(first post, so bear with me )

I am a guild leader of a recently formed "casual serious" guild focused on farming Karazhan and moving more into 25-man raiding. We try to raid three to four nights a week, we run two Karazhan groups over the course of two days, and farm Gruul's lair. We have only spent about two hours on Magtheridon at this point (last week was our first trip in), but we came away with the feeling that we had enough DPS just need to practice getting through phase 1 cleanly and working on clicking cubes.

My main goal has been to reduce Karazhan to a one night clear in order to free up a day to work on 25 man content. We have been fairly successful (two groups with Prince and Nightbane down in ~4.5 hours). Is this the preferred strategy for most progressed guilds?

When did many of you stop running Karazhan all together? I believe there is a place for it for some time in order to test new recruits and teach skills needed later in progression, but when should we switch the majority of our raiding time to Magtheridon and SSC (just finished farming the resist gear for Hydross)?

Thank you for your advice.

We moved karazhan to member organised offdays once we killed hydross. We had a week of 1 kara, 1 gruul+magth and 1 SSC in which we killed hydross and decided to drop kara the week afterwards, chaning our schedule to: Gruul+magth+hydross/tidewalker on one day, 2 progression days in SSC for the rest of the week.

We usually run at least one or 2 offday kara groups, with alts and non raiders/recruits who manage to clear everything but maiden/netherspite in 1 night usually. (which is good enough since its mainly for attuning new people and getting that 1 kara item most still need)

We are in the exact same situation... right now we are talking about having Kara on a 2 night setup (sunday monday) and 25 mans tuesday and thursday.

The point is that first Kara night is mandatory bosses (moroes opera curator shade prince chess and nightbane) and the 2nd night is what we missed (if we had DC or bad luck wipes) + optionnals (Attumen Maiden illhoof Netherspite). If 2nd night Kara ends early we'd try to break into 2 heroics group per team to get Trials done and farm badges.

We try to rotate nightbane for more ppl getting keyed as well.

Once we have enough for SSC we'll split 1 night Gruul + mag and 2nd night in SSC.

We also do not schedule Karazhan raids. Our guild formed with 25 man raid progression as our priority and for the sake of raid leader and officer sanity, we decided to not schedule 10 man raids. We let the members of the guild create their own raids and clear Karazhan on weekends or weeknights after raids. It's just a huge pain to have to schedule a raiding day dedicated to Karazhan and then create multiple balanced raid groups without pissing anyone off.

vorda's approach sounds pretty reasonable to me. If you want to make serious progress in the 25 mans (without raiding 6 nights a week), something has to give, and it's probably going to be Karazhan.

There's also a good thread on how to speed up Karazhan clears (link)

We have been fairly successful in created two balanced Karazhan groups every week, but I agree it is a pain. I am slightly concerned that if we don't schedule Karazhan, people will have trouble getting a full run together. Since we are more casual, most people need some advanced notice.

I like Vorda's approach as well as it allows for us to have several encounters on farm (Gruul, Mag, and Hydross) before we drop Karazhan to guild pickups.

Thanks for the information, keep it coming!

Good points, and I think we have individuals who would enjoy doing that. Definitely an option.

We have recently dropped Kara, and are taking the member run approach. We currently Raid 25 mans Sunday - Thursday, and Friday/Saturday are off. This week I ran 1 Kara after the raids 12-1:30/2AM, and there will be another one this weekend on Sunday before the raid. So far it has gone well considering, we had to grab a couple people from outside the guild but is 2 nights (after raid only we cleared all but Netherspite/Nightbane/Illhoof and we will clear those on Sunday or Monday.

If you want to raid 4 days a week, and make progress you really don't have time for 2 days of Kara, you really probably don't have time for 1, but if you can get down to 1 day full clears (what we were at before we dropped it), then it is probably still worth it, 2 days and you don't have enough time for farm + progress.

It is definitely taxing us

The raiding group I have is even more casual than that. I haven't even seen past Aran yet, and we have yet to take down Gruul. When the expansion came out, they gave people a whopping three months to get from 60 to 70. A bunch of us who were more eager started our own private Karazhan group in Feb, since we had all our heroic keys by that point and were bored. So we got to Curator but had to wrap it up, since the raid group was going to officially start Karazhan. So we had to start over, teaching the new guys how to do the bosses, etc. Then this month, they inexplicably officially dropped Karazhan, leaving it to people to do their own Karazhan groups. So now we're having to start over again, while a lot of guilds have it on farm by now.

It's not a huge deal, though...people with families or demanding jobs should still be able to have a group to run with. If I really want to see SSC or The Eye, I can just join another group or guild. Their progression is definitely like molasses, though.

How can you possibly drop Karazhan from the schedule before having a SSC-keyed raid group? Do you raid one night per week?

edit: oops, misquote

I was referring to Chandrialla's post, not yours.

I'm not the right person to talk about our strategy, as I have been MIA for months. As far as I know, Kara is still run one night per week with multiple teams, and we're up to Vashj. I could be wrong, though. Woohaa and Deetee might be able to provide more insight.

My apologizes =P

Our raids go:
-1 Night Maulgar/Gruul/Mag,
-2 Nights SSC
-2 main karas, 1 alt-kara on the weekends
The main karas fully clear or leave 1 or 2 optionals on night one. Alt-kara also clears the instance but takes more than one day most times.

In my opinion, until you are farming a significant portion of teir5 content (or you are really lucky with drops), try to keep at least the required kara bosses on your raid schedule every week. There are a lot of drops that are very good upgrades for your raid across the board, not to mention teir4. If there does come a point where it seems your 'core' raiders are clearing the place and sharding almost everything, then maybe consider dropping it. Honestly though, from my experience with the gear buffs and boss nerfs, Kara has a been nice change of pace and is relaxing after doing the 25mans during the week.

That is my main concern, dropping Kara too soon would reduce our number of upgrades per week. Thanks!

Once you get more and more into SSC you will run into some problems however. SSC is extremely time consuming unless all your players are very good, its very easy to wipe on every single boss from a single mistake/DC.

If your guild takes a few nights to down lurker or morogrimm then you will likely see tanks and healers not wanting to run Kara in offnights, leading to issues with multiple kara groups - having only the tanks or healers for one for example.

Really try to get TK into the mix quickly, it helps with the boredom of SSC and TK is not harder than SSC. The trash and void reaver are on the same level of difficulty of SSC, and after wiping a night or two in SSC its sometimes a relief to step into the colorful environment of TK.

Good to hear. We have plans to enter TK as soon as we have enough keyed. We have quite a few only needing Mag now, and everyone else is working on the trials during off nights.

I too am part of a somewhat casual raiding guild, and our progress/choices have mirrored those mentioned by several people in this thread.

We too had a number of strong/dedicated players race to 70 and get a hand picked Karazhan team going, and then had a vast number of stragglers get attuned as well, in turn leading to the now cliche drama of trying to get multiple successful groups going simultaneously. Gruul's now on farm, and Mags has been dying without much difficulty on the same night (usually Tuesday) for a couple of weeks now. We've set 3 'main raid' nights for new and old 25 man content; Wed/Thurs for SSC, and this week we've gotten Hydross under 40% with two short nights spent. (2-3 hours apiece)

The remaining days of the week usually see 2-4 Karazhan groups form up (number usually limited by availability and interest of tanks, healers and dps, in that order), some getting all but 1-2 bosses down even when rounded out with alts. The Karazhan shenanigans died down in time and went from clearly defined form up times with officers and raid leaders, to a less formal Friday night grab to get a crew or three going, and then one or two forming up over the weekend.

The advice given to keep Karazhan groups going sounds like it'll be our tactic as well, as the zone (when people are on the ball) can be a fairly fast clear with some viable upgrades for a lot of our members. We've seen many of the old school crew leave in the past 6 months for a variety of reasons, so as we recruit, we often find the need to catch them up on some measure of raiding experience and gear.

I think the one issue I'm really going to try to push with the other officers is extending our raid times a bit again. We used to run 3 nights a week for 'main' content (40 mans typically), 2 nights of 4 hours during the week, and one 6 hour run on the weekend. 3 nights a week at 3 hours is our new system, and with people forming up, repair breaks, trash respawns and whatnot, we're lucky to get even 2 good hours going.

With a 2 hour respawn on trash, it's kind of a waste to zone in and buff up by 9, clear and fight a boss until 11ish, and then realize trash is about to respawn, so we clear for another 5-10 and have a whopping 20 minutes or so on the boss again. It just seems like an inefficient use of time to me.

What about other fairly casual guilds, particularly those making first steps into SSC and TE? How long do you run? How often? And more importantly, have you adjusted either due to the mechanics Blizzard has put in place? Obviously what works for one group might not work for mine, but I'm curious as to how those a month or two ahead of us have adjusted their style/schedule to benefit the raid crew as a whole?

Once we were doing SSC and people needed less and less from Kara, we moved Kara to off nights and usually ran a Main and a Main/Alt mixed group. Eventually it gets trimmed down to a single Alt run with mains stepping in and out for bosses to cherry pick selected upgrades.

This gives people alot of value for their play time actually by:

1.) who doesn't want epics on their alt, come on now!!
2.) there are still runs so people can get in for that 1 or 2 upgrade bosses while not increasing their already substantial Kara burnout.
3.) frees up raid nights to focus on progression instances (SSC/TK are roadblocks to progression due to attunements).

Keep in mind you only need to get to Nightbane to key someone for SSC. That's 2 hours at a medium pace if you're not wiping regularly. If you're recruiting a lot then you'll need to do these runs until you are killing Vashj or you can attract keyed recruits.

We stopped Kara once we had 2 or 3 bosses in SSC dead, but we killed those quickly. If we were going slower we may have been tempted to drop it right after getting Hydross downed. There's just too much out there to kill to be spending 2 valuable nights a week in Kara unless you need the upgrades to make progress.

Deja vu, you sound so familiar, it's like we're twin brothers, from other mothers.

Like my linked thread, our goal was to get Karazhan down to one night. We spent wipe nights getting bosses for the sake of getting bosses, but since there just aren't enough hours in the night, we've written off quite a few in the "Plan to get your upgrades here," sense. You have to take the pulse of your guild's gearlevel - if you need the upgrades, slow it down and clear more bosses. Yes, the super awesome can clear X with greens, so what? You have a reset timer, only so many hours - are you really best served wiping and getting nothing for it in nextInstance (SSC in this case) versus getting loot in Karazhan?

The flipside is the other factor - at what point are you just treading water? "Guys I don't want to go wipe in the SSCs, I want the free loot for my alts ~".

We're on par with you (or one very small notch ahead), I think, so I may not be your desired respondent, but right now, very few regulars are missing anything important, besides Generic-Item-That-Refuses-To-Drop-For-Your-Guild, and I think people would be happier having the tier 5 version not drop for them then the tier 4 one anyway. So SSC is coming on the schedule, but while Karazhan is staying, it's "Kill Nightbane at the end of the one night, whatever else is a perk" We flubbed this week, and made an off night a raid night to fix that because we don't have many people attuned.

We won't open an off-night once we do have enough.

I am thinking when SSC becomes a two night affair, with a loot night and a wipe night, Karazhan will go off the schedule.

As for teaching recruits skills, well... I just screw up instance runs with them. "Oops, I pulled two packs." "Oh noes, I accidentally got aggro, how'd that happen?" Or they get a raid role out the gate. Exciting stuff, really. "Hi guy-who-just-hit-70. Your goal in life is to keep that off tank alive. Fail, and we wipe, your fault. Enjoy!"