This combination of killing bosses seems to be the norm of most guilds as well as my own. Tonight we defeated Void Reaver, and have 3 boss options open to us. I would like to get some feedback from the community as I am fairly unexperienced with the remaining bosses and with the changes in patch 2.1 I really don't know where to head next. So out of Al'ar, Solarian, and Vashj what would you recommend to be the best course of action as far as the next boss to tackle.

Al'ar > Solarian (if you use 2 soaks) > Vashj

Then again, personally I'd prefer to finish off one instance (kill Vashj) rather than go kill those other two :p

Vashj takes a bit more time to learn then Al'ar or Solarian.
But getting as much people as possible with vials as early as possible will only benefit you in the future.

We are in the same situation and going for Vashj mostly because of the vials.

Having more of one of two quest items shouldnt be determining where you go, Solarian is the easiest of your three options (using two AR tanks), alar is easy but theres also quite alot of learning and vashj is a fairly hefty dps check requiring a good strategy also.

We are closing on your situation, however, after killing Void Reaver we kinda gave Solarian a try, and it seemed *very* manageable (even without AR tanks) - so cheesing it a bit w/ 2x AR tanks would trivialize it completely. As such, that'll probably be our next mark after we kill Leotheras. At that point the question is really whether to learn Al'ar or Vashj first, and while I'd like to do Vashj first, progression wise, Al'ar plays into my guild's strengths more from my understanding of those fights - the incredible loot that both of these bosses drop makes it even more of a tough call.

Don't underestimate the fact that a trash clear to Solarian *will* in all likelihood net you a couple vortexes and patterns aswell as trash epic drops. Even our first time clearing that trash took such an insignificant amount of time that I doubt trash should be the excuse of choice to go for Vashj primarily - though I do agree with you on the loot quality.

A Vashj kill will get you 4 items, while Al'ar only drops two. So if you can only learn one before the next reset, Vashj all the way :-)

Al'ar is easier to learn than Vashj. Only two phases, repeatable action sequences. We learned him within an evening, while Vashj is still shaky.

And don't underestimate Solarian. While the concept seems simple, it is a VERY DPS-intensive fight.

I'll echo this. We found Al'ar an easier fight to *execute* than Solarian. Both are relatively easy to learn, but Al'ar is more forgiving of mistakes. Of those two, I would go for Al'ar first, if for the simple fact that starting with him means you won't have to reclear two bosses worth of trash when you're working on Solarian. I can't really speak to Vashj, since we're only 3 bosses deep in SSC after killing 3 in TK.

Personally I'd suggest going for Al'ar first. Simple reason being that (post 2.1) it's a really easy encounter. We killed him for the first time last reset on our first night of attempts - it took about 4 hours to get the strat down and optimise our dps. Overall I can't see any guild taking more than 2 raids to learn him. This reset we went back and one shot him with minimal casualties.

While Solarian isn't exactly hard when using the 2 sponge tank method, it's one of the few encounters I've seen so far that requires a lot of skill and focus from your healers. Also, you'll need 2 tanks with ~500 arcane ress and it's certainly alot easier with a slightly stacked raid (i.e 7+ locks/mages and 8 healers).

Vashj is the hardest of the 3 and will most likely take any guild several nights to learn.

I agree with Quigon for kill order. Alar is a very easy fight to learn, with a good deal of execution involved. Solarian is a little more luck based and twitchy it seems. Vashj is just a straight up gear check IMO.


As a side note - Quigon, it seems that every guild (or at least most) has their "Achilles Heel" of encounters. For Fusion, back in the day, it was Onyxia. We were still nearly wiping to onyxia while having 9 bosses down in naxx. In current raiding, it appears to be tidewalker. We almost always wipe to Tidewalker, yet we are one shotting nearly every boss (including Vashj). I think it just comes down to guild strengths and weaknesses. Some guilds perform really well at certain encounters, but occasionally come up against something that just baffles em.

I agree with the achilles heel comment fully. But even when we one shot solarian I want to kick a small animal to death. Even thinking about that boss....

We've never one-shotted Morogrim. Ever.

Anyway, I'll have to agree with Al'ar-->Solarian-->Vashj. Al'ar is fun and quick to learn -- especially if you check out the bosskillers guide and a video or two first so you go in knowing what to expect. It also has the advantage of despawning the hallway and atrium trash, so that you don't have to keep doing inefficient clears to VR through two bosses' worth of trash.

For Solarian, I've found that in 2.1, stacking AoE really isn't the answer anymore. We did her with 2 mages and 3 warlocks easily this week, because the Agents just aren't that dangerous anymore if you have a decent strat for them -- it's just Morogrim redux. But adding more rogues and fury warriors will make Solarian herself die that much faster.

Vashj is a more complex fight. You should be able to do Al'ar and Solarian in a single timer if you can clear the rest of SSC, and then you'll be able to focus on the two end bosses.

Having 5/6 and 1/4 like you, I've elected to go for Vashj despite hearing so much about Alar being easy and fast and Solarian to a lesser extent. Aside from the fact we have about 40 people we raid with (meaning we'll need at least two weeks of vials) Vashj drops more loot, in addition to 2x t5 which I'd rather start farming earlier then later. In the end it's only a couple extra pieces of loot, but the 'free' alar kill after Vashj will be a nice reward for the work we put into Vashj tonight and sunday. Not having to kill any trash for a couple days is a somewhat welcomed break from all the pre 2.1 horrors. Not that it was particularly hard, but at least once a day we would wipe from some absurd thing and it just left a bad taste in everyones mouth for SSC in general. However, I have no doubt we'll pass the 'gear check' dps wise and if your guild isn't in the same situation you might want to head to Alar. We have <7m Hydross, <8m Morogrim, <7m Karathress kills as a benchmark, all unpotted.
As for Morogrim, we 1 shot it last week much to my surprise, after wiping on him 2-4 times the 2 weeks before. This week we failed at 30% but got him on the next try. Morogrim just seems like it's one of those fights where bad luck will result in a wipe every single week forever. We can generally handle our paladin geting graved after he gets agro while murlocks are up once, sometimes a second time with acceptable losses, but three is just too much even with our 2 backup tank strat. I'm really sick of our paladin and backup paladin both getting graved immediately after they spawn though, and I cringe every time we clear to him. I thought we just kept getting unlucky, but apparently others are in the same situation.

We wiped 4x to Tidewalker last night...something about the healing just doesn't always click. We're very much at loggerheads about how to handle progression right now, being at the exact same point at the OP in progression. We've given Vashj 3 full nights of work, progress has been frustratingly slow (we have a lot of weak DPS) but we did manage to drop the fourth generator on our last attempt on Monday (zero consumables, so I think with potting and some more practice we'll do it). I realize that in those progression nights we could have probably killed Al'ar or Solarian, but given the quality of Vashj's loot (and my fantasy that mastering the fight will teach our DPS 2play) the time doesn't seem wasted. Our MT on the other hand complains endlessly about what a waste of time Vashj is when we could be getting Al'ar/Solarian loot. Given that our DPS and tanks have full t4/t5 epics, I don't think it's that big of a deal.

Odd, we've one shotted hydross every since our first kill. Hydross doesn't have any luck factor, whereas Morogrim seems to just grave our tanks over and over and over, and always right after they get agro, not before the murlocks spawn or after they are dead. Perhaps if we switched to a 'tank adds out of grave range' strat it would be more repeatable, but definitely a much longer fight.
In any event, I was expected Vashj to be a little harder then it seemed. We got to phase two on our first attempt with I think zero deaths, and even managed to get two balls in place while I frantically tried to make a strat for phase two while she was at 75%. Obviously the hardest part is stabilizing the 2nd phase long enough to get all four balls in place so that doesn't really say much.
For those of you who put 3 days into it without progress, is all of that time spent just trying to get the last couple balls in?

You might want to consider renaming the thread title to something a little less ambiguous - its kinda a poor title, at least imo.

I thought it was about dates at first, or perhaps relative boss difficulty. I recommend something other than "Help with our raid progression: What to do next?" though, since that is taken

EDIT: To Fayrn below - it could have been heaped because it was a double-post, especially with the recent traffic.

Especially because this exact same thread by the exact same person got heaped earlier, and now it seems to be a viable discussion.

Short answer: Yes

Long answer: The first core usually goes smooth, the second is usually the same. When 3 and 4 come, people seem to forget that they despawn if you dont burn them. Not sure if its because the elementals are dying further and further up the stairs, making it hard to get to the poison dudes or what but i think we have reached 3/4 only 1-2 times. Once we reach phase 3 i dont see it taking long for us to get her down though. We are however making progress. The striders and nagas are dying much faster. What helped us the most was doing a couple of attempts without even looting the cores. We would still kill them but didnt loot them. We made it though 4-5 strider and naga packs. This seemed to really help the people up top learn how fast they need to dps and how phase 2 works. Seeing how the whole fight is phase 2, we did what we could to extend the time we had in it so we could spend more time learning. It seemed to work for us. I am positive this week is a kill for us.

We killed Vashj before Void Reaver due to attunement issues.

So uh, I don't recommend that.

I believe the only time we've ever one-shotted Tidewalker was our first kill, potted up and ready to spank him on the second day (so I guess that doesn't count as a one-shot). Hydross tends to hand out 3-4 repair bills due to stupid transitions, whereas Karathress and Leotheras haven't wiped us for a couple of weeks.