Hidden Hard Modes: An Introduction

Prepare for the unknown by studying how others in the past have coped with the unforeseeable and the unpredictable–Patton

The title of this post may be initially confusing, so I’m taking this opportunity to explain the motivation behind this next series of entries.

“Borsk, hidden hard modes? Does this mean that there really is a boss behind that door if you take a left at Sister Svalna?”

Not exactly, but you’re welcome to try running into the wall until it opens! Raiding guilds across the globe formulate strategies and tactics for taking down raid bosses. When you look at an achievement list, that’s what you see. You get a list of what they killed, what loot they got, and how many times they’ve done it.

If these were the only bosses raiding guilds had to kill, everyone would be done with Hard Mode ICC25 by now (ICC10 man at least). It turns out that there are a lot of other fights you don’t see.  Raid Leaders and Officers battle other, hidden, bosses on a nightly and weekly basis.

Unfortunately these folks don’t have many places to go and watch a video (with techno music!) portraying, for example, an effective recruitment post. The only way they truly get a sense of how to handle these “encounters” is to see them, probably slip up, and then gain a lesson learned for next time.

What’s left out of an armory feed or kill shot is everything that it took to get to those 10 points. All the hard work spent finding someone to fill that Moonkin or Pally Healer raiding spot isn’t on the Glory of the Raider meta achievement.

“We would have killed him this week, but none of our mages logged on!”

“We were a couple folks short of forming a real raid, but couldn’t go. Now we’re third on the server. If only everyone was able to log on!”

Those are just a couple of examples. All of them may be valid, but none of them are good excuses. Being able to field the proper raid composition (or any raid composition) is one of the very important strategies a raiding leadership team must develop. The Hidden Hard Modes I speak of are the following:

Recruitmentface/Attendancegut

Loot Prince Council

Stratdragosa

Lord Morale-gar

Those are some terrible puns. If you’ve been an officer or raid/guild leader in the past, you’ve fought them at every tier in progression (the bosses, not bad puns!). Sometimes they kill themselves, other times they’ll give you more trouble in a week than a bugged C’Thun.

How do you get the strategy for a new boss that you’re about to face? You go look at StratFu, EJ, or Tankspot and watch a video and read a write-up. You might log over to another server and ask your old buddy how his guild handled a certain mechanic. Don’t forget just good old-fashioned trial and error. For the hidden hard modes, the number of resources is quite small.

For now.

Hidden Hard Modes: Recruitmentface/Attendancegut coming soon…