Progression Raiding and the Holidays

Apparently, my guild hasn't been following my amazing advice on how to get Mythic kills, because we've been stuck on M Tectus for a week and a half. With the holidays forcing less than ideal comps and a lot of off days, our ranking has fallen precipitously from how well we were faring at first. It's come to a point where we're becoming disheartened, faced with the harsh reality that after all the work we've put into beta testing every boss and splitting main/alt raids for the first time, our place is still firmly situated in the semi-hardcore bracket.

While there is yet an adequate amount of time to turn this around, we're still left with the post-Brackenspore depression from our pace of progression not meeting the high expectations we held at the start of the tier. By the time everyone is back from celebrating New Year's, we need to have learned to cope with this potentially crippling disappointment like many guilds experienced at the end of Firelands or on H Siegecrafter. Surely, a night of transformative revelry full of new hope and resolutions for a better year will be enough to inspire our raiders to come into Highmaul once again with a strong determination to perform like world-class players. Or it could just end up the same kind of situation in which we don't quite meet the level of success we anticipate and fall into despondence again.

Thus is the inherent danger of New Year's and all its hype of fresh beginnings only for people to succumb to the human failings of lack of discipline and perpetually procrastinating change, but I don't give a crap, because I LOVE NEW YEAR'S!!!

<3Avia.

RP Your Life! Guide to Mythic Raiding for the Semi-Quasi-Antepenultimate-Hardcore

I let my resources pile up! >_<

The past couple of weeks have been a crazy mess of packing, moving, and frantically trying to find an apartment, but don't worry, guys! I have my priorities in order, and I have been raiding Mythic Highmaul all the while. Sitting at 3/7M so far, I have analyzed what exactly it takes to get those coveted Mythic kills.

Gear

Obviously, gearing out of those ilvl 630 pieces will make any raid encounter easier, but it's not enough to just raid normals and heroics. Merely raiding is not a guarantee that one will get drops, and the rule of Highmaul seems to be that any gear that does drop will be horribly itemized. What will make those prized trinkets and weapons finally coin-roll is if one spends all the gold s/he has an hour before raid on crafted items that will immediately be replaced and thus turn into a complete waste of money. Not doing this will ensure that the only drops in raid will be hunter gear and healing plate, so don't even try to save up for that Alliance chopper.

The Pull

Since it's vital for a DPS to execute a perfect pull in order to end the fight with decent numbers, it is important for one person to maximize his/her own DPS by casting way too early and screwing over everyone else's pre-pot. If the entire raid isn't yelling "goddamnit!," then they might as well start over.

Execution vs. RNG

When it comes to killing bosses, there are two tactics a raid can follow. The first is execution, which my current guild employs rather adeptly, i.e. not standing in bad, planning for upcoming mechanics, reacting to the ones that force people to adjust on the fly, and pushing throughput. Or a raid can go the RNG route and just try again and again until the stars above Draenor align and any mechanics that can kill people end up not bothering anyone at all. Sure, it's annoying when someone is standing where they're not supposed to be and Tectus puts a pillar right underneath him/her, but it's awesome when everyone is running around like an idiot and the mountains happen to get perfectly placed anyway. If every attempt was that ideal, then it'd be a Mythic kill for sure!

A Banging Soundtrack

While voice chat and boss mods should be the primary focus of one's auditory attention during raid, there's no denying that having music playing in the background is a great way to keep up energy and stay hyped during what can arguably be described as a somewhat monotonous activity. It's easy to get drained when going through pull after pull of unforgiving yet predictable mechanics, and having that appropriately soothing raiding soundtrack will help offset the boredom and/or frustration of spending four straight hours watching people take inordinate amounts of fire line stacks. Occasionally, listening to music a little too loudly might cause a particular warlock to miss important instructions and then end up blindly following a mage that blinked into a corner to iceblock through something that she definitely cannot survive. But hey. Beats.

Fuck All

And then, sometimes, all of the planning, execution, and perfect play of one's class becomes completely irrelevant, and all it takes to get a kill is for a single person to die to something incredibly stupid and sacrifice his/her DPS to make everyone else look great.


*sigh*

-Avia.

The Week in Highmaul

 

After the frenzied rush of leveling for two days followed by an unnerving raid-less calm for two weeks, I am once again entrenched in the middle of almost nightly group content. Currently, I am hanging out alone at the Darkmoon Faire, finally taking the time to relax with a mug of what is probably disgusting tasting alcohol and reflect on my week running two alt/main split raids in Highmaul. With 6/7H bosses down and Imperator still to go tomorrow, my guild has been performing... as expected. No need to hype it up, people. It's only "heroic" after all. Come Tuesday, we're going to start getting our asses handed to us by OP class stacking, bench drama, and oh yea Mythic mechanics. But for now, it's just a lot of hours and the feeling of accomplishment when we finish encounters for the first time. After all, regardless of how satisfying the actual fight was, in the end, a nerdgasm is a nerdgasm.

Check out our kill videos below for what we've cleared so far, and stay tuned to see if we have as much trouble with Imperator as other guilds did!


-Avia.