Matt’s Razor: Where Second Kills are Harder than the First

It’s been over a year and a half since I last stepped foot into any sort of Mythic raid. Nervous? A little. But jumping back into Mythic raids is like getting back on the bike after shelving it for the winter. You can’t slack off, you can’t coast, and your decision making can’t suffer. We did get manage to get Mythic Nythendra within a day of real attempts and ended with a handful of players alive at the end. Unfortunately, as I always say, the hardest part of any Mythic boss kill is the sophomore kill — That is, killing a boss the second time. I don’t know what it is about bosses, but taking down a boss the following week almost always seems to result in more attempts than the first kill. After that though, it becomes more routine. Is it just pre-game jitters? Is it the expectation to kill a boss not quite on farm is so high that players just get in their own heads? People playing more careless just because they’ve already killed it and gloss over the moves that led to the kill in the first place?!

I call it Matt’s Razor — The second kill is always harder than the first despite having secured it before. You can let me know if your raid can prove or disprove it.

The next move is to challenge Elerethe and she’s going to be a tougher cookie than most. We’re almost at the point where we can consistently play through all of the first platform without casualties. Cooldowns have been timed for the first and second, giant green circle run away ability along with the Ji’Kun flappy wing ability.

You can tell my memory for ability names is lacking.

What’s stalling us right now is the transition and execution over to the second platform. We’ve split the raid into two groups to eat the winds, but we’re still getting shredded. I suspect we just need more looks to get accustomed to it. Sometimes, you just need to pull the boss because you can’t explain it any harder.

Hooray for finally unlocking the third golden trait in T’uure. I kinda went backwards though ever since the game came out as I picked up Light of T’uure last out of all the traits. Whoops.

Double hooray for lucking out and getting my second Legendary with the belt, Al’maiesh, the Cord of Hope. You can all hate me now.

Triple hooray for getting the Shadow artifact appearance off Illy. Now I fully expect to not get drops for the next month.

I should be at a casino. What am I doing playing this game?

Mythic dungeons

Speaking of Mythics, I wanted to touch upon a different set of Mythics. I can easily heal through dungeons at the Mythic 6 or 7 level but I start struggling at anything higher than that. I’m not sure if that’s a me thing or if it’s a Holy thing (or a combination thereof). The perception is that I (or Holy) has to work much harder than some other healing classes for the same result. If I were to put groups together, I’d almost always take a Resto Shaman in largely due to Wind Shear and Capacitor totem. Holy Priest has the option of a stunnable Chastise or an AoE knockback with a slow.

Playing on my Ret Paladin has been tons of fun though! It’s just hard to get into groups as well :(.

4 thoughts on “Matt’s Razor: Where Second Kills are Harder than the First”

  1. Congrats on Nyth and the legendary!

    Back in HFC we had serious issues with repeat kills, especially on mythic Mannoroth – even months into farm we were still having multiple wipes on a bad night. EN has been much more consistent. Insert obligatory comment about EN being an entry level raid, tho..
    I soak 2nd winds on Elerethe. I have PI and mindbender up for 1st winds; rapture/penance and psupp for the tank on the 2nd. Our main progression wall on that fight was the positioning of tornadoes/poison, tbh. Good luck!

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  2. My experience is that he second kill is harder in part because a few people don’t show up from the first kill for whatever reason (boredom, burnout, reluctance to “carry” if they perceived themselves as higher contributors).

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