The Mythic Raider

So you want to be a mythic raider? Beyond finding a team that you want to join, you need to know what is expected of a mythic raider.  While each raid team will have different expectations, here is what I view as the basics.

1) Knowledge of your class.

Of course this starts with knowing your rotation/spell priorities, cooldowns, stat priorities but for the mythic raider this means more than this. You should be familiar with all of your spells and their idiosyncrasies. Read the tool tips and know the details.

Why is this so critical? These idiosyncrasies are what will let you survive and conquer the challenges of the fights. A group stealth may get you past some trash. A certain talent may let you take a debuff that lets the tank survive and gets the boss down.

If you have read Icy-Veins strats you will see that there are class specific guides that suggest specific talents and spells. for a starting point you should know these, but the expectation is that you will soon be able to look at a fight and see what tools  (talents, spells, gear, etc) will be best for the fight given a particular strategy.

 

2) Situational awareness

The foundation of this is don’t stand in the bad stuff and stand in the good stuff, but there is much more than this. There is an excellent article on this by Hamlet on It is Dangerous to go Alone that I will refer you to here. Read it and learn it.

 

3) Knowledge of the fights.

Again there is a foundational skill as with the others, and i think of these foundations as being essential for a heroic raiders, and in almost all cases normal raiders. For knowledge of fights the very basics are watching and/or reading a strategy for the fight. (Obviously, if you are seeing the fight before strategies have been created this doesn’t apply, and in that case I appreciate you reading my humble blog.)

For heroic raiders there is more. You should be looking through the dungeon journal and seeing the spells and effects buffs and debuffs that the boss and/or adds and/or the environment present. You should also be thinking of how you can counter or benefit from them.

Beyond this If you can spell steal see what can be stolen, if you can Mind control, how can that be used.  If you can interrupt, expect to interrupt and if there are multiple interruptible spells know, or at least guess, which will be the most critical to interrupt. Do this for any of your utility spells.

While the raid leader will come up with an overall strategy, it is my expectation that even without spelling out things like interrupts and spellsteals they will still be handled.  Reduce the damage to the team and gain the buffs you can.

 

4) Awareness of the team.

This could almost go under situational  awareness, but is slightly different and will develop over time. When the team needs to group and move together. this requires team awareness, when you need to spread out the team needs to be able to spread out and adjust as needed quickly. This awareness comes with time…if it is something you are striving for. Strive for it.

I will leave off here with a portion of my favorite boss kill video and below it I will point out some of the places where it demonstrates what I have mentioned above. (You can start from 3:30 and see everything I discuss below.)

1) Knowledge of your class:

Just to pick one example of this, when the raid lead called for the hunter to taunt he was at the ready, no need to find the spell in the book, It was just a matter of picking who was going to taunt

 

2) Situational awareness:

Just to pick a single example look at how they moved out the out of the defiles.  The person with the defile moved away from the group and the rest of the group moved the opposite direction making for very small well spaced defiles.

 3) Knowledge of the fight:

Some of what we see is excellent raid leading, (as well as the many previous attempts). However, the realization of the impending enrage and that the boss was tauntable and how the enrage plays out (boss does more damage not aoe wipe) This awareness enabled them to react and call for a hunter taunt.

 4) Awareness of the team:

In the last Frostmourne phase the whole team moves as one. It is a thing of beauty,.a dynamic ballet played out within the strategy of a final boss fight.

While not every mythic team will be on that level (few are world first caliber) we can and should learn from them. For my team, the Orcbusters,  I expect my mythic raiders to possess the above skills and knowledge and always be striving to refine and hone those skills to get yet better.