Guild & Raid Information

General information about the guild and raid.

Guild Information

Guild History

<Trash Mob Death Machine> has been a guild on Illidan since The Burning Crusade, initially formed by Nethrus. It raided as a one-day-a-week casual guild until Cataclysm when the raid's goals were changed to be closer to semi-hardcore. During the Firelands tier, Nethrus needed to step away from the game. Leadership of the guild was passed to Zarillion, who is the current guild and raid leader.

The guild continues to maintain a semi-hardcore environment and has raided in some capacity during every tier. We have casual members and raid-oriented members, some of whom have been around since the start. The guild has numerous Cutting Edge achievements and is the longest standing raiding guild on Illidan.

Guild Officers

General Rules

Raid Information

About the Raid

Our main goal in the core raid is to clear each raid on Mythic difficulty and earn everyone who helped with progression their Cutting Edge achievement and final boss rewards. This means finishing progression with enough time left in the tier to farm the rewards out for everyone.

We do not have a specific World, US or Realm rank goal. Setting one in a semi-hardcore guild would put additional strain on progression, and downplay our success if we finish a tier ranked lower than the previous tier. We will always strive to clear the content as fast as possible with the players we have available.

We will always complete the [Glory of the …] meta achievement for the current tier for those that are interested. This usually occurs after Cutting Edge is achieved.

Raid Rules

Raid Schedule

All raids are 3 hours, 9pm to 12am server time (central).

Required Addons

Required WeakAuras

Additional required auras may be listed on the strategy page for specific bosses.

Loot Rules

The RCLootCouncil addon is mandatory and will be used to determine who needs what item and their level of need. Everyone will be able to see what people have put for their response. If you do not have the addon you will not be considered for loot. The loot master will take level of need, progression impacts and rolls into account when deciding loot recipients.

Bind-on-equip items are handled different based on whether they dropped from trash or a boss.

Special Cases

Trial Period

The trial period typically lasts for three weeks after Mythic raiding has begun. Trials are extended at the beginning of a tier before we get into Mythic. We are looking for players with a balance of ability, attendance and attitude. Doing poorly in any category is enough to fail your trial with us.

Raid Links

TMDM Encounter Client

A guide to the TMDM Encounter Client by Zarillion.

What is it?

The TMDM Encounter Client is an addon developed specifically for use in our raids. It is a display addon that allows text, sounds, chat messages, emotes, frame glows and more to be triggered via addon messages sent by the raid leader.

Motivation

Before discussing how the client works, you should think about the current state of complex assignment auras and their downsides. Think about the following:

These auras are brittle. The auras are inflexible. They auras are buggy. These auras are inconsistent. These auras can be hard to work with and they often provide little information about what they did during each pull. Think about the total amount of time and wipes caused by some of the assignment auras. We should be progging the boss, not the weakaura.

I think about 20% of our wipes on the last three bosses of the last few tiers can be attributed to the Liquid or Nothern Sky assignment auras.

Rolanor - Raid Traffic Control Officer

Design

The client does not do anything by itself. It is simply a listener that allows addon messages triggered by the raid leader to display information on your screen. Any complex assignment logic is handled by code running on the raid leader's computer (typically done through custom auras written by me).


This eliminates entire classes of problems from the list in the previous section:

It is not currently possible for the client to replace all auras we may want to use on a fight. Sometimes complex figures or lists of players must be displayed and the client cannot (yet) display these types of things. However, the most important "go here now" or "do this now" type of assignments are what this client targets and are the most critical pieces of any complex fight.

Assignments

The client eliminates some of the headaches of common assignment auras. The way in which our assignment code is written helps alleviate some more. When writing our custom assignment code I strive for the following:

We have freedom to customize how we assign things. We can prioritize players, classes and specs in ways that suit us, which is not something that could easily be baked into the standard assignment auras. Approaching assignments this way saves potential wipes and reduces the setup time needed when the roster changes week-to-week.

Example

Here is a portion of the assignment code written as an aura for the Broodtwister Ovi'nax encounter:

function (event, ...)
    local aura_env = aura_env

    local function Emit (message, target)
        C_ChatInfo.SendAddonMessage('TMDM_ECWAv1', message, 'WHISPER', target)
    end

    local function AssignDosages ()
        if #aura_env.dosages == 0 then return end

        local unassigned = {}

        local function AssignLocked (player)
            for marker, locks in pairs(aura_env.locked) do
                for i, lock in ipairs(locks) do
                    if lock == player then
                        table.insert(aura_env.assignments[marker], player)
                        return
                    end
                end
            end
            table.insert(unassigned, player)
        end

        local function AssignUnlocked (player)
            for marker, assignments in pairs(aura_env.assignments) do
                if #assignments < 2 then
                    table.insert(assignments, player)
                    return
                end
            end
        end

        -- Assign locked players
        for i, player in ipairs(aura_env.dosages) do
            AssignLocked(player)
        end

        -- Assign left-over players
        for i, player in ipairs(unassigned) do
            AssignUnlocked(player)
        end

        -- Send out assignment messages
        for marker, assigns in pairs(aura_env.assignments) do
            local rt = "{rt"..marker.."}"
            SendChatMessage(rt..": "..(assigns[1] or "(none)").." "..(assigns[2] or "(none)"), "RAID")
            for i, player in ipairs(assigns) do
                Emit("c=SAY "..rt..";m="..rt.." DOSAGE "..rt..";d=8", player)
                C_Timer.After(4, function () Emit("c=SAY {rt"..marker.."}", player) end)
            end
        end

        -- Reset for next set
        aura_env.dosages = {}
        aura_env.assignments = { [6] = {}, [4] = {}, [3] = {}, [7] = {} }
    end

    if event == "ENCOUNTER_START" then
        aura_env.MRT()
        aura_env.dosages = {}
        aura_env.assignments = { [6] = {}, [4] = {}, [3] = {}, [7] = {} }
    elseif event == "COMBAT_LOG_EVENT_UNFILTERED" then
        local _, message, _, _, _, _, _, _, destName, _, _, spellID = ...
        if message == "SPELL_AURA_APPLIED" and spellID == 440421 then -- Experimental Dosage
            table.insert(aura_env.dosages, destName)
            if #aura_env.dosages == 1 then
                C_Timer.After(0.5, AssignDosages)
            elseif #aura_env.dosages == 8 then
                AssignDosages()
            end
        end
    end
end

This aura allowed 8 players to be "fixed" to an egg in the MRT note, and dynamically assigned any other players to eggs as they received the Experimental Dosage debuff. Most importantly, it sent out a message to the RAID channel for each egg marker indicating who the assigned players where.

The #1 aura-related complaint we heard from raid applicants after the Nerub-ar Palace raid were the Ovi'nax auras used by their guilds. Our guild didn't have to worry about that, it just worked.

Summary

With all of the above in mind, remember that there is a cost to using the client. Namely, I am writing the custom assignments as we get to each boss during progression. It is unlikely that I will get them working exactly right on pull #1, so sometimes we have to spend a few pulls debugging any initial issues. However, keep in mind that once they are sorted out and it is working, we don't have to think about it for the rest of the tier even as players come and go.

Ultimately, I am personally taking on all of the aura headaches mentioned in the motivations at the top so that the raider's experience is simply "install the client". This saves time and reduces wipes considerably in the long run, so be patient when we are working through issues.