Guild is looking to start Mythic

[Deterous]

Hi everyone.

I'm currently a member of a guild that will be pushing into Mythic shortly with the aim of being able to clear the next raid tier on mythic difficulty. So what i would like to know from any of the raiders here is what would you say is the most important things for raiding mythic?

Some additional info is that we will probably run with only 20 members so we won't have any backups so would at least 1 alt be a requirement?

[Deleted]

Recruit. A guild that stops recruiting is a dead guild, so when you say you will run with only 20 members, no, you wont. This is a recipe for a very quickly failing guild. Having an alt wont matter if you only have 19.

However, if you guys really want to go for it, important things for your raid team is that they are all equally as good as each other in their respective roles. There is no point in having one stand out dps for example. The rest will have to step up if they can. Another very important thing is that your entire raid MUST be able to take criticism on the chin without drama. Hurt feelings are irrelevant to the raid but can cause problems down the line.

How fast can you clear BRF on heroic right now? If it is taking you more than about 3 hours, then you might want to think again. If it is taking more than 3 hours, what is the hold up? Are to many people going AFK to often? Are you wiping? Organisation is key.

When you do wipe on a boss, how is the atmosphere afterwards in both chat channels and your voice server? Do the problems get identified quickly and dealt with or do you wipe to the same mechanics often? Mythic is more punishing, so wipes will happen more often and especially in progress.

[Deterous]

Yeah we are always recruiting and currently have two teams that are up till 9/10 Heroic, normally takes around 2-2:30 hours for us to get up till 8/10 so once we get Blackhand down it should be around 3 hours for us.

Yeah noticing that a few members may need to step up their game a bit but that can be handled through recruitment.

Thank you for the input, I'll be sure to use it since a number of our team are wanting to push to try to get at least 5/10 Mythic before the next tier is released.

[Socialhealer]

going into mythic you want your raiders to know all the new mechanics they will be facing, for example beastlord, a very easy fight for most, but for heroic raiders 9/10 it's unforgiving compared to heroic where fails won't result in huge pressure on healers or just instant deaths.

for example, pack beast aoe means nothing, people saving ANY dps to aoe them down are being carried
the 4th beast and it's epicentre needs to be handled properly
pinned down in the last phase is a 1 shot no raid has the dps/time to break it out not on a first kill
knowing after the 4th beast dies his health is doubled so you need every bit of dps and lust to squeeze that kill before your healers are out of raid cds and people start dying.
rend and tear really must be done properly or the damage gets out of hand
dispelling needs to be fast on conflags or you can get conflagged into a pinned down with bad luck.
assigning dispells to bosses and the beasts savage roar? buff is also important
also every class knowing it's strengths and tricks on an encounter

having all this knowledge before you go into a fight can save you literally hours of wipes, and this goes for every boss, my guild had such terrible preparation we wiped more times on beastlord mythic than we did on blast furnace mythic.

[kamuimac]

have two teams that are up till 9/10 Heroic

with the aim of being able to clear the next raid tier on mythic difficulty.

i would advice to not do it- and by it i mean seting goal as full clearing mythic if your current progressis only 9/10 H at this point of patch you will only hurt yourself by seting main goal as clearing whole mythic unless next tier will take forever and heavy nerfs like ICC/DS :/

Set your goal to start and clear as much as you can but dont lie to new memebrs and yourself that you have capabilites to fully clear mythic im;ess you will implement really very drastic changes to raid policy -_-

[Deterous]

Yeah i understand that a full clear might not be possible so I believe the guild would be able to clear at least half of the bosses within the next tier on mythic as long as we are able to have everyone performing to the same level which seems to be the hardest part now.

[netherflame]

Meters aren't everything, but execution is.
Sure its great be great on meters but the mechanics are pretty unforgiving, you can't cut corners.

[Count Zero]

Recruit. A guild that stops recruiting is a dead guild.

This. For a 20-player mythic team you want at least 25 players, so you have enough bench spots and folks with alts that even if you're missing two healers and a tank on a night for any given reason you can still raid.

[Deleted]

dps/hps does not matter, mechanics, movement and awareness does

[Asethi]

Hi everyone.

I'm currently a member of a guild that will be pushing into Mythic shortly with the aim of being able to clear the next raid tier on mythic difficulty. So what i would like to know from any of the raiders here is what would you say is the most important things for raiding mythic?

Some additional info is that we will probably run with only 20 members so we won't have any backups so would at least 1 alt be a requirement?

Here's some advice I can give you as someone who has been raiding since TBC (currently 14/17 Mythic)

First off this difficulty of raiding is very challenging, almost as difficult as sunwell back in TBC. The guilds who are clearing content before the next raid is released are the ones who deserve to. You all need to realize that you will be wiping...A LOT. These fights take great coordination to the point that 1 wrong mess up due to someone failing to mechanics is most likely going to cause a wipe. You need to all have patience with each other and not get mad when someone messes up when learning a fight. Try to do as much homework as you can before hand as a group over mumble/vent, about a month before this expansion came out, every tuesday before raids we would get in and go over a few bosses and what they do mechanically and what we needed to do to prepare, we all took notes like we were in some sort of classroom and it helped us very much (cleared 6/7M highmaul with wipes on imperator during p4 before BRF came out)

The most important thing that you can do personally is stay up to date on your class and compare how you play with your current skill level to people who have cleared the same content. See what talents they are choosing, see how they play their class, try to gain as much as you can by watching videos so that when the time comes to execute you can be the player your guild can count on to do the job you're supposed to do. Look at every mechanic as something that you will have to react to and know how to handle it at any given time.

As far as a bench goes we have about 8 people at any given time that we swap in and out on fights for. It is always to good to have an alt if filling a bench is hard to do. There have been times where we yell when someone messes up during progression, but that's just how this game is for the most part. At the end of the day we all still love each other and none of us take it personally. You should be able to handle constructive criticism, and not take it as an insult to your playing but look at it as someone trying to help you by suggesting something they might potentially see as better that you don't see. Being number 1 dps on the meters does not mean anything if you are choosing to aoe adds over prioritizing single target boss damage.

I guess I am kind of talking about multiple of things, but if you have any other questions or just wanna talk hit me up for some help!

Just to take in our wipe count for Highmaul Mythic without any of us doing any PTR

Kargath - 5 wipes
Twins - 60 wipes
Brackenspore - 120 wipes
Tectus - 80 wipes
Butcher - 65 wipes
Ko'ragh - 70 wipes
Imperator - 175 wipes getting to phase 4 before BRF - 210 wipes total

So yeah TL;DR -
Expect to wipe, don't get mad if it takes time to kill a boss. Learn your class to the best of your ability and try to do homework as a whole before fights come out so you are going into the fight knowing what to expect. Most importantly have fun with the ones you raid with, don't let hours of wiping on a boss all night destroy your guild/ruin friendships.

[femur68]

Here's a question I want to pose to those further progressed Mythic guilds out there.

I'm a raid leader and my guild is currently 4/7 M HM, 10/10 H BRF (we are just wrapping up 6/7 M HM before we head into M BRF for progression's sake and to give our Mythic team some grounding). We only raid two nights a week progression-wise, then have an optional farm night on Sunday for Heroic BRF.

We currently are running with ~23-24 players on our Mythic team, but ideally want to be at 25 (it was 25 until a couple weeks ago when I had a few people drop out). We are recruiting right now to try and bring that number back up.

Currently, how we do rotating raid members is we have 5 spots designated in the raid team that are "rotational" spots. This means that these 5 spots house our 10 rotational players, and we give each of the rotational raiders one night of progression (either Tues or Thurs) each week. Typically, I send them a schedule of who is raiding what day ahead of time, so they know if they need to be there or not. Then, if someone calls off, I can call on the rotational players who aren't raiding that night and have them fill in, or at least that's what the systems original intention was to be.

What's been occurring lately is the following. I will tell the five rotational players that they will need to be there on either Tues or Thurs. Then, someone calls off, whether it be one of our 15 starting players or one of the rotational players. Then, when I go to contact the rotational players that hadn't been scheduled that night, they can't raid because they'd already made other plans or whatnot for that evening and are unable to raid. So, in reality I have no backups. This is an issue I've been trying to solve lately, but can't seem to think of a proper solution that doesn't involve me being an asshole, like making everyone show up whether they were raiding or not, etc. I know its my job as a raid leader to be that asshole sometimes, but I'd just like to see if there are really no other options before moving to that type of plan.

So finally, my question is how to other further progressed raiding guilds manage their backup players? Do you make them get on, then just sit online and wait for raid to be over? Or do you do something else?

[Huntingbear_grimbatol]

Being benched if your spec is just plain bad for a fight is something smart players will just accept to increase the guilds chances to down a boss. You shouldn't recruit people for the bench- you have a bigger roster than needed to easily swap out underperforming people- doesn't matter how much you like them or not.

If you're having a hard time with something the best solution is often just to get rid of it faster. If tgat means killing a mob sooner than you'd like, dispelling differently, using heroism differently and so on.
*edit*

Oh and one more thing.
Just because a class / spec is in theory the best to deal with a mechanic doesn't mean the dumbfuck is able to do it.

[Deleted]

dps/hps does not matter, mechanics, movement and awareness does

I have to say that this statement is wrong. Both things are important for mythic difficulty. If you want to raid mythic, yes you need to deal with the mechanics. This includes the mythic mechanics along with the other mechanics that you more or less ignored on normal/heroic. If you do not learn to deal with this you will wipe.
Not every boss on mythic requires perfect execution, our first Flamebinder kill was quite bad if I recall. But the harder the bosses are the more punishing mistakes are.

But you cannot ignore dps/hps. A guy who does every mechanic perfect and is not able to break 20k dps is, despite his mechanical awareness, a dead wheel. Almost every fight on mythic have a certain requirement of dips/healing, even if it not the enrage timer.
- On beastlord p4 is a dps race.
- Gruul have a quite tight enrage timer
- Oreborger id more forgiving in terms of enrage but still you need to meet it.
- Hans and Franz is the only boss where I think perfect execution makes dps/hps irrelvant
- Flamebender have her dogs that you need to kill fast and at the same time
- Kromog have his pillars of stone
- Thogar have his adds
- Maidens have p2 (or the sub 20%)
- Furnace have its primal elementalists
And so on.. This was just small examples.

If you want to progress on mythic. Make sure you have players that knows how to do mechanics while ALSO pushing their dps/hps to the limit.

[uihsongshi]

Sure its great be great on meters but the mechanics are pretty unforgiving

[Summer]

Here's a question I want to pose to those further progressed Mythic guilds out there.

I'm a raid leader and my guild is currently 4/7 M HM, 10/10 H BRF (we are just wrapping up 6/7 M HM before we head into M BRF for progression's sake and to give our Mythic team some grounding). We only raid two nights a week progression-wise, then have an optional farm night on Sunday for Heroic BRF.

We currently are running with ~23-24 players on our Mythic team, but ideally want to be at 25 (it was 25 until a couple weeks ago when I had a few people drop out). We are recruiting right now to try and bring that number back up.

Currently, how we do rotating raid members is we have 5 spots designated in the raid team that are "rotational" spots. This means that these 5 spots house our 10 rotational players, and we give each of the rotational raiders one night of progression (either Tues or Thurs) each week. Typically, I send them a schedule of who is raiding what day ahead of time, so they know if they need to be there or not. Then, if someone calls off, I can call on the rotational players who aren't raiding that night and have them fill in, or at least that's what the systems original intention was to be.

What's been occurring lately is the following. I will tell the five rotational players that they will need to be there on either Tues or Thurs. Then, someone calls off, whether it be one of our 15 starting players or one of the rotational players. Then, when I go to contact the rotational players that hadn't been scheduled that night, they can't raid because they'd already made other plans or whatnot for that evening and are unable to raid. So, in reality I have no backups. This is an issue I've been trying to solve lately, but can't seem to think of a proper solution that doesn't involve me being an asshole, like making everyone show up whether they were raiding or not, etc. I know its my job as a raid leader to be that asshole sometimes, but I'd just like to see if there are really no other options before moving to that type of plan.

So finally, my question is how to other further progressed raiding guilds manage their backup players? Do you make them get on, then just sit online and wait for raid to be over? Or do you do something else?

You're trying to be nice with the "don't have to show up if you're not raiding" thing but you're making it impossible for yourself.

Either stop posting rosters altogether for a while or pick a few standbys who need to be around. Have repeated last minute cancellations on one person lead to consequences - loot ban or getting sat for for a week etc.

Basically you have to be a bit evil sometimes to make sure things are running if being nice is failing :P

[Sting]

I hate to be that guy, but if you haven't killed blackhand heroic by now you're going to really struggle with mythic next tier. Existing players should really work on stepping up their game, and you should start recruiting asap. I can tell you right now that having just 20 core players isn't going to cut it either. If one guy cancels, your whole raid is cancelled.

You also state you're only a member of the guild, not an officer or GM. How do you plan to convince the leaders of your guild to recruit new players and thus replace their old ones? How close is your raid team as a whole? To be fair, if you really want to raid mythic, I'd suggest finding a new guild instead of relying on your old guild to improve by leaps and bounds in the span of just a single tier.

- - - Updated - - -

Here's a question I want to pose to those further progressed Mythic guilds out there.

I'm a raid leader and my guild is currently 4/7 M HM, 10/10 H BRF (we are just wrapping up 6/7 M HM before we head into M BRF for progression's sake and to give our Mythic team some grounding). We only raid two nights a week progression-wise, then have an optional farm night on Sunday for Heroic BRF.

We currently are running with ~23-24 players on our Mythic team, but ideally want to be at 25 (it was 25 until a couple weeks ago when I had a few people drop out). We are recruiting right now to try and bring that number back up.

Currently, how we do rotating raid members is we have 5 spots designated in the raid team that are "rotational" spots. This means that these 5 spots house our 10 rotational players, and we give each of the rotational raiders one night of progression (either Tues or Thurs) each week. Typically, I send them a schedule of who is raiding what day ahead of time, so they know if they need to be there or not. Then, if someone calls off, I can call on the rotational players who aren't raiding that night and have them fill in, or at least that's what the systems original intention was to be.

What's been occurring lately is the following. I will tell the five rotational players that they will need to be there on either Tues or Thurs. Then, someone calls off, whether it be one of our 15 starting players or one of the rotational players. Then, when I go to contact the rotational players that hadn't been scheduled that night, they can't raid because they'd already made other plans or whatnot for that evening and are unable to raid. So, in reality I have no backups. This is an issue I've been trying to solve lately, but can't seem to think of a proper solution that doesn't involve me being an asshole, like making everyone show up whether they were raiding or not, etc. I know its my job as a raid leader to be that asshole sometimes, but I'd just like to see if there are really no other options before moving to that type of plan.

So finally, my question is how to other further progressed raiding guilds manage their backup players? Do you make them get on, then just sit online and wait for raid to be over? Or do you do something else?

We don't have backup players. Everybody is part of the raiding team (about 25 people atm). The setup on progression is basically the players with main characters that are best suited for an encounter (i.e.: if hunters are strong on a fight, we'll prefer our hunters over other ranged classes). Usually a tier is diverse enough to give everybody their time to shine. The players that are benched for a fight are required to be on standby either ingame or on TS so that they can log in if they're needed. Once progression is done, the raid setup is entirely dictated on a fight-to-fight basis based on who needs loot.

Stop telling people in advance if they're needed or not. If they're part of your raid team, they're expected to be available during your raiding hours. Being designated a rotational players is basically the same as being called "team 2", a situation which I would avoid.

[Deleted]

We don't have backup players. Everybody is part of the raiding team (about 25 people atm). The setup on progression is basically the players with main characters that are best suited for an encounter (i.e.: if hunters are strong on a fight, we'll prefer our hunters over other ranged classes). Usually a tier is diverse enough to give everybody their time to shine. The players that are benched for a fight are required to be on standby either ingame or on TS so that they can log in if they're needed. Once progression is done, the raid setup is entirely dictated on a fight-to-fight basis based on who needs loot.

Stop telling people in advance if they're needed or not. If they're part of your raid team, they're expected to be available during your raiding hours. Being designated a rotational players is basically the same as being called "team 2", a situation which I would avoid.

This is ideal. However most guilds, still progressing on mythic will have players of different skill. You may have two mages; mage A and mage B. Mage A is better than mage B, more dps and dies less.
My statement is that mage B will sit more on the bench than mage A.

@Femur68
Most guilds do have a sort of rotation group. A group of players that they are more likely to bench than others. However they do not proclaim it and tell them that they do not need to be there for specific nights. This is what you are doing wrong imo, despite it being a very sympathetic move.

You can consider it a bit like sport. If you are on the bench it is often because there is someone else better than you on your spot. So it is your job to proof to your leaders that you deserve a spot in the raid team. If the time spend on the bench is unacceptable for a player, then maybe he should find somewhere else to raid.

My advice. When you are progressing on a boss, try and bring the best setup you can (class wise and player wise). Stop considering it a social club, where you want everyone to get a "fair" amount of raiding. I would not be surprised if some of your 15 core group members are annoyed if you have to do progress with Player X, who is worse than Player Y, but due to your rotational group, X is in and Y is out.
Bring the best players/classes for progress. You can bring the worse ones for farm so they can proof themselves.

[femur68]

Thanks for all the advice guys. I really appreciate it. Even though I've been raiding leading for going on 4 years now, there's still a lot I have to learn when it comes to large roster management. I'll talk it over with my officers and see what they have to say on the topic. Our server is pretty small, so it's pretty hard to find players with the progression mindset. The skill-creep in our guild though is slowly building, and we're getting to the point where we're starting to push server first kills on boss fights (yeah I know at 4/7 M HM we're pushing server first kills laugh it up rofl). I'm hoping one day our guild will be able to defeat a final boss on Mythic before the raid tier ends and without the help of things such as the ICC or DS raid debuffs.

[Kazuchika]

Some additional info is that we will probably run with only 20 members so we won't have any backups so would at least 1 alt be a requirement?

Then enjoy cancelling every raid when one person can't make it.

[Deleted]

Then enjoy cancelling every raid when one person can't make it.

If they are on a decent pop server, they could easily pug a dps or maybe a healer for the first few mythic bosses. There are bound to be some average skilled players with no active raiding guild or there could be some decently geared alts from more progressed guilds willing to tag along.

With my alts on Sunday nights I occasionally pug the first few mythic bosses with some lower progressed guilds on my server if nothing it going on that night.