Good Habits Lead To Good Times

Thok down! gj.

What was the difference between last week and this week?

Understanding an encounter. Really understanding an encounter. We were miles away last week, we added very little gear, if any, to the raiders in the week in between, and yet this time a Thok kill was within reach. The difference was a thorough understanding of the encounter - enough to be able to action that understanding into a successful accomplishment.

It's a reminder to us that for every encounter, we need to evaluate "What's the mechanic that will wipe you?" In the case of Thok, it is Frenzy - more especially, uncontrolled frenzies. With Nazgrim, it is waves of too many adds.

The opposite of a wipe is success. Tailoring our approach (ie. having a strat that we perform) to prevent the wipe is what enables us to succeed. In the case of Thok, it was managing the Roar Phase (phase 1) better and controlling when Thok went into Frenzy Phase (phase 2) and how long we permitted him to be in Frenzy Phase.

Obviously, dps and healing are significant factors - however they are mainstay contributing factors to the strat and are not themselves the key answer to the wipe mechanic.

Having gear isn't enough. Knowing how to play your class isn't enough. Knowing how to play your raid role given your class isn't enough.

You have to understand the wipe mechanic and the strat to prevent the wipe - and understand it enough that you can take concept to successful performance.

This is what I witnessed as the difference between last week and this week.

Keep up the good work - research the next fight and UNDERSTAND it!

Thok - For reference

Impromptu 10M Normal

An impromptu 10M Normal mode into Wing 1 arose Thursday evening and while we zoned in planning on just going to see Immerseus, we ended up clearing all the way to almost Norushen down. For impromptu, it wasn't bad at all to get two bosses down in 3 hours. That being said, it also reinforces in a friendly and positive manner that we have more time to work in Flex difficulty before we are ready to efficiently clear enough bosses in Normal difficulty given the hours we have available to raid.

By no means does this replace a guild raid event nor was that it's intent -- it was no more than just an impromptu "hey let's go do this for fun!"

Flex will continue to be a focus for the scheduled raids at least for the next 2-3 weeks. After 2-3 weeks, the later wings will continue to be Flex even if we shift to Norm for Wing 1 -- more especially because we are likely going to have more than 10 ppl interested in Wings 2-4.

Raiding Tune-Ups and Tweaks

All,

We will spend the next several months polishing our raiding craftsmanship, clearing content, and going back for missing achievements. The latter two are obvious and require no explanations. Draw your attention to polishing and improving our raiding craftsmanship.

Our guild benefits from having truly great people to spend time with. Also, when we bend our attention to polished craftsmanship in our raiding skills and awareness, given sufficient gearing, we clear everything in our path.

Not to rest on our laurels, and to shake off the dust from taking things a little too casually in the past year -- can you legitimately assert that you take the basic raiding good practices of pre-potting and timely potting during each attempt?! -- we are going to raise the bar again and polish that raidcraft!

5.5 Flex difficulty until we "skill up" and reliably can efficiently take down the Flex difficulty content. Then we will move on to 5.5 Normal difficulty of the same content. By keeping the skills honed and polished, we won't have to dust off old skills when 6.0 arrives and instead can focus on gear collection as we press through LFR -> Normal -> Heroic.

We will keep the focus of the guild raids to align with our principles of Fun and Respect. We will strive for inclusiveness and structure the raids accordingly, however the players have to pull their weight and take accountability for improving lest they be party to holding the raid back -- which is not fun nor respectful.

We will take the next 3-4 weeks to REALLY polish.

We will take the following 3-4 weeks to shorten SoO 5.0 Flex to 2-nights a week, with wings 1-3 the first night and wing 4 the second night.

After that, we will add 5.5 Normal difficulty to the mixture in quantities that make sense based on the ease with which we are clearing Flex difficulty.

Think about where we are and that will paint the picture of how much polishing we need to get done!

We are focusing on QUALITY, not QUANTITY of progression.

All focusing on quantity ever did for us was slow down progression. If by any chance, your focus is on quantity or a harder raid difficulty than what we are currently not clearing, get your head into the quality program or get out of our raid group. Thank you very much.

We are looking for improvements in Knowledge and in Performance. The learning and training encounters are the first and second weeks at most; after which, we should all know the fight and be improving our performance of the strats. Long before that, we should all have improved our personal performances. Weeks 3, 4 and + are NOT the time to be learning to not stand in the bad!

Wasting other peoples' time with unnecessary wipes is neither fun nor respectful -- get your act together and polish your raidcraft so that you can participate in us all improving our raidcraft as a raid group.

On that note, please take due notice of the following and govern yourselves accordingly:

1. Keep the environment fun and respectful, and to the best of your ability, friendly and harmonious.
2. Time Management - time being, obviously, the most precious resource to every human being:
1. Do not waste other people's time - it should go without saying, however this is one of the areas that we have the most polishing to do. There are too many basics here to write them all out, use your head and be mindful that we are returning to a desire to spend more active time raiding during a scheduled raid than time spent standing around waiting to raid
2. Courteous notification if you will NOT be present or will be late (we expect you to be there, that is the default, tell us if you will not be there so that we don't wait around)
3. Performance:
1. Be prepared with knowledge
1. Know how to play your class
2. Know how to play your class in a raid to the benefit of the raid
3. Know the strats for the encounters and know how that relates to your role in the raid
4. ANTICIPATE (based on the previous three areas of knowledge) what you have to do next and act accordingly -- ie. be able to APPLY your knowledge usefully
2. Be prepared in your gear and supplies
1. Raiding 101 - all gear reforged, enchanted, gemmed
2. Have buff food, flasks, pots BEFORE scheduled start of raid
4. Good counsel - Accountability
1. Be accountable for yourself and your performance - that means not just taking blame, but taking action to prevent there even needing to apply blame
2. Provide good, positive counsel before, during, and after raids to help others improve their raidcraft so that the whole group can do more, have more fun, accomplish more things we set out to do
3. Hold people accountable in the most friendly manner and without reprisal
5. Attendance - Be there, or have communicated your absence in advance to a raid officer

These are not optional.

We enjoy raiding with you. Please make it so that you adjust with these simple improvements so that we can continue to enjoy raiding with you!

= )

Cheers,
-Beartooth

New Expansion! Positive Impacts!

New Expansion Announced!
It is that exciting time, again! Blizzard has announced that there will be no 5.5 and that all their staff are focused on the next expansion, Warlords of Draenor, or version 6.0. With the proposed changes come several that impact our way of play (in a positive way) for which we will prepare for in advance.


Gear swaps stats with spec swap!
Blizzard has announced that gear (excepting trinkets, cloaks, and jewelry) will be spec-agnostic and that the stats on the gear will change according to the spec that you are in - including tier sets and set bonuses. Obviously, this is a huge boon for gearing up much faster for all of your chosen specs. ie. as soon as you have gathered the main gear slots in one spec, you will by definition have gathered all of gear for your other chosen specs' main gear slots leaving only the trinkets, cloak, and jewelry of those specs to gather.

The impact is that we will have more time to focus on the skills required for a progression fight in the new expansion because it will take less time to gather the gear that enables us to get to that progression fight sooner. ie. we will spend less time on the earlier bosses gathering gear (as ostensibly every piece of gear would be useful to the spec you are primarily in, and most of the gear will be useful to your offspec, too!)

Flexible-sized Raids was a Success and is now expanded!
It has been announced that LFR difficulty will be a flexible-sized raid (10-25), as will be Normal difficulty and Heroic difficulty. In addition, present LFR will be named LFR in the expansion, Flex will be named Normal, and Normal will be named Heroic. Presently named Heroic difficulty will be named Mythical in the expansion and will be restricted to exactly a 20-man size.

This has several implications to us:

• we will be able to do LFR difficulty together, if we so choose to schedule it rather than do it individually with the masses, and not have to endure the Sunday Night Madness that is LFR today (and ostensibly, the quality of the player base in LFR will drop significantly since the better players/guilds will LFR together without the unwashed masses.)
• we will be able to do Normal difficulty together today the same way we do Flex together, and it appears that we will then be able to do 'Normal' difficulty and still have the benefit of being able to include our friends from other servers.
• we will be able to do Heroic difficulty (once we get comfortable with the content on Normal difficulty) with a group that is 10-25 in size making early entry easier and overall making it more inclusive of an activity for our guild.

Free Insta-90!
Blizzard announced that it will be including in the 6.0 expansion a free character boost to level 90. The new cap is 100 however they have been very clear that this will not be a long, boring slog like 60-70. This does mean that if you were ever thinking of leveling something that you just didn't want to have to level through all 90 levels, this would certainly be the key to snap out that 90 and then cruise on up to 100! Leveling [mages] 10 levels instead of 90 has its attractions, I am sure!

The impact to us is that we may see people that have traditionally played one class, play a different one. As we draw closer to release, if you suspect you are going to have a significant raid role change, just keep us apprised in advance!

All in all, the new expansion looks awesome and I to see you all there!

"We got this!"

In humble commemoration of many, many, many nights together:

"We got this!"

(... and to many more!)

Transitioning to Summer Intensity!

Summer is here! It's time for that annual transition to summer intensity - every year, during summer, there is a decline in the number of hours that people are online and we see fewer people available to raid consistently week after week. We love summer and all the wonderful things that come with it so we adjust the raiding intensity accordingly - after all, we are a weekend raiding guild and there are summer parties and things to attend to!

After thorough discussion and planning, and after looking at the attendance logs, we have decided to suspend Blue (Tigers) and Purple (Dragons) raid groups for the summer. Green (Bears) raiding group will continue to raid every week on its normal schedule.

Why did we do this? What does this mean to you?

Why did we do this? Bluntly, it is merely announcing what has already happened and that we are not attempting to reverse it during the summer - the raiders have already effected this to each group.

Overall throughout all of wow and on every server, the summer brings about a lower attendance and availability and it is the time when there are the fewest 'guild recruits' available to bring in to fill empty raid seats. Recruiting is not going to be more successful during the summer quieter period than during the rest of the year - not that we will not continue recruiting, however we have to face facts from the past seven years. Green group actively maintains a reserve list of non-guildies ready to raid with us should we lose a member and be unable to recruit from within the guild. However, Blue and Purple group have been below full roster fielded for a 10-man raid for weeks now and they do not have a reserve list of non-guildies from which to draw upon to fill the empty raid seats.

Green group has a roster that pretty much shows up week after week after week for months and months and months (years, really) - it has a roster of people (12) that is sized to ensure that it never is forced to take a week off because of one or two outages. This gives it the consistency and resilience to absorb someone not being available one week and still roll out the raid. Also, within the roster, there are multiple people who have the tanking spec and gear, the healing spec and gear, the dps spec and gear such that it can shift people around to best suit the encounter and address an outage (e.g. a tank is away for 2 weeks on vacation with family) -- it doesn't do so by bringing in an alt that has not been geared and receiving the drops every week, but rather it does so by changing the specs of the toons already in the raid group. In effect, it has forward momentum and the critical mass to successfully raid every week unless it chooses to take a week off.

Blue and Purple groups on the other hand have several committed raiders each, however not twelve. In fact, not even eight each. Within the committed (they show up reliably every week) raiders within each of Blue and Purple, they lack tank and healer resilience should there be an outage - they can pull someone's alt or swap specs however the gear and skill level is a sizable step down from the 'norm'.

However, combined, Blue and Purple *do* have a 'roster' of enough committed people that the raid group could effectively raid every week unless it chooses to take a week off. That same combined roster has tank and healer resilience.

So rather than attempt to force a square peg into a round hole, we are not going to approach the shortage of committed raiders in Blue and Purple by recruiting for each of their groups now during the summer months when it is hardest to recruit raiders. Instead, we are suspending both raid groups and will re-visit how many raid groups we need in the guild in the Fall.

What does this mean to you? If you are in Green group, it means there is highly likely a guild replacement should you want to take a week off, communicate in advance accordingly as usual. On the other hand, if you are in Blue or Purple group, it means you are now highly likely going to be able to raid every single week - together. And you should expect to see some of the Green group raiding with you form time to time also.

Keep in mind that a 'raid group' by our definition is a highly managed entity. There are set rosters, firm attendance reliability expectations, performance expectations, and everyone is expected to have the highest levels of communication with the raid lead and group as to outages or changes. There are raid logs to be snapped, posted, and reviewed (by everyone in the group). There is a 'set in stone' mentality about our raid groups and a very, very high level of commitment that is expected.

Side bar: there is a difference between 'need', 'want', and 'like'. People need to drink water. People want to appear clean when they go to work. People would like to be a movie star. As a result, they always drink water, they do take showers, but they don't actually do anything that in any way is conducive to them actually becoming a movie star. Separate individuals from groups and look only at the actual evidence of the groups as whole entities: Green group has demonstrated that it wants to raid. Blue and Purple groups have demonstrated that both would like to raid - each has individuals that want to raid.

tl;dr: For the summer, Green group will be the only official rostered guild raid group however everyone will be able to raid in guild groups.

How will this work in practical terms? For Green group, no change - carry on. For Blue and Purple group, you will no longer see raid invitations on the calendar (that's alright, half of you were not responding anyways!). The guild raids on Fridays and Saturdays, 8:30PM server. If you want to raid, be online early enough to get a raid seat when raid groups start forming up.

i.e. Green group will assemble up as usual. Everyone not in Green group, will do what we have always done in wow for the past 7 years when in a raiding guild but not in the 'official' raid group: raid with guildies!

Obviously, we can expect that the raiders that want to raid every week will likely coalesce into an informal roster. (Please note that no one will be managing this roster!) It is a logical conclusion that we would not disband such a tight-knit group in the Fall but would simply re-brand it to be the new Blue. If an informal roster does not coalesce, we will re-visit raid rosters in the Fall anyways.

Why aren't you suspending Green group also? If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Hey! Are you saying we are broken in Blue and Purple?! Not as individuals, no. You are fabulous as individuals. As groups - hells yes! Let's call a spade a spade here folks: a raid group that cannot reliably form a raid every week and zone into an instance or that cannot do more than get the first boss down after months and months is not a 'healthy and good working' raid group. Let's call it what it is and heal what ails it.

Sounds elitist. Personally, I plan on raiding with 'the summer group' A LOT this summer. Frankly, I don't care as much about which raid group I raid with as much as I do care about us sticking to our guild principles of respect and fun -- and there is nothing fun nor respectful in asking Gray or Doom to put thankless hours into organizing and managing and caring for and stressing over a group only to have people log on and not have the basic courtesy of clicking a button on the calendar invitation to let them know whether that raider will or will not be available that week. It is not respectful nor fun when a large group of people all agree to show up every week as a group and then more than half fail to do so leaving every one of the other people who did show up hanging and the raid lead feeling stressed because it was their job to form a raid that night because people planned their weekly lives and set that time aside as the precious time in the week when they could enjoy the leisure activity of playing the game and specifically, raiding. Green group 'got it' and made it work. Blue and Purple groups did not get it, but individuals in both groups totally 'get it' and it's time to make sure they get the benefits rather than just having another week where they don't get to raid because not enough people showed up.

Have a nice day and enjoy the summer!  = )

Megaera Down!

Immediately after Meg was beat, you could hear two things in Mumble: elation and relief! We had not been working on Meg for very long, however you could sense that everyone felt 'it should be down by now' and so 'the sooner the better'. It is a fight that, at first blush, seems quite simple on the surface; however, under the covers, it is a bit more demanding than you'd think both on the healers and on the dps.

As a tank, it is business as usual: establish and hold aggro, immediately face [your part of] the boss away from the raid, rotate CDs accordingly, move when and as needed.

As a dps, there is a tremendous amount of reactionary movement that is punishing to the healers if you linger more than a split second on your reaction times. In the final stages of the fight where the boss is hitting harder and more frequently, cast-time casters have a hard time getting a cast in before they have to move, again.

As a healer, the performance of the raid and it's ability to react to the situations that develop are what drives how difficult this fight is for you. The first half of the fight is deceiving in that the boss is hitting slower and not as hard, however the second half of the fight accelerates the rate and increases the damage done by the boss requiring the healers to increase the rate at which they heal and the oomph with which they are healing - right about the time when their mana pools are bone dry.

After Meg was down, I asked if there was anything we did on that attempt that was different (so that we could do it on every attempt, obv), however the general consensus was that no, nothing was done diffferent than our usual strat - just that we needed to polish the execution until we got it all working together.

Frankly, I think that is the essence of raiding - being willing to show up and try things until you find what is likely to work for you, polish it until it works, and have fun together doing it. Granted, there is a balance between pure fun and pure progression - progression being fun "in a way" but largely being stressful while you are doing it! There is a reason why you hear elation and relief when a progression boss goes down.

Striking that balance between 'we want to have fun' and 'we want to progress and see the content' is dodgy, at best. People have to be pushed when they are least wanting to be pushed which is when they are already sensitive to being behind where they should be (which is why they need to be pushed if they want to stay in that fight at that time). Pushing progression too quickly is a 'fun suck' and it raises a bar of performance that might be too high for your group -- just because "everyone else is 11/12" does not mean your group should be, too. Then again, if people are not being mindful of paying attention to detail and performing good raidcraft, then yes, they need to be pushed.

But back to last night: progression, and fun!

About the only complaint that I had (other than the bludgeoning headache I had) was that the run back to Meg after wiping feels inordinately long compared to the other run backs -- yes, I know, there were longer run backs back 'in the day'; however, we've been nicely spoiled this xpac with zoning in almost where you wiped and I like it!

Tortos down! : Reliable Attendance and Performance Paired

Tortos was one of those boss downs that just felt really great! All around noise in mumble when he went down. Excellent work on part of those that drove the reliable attendance and reliable performance leading to getting him down.

Megaera was very close to going down as well and will have to sit until next week!

On to Tortos!

Steady progress -- and everyone have a pretty good time of it!

Fun Dino Fights!

We have absolutely stupid amounts of fun and it's always great going from very close to just knocking him out of the stadium! (grats to all again for a fun evening!)

Raid Status March 2013

 tl;dr version:

• we are in a very healthy place - let's keep improving on that
• we are short 1-2 tanks - and we need them staffed and ready to tank MSV/HoF in 1-2 weeks.If you have one, or have a friend, get them into guild!
• fill out the new survey if you want us to consider your availability: link
• guild LFR on Tuesdays 9PM server
• guild open raid on Thursdays 8:30PM server; mains > alts
• 3 raid rosters and one open group
• respond to raid events on the calendar by Tuesday night
• raid rosters are small - everyone in that group is counting on you to show up
• be reliable and bring your best performance on every pull

Longer Version:

Raid Status March 2013

Hi everyone, happy Friday!

I’m glad you made it tonight - the reason I suggested we get together is to

• cover a handful of notes; and, as always,
• invite you to send me your suggestions
• my email
• in-game

I’ll try to keep it brief as we all have things to get to!

people have had changes to their personal schedules and we have a few new faces in the guild - all of which translates into changes in raid rosters

we recruited more great people and specifically only raiders - we do however still need 1-2 tanks!

we adjusted raid rosters to accommodate people who prefer to raid Wed+Fri and we have kept our bread and butter: Fri+Sat raids

we have had several days to adjust to the 5.2 changes and time for each of us to form our own plans for how we can progress our gear

we have also confirmed that Blizzard has continued on their track for increasing the encounter difficulty tuning - and the new encounters are a blast, and they demand high performance, … and they hit like a truck!

to ensure every raider that has at least MSV-level gear can get in to see normal mode raid content, now in addition to the raid rosters, we are putting an all-guild weekly open raid on the calendar on Thursdays - mains and alts are welcome, priority to mains - this should help with gearing

further, we have added a guild LFR on Tuesdays which is a massive success from the perspective of reducing the queue time to 10 seconds, and helping us all raid together as well as cross-pollinate strategies and approaches across raid rosters

we collapsed 4 raid rosters down into 3 raid rosters and each has about 11-13 raiders in it - this is a key point that I earnestly want you guys to get your heads around: that means we have anywhere from 33-40 raiders looking to fill 30 spots each week. In addition, we have the raiders moving up that are not yet in a raid roster - in total, we have ~55 raiders right now.

Now, we’ve been doing this raiding thing for a lot of years now and we know a few things, right:

• if you soak loot across 30 people in a raid roster for a 10-man raid group, it takes a lot longer to stack enough gear and stats to succeed in progression fights compared to soaking loot across 10 people in a raid roster for a 10-man raid group. so we want to keep the groups small and soak loot to stack stats and make quicker progression.
• however, small groups are at risk of not running reliably each week due to player outages. and while in the past we have had almost religious attendance, that track record has slipped enough over the past 2 months that for now we need to run at least 11-13 people in each roster to ensure the raid groups go off without a hitch reliably each week.
• and of course, when you put more people in a raid roster than fit into a raid group, people do not like rushing home from work or personal events or rescheduling their family activities and time only to find that they are not raiding that night; which is why we post the raid events by Monday night, and confirm the rosters by Tue/Wed. This does however, require that raiders sign up early so that we have a picture of who is available - and of course, if we guarantee that you are raiding, it’s key that raiders show up because we know pugging late into the week is just … bad
• lastly, we know that showing up prepared, early, and ready to perform makes for a great evening for everyone. for new bosses they have never seen, every raider should have watched at least 2-3 different fight strat videos for each boss they are going to attempt that night, and preferably, they watched the strat video they most liked twice or enough times to really understand what they need to do in that encounter to effectively contribute to downing the boss

So we have rosters, and raiders, and reliability, and performance.

And this is where each and every single raider needs to bring their A game whether they are on standby, or in the raid instance. Whether in ToT, or running an alt in the guild LFR run that week.

It starts with reminding each other to sign up and to be online - raiding or standby. It’s in the most friendly manner you can muster, reminding each other to perform your very, very best from sign up to end of the raid night. It’s helping to call things out in raid, and helping by paying attention to your own raid craft.

Bring your best raiding craftsmanship you’ve got - every time.

This week, and going forward, you get and keep your raid seats by being reliable and by performing. What is ‘performing’? Effectively contributing to downing the boss.

Everyone has something they need to work on - we all do - and it is on us to work on it. To improve it. Otherwise, we are just holding the other 9 people back. It’s on us to help each other - and that starts with signing up and showing up - and reminding all the other people to sign up and show up.

The fewer times we have to replace empty seats with pugs, the better for your overall progression - not just this week, but next week because the loot that was soaked shows up in raid the following week.

If you are having problems with mechanics, seek out people who are not having problems with them and bend their ear to get some help. We’re family - lean on each other.

If you are having problems with dps, your tanking, or your healing, lean on people that are not having problems and get your craftsmanship up.

If you are not having problems, lean over and whisper some good counsel or lend a helping hand.

We will effectively have 4 raid groups running each week (3 rostered and 1 unrostered) and a huge LFR group. There are plenty of people that need help polishing something or other and there are plenty of people to help you polish that craftsmanship.

In the end, however, it boils down to you. You have to improve your raiding craftsmanship. That part is on you.

Be reliable. Perform your best - whatever that is.

Do what you say you will do - and do it well.

To set the bar high, let me throw this out there: in my raid roster, this week, with the raid calendar event posted Monday night, by Tuesday night, 12/12 players had responded - and all had accepted. The other groups were in varying degrees of ½ to ¾ responsive to their raid events with a very large % tentative.

Start improvements there. Make a point of signing on Monday night or Tuesday and responding to the raid events you see on the calendar.

Then make sure you have studied up on the fights and your own class/role.

Show up. And put your best performance in on every pull.

Rinse and repeat and we will see all of the groups in ToT soon! We could even be doing 25m raids in Throne before you know it! Remember, way better gear has a much higher drop rate in 25m than it does in 10m; however, we have to have enough people that can effectively contribute to downing the boss on 25m before we can do that 25m into ToT and to get there, first people need to sign up, show up, and clear through MSV, HoF, and Terrace.

So bring your A game. Do what you say you will do, and do it well!

If you have any questions, or comments about the notes I shared with you tonight, please email them to me (my email address is in the guild info), or mail them to me in game, or just bend my ear sometime over the next few days.

Thank you for taking the time out of your evening tonight and I hope that it was well invested -- which we’ll know to be true if more people  sign up and show up for the raids - and the raids start clearing more of the content!

Happy hunting tonight!

Amber Shaper Down!

Bitter sweet - Amber Shaper went down which was awesome, however we ran out of time on Saturday to finish off Empress and complete the target bosses in Terrace. We have been thoroughly enjoying working together as a group and have the raid experience and performance to take down bosses relentlessly - in Tier 15, we plan to get started at the beginning and avoid the potholes that frequently waylay a guild's progression.

5.2, Raid Rosters, and Expectations.

Patch 5.2 is most likely going to drop next week or if not next week, then extremely likely the week after that. I have fielded a few questions or answered side queries that are rather similar and to better address the topics, they are summarized here.

5.2 and ilevel requirements
You have almost certainly noticed the scaling requirement of ilevel for entry or success in LFR or normal mode raid instances, respectively:

LFR: MSV (460), HoF & Terrace (470), Patch 5.2 ToT (480)
10m: MSV (470), HoF & Terrace (480), Patch 5.2 ToT (490)

What is less intuitive is the encounter difficulty tuning which has scaled up since Cata. (You can find a link about that at: link.) Which has an impact on you depending on your raidcraft. If you tend to over-perform your raidcraft (raid awareness and performance throughput - hps or dps or tanking), you can get by with lower ilevel in normal mode and if you tend to under-perform your raidcraft, you need more ilevel and gear to compensate. Which is to simply say that some people may need 490-495 ilevel to effectively contribute to downing a boss in 5.2 raid and some may need 500-505 ilevel to effectively contribute to downing the same boss. Plan accordingly.


Raid Rosters
As we said several weeks ago, in order to be effective and efficient as a guild in downing content in the new 5.0-5.1-5.2 tier 14+tier 15 available content, we are forming rosters not only based on committed availability but now also on performance - raidcraft.

You can expect Wabbyt's Ronin Dragons to pretty much stay in tact as a roster. Same for Bear's Ronin Bears (we are going to need to add another hunter or rogue to the roster).

Gray has secured enough critical mass of interest in having a Wed/Fri group that starts earlier and ends earlier that that roster will add a few more people and likely recruit remaining positions where we do not have enough raiders with committed availability for those times and the required raidcraft. This is essentially the same Ronin Tigers with a schedule change and minor roster changes. Gray will lead the Ronin Tigers.

Doomwombat will pick up the full role of raid leading the Fri/Sat group and will consolidate the members of the Ronin Tigers that cannot transition to the new schedule under a new group's name (TBD). At this time, depending on how many people we have on hand and how many we are able to recruit, there is a very high likelihood that this will not flesh out into a full ronin raid group until a few weeks into the new patch content and will be initially mostly a pug/social group.

Expectations
We are committed, of course, to supporting all raiders or people interested in raiding to being able to raid; however, the 'new normal' encounter difficulty tuning means people have to step up their raid craft, or expect to be pugging / LFRing until their raidcraft is at a suitable level where they can be an effective contributor to downing a boss.

On progression fights, by very definition, there is no room to carry anyone. Everyone has to be a contributor.

Manage your expectations - if you have been dying frequently and forcing the raid to burn its only battle rez, or dying after the brez has been burned and preventing a kill due to insufficient dps, or you have been forcing mana pools to empty out due to taking far too much unnecessary damage, or your healing has forced the group to 3-heal 2-healer encounters, or your tanking is not where it needs to be, expect to be pugging / LFRing until your raid craft improves. This is not done to be mean nor to exclude you - it is done so that the group can have a chance of progression.

Simply put, if you are performing reasonably within range with others in your role, expect to raid in the guild groups. If you are performing below the reasonable grouping of others in your role and they are doing an encounter that is challenging the group, expect to sit it out and make other plans.

Blizzard has said they fully expect many guilds to still be clearing tier 14 in order to stack enough gear on their raid members to have a shot at downing bosses in ToT (patch 5.2) - they have purposefully tuned 5.2 harder than 5.1. If you are having difficulties clearing Terrace or HoF content, PLEASE manage your expectations so that your group is not assuming you are going to skip tier 14 and just start clearing content in tier 15 (which is basically what most guilds did in Cata - skipped BWD, BoT, Tot4W and went straight into FL and DS instead).

As a benchmark, my group - Ronin Bears - will still be doing tier 14 in the first weeks of Tier 15 release. Yes, we will also go 'see' Tier 15 content each week as appropriate to gauge how close we are to clearing it, however, we have a present estimate of dps needing to be about 75-80k a piece in order to get to 110-120k a piece with the +50% buff.

You have probably noticed the trend:

• for MSV full clears, you want to be doing over 50k dps
• for HoF full clears, you want to be doing over 60k dps
• for Terrace full clears, you want to be doing over 70k dps
• and from the PTR, for ToT, you want to be doing over 80k dps

Manage your expectations. Either you are performing reasonably at par for your class in your role or you are not. If your group has an opening that night and they have challenging content to do, they will almost certainly bring a pug that can effectively contribute instead of someone in guild that is significantly under performing right now.

For those of you that have been raiding for years, this is nothing new. However, over the past 3 months we have seen a fair bit of expectation that people are raiding regardless of how they performed the previous week because of the guild tag. Please discard that thinking. To be clear, going forward raid seats are filled with performance and availability, guildies first, then non-guildies - but always with performance and availability first.

To join any of the raid groups, contact their raid leader.

Preparing for Patch 5.2

Bashiok covered the details that you should be considering as you prepare in these last weeks before Patch 5.2 arrives. From a raid scheduling perspective, the key highlights relevant to you are that:

• the new 12-boss raid instance will be available on normal mode in the first week of patch 5.2
• the LFR version of the new raid instance will be available in 4-boss wings being released one per week starting the second week of patch 5.2 -- you need 480 level to get into the LFR version
• the heroic version of the new raid instance will be available starting the second week of patch 5.2

MSV - MSV has been dropped off our raiding schedule other than on an off night / alt night. Fri & Sat are for HoF.

HoF - The remaining raid nights before patch 5.2 drops, focus on HoF and spending hours polishing your raiding skills on whichever is your progression boss fight for your raid group. It is literally about studying the mechanics and strategy you are going to execute and paying particular attention to executing that strategy with craftsmanship. e.g. One night on Wind Lord, we dedicated the night to getting our phase one executed perfectly - to which we succeeded and our healers were in solid position going into phase two. It wasn't about whether we downed the boss or not, it was about the craftsmanship with which we executed. It was about practicing our raiding craft in anticipation of entirely new content in 5.2 which would not need our knowledge on Wind Lord but would need our highly polished raiding skills - granted, it was ALSO about getting phase one down well so that we could get Wind Lord down in subsequent attempts. With the remaining time, focus on getting what loot you can out of HoF, sure, but more so, focus on practicing and honing and polishing so that you are at your best to make a sizable dent into 5.2 in the first week.

Patch 5.2 Raid Rosters - This is the time when we are setting up the rosters for at least the first several weeks of patch 5.2 - all factors permitting, we will attempt to keep the rosters fixed. That is, the raid rosters will be set BEFORE patch 5.2 drops so that the raid groups can immediately begin working through the new raid instance the first week of the new content. Now is the time to get in and perform so that we can group people up and let the raid groups gel into performing together.

Remember, there is a new normal and Blizzard has expressed that they feel this is 'working as intended'. In the past, encounter difficulty tuning was set such that

Easy ----------- Hard

LFR-----N-----Heroic

However now, it is generally accepted that the new paradigm of encounter difficulty tuning is

Easy ----------- Hard

LFR----------N---Heroic

Everyone needs to step up their game. There is already plenty of information about each boss encounter  on the PTR version of wowhead.com (link on their page in the top left). People are already posting strat videos and write ups. To be in normal mode raid groups in our guild, you should be zoning in without requiring any explanation of any of the fight mechanics nor boss abilities - neither as they affect you nor as they affect others - and you should have a firm grasp on how your class and raid role specifically can and should support downing the boss and providing the most benefit to the raid group - encounter by encounter. If you are not doing that level of preparation, if you are taking a more casual and social approach to raiding - nothing wrong with that at all - then your raid seat is in the casual / social raid roster, not in the core progression rosters.

We expect to enter patch 5.2 with two (if not three) core progression raid rosters and one social / casual roster. This will support addressing the two different approaches to raiding (more casual and more serious) and the two different paces at which those approaches successfully clear through the content.

As always, if you have any questions, do not hesitate to ask an officer - especially a raid lead. We're not here to exclude you from raiding, we're here to help you succeed in our raiding!

Edit - To give you an idea of where the damage done / dps stands for fights in the new raid instance, the below is a snapshot from icy-veins.com. Granted, it is PTR. The sheer numbers if carried through to live from PTR suggest that the core progression raids may need to stack some gear first before they can take on the mechanical soft enrage with the first boss Jin'rokh at 6 mins (floor covered completely). So plan to be in your raid roster and plan to be working hard to either gear pre launch of 5.2 or continue in 5.2 until ready to beat the soft enrage - either way, both rosters will go into the new raid instance in the first week to immediately start experiencing the new fights.

5.2 - March 6

A reminder that 5.2 is coming -- ostensibly as soon as March 6th -- at which point the raiding focus will change just like it did once Firelands was released. You can begin preparing now by stockpiling VP (they are no longer resetting VP) and wrapping up whatever might distract you in the initial weeks. There will be a new faction (similar to how there was in Firelands) however you earn rep with them in the raid instance rather than through dailies - allegedly. You will need i480 to enter the 5.2 LFR and 5.2 LFR drops 502 gear. Plan accordingly. Gear upgrading through VP is still going away upon arrival of 5.2 so upgrade any gear you are intending to upgrade before 5.2, VP permitting.

Tier 14 will become old tier, however Blizz is not intending for it to be bypassed as in Cata and Wrath -  as you gear up, you will still need 460 to get into MSV LFR, and 470 for HoF and ToES LFRs before you can get into 480 TotTK LFR. To make that a shorter trip for your alts/new toons, pay attention for announced gearing runs in Tier 14 once T15 is out.

Good Raiding!

Fun weekend! We teamed up 7 Ronin raiders with 3 iRaiders (also Ronin) and those Ronin raiders got their first MSV clear! Awesome! +more raiders that now know how we do the fights by having experienced it first hand. Taking personal responsibility for driving performance and constantly improving to avoid repeating problem areas cleared the bosses and drove up raid performance! /grats

We started in on Terrace and took the first bosses down to 40% with more than half the dps team away with replacements standing in for them this weekend. It's great that we have started in on attacking Terrace!

Raider Availability Survey

We are attempting to be responsive to changes in people's schedules, and hence in when they are best available to raid. If you intend to raid in our groups, complete the survey below. Raid seats will be provided first to those that complete the survey and any vacancies, if any, leftover will be filled with raiders who did not complete the survey. This will enable us to place people - most likely - in a raid roster that best suits their personal schedule commitments.

Thanks in advance!

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dGctWE5FMkNFbDAyQldWSGlkSGVUMlE6MQ

Finally: Guild Achievement!

Job well done.

As long as we have been clearing the bosses as a raid group, it was nigh time we made a guild group composition for the achievement! For those for whom it was their first clear, a very special /grats!

(Interestingly, Armory has yet to update to reflect that we obtained the achievement! But meh!)

Stone Guard Practice and Polishing Tonight

All, we have a couple of tanks that we are bringing into MSV tonight to help them practice and polish the taunting routines. We will enlist some dps to help clear the trash, then release them and stack the raid with just tanks and healers and go about hitting the enrage timer a few times to give everyone some time to practice and polish before the real raid window later this week.

Please make yourselves available to support this activity.

Welcoming Ellesmira!

Please join me in welcoming Ellesmira to Ronin and bringing her healing and dpsing talents! We're excited to see a monk step into raiding with us and look forward to making a new long-term friendship.

Welcome Triaxen and Auuron!

This week we welcome Triaxen and Auuron to be Ronin! Warlock and DK. We are looking forward to seeing them joining the regular ranks of the raiders and to seeing this family team raiding together! Please welcome them and support them in finding everything they need in their new home.

Keep Your Raid Seat - Sign Up Early

In the most friendly manner, this is a reminder that if you would like to keep your raid seat, you should sign up early in the week. Raid events are posted no later than Tuesday - and typically on Mondays - and we start recruiting people to fill the empty seats on Wednesdays.

For known empty seats (when someone tells us in advance that they will not be available or when they sign up as out or declined), we immediately begin recruiting people to fill their empty spot. For unknown empty seats (e.g. when only 2-4 people have signed up and we have no idea whether more are going to sign up), we begin inviting people to cover off on those seats as early as Wednesday.

All of which is to avoid arriving at Fri/Sat and having to cancel a raid due to insufficient raiders and no available qualified pugs.

The obvious and common sense point is that it is poor guild relations to invite people to the event and then not let them in.

A catch 22 so to speak. We can neither ignore empty seats early in the week else we will not have decent replacements come raid night, nor can we find replacements early in the week and then not bring them to the raid. As you can see, this quickly translates into people who sign up late, sit out. And those that sign up early are not 'punished' by having the raid canceled because we waited until the end of the week to find replacements for empty seats we knew about several days earlier.

The simple solution is for everyone to respectfully sign up early - Mon/Tue.

Sign up before Wednesdays or your raid seat may already be assigned to someone else by the time you decide to sit in it. We absolutely will not punt someone from the seat just because a 'guildie' decided at the 11th hour to let us know they would be raiding that week. That is completely disrespectful and goes against the grain of what we stand for as a guild.

Sign up and show up - and may there be many loots!

Recruiting and Raiding Going Well!

We are steadily and successfully recruiting to fill the guild raid group with all guildies or at least always 8/10 guildies - and with the oomph to catch up again to the sponsored iRaid group and give it some healthy competition! Actually, we're aiming to get both groups running at the same level of progression (just like we were before) and with the same stability in week-to-week rosters.

Cohesively, all of our Ronin and iRaid raiders should be interchangeable and be able to fill a seat in either group and expect the same progression that week. Practically, we will try to minimize the shifting around to minimize re-learning and such (e.g. a leg dps in one group cannot just easily replace a pherom kiter in the other group on the big bug).

Both groups are pushing forward successfully and locking down more steady and stable rosters will only make that even more successful.

You can do your part to expedite that by both making your attendance regular and reliable, and by assisting in the recruiting efforts.

Welcome Dràeno!

Join me in welcoming Dràeno to the raiding roster. Dràeno returns from a break near the end of Cata with an extensive raiding background. Presently gearing up and we're looking forward to seeing Dràeno give our top dps a run for their money!

Raiders making headway

The iRaid group - backed and sponsored by Ronin - pushed Garalon down to 1% last night. Last week we cleared MSV and Will was such a push over that we forgot to screenshot it and simply zoned out! This week, we snapped a shot and then zoned into HoF right away with lots of time left on the raid clock. We have now compressed MSV into only taking part of a raid evening - which is where we want it to be so that we can farm it and spend the evening knocking down the bosses in HoF we have 'on farm' (first two only so far). That will leave us the second night to focus on clearing HoF and once completed, starting in on ToES.

The Ronin group is still settling into a roster that changes by about 3 seats each week which is causing some disruption on the smooth running of the first 4 bosses. The core group is reliably there week to week - it's the last three that seem to change each week. We are working steadfastly to secure a more stable roster so that they can get in sync together and make quick work of 4/6 and focus on clearing the last two - which really only Elegon is the hold up and likely won't be if they get to spend an hour of raid time on it.

This week, everyone pushed harder and performance was up across the board - awesome!

Raid Performance - Facts, not Fiction

After the extensive discussions last week, we reviewed the data - sticking with the old saying of "In God we trust, all others bring data." It confirmed what we believed. Let's step through the bad, the good, and then step off doing the things that clearly will get us from where we are to fully clearing tier 14 content as a guild. There is some frank, and data-based honesty that follows - weather through that to get to the sunshine on the other side.

(first the ugly and the bad):

• the guild group was assembled of guildies as requested by some members (9 were supposed to show up and one tank was a trial to see if he was joining the guild, however only 7 showed up, we pugged in 2 people, and they were the best dps performers in the group and actually were the best performers for the last two months including the iRaid) 
• neither group was stacked (other than guildies in one and the # of guildies that didn't fit into the other) and in fact, the data shows that overall and over time both groups were pretty much evenly matched and distributed - which is what we had based it on before we ran the raids that night and saw the outcomes (we only had the info on hand for prior performance which was evenly matched)
• performance on the other hand, was completely different and pretty much everyone except the guildies in the guildies group performed evenly - guildies were all over the map
• some of those with the loudest outcries were the lowest performers - the steady performers shrugged it off and simply looked forward to hitting the instance again next week

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Aupln3XuJnjZdE5ueElkTUF6b0xTYjFIV1ZJcFRCX3c

(next, the good):

• the guild group has the gear to clear and there is a high degree of confidence by those asked that if the group can work together for a week or so more, that they can get into a groove together and clear the content - all we need for that to work is for people to show up reliably
• we have a strong bench in the iRaid that can help fill gaps week to week in the guild group until the guild group has a full and reliable roster - guild can accelerate this by everyone helping to recruit (if you didn't help at all this week after so many posted requests, don't complain)
• the changes that could be made to significantly improve performance are simple. e.g. the fire mage (level 488) doing less damage done than the 468 mage could switch back to arcane (which they prefer anyways), raiders could focus on individual performance and not the race to beat the enrage timer - you'll beat it just fine with your gearing if you just perform individually
• the healers in the guild group are solid and if the raid can both pay attention to taking less unnecessary damage and do more damage to shorten the fights, the group will be able to clear MSV based on the pure healing numbers and the damage taken numbers by the tanks

We used Feng as the means to baseline performance across the board week to week because it does not favor ranged over melee, nor multi-target over single-target, it has fewer mechanics that would skew comparability (e.g. Gara'jal's buffs, Stone Guards' jasper chains, pinning arrow in Spirit Kings), it is early enough that each group absolutely gets it down right now.

We looked at both average and best damage done. We looked at ilevel. We looked at performance of similar ilevel characters on a myriad of servers and what their performance is in a raid log (e.g. compare Dyasis in The Blood Legion on the Mal'Ganis server to our mages Novastorm, Toxi, and Mazius -- Dyasis is under our top two geared mages and doing well over 150% our damage done).

Last but not least, rather than take a personal opinion on whether raiders in the guild group are geared enough to clear MSV 10m, we looked them up on wow heroes. According to that standard, everyone is geared for heroic MSV 10m to be challenging (yellow) and normal MSV 10m is green or 'easy' for them.

It's not the gear. It's not the class. It's not the roster. It's something much simpler to improve: personal performance.

This isn't to drop the hammer - it is because we are not going to improve the problems if we won't identify/admit first that those are the ones we need to improve.

Perform better and at least match peers' performance. Recruit a few more people. Golden.

Keep in mind that ALL raid log parses world-wide for the past two months (including all of the raiders that have significantly worse gear than we do - e.g. we are in the top ten or top 20 of our classes on our server) show that on Feng no one in our group should be under 60k dps except for a boomkin or warrior:

Welcoming Remnia!

We give a warm welcome to Remnia and look forward to good times ahead together! Remnia joins our guild raid group filling a key missing spot of resto shammy / dps offspec. Please join me in making Remnia feel at home and welcomed.

Raid Rosters

*** Major Update ***

When iRaid launched first week of January 2012, Ronin did not have enough geared raiders to fill a 10-man. Today, it has more than fit in a 10-man. These things we know already. Nowadays, we juggle who is available which week and hence based on balancing each raid is which group they have been assigned to - many people staying in the same group week after week, and some changing occasionally to maintain balance and to attack specific goals that week (e.g. getting a guild achv for a boss kill).

The masses have spoken and people would prefer that each group have a pretty permanent roster. Rather than two mixed groups within iRaid, a guild group has been requested and rostered. Beartooth and several other Ronin will continue leading the iRaid group - we have no interest in just dropping those people, consolidating down to one group and benching many each week, nor in any other option that basically reduces how many people are raiding.

For clarity's sake, the raid rosters are available in the following google document:
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1vBUmooc2-OKZfhSud6_E6SCCWZxl3m8XqQJgzsp753s/edit

It is HIGHLY recommended that if you want to keep your guild raid seat, that you pay careful attention to being reliable in showing up each week. The benefit of the larger iRaid group was that there was more built in flexibility to personal schedules and routine outages for stretches of time (e.g. someone is typically available on Saturdays but for the next 2 months is not). However, in the smaller groups, if someone were to have a known long-term outage, that person is likely going to be replaced unless the raid group is going to gamble on whether they have a full 10 people each week.

The guild group has our best tank, our best healer, and our best geared dps. Where it is at risk, is regular and reliable attendance. Take care of that, and the road ahead is smooth sailing.

MSV 10M 6/6 Cleared!

Congratulations to each and every raider last night as we downed Elegon and then easily toppled Will. Frankly, the series of Elegon attempts and final kill were perfect examples of people taking responsibility and pride in their personal performance - and it paid off handsomely.

First attempt on Elegon had him at 8%. Subsequent attempts had him at the raucously heart-breaking 1%, 0%, 0.4%, and finally at downed.

We mixed-and-matched raiders to both 10-man groups last night to provide diversity in the healing and tanking classes, the loot soaks, and of course we tried to accommodate people who wanted to raid together. All in all, we started out with two very evenly balanced groups. The second group had some attrition from pugs and ended up closing out 4/6. The first group to take down the Stone Guard had a barrel of laughs seeing multiple glitches on multiple bosses not to mention the occasional hilarious player-versus-player murdering all in all to close out 6/6 for the night.

Getting Elegon down was a significant milestone and very much enjoyed. As we all knew well in advance, Will of the Emperor was as tough as a wet napkin and we killed it on the second attempt ever - not much to report there!

Congrats to all, again!

Continue casual attendance - or clear tier 14?

Happy New Year! What a wonderful thing that a new year is - it's always exciting to start a new year and you don't really know what lies beyond until it is already past. Very much like wrapped presents under the tree or landscape on the other side of a mountain range.

We go into 2013 with a fun group of people that enjoy knocking the content around together - most of them guildies.

We find ourselves with a new year and a soon arriving Patch 5.2 with new content and, of course, a whole new tier of gear and raiding challenges!

Now, late in Patch 5.1, we can look back and see that we started out strong and then waned. One of the nice things about keeping the iRaid data around is that we can literally see where we surged and where we started trailing off. We can see that where raid attendance started to get spotty at the individual level, raid performance at the raid level declined. We can see that where raid attendance at the individual level was reliable, that raid performance at the raid level improved constantly.

Knowing that we tried to find further information on when were better raiding times for the raiders, and knowing that we either received affirmation that the best raid nights were on the days already being used - despite the attendance issues - and knowing that most raiders did not provide further availability information, we are unlikely to find that changing days will affect attendance reliability. So for now, the raids stay scheduled for Fri and Sat.

If we are to complete tier 14 content before the inevitable content nerf that will come with Patch 5.2, we have some work to do - starting with attendance!

Everyone likes having a raid group that is there when you want it and everyone enjoys a level of commitment of "I'll raid if I want to and not if I don't feel like it"; however, that casual approach is not translating well into progression beyond Spirit Kings normal mode - for either of the groups.

We don't know what lies ahead, however we do know that we enjoy raiding with each other and we know that the casual attendance approach is not accomplishing progression.

The obvious question at hand for each and every single one of our raiders is 'do I prefer casual attendance commitments or do I prefer accomplishing progression?'

It's a question that we will be answering this Friday - please come with your personal answer in hand so that we can discuss as a raid group how to proceed. We always try to make big decisions like these together and the only way that happens is if 'we' contribute to the discussion/decision.

The raiding must go on! (See you Friday!)