by JR Cook - 10 years ago     show comments

Last week I had the opportunity to sit down and talk with Aladya (Blood Elf Holy Paladin) and Treckie (Tauren Prot Paladin) from Method, the world’s top ranked raiding guild for World of Warcraft.  I was able to ask them a few questions about Siege of Orgrimmar and their experiences with Mists of Pandaria as a whole.

How does it feel to be at the top again? Were you confident going forward after having such a good track record in this expansion or were you nervous that there might be stiffer competition this tier?

(Treckie): When This expansion started I don’t think many could have expected it to go as well as it did. After first tier we learned not to underestimate the other guilds and I think that strengthened us as a guild to do the best we could for what came later.

(Aladya): It went overall better then expected. You’re never confident you’re going to win when you start of 10 bosses behind in a 14 boss raid dungeon, but spirits were pretty high after we killed Thok and Siegecrafter.

Did the race for world first differ this time compared to the previous two tiers? If it did, in what way?

(Treckie):  I think the main differance between this tier and others was that once EU caught up, we took all remaining bosses world first, in the other races there’s always been some guilds overtaking each other a few times, making for a more interesting race for race spectators. But it was nice seeing a pretty balanced smoothing curve through the Raid.

(Aladya): I’d say overall the race was extremely similar to ToT. On a guild level,compared to the previous tier we didn’t have Kuznam any more as raid leader, with his spot being taken by Noxe and Rogerbrown. 

What are some things you guys loved about this raid? What are some things you did not care for?

(Treckie): I dont think many people cared about the first 8 bosses, they all died in one or two pulls and for us they are pretty much a timesink to get to the interesting bosses. Personal favorites of this tier is definitely Blackfuse, as an overall fight, its a very engaging boss in many aspects.

(Aladya): The early bosses felt massively under-tuned so none really cared about them. I think Blackfuse was the most enjoyable boss, everything about him from tactics->progressing->killing felt awesome 

What sort of raid schedule did you operate on? Did it change at all from Throne of Thunder?

(Treckie):  We used pretty much the same raid schedule as we have in the past, main difference this tier was prolly to have it a bit more structured with set times for breaks (still a bit fluent) while in past tiers its been more that we take breaks a little whenever. Normal day would be to start around 12:00 and end 03:00 in the morning, with foodbreaks and smaller “clear your head” breaks during the day.

(Aladya): We had more or less the same schedule as before, except with set breaks this time so people would know when to order food/etc. 

What sorts of composition changes did you make for 5.4, if any at all? Why did you choose to make or not make changes?

(Treckie): It didn’t really feel like we made that many changes, we never really do change that much in class comps. The usual happened, a guy or two re-rolled something that looked better on the ptr just to fit the roster a little bit better, but nothing major.

(Aladya): The changes we had to do were mostly because people quit.

What classes do you think had the opportunity to shine the most in SoO? What classes had it rough?

(Treckie): Warlocks definitely comes out as one of the classes that got to shine in SoO, just like in ToT they are really strong in many aspects. Overall the melee balance seemed pretty solid, and there didn’t seem to be all that many fights where melee had a big disadvantage in the end (not that affected us or made us go melee low). One of the classes that had it a bit rough was probably shadow priests.

(Aladya): Warlocks #1. Warlocks were pretty insane this progress no doubt about that. Melee wise, we used 4 rogues for most fights because of their amazing survival/efficiency. Healing wise, Disc Priests and Resto Shamans were pretty insane. Mistweaver was worse then Resto Druid&Shaman in every way. 

What boss posed the most problems for you in SoO and why? What did you have to do to overcome?

(Treckie): Blackfuse is a popular one, there was a lot of things to sort out and to figure out on how it worked before we killed it, it was a very hard fight considering the mechanics of the fight. Klaxxi likely caused a lot more problems imo, but it was mainly due to bugged/mistuned encounter, so it was a problem that we couldn’t really work around and more or less had to wait for some fixes. Garrosh himself obviously took the most amount of tries and by far the most ammount of time to take down, but mechanic wise, it is not very challenging.

(Aladya):  Blackfuse was the first wall we reached, all the other bosses died pretty swiftly. The boss was near perfect tuned, the only small issue with it was having classes able to abuse the conveyor belt. The Klaxxi felt rather unfinished when we got to them. You could of died with Mutation even if you ate, you could spell reflect Mutation to the Dissector, Multi Shot doing 620k dmg, Parasites just instant killing people, Locust had an aura that made him kill people around him when he was jumping to throw amber. What I loved about Garrosh was the shifting difficulty part. We changed when we used Bloodlust from P1–>Intermission so we get it under 25 energy–>P2 so we make it before 3rd Intermission–>P3 so we could actually get to P4. 

I know you guys have been asked what your favorite encounter is in Siege of Orgrimmar, but we want to know what your least favorite encounter was and why?

(Treckie): My least favorite encounter is likely Nazgrim, pretty boring add boss with a chaotic ending not to mention the adds the first pull.

(Aladya): Nazgrim. The encounter had potential on the PTR but it was changed because of class balance to something uninteresting. Thok as a Holy Paladin is also extremely annoying. 

What tier of this expansion was the most exciting for you to race through and why?

(Treckie): Tier 14 was interesting imo since it was different with three smaller races rather than one more drawn out race, that said I hope they don’t do so again. ToT was probably the best tier this expansion, good bosses in the middle, and awesome end-boss, even tho the “optional” boss had some issues.

(Aladya): Would give that tittle to ToT. The wall came earlier- Durumu(7/13) rather then Blackfuse(12/14), and the race felt close.

Now that you guys have locked in world first, what are you going to do to occupy your time?

(Treckie): We go back to the normal state of the guild, aka not progress. We barely had a 2 week break from everything, now its over and we resume everything again. Some work, some study, some just play wow.

(Aladya): Most of us take time off work during progress, so there’s always that to catch up on. No more progress means relaxed raiding, 1/2 times a week for the next months until the next expansion. 

Looking back on Mists of Pandaria, what is one thing you would guys would do differently in terms of your raiding experience?

(Treckie): I am pretty proud of all we have done in Mists of Pandaria that its hard to say what we should have done differently, Heart of Fear comes out as the real only weak point for the guild, that could have been improoved upon.

(Aladya): I would of said Heart of Fear, but I think it was a good lesson for the future. So nothing really. 

Do you have any predictions for the next expansion?

(Treckie): I hope in terms of raiding that they learned from MoP raiding, and takes much of the things that made MoP raiding so good, and try to remove some of the less enjoyable stuff from the raiding scene.

(Aladya): Burning Legion? Yes pls.

Any final thoughts you want to share with readers? Advice? Class specific guidance for the readers out there? Opinions on Mists of Pandaria as a whole? Etc. 

(Treckie): Be a team-player, nobody likes doing the shitty job, but it has to be done. As for MoP, I think blizzard really did a great job over all with the raiding part of the game, legendary questline had its moments both good or bad, but I wouldn’t mind seeing something similar in the future. 

Method will be pitting its skill against Midwinter as they both will be doing a live race through 25 Heroic Siege of Orgrimmar during Blizzcon later this week. To watch this race and more amazing events during Blizzcon head over to http://us.battle.net/blizzcon/en/virtual-ticket/ and pick up your Virtual Ticket today!

You can follow Method on Twitter: @Methodeu