wow Method.gg Interviews New Raid Champions Pieces

[Starym 3,800]

 

EU guild Pieces took home the trophy in the Crucible of Storms Mythic progress race and now it's time to take a look at their journey through the surprisingly difficulty 2 boss raid. Method.gg interviewed several members of the guild, their GM, an officer (both healers) and two members (DPS) going through the details of their win.

They talk about everything Crucible and race related, including the difficulty of keeping a stable roster, player availability and days off work, how both World Firsts felt, a lot of details on the boss fights themselves, tuning, class balance, racing against guilds that stream, Pieces streaming, the US and EU advantage, and a whole lot more.

Here are a couple of highlights:

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To start off, congratulations on the big win in Crucible! This was both your first World First AND your first raid endboss WF. How did each of them feel individually?

Champs: I’m really proud of our Cabal kill. After watching US guild struggle the first day we were worried this tier would be really hard (and it was), but when we finally got to enter the raid ourselves we managed to hit Berserk on our first pull. The boss still had a lot of health left but we proved that we knew how to deal with the mechanics and we just had to fine-tune a few things, like the Promises of Power uptime, for a kill. As a cherry on top we were the only guild in the world that managed to kill Cabal on the first day (unless a Chinese guild did it, I don’t know). Killing Uu’nat felt really, really good and it stuck with me longer than our Jaina or G’huun kill. I still wake up in the morning and think “we got world first” which always puts a smile on my face.

Rinoa: Cabal was the first World First kill we had as a guild, so it felt quite special. I don’t think any of us truly expected it to be a hard boss. I was very pleasantly surprised with the difficulty level of it, and am quite satisfied with our performance. We were able to execute the things we practiced in heroic mode, and although some strategy modifications had to be made along the way, most of what we strategized ended up being quite good. When we finally got Uu’nat I think we all felt immensely satisfied. Uu’nat was a different beast. Definitely one of the hardest bosses I’ve progressed alongside Kil’jaeden. When it finally died the rush of emotions that came was quite powerful - relief over having killed it after so many tries, happiness over being the first to do so, and a sense of being a part of a team who can accomplish something when we work together. In that moment the guild felt more like family than a team, silly as it sounds.
 

The discussion over vacation days, player availability etc. has been in focus lately, what is your policy on it in general and for Crucible specifically, as you seemed to go pretty hard at it for those 10 days?

Champs: Our progress raid times are listed on our Wowprogress page (from raid opening to midnight first day, 19.00 to midnight during the week and 16.00 to midnight during weekends) but these times are not strict at all. All of us want to raid as much as possible during progress which is why we often try to start earlier. However, if someone is unable to attend outside of the previously mentioned raid times that is totally fine. For Crucible specifically we had played with the idea of going full daytime the first 5 days of progress (Wed-Sun) for a chance at World First. Everyone thought it was a good idea and we went for it.
 

Method had a 2% try 2 days before your kill, where were you at that point?

Champs: I don’t remember the exact % but around 10% I think. However, the last phase can’t really be measured in % because we still hadn’t managed to kill off the 2nd add wave in P3 at that point and we all knew that if we could get over that hurdle we would get the boss to 0%.

Rinoa: To elaborate a bit on what Champls wrote, progress-wise the last phase can be looked upon as “waves” of mechanics. If you get past one wave, you buy yourself a lot of time where there’s not much going on and you get to push damage for a while. We were stuck on the last “wave” where we had to live through the beams, marks and kill off the last set of adds. The boss health was probably around 10% at that point, but we knew that if we could make it past that point the boss would simply flop over as there were no more dangerous timings left which would be difficult to survive - the fight was simply over.
 

What do you think gave you that edge to down the boss before everyone else?

Champs: I don’t think there was a single thing that made it but rather it was the teamwork. Basically our entire roster came with valuable input before and throughout progress. We constantly made small adjustments between pulls to perfect our strategy and that’s not possible if only a few people contribute.

Rinoa: In addition to the points Champls brought up, I’d also like to mention that our raid atmosphere is amazing. Keeping the mood light and the motivation of each player up is helpful when staring down the abyss of a 700+ pull boss. It’s easy for things to go sour, and if negative thoughts get a hold of people their performance tends to suffer as a result. We place great importance on ensuring the mood of the raid is as good as it reasonably can be, and I think that ultimately greatly increases our performance as a team.

Make sure to head on over to Method.gg for the full interview, as it's a really interesting look into a more casual guild that went for it and won.

They talk about class balance, boss tuning and bugs, roster issues/vacation days and a lot more.

[Seksi 208]

Great interview, proud of my ex-Group Therapy boyes (Bastu/Hankstar/Blade) who went straight from 2 day / 8h raiding weeks into 24/7 world first raiding ?