Mythics Managed

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After our success the previous night with Freehold, we decided to set our sights on a new target.  We had heard one of the next easiest mythics was Waycrest Manor… aka the Haunted House.  As such we made our way over to Drustvar and zoned in hoping to have the same sort of luck we did the evening before.  So things I noticed… firstly that we had gotten a bit more gear since the last outing and the trash packs specifically felt much more manageable.  However several of the boss encounters caused us to attempt them multiple times to finally sort out everything that needed to happen.  It was a longer run than Freehold, and I am not a huge fan of the layout of the zone given everything feels super claustrophobic.  The other issue is both times I have been here there have been issues with the Z Axis… so it was feeling very reminiscent of old school Everquest runs of Castle Mistmoore or Kedge Keep.   There were several times when a mob literally warped up through the floor and came charging at us, and I feel like this isn’t necessarily something that is supposed to be happening.

The hardest encounter was the three witches, largely because of the sheer amount of damage we were taking.  I finally decided to use one of my Drums of the Maelstrom, which effectively gives me a one time shot use Bloodlust /Heroism.  We waited for the second boss in the sequence and used it to burn most of its life away.  However largely I think it was Grace carrying us all with her healing because it still seemed like we were taking copious amounts of damage.  I believe we all walked away with a shiny epic bauble to show for our effort.  I managed to pull two items, but the second was a pair of shoulders roughly the same as the ones I was currently wearing so I traded them over to Tam.  I guess that is the positive about running the mythic with the comp we were… because it was four leather classes so ample opportunity to swap gear around.  Unfortunately Grace was the odd player out as a cloth wearer, but the other night she was swapping stuff with the Mage so I guess it all shakes out in the end.

RoboSquid Armada

This is sorta a name we continue to flock back to because it is amazing…  but has shifted focus a number of times over its life span.  At first this was the guild we formed on Eonar to start running dungeons grossly undergeared and at the minimum item level available to zone in.  We managed to make it through Gnomeregan before we sorta petered out.  We intended to come back and start it up again, but a handful of us were not actively subbed to the game… and then the world scaling patch sorta killed this notion.  During late Legion we revamped things and started using the Discord attached to it as a home base for a group that was attempting to push Mythic+ encounters.  This went well for a period of time..  but I sorta had a bout of crippling self doubt and anxiety due to some external stresses that were happening in my life and flaked the hell out.  Since that point it has sorta been a neutral ground for making groups happen, and the discord we hand out any time we have folks who don’t all have access to the same locations.

Yesterday I tweeted the above message out… which was immediately mistaken for me starting a transmog farming group.  So maybe I should have worded things a little differently.  Essentially one of the things I miss is the early days of World of Warcraft before the looking for group tool.  In that era we had tons of social channels run by different raids or community organizations and they served as the basis for forming groups by hand.  Hell the entire reason why this blog got any readership at all I feel is because of my early “Groupcraft” guide series that got picked up by WoW Insider at the time.  When the dungeon finder was introduced during Wrath of the Lich King…  all of those social networks started to atrophy and decay away.  When I came back after leaving the game in Cataclysm…  almost all of my social channels were completely empty.  People just stopped joining them anymore since they had the group finder to lean on and since Cataclysm largely destroyed the concept of non-guild based raiding.

The primary reason why Mythics have felt awful is that it forces players to rely on either guilds… or complete strangers to make them happen.  The social network and infrastructure that Vanilla to Wrath players used to rely on to make things happen… is just flat out gone.  The other huge problem is that players are now spread out among countless smaller servers with a hefty $25 per character tax if you want to remedy that fact.  So to move my 14 Horde characters from The Scryers to some other location (not that I want to)… would cost me $350 which is not at all reasonable.  Cross server grouping is awesome… but also sort of unmanageable just through a friends list because again… not all of your resources may be battletag mutuals and you sorta have to get different people to invite different folks to the group/raid.

With this expansion however Blizzard introduced the ability to join Battle.net and WoW Social channels and have them piped to in game chat.  The “Social” tab was mostly a useless thing when it was first introduced but now that you can actually use it while playing the game… it suddenly becomes way more useful.  It is going to allow us to rebuild that sort of infrastructure that we once had and provide a bridge to help connect players scattered throughout multiple servers and guilds.  I was a huge fan of the concept of having a raid completely separate from your guild, because it allowed you to hang out and get green text with the people you felt comfortable with…  and have a similar but different group of people you got things done with.  There are a lot of players that are simply not comfortable being in a mega guild, and during the Duranub Raiding Company days we basically had House Stalwart as the large guild… and a bunch of smaller satellite guilds that all joined together to do stuff in the world.

So ultimately… yesterday Grace and I got to talking and that almost always lends its way to nonsense.  The idea is that we start trying to use RoboSquid Armada as a vehicle for binding together all these pockets of people who want to do stuff… but also are not willing to pug.  This of course is what spawned the tweet above.  Effectively what we are looking for in players…

  • Horde NA Server Players.
  • Willingness to Roll with the Punches and Attempt things with little to no prep time.
  • Being super good-natured and willing to accept that we are going to fail an awful lot in some of the things we try.
  • Willingness to help out players that need help.
  • The ability to ignore all of those ways that players prove themselves to be better than others, and just be part of the group all working towards the same goal.
  • Willingness to work hard and improve your own game play when the challenge arises, and come up with creative solutions to work around group composition weaknesses.
  • Being open to passing along gear to help out others that might not be as well geared as you are yet.
  • Folks that simply want a comfortable and safe place to hang out while playing World of Warcraft.
  • Being able to laugh at your own mistakes and pick yourself right back up and face the nonsense all over again.
  • Being able to mentor other players when they ask for help, but not being a know it all and forcing your opinion on them when they didn’t.

So that isn’t really a list of guidelines or rules, but more something to think about when approaching this group.  We do silly things and it is okay if we fail… but at least we tried really hard to make it work.  We will have fun and learn together and sort out what we need to do to make the bosses fall down.  For the time being… it is largely just a group for getting normals/heroics/mythics going or just having a fun time while leveling your hundredth alt.  In the future it may coalesce into a non-guild based raid if we have enough people interested and something resembling a workable group composition.  Essentially…  I am looking for a few people willing to fail hard and laugh about it.  Are you interested in nonsense?  If you have any questions ping me along the many many avenues of contact I am sure you have with me.

The details…

Some rules that should be obvious but I will state them anyways:

  • This is a positive community so please respect each other so we can go off and do awesome things together.
  • No religious or political chat please.
  • Racism, homophobia, sexism or any other abhorrent behavior will not be tolerated.
  • No Posting of DPS Meters or any sort of that behavior.

If all or any of this sounds like an awesome idea then I really hope to see you as part of the RoboSquid Armada.

[EDIT]  Updated the link to the social group, because for whatever reason the first one was not working.

2 thoughts on “Mythics Managed”

  1. In case it was not clear, the second which does such insane damage because she has a stacking aura debuff that ticks for large amounts, which you can remove by jumping/moving. Once you do that the fight becomes pretty easy.

  2. Pingback: Forget your fears | Moonshine Mansion

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