Overall Raid Recap as of now

So based on last Sunday where I caught the last 3 pulls of Margok and after looking at the logs for a while, as well as my own experience killing it on my own, this is what we are doing wrong, because for some reason it either hasn't been said yet or people are too lazy to look at logs (Or use common sense) and fix their mistakes. This is just an example for one specific fight (I don't feel like explaining every single fight in one post) but the moral of this post can and needs to be applied to every single raid night. Now let's get into what is going wrong for Margok.

1) Mines. This is embarrassing that it's even still an issue for a mythic raiding team, but mines are still being stood in. It's on a timer and you have like 3 seconds to sidestep like 5 yards. It's also a giant glowing circle on the ground to hint you to move if those first two crutches aren't enough.

2) Branded. I still don't think people understand how branded works, which can easily wipe the raid by itself if not handled properly. If you still don't understand how to handle branded, then you need to research more and it really shouldn't have to be explained to you, but for the sake of argument I will. Phase one, if you get branded passed to you and it is at 4 stacks, just run it away from the raid so it falls off. Easy. Phase two, same thing with 4 stacks, except there is the ring around you that you CANNOT run out of, because you will look like an idiot, and you will potentially blow up a mine if you are teleported back into it, so just run as far away from the group as you can while staying in the ring. Phase three is when we have to be a little more loose with the moving around so there is a bit more personal responsibility with paying attention to branded, however you no longer have the circle so it's easier now. The reason the stacks are taken a lot higher is because the range in which it jumps each stack will now decrease in much smaller increments so 6-7 is around where it should ideally be falling off. Phase four because we are spread out and because force nova starts doing a fuckton more damage and branded will now jump to two people on the first jump this time, we wanna get rid of it sooner, and the very few times we have made it to this phase we have failed handling branded every time. Getting it to 10 stacks means the last few people who had it were not paying attention at all, and when it gets this high, it will start to one-shot people.

Another problem we have with branded is when it is in melee. If someone in melee gets branded, they need to run it to a ranged. It CANNOT be bouncing around melee for the entire phase. If you have to get off the boss and lose like 5 seconds of dps VS healers ooming themselves because we have to keep people alive during their mistakes, I think the choice here should be obvious.

3) Intermissions. First and foremost, the easiest thing that can be corrected yet is still a problem is being fixated. It shouldn't have to take people yelling at you to get out for you to get out. You get fixated, you run away from people, it's not the hard, and if you get the slowed debuff and need it dispelled, just ask for a dispell or a Hand of Freedom or similar spell. Next is the rate at which the exploding adds are dying. This needs to be coordinated WAY better so we can optimize our survival cooldowns. Whoever is tanking the exploding adds needs to be communicating when adds are going to explode so we can prepare for it. Another thing about the exploding adds is that there shouldn't be like 5 dying at the same time, they need to be staggered better, it's just unnecessary mana being drained from healers just so that we don't wipe because people are mindlessly spamming AoE onto the adds.

4) DPS and Healing. According to logs we are not doing the damage we should be doing with our gear level. Now I don't know every classes dps rotation or what their logs should look like or what button they need to hit when, but I do know people shouldn't be under 20k dps ever, especially when the majority of people who did not pull the numbers they should have are at 660 item level or higher. That is just plain unacceptable, and is disappointing that some people aren't taking the steps to improve their personal play.

As for healing, honestly I do not think we are using our raid cooldowns very wisely, meaning we aren't using some of them when we should, or are unnecessarily throwing out a cooldown when it isn't needed. Again here, I don't really know entirely how each healer class works, but am talking in a general sense.

Reason four here, while important, isn't the biggest reason why we cannot kill this boss. We still should be parsing higher, but we could all be doing a consistent 30k dps and hps and still blow up mines and stack branded too high and everyone still dies.

5) Miscellaneous improvements. Damaged stated in another post that phase three is our problem area, and isn't entirely wrong, we are doing that phase fairly incorrectly but not just specifically how he stated however. There are multiple correct ways we can handle the positioning of the boss here, but how we are moving as a raid currently is not very optimal. As he stated, ranged still being relatively stacked is important to optimize the area for dropping mines, and also for ranged dps and healers so we have less moving and more casting. We could use the four corner strategy or just stick with going back and forth, but the problem either way is that ranged need to still stay clustered around the center so we will also be close to the boss no matter where it is taken. The abberation add does not do a knock-back in this phase so we have more freedom as to where we move to when mines spawn. In addition to all that, as I stated previously, our incorrect handling of branded is also adding additional unnecessary damage taken to the raid. One last tidbit that is easily remedied is Force Nova, and all we have to do better when this is cast is run through it quicker to minimize the damage we take from the ticks from it.

I suggest that everyone needs to be looking at the logs every single week, see what they did wrong or could be doing better, and fix it. Here is a link for those who for some reason maybe didn't even know that we logged: https://www.warcraftlogs.com/guilds/2234.

As for this fight specially, there are TONS of information out there on how to execute it correctly. Two good resources are, but not limited to, the [url=https:
//www.
youtube.
com/watch?v=5q8Vsjcb_Ko:1wsx2od7]Fatboss video guide[/url:1wsx2od7] and the [url=http:
//www.
icy-veins.
com/wow/imperator-mar-gok-strategy-guide-normal-heroic-mythic:1wsx2od7]Icy Veins written guide[/url:1wsx2od7], as well as hundreds of class PoV uploads on Youtube to see how you should be playing your class specifically here.

So please, please, please everyone, wake up a little bit and put in some more effort here. If you haven't read the guild policy yet, you need to, because some people are just not respecting any of these rules. Links for the lazy: [url=http:
//www.
sadisticteam.
com/viewtopic.
php?f=9&
t=3:1wsx2od7]"
The Raider's Bible"
[/url:1wsx2od7] &
[url=http:
//www.
sadisticteam.
com/viewtopic.
php?f=9&
t=2:1wsx2od7]"
Who we are, what we do"
[/url:1wsx2od7]. (Two most important reads about the guild and raid.)

Edit - Typos and such.
Edit 2 - Fixed wording on a few things.

Good post.