2% wipe on Chronomatic Anomaly on our last raid night.
We lost a vital player who was tasked with a specific job and couldn't scramble to fill it fast enough.
Another couple of people died and we hit the enrage timer.
It was the last attempt of the night and our best by some distance although the last 4 or 5 attempts had seen some excellent progress.
That was the first of our two raid nights... what do we do on the second night?
After coming so close to the kill, particularly following the progress leading up to the last attempt, we feel like we have the fight won.
We've twiddled and tweaked the tactics (far too much) until we found something that worked for us (the original tactics) and now we just need to execute it properly and the boss will surely die.
Should we go back to push for the kill?
Or should we clear Heroic again for more gear?
We are going to do both!
Jump in on Mythic, kill Chrono (sorry Chrono), have a quick look at Trilliax, clear Heroic... go to The Winchester, have a nice cold pint and wait for this all to blow over.
Not a chance in hell.
Most likely we will take a few attempts to get the kill on Chrono but mainly I am just hoping we don't get bogged down with it all night.
Trilliax is an unknown quantity.
It's supposed to be fairly easy (but so was Chrono), it would be great to have a look at him and see what we need to prepare for next week.
How much time that will leave us for Heroic is anyone's guess but I'm thinking Elisande and Gul'dan will be safe this week.
They are the bosses we really need kills on, the ones that hold the best loot, but also the ones we are least likely to 1-shot.
Not me by the way. I don't need anything from those later bosses, my loot drops from Chrono (trinket) and Trilliax (Tier cloak) so it would probably suit me better to push Mythic.
I can easily see us staying on Mythic for the whole night... take some time to kill Chrono but get there in the end.
Trilliax gives us an early peek at the kill but then strings us along for a while as we try to recreate that early attempt.
No time for Heroic.
I wouldn't even mind if we concentrated fully on Mythic from now on but people need gear from those heroic bosses and we were instructed not to pug.
I'm pretty sure this all stems from us spending too long farming bosses in HFC.
We could have pushed on much sooner and maybe cleared the instance but we were always farming and farming for minor upgrades.
In the end we ran out of time as people burned out on the content.
We almost made the same mistake again in Emerald Nightmare but scraped through on the last night and everyone is keen not to put ourselves in that position yet again.
So now it is a delicate balancing act between farm and progress, even in the same night.
I just hope we can pull it off.
Edit:
The decision was taken out of our hands as two people couldn't make the start time.
We were forced to go Heroic, 1-shot everything up to Gul'dan but had a few wipes on him before we got the clear.
That only left us around 20 mins to have a go at Chrono on mythic and one of our healers DC'ed as we switched.
He didn't make it back before end of raid time.
On the plus side, I got my 4-set and am now 900ilvl :-)
Its always been a delicate balancing act between farm or progress. Now though there are definitely more options as blizzard have introduced ways to skip to latter bosses and it is no longer a straight forward choice of farm or start at progress boss. Ok even back in the day there was ways and means of skipping content like taking someones alt to the farm night to get the lock for the next week. So now its all alot more user friendly but firmly puts the ball in the raid leader's court as to what to do for the best.
ReplyDeleteWhat would i look to be doing in a similar situation if i was leading well for sure id be wanting to make sure we were still farming at this stage esp the latter bosses which given the relatively few kills had by the team will surely hold plenty of loot for the team. At this point it will be obvious i dont raid much, id be looking to skip the first 3 bosses by now (im thinking this is the point to which blizzard has put the quest too skip to) if people still need loot from any of these then you would hope they could find a fresh run somewhere or just accept that that piece wasn't meant to be. And any how the sooner they start being killed on the higher (mythic in this case) level then again the chance to get that piece comes along with the bonus of it being a few I levels higher.
The trouble though usually isnt with the raid leaders decisions it usually comes from more vocal people in the raid group who to be blunt are only in it for themselves and will push to farm or progress depending on what loot they need or have. They will shift reasoning to suit either situation. This is where a strong leadership team is needed and stick by their decisions and not be put off by a vocal minority. Again though if this is the voice of many the leaderships decision should be reviewed and the majority listened to and catered for.
Moving on and introducing some numbers how many times should we be killing a boss. Of course luck plays a massive part in this but im going to say at least 10 for any boss for any raid size. If a person has a significant piece of loot from any boss they will be using a coin so really 10 kills is 20 chances. And lets face it before the introduction of the bonus roll how many bosses where we killing 20 times+ unless we couldnt skip it by some means. First kill is by definition first kill and the next 2 or 3 aren't going to be too much easier although the expectation of killing it caertainly will be higher for most bosses and teams i think we can say a boss is in on farm after 5 kills so these visits are purely through necessity to access the next boss or choice for gear. And if its only for the latter and more gear is being discarded regularly than is being used then if skipping is an option then it is surely time to skip no matter how much 'mr. I Need' insists on farming for his extra +10 crit upgrade.
I think people lose sight of the real goal here. It is not to gather BiS heroic gear, or get enough gear so that you top the dps meters.
DeleteThe goal is to make sure the raid, as a whole, has enough gear to kill the next boss.
The number of kills is irrelevant because it isn't the gear we are missing that's important... it's whether the gear we have got is enough.
Despite it's flaws Loot Council has made sure that virtually nothing has been wasted and our whole team is 900ilvl or higher, Heroic only drops 890-895ilvl gear.
There are still some upgrades in there but, to be blunt, who cares?
We have the gear to go for bigger fish.
There are a couple of exceptions, the tier sets hold massive power so they are worth chasing. I was the last in our raid to get the 4-set though and I would have happily pugged to get it.
There is also at least 1 trinket that is ridiculously overpowered too, I think it's the melee one this time (Assurance of consequence?), so that is probably worth chasing.
I just feel that, with only having 2 nights per week, time is far more important that minor gear upgrades.