In all honesty, SSC takes us 2 days minimum around 5.5 hours or so.

Mostly it's because nobody takes it seriously anymore since we're deep into BT and thus attunement runs were few and extemely far between, to the point where we are sticking with our current roster come hell or high water so we don't have to go back there to see people fall asleep on Morogrim : b

I can't conceive of a method to do SSC in 2 hours, do you skip Lurker trash or something? I mean, that would shave off a good 30 mins easily if your group can handle running on spout.

...I couldn't resist:

Ferry Corsten - Fire

People seem to forget that pre-TBC the raid didn't need to focus that much in order to kill things once they were on 'farm'. You could take 10~ item buyers per BWL raid and still have no problems even if your raiders were going half-assed about it and getting drunk on VT.

TBC raids require alot more focus, constantly, which burns most people out and they start wanting to just skip it and as a result it has happened.

How long did people keep doing BWL after AQ, and to an extent Naxx came out? I dont believe many people stopped, it was an easy raid zone once it was learned and your gear advantage made significant difference in the attention needed from the raid.

I could never imagen doing a SSC/TK 'sell run' even though with vortex abundant and epics unwanted it seems plausable.

There-in lies the problem from my eyes, you cannot out-gear Vashj and Kael into oblivion, nor can you play your drunken games and kill people on the trash in TK.

Heck I could potentially see us doing a BT 'sell run' more than I could a TK/SSC one, the trash and general focus requirement seems lower untill the later half of the instance.


To slide back onto topic, Vashj feels easier than Kael, which is why he initially seemed abit odd in the placement of raiding. Its not that individually they are poorly placed, but its when people hold them in comparison things seem abit odd.

The only trash we skip is the trash that you would kill if you took the Morogrim path at the Leo or Morogrim fork. We chain pull all of the trash in zone, including giants, for what that is worth though. Nothing is really done out of order or anything. Maybe we just have people paying more attention through SSC than most BT level guilds thanks to officers doing their best to make us feel like scrubs if we do wipe to anything. We're not going in with a partiucularly DPS stacked or abnormal raid anytime we do it, and often have 1-2 people who are at our friend non-raider rank involved. We're going to do a clear tonight of both, so I'll try to specificially pay attention during our SSC run to see if there is anything that seems abnormal that we do. I really can't think of anything off the top of my head however.

I don't think they should put in something like that. Yes, I realize it would only be for people who have killed the end boss but it just trivializes the whole concept of raiding to give people passes to pick and choose what bosses they will farm.

In regards to Kael and Vashj's positions... I think Vashj is fine. Phase 1 and 3 really aren't that challenging and Phase 2 is learnable in a week by a guild good enough to clear to her. I hesitate to say Kael'thas is 'out of place' -- it's more of a case where everything in Black Temple and Hyjal is arguably 'easier' in terms of strategy and execution. It's a well designed encounter and should be left unchanged.

I'm really astonished that some raids find Vashj be more difficult than Kael. At the moment we try to buy Vashj IDs in order to get some of the nice loot from her without having to clear the instance. Even with a B crew we in general kill her within 3 tries, if the A team is on, she is virtually on farm. Kael otoh can be very tiresome if you don't oneshot him because his effect on the concentration of the raid (at least for us). We really don't want to do any T5 content anymore. We have attuned those folks that matter and in general we tend to shard most of the stuff before Kael/Vashj since we tend to have very one sided loots from most bosses.
Even if you rush through SSC in 2,5 hours, its still one evening you don't spend in progression raids.

To answer the op: I think Vashj's placement is absolutely perfect. She is difficult but can be mastered in a reasonable time. Kael on the other hand can be a wand of concrete for some raids who don't have such a consistent attendance as most BT/Hyal guilds have. Which is why I understand they want to change it somehow. Most hardcore raids have mastered the fight and won't be affected all that much by it. Those who are not quite as hardcore will have a smoother progression which is ok in my book. I wouldn't call him out of place though: killing him will push your raids morale to new heigths (and I think the ups and downs of raiding are one of the most fascinating aspects of raiding).

I think the fact that TK is the more boring, poorly designed raid zone Blizzard has ever pushed out doesn't help Kael at all. It makes peopel keen and eager to push past him, despite his (somewhat) great loot and the fun fight.

i) Insane trash, even post nerf, that one shots any cloth wearer with multiple AE attacks in tight, small corridors

ii) DULL mobs. Every mob is a blood elf apart from Void Reaver's wing.

iii) The most uninspiring geometry ever. Even MC had curves and bends and twists. After the fun that was Arcatraz and Botanica to suddenly find Kael holding up in what appears to be a bright pink aircaft hangar is dissapointing.

iv) Poorly designed bosses. Al'ar is the only vaguely interesting one, and even he isn't much fun compared to Lurker or Leotheras. Void Reaver and Solarian simply scream "an intern designed me".

v) Trash respawn on Kael is just beyond stupid. Netharion didnt have it, Cthun didnt have it, Kel'Thuzad didn't have it, Vashj didnt have it - why does Kael need it? Trash that only spawns when he does is ridiculous. Heck, the run back to him takes long enough...

Farming Kael would be a lot more popular if the zone around him were better designed. As it is, if they remove attunement to BT / Hyjal, I'd tell people to learn SSC, because the zone is now fun and good practice, and just skip TK straight up.

There is a precedent for "go to the end" in WoW, as imperfect a precedent as it might be.

In AQ20, you coud go Kurinaxx, Rajaxx, Ossirian, skipping several bosses along the way. AQ40 was less extreme, but the ability to bypass the bugs, the alliance-killer (Visc) and the worm, made the ludicrous trip to C'thun (lengthwise, altho the time eventually was a manageable 2 1/2 hours) a tad more manageable.

What's different I guess it that for many of us (the middle of the pack and better), BWL went from taking 4-5 hours for a clear to about 2 and change. So, you know, excessively overfarming it was no big deal. Never mind the fact that at least for a while, we spent a lot of time sucking in AQ40 and were able to justify BWL time because, well, the 11 billionth wipe on Sartura was only so much fun.

Unless they massively nerf SSC and TK, no one is going to farm them for a full raid's worth of cycles. Not when easier bosses and "better loot" are sitting around in Hyjal and BT. Not when excessively Hyjal runs at least offer tremendously nice rings, while excessive SSC runs offer, um... yeah... what was it they offered?

The part where everyone wants to complete their sets is a bit outdated in the 5-piece set era. And it's kinda hard to imagine getting everyone a T5 chest with 12+ Kael kills. Tokenized loot -- off on a tangent -- was a great step. But you're going to be killing Reaver way more times than Kael period. It's a shame there isn't a way to set the raid on "we're kinda done" mode and allow the bosses to drop a partial token for a helm or chestpiece in lieu of the shoulders/legs/gloves token. This creates its own set of problems, so even though I just wrote it, I'm not really convinced it's a good idea.

Short and to the point: If the intent of Kael and Vashj was for them to be killed repeatedly, then it was a failure. If you believe, as I do, that they were both great encounters that provided entry into better content (while giving killer loot at the time), then I believe they did their job.

Their position as major lore characters juxtaposed with their placement in TBC raiding seems very appropriate to me (as I consider Illidan a far more compelling lore character on the whole).

That isn't to say I wouldn't be happier with the old system of "rolling out" new instances incrementally (I surely did prefer this), but I think the question posed in the thread title is more a symptom of the problem than the problem itself, which to me is the release pacing of raid content.

One solution would be to substantially increase the amount of loot that drops of say Kael. make it 12 or 15 items instead of 5 or 6.

More is useless, better would be a more appropriate thing. There is a distinct lack of items for certain slots anyway, could have added those to Kael and Vashj.

Kael has some extremely poorly itemised items on his loot table that discourage peopel from coming back. The healing hat and dps cloth gloves in particular make me wonder what is going on over there - Tier 4 mage set gloves are better than the ones Kael drops.

It seems they've tried to mimic the design of the old world raid dungeons.


Now I know on our server quite a few guilds went to AQ40 when it first came out and farmed up to Huhuran before killing nef. They got on par gear with nef (worse in some parts) and if they were lucky enough to get some armaments they got an awesome weapon.

A ton more guilds went and cleared out a lot of nax before touching c'thun or even TE sometimes. The loot here was much better than AQ40 and helped gear up the raid over the honestly lackluster loot in AQ.


Now it seems like they've tried to mimic the design here. You go through the instances, gear up, start on Kael. You have a few wipes but to keep people happy you might go to Hyjal or BT and clear out the first 2 or 3 bosses. This keeps people interested and attendance up, as well as gearing you better for Kael (although not really a gear fight).

The obvious flaw in this logic is the attunement quests.


Lets go back to the old world comparisons. Imagine if Nefarion had been required to enter AQ40. Thats not a major deal I don't think. Some guilds would have been hit but when you combine the fact that AQ loot, especially the early stuff, was a small upgrade or even a downgrade from much of early to mid Tier 2 loot, and that Nefarion wasn't a massive challenge really, it was just beating out the niggling details and getting your P1 + P3 tactics down, then most guilds wouldn't have been too fussed.

But imagine if C'thun had been required to enter Nax. The guilds entering there would have been cut back enormously. C'thun was often cited as the hardest fight in the game before 4H, and harder than Sapphiron.

This is simliar to the situation now. Had attunement been kill Al'ar and Leotheras we'd not have seen the huge block or divide in guilds up to Kael'thas and then after. Whether its a problem or not is up to the individual but I'd say that perhaps BT attunement should have required Kael, wheras MH attunement should have just been Vashj.

I agree with those who feel that the placement of Kael and Vashj is perfectly fine, and that the only problem is backflagging new recruits. As has been said previously, if they were to remove Kael from the attunement to Hyjal, very few guilds would even bother to kill him. Personally I like the fact that he's harder than early BT and Hyjal because I find it more preferable than going from MC to BWL and having a major shocker when your raid is slaughtered by the steep difficulty change.

As the leader of a guild who just killed Kael last week, I can already see the nightmare of backflagging people. We just got a couple new recruits who need their Vashj vial so we have to reclear SSC, and our veterans are already lamenting it because they are so sick of that zone. I can only imagine how bad it will be a month down the line if we have to repeat the process. So that leaves me with two options, I can either not accept apps who don't have their Vashj vial (and later on Kael) which would significantly reduce the recruitment pool, or I can drag my guild back through SSC to get new recruits their vials. Neither is a particularly enticing option.

The encounters themselves are fine, the initial attunements are fine, all Blizzard has to do is address the backflagging issue and I think most reasonable people would be satisfied.