Zindel

The recent start of school year probably affected a good deal of guilds out there. For guilds that are 2-5/5 Hyjal and 2-8/9 in BT this has been an extra cause of stress. As a rule, I like to have a little bit extra manpower to ensure that losing people doesn't cause the guild to collapse. To me, having around 35 raiders seems ideal. 9 healers, 4 tanks and 23 dps is the numbers I wanted to keep in the guild. It worked well throughout learning SSC/TK and when a person can no longer play, we'd be able to replace him/her fairly quickly as we have a decent reputation on the server/battlegroup.

In BT, I feel the attunments are getting in the way of adapting to the changes a guild goes through. In pre-BC, I'd interview the app, decided whether he's a good addition or not, and got him right into raiding. In early BC, all I'd have to do is take him through our next 45minute Gruul clear and our Karazhan over the weekend to get right into SSC.

In T6 content, however, it takes a little bit more than a 45 minute raid and a weekend 10 man to get a replacement. I'd have to schedule 5-6 hours of raid time into otherwise useless content just to prepare an app that may or may not continue to raid with the guild. We raid 22.5 hours a week. For a guild that's halfway through BT, that leaves very little room to progress time for the week.

For us, and we're 7/9 BT, this hadn't been a problem. We had to do one round of attuning after killing Archimonde and this group is still around as we're killing council Sunday and Illidan shortly afterwards. I feel Blizzard made a great choice in allowing non raiders to have gear good enough to jump right into raiding via craftables, heroic badges, and arena gear. I do feel, however, that attunmets can be done better.

A simple solution, off the top of my head, is to have the attunment boss be in a short, Gruul-like instance. The instance could have several things to ensure only a raid that's beaten previous content can enter it such as a gear check first boss, or a quest item (like the molten core vials required to summon Majordomo) to summon the boss of said instance. I liked the SSC attunment as it required little raid time to get people prepared, I don't like that losing one paladin means I have to spend 5-6 hours of my raid time just to replace him.

Having Magtheridon require T5 dps for P1, a T5 tank to survive through P2-3, and require three people to have completed vials of eternity quest to be able to summon him means a raid can simply do a full Hyjal clear then a quick attunment run for that third paladin who's replacing the one you just lost for the new school year/start of summer...etc

 

Emeraude

The reason that attunements are so unforgiving in BC is because all the content was basically ready to go from day one(Maybe, over tuned, but that's a different argument).

In WoW Classic MC had a simple 5-man, BWL had the 10-man run, AQ40 had the War Effort(Ugh), and Naxx made you pay gold and items to get in.

The difference is, WoW Classic gave you that content every 3-4 months or so, while in BC the attunement process seems to go around the idea that forcing the players to go back into old content over and over again for whatever reason is a good idea(See: Original Heroic Runs for SSC/TK for all your guildmates/apps, and now the runs for SSC/TK for guilds in BT/Hyjal).

The irony is that the heroic runs were pretty bad to begin with, but in comparison to having to run SSC/TK for your apps, they're not so bad are they?

 

Zipher

The only reason the 25 man attunement quests are worse is because you can't require applicants to have it completed (Unless you're one of the very top guilds). If you're the only guild able to kill Vashj or Kael, you'd have to rely solely on cross server applicants if you require the vials; and really what person interested in raiding is going to xfer to a server with such stagnant progression? The heroics on the other hand were actually a good filtering system and it was a reasonable expectation to have of applicants.

They could always add very difficult 5 man encounters as alternatives, but design them expecting everyone in the group has max t5/some t6 gear. That way me and 3 guildmates could run an applicant through attunements on a weekend instead of wasting raid nights.

 

Zindel

Something like the Zul'aman timed finish would be another good choice for attunments. I actually didn't mind both parts, a scroll on Archimonde wouldn't be bad either.

 

Vhex

Simply put, attunement should work as such: If at least 10/25 of your guild members are attuned, everybody in the guild is attuned by proxy so long as they wear the tag. Attunement should be about proving you're ready for the next zone. Not proof that you can grit your teeth and farm trivial content,

 

Grogzor

Since BT and Mount Hyjal have been out for a decent amount of time, do you think its a good idea for Blizzard to drop the Attunement Requirement to them?

 

Russta

I've always held a utopia of raiding with the same 25 people every single day - it doesn't work. Granted, I came close and we survived with only 27 people for a decent amount of time but, ultimately, when just a small amount of people need the same time off you suddenly find yourself unable to field a raid.

We recruited a few cross server people and did another attunement run and held together with about 30 people until we got to Illidan a few weeks ago. Let me tell you something, standing in front of a passive, slouching Illidan without enough members in the raid is a very humbling experience. So, we recruited and attuned seven fantastic new members and made our first real set of attempts at Illidan on Thursday night (19%...).

I think Zipher's post above really summerises the entire situation perfectly. Our server is dead so people don't want to come here. We've been the only guild in BT for over two months and, after merging with two other guilds, the second best on our server has finally made it in there too, without great success I believe. If things don't work out with us, it's a long way down. Not that we can even consider transfers - we're transfering ourselves to Mal'ganis in the middle of November.

So where does that leave us? A tiny pool of talent to pick from, a server nobody wants to go to, no real right to demand people have the Vials and no other guild to do it for us. The thought of personally doing SSC and Vashj again right now along with putting up with all the bitching of my guildies who feel the same way makes me want to off myself. Which sucks, because I'd like to fill a few holes I believe we still have.

I really want them to do something with attunements sometime soon. Remember all the bitching when they lifted TK and SSC attunements? Can you imagine how it would be now if you had to ensure that anyone you wanted in your BT raid had to do all the Naaru trials, the full quest line in Karazhan then go through all of SSC and TK with you? I don't for a second think they should allow people to just stroll into BT and Hyjal; Kael'thas should never become something to truly circumvent, but they need to do something to allow us to backflag new members.

I'm curious as to what the attunement for the Sunwell is going to be. It would be nice if Blessed Medallion of Karabor is all that's required, but then that gives us the same problem if there's no method of backflagging in the future.

 

Grogzor

Back in vanilla WoW, a few guilds would ultimately get stuck on Twin Emps/Ouro/Cthun and when Naxx came out there was nothing stopping those guilds from going to Naxx. And they did, they were more then easily able to beat some of the bosses in Naxx and when they got the gear they needed to overpower the AQ40 end bosses, they did. I don't see why this wouldn't work now, do you?

 

Lansky

We were in more or less this same place about a month ago and it sucks I feel for you. We had Archimonde down, and were around Bloodboil or so in BT then lost a bunch of people to various things. Recruiting on a server that has one other horde guild killing Vashj, not Kael, but Vashj and has never even had 2 guilds farming Solarian at the same time... bleh. Since the push through BT/Hyjal started I think we've picked up maybe 5 or 6 people from our server and that was only possible because one of the mid level SSC/TK guilds fell apart at an opportune time for us. Other than that you have to convince apps to come and try out, which is a slow process when you explain to them that getting them keyed is one of the last things on your priority list and if you decide not to pick them up their only option is to try and kill Kael with a different guild that is working on him as 99% of our transfer apps were in 3/4 KT guilds, a shock I know.

Obviously the issue is the entire Hyjal attunement which to me doesn't even make sense from a lore standpoint. We need to go get the remaining vials of water leftover from the Well of Eternity in order to help the Scales of the Sand... do what in Hyjal? Has anyone ever figured out why we are there, or why we need the vials so desperately to enter? From a game mechanics standpoint this is the bottleneck (duh). Clearing all of SSC/TK to get an app to enter this instance is time consuming and annoying. When your options are go attempt Illidan or attune apps in T5 instances no one is happy.

I have no new interesting ideas on how to circumvent this issue. Various decent ideas have come forawrd such as the stack of BoE vials on KT/Vashj, an attunement scroll on Archimonde, and some others. I do not believe these will ever make it into the game at this point (prove me wrong blizzard) but I hope we never see such a guild straining sequence of events in the future just over keys. Difficult encounters should make guilds stress when they are progessing, not the fact that even a guild raiding 6 days a week has to devote roughly one third of their dedicated raid time just to going back and attuning apps, if you only raid 4-5 days a week this gets even more daunting. Blizzard can learn lessons, hopefully they will learn this one.

 

Sapp

Note, though, that when Sunwell comes out they'll likely drop the Hyjal attunement quest. They did for SSC/TK when Black Temple was officially announced.

(Probably not the BT attunement though, since it's so fast and is directly linked with the item you need to even get in (plus it's cool, lol retribroken))

 

Lymmel

I think dropping the vashj vial requirement would be a good start. Most guilds have been doing vashj for some time before they kill kael and the vashj part of the attunement seems unnecessary considering kael is essentially the BT/Hyjal gatekeeper. Vice versa or only 1/2 vials wouldn't work either as a lot of people would just skip Kael. Kael is the ultimate t5 challenge and killing him should give you access to BT. They could just lift the attunements ofcourse which I wouldn't mind either, but I am guessing they are afraid of BT/Hyjal losing their glamour as a new wave of 4/5 Hyjal 3-5/9 BT guilds becomes the normal.

As for attuning recruits, while we have felt its effect on us and the whine involved in doing ssc/tk one more time, guilds who are keeping a roster below or close to 30 people are really asking for trouble. Weird things happen all the time and as it was generally concluded in this forum on another thread keeping a roster below 35 people requires knowing and trusting your people more than most guilds in wow can I believe. We now have 42 raid members and while putting something on farm or learning it is taking a bit longer indeed, we at least never had to cancel a raid during most of TBC and generally whine about standby hasn't ever been significant. But each to his own I guess.

 

Wintern

Dropping the Hyjal attunement in 2.3 would be fine in my opinion, I really don't mind them dropping attunements as long as they don't do it too early, but once the instance is well and truely beaten I don't see much point to keeping them there. I do think attunements are a good idea though in general if they are done right, as long as Blizzard release raid instances all at once they are needed, or guilds will skip the lower tier raids and go straight for the higher ones.

 

Whitemane

I don't know why they didn't extend the scroll idea from Vashj/Kael into BT/MH, it doesn't make any sense.

Preferably though, I'd like something along the lines of 20 people in a raid require the attunement done and then have 5 free slots where you can put non attuned people in. When you defeat the final boss, you then get a BoP item to attune these last people.

One of these two approaches would be good and are in fact needed. The pain of re-running SSC/TK to attune applicants is a real problem. We have so many applications and they all read "I'm not attuned to BT/MH I just need Vashj + Kael." and I grit my teeth every single time, because it basically means it'll be a week with close to no progress for us if we decide to recruit that person. We've had people on trial for two to three weeks waiting to get their attunements done, simply because it's not a huge priority to do really when you only have one or two that needs it. You always want to stretch it that further that you can get all your recruits done in one go.

 

LucidityAxel

A good compromise between the current situation and no attunements at all would be for both Vashj and Kael to drop both vials.

New raid groups would still need to finish all of either SSC or TK, and established tier6 groups would only need to do one zone or the other to backflag applicants and new recruits.

 

Lymmel

Was the scroll idea such a great one really? By the time we were killing kael we would hardly recruit anyone who hadn't done those heroics once for gearing/attuning purposes. It was kinda redundant really, maybe some people missed magtheridon but that was honestly something not at all hard to get for them. Same for vashj more or less, even if that attunement was much much easier.

I don't see how putting scrolls in Illidan/Archimonde would really help as by the time you kill them it's unlikely to recruit anyone who isn't attuned. Ever since we passed RoS we have pretty much have found an attuned person to replace people who quit, the problem is more persistent when you are new to the instance, and scrolls on Illidan won't help you much.

 

Brakar

The problem is when there is no one else on your server and faction in T6 zones. You either can ONLY recruit from off server, or you have to go back and run SSC/TK to get people attuned. A perfect example of this is Juggernaut on Doomhammer: WowJutsu: World of Warcraft Guild Rankings: Doomhammer

They first killed Illidan two months ago but there still isn't another horde guild in MH/BT. It drastically reduces your recruiting pool because there is no one on the server that can have the attunements done.

From a guild "attunement" standpoint I don't have much problem with Kael and Vashj being required. The problem is how much of a headache it is for anyone new you're going to need to recruit. While it's not quite as bad as the only guild in MH/BT it's also a problem if you're the least progressed into MH/BT for whatever reason. You're still mostly restricted to either attune people or take server transfers as it's unlikely someone from a further advanced guild will drop down.

 

Zraknul

I don't mind having to attune applicants. If they don't have the vials, they don't know vashj and kael so you can see how they perform on challenging new fights (to them). Their screw ups here probably won't wipe you, and you are practiced enough to not need 100% focus to see them on action on these fights.

We've been clearing Illidan since the end of August, and that doesn't mean we've exhausted all useful gear off T5 content. In the pacing thread people mentioned they feel they didn't get enough time to farm the rare drops or things that just randomly haven't dropped; attuning apps through them gives you more chances. An app denied who got an upgrade along the way (on gear that was other wise getting sharded), while probably still feeling bad, can at least point to something positive gained in addition to the experience.

 

Zwink

Having scrolls on Illidan/Archimonde certainly doesn't solve the problem for guilds progressing through BT/Hyjal, however it does make things easier and more convenient for an Illidan killing guild. It would allow me to give people a chance that I would otherwise not look at because I don't want to drag the guild back to SSC and TK.

http://vodka-guild.com

 

Skulli

We cleared SSC/TK every week since entering Hyjal/BT. We only skipped TK once during the week killing Illidan for the first time.
But i must say we raided 6days / week then and 5hrs and sometimes more a night.
With like 4 raid nights i can see the problem with having not enough days to have progress nights. But even then its possible. If you are slow you can do ssc/tk in 2 days. 1 day for farmable content and 1 day for progress.

 

Kuai

When the Sunwell comes out and the attunement is just having killed Illidan, then would it make sense to have Akama stand around after the instance is cleared and give an item that gives them a short quest in order to get a Medallion of Karabor to backflag them? I assume most guilds will drop Hyjal when Sunwell comes out and can do BT to attune new recruits/get them geared and ready for Sunwell.

 

Lansky

This goes on to complicate the issue further to me. To get into BT, you have to have acess to Hyjal. To get acess to Hyjal you have to have cleared all of SSC/TK. Back to square one. Unless you are also saying that T6 attunements should just be lifted at this time. There are still no other horde guilds in T6 content on Mannoroth and i'm not so sure there ever will be either. Short story we went from 3/4TK to a full clear on T6 content in the time it took one guild to fall apart on Kael and another guild to just now get to a point where they can begin attempts on him. Our server is by far and wide not alone in having this type of monstrous gap between the top and the rest. I'm afraid requiring BT to enter Sunwell will just further this gap if nothing is changed.

 

Metrosexuelf

That's it in a nutshell -- it all goes back to the pacing argument. In hindsight I think it was an extremely poor way to stagger out TBC content.

My guess is that sometime before Sunwell comes out the attunements to BT/Hyjal will be dropped. Sunwell attunement will probably be something as simple as a quest completed in the new 5 man in heroic mode. I would be pretty surprised if it required killing Illidan. Archimonde... maybe... but not Illidan.

 

Kuai

Bring me a fragment of Kael'Thas' robe and a chip of Archimonde's horn and I shall fashion you a disguise to wear so you may infiltrate The Sunwell Plateau disguised as the zombie remains of Archimonde wearing Kael'Thas' pants.

 

Kiryojo

Dammit man, don't give them any ideas.

 

Jeffrey

When it comes to who does which instances, most guilds fall in one of the following categories:
GROUP 0 ("casual"):
- Full normal 5man and easier (avoiding "hard" heroics) heroics: Non-raiding guilds.
- Any heroic and half T4 ("Prince but not Nightbane"): Kara guilds.
GROUP 1:
- Maulgar farming guilds (Gruul not a "reliable" farm despite having killed, no real chance at Mag): Early 25 man guilds.
- Close-to-full T4 (Kara, Gruul sometimes Mag) and parts of t5 (VR/Lurker): Early SSC/TK guilds.
GROUP 2:
- "Fast" T4 and middle T5 guilds (T4 in hope for a prince weapon/DST - sometimes done on alts): Middle SSC/TK guilds.
- Close-to-full T5 (working on Vashj/Kael): Nearly-cleared SSC/TK guilds.
GROUP 3:
- Full T5, early T6 (just killed Vashj/Kael): Starting BT/Hyjal guilds.
- Middle T6 (on RoS): Mid BT/Hyjal guilds.
- Full T6-clearing: Illidan-clearing guilds. Currently out of content.

Advancing in groups is a hard thing to do and it's where a lot of guilds get stuck. You can't really recruit people from a group lower - they're undergeared or underattuned. Undergeared isn't that much of a problem when you're DE'ing half of the loot, underattuned though...

What a good attunement needs:
1) Minimum exploit potential to avoid completing the attunement as a group
2) Minimal chance to be a problem when odd group setups are required (ie: doable on alt with relative ease)
3) Should not require a guild which is far beyond (half to fully clearing) tier X to clear tier X minus 1 content
4) Should not be too hard to organize a completion; doesn't require many players (and they can possibly be alts), requires a small amount of time or has potential to drop items which are useful for everyone for a above-normal time.

The heroic keys meet NONE of these; Cenarion Expedition can be soloed to Revered, but especially tanks/healers are not very likely to have done so. Some servers are totally beyond normal mode instances to the point where you can't effectively rep grind. Alts probably haven't done normal instances much but often have good enough crafted gear.
The Karazhan attunement by itself meets all of these; a Kara guild wanting to backflag someone could run the attunement instances in heroic mode and a Kara guild should still have some use for badges.
The original SSC attunement met 1 but not 2-4. After the huge Gruul/Nightbane nerf point 3 was the only problem remaining.
The original TK attunement didn't meet any except 1, and even then you could exploit it in various ways (swapping people for the final bosses/Arca mass attunement). Everyone needed their own heroic keys to even think of getting attuned and the heroics were a huge pain in the ass too. In addition, the standard 3/7/15 raid setup did not translate very well into 1/1/3.
The Hyjal attunement only meets point 1. It really gets in the way to the point where raiders are split into two groups - Hyjal attuned, not Hyjal attuned. You need to fully clear both SSC/TK to get a single person attuned so attuning is a huge hassle.
The BT attunement basically comes along for free with the Hyjal attunement and isn't a real problem by itself (altough the 5 man chain part could be pretty hard to do these days).

Solutions which could work:
- Additional guild attunement after killing "checkpoint" bosses in BT/Hyjal, Gorefiend and Azgalor seem perfect judging from wowjutsu. Kill boss with at least X players from guild Y, guild Y is perma attuned. Exploit potential if the whole server joins the same ingame guild (but in different raidgroups still). Doesn't do anything for raiding alliances unless X is very low which would give exploit potential.
- Scrolls in the middle of the instance. Again, Gorefiend/Azgalor seem perfect checkpoints for guilds to stop saying "we don't need anything from T5 content".
- For every 4 attuned players entering a raid instance, one unattuned player can enter as well. Naj'entus and Winterchill drop begins a quest items to kill Gorefiend/Azgalor which give you attunement. Need to make sure that players don't tag along somehow - perhaps make it one quest requiring a kill of both and providing attunement to both. This is basically like scrolls except they need to have actually killed the bosses.
- Zul'Aman speed clear providing BT/Hyjal attunement. The speed clear is supposed to require late-T5 gear and thus should hopefully be doable in 9 people with early T6 and 1 slightly undergeared.




Having that said, what's probably going to happen is that Blizzard hotfixes Hyjal attunement out but keeps BT. My guess is a hotfix after 2.4. A guild would still have to kill Fathomlord and Al'ar to get BT attuned and Vashj/Kael drop some very good loot - and should be a bit easier in a bit of T6 gear.
I'm really hoping they'll learn for WotLK but I doubt it. In particular, AQ was a good thing, it's just the grinding parts that sucked (pretty badly). It wasn't THAT uncommon for early BWL guilds to gear up in really-early AQ40 but it really helped with progress (and gave people something to look forward to).