BDGG on the Preparation to Compete in the World First Race for Sanctum of Domination

Live Publié 02/10/2021 à 04:08 par blooblahguy

“Wow, if only they raided more hours, they’d be able to compete for world first”

We used to think of ourselves in that same light until we actually went for it… and promptly got destroyed.

Shampy - Officer and Healing Lead of BDGG

BDGGBDGG's BackgroundOur pull counts in UldirOur pull counts in Battle for Dazar'alorRequirements to CompetelivemoneyThe First Attempt: Castle NathriaIssues

Sleeping, eating, and break schedules

Proper reads on meta and comp

Boss strategies for later bosses

Fully fleshed out strategies for earlier bosses as well

Custom boss timers / WAs (especially early on)

BoE acquisition

Legendary acquisition

Stocking consumables in guild bank

Fatigue/consistency whilst raiding all day

Building out HOW to raid lead/call decisions on the fly with no guide in front of you

Maintaining a positive atmosphere

Organizing and scheduling heroic week

Day Raiding DemandsDiminishing ReturnsFixing, Growing, and Looking ForwardBubbadubInternal Changes

We sent our new raid leader to a US 700 guild to practice raid leading from a 21st man point of view (yes, we actually did this). We also spent time optimizing the UIs of the players who would be his point of view in our guild.

Hired a talented external WeakAuras writer to create custom WeakAuras and adjust them mid-tier without us taking time during progress so one of our raiders could fix them.

Shifted BoE and Legendary acquisition more heavily to support staff, as well as bringing on additional people to help in that role, to again remove the need for officers to do these things and spend more time solely on progression. This also required a new approach to BoE acquisition, proactive instead of reactive. We bought anything we *can* use right now, worry less about financial worth, especially with avoidance/leech.

Created *rigid* scheduling starting before heroic week to get everybody on the same/consistent sleeping and eating schedules. During progress this meant taking an hour break immediately following a wipe to Guardians of the First one at just 40,000 health. Most guilds, and us in the past, would say “oh we’ve got this, one more pull” but this often doesn’t go according to plan. Making these strict calls assisted in addressing fatigue and mental consistency.

Creating detailed and optimized scheduling Heroic week to maximize gearing and character preparation whilst minimizing time spent. This includes mandated groups and timings for Mythic+ groups, Torghast groups, Korthia swoops, etc. One big area of success here was we were able to get a large percentage of our roster 2100 in PvP without spending too much time (shoutouts to Absterge in particular for offering to help).

We brought in a huge amount of new talent that had shown they were ready to buy-in to our guild culture. It’s probably really easy to understate this bullet point but it was easily one of the bigger factors in our success; people were hungry, but also unified. Our guild cohesion was exceptional.

Had, literally, hundreds of hours of meetings for PTR and boss testing. This included discussions about strategy before first testings, then meetings to refine strategies for Mythic, followed by multiple meetings to abuse each and every fight and their mechanics for the Mythic version specifically. We were overall very productive here, as we identified strong strategies such as the Ner'zhul Dissipation de masse cheese, as well as the predominant Kel’Thuzad strategy that was shown by Echo.

Pictured here is an officer's girlfriend upset at the number of meetings required for excellence.

To augment boss strategy, we also held testing sessions for DPS where we effectively tested various timings and profiles that looked to be important for the tier. For example, testing DPS for 5:40-6:15 windows for Guardian to determine optimal comps, 1:15 windows for Kel’Thuzad Phase 3, as well as target swapping to simulate Painsmith balls.

More meetings. Seriously, we talked constantly. About everything. One of the strongest aspects of our preparation this tier was intentionally trying to include every person in the raid in our decision-making, which yielded incredible results as we were able to act upon great ideas that wouldn’t have come to us if we were more insulated in private channels.