run this week!

Imonar we got a little too excited and too hasty on, with crossing the bridge the second time. We’ve become a little overconfident, and a little lax in being careful. As a result we had a wipe at only 6% health left. Raid Lead Reminder: stay behind the tanks! There’s no point in getting there first and missing heals or stepping in something bad.

Kin’Garoth, similarly, had a few mechanics issues. We had early Ruiner deaths across the board. We try to give ample time for calling out Ruined ahead of time, but you should all have timers that show when these things are being cast (especially you new folks). Raid Lead Reminder: Keep an ear out for important callouts. Ruiner and balls are both avoidable medhanics. We’ll do our best to help you by making others cut extraneous chatter.

Varimathras had tank issues again. Our first pull was really good. After that, we could barely get between two movement rotations before wiping. Once we got those issues sorted out, we downed him.

Wednesday Logs

Saturday: We did it, Reddit!

WE DOWNED COVEN!

It only took us 3 attempts that night. Basically, we needed decent RNG on the add phases. If we could have everyone up for the healing adds, we were golden. We finally got a good one, and took those bitches down.

After that, we rolled onto Aggramar for a while, and then Argus. Aggramar had 4 wipes, including one that was very nearly a kill. Mostly, we’re struggling on add management and CC. Our first add phase will often go well, while the second…is a mess. We also had the large adds brought too close to one another, or too close to smaller adds, on a couple occasions. Aggramar is….aggravating…and requires us to be very precise in our movements.

Saturday Logs

Sunday: Bonus Argus Kill

I didn’t take logs. We killed him, for the first time, with no PUGs. It was great to get one final kill in on Heroic before the squish and great to do it “alone”. It’s been a great season and that was a lovely way to wrap it up.

Monday: Alt Night

First off, we had no wipes. That doesn’t happen much, especially not when we go for a record-setting 9 kills on raid bosses.

We had a very good and relaxed time. We had multiple tanks at points, multiple people under our minimum requirements (last night before squish – why not have some fun with it?), and plenty of fresh faces. We hope you guys will come back! Here’s some quick tips on the various fights:

Garothi: DPS should run decimation to the right-hand side of the screen.

Coven: Melee should never be on Noura; make sure not to stand close to one another when we have lightning adds; don’t stand in the middle during flames!

Aggramar: Everybody did a great job. We can tell that the newbies did a great job listening to raid lead calls and really worked hard here. We had only two deaths!

Argus: We could use a few more DPS paying attention to when orbs spawn, and some of the blights were messy. Make sure to bring blights back as far as possible in phase 1. Conversely, move the buff drops to the right. Be good about practicing only interrupting the proper spell on normal, and by the time you face Heroic, you’ll be a-ok!

Felhounds: Nobody died. I got the Charhound. Can’t complain 😉 Ranged, be sure to stack tightly on the blue (ranged) marker unless you have the fire mechanics. This will prevent hardships on the healers, and is good practice for heroic, when fear becomes an issue.

Eonar: It’s hard to mess her up these days. Enjoy the free tier pieces!

Imonar: We had a few people who didn’t quite understand sleep canister, but repeating directions of where to stand or go, I could see that listening comprehension was pretty good in this group. We rearranged and moved together pretty well. Lasers were an issue – I had to call out too many people who needed to move to one side or another. Be sure to watch videos of this fight, and pay attention to your in-game warnings! We also had a ton of people simply plow over mechanics on the bridge back across. Much like on heroic, wait for tanks to go first (unless you’re REALLY self-assured).

Kin’garoth: Some of you died to avoidable mechanics like Ruiner. And not many were stacked properly. It’s incredibly important that after you dodge a mechanic, like Ruiner, you get back to blue as soon as possible. It is better for you to stop DPS and run, than to stop-go-stop-go and mess up the raid with bad Ruiner placement. This week was no problem, but next week, Raid Leads will be naming names on who is not standing in the right spot. It’s not about shaming you, it’s about making sure you can make things easier on the tanks, healers, and your fellow DPS. The other advantage to standing on blue is that when Ruiner comes out, you can run in the direction of where you’re supposed to go next. This is especially important on heroic – dodging Ruiner in the direction of Yellow or Purple will make it easier for you to get to that location when you need to, thus increasing your DPS output 🙂

High Command: NOBODY died? Woah. Great job, healers! And tanks and DPS, I guess. DPS, make sure to stack behind and to the left of the boss, and be sure to dodge bombs that get placed under your feet. Again, Raid Leads will be naming names in the future instead of making general comments. Again, not to shame, but just so you know to pick up your awareness on some things a little more.

Monday Logs

Final Thoughts

Congratulations everyone on a wonderful Raid Season and expansion in general. We started coming together this year for raids and I’m super proud of how far we’ve come. I know the other Raid Leads are as well. I know we’re all very excited for BFA and for Uldir, and I know you are too.

Please take a few minutes to read our plans for raiding until BFA launch and Uldir launch.

New guys, I hope you return. Veterans and old hats, thanks for sticking with us.

Here’s to an amazing Battle for Azeroth.

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!

Tonight was another PvP event. Recently promoted Guild Champion Bighoss writes:

“After a slight hiccup on grouping together, a few brave souls started the PvP event for the night. We did our best to bring honor to the Horde! Fflarn, Fistlok, Gulluthord, Lvana and I fought with great tenacity. The first rated battleground didn’t go as planned, but we didn’t let that stop our hopes! Everyone showed vast improvement compared to last week’s attempts.”

Congratulations, you guys! Take it from a raid leader, there’s a lot of work that goes into forming a team and working together cohesively. That you’ve already seen improvement is wonderful. Keep it up!

“We then did one Kotmogu Brawl and to our surprise, pulled out the win!”

Guild chat was lit up with Temple of Kotmogu Victory & related achievements.

“To all who came tonight, thank you. I hope for many more in the future. And to Lunzz, even though you weren’t there, we tried to make you proud. PVP events are planned on the calendar. We would love to see you all on the glorious field of battle!”

We’ve got a lot of PvP planned! Now that the raiding season is winding down, we hope you’ll join us. I myself will be spending most of the next few days in Ashran, as both Ashran and Strand of the Ancients are disappearing in the BfA prepatch, which is confirmed for the 17th (4 days away). If you’re more of a battleground kind of person, there’s another Rated Battleground night planned for Tuesday, and a Random Battleground night planned for next Thursday. Take advantage of the battleground bonus event next week!

In honor of our recent PvP pushes, I’ve added a new category to the posts on the website: PvP. Now you’ll be able to view all PvP related posts in one convenient location! Stay tuned for other exciting events in the PvP lineup, and how we intend to give improved support for this new direction from the Ministry of Defense.

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:

A big thanks to everyone that came out to the For the Horde! achievement on Tuesday. We had 27 people show up! It was a great time had by everyone. Lunzzul was unfortunately out of town and couldn’t make it, but big props to Bighoss for leading the attack and showing all of us the best way into various cities. Between good entry paths and quick mage portals, we finished our run in under an hour (really around half an hour if you discount all the dicking around before our first go).

Following are a ton of pictures and a synopsis!

Continue reading

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)