Progress vs Rotation...

The big debate raging among the officers now is how to handle our roster of 25 raiders.


Our old system had a 'core' 20 raiders with 3 or 4 'support' raiders coming in to cover when someone had a night off... this fell down because our core were ultra-reliable and all turned up to every raid for weeks on end, meaning the support never actually got a chance to raid and eventually got bored and left.


When someone did finally need a night off, we were scrabbling around for someone to fill in and even pugging sometimes to avoid cancelling the raid... far from ideal for Mythic progress.


Our GM has recruited a few extra people now so we always have enough people but he hates benching anyone and we have to go through the rather torturous process of picking those benched people each time.


To make it 'fair', our GM decided we needed a rotation system to make sure the same people didn't keep getting benched over and over again.  That would be the same as our old core+support system, just without telling the support that that's what they were.


With this in mind, I figured we could have everyone open for rotation on our farm night then pick the best 20 available for whatever boss we were progressing on at the time for our progress night.


For example, we are currently progressing on Antoran High Command which is mostly an AoE-fest so...  I wanted to bench our lowest AoE dps - 2 BM hunters, 1 Rogue and 1 Frost Mage who are consistently lowest on our Heroic kills - They would get plenty of opportunities for the kill in future but it's a small attempt at min-maxing to get our first kill.


The first fly in the ointment was one of our BM hunters who is extremely resistant to being benched... one of the main reasons she applied to join our guild was our old core raider policy so I have some sympathy for her but ROTATION!
She went on holiday, taking full advantage of our expanded roster, before we implemented the rotation plan anyway but the GM is concerned she will leave.
It turns out she isn't the only fly and a few other people have now spoken up about their dislike for the bench.


One of our officers suggested just not rotating those people that are going to complain but I couldn't see that working particularly well for any length of time.
Another officer suggested complete rotation with making sure all roles are covered being our only consideration, the fairest of fair systems.


The GM was not happy with any of these suggestions... so I came up with a plan to cover ALL of them!
My plan was to have everyone rotate, has to be that way really, as a starting point.  But, beyond that, I set up a new 'core' of raiders that would only be benched on our farm nights with everyone else being benched on our progress nights.
Over a 5 raid period, all of our players would be benched once but we still had our top players available for progress every time.  I won't go into any more detail but it was a solid plan that covered all eventualities.


Submitted it to our GM, we went through some what-if scenarios, and he was happy!
We tentatively (and secretly) put it in place before our progress raid on Monday, benched some people, and went to raid.


Despite our best efforts (4 wipes at <5%), we failed to kill AHC and I should have predicted what happened next...
Wednesday farm night rolls around and our GM wants to push for the AHC kill so refuses to bench any of the new 'core' players.  This throws the whole rota into an absolute mess as we can't fit everyone in now and still keep the core for progress nights.


Personally, I don't really care what system we use but we probably should have a system of some kind in place if only so that people know where they stand... or, more importantly, I know what's going on if they ever ask me!


I thought my initial solution gave us the right balance of rotation and progression.


What do you think?
Any different or better ideas?

Ahead of the Curve - Antorus - Part Three

The raid naturally splits into these three areas and I think this is where the skip mechanism brings you once you've collected your 4 McGuffins.
It's a natural split in difficulty too, Coven shenanigans aside, although the curve is quite gentle over all of the first 9 bosses.

Aggramar

Our plate users were drooling over his sword, Taeshalach, which can actually drop for transmog purposes.  It does look bloody cool!

The fight itself is a lesson in avoiding fire which gets progressively more difficult as the fight continues.  In the final phase, I find myself tending towards the headless chicken routine and still haven't mastered Icefury so my dps is close to non-existent.

There are a couple of really interesting aspects to the fight though...

Taeshalach's Technique is reminiscent of the 'dance' you had to perform for Will of the Emperor back in Mogu'shan Vaults. 
Do you remember that?
It was a series of telegraphed moves you had to avoid for a damage buff.  I remember finding it quite tricky at the time, definitely on the first few attempts at least.
This incarnation is only for the tanks to deal with and doesn't have much depth to it, seems like a missed opportunity to me.

CC all the things!
There are a couple of transitions in the fight where the boss is immune to damage and some adds spawn.  A couple of big adds to keep the tanks busy and a few smaller adds for the rest of us.
These smaller adds just move slowly towards the boss - If they reach him, they explode for raidwide damage and leaves a debuff for more damage from any more explosions.

On Normal, you just kill these adds off before they reach the boss.  It's pretty easy, they don't have much health.
On Heroic, it gets much more interesting!  You can still kill the smaller adds but after a few seconds they just reform and continue their journey to the boss.
You need to CC all of the adds and release them one at a time to reach the boss as the debuff from the previous one runs out.  It's a level of individual responsibility and coordination that isn't needed on any of the other fight.
Having a DK grip each add in at the right time makes it a lot easier but it is still a step up in challenge, particularly with all of the fire-dodging going on.

Argus the Unmaker

Wow, this fight is spectacular!
I'm going to do my best to avoid spoilers here because I really feel like this is a fight you should experience rather than read about in a blog.

I barely know where to begin anyway, so much going on...
Multiple phases
Big buffs to make you OP
Big bombs to blow up the raid
Even a bloody Cone of Death!!!

Visually stunning, it is a superb way to end a raid (and possibly expansion)
Normal mode seems well tuned but I think Heroic is lacking a bit of bite, although reports suggest that is more than made up for in Mythic.

Those 'epic' moments are few and far between when you have been playing the game for a long time but this fight really brought them back, hope you enjoy it as much as I did!

Summary

If, as expected, this is the last raid of the expansion, then I can't complain.  The bosses are fun for the most part and although the setting does get a bit 'same-y' after a while, it looks incredible and Eonar/Argus offer a touch of variety.

On Heroic, the bosses were not quite challenging enough for our group but that is probably more down to gear than anything else.  I've been keeping an eye on the progress of some old friends (who didn't raid Mythic ToS) and it seems nicely tuned for them.

We're now pushing on for Cutting Edge after a break for the holidays, I'll keep you posted!

Alt Shenanigans - Arms Warrior??

11 of the 12 classes at 110 now, only Monk to go.

I had some lofty goals of running tem all through invasions each week, gearing them up with Relinquished tokens and eventually collecting all of the class mounts.  It seemed like a better idea than running around Dalaran on my main, looking at the groupfinder (but not applying for any groups).

That didn't last long to be honest, felt like too much of a chore.  It did get me playing all of them though, and sometimes one would grip my attention for a while so I would do some World Quests and LFR on it.

Since abandoning the invasion plan, I just jump on whatever alt I feel like to just go do stuff!
Recently, I've been enjoying the Arms Warrior of all things.
It has the simplest of simple rotations, on par with BM Hunter and Havoc Demon Hunter as the easiest specs to play, but there is a certain satisfaction to be gained from hitting something really hard with a big sword!  :-)

I originally levelled the Warrior because they kept destroying me in PvP... I can't remember why I was doing PvP now but I was doing some random BGs and always struggled when I came up against a Warrior. 
I didn't do any PvP on the Warrior, I stopped doing it on the Shaman and forgot all about it, so he sat around for the last few months without even leaving his order hall until the invasion plan started.

Still not doing any PvP on the Warrior but I'm now playing it on the side, it's up to er... 2nd or 3rd alt, which is high indeed for a class I've pretty much avoided for all of my WoW life.  It has even edged out the Mage, only my pipedreams of one day being a Paladin tank are keeping it from going higher (Timewalking last week, content for making you feel good about your tanking ability :-) ).

A couple of runs through LFR and a few WQs, I'm now considering doing some real content with him!  Maybe run some Mythic plus this week, I doubt I will reach the 975ilvl that pugs want for a normal Antorus run though.  The old guild is gathering to raid once more so maybe some opportunities there.

It's exciting being at this stage with a new class, so much content ahead of me and no rush to clear it... I'm going to have to name-change first though, can't take him seriously at the moment xD