TBC & Naxx Raids - Page 2

berg · 02/26/07, 1:59 PM

We went back to finish 2 atiesh quests this weekend. As a guild we pretty much stalled entirely at 4H around when beta invites started getting handed out so the whole place was on farm and we just stopped bothering with 4h back in the day.

Coming back was pretty absurd.

The trash just gets absolutely obliterated. Everything is grey so crit rate is out of contol. Also all of the caster mobs dps is near zero because you resist everything. For example clearing to 4H we pulled like 4 gargoyles and 2 spiders at the same time and lived.

The 2 MC based bosses are a joke because you are MC'ing grey targets.
In deathknight wing
Gothik was silly. No CC no planning just kill everything.
4H still needed some tank rotations but the first 2 were dead so quickly that is was of little consequence. We did wipe on a real attempt but it started with a link dead tank so no real surprise. Tanks could very comfortably stay in for 5-6 stacks.

In Plague wing
Noths trash is an after though but decursing is still critical.
Loatheb only got off 2 dooms and there was some genuinely obscene dps going on in this fight.

Spider
Anub was around 20% at first locust swarm.
Faerlina we charged the trash in her room (shadow volley is like 90% resist) In the actual encounter we only MC'ed one follower and then just burned her down.
Maexxna - I was on the wall during enrage so I did not really see hwo bad it was but it was still simplistic.

Abom:
Pwerk actually worried me somewhat as we had like 10 non-guildies. In the end it was still a joke though we lost like 3-4 melee during the fight and interestingly the DM was won by a hunter with the bow from Malchezzar.
Gluth was completely hideous and all of our kiters died but we still won though brute force. It was easily our most half assed attempt of the evening. The chow could not really daze anybody which helped kiters but their debuffs still stacked like normal so they were still dangerous.
Thaddius was similarly bad. We lost like 10 people on the first 2 transitions. I think the most my buff ever was was 14. Still he died in around 3.5 minutes.

All in all the 4 wings were cleared in the neighborhood of 3.5-4 hours. The trash was actually pretty fun. AE killing trash with Bop and seed of corruption etc is pretty funny considering this was stuff that we wiped to at one point or other.

We had to learn Sapphiron and Kael so I cannot comment on them compared to more experienced guilds. Our frost resist gear was lacking (mostly vendored while making room during expansion.) The poor frost resist was pretty meaningful in slowing us down while learning Sapphiron. So if any other guilds go back done vendor the old stuff or try to replace it ahead of time.

♦ Praetorian · 02/26/07, 1:59 PM

Originally Posted by Amera

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

I genuinely have no familiarity with the ability beyond the tooltip. For starters, it works at range, which seems like it could introduce some different strat possibilities. Second, is it subject to the same resist rates as regular taunt, since you use it on a friendly player instead of a hostile target?

Kalman · 02/26/07, 2:00 PM

Originally Posted by Amera

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

Well, it also makes it a little easier if you get someone pulling aggro or a resist leading to a horseman making for the center; ranged taunt him back.

Other than that, not much different, barring the slightly longer cooldown leading to the occasional higher stack of marks.

edit: And while it is subject to resist, I believe it works off spell resist; gear with spellhit, however, tends to be a little more useful for a paladin than for a warrior or druid.

berg · 02/26/07, 2:08 PM

Originally Posted by Ahindwe

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.

We will be heading there tomorrow to finish our second staff. I suspect he will be in exectute ranger after 1 invulnerability. If everyone is still up he could very easily be killed during the 1st vulnerability. Bloodlust was almost tailor made for that encounter.

Malan · 02/26/07, 2:13 PM

Originally Posted by berg

All in all the 4 wings were cleared in the neighborhood of 3.5-4 hours.

That's encouraging. In my new guild only a very small number of us were past the first 4 bosses in Naxx and many have expressed interest in going to see it eventually.

• Zoid · 02/26/07, 2:22 PM

Originally Posted by Praetorian

I genuinely have no familiarity with the ability beyond the tooltip. For starters, it works at range, which seems like it could introduce some different strat possibilities. Second, is it subject to the same resist rates as regular taunt, since you use it on a friendly player instead of a hostile target?

Since I'm pretty much the guild paladin tank, I can answer this for you.

The way it works is casts the taunt debuff (Righteous Defense) on up to three mobs that have the person you are taunting as their primary target. I'm not sure if its randomly selected if there are more than three mobs, or its based on threat order or what not yet. The resist rates are about the same for taunt. At least, the resists I see feel about the same when I was tanking stuff with my warrior in pre-TBC. Note that the resist is individual for each mob as well (you can have one resist, but two not).

It has a 40 yard range for the player you are taunting the mobs off, but no range that I've determined for the mobs themselves. I get out of range messages on the player I'm assisting, not the mob I'm taunting. It's a weird mechanic in that you have to cast it on the player and not the mob. I use a macro that casts it on the targettarget so i can just hit it when I have a mob targetted. It causes some weird issues if the mob is stunned since mobs have no targets when they are stunned. The debuff "make him attack you" duration is shorter than taunt's.

What I've found as a paladin tank is I have to taunt very rarely in instances. I have a huge amount of AoE threat with Consecrate and Holy Shield block damage. The only time I've really had to taunt is on over zealous shamans and warlocks who beat me on threat or the caster mob that stopped outside of my Consecrate range and starts bolting the healer.

Warlocks/Mages love me on AoE pulls of many mobs since after a few ticks of Consecrate, they'll never get the mobs off me before they die with AoE damage. A good example is the gnome packs at the Steamvaults second boss.

My only problem as a paladin tank is I just take 4% more damage than a warrior in equivalent defensive gear since my Improved Righteous Fury talent is 6% flat damage reduction instead of warrior's 10% reduction from Defensive Stance.

deuce · 02/26/07, 2:31 PM

My guild was up to Gothik before the expansion and had killed C'thun in AQ40. We went back to to Naxx and AQ40 to see what it would be like and also to make the Atiesh to use as a Karazhan taxi cab. We went a week or so ago and here's what I observed. We had 40 in the raid at all times, with 30 of our members, 10 pugs. Our guild has killed Nightbane and Maulgar, and we run heroics alot, so we have decent level 70 gear. Took me about 2-3 hours to get to honored with Argent Dawn to get attuned (blood elf paladin), the mats for honored attunement are cheap as chips now. Just did the quests in EPL and WPL and went with my other pallies and a mage and AOE'd down Strath and did the 45min baron for easy rep.

AQ40. We one shotted every boss which was good even with 10 pugs who hadn't been past Huhu

Trash - All the trash was extremely easy. Just watch out for trash that impales you into the air, as fall damage is still % based. The C'thun trash was also VERY easy as you just resist all the mind flays and mind controls.

Skeram - Very easy with the large HP pools, nobody died even when he earthshocked a bit.

Sartura - Very easy also. Since we never had the luxury of Paladins before, using HoJ was fun!

Bug Trio - We've done the bug trio all three possible ways, and we decided to do it with Kri last. This again was very easy.

Fankriss - This might of been the easiest fight in here. I think one worm spawned the whole time, was very fast.

Huhuran - Not many people had NR, but it didn't make a problem at all. Just do the usual chain heal, HoT's, PoH, no need for NR or NR pots, was very easy. Use of BoP was nice too for agro switch, but the MT's resist alot of the poison.

Twin Emps - This was probably the hardest fight of the night. Since we had around 10 pugs who had not done Twin Emps before (our guild was the only horde one on the server past Huhuran), had to explain it all etc. Our two physical tanks didn't take much damage, the unbalancing strike still dents their HP alot, but was easy to heal them. We had one warlock tank and one frost mage tank (since our usual twin emp warlock has quit the game) on the magical emp. They both took reasonable damage, but nothing too heavy. The warlock had 300 SR and the mage has 12k HP (Maulgar Mage Tank). The main concern from the fight was agro from neutral bugs and people running out of the teleport in time. But we killed him on the first attempt even with around 5 deaths at the first teleport, had about 5minutes to spare, was good

Ouro - Very easy. We resisted about 95% of the quakes, so we all just stood in the middle

C'thun - Now this was the fight I thought I'd be here all night with, with the pugs green beaming everyone and dying to red beam. To my surprise, everyone did a really good job, I just explained the fight and got everyone to download C'thun Warner and it went good. We had 4 people die off the pull, but had SS and CR. The tentacles die in a second in stage 1, and all the new people were good at avoiding the red beam and not chaining green beam. Stage 2 was an absolute joke, the giant claws hit our tanks for barely any damage and were killed in a couple of seconds. The giant eyes also were killed very quickly as well as the small tentacles. The stomach was killed very fast and on first weaken we got him to 30% with around 35 people alive and killed him easily on the second one. There was times in stage 2 where we were all waiting around for ages for the giant eye / claw to spawn. Stage 1 was definately alot harder than stage 2.

Overall we cleared all of it (minus Visc) in around 4 hours which was very quick compared to our normal clears, it was alot of fun.

Now to Naxx. All the Naxx trash is extremely easy, heaps of resists from the magic ones, barely any damage from the physical, can just aoe alot of it. We one shotted every boss except 4h even with 10 people who had never been past Anub, so it was fun for all the new people to see so many encounters.

Spider Wing -
Anub, Grand Widow and Maexxna all went down with no problems at all. The fights lasted only a couple of minutes, no problems at all. All bosses and adds hit our tanks for alot less, just do the normal strats.

Plague Wing - Noth was interesting considering we were very low on decursers. The curse went off on the first one and not everyone was decursed and I thought oh no, first wipe of the night. But with our large HP pools everyone survived and just healed up. The adds died very fast and we got him to about 40% on first teleport, very easy.
Heigan was fun to watch all the pugs die to the dance =D Got him to around 35% on first dance and killed him after it. The teleport tunnel is fun, all the eye stalks and bugs ignore you and you can just run back.
Loatheb was also alot easier. We had 3 shadow priests and a feral druid with the main tanks group and he pretty much never went low. Killed him with no deaths and with no shadow pots or consumables or world buffs before the third doom I think. We just healthstoned and bandaged, the new ranks of first aid and healthstones helped.

Abom Wing - Patch still hits hard and HS still hits hard. Even with our tanks in T4 and alot better gear, still get hit for a decent amount. He died very fast with the massive DPS, but healers still have to actually heal.
Grob - Just an easier loot vendor.
Gluth - Our guilds most hated fight in Naxx was extremely easy. He hits the main tanks for alot less and the adds that need to be kited hit alot less too and you can hold more debuffs. The adds also get AOE'd easier nd the tank is alot easier to heal at decimates. Also salvation was very nice on this fight

I was kiting (BE Pally) the adds which was alot of fun

Thaddius - First we got all the pugs and anyone else to install Bigwigs Arrows plugin. Stage 1 was very easy, the two adds hit for barely anything even on power surges. Stage 2 was interesting, with a few of the pugs missing the jump and then charging a few people and 2 people disconnecting, we had around 30 people alive at second polarity. Managed to DPS him down with a few seconds left until enrage on our first attempt. Just make sure everyone has the arrows mod and dosen't DC and its cake

Deathknight Wing
Instructor - Same as usual, adds hit for our tanks for barely anything, but he still hits the adds hard if no shield wall is up.

Gothik - Easiest fight of the night. We hadn't killed him prior to BC and had 2 nights of attempts on him. Killed him first time, the adds are absolute cake, no need to CC on living side at all, just AOE and nuke everything, dead side can handle it easily. Very easy.

4horsemen - Well this was another interesting fight. Only one of our officers had attempted them before with his second guild, everyone else was clueless. I'd see a movie or two, so I had a general idea on what to do. My officer had the timings down for where everyone should be on each mark and just macro'd it for each group and went from there. Deadly boss mods is very good for this fight as it shows everything and a nice frame with all their HP. Mograine went down very fast (can't remember how many marks) and then just worked on the others. We had 7 warriors and 1 feral druid for tanks and they all did a good job.

We wiped once due to a miscommunication amongst the tanks and the Lady came to middle and void zoned us all. Second attempt, went well, had about 10 dead, mainly due to void zones and not watching their marks, but it was very fun to actually kill them and in the end it was easy. Killed them on our second attempt which nobody in the raid had done before and took days/weeks to complete at level 60.

As for taunt resists, it didn't seem a problem at all. I can't confirm if taunts did resist or did not, but with the larger HP pools, taking an extra mark didn't seem to kill any of the tanks. I'll ask the tanks if they can remember if any taunts resisted or not, but it didn't seem to be a problem and we didn't wipe because of it.

Sapphiron -

Well I thought 4horsemen was going to be the hardest fight to learn and went into Sapphiron all confident that the worst was over, how I was wrong =( We didn't have much FrR, none of the crafted gear, just the Heigan/Gothik/Widow drops on a few people. The frost aura was ticking for the max amount on just about every one (had frost resist aura, no crafted gear). He didn't hit the tank that hard, but the Frost Aura was killing us. It was extremely hard to heal up everyone and the blizzard also didn't help. The life drain was also a pain due to the lack of decursers. Pretty much if you had the frost resist, this fight would be cake, but since we had barely any, it was impossible. Even with large HP pools, without the Frost Resist, you are still taking huge frost damage. So we are going to collect the green pieces from the AH, get everyone over 200 (those who had 200 or more resisted a good amount) and anything else cheap that we can and go back in a few weeks to collect our Atiesh from Kel. I was thinking about crafting the gear with all the frozen runes I have, but it's way too expensive for all the old materials and there's no point putting money into it.

As for drops, nothing much was really used as an upgrade. The t3 chest was an upgrade for one of our rogues and we mainly gave out all the other loot to pugs or people who wanted them for looks. Despite a few drops, I wouldn't run it for the drops, rather for the Atiesh or for the fun and experience, but our group of 30 or so on the run either already had the item or had better, so we just gave it to the pugs.

Well thats it from my BC AQ40 and Naxx experience, I suggest that you should go back if you had a free raid night or an off raid night, was alot of fun

If you are like my guild and don't really have 40 active raiders anymore, just get some friends from other guilds and go, 40 makes it alot easier and faster.

Thanks!

Kincaid · 02/26/07, 2:54 PM

We killed Sapph with 36, I think on the last Kel attempt we finally had 40 in the raid. We've been using friends of the guild to fill in spots for a while, not wanting to recruit people who we don't have space for in 25 mans.

Snipping everything about the other bosses, Arawethion hit the nail on the head - if you can teach your people the mechanics of the fight, you can do it without spending money on consumables.

Originally Posted by Arawethion

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

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.

We did it with an 8 tank rotation - 6 warriors, 2 feral druids. For the warriors, we all rotated and tanked all four horsemen in rotation with assigned healers moving with us while the DPS rotated between Mograine and Thane, then Zeliek and Lady B. Basically you tank until get relieved by the tank behind you in the rotation, then run to the next horsemen. The second tank to tank each horseman ran from the safe spot to the horsemen they were assigned to after the first mark went off. Generally, we were moving at mark 4, sometimes eating a fifth one if we were a little slow.

I think the second kill we were a little shorthanded, but I honestly don't remember. I'm sure that with a full load of consumables (we were using pretty basic pots on the DPS, pre BC level stuff mostly, no flasks or anything). If you wanted to full boat on consumables and just burn things down, you could probably burn them down with only 3 DPS rotations (one for the first shield wall, one for the second, then back to Mograine for the third). I think we took 4, possibly 5 at most to drop Mograine. And I think we only had a single taunt resist on 4 horsemen across both kills. We had *maybe* 4 of the 8 tanks with the dreadnaught bonus.

Sapphiron you do need the frost resist gear for. The aura doesn't seem to take into account level based resists. Frankly, out of everything in Naxx, I would say that Sapphiron is the hardest fight at 70. You still have to have the crafted frost resist. You get a nice error margin from all the extra stamina people will have, but it's not something you can come in wearing whatever you want and just expect him to roll over and die. We had 200 frost resist on our worst geared members, we asked people to push for at least 250. After everyone got the AH greens and their crafted stuff made, it was just a matter of getting the decursing and learning to move early to the iceblocks instead of late.

I honestly can't imagine what stage 1 of Kel'Thuzad would have been like at 60. It was fairly trival at 70. Our biggest problem was learning to counter the % based effects, like Gurg suggested earlier. After we came up with some solid counters to that, we made it to stage 3 effectively, and while the adds are annoying, the extras that can't be shackled can easily be offtanked by one warrior.

Banelion · 02/26/07, 2:54 PM

Instructor - Same as usual, adds hit for our tanks for barely anything, but he still hits the adds hard if no shield wall is up.

Well the level of the boss and adds hasn't changed, so that's kinda normal. I suppose he just died faster from the DPS?

Kincaid · 02/26/07, 2:57 PM

Yeah, Instructor just dies faster at 70. Pretty much everything leading up to Sapphiron works that way. It's actually relaxing to go in and learn the fights when you're not dumping hundreds of gold a night on consumables and repairs per night.

Banelion · 02/26/07, 3:00 PM

So. To lead on from that, let's take a guild that's never been in Naxx, rushes through it all then hits Saph, without the FrR, is the fight impossible? If so, how long would it take to get the FrR? Does only the tank need it?

It'd be kinda annoying if my guild decided to go do Naxx, then we couldn't see Kel because Saph was blocking us. (Yay for resist fights.)

Chuck · 02/26/07, 3:04 PM

Originally Posted by Banelion

So. To lead on from that, let's take a guild that's never been in Naxx, rushes through it all then hits Saph, without the FrR, is the fight impossible? If so, how long would it take to get the FrR? Does only the tank need it?

It'd be kinda annoying if my guild decided to go do Naxx, then we couldn't see Kel because Saph was blocking us. (Yay for resist fights.)

You'll get loads of FrR gear on the way .. guess it will take a few weeks but then you should have at least most ppl decked

Kincaid · 02/26/07, 3:06 PM

I'd say so. The first night we went in, people had been slacking on frost resist, and hadn't really made an effort to obtain any. Average frost resist on the raid pre buffs was maybe 100ish. We wiped, over and over, because the healers would go OOM at maybe 50%. We got the frost resist, Sapph died. We had the mechanics down for the fight, but just didn't have the gear, or he would have died the first night of attempts.

You need, I would say, at least 200 frost resist on every raid member, or more. More would definitely be better, like I said before, 200ish was our worst FrR on anyone. A pretty big chunk of ours was from craftables using our frozen rune supply - most raid members were wearing the quest reward pants and 2-3 more pieces of crafted stuff, along with maybe 10-15 FrR drops scattered among the raid group. Once the server found out we were actually pushing Sapphiron, the mats for all that gear started showing up on the AH, for ridiculous prices, along with a lot of frost resist BoE greens. Also for way, way too much. :P At least we got out of the craziness of consumable usage.

Oh, and someone reminded me, we used probably 100 greater frost protection potions on Kel and Sapph over the course of the night's attempts that were guild provided (total, not per raid member o.O). Not really necessary though.

Banelion · 02/26/07, 3:10 PM

What about Frost Pots? To Absorb the damage? Or would you still need the resist after they ran out?

deuce · 02/26/07, 3:13 PM

Originally Posted by Banelion

So. To lead on from that, let's take a guild that's never been in Naxx, rushes through it all then hits Saph, without the FrR, is the fight impossible? If so, how long would it take to get the FrR? Does only the tank need it?

It'd be kinda annoying if my guild decided to go do Naxx, then we couldn't see Kel because Saph was blocking us. (Yay for resist fights.)

Yeah thats correct. Although our guild was 11/15 before the expansion, we knew we wouldn't make it to Sapphiron before the expansion so we didn't bother crafting the frost resist gear. Then when we got to him the other day, it was a shame to see that the fight hasn't changed at all and no matter how large your HP pool is with new gear at 70, you still need the frost resist.

Every other fight in there was a load of fun and easy, it's just a shame that Kel is behind Sapph =(

Like I said in my post above, we'll be looking out for the level 60-70 green gear frost resist gear which has stam and FrR. It will cost alot less than buying the materials for the crafter frozen rune gear, with some of the older materials skyrocketing in price because they aren't farmed as much as they used to be.

Kincaid · 02/26/07, 3:13 PM

You might be able to cheese it by chain chugging greater frost resist potions, I dunno. We discouraged any suggestions of doing that in guild because we wanted people to pick up the resist gear anyway in case it ended up useful in BC down the line.

Evy · 02/26/07, 3:14 PM

Originally Posted by Banelion

So. To lead on from that, let's take a guild that's never been in Naxx, rushes through it all then hits Saph, without the FrR, is the fight impossible? If so, how long would it take to get the FrR? Does only the tank need it?

It'd be kinda annoying if my guild decided to go do Naxx, then we couldn't see Kel because Saph was blocking us. (Yay for resist fights.)

Your tank won't really need frost resist at all. He should be fine just being defense capped and keeping his HP and armor as high as possible. Sapphiron hit our tank for like 2.7-3.5k IIRC at level 60, so that should be pretty simple to heal through with huge HP pools. Most people have about as much HP at 70 as they did flasked and world buffed at 60, and since Sapphiron is essentially a survival fight it should be very easy just because of the stam change. You'll probably want to have people in your raid wear some minimal FrR (cheapo level 65-70 greens and maybe 1-2 crafted pieces), but it won't require ~230 or anything even close like it did at 60.

Kincaid · 02/26/07, 3:15 PM

Originally Posted by Evy

Your tank won't really need frost resist at all. He should be fine just being defense capped and keeping his HP and armor as high as possible. Sapphiron hit our tank for like 2.7-3.5k IIRC at level 60, so that should be pretty simple to heal through with huge HP pools. Most people have about as much HP at 70 as they did flasked and world buffed at 60, and since Sapphiron is essentially a survival fight it should be very easy just because of the stam change. You might want to have people in your raid wear some minimal FrR (cheapo level 65-70 greens and maybe that quest epic ring), but it won't require ~200 or anything even close like it did at 60.

The periodic damage from the aura isn't affected by the level change. More HPs doesn't cut it, it just lets you skip the flasks and world buffs. We also put our tank in frost resist gear too.

Wendell · 02/26/07, 3:41 PM

We went back a couple weeks ago to get some equipment for the new shamen and some more Atiesh shards, as well as to have something fun for the guild to do together again (25 mans and Karazhan still leave a few on the sidelines). We had previously beaten Kel'Thuzad prior to the expansion, so we did have familiarity on our side.

In general the improved DPS and HP totals made the bosses much easier and resist levels made the trash trivial. Lower numbers (we had 29 for most of the time there) made some of the bosses a bit tougher than they would have been otherwise. Some of the interesting things we noticed:

Razuvious - When the priest mind soothed the first add and controlled him, he came without aggroing Razuvious! He had to run over and smack him to start the encounter.

Gluth - We had to learn this with totems slowing the zombies, had no Piercing Howl warriors in the raid. As a kiter, I gained a new respect for the advantages and limitations of totems.

Heigan - You still need to know how to dance, the slime still hurts pretty bad, but HP levels gave a bit of leeway to mistakes. The gauntlet, however, is cake at 70 - aggro range is tiny and if you do happen to get mind flayed, you resist most of the damage. The only time it killed people was when they were ported too close to a dance to run out in time.

Four Horsemen - We did it with 29 people - three warriors, 2 druids and a paladin (me, Holy/Prot spec) tanking. It was a great deal of fun - the higher HPs allowed for higher marks, but it still took a great deal of good execution to win.

Sapphiron - Don't throw away that resist gear yet if you want to go back! Sure the HP totals made excessive consumables and World Buffs not necessary, but you still take a whole lot of damage. It is still very much an endurance fight.

In general, the whole place is easier, but several of the bosses cannot be "muscled past". Experience was a great ally, and while a guild that had decent progress in there prior to the expansion can probably be successful - expect to face some learning curve, particularly if you go in with less than 40.

Nnep · 02/26/07, 3:41 PM

With new abilities, say prayer of mending for example, and having 10 levels on the aura (again, the whoel scaling thing brings up questions about resist rates and such) i'd say you would need very little to no resist gear on sapphiron. Starting fresh and expecting to rush through naxx and walk in and kill him, i'd say you'd probably run into a few problems, but if you really have desire to learn him, i see no reason why you couldn't down him.

And to answer Praetorian's question, the pally taunt was introduced before TBC, so for a few weeks we were running Naxx with the ability. It's quite nice for situations where the DPS pulls aggro and one of the horsemen starts running to the middle, although i'm fairly sure it resists just as often though =/

Elendril · 02/26/07, 3:45 PM

A shadow priest per group can easily outheal the damage from the frost aura on sapphiron, and I imagine prayer of mending alone could almost do the same.

I'm almost tempted to do Naxx just for sapphiron loot, oddly enough. The shoulder enchants are still better than the aldor/scryer exalted ones, and the trinkets are on par with the heroic badge turn in trinkets.

Kincaid · 02/26/07, 3:51 PM

Originally Posted by Nnep

With new abilities, say prayer of mending for example, and having 10 levels on the aura (again, the whoel scaling thing brings up questions about resist rates and such) i'd say you would need very little to no resist gear on sapphiron. Starting fresh and expecting to rush through naxx and walk in and kill him, i'd say you'd probably run into a few problems, but if you really have desire to learn him, i see no reason why you couldn't down him.

And to answer Praetorian's question, the pally taunt was introduced before TBC, so for a few weeks we were running Naxx with the ability. It's quite nice for situations where the DPS pulls aggro and one of the horsemen starts running to the middle, although i'm fairly sure it resists just as often though =/

The aura is not affected by level based resists. I tried it with zero frost resist gear on for one attempt, just MotW, and I got fewer than 10 partial resists during the duration of the attempt. Other periodic damage that isn't affected by level - Heigan's splash damage, Loatheb's Impending Doom, possibly the random effects from the Horsemen, didn't test though throughly, and pretty much anything Kel'Thuzad does.

As far as we could tell, the bosses themselves are still level 63 mobs. Offensive spells are resisted as if cast by a level 63. Casters still got partial resists, melee still get glancing blows, as per the boss flag setup. The things I listed above were the exceptions to that rule that we found.

You could probably stick a shadow priest in each group and get it around it that way, as suggested by Elendril.

Nezralix · 02/26/07, 3:55 PM

Originally Posted by Elendril

A shadow priest per group can easily outheal the damage from the frost aura on sapphiron, and I imagine prayer of mending alone could almost do the same.

I'm almost tempted to do Naxx just for sapphiron loot, oddly enough. The shoulder enchants are still better than the aldor/scryer exalted ones, and the trinkets are on par with the heroic badge turn in trinkets.

That seems like an awful lot of work for a shoulder enchant and a trinket.

♦ Praetorian · 02/26/07, 3:58 PM

Originally Posted by Nezralix

That seems like an awful lot of work for a shoulder enchant and a trinket.

Two shoulder enchants!

And hey, an upgrade is an upgrade, and they're few and far between these days. :P

Wendell · 02/26/07, 3:59 PM

Originally Posted by Nnep

With new abilities, say prayer of mending for example, and having 10 levels on the aura (again, the whoel scaling thing brings up questions about resist rates and such) i'd say you would need very little to no resist gear on sapphiron. Starting fresh and expecting to rush through naxx and walk in and kill him, i'd say you'd probably run into a few problems, but if you really have desire to learn him, i see no reason why you couldn't down him.

But, you don't have ten levels on the aura. Since Sapphiron is a Skull boss, your ability to resist remains static as if he was +3 your level. The damage does not change, but not resisting it means you take 600 HP per tick instead of 150 which you almost always took with high FrR (people in our raid not wearing resist gear noticed this). You have much higher HP totals, sure, but craftable FrR gear was already high Stamina anyways. Four times as much damage is alot to heal through.

If the cost of getting the gear is a concern, I'd go for some of the high FrR value items to limit your cost. A good balance of Frost Resist gear and TBC high Stamina items can make a big difference. And who knows, some of those resist items might have use in the upcoming raid content.