Moving Forward

Tonight was a clusterfuck to say the least. For those who weren't sure what happened here's the scoop. Sunday night, we did 25 man heroic SoO with the plan being to flip to 10 heroic on Monday night and do progression. We saw last week that while first 8 bosses were relatively smooth, once we hit Malkorok/Spoils/Thok we were carrying too much weight in order to get to where the team is on 10 man. Heals and dps were both too low to make any significant progress on Thok. Logs are posted on WoL and Warcraft Logs for anyone who isn't sure if their dps was good or not (heads up: if it was under 300k it was not good enough).

Had this plan worked things would have been smooth sailing. We'd be actively trying out new recruits for WoD while simultaneously achieving the goal of killing Garrosh before WoD. However, Blizz saw fit to kick us in the nuts and ruin our plan. To be fair, we should have researched this idea to make sure it would work before tonight so it's certainly our fault and lesson learned.

So our options for the next 5 raid lockouts are to either continue 25 man/recruiting for WoD or just do straight 10 man progression. The goal of the raid group has always been to kill heroic Garrosh before WoD so the choice is clear. We don't have the ability to clear it on 25 man so 10 man progression it is. That also means that we're going to be extending the raid lockout every week until Garrosh is dead.

We've got more than 10 people that are geared and capable of killing Garrosh which means that some people will have to sit out while we work on certain bosses. Ideally we'll kill Garrosh with a couple of lockouts available to ensure that we get as many people the achievement as possible but the initial Garrosh raid comp will be based on performance, attendance and group makeup.

If you are late we're not waiting for you. If you can't figure out how to log into mumble we're not waiting for you. If you get hit with Shockwave/Saw Blades/Missiles/etc repeatedly you will be sat for someone who can avoid the bad. We've run out of time and patience and can't afford to wait for people to get better at the game and we can't afford to waste time waiting for people to log in. We've got a strong team of 10+ people now so we will not hesitate to sit someone. This goes for everyone (including me, some nights I suck).

I don't want to sound like a dick but the goal has always been to kill heroic Garrosh and we've run out of time. We have lost raid weeks to attendance, to performance (Malkorok and Siegecrafter attempts anyone?), and to entertaining the idea of recruiting for WoD. We are all at fault for not being done with this tier.

As far as the roster goes for these 10 man raids it's going to vary based on performance, raid comp, attendance, etc so I would ask that raiders be online before the raid is scheduled to start (6:45 server time). I know we've said this a million times and yet every week we're waiting for 1-2 people. If you log in after 6:45 server your spot will hopefully already be filled and you can watch the achievement spam as we kill heroic Garrosh without you.

As always, feel free to ask questions either here in this thread or talk to myself, Cheeko or Iffi directly.

Totally agree.

I have always said that if I am fucking the monkey I would sit myself so I think it's not too much to ask the same of others.

Seems Legit " title="Very Happy" />

I shall admit...the 25man and fire, SUCKED! I'll be working ten fold on pushing my numbers to be ready when needed " title="Very Happy" />

If 5 weeks from now we are still progressing on H Garrosh 10 man would that change anything for anybody? My warlocks guild did the same thing, they were 25m and wanted to finish out the tier so switched to 10m. Granted they were 12/14H in 25m, they quickly downed H Paragons in 2 nights and began working on H Garrosh immediately...granted they are a 3 night a week guild (I can't raid one of their days). That was 2 months ago, they are still working on H Garrosh (they are making it to phase 3), they have also been adding days sometimes raiding 4-5 days a week.

I don't want to be pessimistic but 5 weeks is a very short time for a 2 day a week guild to down the last 2 bosses in a tier. It's simply about time on boss and attempts for the most part unless most of the raid group has downed those bosses before that I don't know about.

H Garrosh is a 12-13 minute fight that ZERO people can make ZERO mistakes. A couple of months ago I would have been all for it, but after seeing the other group struggle hard on the boss with higher ilvl than ours for longer than we have left I'm wondering if it's the best decision.

We'd just have 5 weeks less time to recruit good quality players for mythic when it comes out.

I just wanted to post a different view on this, either way is fine with me.

I agree with nearly all of this.

But some things to point out for future raids and such:

One thing that slowed us down a good bit was strat changes.

Im going to use Siegecrafter as an example for this one, just because this is the one where it was focused on more.

We tried like 3 or 4 different strats then what we ended up killing it with. I understand that trying to find a strat that works for us is ideal, but at the same time slamming your dick in the door enough would help people learn the "
general strat"
.

We ended up killing siegecrafter with basically the first strat we attempted, ages ago. So we need to focus on picking a strat from the first week or two, and just focus on improving that strat. I do think that would give us a few weeks more time on content in the next expansion.

Not a HUGE difference, but trying to shave off a few weeks " title="Smile" />

@ Schloop

yes
yes
yes

I might be in the minority, but i want to add more time to our raiding week. I know people have lives and shit, but is it too unreasonable to add 1 more hour to the tail end of each of our nights? Who can't do this and who is up for this?

I am in for adding extra time.

Actually, reading more upon Schloops post, it only makes more sense now.

We have 7 weeks til 6.0 drops. Once that happens, we have 4 weeks for Garrosh. We have new talents, new styles of play at this point. We will need a few weeks to optimize on how things work, optimize gear, and get a feel for things. If were progressing like we are now, its basically only 7 weeks to kill Garrosh due to this and boosting the roster in-raid by another 10 people. (You saw 25m Thok, 5 less people wouldn thave made that easier.)

Things to take into consideration: We have only killed Blackfuse once. ONCE. Havnttouched it since then. Who is to say were just going to go in and kill it now? It could still take us 20-30 tries a night. We havnt touched Paragons yet. While its core is easy, we know how that goes. Take a look at Malkorok...

I honestly think our time would be best spent doing 25m at this point, and getting a few solid recruits for when 6.0 does drop. When 6.0 drops, if we have a solid group, maybe we can progress to where we currently are at least. Im not saying we will Kill Garrosh, as I highly doubt that.

My only thought behind this is a lot of people want to kill Garrosh before the expansion ends. However, in 6 months when you link that heroic garrosh achievement, no one will care. it will be "
outdated and old"
. We can always just come back at 100 and own H Garrosh.

I'm inclined to agree with Schloop and Ashe. It Might be better to stick to the 25man recruitment option. Also it gives the roster we currently more time to get to know other people's habits and movements. I for one like to know who I am playing with and how they move, react, and sometimes who's voice is who!

There will be alot of cesspool players that we'll find in our recruitment...but we did find some cool and interesting people! I Only say this as we need to consider the long term rather then the short term of killing Garrosh. It would be AWESOME to kill him pre xpac...but we can't have our cake and eat it too.

In the End, we need to decide what is best going in to Warlords. More people? or flashy "
I Killed him"
.

I'm gonna touch on a few peoples posts here.

Strat changes making us take longer on fights.... This is absolutely necessary, especially on a fight like Siegecrafter. We needed to find a strat that worked to the best of people's abilities because as the many attempts prove people can't seem to figure out how to target switch, avoid shit etc. If people executed the first strat properly then we could have went with it and just continued but night after night of going over logs crying meant needing to try other things to get a kill. Our original strat was anti-mines. The strat we used to kill siegecrafter (anti-missile) was one we used over 3 weeks.... not even close to being one of the first strats we tried.

5 weeks is not a short amount of time. Will we have as many attempts at bosses as groups that raid 3 nights a week.... no. Can we kill 2 bosses in 5 weeks? Absolutely yes! If people know the fights and execute properly we will have a kill.

The average ilvl of our core group is 584. You can't get much higher then this, we should blow through this stuff. People just need to focus and stop dying to bad.

5 less people on that Thok attempt would have absolutely made it easier. Take a look at the logs and remove the bottom 5 people. Instant improvement! We are carrying too many people to do a proper 25 man. As fun as it is to run those groups it is a waste of time for half the raid group to just do the 9-10 bosses that we can clear while carrying people.

We are going to go hard on these 2 bosses and we have raiders capable of doing it. The reason we require a group online is that if someone is not performing and keeps dying to stuff you will be replaced on the fly with someone else that is online so we can continue. No one is safe from this. If I keep dying to amber pools then Slater will remove me and bring someone else in so we can efficiently continue.

This is not impossible... it is just hard. If you aren't ok with going strong to finish this tier up then let us know now and go ahead and use Open raid to find groups until 6.0 drops.

I would rather spend 6.0 ->
Expansion Launch on looking to figure out the core team and bench. Once 6.0 drops (that is the expansion pre-patch) the mount goes down to 1%, the Feat of Strength is removed, and 20-man mythic is implemented for SoO. If you care about killing Garrosh after that go in at 100 and crit bosses for 20 million (that is not a joke that is how old world soloing will scale).

For now lets step it up, have people ready on the bench DURING THE RAID, not waiting to see if they get an invite then log off, that not a good attitude to have. I know that is easy for me to say because the likely hood that i get benched is low. But im telling you thats what i would do. I will sit in vent, online, going over logs if people load them after wipes. I know if me sitting on the bench helps progression it will make the fight 100x easier when i come in during the following weeks. You have given 10 other people the knowledge they need to kick ass (case and point wiping on thok ~80 times, to now we can 9 man it)

Kind of a rant, w/e

Couple of quick notes here:

Regarding strat changes, pretty much what Cheeko said. We formulate what we think is the best way to go about killing a boss, try it, look at the logs to see what is working and what isn't and make adjustments from there. Anti-mines was definitely not working because people couldn't be bothered to target switch to missiles and people liked to hang out in the empowered lasers. The logs clearly show who was switching to missiles or who stood in the fire to 5-6 stacks. So we needed a strat that minimized those 2 things since they were usually the biggest killers.

Siegecrafter is a special case too because there are so many different ways to go about killing him. Most bosses don't have that many different strats that work.

Regarding an extra hour per night: I'd be down for that if it's an effective use of time. I find that a lot of people get tired after 3 hours of raiding (especially if we're working on the same boss all night) so an extra hour might end up being a waste of time as people start dying to easy mechanics. If we continued to make progress during that extra hour I'd be all for it though.

Regarding Garrosh (achievement and mount): Coming back at 100 and killing him won't give you the Cutting Edge achievement. That's a prestige achievement that goes away with 6.0. If we're willing to just come back at 100 and do it instead of killing him now we should have just called the raid 2 months ago and saved the headache that was Siegecrafter. We could have just been doing 25 man to Spoils each week while recruiting people or taken the summer off and come back in October to recruit. It's crazy to stop trying now, especially since we've beat arguably the hardest boss in SoO (next to Garrosh).

Also, the mount is still available in 6.0 as per [url=http:
//us.
battle.
net/wow/en/blog/14014199/siege-of-orgrimmar-changes-in-patch-60-and-warlords-of-draenor-5-5-2014:h7mhmdfs]this post[/url:h7mhmdfs]. So we have extra raid lockouts to get more mounts before WoD.

I know we're short on time and the hardest boss is still in front of us but I know that we can do it. We'll be extending every week so we're not wasting a night on the first 10 bosses in SoO. We'll have a bench online and ready so as soon as someone decides not to interrupt properly or dps the wrong target or get hit with the cone of doom we can remove them and bring in someone fresh. We're in a much better spot than we were 2 months ago so we just need to finish strong.

One thing I think needs addressed is how mount will be rewarded. I see it being brought up in a lot of these post and I jokingly asked in good yesterday about it. After I asked I got a few whispers about it.

7 weeks out for 10m still. Being realistic, we can get about 4 mounts in that time. A lot of people seem concerned that it will go to officers and "
cliches"
of the officers. Most people agree on that if you helped participate in the kill you should be able to roll on it.

So, for the people of the guild that asked me, how will Mount be rewarded (if and when we get him down)?

So, technically we have 11 weeks before the mount is not a for sure drop.

I am not ready to quit.

On the adjusting strat thing. Yes, adjusting things to be better or easier or whatever is fine. Siegecrafter though, we were literally changing the strat what felt like every other pull. There is a point where changing it too much is like wasting progression. I feel like we blew easily 75 wipes on that boss fucking around changing strats.

Slater and Cheeko are very thorough and research the living fuck out of these fights so I know it's not a strat issue. It's a adapt and overcome issue on the raids execution. If we go in and realize hey this isn't working yeah slight adjustments is fine but completely overhauling everything every 4-5 pulls... Not so much.

[quote="
Iffi"
:2m1ob7en]So, technically we have 11 weeks before the mount is not a for sure drop.

I am not ready to quit.

On the adjusting strat thing. Yes, adjusting things to be better or easier or whatever is fine. Siegecrafter though, we were literally changing the strat what felt like every other pull. There is a point where changing it too much is like wasting progression. I feel like we blew easily 75 wipes on that boss fucking around changing strats.

Slater and Cheeko are very thorough and research the living fuck out of these fights so I know it's not a strat issue. It's a adapt and overcome issue on the raids execution. If we go in and realize hey this isn't working yeah slight adjustments is fine but completely overhauling everything every 4-5 pulls... Not so much.