I would like to know if any Guilds have returned to Naxx now that have reached LvL 70?

I understand many might have returned for various reasons (eg. to experience content they hadn't seen before, for Tier 3 gear or the odd trinket etc).

What is your experience in Naxx with a full raid of close to lvl 70's? Is it a lot easier? Seems to me you could gear people up pretty quickly one or two days a week.

Experiences/Thoughts/Comments are greatly appreciated.

I've replaced quite a few pieces of my Naxx T3 set, as well as weapons and such, with level 70 blues from TBC 5-mans. I still use 2-3 pieces, but could easily have replaced them by now, losing a few points of damage or stamina.

I don't think it's worth going into Naxx for gear at this point. You're better off running heroics and such. Experiencing the content is a whole different matter however.

Why bother? I've been getting blues from the lvl 70 5mans that are better than many pieces of the shaman T3. Unless you really really want a Staff of Atiesh or just to see the bosses I can't think of any item in there that is worth the effort. Maybe an Ashbringer but that's just hoping for a lucky drop.

Nothing in Naxx is worth the effort loot-wise, if your missing the old raiding days go try BWL or something, atleast the Rejuvenating Gem, Nelth's Tear, & LGG are still decent items.

My guild just killed Kel'Thuzad and Sapphiron for the first time last night, first night of trying him and second night on Sapphiron. We went back to finish it and to see the content, and to try and encourage a little guild unity during the gearing and leveling phase of BC, since you can take someone of any level past 60 to Naxx. We'd literally downed Thaddius for the first time the night before the expansion was released. I think we've been working on it for about a month since, though with only 3 days a week instead of the 4 days of raiding a week we were doing pre BC.

The trash is totally trivial. You can basically just AoE everything. It's kind of amusing, really.

What going back at 70 basically does is allow you to skip the gearing up phase and a lot of the ridiculous consumables requirement. You still have to actually learn the fights. People screwing up Thaddius will still prevent you from beating the enrage without popping pots, for example. Loatheb you can skip shadow resist pots for because of the huge health pools from BC gear. Gothik is a joke. Sapphiron still requires the frost resist gear, some light DPS consumables. Don't have to pop constant resist pots or get world buffs.

I wouldn't recommend doing it unless you're really interested in just seeing the content in Naxx. There are a few random items that are nice, but as far as I've seen, pretty much anything is replacable by level 70 loot, whether it be epics or blues. I can say that I was really happy to see Kel'Thuzad die. It felt like an accomplishment still, even if it was at 70 instead of 60. Would it have been a hell of a lot more monumental at 60? Of course. But it was awesome to see the fight and beat it anyway.

Putting together a 4H run wouldn't be terribly time consuming provided your raid has a little experience with them. The trash would be an absolute joke at level 70. Gothik would also be trivial with the increased raid DPS and stamina. Probably wouldn't even need to CC anything!

Of course, there wouldn't really be any point since most level 70 5/10 man gear is on par if not better, but it could still be fun. I still really want to go back in kill Kel'Thuzad one day (1% wipe the night TBC was released. gg mc bug), but the thought of farming the other 14 doesn't really seem like fun.

Not to mention, if you are going for an Atiesh, you have to kill C'Thun. Probably not totally trivial at 70, though it'd be much easier with increased DPS and HP.

As far as Naxx goes, I wouldn't put your guild through it unless the majority want to see the end. Our guild intended to continue in Naxx with the expansion, but since it hit, the newly available content has grabbed just about everyone's attention. Even Kel'Thuzad loot is outclassed pretty easily (my BoP 1h axe is higher DPS than anything he dropped), and the dungeon gear from level 70 5-man instances I've found to be superior to tier 3 for the most part. Not to mention, Tier 3 has the extra material requirements, which may be tough to come by; nobody is using transmute timers to make arcanite bars anymore.

So, in the end, it's for the experience. If you have nearly a full raid of 40 people who really want to do it, then go for it. If most people are looking towards new content, gear upgrades, and generally working forward to things like CoT: Mount Hyjal, your efforts are better spent on Gruul's Lair and onward.

Kiss of the Spider seems like it'd still be a very good item given the Haste Rating changes, no?

Anyway, this thread isn't about the items. Obviously ilvl 83-92 epics aren't going to be as amazing when the expansion gives away ilvl 95 epics left and right via heroics and reputation.

I'm personally interested to hear how guilds that have seriously gone back to Naxx at 70 have found the zone. I'm surprised that Kel was easy to learn as a first-time experience, though. I'd have thought that most of his abilities would actually scale very well with level: Frost Blast is %-based, Shadow Fissure will kill a 70 as easily as a 60, a MC'd 70 is proportionally more dangerous than an MC'd 60, etc. The big differences would seemingly be having a tank that can easily take a full frostbolt from Kel if your interrupts get screwed up, and obviously just higher DPS all around to burn down Kel, and more hp/mitigation to handle his adds when they spawn (and of course the adds being fixed-level, not skull mobs, and thus much less dangerous).

I'm very interested in this as well. We killed 4H on the day on the day 1.0 ended, and never got to see Sapphiron and K'T. We poured heart and soul into Naxx for months, so not finishing it is always unsatisfying. To top it off, we have someone who really deserves to have an Atiesh finished off (*ahem* while we're on topic, I'm assuming C'Thun wouldn't be very hard).

What were the Horsemen like? That's the only thing that even gives me pause. Everything else, I don't see posing a problem to people who have done it before, even a few months back.

I'm wondering if you took a full 40 raid there or slightly less?

Well, I'm running down the bosses in my head, while I seriously contemplate this idea.

Anub'Rekhan--without the threat of even dumb people being killed by Impale, this should be easy.
Faerlina--with high DPS and the amount by which tanks could survive Enrage, easy.
Maexxna--everything about this fight screams "easy." Web Wrap not killing people quickly, tanks surviving Web Spray without trouble, and not even needing to survive an enraged Web Spray.
Noth--stand in a room and kill small mobs.
Heigan--largely unchanged, but I bet a lot of people can survive two splashes and not die.
Loatheb--if it even turns out to be hard, just abuse VE.
Patchwerk--need healers who actually know the fight, but the amount of leeway present will be huge.
Grobbulus--it would be hard for someone to try to wipe the raid here.
Gluth--this one you actually need to execute correctly. Easier, obviously, but not as much as the other bosses.
Thaddius--same. We'd handled 1 or 2 screwups before though, so I bet we could survive at least 5 or 6 now.
Razuvious--I guess he'll be basically the same as he was before.
Gothik--you probably need to plan out a CC strategy to avoid pissing off undead side, but everything will be so much less dangerous.


4H--ok. The average raid member can survive a Mark 6 or 7 if necessary. 2 people can soak a Meteor if the healing is there. There's a lot of room for error. My question is, will you still need 8 tanks?

First of all, how quickly can you kill Mograine/Korth'azz if you really try? A raid member can DPS one of them through 5 marks with only slight healing. So you start the fight, smash Mograine to Shield Wall around Mark 3, say. When he Shield Walls, run over and do the same to Korth'azz, escaping Mograine's 4th/5th Marks. When Korth'azz Shield Walls, running back to Mograine could get him do his second Shield Wall before people stack up to 6, but not dead. So it doesn't seem like you can kill a Horseman without even letting his Mark reset once (*shakes fist as clever designer with the Shield Walls*).

So the DPS team will probably charge around the room, taking each Horseman down to their next Shield Wall, in turn. You can probably end the fight before Mark 30.

As far as tanking, now that I think about it, you obviously don't need 8. Current HP levels mean that the previously sketchy Mark sizes (6,7,8) hit about as hard as Mark 4-5 used to. Thing don't even get dangerous until Mark 10 or so on non-Mograine. So 6 tanks is fine. Heck, possibly 5, if you really work at it.

I actually wonder if the 4 tank method where they run to each other and swap might even work.

I'll have to disagree with the majority of you, although gear is being replaced left and right, there are still some very desirable items from naxx. Just the other day in a raid i was inspecting a few healers just to see what they had replaced, and i couldn't find one who didn't still have a few naxx items.

Is it worth the time and effort? It's debatable, although personally i'd go back just for the two healing trinkets (which i think TBC has been lacking on) and enchants alone.

Ah yes--the "moving Horsemen" scheme. It would amuse me greatly if, after all the talk back in November, that could be made to work.

The Horsemen will still resist at 17%, right?

The moving horseman method sounds great until one of them dies out of place.

I think it'd be nice to go to Naxx, not only for the experience (having never been) but also to say "Hey I got my full T3", even if it's just for looks. (Some pieces might be good at 70, I've no idea.)

On the 4Hman note, being a level 70, what's the chance of taunt resists now? None? Or would you still need the backup tanks? Having only 4 sounds like it'd be loads of fun switching between horsemen.

That doesn't mean they couldn't have replaced gear, it might mean they chose not to do so because of set bonuses or losing +healing in exchange for higher stam, armor, etc. One of my priests refuses to give up his 2 piece ZG set bonus because he can't find a belt/bracer that gives more collective +healing than with those items, even though he's missing out on lots of stamina/int/spir upgrades.

According to what Blizzard released, any boss marked as Raid level will always have resist rates equal to 3 lvls higher than the player interacting with the boss.

Note: Not from personal experience.

There's a guild on my server that had been working in Nax pre-BC, farthest they got I think was Anub/Raz.

As of now they've cleared spider wing, noth, and patch/grob, they havn't gone back in as far as I know. Some of the fights are extremely forgiving, killed Patch with >1hr on him. I honestly don't even think most of them understood the Hateful Strike mechanics. Keeping that in mind, I'd love to hear how a guild that had cleared/gotten to 4H would just blow through the place.

Being a guild that had just downed Gluth and had started working on Thaddius before the christmas decline hit, and we ended up having ~20 people online max. I'd love to go back and clear everything out. Not to mention one of our Atiesh holders is >6 shards from his staff and I still need 35 : /

Yes, but you have to weigh that against the fact that the strategy involves the word "counterrotating."

[quote=Nnep;292975]I was going to answer your question about taunt, but it occurred to me i probably shouldn't because 1) i'm not a warrior and have no idea about how the warrior's level effects taunt and 2) I'm almost sure, but not 100% that you'll still see as much resists due to the whole boss scaling debate that lasted like 20 pages on the R&D.

That aside, not to derail, i'd say the only thing that would change about the 4H fight is you could add at least 1 or 2 more marks to transitions, which means that 2 warriors could just rotate back and forth on their designated sides instead of swapping every transition. the enormous boost in HP will really put guilds on the edge of the fight pre-BC on their way to success./QUOTE]
Yep, fairly sure that taunt would still have the same resist rate. You won't be able to just run in and haphazardly zerg them, but the new numbers should make the fight very, very easy if you actually have a basic rotation set up, because everything that could possibly kill a player (except I guess eating a meteor while running in/out with zero players to share the damage) in the old fight should no longer be able to. Meteor than a 4th mark while running out? No problem. Void zone ("wtf it was invisible, really!") tick plus a mark tick? No problem. 2-3 taunt resists leading to a 6-stack or 7-stack on your Mograine tank? Who cares, he has 5000 more health than he used to. And so forth.

Not to mention the increased DPS all around, of course, combined with everyone's larger health pools. I suspect you could have Mograine down in just a couple of minutes if you focused on him, and then everything from that point on would be a joke.

Also, here's a slightly more tangential question: How would the new paladin taunt interact with this encounter?

As cool as it would be to finish the zone, since we more or less stopped being able to field people at 4H, a part of me never wants to return to this zone. Long nights of wiping to stupidity of a few people, months of reclearing the same bosses over and over, ad nauseum. I guess I am pretty content to let a zone die once it's time has come.

Other than giving you more possible tanks to use, I don't see how it would be different than the warrior one, really.

What do you guys think would be a bare minimum level 70 raid makeup to clear most of Naxx? Still take 40 or could you get away with lets say 32? It would be interesting to see what you could get away with numbers wise in there. Some bosses such as Thaddius may be interesting at those numbers.