Forged Alliance in Battle for Azeroth

guild news, policies, and raid information
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draven
Posts: 4005
Joined: January 5th, 2007, 6:21 pm
Location: tbd

Forged Alliance in Battle for Azeroth

Post by draven »

greetings! welcome to battle for azeroth! i hope everyone has fun leveling and exploring the new content. this thread will contain general information about guild policies and their evolution throughout battle for azeroth. it will be updated whenever appropriate.

for those not aware, there is a new community feature that should allow us to reunite the guild a bit. so far it has been less than stable but we'll see how it works out. more information about that is here:
https://www.forgedalliance.org/forum/vi ... f=1&t=5598

as is the case at the beginning of every expansion, ranks have been reset. almost everyone that is active should be ranked as member. if you are returning to the game and are ranked as inactive, please request a promotion from an officer. the requirements for raiders are tbd, but with the new community tools it is likely that raids will be organized a bit differently. more on that soon™.

finally, we are still in need of guild officers and a backup raid leader for when i am mia. a slightly outdated post on that subject is here:
https://www.forgedalliance.org/forum/vi ... f=1&t=5392

that is all for now, as always if you have any questions / comments / suggestions / issues / whatever please let them be known. thanks!
draven
Posts: 4005
Joined: January 5th, 2007, 6:21 pm
Location: tbd

Re: Forged Alliance in Battle for Azeroth

Post by draven »

greetings! after a bit of a delay i think that everything on the site should be updated for battle for azeroth, if you notice anything i've missed please let me know. the most notable changes involve raiders and ranks.

for those interested in raiding, the raider requirements have been updated:
viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2789

guild ranks for raiders have mostly been replaced with a new Forged Alliance Raiders community that will be used to organize raids going forward. with the demise of openraid and the number of cross realm people that we raid with i think this will be the easiest way to manage things. it is not possible to customize ranks within a community so raid invites will be based upon membership in the community. membership will be determined based on the raider requirements as usual. the raider event has returned to the guild calendar with a title of "Forged Alliance Raiders". if you are interested in raiding, please sign up for the event and i will send you a community invite upon approval. i'm hoping to start using the raiders community for events starting the week of 10/7.

in other raiding news, it appears we need to rebuild the raid roster a bit so i'll work on recruiting. i'm hoping to clear normal mode this week and get into heroic mode as soon as possible, but we'll see how that works out. also, the mumble server is back online so we will resume using that for voice communications.

i think that is all for now, as always if you have any questions / comments / suggestions / issues / whatever please let them be known. thanks!
draven
Posts: 4005
Joined: January 5th, 2007, 6:21 pm
Location: tbd

Re: Forged Alliance in Battle for Azeroth

Post by draven »

greetings! i've a quick update as we start working on heroic battle for dazar'alor. after a bit of an up and down adventure through uldir, largely due to me being frequently mia, we're doing pretty well in dazar'alor so far.

along with the new raid tier the raider requirements have been updated:
viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2789

the ilvl requirement is now 370ish, but anyone who has been playing somewhat consistently shouldn't have issues meeting the requirements. ranks and raider community membership have been updated. i'm also still working on recruiting a few more people since it seems like a lot of mechanics these days aren't friendly to smaller raid sizes.

that is all for now, as always if you have any questions / comments / suggestions / issues / whatever please let them be known. thanks!
draven
Posts: 4005
Joined: January 5th, 2007, 6:21 pm
Location: tbd

Re: Forged Alliance in Battle for Azeroth

Post by draven »

greetings! i've a few updates as we approach the rise of azshara patch release, which is currently rumored to be late june or early july. the goal is still to get aotc for both battle for dazar'alor and crucible of storms and we are running out of time to do so.

after this week's successful experiment with mythic champion we will continue to farm that every week, most likely first thing on tuesday. you should be aware that mythic raid lockouts work differently than other lockouts, you are locked to a specific instance id in mythic so you are not able join other groups once you are locked to our id. if you want to pug mythic or run with another group later in the week feel free to sit out or bring another appropriately geared character for our kill.

we will probably be extending lockouts for heroic in order to make a push towards getting the end bosses down. we are very close on rastakhan and i'm hoping that mekkatorque will be manageable, but i suspect blockade and jaina will require some practice. it is likely that we will have to rely on pugs going forward, i thank you in advance for you patience in dealing with all of the fun things that come with using the lfg tool.

finally, the raider rank requirements were updated a while ago to be more appropriate for the middle to end bosses in battle for dazar'alor:
viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2789

the ilvl requirement is now 390ish. if you haven't been raiding consistently mythic+ is probably the best way to get there, feel free to ask for help in gchat if you don't want to deal with pugging while you're trying to gear up.

that is all for now, as always if you have any questions / comments / suggestions / issues / whatever please let them be known. thanks!
draven
Posts: 4005
Joined: January 5th, 2007, 6:21 pm
Location: tbd

Re: Forged Alliance in Battle for Azeroth

Post by draven »

greetings! i've a few updates with the arrival of 8.2 aka the rise of azshara patch.

first, for a variety of reasons battle of dazar'alor did not go as well as hoped. we still have two weeks to get aotc, but overall between encounter mechanics, scaling / tuning, and raid comp we seemed to struggle a bit with the majority of the instance. i've no idea what to expect going forward but i think there are some things we can do to try to improve and get back to being able to clear heroic comfortably before the next tier.

aside from having a better understanding of mechanics (grong issues for example), it seems like the tuning and scaling for battle for azeroth has been skewed to the point that gear that is available in the instance isn't particularly helpful for encounters we have trouble progressing on. for example, after a certain point normal mode gear wasn't helpful for the end bosses in normal, and heroic gear wasn't helpful for the end bosses in heroic. a way to fix this is to push the next difficulty tier a bit earlier, for example we should have been farming mythic champion as soon as it was available cross realm, if not sooner.

another option is to push mythic+ earlier in the tier since the gear is on par with or better than everything aside from mythic raid gear. i find it somewhat annoying that mythic+ is borderline required for raid progression, but it is what it is and i think it will be helpful. i'm hoping to be able to run mythic+ consistently every week, most likely sunday and / or monday nights, and will probably start setting up events to see how much interest there is for such things.

as far as raider requirements, the gear in azshara's eternal palace is 415 for normal, 430 for heroic, and 445 for mythic so i'm guessing that the minimum ilvl requirement will be 400ish for normal and then increased to 415ish when we get to heroic. this shouldn't be an issue for anyone that has been raiding consistently, and we'll see how things go once the raid is available and adjust accordingly if necessary.

in other news, it is unlikely that i will be able to continue raiding until 11pm pacific so we will probably need to adjust raid times at some point. for those not aware i've relocated to the east coast and being up past 2am two nights a week seems like less than responsible adulting on my part. we probably have a few options for an alternative raid schedule so i will create a separate post to sort them out when i have a better idea of what my schedule will be.

in the realm of voice communication options, it seems that we will be relying on pugs and therefore discord for the foreseeable future. however, i created the forged alliance server with an account i no longer have the login credentials for so there is no way to manage the server. therefore i am going to create a new server so that my new discord account is the server owner, theoretically aside from being a different channel everything should be pretty much the same.

i think that is all for now, as always if you have any questions / comments / suggestions / issues / whatever please let them be known. thanks!
draven
Posts: 4005
Joined: January 5th, 2007, 6:21 pm
Location: tbd

Re: Forged Alliance in Battle for Azeroth

Post by draven »

greetings! i've a quick update as we work our way through the eternal palace. we did a good job getting through the easy bosses in normal but as is generally the case that didn't lead to learning mechanics particularly well which has been evident on za'qul and azshara, as well as heroic sivara and ashvane. please make sure you know the encounters that we will be working on and if you have questions on anything please ask. also, since it seems likely that i will be tanking for now, if i am missing something or making things difficult for other roles please let me know.

the raider requirements have been updated to reflect early heroic progression:
viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2789

the minimum ilvl requirement is now 410ish. this should not be difficult to attain for anyone that has been raiding and / or running mythic+ relatively consistently. if you need help gearing up feel free to ask here on the forums or in gchat.

mythic+ fun times on sunday and monday have gone well so far. the goal in the short term is to ensure that everyone who is interested completes a +7 for the week, and hopefully we'll be able to start pushing +10s so we can learn about the season 3 beguiling affix and azshara's emissaries. invites are on the calendar for those in the forged alliance raiders community but anyone is welcome to attend. depending on how much interest there is we will probably have to rotate through people unless we have enough for two groups.

finally, thanks once again to everyone for dealing with pug fun times. i had hoped to have a consistent group by now but recruiting is still a challenge. hopefully we'll get it sorted out soon.

that is all for now, as always if you have any questions / comments / suggestions / issues / whatever please let them be known. thanks!
draven
Posts: 4005
Joined: January 5th, 2007, 6:21 pm
Location: tbd

Re: Forged Alliance in Battle for Azeroth

Post by draven »

greetings and happy new year! i've a few updates while we await the arrival of the visions of n'zoth and the accompanying ny'alotha, the waking city raid.

first, the raider rank requirements have been updated:
viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2789

the ilvl requirement is now 430ish, which shouldn't be an issue for anyone that has been playing relatively consistently. that is a guess at what will be required for normal mode and if necessary it will be updated based on how our adventures in ny'alotha go.

second, raid times have been adjusted based on everyone's feedback to better accommodate the time zones that some of us now reside in. the short version is that raids are now 7:30 - 10pm pacific, still on tuesday / thursday. more information on that is here:
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=5819

third, mythic+ shenanigans have been going well and will continue to be important as we get started in the next tier. in 8.3 gear will apparently continue to scale up to +15 so it will probably be worthwhile to try to push keys as much as possible. i'd also like to adjust event times for these, we will try starting at 7pm pacific, still on sunday / monday, hopefully being done around 9pm pacific. we should be able to be pretty flexible based on when people are available so we'll see how it goes.

i think that is all for now. if you have any questions / comments / suggestions / whatever please let them be known. thanks!
draven
Posts: 4005
Joined: January 5th, 2007, 6:21 pm
Location: tbd

Re: Forged Alliance in Battle for Azeroth

Post by draven »

greetings! i've a few updates as we approach the final stages of ny'alotha in these strange times.

first, the raider rank requirements have been updated to align with the end bosses in ny'alotha:
viewtopic.php?f=23&t=2789

the ilvl requirement is now 450ish and your heart of azeroth should be at least level 75, neither of which should be an issue for anyone that has been playing relatively consistently. for those that don't meet the ilvl requirements, your best bet is probably lower level mythic+. if you're scared of pugs feel to spam chat and we should be able to get a group together.

second, please be aware of how much corruption gear you are using during raids and how that is affecting your performance and survivability. my personal preference is to run with zero corruption, as grasping tendrils can easily prevent you from avoiding mechanics that will kill you, and eye of corruption and especially grand delusions create issues that at best are a distraction for healers and at worst will also kill you. if by chance you have sufficient gear to suffer inevitable doom it is likely that you will be removed from the raid.

finally, mythic+ fun times have been a bit of an adventure as we push into higher keys. the goal is still to get everyone at least a +10 completion and eventually be able to complete +15, but no worries if you don't have any interest in the higher keys as they can be punishing and occasionally not much fun at all.

that is all for now. if you have any questions / comments / suggestions / whatever please let them be known. thanks!
draven
Posts: 4005
Joined: January 5th, 2007, 6:21 pm
Location: tbd

Re: Forged Alliance in Battle for Azeroth

Post by draven »

greetings! i've a quick update as we wander into mythic ny'alotha. as you're probably aware, mythic has a fixed group size of twenty people, unlike normal and heroic which allow flexible group sizes. this creates the unpleasant possibility that some people will be benched should we have more than twenty people, and the not fun job of determining who those people will be. for those that are curious, those decisions will be based on the following:
  1. the raid calendar invite status. if there are twenty people that have accepted the invite and make a feasible group, then that is likely the group we will go with. therefore make sure that you accept the calendar invite if you would like a raid invite.
  2. corruption mechanics. those that insist on getting themselves killed due to and / or rely on healers to survive grand delusions make this decision easy.
  3. should the first two filters not be sufficient, the final group composition will be based on a nebulous combination of performance, preparedness, and attendance, unless there are volunteers to sit out.
these kinds of decisions used to be a standard part of the game but haven't really been a thing since flexible raid sizes were introduced. it has been a while since we've had enough people for this to be an issue so i request everyone's patience and understanding as we sort things out. if you have any questions / comments / suggestions / issues / whatever please let them be known. thanks!
draven
Posts: 4005
Joined: January 5th, 2007, 6:21 pm
Location: tbd

Re: Forged Alliance in Battle for Azeroth

Post by draven »

greetings! it seems the previous post has not aged well as we have suddenly reached the standard end of expansion decline in interest. i'm not sure how much effort we should or will be able to put into mythic ny'alotha going forward, but there are still things to accomplish before shadowlands arrives, such as:
  1. making sure that anyone who wants ahead of the curve: nzoth the corruptor as well as the related uncorrupted voidwing mount from heroic n'zoth gets it. this applies to anyone on proudmoore or destromath, please let me know if you are interested and we can get you into our weekly farm run. we can also consider trying to sell this.
  2. making sure that everyone in the raid group who wants it gets the glacial tidestorm mount from mythic jaina. i think we are close so this should be relatively easy to finish up.
  3. personally i would like to get battle for azeroth keystone master: season four and the associated awakened mindborer mount. this should be achievable but i am starting to worry that we are running out of time and resorting to pugs scares me.
  4. finishing up glory of the ny'alotha raider along with any other older raid achievements. i think these are less of a priority as they don't need to be obtained before shadowlands.
if there is anything else i've missed please let me know. it would be nice to progress a bit further in mythic ny'alotha as well, but i'm not sure how realistic that is since it will likely require pugs which of course has been hit or miss.

anywho, i think that is all for now. if you have any questions / comments / suggestions / issues / whatever please let them be known. thanks!
draven
Posts: 4005
Joined: January 5th, 2007, 6:21 pm
Location: tbd

Re: Forged Alliance in Battle for Azeroth

Post by draven »

greetings! welcome to the shadowlands pre-patch! i've not much to say other than i have no idea what to expect going forward from now until whenever the official shadowlands release is. in the short term i suspect things will be broken and everyone will need to learn how to play again, but aside from that i am open to suggestions for activities. we can revisit ny'alotha to see how different things are now or continue to work on random achievements or whatever else. alternatively if people prefer to take a break from raiding and other organized activities that is fine too.

at some point i will update the web site and make some changes to how things are organized. i will also put together a survey of some sort to see what everyone intends to level and play in shadowlands so we can be somewhat organized going into castle nathria. until that happens if you have any questions or suggestions please let me know. thanks!
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