Official 25M Forum

[Rebelogic]

I thought all the points that were made in the other two forums were very nicely written and well thought out. However, going forward, it would be best if we let that forum live under the Dungeons & Raids section within this thread. To begin, I would like to thank everyone who came to me with questions and concerns about the 25M. We cannot progress unless everyone is on the same page with their focus and ideas. So, to get the ball rolling on this forum, I wanted to touch upon something that has been bothering the ten man teams and myself.

Progression: Currently, groups 2 & 3 have been plagued with attendance issues which has halted progression somewhat. We will get in a couple good days and when it comes to a progression boss, we will be missing someone or something. In group 3's case, it always seems to be a geared 3rd healer who we trust, then betrays us, but I digress. Then the inevitable happens, Sunday and Monday roll around and we are forced to combine groups into one 10M which leave a bunch of fully capable raiders losing out on progression bosses. For example, I get asked to go into group 2's run on Monday's to try to help them kill Nef. I go into the run with mixed emotions. I don't intend to get any loot off those bosses, it should go to people who need it more than me. I just go because helping them out gives others a chance at experience and loot. Now, to be perfectly honest, I like running with group 2, but a combination of the two groups ultimately puts consistent raiders out in the dust and that is totally not fair. Someone put it to me like this, "the ten man is so close to progression, but with the 25M, it almost feels like it is being yanked from us." Now, this is a completely legitimate fear, but my hope is that the 25M will ultimately help progression rather than hurt it. Let me paint a picture for you, Say group 3 needs a 3rd healer. Getting a new person for the group and gearing them up in the alt run takes a while considering we don't kill that many bosses in the alt run. If we bring them in the 10M group to gear em out, it will probably slow our raid in getting to our progression boss to which the new healer is probably not geared for anyway. However, if we focus on a 25M for the first day of the raid week, we are now gearing 25 people equally. If we split into ten mans as the week continues, each group now has 5 extra geared/experienced people to help fill their ranks, so people don't have to go from group to group. Group 2 and 3 will be able to continue their progression. Now, people might ask about the people who would be undoubtedly asked to sit for the 10M later in the week, we can't break up 25 people into 2 ten mans. Think of it this way, if we didn't do the 25M at all, those people wouldn't have a chance to raid with us at all. If this ultimately gives us a chance to progress like crazy in the 25M and we can afford to have a consistent group 3 days a week, all the better for us all. The goal is to BENEFIT the guild by making it easier to gear/progress with more people. I don't want to feel like I am letting my group down again.

Now with that said, I just want to quickly summarize a few points that were made on the other two 25M forums.

Boredman brought up his fear of starting 25M in the middle of content rather than waiting till 4.2. It is my view that since we all have experience/gear with the current content, it would be better to do it now than starting with fresh content. We will more or less be gearing 7-10 people in our 25M rather than 25 people since most of us just need a few pieces in current normal content. As far as halting progression within the 10M's, as I mentioned above, our biggest Achilles heal in the 2 groups has been having enough people, hopefully the 25M will help us out.

Interrupts: In 25M, we will be in need of more interrupters. This speaks to more of a learn your class as best as you can point. If there is anything that you can do to better stay alive, do more DPS, heal better, help on a mechanic, please do so. Learn not only what you can do individually, but how you can help the raid as a whole.

Leadership: Before every raid, I will assign several jobs to different people within the raid. This will do two things, 1) Help the raid run more smoothly and 2) Empower some new leaders to step up. These duties will include Range/Melee/Healing/tanking leaders. These people will coordinate and lead discussions within the raid amongst their respective groups to better improve/coordinate the efforts. The leaders should assign who interrupts what, who tanks what, who heals what, etc. This way, if there is a wipe, if I ask what happened with the healing, I don't get crickets in vent. Also on the leadership concept will be specific people assigned to call out mechanics. This should never be more than 3 people maximum, otherwise people will get confused. Now this is a point to myself, Wili, and all those who have a habit of talking and calling out too everything on vent: We have to stop that in the 25M setting. Lastly, for trash, I want there to be a marking leader who will mark targets and assign CC's.

Loot Council: The officers in the raid have downloaded a Loot council add on, which will be the basis for our loot system for now. When a piece is dropped, it is linked in raid. People whisper the Loot Master what they have for the specific slot that piece goes to, basically what they will replace if they get it. You type "MAIN" or "OFF" depending on whether you want it for Main spec or offspec. The add on lets the loot council give a quick vote for who they want (They cannot vote for themselves) and the piece is automatically looted to the player who wins. Loot council will weigh how much much of an upgrade it is, your attendance, whether you have gotten a piece recently, etc.

Recruiting: Recruiting for the 10M teams has always been tough to do. Solid players always feel like they have less of a chance to get into a 10M. If you are the 11th guy in a 10M team, you probably won't have as easy a time getting into a run than if you are the 26th person in a 25M team. Recruiting for 25M will give us a better chance at getting quality people. If this effect trickles down into the ten man teams, then all the better.

Scheduled Breaks: Cutting down on afk's in 25M is always a HUGE issue. So to lessen down time, we will have scheduled breaks throughout the raid. Besides the breaks however, here are a few things you can do individually to cut down on overall wasted time. Buy everything you need for raid, the night before (flasks, potions, food, feasts, cauldrons, etc.). Repair before the raid and expect specific times during the raid to be set aside for repairing. When a boss dies, don't wait around next to the loot master, continue pulling trash. Before the raid begins, GET YOUR ASS TO THE RAID! Fuck mass summon, be there ahead of time. 30 minutes before the raid begins, do a small mental checklist for yourself. This could mean going over what spec/abilities you think will maximize your class on specific boss fights, it could be asking people what loot they will be rolling on, working together with your fellow DPS to figure out a better strat to down an add, something. All I ask is that we take a solid 30 minutes to discuss the raid itself. We have all the other time we are online to discuss random shit that happened during the day. Also, after the raid, I would like to have a 5-10 minute session for people to re-cap things they have learned throughout the raid. We have never done this before and I want to make it a new tradition so we can try to cut down on recurring mistakes.

Working together: As I said before, this is not an individual effort we are undertaking, we have to work as a team with a positive mindset. Nothing is on farm in 25M! Talk amongst your specific class members to discuss what best you can do to improve boss kills. If someone is doing better than you, don't hate them, ask how you can improve!

Sitting people: Wrath content was easier than Cataclysm. As such, we need to step up performance or we will never succeed. This means that the time for carrying people is over. Now, this doesn't mean that I ma going to be a crazy dictator, it simply means that if the officers collectively think you are having a bad day, you will be sat for someone waiting on the sidelines to prove themselves. Now, if you get sat, your first reaction shouldn't be resentment towards us for sitting you, it should be a renewed attitude to improve yourself. Keep in mind however, somethings are just out of your control. For example, if you are DC'ing a lot, an emergency happens, etc. You should take it upon yourself to ask to be sat to better help the raid. Now, as far as mechanics are concerned, sometimes we just need more of a certain class to down a boss. This could mean sitting the lowest DPS for an extra healer on Chimaeron, etc. Don't take anything personally, it is all about the benefit of the group. Now, that said, if you don't need any gear off a boss and you want to sit for someone else so they can get something, by all means offer. Above all though, if you are having a bad day, we want to be in a position to actually make the tough decisions rather than just be nice.

So, as usual, I made a long ass post. If I missed anything that was said before, please add it. Remember, this forum is to discuss any specific issues & suggestions people have with the raids. If you are going to comment on a strat or an individual, please be as objective as possible. I don't want to hear a post saying, "Man that Rebel is just bad." I would rather see a post saying, "Rebel, it would help if you salved yourself more often so that you don't pull aggro as much."

I want to make this forum get as much constructive traffic as possible, please contribute!

[Lyntha]

Interrupts: In 25M, we will be in need of more interrupters. This speaks to more of a learn your class as best as you can point. If there is anything that you can do to better stay alive, do more DPS, heal better, help on a mechanic, please do so. Learn not only what you can do individually, but how you can help the raid as a whole.

I think there needs to be a more solid plan on managing interrupts, such as an interrupt rotation or something. On fights like nef and maloriak, interrupts are absolutely critical and should be handled appropriately. Maloriak is especially tough on 25 as there are multiple things to interrupt on the same boss and the interrupt sequence will vary. For example:

Interrupt 1 --> Dps 1

7 seconds later: Interrupt 2 --> DPS 2

11 Seconds Later: Interrupt 3 --> DPS 1 and 2 both interrupt

6 seconds later: Interrupt 4 --> DPS 1 and 2 are both on CD

DPS will have to work together to ensure smooth interrupts and talk amongst themselves and this is not a challenge on 10man.

Otherwise, this whole thing appears to be very well thought out by you Rebel!!

[Berms]

Interrupts: In 25M, we will be in need of more interrupters. This speaks to more of a learn your class as best as you can point. If there is anything that you can do to better stay alive, do more DPS, heal better, help on a mechanic, please do so. Learn not only what you can do individually, but how you can help the raid as a whole.

I think there needs to be a more solid plan on managing interrupts, such as an interrupt rotation or something. On fights like nef and maloriak, interrupts are absolutely critical and should be handled appropriately. Maloriak is especially tough on 25 as there are multiple things to interrupt on the same boss and the interrupt sequence will vary. For example:

Interrupt 1 --> Dps 1

7 seconds later: Interrupt 2 --> DPS 2

11 Seconds Later: Interrupt 3 --> DPS 1 and 2 both interrupt

6 seconds later: Interrupt 4 --> DPS 1 and 2 are both on CD

DPS will have to work together to ensure smooth interrupts and talk amongst themselves and this is not a challenge on 10man.

Otherwise, this whole thing appears to be very well thought out by you Rebel!!

Don't put too many interrupters on Maloriak. It'll lead to people interrupting casts that should've been let through. Pick your most reliable two people and assign them specific spells. Let the tanks/leads/whatever decide how many casts to let through for the adds. Seriously, this is one of those fights, you want people to just tunnel within reason. If they can't be trusted to interrupt, don't make them do it.

[Boredman]

I still disagree

[Prydain]

Hey tanks & healers can now reliably interrupt.Bye bye hit rating on gear!!! yay!!!

[Lyntha]

The 25m seemed to be much easier than 10m. Due to lag, addon problems, DC's etc, we had several major messups throughout the night on almost every boss and still crushed the place. I mean look at the Chim kill, we lost a few people right at the beginning and still killed him. Imagine if that happened in 10M, it'd be a wipe for sure. Imagine next week when all the lag, dc's, addon problems etc. are fixed and we are also more comfortable with our roles. We should literally obliterate the place.

I approve of our 25's and hope to see us doing more! Excellent job Rebel.

Edited April 27, 2011 by Thraiborasam

[Rebelogic]

First of all, I can't take all the credit for yesterday. I mean, Glitter was in the raid; he brought us good luck in our efforts with his trademark yelling in vent he always does.

No, in all seriousness, GREAT JOB EVERYONE! The most important thing about yesterday night is that people showed up with a positive attitude about the raid. I didn't feel that anyone was bummed out about doing 25M rather than 10M, and if you did feel that way, you didn't show it, which I appreciate. So, let's recap the awesome night of epic-ness that was our first foray into 25M (Not counting BH or Realm first Lvl 25 efforts) since Wrath.

First, the lousy crap we couldn't control: Patch day, fucking patch day. People took a while to download and properly load the patch, but that was only the beginning of being able to actually raid. There was server and dungeon lag everywhere. A bunch of us got the "No instance found" error message when we loaded into BWD. Most of our add-ons didn't work or were consistently dc'ing us. Then there were the DC's from the frame-rate problem and other reasons (Blizzard said this morning that they are fixing that issue through re-starts and hot-fixes). Lastly, even though we went 5/6 yesterday, i felt like we downed 4 extra bosses (Loading screen boss, vent lag boss, release boss, and "Awe crap, I got ported to Org" boss). Despite all that though, I think my favorite uncontrollable error we had was on Omnitron, when the next robot refused to come out and Arcanotron decided to take a stone nap.

For personal blunders last night, there were a bunch but a lot of them shouldn't be difficult to fix. One problem we have is talking over each other. I am a huge culprit of this because like Wili, Greatbad, Moot, Nemesis, and all other people who are used to calling out everything, I had trouble holding myself back from doing so. On any given boss fight, we should have maybe 4 people max calling out different mechanics. Above them, we can have the raid leaders call out any major changes to the fight in order to recover a tank loss or battle-rez. For specific encounter blunders here are a few things that I noticed: Lyshani accidentally pulled Chimaeron. Now, we can sit here and yell at him, but considering that we only had 1 accidental pull which resulted in a raid wipe, I consider that a success for our first 25M in forever. On Maloriak, we spent the beginning of the fight with the boss facing the cauldron rather than us on red phase. We also had too many interrupts during the first cauldron cycle which resulted in only 6 adds at first. This was probably due to a melee who is used to doing the interrupts accidentally grabbing one. We also had Moot die while kiting which the range can do a little better job with helping him out with slows. On Omnitron, I noticed that when adds came out from Toxitron, the melee didn't move out fast enough before we were sure who they were targeting. Besides that, there were a few other minor errors, but if we just remember them, we can easily point them out next time and fix them. Please comment below anything else you noticed we can fix on specific fights.

What we did really well: We can't focus only on the negative, so I just want to call to attention the little efforts that people put in to make the raid go as well as it did. First, people logged on as soon as they could for yesterdays raid. I know that most of us had work and got on just before raid to find out that everything didn't work. However, you guys made the effort to fix things fast and inform the raid leaders of any problems you were having getting online, well ahead of time. In terms of pre-raid vent banter, people helped me out in vent by mostly talking about raid issues before we began rather than random things. That carried into the raid itself, despite us raid leaders talking over each other a lot, we didn't have excessive random banter, which I really appreciate. This is the difference from Newma making you smile and annoying you, you did well Newma. Adds in general died fast all over the place. We seemed to be good at switching to them and destroying them. Magmaw, Omnitron, and Maloriak adds died quickly. As far as interrupts are concerned, I almost think we did that too well (6 adds first cauldron phase on Maloriak). Only caviat to that last statement would be Omnitron where people didn't call out some of the interrupts they were getting until someone asked me if they could (my bad). As far as raid leading, the people who marked, tank led, healer led, range led, and melee led all did a good job managing their squads. People were attentive to their leaders and gave some very god suggestions as to how they could help the raid as a whole. There was a lot of other things people did really well on the fights, but I just want to focus on one aspect that permeated the entire raid. People kept an open mind to playing multiple roles, boss strats, loot council (which I think worked out pretty well), and the overall aspect of doing 25M. I can't thank you guys enough for helping me out in being positive.

Strat improvements for next time: For Magmaw, we were almost too efficient killing the adds. I don't mind if we take a person or two off of them to just stay on the boss, we can switch up who does that every raid. For Omnitron, as best as we can, we must get the golems to be on the opposite side of the room. They stop to cast and this process will take the tanks a bit, but it will help the healers if we DPS move around accordingly to acomodate add movement. Maloriak, I think we did fine on, just minor fixes. On Chimaeron, as long as we stick to the strategy of putting a healer in charge of a specif group and all others be wary of the spacing, we will be fine on that boss. For Atremedes, we are going to try a new strat next time. I want him in the middle at all times while he is down. There will be a melee group on one side and a ranged group on the other all stacked. If someone gets breath, they kite it right, everyone else will go left. A range can be designated for gongs. What this will do is give us a larger range of motion, prevent people from getting stuck on the sides, and limit the amount of sound we get because we will only get an average of 2 discs per side. Less movement = less sound = more win. I know we one-shot Atremedes, but we can still improve.

So, it seems that 25M is being embraced by more people, but in order for it to succeed, I need some things form people. First, we need to get an assessment of who can make what raid days. Please be available on non-raid times for me to ask you. From that information, we can determine our 25M schedule next week. I specifically only wanted to do 1 25M day this week so we can take a good chunk of time getting the raid properly ready to progress.

So, in closing, I thank you all for putting in the effort and positive attitude to make the raid go as well as it did. Please leave as much feedback as you can on this thread. We can only improve if we discuss how.

[Iammoot]

Hey Rebel, got a few things that I'd like to throw your way.

1.) On our Magmaw kill, the chains post-mangle seemed to be a little disoriented, i.e. 1 would come down and then another a second later, etc. That is why I died during the last ~20 seconds of the fight--Magmaw was just up for too long and Mangle autokilled me. To counter this, maybe we could have one of the jumpers count out "3.....2.....1.....GO!" at which point they all use their chain and there is cake at the end.

2.) For Atramades, I disagree on the idea behind changing our strategy. Yes, while sound did appear to be a problem for some people, I am hesitant to blame this on the strategy over the lag and framerate issues among other things. Besides, I think we would run into *additional* problems if we were to switch who is hitting the gong. I know that, personally, it has taken me months to get used to the cycle of searing flames and staying attentive. Telling someone different to do it is asking that person to relearn the fight whereas a repositioning the boss is very easy on the part of the tank.

However, I do think that the strategy could be reworked:

This is a link to the tankspot guide to 25m normal atramedes. What they do is one ranged pile, one melee pile and the tank. I think this strategy could be play-do-ed to our strategy if we were to kee the ranged pile somewhere in the middle of the room with the meelee always at a flank or tail position on the boss. I have noticed a pattern with respect to how I manuever the boss when I am going for gongs.

First, I always pull Atra to the NW corner of the room. After the first air phase, I go to the SE corner of the room. Then it's a toss up whether I go to the NE or the SW corner but either way, we usually know where Atra's rough position is and can plan around it or could even just call out a reliable melee/ranged to stack up on.

EDIT: Aesthetics...

Edited April 27, 2011 by Iammoot

[Lyntha]

Rebel:

I've been in a lot of 25M raids and vent chatter didn't appear excessive at all. If anything, there seemed to be a need for more. IE when we collapse on Chim (And Spread Out) some of the calls were late or missing. It might be a good idea to designate two ppl to say it if one person will occasionally forget or be too busy healing, tanking or dps and forget to make the call.

The fact that we only had one ass pull of Chim was an achievement itself. I was literally thinking as we were buffing that pull "Wow, we haven't ass-pulled chim yet! I should mention it! No wait, i'll jinx us!!"

Maloriak was pretty messed up in multiple ways. For one, I had never tanked the boss and had no idea that I had to face him towards the raid. That obviously thankfully got solved quickly (Thank goodness I didn't get one-shotted) and is no longer an issue. Somebody was interrupting Release Abberations at first but they stopped and I interrupted the rest according to my Boss Mod telling me that 9 adds were up when there were only six. I guess my mod didn't catch an interrupt? Not sure, but that ended up being MY fault, not the DPS. This caused Moot to have to tank 12 the second time which is why he died, that's not a fault of moot or the ranged dps providing slows. Their damage increases almost exponentially the more you have up as they buff each other. We recovered quickly, got moot back up while I AOE Taunted + Swalled and beat the fight. It was a great effort. So basically, all the problems were my fault . I will stroke my ego a bit and admit that I didn't get hit by a single magma jet however the first time I've seen the mechanic and came up with my own little system for placing them on the fly without hitting the raid or getting hit myself. So maybe that balances it out? Idk, we should be fine next time regardless.

Moot:

For magmaw, the melee just have to spam click on magmaw and do the chains immediately. If there is no delay (There shouldn't be), it will naturally happen all at once. Coordinating it (1, 2, 3 GO!) will only create more vent chatter and enhance the possibility of a mistake due to vent lag, not to mention delay the exposed phase and increase tank damage. Too much possible bad stuff to account for people screwing up something exceedingly simple (Click on a huge freaking boss as soon as you can click on him).

Edited April 27, 2011 by Thraiborasam

[Rebelogic]

My earlier comments on what went wrong on Maloriak were just small issues we basically fixed throughout the fight. I only called them to attention because they happened, from what I saw, not glaring things at all, we fixed things fast. It wasn't the ranged's fault that Moot died, Thrai is right, 12 adds is annoying on one tank. I was just suggesting that every once in a while, we could get a ring or hunter trap to help moot out a bit.

The two person call out on "Stack" "Spread" on Chimaeron is a good idea since during that fight, there is nothing else really to call out until phase 3, except for the occasional B-Rez and healer CD. As far as vent chatter goes, it is always easier to increase vent chatter than to reduce it. I tried to set a standard of, let's be as quiet as possible and tackle everything as if it is progression. Now that I know where we stand, we can be a little more talkative in vent between fights. You have all proven you can focus, just don't lose that.

For Atremedes, I wouldn't mind doing it the way that we did it yesterday from now on. It is basically the way that both group 2 and group 3 does it. However, group 3 has gone a couple weeks before where we had a ranged hit gongs (Zeroshiki), and he got really good at it. It is worth a shot to try it a new way just to minimize movement. However, this is one of those symantics issues where we can take the Tank, Healer, Ranged, and melee leads for the day and vote on which strat they prefer. I wouldn't mind either strat, tbh. A combo-strat with what Tankspot did as you suggested, would also be fine.

For Magmaw, I think lag fucked up the jumpers a little bit. It was the three DK's who were assigned to do it (Nemesis, Ghostwind, Havlat). They got it right most of the time, though you are right, coordination was off a little a few times. In 10M, Our group just spam-clicks the boss and throws the chain as soon as they can. 90% of the time, they hit within a second of each other. Adding one more jumper/chain to the equation shouldn't affect things too much in terms of timing on a non-patch day. Maybe the three jumpers could call out something to the affect of "Nem Chain up" so people know if one of them missed the jump or something. Considering that besides "pillar" and "Mangle", there isn't too much being called out on that fight, I wouldn't mind 3 melee confirming that their chains are out. Btw, thanks for pointing that out Moot, I had forgotten to mention the Magmaw chains. I was well aware that it wasn't your fault you died there, lol.

Lastly, The Lyshani pulling on Chimaeron thing, is now confirmed to be Thrai's fault, it has been admitted. He basically jinxed us all with his mind.

Thanks for all your suggestions/comments guys, keep em coming.

[Lyntha]

WALL OF TEXT

/agree . It is also very possible that somebody accidentally clicked on Magmaw and was on him messing up one of the three DK's who were supposed to be chaining. I think I even remember one DK saying on vent that somebody went up instead of him.

Lastly, The Lyshani pulling on Chimaeron thing, is now confirmed to be Thrai's fault, it has been admitted. He basically jinxed us all with his mind.

[Ghostwind]

One thing that I think worked very very well in the 25 man was setting up like class roles into groups. On chim we had to do it for everyone to receive a heal, but it gave me and my fellow melee bros the chance to talk amongst ourselves in /p and position ourselves correctly before Willi had to move the guys on the other side into position. I like the squad feel it gave to raiding and i think it really helped with cohesion and helping each other out without spamming vent/raidchat with me, Havlat and Nem's so called "DK TALK". On that note......... hero class. But really guys great job we flew through BWD. Just gotta realize that communication and coordination is much more important in a 25 man setting. If it wasn't patch night I honestly think we coulda rolled into Nef's pit of lava and gave him an asswhooping.