The Queue: Movin right along until…

We may not be World First raiders but my guild has been doing pretty well in Sepulcher. We took a bit of a slower start to the tier than usual, spending a little more time in Normal than we normally do to get a few extra tier pieces for people and last night we finally saw some good progress into Heroic. We cleared all the way up through to Halondrus in just three hours, getting first kills on the Prototype Pantheon, Lihuvim, and Xy’mox 2: Portal Boogaloo. We even managed to knock a bunch of time off of our best Dausegne kill. It turns out that getting powerful upgrades like second legendary items and tier set bonuses really helps… go figure!

Then came Halondrus.

While he may not be as tough on Heroic as he is on Mythic, it’s possible that he may take us a few more attempts than the last few bosses…

While I look up some good recipes for crab cakes, it’s time for — The Queue.

I think that the tuning we saw this time was deliberately a little heavy on the boss’s side after the cakewalk the guilds had going through the Sanctum of Domination. Seven days for Sylvanas wasn’t really as exciting as it could’ve been — considering the build-up around finally getting to fight her.

Now getting the tuning to that “just right” sweet spot of the 10-14 day race is something that’s going to be pretty tough. We’ve seen before what kind of shenanigans these guilds are prepared to do in order to squeeze every last drop of damage out of their players. I don’t think that the developers saw it coming when Echo brought 12 melee DPS to their world first Lords of Dread kill. Things like that are what make this event so hard to tune.

Especially when you take into consideration all of the things that the top guilds do outside of raiding in the week or two leading up to the Mythic difficulty opening. If there’s a trinket from a Mythic+ dungeon out there that will give ranged DPS 1% more damage than any other trinket, you bet that every ranged DPS in that raid is going to have it, no matter how many times they have to run that dungeon.

Team Liquid calling their in-person event early because they recognized their players were burning out was 100% the right call. I’ll have more to say on it in a post later, but the hours that they had been raiding for had been rough. Nearly 21 days straight of 10+ hour raiding and dungeons is going to take a toll on you no matter how many food breaks and stretches you do. It easily could’ve been Echo making the same call if both guilds were stuck in the same position, or if the Mythic Phase wound up being something that turned the Jailer into another Halondrus type boss.

Oh very much so! It’s great seeing the swarm of players all descend from the sky on their menagerie of flying mounts. Or even better, when people get bored waiting for something to spawn so everybody gets on the same mount — and all you see is a circle of yaks waiting for the Sha of Anger to spawn.

I also like how weirdly positive everyone seems to be around long-time bosses like the Sha of Anger. Maybe this is just me, but I always feel like people at him are just kinda rooting for someone to get the Heavenly Onyx, even if it isn’t them at least it proves that it still exists. Of course, it would be better if it was them getting it, but confirmation is good too.

That’s a good question. From what I’ve seen, none of his mechanics are things that are necessarily super unfair. He just feels like a fight that is very much designed to play out mechanically very tightly each time. Do everything you’re supposed to, don’t put your back to a hole in the ground and you’ll win. Especially after they hotfixed the missile cast in phase three to not need as many people soaking them. Now you can afford one person on the floor as you go into the phase, assuming you have a charge of battle rez coming soon.

Of course, you can’t expect everyone to play as flawlessly as RWF guilds, or put the same kind of effort in. That’s already untenable for them, in the long haul. I think there’ll probably be nerfs to the Jailer’s total health, and the damage that Azeroth takes from him in phase three. I think that the phase four mechanics all looked appropriately challenging for what you could expect from an end boss in a raid like that. Especially since the heal he gets going into the phase is reducible through Mortal Strike effects.

Echo did have roughly the item level and extra bonuses that a guild should’ve had by the time they killed the Jailer. Between their M+ farming, and just picking up gear through their almost three full clears of the raid most of their raiders were item level 274 or above. So add a few extra points onto that for a more Mythically geared guild that has fought their way past Anduin, Rygelon, and the Lords of Dread a few weeks now while they’re getting practice on the Jailer, and you’ve got the recipe for success.

At least as far as Cutting Edge raiders are concerned. If my progress winds up at 6/11 Mythic before season 4 comes out I’ll consider myself a happy bear.

I think it’s fine. It’s neither annoying nor exciting to me. It’s just kinda there.

The Wo invisibility feels like the most impactful of them, and that’s just another version of the Obelisk skip that we’ve seen before, only a little more freeform. Vy’s damage boost is nice, but the last bunch of keys I’ve done Urh was the group choice every time. Getting time knocked off of your cooldowns is pretty nice in fairness, I’m just shocked that the straight “you have more haste and a damage proc” doesn’t win out.

Maybe it all just comes down to how often Vy jumps around, that any extra gain of damage you’d get from the power is lost in getting it.

What I am surprised about is that every boss just spawns a group of them, I guess I was expecting to have to do weird pulls where you dragged relics from one group of trash near the boss onto it so you’d have the buff. Kind of like how you’d time your Prideful kill count% breakpoints so you’d have the boost prior to hitting bosses.

I don’t know about the complete invincibility thing, that would probably just see groups of people where 15 players are tabbed out and auto-attacking while checking the latest news, and 10 people are left actually killing the boss. I wouldn’t mind seeing Determination reworked to stack up faster though. Keep the maximum amount of bonuses gained, and just award that at five stacks instead of ten. Maybe add a thing where after five wipes everybody gets one cheat death “get out of jail free” card for that fight.

Today’s Anna Earworm™:

That’s it from me, your friendly neighborhood bear — have a great week everyone, and leave Anna lots of questions for tomorrow!