Mem

VR is not the most difficult boss out there, sure. But in my experience one shouldn't underestimate him. We killed him after 4 attempts, yet had to wipe 3 times again due to individual mistakes. Furthermore you need tanks who are able to put out a respectable amount of trash and a DPS department that is not slacking. Killing him before the berserk requires almost every dpser alive (at least for us because the performance of our dps is very spread out unfortunately).

And regarding the question about melee dps. Melee is doing ok on VR since the ranged have to move quite a lot as well whereas the melee only has to do a few steps to get out of the pounding.

On the gear requirement: if your raid sports a lot of kara stuff or crafted items you are probably good to go. When I tanked VR I had no loot from 25 mans and the Kara stuff was more than sufficient.

 

Illundai

Just heal the melee? They lose a ton of DPS and healing them really isn't that hard. One Resto Shaman can heal 3-4 melee np.

 

loky

Well its a good change of pace for the guild, considering you have been farming Kara for over a month and if enough people are motivated you should give it a try .

Best of luck =p

 

• Ralask

Just because you can go somewhere does not mean you really should. The question is, why are you wiping on Gruul? If it is because you dont have the gear to tank him thats a big problem. Just keep being casual raiders, get gruul, down Mag and work your way into SSC and TK.

 

Corinthian

My Guild is currently farming Gruul and working on Magtheridon. We went into the Eye last night and had a blast. Trash wasn't a huge issue (although a slow clear as we were getting used to it) and we got 4 solid attempts on Void Reaver.

In my opinion, the fight is entirely doable for us. DPS was high enough to kill him before enrage, but we had problems with people getting nuked by the orbs. Either people didn't move fast enough, or they over compensated and spent all their time running. I know at least once I ran away from one orb and ended up running into another one.

I also noticed this is not a pet friendly fight.

 

• KinetiK

Wow, I thought my casual guild really was casual as we're only starting Karazhan this Friday. Out of the potential raid members only 4 have ever set foot in a raid instance before, three of them were keyed last night and we hopefully will get our last 2 members keyed tonight (we're still looking for our 10th). It is my intent that I will mould these casuals into a hardened raiding crew, occasionally being able to kill trash mobs in Karazhan!

That would be great!

Things used to be different though as pre-TBC I was a member of guilds who'd cleared & farmed MC, BWL, AQ40 and we managed to get Heigan down in the week before TBC was released. When I saw the progression choices with trade skills, pvp etc I decided I wasn't going to raid in the expansion so I simply stopped on Jan 14th, quit my raiding guild and rejoined my wife's vanity guild. Things were going very well with PV, I was able to play my alts a lot more than I had been previously but the raiding bug bit me again after I was invited to help out a friend's Kara raid. We started recruiting immediately and now we have a guild that is 4x bigger than it was a month ago and most of those new members are new 70s or are still levelling.

I'd like to say I don't really know why I want to raid again but I know the exact reason I want to do it. The challenge for me isn't the Kara keying or fights inside Kara or the loot or being on my server's progression list but it is simply that I want to take some clay players and mould them into competant raiders. However... I fear having to train them how to raid because if the 5 mans and ZG last friday was any indication it'll be like herding cats I'm sure. Ok, i'll say it, my guild isn't filled with casuals, it's filled with noobs! With a few exceptions, no one really knows their class very well, they don't fully understand how their class works with others (warlocks & shadow priests) and to a man none have ever set foot in an instance with more than 4 other people. They are casuals with the attitude of "I'm playing for fun not for progression", with equipment occasionally chosen for its colour or the fact that it has horns (?) and the talent choices? My god. Yeah, true casuals.

This isn't my experience at all with learning new content. I love generalisations because they're always terribly accurate so allow me to make this statement: "Farmed content brings out the casuals, learning fights bring out the hardcore." If you aren't offended yet allow me to explain further: 'casuals prefer loot, hardcores prefer encounters.' As guild of hardcores you'll enjoy beating the content more than the end result (loot) but if you have a guild of casuals new content isn't a challenge, it's a steep mountain infested with spiders and stinging nettles with an omniponent and unbeatable boss at the peak. Just being in the raid for 2+ hours is justification enough for some to demand loot for their time... seriously.

My MC/BWL guild was about 40% hardcore and 60% pure casual and when an encounter or instance was on farm it was nearly impossible to get into the raid but for learning fights we might have 32 online when the raid started. This occurred with MC, with BWL, a little less with AQ40 (trash ) and then picked up again with Naxxramas. Kill Rag? Next week is a full full full raid for the MC farming but when you zone into BWL and see Razorgore for the first time the raided ended up with 32 again.

Things are more like they are now than they ever were before. - Dwight Eisenhower

 

cheebamonkey

For any guild that hasn't stepped foot into SSC or TK yet I would highly recommend waiting untill after you have killed Gruul first, then moving on the Void Reaver. The main reason being if you don't have the coordination to kill HKM you won't be able to make very good progress in either instance and because gruul offers a fight very similar in concept to the void reaver fight. High DPS while having to pay attention to the people around you. Also the trash clear to gruul is much easier then for void reaver. Once you are able to down gruul move on the void reaver and then go to mag. You could skip mag and possibly go to lurker but Mag will teach you some of the skills needed for hydross, who while harder then lurker I would still recommend killing before lurker.

 

Foxery

A bit of a perspective check for guilds who are in similar positions, or generally have not yet started SSC/TK... When posters here at EJ say that something is easy, it's usually from the view of a highly experienced raider. It takes a lot to faze us.

However, let me put it to you this way: "The Lurker Below is really easy! He's just a simpler version of C'Thun." You are likely either giving me a blank stare, or perhaps the blood just drained from your face. "Void Reaver is a pushover. Just combine Broodlord with some Twin Emps movement and loot him." Are you still excited?

You need to be comfortable with Gruul and Prince first; not because of farming gear, but because they are the beginning of TBC's raiding experience. If Gruul gives you trouble, you will not believe how hard Void Reaver will abuse you. I would advise against rushing ahead. Your patience and normal pace will serve you better.

 

Rott

While I haven't experienced anything past gruul myself I think this approach is the correct one for most casual guilds. Don't feel pressured to catch up to the hardcore guilds because you will just put unneeded pressure on your casual raiders and will always end up feeling behind. Set a pace for yourselves that you can maintain with a casual schedule and do your best. Don't compare yourselves to anyone else and be content with doing things at your own pace.

 

Sinuous

In order for a guild to find much success in SSC/TK. I believe nearly everyone needs to be in mostly epics and the best blues.

Tanks need a certain threshold of gear and many of the encounters have enrage timers. Skipping bosses is a bad idea.

It's not like cthun where the first few bosses of naxx are easier. All the bosses in SSC/TK are harder than gruul/mag, except perhaps Void Reaver.

Also, skipping Mag is a very bad idea. You are guaranteed 3 drops that people will want. In many cases T4 chest is the best people can get for a long time. The ring from the head quest is very nice for all classes.

With the attunement requirements being lifted, I believe guilds should start off with Void Reaver because it's nice to get guaranteed T5 and shoulders for most classes are very very nice. I wouldn't head back to TK until killing vashj. Solarian and al'ar's loot tables aren't that fantastic.

 

Aod_Macabre

While gear is obviously a requirement for some encounters in SSC/TK, as it has been stated before there are some bosses that are just as easy/difficult as the one-shot 25 man bosses. I completely agree with the point made earlier that "If you are not comfortable with moving against Gruul, don't bother with VR". Also, although this is less relevant with the 2.1 nerfs they got, I feel some experience with Mag's trash could prove highly valuable for SSC early trash. The TK trash before VR will keep the majority of incapable guilds from getting T5 shoulders imo.

 

The Grog

With the new pvp gear, you are better off going out and farming honor and getting your 10 arena games in than clearing KZ or Mag. Gruul has the awesome dragonspine trophy, but that's the only useful item.

Merciless Gladiator Gear > t4 for most classes.
New PvP jewelry and BBB (belts, boots, bracers) > KZ.

Void Reaver and Solarian are easy, if you cheese AR on High Scryer Solarian. ( not an astromancer). Alar is harder, and probably shouldn't be attempted until you can kill half of SSC or so.

 

• Jamor

Gruul also drops a very nice sheild.

 

Kink

A lot of people are saying to down gruul first before you move on to SSC and TK. But the trash drops some fairly nice epics, fairly often too. Not to mention vortexes for T3 weapons.

So personally I say if you already have Maulgar, then just give it a try to see something different. At the very least you might get some nice trash drops.

There is light at the end of the tunnel.
The only problem is, it's often an incoming train.

 

Mem

Well, the danger of doing TK/SSC while still working on Gruul and Mag is that you spread your raiding time to thin. Don't forget, casual raids don't raid every day, rather 2 days a week or so. Keeping your raid focussed won't be easy if you become an encounter hopper

 

Daeus

Gruul/Mag also has a bit less trash as well. A good clear from Entrance to voidreaver is 30-45 minish if i remember right 16-17 packs before you get to Voidreaver

 

Forar

My guild could probably be considered quite casual these days; we used to raid new content 3 nights a week (2 x 4 hours on weeknights and 1 x 6ish hours on saturdays), whereas we now get in about 3 x 2.5-3 hours on new content during the weeknights, with Karazhan filling up whenever we have people interested.

We started Karazhan pretty quickly/early into the expansion, moved onto Gruul, started getting Mags about a month ago, and have Hydross and VR down in the past few weeks.

Unfortunately our raid force has issues with committment (availability and showing up ready on time), and has for quite a while. With the 40 mans this wasn't a huge issue, as you could often fill in with warm bodies without too much trouble. With the 25's, people are warry of going in short handed (particularly with new content), so there's far too much sitting around being done. Raid form ups at 8 lead to first pulls at 9 due to a tank or a couple of healers being MIA or afk.

To tie this excessive background into the matter at hand, I've been pondering my casual guild's progression, because as we become successful in instances (got Tidewalker to 40% last week) and rack up more bosses to kill/work on per week, the more that 'farmed content' is going to eat into our meagre available time.

As an officer, I've been pushing to get our form up/buffed/pulling time down, and to expand our raid times (preferably with longer raids, as opposed to more of them, where I suspect said lengthy form up times would give us diminishing returns on the night's time investments), but thus far am meeting limited success.

I have no interest in abandoning my friends, but the guild has seen a lot of attrition lately, at least in part due to frustration, lacking progression and burn out. As happy as I am to get fresh faces on board and get back into instances, re-teaching/re-learning encounters repeatedly wears on my desire to remain a steady contributor, and having cut our effective raid time nearly in half has left me with plenty of blessed time for alts, but little time spent doing what I'd actually like to be doing; learning encounters and kicking ass in raids.

 

Lateolocutus

The problem is that the arena gear isn't good for tanking for warriors (no defense, no avoidance), and healers may find that they have significantly less healing/regen given how the item budgets for pvp gear work in resilience. Unless you're planning to have all your warriors on dps duty while druids tank, or have them tank SSC/TK in crafted epics/blues, you're going to need to do some work in Kara/Gruul/Mag.

 

andastra

I would recommend going ahead and trying VR. We got him the week before Blizzard removed the attunement and we did kill him after already downing 5 SSC bosses. However, we got him to 1% on our very first attempt and got him on our third. He really is that easy. We killed him with over a minute to spare.

This week's kill was even messier. We had a few people (spriest, lock, mage) overaggro and die around 20-50% and a few other dps dead quite late and still managed to kill him before enrage. Lots of room for error on this one, especially if you use consumables.

We also use 4 tanks so it isn't a problem is 1 or 2 die. I think on one of the attempts, we had 2 tanks remaining for quite a long time.

 

ebbv

My guild got Magtheridon down months ago, but had been having serious difficulty putting SSC raids together because of attunement. We eventually got Hydross and Fathom-Lord before the attunements were removed.

But just this week, now that we can consistently field raids, we got Void Reaver on Tuesday, Tidewalker on Wednesday and Lurker Below last night.

My point is, don't listen to the people who said that because your guild can't get enough people attuned you're going to have problems in SSC and TK. It's not true. If you have a raid full of people who are attentive and know what they're doing, you'll be successful.

Of course those people who said that will now asy "Those bosses are easy wait til you fight Vashj." and then once casual guilds start downing Vashj they'll say "Well you'll never get past Kael'thas.", et cetera.

Don't be intimidated. Definitely follow the progression model Blizzard has created, and gear people up along it. But don't be afraid to take a jaunt into SSC and test the waters. (Pun intended.)

 

panny

My guild is a casual raiding one, we raid twice a week, which means we usually only get ~2-4 hours a week on progression stuff. We killed Void Reaver on our second ever pull. Some of the trash took some learning, especially the saw blade guys with only one warlock, but overall, I think VR is the easiest of Magtheridon/Hydross.... I'd say he's even easier than Gruul.

 

• Beliandra

My fairly casual guild (Gruul downed the last few weeks, no particular progress on Magtheridon yet) decided to go and take a look at The Eye today. We only had 22 people in the raid and no mages (gee that worked well for all those sheepable trash mobs), but we found the trash manageable despite that. We cleared up to Al'ar's room, yoinked an epic smithing pattern (Red Havoc Boots), and generally had a good time. Well worth checking out.

 

Dakous

Mechanically, perhaps. I suppose it's "embarassing" to fess up to it, but we wiped (twice) to VR despite knocking over Gruul and Mag. I have little doubt we will shortly be taking his epics, but for a casual guild making their first/planning forays, make no mistake - the trash will take time to learn, just like SSC and Gruul's trash did. There are a large number of pulls (two and feels like a half bosses worth), it will take time.

I had hoped to go in with an hour spare after Gruul/Mag - I believe the trash respawn is 2 hours? I'd certainly set aside that much or a little more for a first expedition... if that's not a little trite for "generally accepted raid practices" anyway. I thought it bore saying, since reading all these posts, I felt a slight disconnect.

Of course, that may be more "redundant" to a more hardcore guild (when you have 4-5 hours a night, 2 is not as significant an investment as...) as opposed to "vital" to a casual (when you have 3...) one.

Everybody is your brother until the rent comes due.

 

Kissmyaxe

Skipping content is not a good idea in my opinion.

After we had killed Gruul I thought that Magtheridon might be too hard for us and decided to try the "easy" bosses in SSC. We went in a few nights trying Morogrim and Karathress with no real progress (usuallt trash respawns meant raid was over).

Then finally we decided to focus on Magtheridon. He died on our second night of attempts. The fight is so easy once you get some practice on it, as long as your DPS can down the adds before the first Blast Nova. I was so angry at myself for wasting our time in SSC. It probably costed us 2-3 Magtheridon kills.

After Mag we focused on Hydross and it payed off.

We didn't have the attunment for TK yet so VR was not an