Absolutely preposterous.

Retail’s too popular and too good of a game for Blizzard to end. People like the raiding, the dungeon system, housing, all the collectibles, etc. It’s got something for everyone even if it doesn’t have everything for everyone. Despite the presentation comments about helping Azeroth “one last time”, Paul Kubit (Associate Game Director) explained that many of the story beats will get resolved in the last expansion of the Worldsoul Saga, which will pave the way for more stories afterwards.

I do want to add that this discourse of Retail vs Classic needs to stop. We’re all playing in one big sandbox. I don’t see why one has to end for the other to live. I don’t agree that one version of the game is infinitely better than the other, simply because there are too many individual preferences. I’m not going to condemn someone for living in Retail exclusively versus another who heavily favours Classic and wants to play forever in that era. They’re two different games. People need to stop shitting on other people for enjoying other games. It was like this decades ago with all of the different MMOs of the time. Between Tera, SWTOR, Rift, Wildstar, and all of these MMOs that were billed as the next WoW killer, Warcraft has outlasted all of them.

But I’m telling you, not even World of Warcraft is capable of killing World of Warcraft.

These purists just need to take a step back and tone down that rhetoric. It’s not necessary anymore in this day and age. If Forever has too many changes (like this Undead Paladin), Classic proper itself is right there. I don’t think that’ll be killed off because there’s a definitive community for it.

Most of this “Retail is dead, Forever killed it” energy I keep seeing is coming from Twitter (or X). Twitter WoW discourse has always run hotter and angrier than the actual playerbase. It’s a small, loud slice of the community, and it rewards the most extreme take, not the most accurate one. A quote-tweet dunking on Retail gets more engagement than a nuanced “actually I enjoy both” post ever will, so the algorithm just keeps feeding you the loudest voices.

We’ve seen this exact cycle before.

With Shadowlands launch, Dragonflight’s slower opening months, you can pick almost any expansion and you can find a wave of “this is the one that finally kills WoW” tweets. None of them were right. The subscriber base didn’t evaporate, the raiding scene didn’t fold, and here we are years later still running progression on multiple teams.

None of this is to say the criticism of Retail is baseless. The gearing treadmills, M+ score gatekeeping in pugs, systems bloat between Delves, Bonus Rolls, and tier sets, weekly reset chores piling up. Those are real complaints and I’ve felt some of them myself. But there’s a difference between “this system needs work” and “the entire game needs to be sunset so Forever can take its place.” The Twitter framing collapses that distance entirely, and it makes the actual, fixable complaints harder to take seriously because they get buried under this apocalyptic rhetoric.

Running raid teams gives me a different vantage point than most people tweeting about this. I’m not about choosing a side. I’m trying to figure out how to fit Forever into a schedule that already has four Retail raid teams in it. From where I sit, the “pick one or the other” framing doesn’t even reflect how people are actually playing. It reflects how people are performing their opinions online.

Another topic I want to weigh in on is that the new race coming into Warcraft Forever has a price tag on it. I saw some discourse about how it was a big ol’ cash grab and unfair that things cost money.

That’s crap, man. This game is a part of the subscription and there is no box price for it like paying for another expansion in Retail. If you think about the fact that WoW’s subscription has not risen in years (at least, in certain regions in NA), you’re getting a deal. You can still access the rest of the game easily with any of the base races and classes.

Have some level of gratitude that the game isn’t more expensive and is financially fueled by name changes, server transfers, faction changes, transmog collectors, and the AH Anniversary mount FOMO players (like me). Paying for a new race isn’t that offensive to help kickstart and sustain a new game altogether.

My Approach to Forever

I’m on multiple raiding teams and I also oversee them. I won’t have the ability or time to dive fully and immerse myself into the way slower game style of Forever. It’ll take me 15 seconds plus a lot of Wanding on my Priest to just kill a mob.

What I need to do is change my approach to the game. I need to think of this as a single player RPG where I can drop in and out. Don’t get me wrong, I love end game content (raids and dungeons) more so than leveling. But if my end game itch is scratch on retail, I won’t need to rely on it in Forever and can just stroll through it like I would in Cyberpunk or Dragon Age.

Raids will come out later in December. Who knows if I’ll have the time to do it as much as I love raiding. This might lead to me dropping one of the other four raid teams I’m participating in.

The Death Jesters and Zeroes to Heroes community is already hard at work laying out the foundation for our Forever guild. If you’re looking for a place to hang out and start, I’d highly recommend it. We had a strong representation this year at BlizzCon with multiple raid teams and community members present. Look at the turnout below!

You’re welcome to join! We haven’t decided on a ruleset yet, but if I were to hazard a guess, it would most likely be Alliance based on a normal ruleset, although nothing has been confirmed.

The post Warcraft Forever: It’s not the Death of Retail appeared first on World of Matticus.

• Talents (with Paladins as an example)
• Transmog
• Legacy System
• Server infrastructure
• Camping
• Itemization

Reaction seemed generally positive especially with servers being decided via rulesets instead of individual realms. There’s a lot of questions here. Can a player on a PvP ruleset change to join a friend on normal? What about RP rulesets? Is there an option like flagging yourself for PvP (similar to retail)?

All of it was fascinating information. I can’t wait to look at the Priest talents further.

My level of involvement in Warcraft: Forever is a challenging one to answer. I’m on four different raid teams. Of the four, two of them are CE focused that I help run to some degree. The third is another CE team where I’m just a player. The last one is a simple AotC team that I joined so I wouldn’t have to queue into group finder for. Picking up Forever means making compromises and dropping some of those teams.

After it ended, I wandered around the show floor to explore the different things that were going on that I didn’t get a chance to from the first day. I ran into the boss man GM and he told me one of our former raiders wanted to meet up with us, so we trekked over to say hello. Seeing people and guildies is a priority that I try to make happen.

The Diablo Immortal line was next. I should’ve entered the phone line instead of the PC line. I tried out the new Tempest class since everyone who participates gets one of three different pin types. I wanted Malthael but my loot luck rewarded me with Andariel instead.

Biggest highlight of the day was participating with my guild in a miniature tabletop session with my friend and former WoW Insider colleague, Anne. She was GM’ing for us. It was a short 20 to 30 minute experience. The story is that Khadgar got himself locked away and we needed to help free him. The party involved a Warrior, a Paladin, a Shaman, and a Mage (me)! I started the game off by casting Invisibility on everyone. Our Shaman went ahead and looted a potion to throw on top of one of the three Ogres that happened to be in the room. Me (in my oh so infinite wisdom) strode over to the weapons rack to see what I could find and somehow pulled a Gorehowl which had to attack someone (and I knocked off the second Ogre). Our Paladin, who rolled a natural 20, tried to speak to the third Ogre to see if it knew anything about what was keeping Khadgar at bay and locked up.

As we should have known, Ogres aren’t bright at all and did not know how to answer a question while it was busy using a table leg for a tooth pick. At least the Ogre was polite and offered another table leg to our Paladin.

Turns out the solution was quite simple. All we had to do was blow up a crystal which lowered all of the shields and countermeasures. My assumption is that the Ogres were a defensive mechanism conjured up by the crystal (which also happened to trigger the wards up in the room that trapped Khadgar). All in all, an enjoyable time! My legs and feet were cooked after standing in line for about 90 minutes.

Having access to NFL Sunday Ticket made lines bearable. I was able to watch stuff during the wait. But this can be substituted for a stream, a Youtube video, or a book.

After all that, we left and got something to eat since everyone was on different schedules. Wished everyone well while I went back upstairs to my room to refresh!

Things I would have done differently

Let’s talk about some BlizzCon lessons.

• This is my 12th BlizzCon. I don’t need to go in to the main stage to watch the opening ceremony anymore. I can watch it and stream it direct from my room after sleeping in and eating breakfast. I’ve done enough of that. I can give up my seat for someone else who has never had that opportunity.
• More undershirts and underwear for sure. This time of year was atrocious with the humidity and the heat. It needs to be back in the October and November time frame.
• Gold Bond. I didn’t think I’d need it this time, but chaffing is awful.
• If I really wanted stuff, outright skip the Opening Ceremony and start going to the stores immediately.

How I wish BlizzCon were done differently

I understand that this is the first BlizzCon back since the disaster that was 2023. But Blizzard needs to start working on getting their fastball back.

• Let’s get that date back to the late Fall. Mentioned it earlier up, but it bears repeating again.
• Line management. Lots of misinformation or misunderstanding regarding lines and where people are supposed to go for the store or for entry into Darkmoon Fair.
• Line activity. PAX West does a great job of this for attendees in lines. But just having something engaging to do to help pass the time is nice. I spent most of my time watching Sunday Ticket.
• Store inventory. Lots of stuff just went out of stock quite quickly. I’d flag Battle Net accounts tied to BlizzCon attendance with store exclusives that attendees can ship home, if they wish.
• Professions section had great turn out. Those lines were jam packed every time. Easily one of the more popular attractions and maybe having more staff and space for it would help.
• Participation prizes? Immortal demos gave away some pins for trying out their game either on PC or on the phone. I never would have tried it otherwise. Battlegrounds demos for some swag would’ve been a good pick. WoW probably wouldn’t need any incentive prizes.
• Multiple stages for opening ceremony. That one year when all stages were used for their respective title announcements was amazing. It helped distribute people throughout the venue.

While it was a bit of a let down on retail announcements, I’m still pleased with all of the other announcements that were made. I wish we learned more about StarCraft and what they envision there.

The post BlizzCon Day 2: Sunday appeared first on World of Matticus.

• World of Warcraft: Not much on the retail side of things which is to be expected since, y’know, spoilers. Warcraft Forever seems like it’ll be well received. I did end up trying the demo for one of the dungeons with the squad from DJs. I forgot how much more challenging it was then with the different spells, the mana, the drinking after every pull, etc. Can’t do it. This version of the game probably isn’t for me any longer sadly. I could always get it and try a different class that isn’t a Priest, I suppose. However, the new Talebound game mode seems like a fun activity to get lost in as well. It’s funny how the crowd was not happy about the new Season 3 dungeon pool but cheered the loudest with transmog opening up to all armor types.
• Warcraft 3: I might need to pick up Reforged with that new campaign. 30 hours of new stuff? I’m in.
• StarCraft: Cinematic announcement was amazing. 2030 as a release date seems so far away. Probably too early for gameplay footage but would’ve been nice to see some of that. But hey, it’s an open world shooter. I know not many people were happy about that but I’m looking forward to exploring StarCraft from a new perspective.
• Diablo: While it’s sad to see that Diablo 4 is finished with expansions, it was a big surprise for me regarding Diablo 5. For it to take place in a new setting and environment where Diablo wins is going to be an all new perspective from previous games where it was always about the eternal conflict. In this case, it seems like the conflict has resolved itself.  Now what? How does the rest of Sanctuary react? Who is left to challenge Diablo? More importantly, the Monk is back! Lastly, this Netflix Diablo collaboration should be awesome. Hoping it bridges the story between D4 and D5.
• Heroes of the Storm: I never expected to see anything new coming to Heroes of the Storm. Is it coming out of maintenance mode? Xal’atath is entering the Nexus and another hero is slated for release later in the year. It’s enough to get me to reinstall it.
• Hearthstone: YO NEW MONK CLASS THOUGH.

That’s all! Tomorrow I plan to try out more of the games on the show floor. I want to explore Hearthstone and Diablo for sure. I was going to put some time in towards the store or the Darkmoon Faire, but I fear that may be a bust.

The post BlizzCon: Actual Day 1 – Saturday appeared first on World of Matticus.

Airport security has changed so much. The gate agents didn’t even ask for my boarding pass. All I had to do was look at a camera and it had everything. Biometrics have made some serious advancements.

It is a little scary.

Once I landed, there was a little trouble with the jet bridge. Maybe it ran out of gas? They couldn’t connect the bridge to the plane and it took them a few minutes to get it going. Once I stepped off, I was immediately roasted with what felt like 40 degree heat (that’s Canadian temperatures, by the way).

Arriving to the main Convention grounds, everything felt familiar. This will be my 12th BlizzCon. But many of my former guildies and past friends will not be. I don’t know if my friends and colleagues from Blizzard Watch will be here. I’m experiencing a new BlizzCon with several community members from Death Jesters and Zeroes to Heroes. I did run into some of the fine folks from WoWHead while I was at the bar here watching the NFL season opener. It was nice just exchanging war stories about past BlizzCons and how the site community has been evolving (or in some areas, stayed the same).

We both agreed that we never look at the comments section, ever.

The community parties and get togethers have vanished. No community WoWHead party, or Con Before the Storm, or any of the other old gatherings. It’s inevitable that the past organizers have moved on to other priorities and other projects but those were definite community staples and will be missed. You think you can live these experiences repeatedly, but nope. All good things do come to an end. Those were the days and some of my favourite memories.

Let’s get to some predictions (and wishes).

BlizzCon Predictions

• StarCraft: There’s way too much smoke for there not to be fire here, especially with the ARG stuff going on at the StarCraft website. Some kind of Co-op or team based shooter would be great. I’m hoping for something like Helldivers. It could be single player. I have low odds for it to be a battle royale of some type (very unlikely). An RTS announcement on top of this would be unexpected, but well received. Look how well Age of Empires 2 has been doing.
• World of Warcraft: Maybe a look at 12.2? I’m sure there’ll be some more Classic stuff, like yet another new game mode. Nothing interesting for me there to look at. I’ve got odds on Plunderstorm making a return on a new map. Will we see a combined Warlords and Legion Classic even though we just had Legion Remix? Is there even going to be another Remix in the near future?
• Warcraft: Can’t see there being any new developments on the RTS side here, either.
• Diablo: Dark horse for announcements. I’m hoping for two new expansion announcements, but maybe we’ll get one. Lord of Hatred just got released a short time ago though so maybe it’ll just be a Season 15 look instead, along with Immortal updates.
• Hearthstone: It needs another refresh. I’m not sure how. The last big feature that was a hit was Battlegrounds. Can they spin up another new mode here instead of yet more new expansions?
• Overwatch: I haven’t kept up with Overwatch in years. Lost all interest since the announcement of Overwatch 2 and the quiet rebrand back. Not sure what the plan is here and I can’t even begin to speculate, but I hope it’ll be a fun one for the fans.

More of the squad is arriving tomorrow. But for me, my plan is to just catch up with people I haven’t seen in a really long time, then watch some more football. Rams and 49ers in Australia will be a watch.

If you happen to find me and recognize me here at BlizzCon, you may need to reintroduce yourself. It’s been six years and I haven’t been able to keep in touch with everyone.

The post BlizzCon: Day 1 – Wednesday appeared first on World of Matticus.

This tier, we told the team the answer up front in our orientation. Don’t use your catalyst charges yet. Not on day one, not before we’d even stepped into the raid.

Six players used them anyway.

Sadness ensued :(.

So what happened?

Before we’d cleared a single boss, six players had already catalyzed a piece into their tier set bonus. Not because the guidance wasn’t given. It was, clearly, to the whole team. They used the charges anyway, mostly because the option was sitting there and it felt like free power.

Actually, one of them checked in with us first and due to his raid standing and position in the depth chart, we ultimately agreed to go with it. With scheduling uncertainties, he didn’t know if he’d be able to stick around in the long run, so under that context, it made sense.

The reality is that we didn’t need the tier bonuses to get through normal raid. We cleared it without much trouble. The real value of tier is what it does for heroic, where certain damage or healing checks are tuned with the expectation that you have your set bonuses online. That’s where being deliberate about catalyst charges actually pays off.

The Math Nobody Thinks About in Week One

Catalyst charges can feel like a personal decision.

But they’re not.

They’re a roster-wide resource problem, and using one early can quietly take options away from other people on your team.

Here’s a simple version of what can go wrong. Say you have four mail wearers. Two of them catalyze their pieces into shoulders right away. That leaves two players who could still use a shoulder token. One of them runs a Timewalking dungeon and gets a Champion track shoulder token as a reward. Now you’re down to one player who can use a shoulder drop.

Now imagine after the first day of normal raid, there are two mail shoulder tokens in the same week. One of those tokens has nowhere to go. It’s wasted, not because the loot didn’t show up, but because the catalyst charges already used up the slots that token could have filled.

Wait instead, and that same set of drops and rewards could have built a full four-piece bonus for two players in the opening weeks of the tier. Immediate gratification cost the raid a completed set bonus and burned a real drop in the process.

Vault Selections Count Too

The same logic applies to Great Vault choices. If you’re sitting on one or more tier selections in your vault, using a catalyst charge on the same slot before you’ve seen what the vault offers can put you in the exact same bind. You end up with duplicate coverage on one slot and a gap somewhere else, when a little patience could have let the vault and the catalyst charge fill two different pieces instead of competing for the same one.

None of this is complicated. It just requires waiting long enough to see the whole picture before committing a limited resource.

Is This a Leadership Problem or a Player Problem?

I don’t think any of the six players who catalyzed early were trying to hurt the raid. They saw an option, it felt good to use, and they used it. That’s a completely normal instinct. It’s also exactly why guild leadership has to be explicit about resource sequencing, and why “explicit” sometimes still isn’t enough.

Telling the team once isn’t the same as the team internalizing why it matters. If the instruction is “don’t use your catalyst charge yet,” the follow-up has to be “here’s exactly what breaks if you do.” People respect a rule more when they understand the mechanism behind it, not just the directive. In the future, I’ll need to bake this into our raid orientation about Catalyst charges and illustrate some hypothetical examples.

Going forward, this is a conversation I need to have earlier and in more detail: not just what to do with catalyst charges, but why the timing matters and what it costs the roster when someone jumps the gun.

But we can still make allowances for exceptions. If it’s a truly harder tier or if someone can make a strong case for breaking their 4 piece early for a 2 piece, we have to keep our options open and at least hear out the player’s logic and reasoning.

The Broader Point

Patient resource management is one of those unglamorous skills that separates progression teams from teams that stall out. It’s not exciting. Nobody screenshots a Great Vault decision they didn’t make yet. But holding a resource for one more week, until you actually know what you’re solving for, is one of the cheapest ways to buy your raid more options later.

Immediate gain feels good right away. Delayed gratification wins heroic checks.

The post Why Patient Raiders Win: The Catalyst Charge Trap appeared first on World of Matticus.

It’s the closest thing I can compare to a Game 7 loss in overtime. We did everything right to get there. We gave it our best shot when it mattered most. And it still wasn’t enough.

By the time we called it, we’d logged 560 pulls on Midnight Falls. For comparison, Death Jesters killed the same boss in 404 pulls. That gap tells its own story about how this season went for Last Call, and it’s worth sitting with before I get into the why.

A Season of Constant Turnover

Over the course of our Lura progression alone, we cycled through roughly 32 different characters. Not 32 pulls with a few swaps here and there. Thirty-two different characters who sat in a raid slot at some point during that fight. One of our locks switched to a Disc Priest because we were down a healer. A Hunter couldn’t make it, so we had to pull in a hunter alt from DJs. A crystal carrier had power issues, so I had to ask for someone else to get it while we grabbed a Ret Paladin.

We never had back-to-back weeks with the same roster walking in the door. Every single time I had to sub a new player in, it cost us about 20 minutes of problem-solving just to get phases 2 and 3 re-assigned and moving again. That’s not a one-time tax. That’s a recurring tax we paid over and over, week after week, on top of actually learning the fight.

I’m genuinely proud of the team we had. But it’s hard to build momentum on a fight that demands precision when you’re constantly rebuilding the roster around it.

Where We Excelled, and Where We Didn’t

Progression-wise, this team is really good at fights that reward preparation. Crown of Cosmos went down in a reasonable number of pulls because that’s the kind of encounter where our strengths show up: strict timelines, scripted assignments, everyone knowing exactly where to be and when.

Beloren was a different animal. That fight demands individual accountability in a way our other kills didn’t. Ball soaks, quill soaks, interrupts, all resting on players managing their own responsibilities in real time instead of following a script. It exposed the skill ceiling of some of our newer mythic raiders, several of whom were tackling serious mythic progression for the first time in their raiding career. We got through it, but it took longer than I wanted, and it was the first real sign of what was waiting for us in Midnight Falls.

The GM Introspection

This is the part of the postmortem that’s less about the boss and more about me.

Every season, it comes back to personnel. Did I have the right players in the right roles? Did I hold onto players too long instead of cutting and evaluating quickly enough? Those are the questions I ask myself every time a season wraps, and this one is no exception.

Recruiting doesn’t make this easier. We raid Sunday and Monday, the last two days of the week, which is not exactly a popular slot for players shopping around for a new guild. It narrows the pool right when we need it widest.

On top of the roster churn, we lost one of our top healers right before Midnight Falls progression started. I also changed my own class mid-season, moving from Shaman to Evoker. Any one of those changes on its own is manageable. Stacked together in the same season, they added up.

A handful of our weaker performers joined midway or late into Season 1. They’ll get another look in Season 2, but with expectations set clearly from the start this time. That’s on me too. Clear expectations from day one would have saved us some of the harder conversations we had later.

Heading Into Season 2

Here’s the strange part: I’m much more optimistic heading into Season 2 than I probably should be after a season like this.

We’ve parted ways with a number of players and brought in some new faces. Some of the new additions are what I’d call project players, people who’ve historically capped out around mid-mythic and are looking to push past that ceiling. That’s exactly the kind of mentality this team needs more of.

Our systems and strategies are already in place. We know how we prepare, how we assign, how we approach a new tier. What’s left is execution. Season 1 taught us where the cracks are. Season 2 is about not letting the same ones open back up.

We fell short of Midnight Falls. But a Game 7 loss doesn’t mean the team is broken. It means you know exactly what to fix before next season starts.

The post Season 1 Last Call Postmortem: So Close to Midnight Falls appeared first on World of Matticus.

What a relief to finally get it done and over with. In the end, it took us exactly 404 pulls. We can jump into the details below.

• Our Raid Leader didn’t have internet. He tried to play by hotspotting his phone, but the connection was too slow, so we had to sit him. Poor guy missed the very first interrupt. Raid calling duties were split.
• Roster boss was real for this last boss. I firmly believe if we had a consistent 20 (or even 22), we would’ve killed it earlier. We went through two Evokers before mine was brought in. I’m fortunate enough to have had crystal reps earlier on when we were learning the fight. Might even make the Evoker a change for me next season. Less emphasis on keeping damage up, so I can just focus on buffing the raid and addressing mechanical needs that the encounter demands.
• With this week, we have some players that will be stepping down and moving on. Some are looking to pursue higher ranks, and others are retiring from raiding altogether. Ultimately, this will be the largest roster turnover we’ve had in quite a few years. We’re looking to recruit a Warrior, a DPS Death Knight, and some any ranged DPS or healers. Come apply here!
• Over in Last Call, we too have been struggling on a week-to-week basis playing roster roulette. It’s not fun. Every single substitution leads to around 30 minutes of additional work. It means positions changed, new interrupt macros need to be made, and other cascading effects that lead into intermission, phase 2, and phase 3. Even something as minor as switching a range DPS for a melee DPS throws things off. Now I have to move a healer back from the inner ring on intermission to the outer ring so that the melee DPS can take that spot over.
• The overall raid preparation has been okay, but I’m a little frustrated with some of the individual aspects. We had a healer who kept scooping up crystals on phase 2 when the crystals were deliberately dropped in the middle after I previously emphasized that players (non-crystal holders) had to fight the pull-in to not accidentally pick them up. Over the span of 8 pulls, it was picked up 5 times by the same player. Naturally, this led to unnecessary splashes that needed to be soaked. But still, I can’t help but be annoyed. It’s no longer enough for CE players to have an intimate understanding of what they need to do at an individual level, but they have to have a larger comprehension of what is happening at a phase-by-phase level. A bigger picture, if you will. Even if they’re not assigned a crystal, they need a fundamental understanding of why and when crystals are dropped so they don’t put themselves in positions where they won’t get it. This is an area of comprehension that separates mid-level mythic players and CE players.
• I haven’t started deep diving into the next season’s roster yet, but by all accounts the next tier is rumoured to come out in early August. We’re going to have some turnover ourselves in Last Call with some players whose schedules are changing and others who also want to move up. I’m planning to open recruiting for another healer, some extra ranged DPS, and maybe one more melee. But I’ll need to schedule end-of-tier talks with everyone to determine their intentions.
• It’s too early to say right now, but if I were to do a post-mortem, Bel’oren is where we lost some time and progress overall. I benched myself for the first few nights because of my damage (or lack of). I wanted to give more reps to the others that were there, and I focused more on the 21st man side of things, calling the raid. I can’t help but wonder if we would’ve killed it faster if I was in there instead. Ultimately, the raid buffs and other things pushed character power to the point that we had to fundamentally change our start. We used to hold 2 minutes for the first egg phase, which felt really bad. Instead, we decided to go with lust on the 2nd egg phase instead (and just use CDs as they came up). We found that we struggled a lot if we got to the third dive on the second phase 1.

Normal PTR testing will be starting up this weekend, and we’ll be stepping into it. Can’t wait to give it a go!

The post Matt’s Notebook: Midnight Falls Over! appeared first on World of Matticus.

• Death Jesters reached phase 4 for the first time. Always remember, stars go left-right-left. Don’t be the guy who went left-right-right and wiped the raid. We saw about six Phase 4 pulls, and any of them could’ve been the kill. All we had to do was stay alive as we did reach the enrage. There’s some type of aura of buff where when you’re alive, you just happen to deal extra damage.
• Last Call finally crushes Belo’ren. I was a little disappointed it took us longer than the average. I felt we should’ve killed it weeks ago, but between the power creep of Sporefall and the extra raid buffs, it threw off our damage math. Eventually, we settled on going with lusting and using potions on second egg phase. We were sending our 2 minute CDs as they were coming up. First egg phase resulted in Belo’ren going below 60%. It also meant that we could force our 2 minute CDs on the second phase 1 on the various adds. Our goal here was to get Belo’ren down quick to avoid the fifth Dive (or fifth set of adds appearing). But it worked.
• Last Call started working on Midnight Falls. It took us the first hour just to test our interrupt macros and UI elements with the memory game stuff, but it worked.
• There’s been some discussion about replacing underperforming players (whether it’s damage out or just mechanical play or early deaths). This is probably the time to do it, but it’s hard to find people to come in now for it. It also almost feels like a disservice to those who’ve been playing with us from the start of the tier. The problem is that the encounters from Paladins onwards to Alleria and Belo’ren have really exposed the skill gaps and skill ceilings.
• The new Sporefall raid debuted earlier this week with flex raiding. I’ve tried it from 15 ranging through to 25 with just pug mythics, and boy, it was an absolute nightmare over the week. I felt like I logged about 8 or so hours just trying to pug it and use as many rolls as I can. Most raid groups go with adds on the boss and adds in the middle. I saw one raid group go with the left foot and right foot positioning for adds, and that one felt much better. You could assign 2 ranged players to focus the remaining add on its own.
• The release date for the next raid tier has been allegedly leaked, and we’re looking at August 11 for Race to World First to begin. That’s too early. I was hoping it would be after BlizzCon in September. With that timeline, there is no way we’re going to be able to clear Midnight Falls and give everyone a mount. We’ll have to come back to this later in the expansion.
• Speaking of patch information, upcoming class changes and tier set stuff have also been released. I’ll post some more thoughts on it later on in the week. The big focus seems to be on smoothing out the burst and spiky damage (especially for Elemental Shaman) with the goal of making damage more consistent. I like that philosophy because I’ve historically been awful at playing classes with those DPS windows (including Shadow Priest and Shaman). I should’ve played an Aug or a Mage instead.
• This is my official last week of work before my contract ends. I’m a little scared of what’s next. The job market’s been awful for the past year and I worry that I won’t be able to find anything that I can contribute to.

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

• 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!

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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.

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