Vashj and Kael would have been fine in the old model where raids were released one znoe at the a time. They aren't "blocks" then - they are the final "reward" fights for the raid zone.

But in the release it all at once model they are blocks...

In said heroic mode it would be ideal if the boss dropped nothing but the attunement item. That way you wade through bosses and trash on normal for loot, and on heroic run straight to the boss and kill him purely for backflagging purposes. Week lockout either way.

I agree. Last night was our 4th Kael kill. We've killed him 4 straight weeks to attune people. We had problems last night and I grew increasingly sleepy as the night went on. It was just that mind-numbing of an experience. I believe we still have 1, maybe 2 apps if a new guy who contacted our raid officer last night is allower to app, to attune.

Also, I hate the Al'ar and VR trash as well. And being a fire mage, the Al'ar fight is quite mind-numbing for me as well.

I'm actually surprised people have so much difficulty on Kael after the first or second time. We took maybe 5 attempts our second kill, but we attuned 12 new people that kill. Our third kill was a one-shot with I think 4 new people. As long the newer people are not in key positions, for most of the raid it's a very easy fight.

Maybe lower the loot, rather than remove it entirely; 1 tier item, 1 epic, maybe? I know the fights are (supposed to be - Kael is a bit away for us) fun, but providing some tangible end reward wouldn't hurt.

What I would like to see is something like the following:

Once you kill Kael/Vashj normally, a quest giver in Caverns of Time allows you to create a portal for your raid to relive the particular encounter (for no loot).

This means no trash, no bosses, no lockouts, but no loot. If you're good at the Kael fight, you can kill him in 20 mins or whatever and get your attunements done. If you want the loot from him, you can clear TK. It ensures that all of your raiders get to see the Kael fight (rather than a scroll idea which allows them to skip it) but doesn't subject you to wasting 4 hours clearing a dungeon you don't want to.

If it's caverns of time, it's close proximity to hyjal too, so you can attune people before you go zone in. You're not giving anyone "free" attunement, you're still requiring a kael kill and a vashj kill. What you're taking out is the need for killing all the trash and all the bosses that your raid is so tired of.

He'd be a lot like C'thun was at the point that Naxx came out - most people abandoned AQ40 and just dove into Naxx progression instead.

Omg what is the name of the artist and song in that video?? so gooood!
I've had the video on repeat for 2 hours now with rly loud volume xD

As someone previously mentioned, I don't think the problem is with the raid zone or placement of the bosses themselves as it has to do with the timing of the BT/Hyjal release. Think for a minute if BT/Hyjal were out in 2.2 and guilds has a month or 2 after killing kael/vashj to exclusively farm them. Would you still think they were out of sync? Would attunements, assuming the quests were doable, still be out of line? The problem is that guilds were given too much content too quickly, which while it is good to have a lot of stuff to do, you often cannot take in and enjoy every part of it if you want to progress.

IMHO BT/Hyjal shouldn't have come out for another month after they did at least. Sure they were ready but I would have had a much more enjoyable time if we had time to attune/gear people up while waiting for it. That being said I am much more excited about the release of sunwell than I was BT/Hyjal for this very reason.

omgosh me2! U shuld put it on ur myspace.

ugh

Hasn't kael been nerfed a bit already? Lowering the HP on his shock barrier? My guild just killed kael this week, took us maybe 6-7 total raids, we had it to 1% on our 4th kael raid I believe. We also have extremely high raider turnover, infact we probably replaced 5-6 players and a main tank since our first night of kael attempts. It is a hard fight but definitely doable.

We really have no intention to farm kael beyond attunement, most of us are so sick of ssc/tk already we just want to move on. The ease in acquiring arena gear gives us another form of character advancement that we just don't want to farm pve gear. The only members in our guild that want to farm ssc/tk are those who solely pve. Kael difficulty has no influence on whether we want to farm him, we'd just rather hit up arena's than farm boring ssc/tk.

Its not too bad having a cockblock boss where it is at, helped us weed out players we don't want. It also allows more casual guilds to have a challenging encounter early on. Most players have never attempted 4 horseman, kael is relatively easy to get to when you consider the difficulty of TK itself.

For the record, I am not whining on "how hard" Kael'thas or Vashj are. I think they are both enjoyable and well-designed fights.

I just think its disappointing that I won't see Vashj or Kael'thas for more than 2-3 raids, sans having to recruit. And even then... It'd probably be better for others to get in. I am a holy priest, we usually only run 1 holy priest on Vashj. If we had to attune another holy priest or something (which was the case), I won't get in.

This is what's disappointing me with their placement. I've been killing Void Reaver for months, but I get to kill Kael'thas 2-3 times? That's the disappointment to me.

I'm quite happy with where they are placed. If they were further up in the instance, then you'd see even more stagnant progression from the numerous guilds that seem to be bogged down in SSC/TK. As fun as Kael and Vashj were for my guild, I could see them ripping guilds apart if players aren't ready for it.

Both those bosses are at the end of their respective instances because they are definitely the hardest/most complicated bosses in the zone (at least, in my view).

Would I like to be able to revisit the zones and *just* do Vashj and Kael? Sure, especially coming from the perspective of a guild officer whose guild hasn't seen a single Vashj healing mace or caster DPS robe - both items that can last until Illidan. Also, I think we've killed Kael a grand total of 4 times (but got 1 mount, woohoo!).

Even then, as Aramul stated above, I'd rather remember those fights fondly than grind them into the ground a la Ragnaros and Nefarian in vanilla WoW. We only raid for 12-14 hours a week, and being able to move on to new content quickly has been a godsend for us. I could see guilds that spend 20-25 hours raiding each week playing around a bit more, as both Kael and Vashj drop some amazing items. It's all about options, and even though I don't like a lot of what Blizzard has done in TBC raiding-wise (stacking, for example), the ability to choose to move on or stay and farm is good.

I always prefered fighting Ragnaros and Nefarian to their respective instances by a large margin because they were harder and better designed. Actually I never got tired of them despite killing them over and over. Some bosses are getting old really fast just like trashmobs (Ebonroc, Firemaw, Flamegor were just stupid) but others can be fun for a much longer time. Clearing the way to these bosses tends to be a chore, though.
Although this will never happen I'd love to be able to skip parts of Raidinstances after you have cleared it for the first time so you can concentrate on the good stuff and not be bored to death by repeating the poorly designed parts or killing bosses dropping nothing but shards weekly.

I always thought that once you got exalted with Hydraxian's you should just be able to summon Ragnaros. Only catch, everyone needed to be exalted.

I did read earlier about someone mentioning "heroic raid instances". Seems kind of like a neat idea. Add some newfangle rep to SSC/TK and then require "revered" or "exalted" to zone into a "heroic" version which would house the bosses.

What do people think about an idea like this?

It seems unlikely that Blizzard is going to spend tons of time reworking TBC raids or introducing new raid modes (heroic), they want to push out ZA/Sunwell and then work fulltime on the expansion. At best you'll see the keying requirements for Hyjal/BT eased or dropped.

I'm also quite relieved that I don't have to reclear SSC/TK every week. We killed Vashj 10 times and Kael I think 7 or 8 times before we stopped doing them. Some people will say that you don't need loot from there to progress in Hyjal, and it's probably not "needed", but many people want it and it makes things a lot easier.
The unfortunate thing about Kael and Vashj is that they have a very low number of best in game items. T5 for a few classes, Kael's neck for a few classes, and a few items here and there that will not be replaced until you have farmed Black Temple/Hyjal extensively and even then not for everyone.

One of the problems with lack of attention for these two bosses is that their gear drops just don't cut it. We had a Crown of the Sun King 6 times. Now that on its own is not a bad thing, but it's just a healing headpiece that is not only comparable but downright inferior to T5. End boss loot should be compelling to gather so you always have a reason to go back, even if you don't "need" it. Like Neltharion's Tear or a lot of the C'thun drops, which remained best in game for a very long time and at least for us, always had people interested in joining for AQ/BWL.

This is also a point that is of personal annoyance to me. Kael'thas is the great leader of the Blood Elves and his loot is inferior to some random foot soldier guy in Black Temple? (Well, okay, I am overexaggerating a little).

But still, lore wise we have Illidan being rescued by Kael'thas and Lady Vashj, and yet their loot doesn't really express this?

Ragnaros and C'thun were good examples (for the most part, T2 leggings kinda sucked) in my opinion.

On a side-note, and I believe I am off-tracking my own thread here. I am annoyed that Lady Vashj, renowned as one of the best and elite archers in the world of Azeroth, rivaled by Alleria and Sylvanas... does not have the best bow in the game. And it's going to be somewhat disappointing to see some random legendary bow in Sunwell. Could-of atleast had its roots on Vashj or something. Similar to the Thunderfury >.> Although, I guess people dislike such thing.

We obviously haven't seen the last of Kael, so there's no reason to think we've seen the last of vashj either.

Being one of the best archers in the Warcraft universe doesn't mean much, just look at Shandris Feathermoon, who's a fairly anonymous non-elite questgiver in Feralas.

Besides, if it can be found in the Sunwell Plateau then chances are it'll have its roots at the Windrunner sisters.

Whatever the roots are, I hope it'll at least have good lore behind it. I hate how random weapons like Sulfuras and Thunderfury are legendary while something like Gorehowl isn't. For me, the only truly legendary weapon in the game at the moment is Atiesh.

It's obvious Kael is still alive, but do we have any reason to assume Vashj as not dead?

Because raid bosses don't die unless Blizzard come out and say "Yup, you killed him good"

This is honestly one of the points that somewhat confuses me when people compare their SSC and TK clear times. Assuming that you've killed Vashj, killed Kael'thas, and have both on good farm status (and presumably everything below them) I don't see SSC as taking a signifigantly longer period of time. Our guild initially got flack for bragging when an ex-member made a video of our 2 hour SSC clear, but in all honesty.. we clear SSC in comparable time to our TK clears, sometimes pushing to nearly shorter clears. The trash rarely requires full "breaks" to drink like some of the TK trash does and the bosses generally allow you to finish the encounter and move to trash almost immediately because once you have them down there is minimal rezing and drinking needing to be done.

Is there just something that we're doing other guilds aren't doing that makes us particularly good at SSC that I may not be putting a finger on? I've regularly seen 2 hour TK clears mentioned, which is approximately what we look at.. but then people speak about SSC like its much longer. How long do most guilds that have SSC on farm take to clear it?

As regards farming the instances.. I think that its totally worth it both from a standpoint of gain(easy stuff that yields a net gain in gold and gear) and because while you don't _need_ the gear to beat BT.. the later encounters in it will certainly be easier if everyone in your raid is in 4/5 Tier 5 and so on. The fact it also affords you getting your healers offspec gear to keep them happier as you progress further seems to be another benefit to it. Unless you absolutely cannot get net time against new bosses without skipping SSC/TK, I think that it is well worth doing them.