• Death Jesters have been grinding away on Midnight Falls, and this week we finally started seeing what the fight really has in store. We got a look at phase 2 a handful of times, which is always that turning point where a boss goes from “we’re learning the pull” to “okay, now we’re getting somewhere.” Phase 1 and intermission are also starting to feel more consistent, which is the backbone you need before phase 2 ever becomes a genuine kill attempt. I jumped in on both my evoker and my shaman this week to help cover some key roles. Grips were one of the main things the team needed, and being able to flex between two characters to fill those gaps is exactly the kind of utility that keeps progression moving. There’s something satisfying about showing up to a prog night in a different spec and still feeling useful. Even though I felt my damage was still insufficient. We saw the second set of beams in phase 2 just once. Intermission is still hectic with the stars and the beams. I caught myself holding my breath a few times during that phase, especially when I was in charge of holding a crystal.
• Last Call Clears Crown of Cosmos! We finally cleared Crown of Cosmos this week, which puts us at 7/9 Mythic. That’s a huge benchmark, and the team has earned it. We’ve since moved straight into Belo’oren progression and got through the egg phase in our early attempts. The egg phase is a straight-up burn phase. It’s send every CD, potion, and kitchen sink to get this thing down as fast as possible. I have to rework our second phase 1, with the orb soaks. The extra set of Quills is throwing the team for a loop. We pushed it to 38% on the egg phase. Best egg damage: ~38%. With Vantus next week, it should go down even more.
• Abundance shards get more convenient. This one is for anyone who has spent more time than they’d like chain running Abundance and investing one Shard of Dundun everytime. An upcoming patch is adding the ability to deposit abundance shards simultaneously rather than individually. Thank goodness. Big ol’ quality of life change and I can get my time back.
• Guild Wars 3 rumours are circling. I’m actually stoked about this. There’s buzz ahead of PC Games Fest later this week that a Guild Wars 3 announcement could be coming. I’ll be watching that one closely. Guild Wars 1 was a an early favourite for me and one I have a lot of affection for. I never got deep into Guild Wars 2, so there’s been an absence in my time with the franchise, but the idea of a third entry is exciting. It’s a rumor for now, and PC Games Fest has a way of generating speculation that doesn’t always pan out. Still, if there’s even a trailer or a teaser, it’ll be worth paying attention to. Fingers crossed. I really hope it’s not some card game.

That’s all for this week!

The post Matt’s Notebook: The 7 of 9 Edition appeared first on World of Matticus.

You show up on time, your consumables are ready, your addons are updated, and the raid plan has been reviewed. You’ve been grinding this tier for 10 weeks. And then five minutes before the first pull, you get the message.

“Hey, sitting you for this one. We’ll get you in later.”

It stings. Even if you’ve been raiding at a high level for years, even if you’ve made this call yourself a hundred times, being on the receiving end never stops being uncomfortable.

I’ve been on both sides of it. In Death Jesters, I’m sometimes the second or third choice to come in, and it’s usually when one of our primary players is away. In Last Call, I have to handle the roster responsibility from boss to boss. The honest truth is that making the call is often harder than getting it. Not because the decision is unclear, but because I know exactly how it feels to read that message and wonder what it means about where you stand.

Here’s a glimpse of what actually goes into it, from someone who’s been working through a roster every week for a long time.

There Is No Formula

The first thing to understand is that I don’t have a spreadsheet that automatically sorts the roster and spits out who’s sitting next. There’s no universal ranking where the bottom person gets benched, and everyone moves up a slot. It doesn’t work that way. There were times when I wished I had some type of grading tool akin to Fantasy Football rankings, where it would help make that lineup setting and decision-making easier, so that I didn’t have to think about it.

Every boss asks for something different. Every week has a different context. Roster decisions are almost always a blend of several factors at once, and the weight of each one shifts depending on where we are in the tier.

If you’re trying to reverse-engineer why you sat by comparing your logs to someone else’s, you’re probably looking at the wrong thing entirely.

On Progression, the Boss Decides

When we’re actively progressing on a new boss, my first question isn’t “who’s performing best?” It’s simpler than that: what does this encounter actually need?

That question has many answers, depending on the boss. Sometimes it’s about raw class or spec composition — we need another ranged, or we’re running too much melee, and people are tripping over each other. Sometimes it’s specific utility: a Warlock gateway, a Death Knight grip, a Paladin immunity, a Druid knockback. Sometimes it’s survivability — I need players who can reliably handle a specific mechanic without needing a rez every other pull.

I ran into this exact problem just last week on Crown of the Cosmos. I’d committed to a comp that ended up being short on mobility tools, and I spent an entire night patching around it with awkward grip assignments that only worked as long as nobody died in the wrong order. It was my mistake on the comp, and it cost us time. The players weren’t wrong — the setup was.

Some bosses make the requirements even harder to negotiate around. Midnight Falls, for example, has a minimum floor: you need at least two Death Knights for grips, at least two classes that can do knockbacks, a Priest for friendly crystal grips, and an Evoker for the mobility. That’s not a preference list. That’s the encounter telling you exactly who has to be in the room. If you don’t have those pieces, you’re not progressing that boss. Someone who doesn’t fit that checklist isn’t sitting because of anything they did. They’re sitting because the encounter is making the decision for me.

That’s the thing about progression sits: they usually aren’t about you. A very good player can sit a progression boss because the encounter favors a setup that doesn’t include their class. That’s not a judgment on their value. It’s the boss asking for something specific, and we’re trying to give it what it wants.

But hey, that’s the demands of Mythic raiding. I know some of my players have lamented the requirement of certain class compositions, but that is part of the difficulty at this echelon of playing.

On Farm, Loot Becomes Part of the Equation

Once a boss is on farm, priorities shift.

We’re not solving the encounter anymore. That means I start looking at loot wishlists, Droptimizer recommendations, who still needs tier, who’s missing a key trinket or weapon, much more closely. If two players are equally viable for a slot and one of them has a meaningful upgrade on this boss while the other doesn’t, that becomes a real factor.

Farm nights aren’t easy breezy runs. I still want clean kills with a full team that knows what it’s doing. But farm is also how you build the raid for the next tier. Getting the right gear onto the right players now is part of the investment.

It’s also the time to consider the future and work in any alts or main switches for the following season.

Fairness Matters More Than People Think

Beyond composition and loot, I’m keeping a mental ledger of who’s been sat and how often.

A roster dies slowly when the same people keep getting the short end of the rotation. Even if the decisions are all individually defensible, if you look up three weeks in and the same two or three players have been sitting more than everyone else, something’s wrong. People start to feel like permanent backups. That quiet resentment builds into attendance issues, then recruiting drama, then players quietly finding another guild.

I try to catch it before it gets there. If someone has been sat multiple times in a row, that weighs on the next decision even if the current boss could theoretically work without them. Long-term engagement matters more than optimizing a single pull.

Trials Need Real Reps (And So Do Some Veterans)

If I’m recruiting a trial and they never actually play, I can’t evaluate them.

Logs tell me a fraction of what I need to know. I can see throughput and mechanical awareness from a log, but I can’t see how someone communicates under pressure, how they respond after a bad pull, whether they ask smart questions or mentally shut down when things go sideways. Farm bosses are where I find out who someone actually is as a raider.

Our roster has a real range of experience. Some players have multiple Cutting Edge achievements and have seen versions of these situations before, such as Fyrakk seeds and the crystals in Midnight Falls. Others (and there’s no shame in this) are in their first serious Mythic environment. Those players need reps too, maybe more than anyone. It’s one thing to read a strategy guide or watch a Taktyks video. It’s another to be mid-pull, realizing a mechanic is about to overlap with your cooldown window, and having to think through it on the fly. That kind of decision-making isn’t something you can shortcut. You have to earn it through repetitions.

I’ll rotate someone into a farm boss because they need the practice planning their movement, managing their cooldowns around boss events, or adjusting their rotation when something unexpected happens. It’s not supposed to be filler. It’s meant for development. And that development pays off weeks later when we’re deep into a progression boss, and I need everyone thinking, not just reacting.

Scheduling is part of this too. If a raider is heading out on vacation for a few weeks, it doesn’t make much sense to bring them in on a new progression boss we’re expecting to kill while they’re gone. They’d be investing pulls into learning a fight they won’t be there to finish. Better to give those reps to someone who’ll be present for the kill and needs the experience.

If you’re a veteran sitting a farm boss for any of these reasons, I know that’s frustrating. But it’s also how the guild builds depth for when you actually need it.

Reliability Counts, Even When It’s Invisible

Here’s one factor people underestimate: I notice who makes the night easier to run.

Showing up on time. Having consumes. Knowing the plan without needing it re-explained (but confirming their position or interrupt order). Having addons sorted for the mechanic we just talked about in Discord. Keeping a character properly maintained. None of these things show up in a log, but they all add up. When two players are genuinely close in value, the one who creates less friction usually wins the spot.

Raid leaders remember who makes the night smoother. It’s not glamorous, but it matters.

The Call Isn’t About You, Even When It Feels Like It

The most common things I hear after a sit decision are some version of:

“But my numbers were better than his.”

“I must’ve done something wrong.”

Almost none of that is true. Most sit decisions are strategic, logistical, or developmental. They’re made with the team in mind, not against any individual. The fact that I’m rotating you doesn’t mean I’m sending a message. It usually just means the context of this particular boss, on this particular week, is pointed elsewhere.

What I’ll always try to do is be direct about it and give you enough context to understand the call. Not a lengthy justification, but enough to keep you from guessing. If you’re sitting because of comp, I’ll tell you it’s comp. If it’s loot, I’ll say that. Vague non-answers are where resentment grows.

Raid Leaders Get It Wrong Too

This goes both ways. I’d be doing you a disservice if I framed every sit decision as perfectly calculated and correct, because that’s not always true.

Sometimes the wrong person starts. Sometimes I overvalue a class that ends up not mattering as much as I thought it would. Sometimes I build a comp around what the top guilds were running in Warcraft Logs during the first week of the tier, only for Blizzard to patch the encounter and change the math entirely. The Paladins fight is a good example since early on, the dispel quantity was high enough that two Mistweaver Monks felt close to mandatory. Then the nerf hit, the number of dispels dropped significantly, and suddenly you only needed one. Any comp decisions made around that original requirement had to be revisited.

That’s just the reality of a live game. Bosses change. Tuning shifts. What was a hard requirement in week two can become a preference by week four. When that happens, I try to catch it and adjust, but I don’t always catch it immediately, and sometimes players pay the price for a call that looked right at the time and turned out to be wrong.

If you genuinely think a sit decision was a mistake, I’d rather you say something directly than let it fester. I’m not infallible, and I don’t expect to be treated like I am. What I ask is that you bring it to me directly, as opposed to working its way through half the guild before it reaches my ears.

Nobody’s Happy Every Week, and That’s Fine

Every week I’m balancing progression needs, composition, loot, fairness, development, attendance realities, and morale. Sometimes all at the same time, all pulling in slightly different directions. There is no decision that satisfies all of them simultaneously.

If everyone in the raid is mildly annoyed from time to time, that’s honestly a decent sign. It means the rotations are being spread around honestly instead of a permanent hierarchy forming at the bottom.

Being sat sucks. Making the call usually isn’t great either. But if it gives the team a better chance on this boss, or keeps someone engaged who would otherwise start checking out, or gets a trial the reps they need to become a real contributor — it’s the right call, even when it doesn’t feel like it.

One week is not the whole tier. There’ll always be opportunities to shine.

The post Why You’re Sitting Out in Raid Tonight appeared first on World of Matticus.

Yet, nobody bought the idea that he was actually done.

Least of all Torts himself.

The problem was simple. He still had the itch. The hunger for preparation. The desire to hold accountability. The specific, unrelenting challenge of taking twenty different personalities and pointing them all in the same direction at the same time. Without that, what was he supposed to do with himself?

He looked around. The NBA felt too soft especially with the flopping, and he would never stand for that. The NFL had too many coaches coaching other coaches. Baseball season was way too long that he’d have aged out before anything meaningful happened.

Then one night, his son pulled up a Mythic raid stream on the TV.

Torts watched for about ten minutes without saying a word.

Twenty players. A single boss that had skewered them hundreds of times. Hours of reviewing the same mistakes. People arguing over positioning. Everyone searching for any possible edge.

He leaned forward and murmured, “Why isn’t anyone holding these guys accountable?”

His son didn’t have a great answer.

Three weeks later, John Tortorella created a World of Warcraft account. Two months after that, he joined a guild. Six months in, he was raid leader.

Mythic Crown of the Cosmos: Pull 43, 9:14 PM

“Alright, everyone shut up for a second.”

Discord goes quiet. You could almost hear him push up his glasses.

“We are forty-three pulls into this boss. Forty-three. And I’m still watching people move like they just downloaded the game this morning. That stops tonight.”

Ready check goes out.

One icon stays shows a question mark.

“Where’s our Mage? Where’s Bicsy?”

A sheepish voice filters through.

“Sorry. Bio break.”

“Are you serious? We called a break fifteen minutes ago. You picked now to discover human biology?”

No response.

“Get settled. We’re pulling.”

The pull timer appears.

“Five. Four. If you are holding defensives like they’re collectibles, I want you to think hard about your choices. Two. Everyone breathe. One.”

Pull.

It actually looks decent. Nobody dead. The first set of adds were going down nicely. For a brief moment, it feels like maybe tonight is the night.

Then a Monk with an Obelisk rolls and overshoots causing lines to lance into the rest of the melee team.

Raid over in seconds.

Silence on Discord. Complete, total silence.

Torts exhales slowly into his mic. The kind of exhale that says he is choosing his words carefully and it is taking real effort.

“Unbelievable.”

Nobody moves. Nobody types in chat. Someone’s dog barks faintly in the background.

Finally, the Monk:

“My bad.”

“Your bad.”

Torts lets that sit for a moment.

“You just turned twenty people into a loading screen. ‘My bad’ is what you say when you spill someone’s beer.”

One of the players tries to help.

“I think there was some overlap with the—”

“No. Stop. There’s no we in that sentence. Everyone else was positioned correctly. Everyone else read the room. You were out of position, and you panic rolled.”

The healing officer, bless his heart, tries to smooth it over.

“It’s okay, guys. Early pulls are for learning. We’ll get it cleaned up.”

“We’re on pull forty-three.” Torts says it quietly, which is somehow worse than yelling. “If we’re still figuring out where to stand, we’ve got a much bigger problem than this boss.”

Uncomfortable silence.

“Alright, let’s go.”

Pull 51, 9:47 PM

They reach phase 2 for the first time all night.

A healer dies without a defensives used. Not a single one.

Wipe.

“Okay. Timeout. Timeout.”

Torts sounds less angry than genuinely baffled, which is its own kind of terrifying.

“Moses. Talk to me.”

Nervous energy in the voice. “Yeah?”

“You have Pain Suppression. Desperate Prayer. Healthstone. Health Potion.” A pause. “You died with all four of those sitting in your bars completely untouched. Walk me through the thought process there. I’m genuinely asking.”

Silence.

“Were you saving them for a special occasion? A birthday? New Year’s? Anniversary?”

More silence.

“Use. Your. Defensives.” He says each word separately, like he’s reading them off a sign. “That’s not optional. That’s not a suggestion. That’s the job.”

Pull 63, 10:31 PM

The raid is really fraying at the edges now. You can hear it in the shorter answers, the longer gaps between pulls, the way nobody’s cracking jokes anymore.

A Balance Druid says something into the void:

“I don’t know, damage might just be a little low overall—”

“Damage isn’t the problem.”

Nobody pushes back.

“You want to know what the problem is? I’ll tell you what the problem is.” Torts doesn’t sound angry anymore. He sounds like a man who has thought carefully about something and arrived at a conclusion. “We’ve got passengers in this raid. Guys or gals who are technically present and physically moving but mentally checked out. Raiders who are hoping the pull works out without them having to be the reason it does.”

A long pause.

“I’ve coached good teams. Good teams are boring to watch. You know why? Because they do the same thing every time. Consistently. Correctly. On purpose. Over and over until they can’t do it wrong anymore. Until it’s completely ingrained into their muscle memory.” Another pause then. “Right now, we’re freestyling Mythic mechanics like it’s jazz night. It’s not jazz. There’s no improvisation on this boss. There’s one way to do it, and we already know what it is.”

Nobody says anything.

“Let’s go.”

Pull 75, 11:18 PM

The raid is running on fumes. Answers are coming in single syllables. The jokes stopped a long time ago.

Torts is quiet for a moment before the ready check goes out. Longer than usual.

“I want to say something.”

The raid waits.

“I’ve been watching every single one of these pulls. Every wipe. Every reset.” A pause. “And I can see it getting better. I can see progression. Moses, you’re climbing the defensive usages charts. Draxy, your positioning is fantastic. I know it doesn’t feel like that right now. When you’re in it, all you can see is the wipe screen. But I’m telling you, that phase three we just ran was cleaner than anything we’ve done all night. The back and forth movement in phase two with the obelisks and the bait is automatic now. You’re not even thinking about it anymore and I don’t have to say anything about it, you’re just doing it.”

A few people unmute to breathe. Someone types a single “fr” in raid chat.

“That’s how it happens. Not all at once. You just keep grinding the edges down until there’s nothing left to fix.” Another pause. “We are close. I don’t say things I don’t mean, and I’m telling you right now — we are close.”

He sighs, and initiates a ready check.

“Everyone wants Cutting Edge. Not everyone wants to do what it actually takes to get there.” He clears his throat. “But tonight you’re doing it, and I can see it.”

Green checks light up across the raid frames, one after another.

Pull 81, 11:52 PM

Clean opener. Mechanics landing exactly where they’re supposed to. Healer cooldowns are rotating properly, timed and deliberate. Intermission and phase two go by smoothly enough that the team enters phase three ahead of schedule by pushing the boss down to 40% before Alleria’s energy even reaches full.

Final phase.

7%.

5%.

Someone dies due to a mistimed tether snap. Nobody says anything. Nobody panics. The healers adjust and keep moving. John barks, “Get him up.”

3%.

2%.

1%.

The boss falls and the Cutting Edge achievement flashes on their screen..

For a half-second there’s nothing as the game freezes for a moment. Then the cut scene starts and twenty people realize what just happened. Discord erupts. Screaming. Actual screaming. Someone’s holding down their push-to-talk and just making noise. The Warlock is playing some kind of victory song through his mic. The Druid is typing in all caps in raid chat.

Torts doesn’t say anything for a while, and just lets it happen.

When the celebrations die down, he starts speaking

“There it is.”

More cheering.

Someone, laughing: “Torts, are you proud of us? Like, actually?”

A long pause. Long enough that a few people start to wonder if he’s going to answer.

“Ask me again after you’ve cleaned up that phase three positioning.”

Laughter.

“Same time next week?”

“Same time next week. And whoever died at 3%, pretty sure it was Bicsy — I saw it. We’ll talk. Your timing was off.”

The raid starts to break up, people start trickling offline, the Discord slowly going quiet. Somewhere in the background you can hear someone still doing a victory lap in raid chat.

Torts sits there for a moment.

Then he opens up the raid plan for Bel’oren.

He’s one step closer to the raider’s version of the Stanley Cup finals, but he’s not done yet.

There’s still work to do.

The post What If: NHL Coach John Tortorella Became a Raid Leader? appeared first on World of Matticus.

How about the Last Call team?

In my first major blunder of the season, I messed up the composition for Crown of the Cosmos. I ran two Priests (none of which are a Goblin or a Dracthyr). It was fortunate that one of our trial warriors had an Evoker lying around, and he offered to switch to playing it. Now I have to set up these inefficient grip assignments where our Evoker carries one, and the first Priest grips the second Priest. There’s also the Wyrmstone option that allows the Priest to teleport to the Evoker. What’s awful is if we lose the Evoker, it’s an automatic wipe since two of our healer Priests don’t have a natural way to get across. I gripe about the Mythic requirements, but I also understand that this is an exclusive part of the game, and the tools required are going to be strict. Some of my players have complained about it and lamented how it’s not fair, and blah blah blah. But I get it, the game has evolved to a point for Mythic where roster composition does play a part in the challenge.

I also wish I had trimmed the number of melee down further and stuck to ranged. Some of our melee guys appear to be fat and getting hit by things they shouldn’t be or there’s too much melee clutter and they’re tripping over each other, I’m not sure. We’ve been getting better at getting to 40% and trigger phase 3 on Crown ahead of schedule. Now we’re just trying to get more reps and solve the final phase. We’ve seen the final 3 platforms but are having some trouble maintaining health on the fifth set of tethers but I think we’ll get it this weekend.

DJs is still looking to recruit some healers. I can temporarily play as a Holy Priest or an Evoker myself since we’re going to be lacking a Priest buff (and Evoker utility). But we could also use another healer (any class). Come check us out!

The post Matt’s Notebook: So Close, yet So Far appeared first on World of Matticus.

Let’s get to it, shall we?

• In Death Jesters, I got the call up to come in on my Shaman as our principal Shaman was away on day 2. I got some reps in on Bel’oren. I hate that fight. The first phase 1 is conceptually easy, the second phase 1 has a lot of stuff going on in there. As we come out of the first egg phase, we either go to the entrance of the room (south) or we move to the west end of the room. I have not quite figured out the pattern in determining which way to go, and I am relying on our raid leader to make that call. We did limp into the second egg phase a few times (about 30% there). I think we can get it down this upcoming weekend.
• Meanwhile, in Last Call, we’re able to clear and get Paladins down. Turns out the solution was just spacing out the Execution Sentences further than what we had. We kept about one Execution Sentence space between each one, and that allowed each group to not worry about hammers as much and focus on dodging Divine Tolls flying into the raid.
• Crown of the Cosmos progression started, and we had a full day on it. Most of the time was spent on the first phase as we were tweaking our damage, adjusting Silverstrike arrow times, and generally working on the ooze control. Two Death Knights helped in pulling them in. I did my best by Thunderstorming the adds in. We did end up being more consistent getting into phase 2, except we spawned the add into the wrong platform a few times, and we lost a few players during intermission. With two Shamans, we can do a better job staggering our Wind Rush Totems and using totem projection to throw them just ahead of us as we traverse around it.
• I did have a dumb pull where I got an Obelisk and just… backed off the platform, sigh.

On the recruiting side of things, Death Jesters is looking at some upcoming departures, and we’re opening up our recruiting. We’re looking to add another healer (any class), and another Disc Priest. The temporary measure is that I would play my Priest for now just to help with a Fortitude buff. My Shaman just can’t seem to maintain consistent damage throughout the raid. I think I’m hitting my spells too quick and am misfiring procs without buffing them accordingly. Too used to “always be casting” that I’m not taking the time to actually look and see what spells I have available, while dealing with all the boss mechanics being sent my way.

Have a great week!

The post Matt’s Notebook: Onto Bel’oren and Crown appeared first on World of Matticus.

This raid just cleared the entire tier and secured their CE.

Instead of celebrating, players immediately started defending themselves about misplays or other errors.

“Yeah I died there because…”
“That wasn’t my fault…”
“I got screwed by…”

No one really paused to acknowledge the kill. That positive moment just seemed to dissipate and fade out.

The raid went straight into deflection. If you’re seeing this in your raid, it’s not just a one-off behavior. It’s now a team-wide cultural issue.

The Instinct to Defend

This type of behaviour doesn’t come out of nowhere. Players don’t wake up one day and decide to deflect responsibility after a kill. It usually builds up over time for a variety of reasons:

• Fear of being called out: No one likes to be criticized in front of everyone else.
• Fear of losing a raid spot: No one wants to get permanently benched.
• Past experiences with harsh criticism: We’re talking harsh, toxic environments, making the game generally unfun.
• A culture where mistakes are punished instead of being learned from: This can range from being made fun of or teased mercilessly.

So what happens?

Players get conditioned to protect themselves first by justifying what happened or blaming things beyond their control. It happens even in moments where it doesn’t matter anymore (like killing the final boss).

Why This Is a Bigger Problem Than It Looks

At first glance, it might seem harmless. Who cares if someone explains why they died after a kill? We need to take a step back though and re-examine this.

If your team feel the need to immediately justify themselves, it means:

• They don’t feel safe making mistakes
• They assume blame is coming
• They prioritize self-preservation over team success
• They’re mentally stuck in “defense mode” instead of “growth mode”

That has consequences. Teams that operate like this will end with one (or all) of the following:

• They learn slower
• They communicate worse
• They take feedback personally
• They spend more time assigning blame than solving problems

You can’t build a high-performing raid like that, and you end up with a raid team that’s stuck in early or mid mythic without the tools needed to progress past that.

The Missed Opportunity After a Kill

Post-kill moments are important.

They’re when you:

• Reinforce good habits. Highlight positive game play from people and recognize them when they’re correctly done.
• Identify real learning points. Show where people “got it” and spread it to the rest of the team.
• Celebrate progress. The team got a new best (even if it’s a new phase or a lower percentage).
• Reset the team mentally. From despair to excitement.

If your raid immediately turns into a courtroom, you lose all of that.

Instead of:

“Nice job, clean that up the adds next pull, and we can see more.”

You get:

“Let me explain why that wasn’t my fault.”

Now you’ve wasted everyone’s time.

Freedom to Fail Is a Competitive Advantage

One of the things Max mentioned is that they had to actively correct this behaviour early in their guild’s history.

They made it clear:

• It’s okay to die
• It’s okay to mess up
• Not every mistake needs a full breakdown
• If it’s not new or useful, move on

That’s the key. Say it with me!

Not every mistake deserves airtime.

If the team already understands the mechanic and what went wrong, rehashing it doesn’t help. It just slows you down and creates tension. High-end teams don’t obsess over every individual mistake. They focus on patterns and meaningful improvements. I don’t know how long your team raids for, but both of mine only go for six hours a week.

What Your Team Should Actually Be Doing Instead

After a kill, your raid should look more like this:

• Quick acknowledgment of the kill
• Identify one or two real issues if needed (or flag it for next week)
• Move on

That’s it.

Not every death needs a speech, and not every mistake needs a defence.

If it’s something new, sure, call it out and learn from it. Absolutely make it a learning lesson for everyone, especially if someone died in a completely new way or missed a mechanic that’s crucial the first time. Go over it once, and talk about it as a team so they know what to expect and how to handle it if it ultimately does happen again. Certain things are worth drilling and repeating until the team gets it, but that doesn’t apply to all mistakes.

If it is already understood, it is wasting precious raid time.

How to Fix It in Your Own Raid

If you’re seeing this behaviour, it needs to be addressed directly.

1. Set the Expectation

Tell your team clearly:

• You don’t need to defend every mistake
• Not every death needs an explanation
• Focus on team improvement, not individual justification

2. Change What You Reinforce

If you constantly call out individuals harshly, players will naturally start defending themselves.

Instead:

• Focus on solutions
• Keep feedback concise
• Avoid turning every mistake into a lecture

Actually, call out the positives. Talk about what you liked. Name players individually who did something good (even if it’s during the pull), and recognize their effort or moves.

3. Protect the Post-Kill Moment

Don’t let it spiral.

If someone starts going into a long defense after a kill, cut ’em off.

“Doesn’t matter. Boss is dead. We’ll clean it up next time.”

We use Warcraft Recorder to capture our game play. It’s not something that needs to be immediately reviewed and it can be looked at after the raid is over. Celebrate the wins, since that’s the tone you want.

4. Normalize Mistakes

Make it clear that mistakes are expected and understood especially in progression. If players feel like every error is being judged, they’ll always be on edge. The team needs to relax and play loosely when starting out.

And that leads right back to defensive behavior.

If your team kills a boss and the first reaction is panic and justification instead of celebration, something is off. That doesn’t mean your players are bad. It means that the raid culture needs adjustment. The best teams aren’t the ones that never make mistakes. They’re the ones that don’t waste time pretending they didn’t.

I’m fortunate enough that this hasn’t happened in my raids yet. But if my team starts pre-emptively defending themselves before I ask questions, I’ve got my lecture in the back pocket ready to come out. If I were to put money on it, I expect it’d be one of my healers trying to present themselves in a positive light but addressing their own shortcomings right away. My first response is going to be, “I didn’t ask! Simmer down! You goofed, that’s okay, this isn’t a deposition!”

The post The Hidden Raid Problem No One Talks About: Instant Defensiveness appeared first on World of Matticus.

• Death Jesters just started working on Crown of the Cosmos this week. We had one look into phase 3, which is the furthest we’ve gotten. There are a few scary overlaps, but with the upcoming nerf this week, we’ll most likely defeat it and start work on the big firebird soon.
• Last Call makes some big strides this week and overcomes the dragons, putting us officially at 5/9 Mythic, and we’re over halfway to our goal of getting that CE for this opening tier. I felt that we should’ve killed it earlier. We came close to it a few times on Sunday night, but had some consistency issues. There are a few players who need to work on just general game sense and survivability. Having the awareness that not only is a fear breath coming and they have to get it out of the raid, but they have to find a spot to safely get to where they can be dispelled within range of healers. Our gloom positionings were great, and even if we had players go down, we were able to audible with backup players stepping in to help with those soaks.
• We’re on to Paladins now, and we spent the better part of our second raid night just working on taunt swaps, positioning, and getting a feel for dispels. Our best pull was about 40%. Logs are showing that about a third of the kills here use six healers, while the rest are done with five healers. I’m a bit torn as to which way to go. We don’t have a dedicated sixth healer, and if we were to do that, I would have to step in and switch specs on my Shaman (who doesn’t have the stats or the trinkets to really go healing). My damage is fairly low here, so I’m just thinking about it. I don’t need to play at the absolute best, but if I can manage to help stay on top of dispels while contributing healing, that might be enough. I also wanted to give some well-deserved flowers to our bait team. They did a commendable job baiting out the charges once they got into a rhythm. There were a few charges that were missed, but they got the idea.
• Now, the next question is at what point should we start considering raid extensions? I don’t know if we’re quite there yet. There’s still some lucrative gear. We didn’t even get any trinkets from Dragons today, even with all the bonus rolls that were used, which was disappointing. Maybe once we clear Paladins, we can start doing lockout extensions.
• In Diablo 4, I made a Spiritborn. Campaign was great, probably one of the better storylines I’ve played in a long time. The end game is much more enjoyable. My only struggle is in finding a build that I like playing. I might switch classes and reroll to a Paladin or something instead.
• Last thing I want to touch upon is Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era. Reminds me of when I was a kid again playing Heroes 3. Such a fun game and this new version is a lot of fun. Highly recommend it if you’ve played it before. The early access grants six factions.

I’m still looking to add some Aug Evokers to the team!

The post Matt’s Notebook: We’re on to Crown! appeared first on World of Matticus.

• Death Jesters clears Vanguard. I was in for progression as relief a few times. This is a boss where it’s more ideal to play Farseer instead of Stormbringer. Ultimately, I wasn’t in on the kill but I did gain some first hand experience on it.
• Last Call crushes Midnight Falls on heroic, and we get that coveted Ahead of the Curve achievement. We’re basically done with Heroic for the tier and can now strictly focus on Mythic from here on out.
• After Midnight Falls, we popped back over to Voidspire Mythic to start working on Dragons. It’s much simpler than I expected it to be. Our best pull so dragons go down to about 23%. DJs killed it the first time within 13 pulls. I didn’t think we’d be as fortunate.
• We had a spirited discussion on dispels on Imperator. I didn’t think they were a problem, but one of my healers was disgruntled about it. I looked into it further. We get six debuffs, but only four need to be cleared (two on the first add, and two on the second add). I can’t see any consequence to leaving up the final two or even delaying removing them. Whenever the player gets dispelled, there’s a 10-second dot debuff that gets applied anyway. In my mind, it’s okay to leave the final 2 dispels up and stagger them a bit to spread out the incoming damage anyway. No real resolution here, and it only came up because I was trying to trim from 4 healers to 3 healers in order to accelerate out of that fight quicker. The next dispel heavy fight with Paladins at least has a Weakaura (or M33kauras) that can assign and dictate dispels accordingly for people, thank goodness for that. But if this discussion keeps up, a definite attitude check is going to be in order here.
• We’re going to need a second healing Monk for Vanguard. We’re fortunate that one of our healers is also quite alt-driven and happens to have a 280+ Monk lying around just waiting.

This is going to be a rough week for me. The new Diablo 4 expansion just came out last night. Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era debuts later this week. Not only that, there’s a new Two Point Museum DLC that’s releasing soon! There goes my time!!

The post Matt’s Notebook: That AotC Full Clear appeared first on World of Matticus.

• Another DJs reclear of Dragons: We managed to reclear Dragons again the second time around. Our first clear only took a whopping 13 pulls, which was far less than what I anticipated. For the record, I thought it would’ve taken triple that amount, perhaps in the 30+ range. They’ve left a blueprint for my guys in Last Call to see if we can follow. I doubt we can do it in 13, but under 30 is not impossible. We did end up putting more work on Paladins this week, but due to some logistical shortcomings (one of our players did not get the assigned Meekauras for Paladins as they were instructed, and another healer didn’t indicate they’d be away). This led to some tension in the raid because boss man was incredibly annoyed. I don’t blame him either, as I’d be pissed too.
• Last Call knocks out Mythic Nexus King and Heroic Bel’oren: We ended up burning Vantus runes on Mythic Salhadaar with these back-to-back 4% wipes. I just wanted to get it down and over with. It’s a hard one with all of the orbs and everything on screen. Very possible to lose visual sight of where your primary orb target is, and I had to make extensive use of the boss frames to target and track it down. I started off with a Mistweaver but quickly made the substitution for a Resto Shaman instead for the extra Spirit Link stability. The Mythic Dreamrift reclear could’ve been better, but I’ve started rotating in newer people who have not seen it yet, so that they can get reps on it and open their vault up for Gazes. There’s still a lot of work to do in minimizing silly mistakes even on farm. We’ll still wipe to early Mythic bosses and it’s always something different, but it’s a result of just sloppy play or absentmindedness. One of my challenges is to try to keep everyone playing at capacity for 5 minutes everytime. We can’t coast through everything just yet. With the time remaining, I felt it was prudent to clear out March. Belo’ren took us about 3 pulls, but it was what I expected. It’s hard to script this one since there are a lot of random elements involved. With Midnight Falls, we saw the 2nd phase just once. It took about 20 minutes to troubleshoot the installs of the Northern Sky Lura map. We had errors ranging from incorrect file placement, or appended file extensions, etc. Crystal damage and grouping needs more attention and reps. There’s a lot of coordination that goes on here, but I’d rather do this now than come back to it later on Mythic (and be in a position to relearn Heroic mechanics on top of Mythic ones).
• Questioning of progression order: I’ve never experienced so much pushback when I wanted to go pursue Heroic March. The feedback I received was that the team would rather continue goiing after Mythic bosses. I understand the sentiment, but I felt it was better for long term growth to at least clear and cap out the Heroic raid tier. It at least gets us that 9/9 Heroic credit. We’ve already started our heroic raid nights at Paladins (with the skip). We’d drop Heroic Dreamrift, but Gaze is still too valuable. We’re at the point where we can drop Heroic Voidspire altogether. There will be limited opportunities for the entire team to raid together as is (between the 3 Heroic bosses including March). I want to still do that to help maximize our team’s play time to that extent before it gets shortened as we progress into Mythic. I’ve never seen Sparty get this kind of pushback when he was laying out the direction for bosses to go after. All of us in DJs weren’t that opinionated about it, and we just did as we were told. The content wasn’t hard, and we’d streamroll it within a few pulls anyway so we could quickly get back to where we were on prog. We don’t need the extra gear to clear out the Heroic Midnight Falls, but we do need time to learn it. Gear from Midnight Falls is still relevant and impactful now (including rings, necks, and trinkets), so it can help our progression on the later Mythic Voidspire stuff before it gets outclassed by gear acquired from the vault. Our raid team is progressing faster than where we were last season with an all-new tank roster, a revamped healing roster, and half our DPS on turnover.
• Raider Self-Improvement and Trial Feedback: I might have to expand on this topic later, but it was brought up internally about some of our newer players and the steps they take for self-improvement. Do we have knowledge that they are reviewing logs, and making the necessary adjustments to on subsequent weeks?
  
  No, it’s assumed.
  
  My stance is that we should make this information and feedback visible to them so that they are aware that they could do better. The opposing stance is that the players should just know and do their own work. I prefer a hybrid model because it demonstrates that we’re aware of their low performance and that we can offer some guidance on what areas to upskill themselves on. If we don’t say anything and take their performance at face value, it hurts both the team and the player because there’s no meaningful feedback. The rest of the team then gets upset and frustrated at each other. The affected player could just have no idea that they’re not performing at their capability. Sometimes the fix can be something as easy as being reassigned to a different target or adjusting their CDs to be more impactful. I don’t like the idea of just assuming and expecting everyone knows what they’re doing wrong. That may work well at a Hall of Fame level, but we’re no where close to that. We still have a myriad of players that are looking to make that AotC jump to CE and haven’t internalized how to self-improve. At DJs, the team likes to stick around after raid or during the week and go over logs with each other just for an extra set of eyes. We’ll even look at our raid videos to see what we could’ve done better on movement or how we can eke out more damage. I’d like to implement something similar, but I just don’t have the bandwidth or the smarts to really pull it off. I can’t expect the team to take me seriously when my Shaman’s damage is not as high as it should be either. I always start off strong out of the gate before the damage just starts falling off over the course of the fight. I have a suspicion it might be related to my bindings. I don’t know.
• Mythic Flex: More on this later, but Blizzard did announce the next small raid is going to have a scalable raid component between 15 and 25 players. Pretty neat idea and is a nice way to bridge that gap for AotC guilds who’ve run out of things to do and want to take on another challenge. I have my own thoughts and on this, but I’ll save that for a different post later.
• Last Call Roster: We’re holding firm at 25 players right now after we had that 2 week turnover. Our Evoker Healer has switched to a Holy Paladin. Now we’re entirely Evoker-less. I’d love to add a pair of Aug Evokers onto the team though. Those are also hard to come by.
• New Patch: The big feature I’m looking forward to is that Voidforge stuff with the extra bonus rolls. I know I’ll mostly be spending mine in M+ for that damned Feather out of Windrunner on my Shaman.

Enjoy the new patch today!

The post Matt’s Notebook: Regicide (again)! appeared first on World of Matticus.

It’s been several weeks, and things have calmed down. The blitz to grind a bajillion keys has leveled off and returned to normal. Here’s the team update!

In DJs, we’re now 5/8 Mythic, having defeated the Dragons in 13 pulls. That one was incredibly eye-opening. It looked way more complicated on paper. The triple tank strat comes in clutch here with two Blood Death Knights controlling orbs. Moving on to Paladins means we need to activate that fifth healer.

Meanwhile, in Last Call, after having about 5 players depart the team, we were able to quickly replenish our roster. They helped net us an extra boss, which propelled us to 3/9 Mythic with Mythic Dreamrift cleared. We logged a lot of shots in on Nexus King, but could not close that one out in the last hour. From a recruiting standpoint, the last piece I’m absolutely looking for is another Aug Evoker. We haven’t even stepped foot into March yet, but now is the time. We were so focused on securing those Mythic kills early on and there weren’t a lot of gear upgrades from March. We’re in a good position to do it now since we can start taking more bosses out of Heroic Voidspire.

I’ll admit, I have not been happy with my own Shaman play as of late. I think I’m having a hard time with timing Master of the Elements. I’m so busy casting, I sometimes miss the procs and end up sending a Tempest without casting Lava Burst before it (to get Master of the Elements active beforehand). I usually open up with a strong start, but my damage tails off as the fight progresses.

Good luck with vaults!

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