Surush

I have not posted in these forums before, although I have read them avidly since I came across them in mid 2006. I have not seen any recent substantitive discussion of resistance gear, and I’d be very grateful for some pointers here.

A little background: I tank for a small and, in terms of most posters here, casual guild. We have only just started in Karazhan, and have cleared a single heroic instance. We only run one Kara group at present, but do intend to build up to two, and to 25 man raids, despite what we read about the state of that part of the raid game in other posts here! We like to be self sufficient, and prepared, and so have had our various designated crafters amassing reputation with factions to craft resistance gear, have been storing relatively good “of resistance” greens, etcetera.

This far, however, I have not seen much need for resistance gear on myself, or other group members. I’d be very grateful for pointers on which encounters benefit from use of resistance gear, to what level of resistance, and on whom, so that we can focus our efforts a little on the resistance sets/items that will be of most use to us.

I would, incidentally, be very interested in a more general description of the Theorycraft of resistance, if anyone can point me to an up to date one (WoWWiki appears woefully out of date here, for example).

Thank you in advance for any advice you can offer.

 

heel

As far as practical applications go, you'll need four tanks with nature and/or frost resistance for Hydross. The first boss of Tempest Keep apparently requires fire resistance. The first bosses of heroic Mana Tombs and Arcatraz are made significantly easier with a tank with a good amount of shadow resistance. Can't think of anything else. There are a few resist sets (most notably: epic arcane resistance out of Karazhan) which don't seem to have a purpose at the moment. In any case, resistance doesn't seem to be something that the average player (or even raider) needs to be worrying about right now.

 

• Navaash

Haha. Shadow resist itemization has always been abysmal and I don't see this changing until Black Temple goes in (I wouldn't be surprised if Ashtongue faction gives crafted SR). You're more likely to get the majority of your shadow resist from priest/paladin buffs.

 

Copernicus

The first boss in Tempest Keep can be bypassed currently.

Fire resist for the primary AE on Illhoof makes the fight really easy. I believe Nature Resist could be useful for tanking the shaman on Maulgar- but it's not a max resist thing. Fire resist is useless for tanking the mage- it's impossible to resist his fireballs.

 

Entropie

You can use fire resistance on heroic ramparts, although with some cheesy air dps you can alleviate most of the strain of the tank.

Furthermore arcane resistance is nice for botanica's arcane protectors.

 

Drelegon

Arcane Resist also makes the Curator fight a lot easier if you have the bolt sponge and add tank with a decent amount of Arcane Resist on.

We haven't tried Mags himself yet but for the trash in there we've asked ranged folks to get Shadow Resist and melee folks to get Fire Resist put together (we're just going to have them stand in the rain of fire).

So far I see a use for everything except Frost Resist (I don't know a darn thing about any of the bosses in SSC and it seems the most likely place for a Frost resist fight right now).

The difference now with resist sets versus in the past, you now try to pick 4 slots or so you don't mind swapping out and in those slots you get ~200 unbuffed resistance. I like this apporach a lot better as the bag space stuff is better and you get the same net result. Before it was 8+ pieces with a bit of resist and stats, now its 4 pieces with stam/resist and 4 pieces of regular gear with combat stats totaling the same combat value with half the bag space!

 

tekmatt

If your raiders can press their movement keys, you don't need resist gear at all on Mag's trash.

Hydross requires a tank with a full frost resist set and 2 offtanks with a frost and nature resist mix. You could also stack stamina items for the offtanks, but I'm sure most healer prefer less spike.

Why would you only get ~200 unbuffed resistance?

 

Gatling

We normally have our hunters take pets trained with full Arcane Resist to tank the Arcane Balls of Energy and have everyone qualf a regular Arcane Protection Potion (the non-primal type). We normally one shot Curator now, using this strat.

 

dukes

You need a full frost AND a full nature tank on hydross, and then either one or two with mixed frost/nature. Also, using resist gear for the trash at mag is pretty useless - have one person with a decently low cooldown interrupt attached to each (rogue, shaman) and then the warrior and them should easily be able to catch every shadowbolt. People should be able to move out of the fire without taking more than one tick. You won't need the resist gear in the fight itself.

 

spronk

For anyone (Nihilum only?) who has fought A'lar in TK, does the entire raid need high HP and high FR - ie the badge set - or are greens sufficient for a good portion of the raid? It would literally take our guild six months to get everyone to farm the heroic badges to build a FR set, so just wondering what is real and needed for that fight.

So I take it then outside of that boss no other boss so far in SSC requires the entire raid to get resist gear? Thats nice to hear.

 

Axira

Excuse me if I'm wrong, but doesn't Magtheridon himself require a raid in "full" FR gear as well?

Edit: Nvm.. didn't see what the Tauren said

 

Quasar

Why would it take six months? Just farm the easiest heroics every day for a couple hours.

Mechanar - 2 ridiculously easy badges, 1 pretty easy, 2 a bit trickier but not too bad. ~90 minutes
Slave Pens - 2 easy badges, 1 medium. ~60-90 minutes
Underbog - 4 easy badges. ~90 minutes
Steamvault - 2 medium badges, 1 easy badge. ~90 minutes

It's what, 100-120 badges for the full FR badge set? Your guild could be decked out in under 2 weeks at a casual pace.

JUICE! Aww I'm sorry. Did... did anyone want some juice?

 

Uziel

Just quoting this for emphasis. You say this as if it were possible for 95% of adult WoW players. Between raiding 3 days a week and RL, I have maybe an hour or two for non raiding things a week and that's usually filled with, you guessed it, farming for consumables.

 

• Kestrel

We use an affliction warlock (often myself, but we have several) in arcane resist (Arcanoweave, Soulcloth when you can get it) as the bolt sponge for Curator. They can do a decent job healing themselves up between bolts with DoTs + Drain Life so don't put a huge strain on healers and don't have a problem getting more HPs than everyone but the MT.

 

◊ Praetorian

If resist gear is your block, then you stop raiding and farm it. Besides, a true "casual" player wouldn't even be 70 now, much less be raiding. If people could find the time to level to 70 in around a month, to run 5-man instances to even get heroic keyed, etc., then they can find an hour a day to run a quick heroic.

 

Natrozim

As a warlock currently I'm building a shadow resist to tank the first boss in heroic mana tombs since with MD I can get resistance easier then warriors. I'm also building up my arcane resist set and fire set since if they are already itemized in epics I'm sure they will have a important use in the not so distant raiding future.

I'm gonna try that idea of using arcane resist gear on curator to eat his bolts, never though about it, it will probably help a lot for when nights with lower dps or pve spec healers. Fire resist will probably be used in that phoenix boss in tempest keep, something tells me he does fire damage attacks :P.

 

Uziel

Oh, I personally agree with you. But I'm the guildmaster, I can see things from that perspective. But having to stop raiding to farm resist didn't work before, and I don't forsee this working again. I am not saying this is the norm, but my own personal exerpience shows that when raids were cancelled and the time used farm resist gear, people would just log off. This is why we've never killed Huhuran but could clear Spider Wing in Naxx. Casual raiders (not flat out casuals) were willing to grab a few potions, but not get even more sets of gear with limited application and have no bank/bag space as a result. I can't say I disagree with them.

I also understand that this point of view may not represent the majority of EJ forums posters, however I consider my guild to be as casual a raiding guild can be, thus relevant.

 

Quasar

Considering you're planning on taking your guild to Tempest Keep, which won't be possible for probably well over 95% of adult WoW players, I feel I made a valid assumption regarding the time you could put into Heroics. =P

JUICE! Aww I'm sorry. Did... did anyone want some juice?

 

Miriam

If he could be killed in greens/old FR epics, I suppose they would have done that by now. Worldofraids.com had a news post from their Void Reaver kill saying "They are actually working on the first encounter: Al'ar The Phoenix God, which seems to be harder according to them, since it requires epic fire resist gear and a long learning curve."
Of course, the situation could be different for various reasons by the time that "average raiding guilds" get there.

 

Uziel

Hm, sorry, I was under the impression that guilds that could at least kill a few bosses in Naxx would be able to experience some 25 man raids beyond Gruul/Mag, at least before the next expansion.

 

alienangel

I've only done it a few times so I could well be missing something, but the SR on that trash isn't to mitigate damage really, it's to avoid being chain feared for 30+s at a time out of range of healers during the pull/peel - and moving well doesn't help if you're unlucky enough to get hit by one of those fears (there's probably some range stuff I can do to avoid the initial fear, but I certainly don't mind putting on a shadow resist cloak and neck for the pulls).

 

◊ songster

Yup. *A* quick heroic. In Quasar's post, for some reason he listed four of them. Of course if you run four heroics in a day, it'll take a quarter as long.

If you can do a heroic a day, that's ~3 badges depending which you're doing. 3 nights a week, you're looking at ~10 badges a week. 12 weeks for the full FR set. That's three months not raiding at all, just farming resist gear. If you try to raid at the same time as farming resist gear, that's your six months.

The majority of people are not going to be able to run four heroic instances in a day, and do not play seven days a week.

 

Lucit

This thread is quickly turning into a casual vs. hardcore debate, and I'm not really sure why. The necessary resist gear (except shadow) is available, and it takes some effort to get. Basically, we've got the following, loosely based on how progression works atm.

Heroics: Some resist gear needed, greens of X protection will suffice.
Karazhan, Gruul, Magtheridon: No resist gear needed (maybe Magtheridon trash).
SSC: Frost/Nature... only for tanks.
TK: Fire, crafted and badge gear available.

The general assumption is that time spent == progression. By the time more casual guilds have progressed to SSC/TK, it's assumed that they'll also have had time to farm the primals and badges necessary to get the resist gear needed.

 

Keline

songster, if you only do one heroic a day, it should always be Mechanaar. Can't beat 5 badges in 90 minutes.

and once you're really good at it, you can do it probably in 70 minutes

 

◊ Bekah

At 3 badges an hour (better than average tbh), it takes just over 33 hours /played for a heroic FR set.

20 hours of raiding a week- technically if you stopped raiding and had the manpower to organize 5-6 heroics runs every night in equal blocks to raiding you could gear everyone out in 2 weeks. Reality says- you don't have the tanks or healers for 5-6 balanced heroics though, unless you're running a massive sized guild.

Of course if you don't cancel raiding at all and only run 3-4 groups a night, after hours, and still expect pot farming, that's 20 hours of raiding, 3-4 hours of farming (we're jsut going fro consumables- gear farming is expected to be done) + X hours of heroics.

I'm not disagreeing with it- in fact I understand completely. Hell I spent easily 40 hours a week in game when I was in Rebirth and, had I been a little more productive with my time I'd probably have gotten more done in the long run. But I'm not exactly normal. On that sliding scale of hardcore to median raiders- I'm hardcore in hours, but a bit further behind in heart.

It'll take most people many more than 2-3 weeks, especially if raiding continues (as it usually must.)