wow Community Spotlight: Introducing Invective

[Stan 5,018]

Meet the new threat of US-Illidan! Invective is a new raiding guild from Wildstar World First & US 2nd guilds Enigma & Subterfuge ready to shake up the Mythic race!

Invective is a new Hardcore raiding guild from Wildstar World First & US 2nd guilds Enigma & Subterfuge. The guild wrote a mission statement on their website, where we learn more information about who they are and what plans they have when Tomb of Sargeras opens.

The guild is based on Illidan (US) and plans to give other top guilds like Method, Exorsus or Limit a hard time racing for World Firsts. Invective's core members all derive from Hardcore Raiding MMO Wildstar and their Guild Master Sky has theorycrafting experience and many guilds followed his strategy guides in Wildstar. Wildstar's dying and Hardcore members were looking for a World of Warcraft guild, but none suited their needs and thus Invective came into existence.

Tomb Schedule

Invective plans to push and jump into next tier content as hard and much as they can.

• The guild will be day raiding the first day when Heroic Tomb opens, the second when servers go up
• They will be raiding the following 2 weeks every day, except Friday with raids starting up to 2 hours early and ending an hour or two later depending on the encounters

Applicants

Each applicant will be assessed directly and past achievements or logs have no value. All applications will go through a vocal interview and Mythic Keystone runs and an infinitely lasting trial that ends only when a player is up to their standards. The guild is currenctly recruiting all Classes and you can submit your application here.

An ideal applicant

• Communicates through microphone, without it having any effect on gameplay
• Excels at to playing several classes and roles at top tier level
• Has flexible schedule / perfect attendance

I've sat down with the Guild Master / Raid Leader of Invective Drunkbath and he answered some interesting questions ranging from the guild's current state up to preparation for the upcoming tier.

How long have you been playing WoW since you transferred over from Wildstar?

I hit level 110 on January 24, a week before Exorsus got the world first Gul'dan kill. The rest of the Wildstar people hit 110 another week or two after myself. Essentially, all the people from our Wildstar core (from Enigma & Subterfuge) hit 110 after the tier was over. We've only been playing for a short while, and I think a lot of people don't realize how much time and effort it takes to get a roster together to Mythic raid. As an experienced raider who day raided for 2 weeks straight in a successful world first environment I can truly say that roster boss will ALWAYS be the hardest boss in ANY game that requires over a dozen solid players that can dedicate the time we expect from our raiders. (We push raid hours till late, and start early as well). Some nights we would go until 3AM.

How do you assess Nighthold in terms of difficulty / progression?

Nighthold was extremely difficult for us, but not because of boss difficulty. The new Artifact system and Legendary loot system were HUGE time gates for us. I used a Blink Legendary (Belo'vir's Final Stand) on dps check bosses for days! To put it into perspective our first Skorp, Chrono, and Trill Mythic kills were half guild-half pug runs. And the 4th boss we decided to kill was Mythic Botanist. So our theory from logs was that Mythic Botanist in theory had the least dps check of the other bosses-- he was more of a mechanic check. With our Shamans' Totemic Revival and everybody getting P1+2 down solid, the fight was an easy number check but a hard mechanic check. Not to mention for our first kill half our roster was behind on AK and barely hitting 30-35 OLD artifact traits. It was pretty hard to get him since we kept trialing people and were mid forming the roster. The randomness of the Legendary loot system did not help either, since barely anybody had a best-in-slot combination of Legendaries for damage. If I had to put a finger on the hardest boss it would definitely be Gul'dan due to fight length-- though we killed it with nerfs I can only imagine having to get used to another 2minutes and the fel lord. The last phase is pretty easy, if all the simple tasks are done. I really enjoyed the strict positioning requirements the fight demanded. Time gate was in the end the hardest boss in the end, between roster boss time gate, legendary bis time gate, and artifact traits-- I don't know which was worse.

How are the preparations for Tomb going? Have you been testing the raid out on PTR? Any particular fights you enjoy?

We've been testing with an awesome US raiding guild Infinity-- they raid three days and do amazingly well for the amount of time they play the game. I highly recommend this guild for anybody that wants to achieve great things for a little amount of time put into the game in comparison to other hardcore guilds. One of the main reasons we came to WoW was because this expansion seems to have picked up its innovation and standards for its raids. There are a few notable fights in Tombs. I personally love the Sisters of The Moon encounter. The full moon mechanic is insanely creative, once again me and my positioning fetish... I have guides and docs for each fight (some are pure speculations, since we haven't tested them all yet, but you can figure a lot via the dungeon journal) but new fights are entertaining to experience.

How many alts do players on your roster need to maintain? Is your roster complete? Are you filling in last spots? If so, which classes are open/closed for recruitment?

We are currently recruiting ALL players that have high skill level, regardless of class. Class isn't a deal breaker since we are going to be doing 3 splits in Tombs (time gate new guild, only can do 3 effective splits) and 5 splits for tier 21. That would mean people need their Main character and 2 Alts of close/equal performance. In regards to our raiding schedule, our ideal applicant has a LOT of free time. I'm not here to convince people to quit their jobs or anything crazy like that. I could have forced a lot of people into this guild but I only want to have people that WANT to be here, that have the will power and their own idea of the guild. I am NOT responsible or going to influence your real life, our schedule is laid out flat and simple and if you can afford to personally make those times then great. We need decent players that can play their class and fulfill their roles in fights. People that can communicate clearly and calmly during hard progression pulls. People that can perform top numbers when the fights are NEW. Parsing months after fights are released and are on farm is not impressive. Seeing how people perform on PTR for example, is interesting and tells you a lot about your roster and what numbers they'd pull on equal gear footing as well as in new fights. We honestly just need more willing and available players, we could definitely use a boost to our Roster's quality, and as I said previously I vigorously recruit. I've poached a few semi-hard guild's Raid Leaders, since a raid leader has experience dealing with the social aspect of the game and even in a semi-hardcore guild when they just have themselves to worry about in a raid instead of an entire roster to lead, their performance sees a huge boost. They also fulfill roles and are the first to usually pickup mechanics and have good communication skills for fights. Unhappy with your guild you're leading? Join us! I want you!

Any words about Patch 7.2.5?

I am looking forward to 7.2.5. I am NOT expecting to hit world first, or even US 1st. Our alts are still time gated and our mains are as well when you compare our roster/player base to top guilds. I am super excited though to be somewhat competitive, as we should be with the amount of time we will be committing to the game. The Mythic raiding in WoW has definitely picked up its game in this expansion and that is EXACTLY why we came back to the game-- in hopes of more innovative and challenging raids. I think the developers of the game believe hardcore raiding is dead, but if I can get 150 people to fill out an application to the guild and go as far as all of them answering yes to "I will day raid" then there is definitely playerbase. It just needs to be done properly and Blizzard/WoW has the devs and the tools to do so. My hopes are high to see the rest of the fights, but ToS might be one of my favorite raids-- from environment and design to boss encounters. Push the limit of your old engine Blizz.

[demonardvark 556]

I personally don't care much for the world first race, my reasons are my own and ultimately negative so I'll keep em to myself. For everyone else though its nice to see a new horse in the race. The past couple months we've seen the big world competitive guilds just melting away. Doesn't make for much of a competition for the next race. When one watches the Kentucky derby of the Belmont Stakes they don't want to watch one horse run in a circle by itself, they want competition. So, I welcome this new group and wish them well and hope they make the next round of world first competitions fun and exciting for all those who enjoy them. 

[Damien 1,514]

Thanks for the interview Stan. I can't wait to see how they will fare in Tomb of Sargeras and in the tier after that. It's also really good for the game that a high profile guild from another game transfers to WoW.

[Seksi 208]

Really interesting, thanks for the interview! Would like to see more features of this kind in IV :)

Hopefully they do well and much better than late guild Apotheosys who joined WoW after dominating World First raiding in another "WoW killer MMO", Rift from Trion Worlds, but had massive roster issues and never got to properly compete with the WoW guilds in a fresh tier, unsure of the details but think they died off in Emerald Nightmare or just before Legion came in.

Warrants a word of caution that WoW's end game is not a stroll in the park but reading this interview Invective seems to have the right idea going on. Good luck and have fun bros!