I'm not sure if all Sunwell discussion is entirely embargoed, or if some non-strategy discussion of the sheer trash volume is permissible. If this post is inappropriate, then please delete it with my apologies.

I wasn't precisely counting during our clear this evening, but there seemed to be something on the order of ~15 or so trash pulls in front of Kalecgos. Compare this to the eight waves in front of Winterchill, or the seven trash pulls in front of Naj'entus, and it seems clear that Blizzard is taking a very different design approach for the final instance of this expansion. It's rougly double the number of trash pulls, and some of the early ones are quite complicated with little margin for error on the initial aggro. I can't think of another raid instance other than Molten Core with this much trash in front of the very first boss.

Did anyone happen to notice if the two-hour respawn was full or partial? I'm assuming it is a full respawn, but didn't think to check before leaving the instance.

Try and forget that this is the most mind-numbing and repetitive trash in the game for a minute. There's 2 pulls between Kalecgos and Brutallus. No trash between Brutallus and Felmyst.

It's designed that way on purpose, the trash is upfront so you can still get Sunmotes and epics, while giving you a nice break as you get past the first boss. They also tuned the trash upwards from what we saw, which will prevent L24M Sunwell in General.

I'll take this over SSC or TK trash anyday.

It's kind of a pain, but the potential haul of best-in-slot epics (to say nothing of Marks, Sunmotes, gems, what-have-you) is worth it. Imagine you're a guild who's clearing through BT right now, or maybe just killed Illidan. You probably don't have the gear to really make a run at Brutallus, but with practice you can definitely kill Kalecgos (who's mostly execution) and you can get a lot of sweet gear on the way. I picked up a pair of gloves tonight on the second pull that I'll use as my best-in-slot item until WOTLK. No exaggeration. And this is kinda weird to say, but the fact that the trash got buffed the way it did since PTR makes it better IMO. It used to be mind-numbing go-AFK-for-five-pulls stuff and now it's somewhat challenging and requires your raid to be pretty on-the-ball. That's better for raid focus than, say, the Illidari Council trash.

We managed to find a safe spot by Kalecgos. Just behind Kalecgos, actually. The only problem we ran into was having to clear the patrol before Kalecgos when it re-popped. We managed to overcome that by having someone run in naked towards Kalecgos and despawn him, at that point the raid runs across where Kalecgos would be standing and engage the patrol. For guilds just killing Illidan, I'd recommend clearing trash though. We probably should have re-cleared but that trash was simply too annoying for us.

What exactly was changed from PTR? I can think of the needed buffs to CCable scouts and the general buff the trash got a week or two into the PTR (before they disabled Kalecgos). If anything, one of the pulls was made easier on live. But then again, the trash is trivial if you have enough Mages that can keep a mob sheeped decently well.


LF5M Mages for Sunwell Plateau trash farming, PST! Gear doesn't matter!

The only pull I felt was really annoying was the through the arch scout pull.

Yeah, the largest issue with this trash is how trivialized it is by one class ability (polymorph). 1-2 mages and its pretty damn challenging. 5 mages and its a complete and utter joke. Slight oversight, I'd say.

That's the pull that got a lot easier since PTR.

There's a patrolling robot in front of Kalecgos now which may complicate learning attempts. On PTR we went at him for 4 hours recovering at him. They also reduced Kalecgos's respawn time from 1 minute 15 seconds down to 20 seconds so you can only get one round of rezes off before he pops.

We definitely had more trouble with the trash tonight than we did on the PTR, but we were just blaming it on people being retarded. Maybe they did uptune it though, but I can't tell you what exactly they did. They did make the robot activator guys completely unrootable/snarable which makes it a bit tougher.

Also QQ that guilds who wipe on Kalecgos a lot are going to have a lot more Sunmotes and trash drops than us. WTB Sunmotes from bosses or something.

Pretty much the only upside of us not killing him tonight. We got a late start and were in there for maybe a total of two hours. And having not seen Kalecgos at all on PTR, we didn't really know what to expect. Only got three half-ass attempts in before trash respawned, so we said screw it after repops. No real rush. Time to go back in tomorrow and rip Kal a new one.