Coming back and clearing Magtheridon or Gruul meant that you went and spent a night trying Magtheridon or Gruul instead of a night bashing your head against an encounter you wouldn't beat in SSC/TK. The loot from Magtheridon and Gruul weren't all that far off the SSC/TK loot. The BT/Hyjal loot is a big, big step up. From the perspective of a 3/4, 5/6 guild, we'd probably have difficulty even getting people to keep farming every boss besides Kael'thas and Vashj in addition to working on BT/Hyjal - learning Vashj or Kael would be almost certainly out of the question. Any boss that took more than a few nights to learn would beg the question "Why don't we go to BT/Hyjal?" After all, you may not have learned the lessons from Leotheras yet, but why bother learning from him when you could try to learn more from doing Gurtogg or something?

Seriously, guilds that hadn't killed Prince in Karazhan immediately got pressure to go kill "Loot Reaver" when attunements were lifted. Imagine if Void Reaver's loot had actually been a big step up from T4, as T6 is from T5. We're also looking at at least 4 pretty easy bosses in T6 content, considerably more for guilds to work on if they decide to do a content jump than there was in T5 content. (Genuinely easy encounters compared to Magtheridon? Lurker and Void Reaver, possibly new Solarian.) This is accompanied by getting the best gems in the game, great trash drops, etc.

Seriously, there is serious potential to get a good foothold in BT/Hyjal as a skipper that was not really possible with SSC/TK. (1/4 and 1/6 compared to 1-3/5 and 3/9.) One of the worst things about starting SSC/TK was that we had no instance that we could reliably spend a night or two killing all of the bosses in before we had to start learning something or go to a different instance. With BT/Hyjal, especially considering the existence of PvP gear, it seems very plausible.

(Note: I am aware that some guilds did completely skip Gruul and Magtheridon, however these guilds are very rare. I would put this down to the simple fact that Gruul and Magtheridon both give good rewards for the time invested. Compared to SSC's winding den of trash and the one boss that most guilds head straight for in TK being hidden behind a mile of trash, both were appealing.)

I'm also not trying to say that actually skipping T5 content would be peachy dandy. I'm just saying that there is a lot of material that could be used to put pressure onto guild leaders, etc, to try and skip T5 content in favour of T6 content.

Remember that there is more to attuning an entire raiding force than killing the gatekeeper mob. When Nightbane was required for SSC attunement, it wasn't the encounter itself that was the serious trouble for slightly larger and/or more casual guilds. It was the fact that you had to figure out a way to get your roster of 55 people funneled through the zone, 10 people at a time, in a way that still allowed you to even kill the darn boss.

While the example obviously doesn't directly compare, since we're talking 25 people now, there is still likely a large amount of pressure building up with slightly larger guilds. We can't kill Kael'thas once or twice, have everyone attuned, and call it a day. If my guild has 50-60 people, we've got the extra challenge of training more people on the fight and then making sure we are killing him on a day where they are available. It's not as big a deal when you've got a raid force of 35 people with 80% attendance.

If a guild is just getting their feet wet in Tier 5 content, so what if they skipped to Black Temple, got their ass handed to them, and realized that maybe they should make a little progress in SSC and TK first? And further along, if a guild is 5/6 and 3/4, by people's own admission they can handle the first few bosses in BT and Hyjal with not a lot of difficulty.

So now they have a choice: do we try to progress solely in Tier 6, or do we try to defeat Kael and Vashj? Personally, I'd rather have the choice be mine to make.

With Naxx, the conventional wisdom that was passed around was the unless you were a Twin-Emps killing guild, you really didn't have a lot of business in the zone. Sure, we could skip AQ entirely and try our hand at Naxx. But instead of there being a hard attunement where only those who'd killed C'Thun could even enter, we got to choose for ourselves whether or not we were ready.

We first killed Twin emps 10/23/06 1 day after our first kill of Maexxna,we had allready been in Naxx for 4 months at that stage. We were still making reasonable progress till the day 2.0 came, I expected for months to come to a halt around thaddius/loatheb as we reached the limits of what a casual guilld could do in around 12 hours a week but in hind sight the time we spent on Twin emps would have been far better progressing in Naxx.

What people who haven't been to BT don't seem to realise it just how staggeringly easy the early BT/Hyjal bosses are. We are basically talking VR/Lurker level of difficulty. Rage Winterchill is probably the easiest boss in the whole expansion, and thats including Gruul and the outdoor bosses.

That I think is the real problem. The really difficult fights like Vashj and Kael should be right near the end of BT. SSC/TK would then have been the difficulty of the easy BT/Hyjal fights and early Hyjal/BT would be SSC/TK difficulty.

It would mean a much smoother progession path for guilds.

Four months in Naxx and only killing Maexxna is not reasonable progress.

The first few bosses in Naxx aren't quite as easy as the first few bosses in MH/BT. That said, it annoyed me back then seeing people who haven't killed C'thun or even Twin Emps running around with wraith blades. Given the choice of lifting the attunements or having to do SSC/TK for apps, I'd rather do SSC/TK for apps.

Tigole hit it right on the head with that quote from 2 pages back. I really think MH/BT would lose some of its luster for me if other guilds who can't beat Vashj/Kael can just go in and beat the first few bosses. For some classes, especially, some of the best drops in the zone come from the easy bosses.

The problem with that statement is it goes against the precedent they put forth when they lifted the SSC/TK attunements. Those instances lost some of their luster, yes, but overall, more people raided probably because they were able to see new content.

I agree that some of the "luster" will be gone, and the achievements of some guilds that successfully killed KT/Vashj will be diminshed, but realistically, like I've said several times, if they couldnt kill KT, they will probably get stuck WAYYYY before Illidan and Archimond, thus giving guilds that did complete KT/Vashj (and probably able to move all the way to Illidan/Archimond) more of the "luster" they lost in the beginning. So, in the end, nothing was really lost and more people using their product and continuing to see new aspects of the game was gained.


I like the point Amonra said. If KT/Vashj had been slightly easier (KT more-so than Vashj), you'd see a cleaner "progression" through the instances and T5->T6, and still allow them to be "Gateway" bosses. From what I've heard from some BT clearing guilds, RoS/Illidari Council/Archimond are harder fights than KT, but the learning curve is incredibly lower, allowing for guilds to learn it in a much shorter time. That really shouldn't be the case when KT drops horrible loot in comparison to the other encounters.

I have to disagree with you there. Say you have two guilds: A and B. Guild A is "better" than guild B and wants to finish Kael'Thas before they start BT. Guild B skips right into BT/Hyjal. You say that Guild A will overtake B in the end, but then say that the end bosses in BT have a shorter learning curve than Kael'Thas. So guild A will just be finishing Kael as guild B is starting RoS/Council. How will guild A make up the time lost on Kael when it will take B less time to down these bosses? Obviously guild A's progression will be faster than B's, but I hardly think that the amount of time most guilds spend on Kael can be caught up if a guild skips him.


Anyways, in the spirit of pure speculation, I agree with the above poster who said Blizzard will lift attunements. The precedent has been set, and I think they will follow it.

I wish they would have done something for Hyjal attunement involving Medivh and interacting with him in Karazhan and Heroic BM. Maybe an fourth, extremely tough optional boss at the end of BM and a fight against a "Shade of Medivh" at the top of Kara in the room before Prince, both at a difficulty level appropriate for the attunement. That would at least have the potential to make a lot more sense lorewise and put way less strain on guilds by requiring less manpower and time to do it this way.

The Black Temple attunement is fine, the Ashtongue questline requiring Karathress, Al'ar and Rage Winterchill kills is much faster to do since you can skip all of the bosses currently required with the Vashj and Kael requirement before Winterchill, only having to clear trash to get to all of them. Most people should be done with the first two anyways if they're moving up from a SSC/TK guild.

Personally, I feel like some of the others here in that the Kael/Vashj vial requirement would have been better as part of the Sunwell attunement at both a lore level and as a competency check, just as long as one of the first few bosses in Sunwell drops attunement scrolls. Maybe some other form of greater benefit from downing Kael'Vashj would help as well. Maybe damaged portions of Frostfathom and Flamestrike that can be forged into their respective legendaries using drops from Sunwell?

The guild I'm in is currently 5/6 and 2/4 with Vashj at 28% and just starting Solarian, mainly because we're on a dead server and keep losing veterans to either quitting or server transfers. Why? Because our progression is constantly slowed because of the lack of decent, experienced raiders and having to bring new people up to speed constantly. Vicious cycle. Another guild that is currently 6/6 and 3/4 had to reform recently because part of their core got tired of some of the same problems and drained into the local BT/Hyjal guild. Another guild has been stuck at 6/6 and 3/4 for months, same reasons. Besides those three and the local BT/Hyjal guild, nothing else to speak of.

Now throw 2.3 into the mix. We already have enough problems with people who turn out to be from the vast pool of players that expects raiding to be just as easy as doing arenas for 30 mins a week and getting their welfare epics. Once Arena 3 and Zul'aman roll around, I expect a huge chunk of guilds in our position to either break or convert to casual raiding from people not really wanting to do much except for those two things. Meaning even less talent to pull from. At least with an attunement for Hyjal like I described above, it would be easier to get skilled players attuned and progressing without the attunement being a complete joke or completely missing.

I'd rather those encounters not lose their epic feeling. I enjoy the difficulty of the Vashj fight as it is right now. The problem is that both fights are just about 100% unforgiving and it seems that most guilds end up bringing 2-3 players that decide to slack off something fierce and make the encounters incredibly frustrating for everyone else. For the average guild to get past them it's either going to take a) one of those days when everything just happens to go right, or b) some heavy nerfing on Blizzard's part: a decrease of the naga/strider spawn rate in phase 2 of Vashj, a decrease in the Sporebat growth curve in phase 3 of Vashj and a good 25% across the board nerf of the Kael encounter... and we're already getting 10% off phases 1-3 in patch 2.3.

V V V

I expect the addition of items that fill T5 itemization gaps, Arena 3 loot and the class changes will make things easier, but in the end it comes down to execution. Throwing gear at these particular fights, especially Kael, isn't going to help things that much.

I think one of the biggest problems with Kael and Vashj isn't their difficulty, but the path in progression most people chose to get there. When our guild killed Leo, we were 5/6 SSC and 1/4 TK. At this point, we had the option of finishing up the easier TK bosses or working on Vashj, which had a multi-week learning curve. While I originally favored going with the easier bosses first, another officer in my guild made a really good point: if we killed the TK bosses first, we would be learning Vashj and Kael back-to-back. This means we will be spending 2-3 weeks wiping on a tough boss followed immediately by another 3-4 weeks of wiping on the "hardest encounter" in WoW. Take the sum and you're asking for your members to wipe for 6-7 weeks with only one boss kill in between. While some guilds are able to pull this off, I think more guilds will be disbanded due to burnout through this rough stretch. Judging by the number of 5/6 SSC 3/4 TK guilds, there are many raiders who are in this position because they were given the option of going with the easier bosses and that's the path they chose. Now consider the other route: work hard on Vashj for 2 weeks, take a breather for 2 weeks as you finish up Al’ar and Solarian, then start your Kael grind. In addition, if you kill Vashj first, you'll have an extra two weeks to get everyone their Vashj vials. That means as soon as your guild kills Kael, you have the option of dropping SSC from your schedule and focusing mostly on TK/Hyjal/BT. If you stagger the times in which you attempt the difficult bosses, it becomes a lot more tolerable for your members.

As for lifting the attunements all together, I think that is a bad idea. It's in Blizzard's best interest, and probably the game's best interest, to have as many people see as much content as possible. While this includes getting people into Hyjal and BT, this also includes Kael and Vashj. Blizzard invested a significant amount of time designing these encounters. Hell, I think Blizzard spent more time on the Kael'thas encounter than most of Hyjal. These fights are the ones that define end-game raiding: they are well designed, unique, incredibly challenging, and incredibly rewarding once completed. Lifting the attunement will deprive all the 5/6 SSC 3/4 Tk guilds of experiencing the best WoW has to offer. And for those who argue there's the option of going back, let's face it, 99% of people are going to want their ez Rage Winterchill epics over a 3 week grind on Kael.

As for getting more people into Hyjal/BT, I think Blizzard has already set in motion their plans. In 2.3, many classes are going to receive significant buffs to their performance (ie: 10% damage tax removal for mages, mental quickness for enhancement shamans increasing spell damage, etc). The introduction of Zul'Aman will hopefully fill many itemization gaps for hybrid classes. The addition of Badge-turn in items will make gear more accessible for all players. The overall increase in gear and performance will basically result in a soft nerf of Kael and Vashj. These bonuses will hopefully help guilds who are stuck on these bosses to get by them. By not immediately lifting the attunement or performing a hard nerf on Kael/Vashj, Blizzard will receive less QQ's from guilds that have already beaten those encounters.

The Kael encounter is getting a slight direct nerf to weapon and advisor HP, and that will help quite a bit for guilds starting to learn or still learning. Raid comp decisions with all those changes should be much more forgivable.

I glanced through the thread and saw removing attunements because the difficulties they placed on t6 guilds was discussed to death. However, I didn't see much mention about their consequences on t5 guilds.

My guild scored our first Vashj kill last night. There's a pretty wide gap in progression on our server and we're the first new guild to have killed Vashj in months. We immediately became the only recruitment pool for these guilds. Since then, we've lost one raider and I know that multiple others have been extended offers.

As a relatively new guild that absorbed many players from other broken SSC guilds, how are we supposed to hold onto our attuned members for long enough to down KT and get into Hyjal/BT. Since our progression has maintained a decent pace (six new SSC/TK kills in three weeks) there hasn't been a chance for members to establish a significant loyalty to the guild and offers of free epics in a higher end guild could easily tear our members away.

I'm more worried about this destroying our guild than learning the KT fight.

Attunments are fine, backflagging is not. Keep the attunments as they are now to make sure guilds have to clear through T5 before heading into T6. Add scrolls on Archimonde and Illidan so guilds that are farming T6 or guilds that are halfway through BT can recruit non attuned people and still not have to waste time in T5 instances.

It's really only a big problem for guilds that killed Archimonde but not Illidan. Before killing Archimonde, you could still fit in TK/SSC/Hyjal and still have time for new content if you average 20-22 hours a week raiding. After getting Archimonde down, you have to give up new content for the week if you're going back to attune people. A scroll on Archimonde suddenly solves the problem since the people you recruit are most likely on the Rage Winterchill part of BT attunment anyway.

From personal experience, we had to waste one week of new content after killing Archimonde to attune new people. Then we had to waste another week running T5 stuff when we were 8/9 BT.

They can have Kael and vashj drop one additional BoE unique(X) vial which you can keep in guild bank to attune X additional people.

I agree the should keep the SSC/TK attunements in place, but enable some mechanism for BT/Hyjal guilds to backflag some members. However, I can also see this being "semi-exploited" if they where BoE vials or some other way to distribute/sell it to other guilds. I think there needs to be some way of making sure it gets used on someone with your guild tag or another method to prevent selling of attunement vials.

My guild is 6/6 SSC (2 Vashj kills) and 3/4 TK, and I want to kill Kael (only 1 night on him so far). What I don't want is to ever go back to SSC once we all have our Vashj vial ... and similarly Kael.

I did the original TK attunement like most here did, I EARNED my easy Loot Reaver epics and unique looking T5 shoulders (ok, Mage shoulders look like crap, but anyway). I felt cheapened when they dropped the attunement and allowed everyone in. I can imagine the current BT/Hyjal guilds feel the same way.

Guild tag means absolutely nothing. Spend a few gold, form a temporary guild, invite 10 paying customers and get them T6 attuned by killing whatever easy T6 boss you'd like to have drop T6 attunements. I'd charge about 10,000g a pop to do that for people.

The basic problem here is that you can't eat your cake and still have it. Either the attunement process is a pain in the behind, like it is. Or if it isn't, by whatever loophole you want added into the game, then attunements would be sold and become easy to get for anyone. So, if you want T6 access to feel 'special', then you don't want easier methods of gaining access added, but take the time out to attune whoever you need to recruit.

I'd personally suggest you recruit a healthy pool of players while you still do T5, so you can afford to loose a few along the road to Illidan. It's hardly anyone elses fault that so many guilds seem to run at about 35 people, so that as soon as they loose a few, they are in a panic with attuning new ones. Much easier to attune another batch of 10 people at the start, drop T5 and then steam through T6 (we peaked at about 50 players before dropping T5).

If you average 22 hours per week yea I can see how you have time for that.
We are currently working on Archimonde and raid 16 hours per week and its a massive, massive pain in the ass. And I dont even want to imagine how bad it will be once we are actually going to start working on Illidan down the line.

There -needs- to be a backflagging alternative other than having to go back and kill these bosses with every single trial.

Had to go back to SSC last night to start clearing it so we can get 3 guys the Vashj vial. We just recently killed KT first time friday and I'm already annoyed that I know that for the next weeks we have to attune an additional 10 characters and I know we can't bring those 10 or even 5 of them to one KT raid or Vashj raid and make it go as smooth as it should due to raidcomposition and lack of experience with those encounters.

I don't think "attunement helpers" like a scroll or anything like that should reside on Archimonde and Illidan, that's just helping epic-factories getting more people free loot. It should instead be a supportive measure to help guilds that are fresh that need to attune additional people an easier way to do it. I really like the idea of 80% of the raid only needing attunement for the 20% to join or something to that extent.

Something as simplistic as a 0.1% chance on drop in Hyjal and BT on an attunement scroll for Hyjal would be good enough in my opinion. Yes they could be sold but that's not a problem, guilds are currently selling attunement spots in their SSC and TK raids anyways and I sure would'nt mind doing the same.

There are plenty of ideas on how to make it foolproof like providing guild attunements that are temporary with the guild tag.
Once a sufficient number of people in a guild are attuned everyone else in that guild automatically gets a temporary attunement flag. This attunement flag is separate from the real attunement and someone with one of these flags can still overwrite it with a proper attunement by killing said bosses. However as long as you are a member of this guild you can utilize the attunement flag.

It's normal for people to be sad when members leave, especially if they were struggling for numbers. It is not normal for them to hate your guts or bitch you out - that's a sign that you need to gtfo and find a more mature guild

Did you go on a looting spree before leaving?

When we were stuck on progression, a few old members privately approached me and told me they wanted to leave the server. They both told me a long time before they did it, they offered to keep raiding if needed but stopped looting, and then they left on good terms. One even recently came back and rejoined our raiding core since, the other is a great friend and still has alts in our guild he pops around to say hi with, and we keep asking him to rejoin.

Another person instead the day before leaving takes a DST, then gquits and server moves without any prior warning since he had been applying to a bunch of guilds without telling us, and one finally accepted him, so he immediately bailed after taking a goodbye gift. Needless to say, we don't like him much.

It is down to how you act really, some people will maintain unusually stupid grudges, but that's hardly your fault.

Its also probably pretty dependant on how common guildhopping is for people in your raidgroup.

For us being a high end guild on our server its something that happens fairly infrequently and as such there is more anger when it does happen.