Big Crits Weekly Update - H Zon’ozz and H Yor’sahj Down

Since our last weekly update (three weeks ago), Big Crits’ progression team has continued knocking down the heroic bosses in Dragon Soul.  On December 16th, we downed Heroic Zon’ozz, but it took another couple of weeks to get Heroic Yor’sahj down, on December 29th.  The attendance boss reared his ugly head due to the holidays, which may have hampered the progression a bit, but the progression team pulled through late on Thursday moving to 4/8 hard mode.

This week the Raiders will be working on Heroic Ultraxion.  According to Raid Leader Basek, “Ultraxion is going to be extremely tough, a lot of our raiders are worried we will not have the DPS to match the enrage because of its extremely hard requirements. But we’ll handle it like we did Ragnaros.”

The progression team stands at U.S. 56th and world 189 with 4/8 Heroic Dragon Soul as of Monday January 2, 2012.

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What did a heroic Ragnaros kill cost us?

Every now and then a boss fight comes along that is known as "the guild breaker." 25-man Heroic Ragnaros justifiably earned this title. The last time this moniker was used as extensively was in Sunwell for M'uru. Sure there were tough fights in Wrath, but nothing like Sunwell, and certainly nothing like Heroic Ragnaros.

The difficult issue many guilds faced, and the very one that we did, was a choice between returning the commitment of dedication versus the very real prospect of stagnation. For us, it came down to clearly defining a starting roster, one which left many raiders on the sideline feeling marginalized by the guild.

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Forum Free-for-All - The Stoney Meme Thread

We have a lot of fun on the Big Crits message board, and the recent Stoney Meme thread is a perfect example.  Stoney recently changed his profile picture on his social media sites, and it was just too perfect to leave alone.  Within hours, Raid Leader Basek had started this thread and pretty soon the whole guild was joining in the fun.  There were even posts of pictures of other guildies.  Here are some of the funniest pictures from the thread.

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Big Crits Weekly Update - H Hagara World 10th

It has been an amazing week for Big Crits.  The progression team are 10th in the world to kill Heroic Hagara the Stormbinder.  At one point over the weekend, Big Crits was showing up on the front page of Wowprogress, as 7th overall in the U.S. and 13th in the world.

As of today, Big Crits is 18th in the U.S.  and 49th in the world.  Look for us to jump back up in the rankings this week when we return to Dragon Soul to kick some more ass!  Raid Leader Basek put together an inspiring video that should help keep the momentum going; you can see it here.

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Raiding. Leading. Again.

Saltycracker, Big Crits' former Raid Leader, has returned to Big Crits after a brief hiatus. The following is a blog post from Salty about his new role in Big Crits. You can read his blog at http://randthotgen.blogspot.com/

About a month ago, I got that itch again to start raiding. I missed it. More importantly, I missed the people that enjoy raiding. The people that make new friends constantly, tell geeky jokes, make bad sexual innuendos and double entendres. You know, fun people. Not like all those stuck-up people you meet everyday in real life.

Ishraaq, our fearless Da Crew chief, approached me about leading another Firelands run. Something simple, something 10man, something for mains/alts/those not raiding enough. I agreed to lead it. This has now morphed into a 25man Dragon Soul run with expectations attached to it. Yikes.

Let's talk about Da Crew for a second quick. Da Crew is our "casual" raiding rank for people just not up to snuff with the standards of the main progression team, but still wanting to raid with good people. The problem is that casual is a very grey word. Back when Big Crits was formed and the guild was starting to pick up steam, there were a lot of people wanting to be a part of the guild, who did not have the time/desire to raid in a progression environment. Couple this with the fact that pugging raids on Sen'jin Horde was AWFUL, Da Crew started joining up and became a casual group of people with whom the alts of the main raiders and the casual folk could play and have a good time getting some phat purps. 

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L2Raid and Big Crits: LIVE on the PTR

Friday, November 18, Big Crits & Learn to Raid will be LIVE on the PTR at 7pm EST!

We've rescheduled the event twice, first due to PTR hard mode testing, and then the second time due to live realm raid scheduling conflicts. Barring any more last-minute hard mode testing, Big Crits will be hanging with Kinaesthesia and Killars. We'll run some dungeons, and then if the LFR is up, we'll pull in some more people from both guilds and go have fun in WoW's PuG playground.

Tune in on Killars' channel: http://twitch.tv/learntoraid at 7pm EST for the fun

May all your hits be crits!

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Heroic Ragnaros - Analyzing Phase 3 DPS

If you are working on Heroic Ragnaros then you know one of the key components of this fight is to get out of phase three with as few meteors as possible. In Big Crits we were focused on getting out with only one meteor. For our kill last week, we switched to three healers in order to ensure we pushed Rags down before the second meteor came out.

However, during our process of learning this fight, and then focusing almost exclusively on phase 3 DPS, one of our warlocks, Democles, began breaking down the World of Logs reports to show our performance during that phase only. This analysis was a key element in not only selecting players for the fight, but more importantly, in working with our current raiders to optimize their DPS.

Because we relied so heavily on Democles to provide us this breakdown from World of Logs, he was kind enough to make a screencast video. What follows is excellent tutorial about how to get the most out of WoL.

Big Crits World of Logs page

Full logs from our first H-Rags kill (the one used in the video)

May all your hits be crits!

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This week in Big Crits: 9/26/11

Every Monday we'll bring you the abridged summary of all that happened in Big Crits during the prior week.

Progression team

With the introduction of the nerfs to Firelands the progression team blew through 6/7 HM in an hour and a half on Tuesday night. It helps when everyone knows what they're doing, but even with that experience under our belt, we destroyed the place.

That left over 10 hours of raid time for Heroic Ragnaros. The raid team put in 52 attempts, with 10 of them going over 8 minutes. The stopping point right now is getting out of phase three with everyone alive, and of course pushing deeper into phase four. This brings the total heroic Rags attempts up to 77.

I was out for the whole raid week this week due to a trip to Asia with the girlfriend. I'm upset to miss the progression and the hard work the guild is putting in to this boss. Basek, Sarc and Suzu are doing a great job of keeping the team moving forward, reviewing wipes, and adjusting tactics as the raiders learn the fight. Thank you guys for your hard work.

Promotions, Additions, Departures

We promoted two members this week to the rank of Da Crew Chief—the officer rank of Da Crew. Orinesong, the raid leader of TPBS, and Vasin, raid leader for TEFA were both promoted to officer upon the recommendation of Ishraaq, the current head Da Crew Chief. Many chiefs in the kitchen, but is works well for us. Da Crew is a big part of Big Crits so they need the officer support and structure just as the progression team does.

Hunter Althorious was promoted to member. He's come a long way since his first week with us and has shown his ability to consistently perform at a high level and under pressure. Two new initiates joined us: Elwynta, Balance Druid, and Blitzkriegx, Hunter. Here is the updated roster.

If you've got the chops for hard mode progression raiding you're welcome to apply.

Da Crew update

With two 10-man teams raiding Firelands each week, our social raiding rank, Da Crew, got their first regular Ragnaros kill! Congrats Team Penguin Butt Sex on your kill—we're looking forward to many more. Team Eiffel Tower All-Stars are starting their attempts on Rags and should have him down soon.

If you want to join Big Crits but can't make the raiding schedule, Da Crew is the place to be; apply here.

PvP

With the return of our fearless PvP leader, Qtchain, the RBG team is rebuilding. We've recruited a core team of dedicated PvPers who will be form the foundation of our RBG team, and then we'll fill out the rest of the group from our PvE member base for each BG. I'm looking forward to the carnage!

Fun stuff

Each week on Friday Basek runs a GDKP in Firelands. This week they cleared 6/7 regular bosses and netted over 320,000 gold for the shared pot. It was so successful due to the nerfs that we're considering adding a 2nd GDKP run for the people that didn't get into the first one. If you're on the Sen'jin server and have some gold to spend, be sure to join us on Fridays.

That's all for this week's update.

May all your hits be crits!

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Big Crits & Geek Switch - The return of the Big Critcast (sort of)

Back in the day there was this thing called the Big Critcast. It's hard to keep a healthy real life, a progression raiding spot, and another crazy time-commitment habit like a podcast, and so unfortunately the Big Critcast fell to the wayside.  Fast-forward to summer 2011 and after some lively Twitter exchanges with @Kirwen he joined Big Crits on Sen'jin. When he and @TonyLivingston launched their uber-geek website, Geek Switch, they were going to include a podcast. After talking with Kirwen, aka Dante, we realized we had a great opportunity to connect some geek dots.

Starting this week, every Geek Switch podcast will include a Big Crits update segment. Some weeks might even feature another Big Critter (Furioso dropped in last week to flex his sexy--and quite possibly over-sexed--self) but definitely you'll get the update from yours truly as to what's going on in Big Crits. More about this week's killer episode below.

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Ten Man Raiding - A Postmortem

After raid leading 25mans during Wrath, I decided to see how the 10man side of progression raiding would measure up to what I thought was the more stressful and chaotic 25man side of things. While it lived up to my expectations in some areas, 10man progression raiding underperformed drastically in others. Would I call it a win or a loss? I’d call it a wash. Both models have their warts, but as long as the Internet exists there will be people from both camps lobbing grenades at each other.  Let’s dive in.

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