Casual Progression

Avoozl · 06/19/07, 4:45 PM

Now, our guild is very casual. 1-2 raid nights a week, maybe 4 hours a night. We've been farming Karazhan for about a month, and are right there on Gruul after a night of attempts (3% wipe last week, we'll get him this week now that people are used to it...and yes, I know, months behind, we don't really care about speed, just experience).

Now, with today's attunement lift announcement, people are very anxious to get into SSC and TK after being basically bored with repetitive KZ runs. My question is, is it even worth it? I've heard Void Reaver is basically a loot pinata, but gear-wise, we're running mostly on KZ and heroic epics, with no Gruul or Mag gear.

Is it worth going into SSC and TK without repeatedly farming Mag or Gruul? Is Magtheridon even worth working on anymore? If we were to try SSC, which boss makes for a good beginning (apparently not Hydross)? I'm mostly curious how big the jump from Gruul to SSC/TK is, and what bosses would be worth taking a look at at this point to see whether it's even worth it for now.

Orcheon · 06/19/07, 4:52 PM

If you can do Maulgar, you can do VR is the general consensus from most people i've talked to in TE guilds.

But prepare yourself for a long and agonizing trash clear.

Abaxial · 06/19/07, 4:55 PM

Originally Posted by Orcheon

If you can do Maulgar, you can do VR is the general consensus from most people i've talked to in TE guilds.

But prepare yourself for a long and agonizing trash clear.

Eh, I'd kill gruul at least. If you fail at moving for gruul, you'll fail at moving for VR.

Artaxz · 06/19/07, 4:58 PM

It's impossible to answer this question fairly...only you can evaluate the talent and gear quality of your guild, specifically the gear on your tanks. You won't get anywhere without two geared main tanks. If you are wiping on Gruul, SSC and TK will be very difficult.

Having said that, work on Magtheridon, Lurker, and Void Reaver. They all require raid cooridination, only require at most three geared tanks, and are probably the easiest bosses in each zone. There is no reason not to try different encounters at this point, since Blizzard has left you free to do so. The trash in TK and SSC drops decent items as well, so if you are clearing trash, you are at least getting something out of it.

Don't get frustrated if you get flattened though. You are probably not ready at this point.

Ghando · 06/19/07, 5:01 PM

I question whether a guild in Karazhan gear would be able to beat the Void Reaver berserk timer without heavy consumable use. Which is unlikely to happen given the premise of a "casual" guild.

Then again, maybe my guild's DPS is just bad.

Erongg · 06/19/07, 5:01 PM

You have to be able to kill Gruul before you go to these other instances. Every boss in SSC and TK is harder than Gruul. I'd say even Void Reaver is harder than Gruul, because you can lose 5-6 DPS to Gruul and still win, but if you lose that many to VR orbs you won't make the enrage.

If you want to try SSC, Hydross is really not bad if you can field five tanks and AoE. He used to be difficult so he's got a bad reputation, but he's not a hard boss anymore. You'll get a feel for how the fight goes pretty quickly, then it's just a matter of repeating the transitions. Lurker is not a bad starting point either, though you may have trouble getting all the adds down because of your DPS.

If Magtheridon is burning you out, the first boss you should switch to is Void Reaver, but you won't really want to skip Magtheridon entirely. Once you get to the point of farming SSC/TK and some of Hyjal/BT, Magtheridon becomes a second priority, but until then two T4 breastplates are still worth it.

But yeah, you have to be able to down Gruul to make it anywhere in SSC or TK.

Mieheg · 06/19/07, 5:22 PM

We killed gruul 1 month ago and had our first 2 attempts on mag this week (27 %). I guess we have a chance to kill VR, but the question i am more concerned about is the trash. I'm not interessted in clearing trash all night long, to have 15min of trying VR.

So my question is, how long do a "good" guild need for the trash ? How much time would you approximately take into account for a guild going TK the first time and wype a few times ?

And one more question on the respawn timer. Since one of the last hotfixes the respawn is on 2h cd afaik. Is this just the respawn near VR or the complete way up to him ?

Tzan · 06/19/07, 5:42 PM

Go in and get flattened. Really. It's a great way to get people more motivated about gearing up through Kara. If the Raid thinks it's ready for TK, go for it. If you win, then you've got people excited about Raiding and they'll be more active and committed. If you get crushed, then people will be more willing to work on other encounters because they'll know they need to gear up better to progress. And, if you get flattened, the next time you go in with better gear, it will seem easier so people will start off the return with higher expectations.

It's a win/win.

Kallisa · 06/19/07, 6:03 PM

Originally Posted by Tzan

Go in and get flattened. Really. It's a great way to get people more motivated about gearing up through Kara. If the Raid thinks it's ready for TK, go for it. If you win, then you've got people excited about Raiding and they'll be more active and committed. If you get crushed, then people will be more willing to work on other encounters because they'll know they need to gear up better to progress. And, if you get flattened, the next time you go in with better gear, it will seem easier so people will start off the return with higher expectations.

It's a win/win.

I agree with this 100% There's nothing more lifting, and encouraging for a Guild then downing bosses, On the flip-side of things, If your guild doesn't quite have the means to down a boss it can also encourage people to attain those means.

I also suggest working on Mag.

It really is a great encounter, and a very fun fight.

Mag really relies on teamwork, and coordination so it is a great building ground, for your guild.

Plus there are still some quite nice loots there =)

06/19/07, 6:07 PM

We kill Gruul but need 2-3 attempts to do so because we have alot of casuals... Mag tries went not so good, we fail to kill all 5 adds in the first 3 minutes... our strength are our 3 tanks though... but the best DD are our 2 rogues... you think Void Reaver would be a good idea for us?

rhyd · 06/19/07, 6:13 PM

Originally Posted by Tzan

Go in and get flattened. Really. It's a great way to get people more motivated about gearing up through Kara. If the Raid thinks it's ready for TK, go for it. If you win, then you've got people excited about Raiding and they'll be more active and committed. If you get crushed, then people will be more willing to work on other encounters because they'll know they need to gear up better to progress. And, if you get flattened, the next time you go in with better gear, it will seem easier so people will start off the return with higher expectations.

It's a win/win.

If you still have questions if your raid is ready if you can do some combination of XYZ boss in Karazhan, Gruul's, Mag, Naxx or whatever, re-read this post.

Keline · 06/19/07, 6:50 PM

On the other hand, if people just screw up and die to explosions all the time, people will be discouraged and won't show up the next time

mavfin · 06/19/07, 7:16 PM

Originally Posted by Keline

On the other hand, if people just screw up and die to explosions all the time, people will be discouraged and won't show up the next time

If people get discouraged that easily, then the guild probably isn't cut out for SSC/TK and above anyway, on the commitment end of things.

gia · 06/19/07, 7:39 PM

Can we turn this thread from "can we do it" into something more along the lines of "useful advice for people going into TK/SSC for the first time"?

Things like the scale of difficulty of the different bosses in each zone, how many geared tanks you need for each one, what kind of resistance sets are needed on what classes, what fights have specific requirements (aoe, etc). How hard/long is the trash clear in different parts of the instance...

My guild has a core group of about 15 players while the rest is way more casual, we've been clearing karazhan for long now and have three 5v5 arena teams over 2000. Only recently have we been able to round up 25 people one night a week and we've been able to down gruul a few times without too much problems. DPS is low but we still manage, last week we even had a 20 grow kill (some dps died at the start). We had about 1 hour of attempts on mag and were making decent progress.

But this isn't about my guild.

So, advice for people going in for the first time? Casual guilds don't have a lot of raiding time available so anything that allows them to plan ahead and not waste time would be great. I imagine there are a lot of guilds in this situation and that will consider taking a peek inside now that the attunement hurdle isn't there anymore.

Gumma · 06/19/07, 7:52 PM

I think you should be able to do VR no problem. He's pretty easy, more an "are you awake check." We sorta tested this the other night - we have about 5 guys that have rerolled X class to fulfill certain raid spots that we were lacking, and we brought all of them with us to VR (we powered them through the attunes). The kill was still fine, though I'll admit our tanks are fairly well geared. Our first kill on him we had 22 people too, so... I think I'd honestly tell every and anyone to go for VR. He, and the trash too him, are quite simple.