Oct 4/5 2015 Raid
Myrmidon
Baron von PuttenhamCalifornia Icrontian
Looking for a little discussion regarding next week's raid.
We have currently split the raid into two parts - heroic Sunday and normal Monday. I'd like to know where you'd like to go. Here's how I see it:
heroic Sunday: At the moment, we are skill-limited on Iron Reaver. Folks are taking more damage than is required, which leads to us switching a DPS over to the healing corps, which leads to us being DPS limited during phase 2. This is something we can successfully beat, but it will require Better Raiding (TM). Alternatively, it will require the presence of one of our high dps/high heals 'guests,' but this is kind of an unsustainable thing to rely on. I'd rather we get better at raiding than pass the boss on someone else's merits.
...I actually have a whole big philosophy on this if we're going to continue to raid heroics, but I'll save that for another time.
normal Monday: I am currently thrilled with our position on Mannoroth - we had him at 0% with our core(ish) group, and then downed him after @Celsh arrived. We are working on Archimonde at the moment, and he has about a million phases. I'm sensing that we're rather close to getting phase 1 down to muscle memory, so I'd like to work P1 and P2 next week (with the obvious possibility of P3+ if P2 goes well).
The question I have for you:
How do YOU want to budget the raid time?
Do you want to just spend both days on Archimonde? Or do you enjoy splitting between heroic sundays/normal mondays? Maybe you'd prefer to see 100% heroic, because you have the purple fever? Someone mentioned 'heroic only if we have the carries,' which is a viable alternative (although it teaches some of our less diligent raiders that they can get by only half-knowing the fights, which is a mindset we need to get out of if we're going to tackle heroic in earnest).
Comments
I'd just really like to focus on finishing Normal, getting this shitlord down, and then 100% focusing on heroic, practicing, getting people to focus a little better, becoming better raiders, etc. I'd for sure like to get my tier chest on Mannoroth N because goddamn. I have a feeling if we finish Normal, mentally, we'll all be a little better focused on heroic progression. There's a bit of a mental gymnastics thing going on with this switching back and forth that I'm not super convinced is good for focus.
I would also like to focus on completing 13/13 Normal before we devote ourselves to Heroic. I would like to earn the achievement for Archie, which is kinda the bar for pug groups for farming him. There is my two cents on the topic.
I, like the previous two, personally would like to focus on Normal.
Specifically I feel I still need some gear, especially with what ilvls are recommended for the fights we've been trying. I know I'm probably gonna have to PUG those in the earlier parts of the week though since the raid seems to have moved on. Not as fun but will get the job done hopefully. I also feel Normal can be treated as a good practice for Heroic fights since the room for error isn't so bad. For example, if people can master taking little if any extra damage on Normal Iron Reaver, they should be much better at Heroic. In theory since numbers tuning is the difference between Normal and heroic.
I understand that's more time spent not on current progression though and is far from what the raid wants though. So highly unlikely but just throwing it out there for consideration.
I mean, if we're being frank, we need the practice.... but we need to go into the fights with the mindset that it IS practice, not "ho hum I can just chill and do my deeps and stuff and I won't die."
There are a lot of people doing this, because our healing corps is usually overpowered enough that they can get away with it. I wish I could find a better way to practice than rushing face first into iron reaver or something, though.
One heal through normal? Much more personal responsibility would be required.
MOAR RESPONSES PLS
I'd like to farm the last part of normal for maybe a couple of weeks, along with working on shitlord to down that bastard and get the Achivement. I feel like if we get a majority of us with nice set bonuses, working on heroic will be much easier. That said, I really really really hate tanking the same boss over and over all night if we're not making any progress (see heroic iron reaver)-- it's very exhausting and hard to keep up morale. So maybe run through the second part of normal fairly quickly on sunday, then hit on Archi all night monday and we can throw in a heroic first boss for some spice?
There are two pieces I need to finish out my normal set. Need bosses: Velhari and Xhul'horac and of course Archimonde. other than that I would like to start hitting Heroic at least half of one night?...I dont think it would take us long to down the normal bosses people need for a little more gear....just my opinion and imput.