Valarauko

This discussion ties into the train of thought in the "So you want to create your own raiding guild?" thread, but is unique enough, I believe, to justify its own topic. Heap if deemed unworthy of debate.

The question I have been mulling over lately is regarding the plethora of reroll raiding guilds that pop up both on guild recruitment forums and locally within our server communities.

Obviously, there is a dichotomy at times between the raiding experience of a player and the experience reflected in a particular character (gear and the like), but this difference is nowhere more glaring than when rerolling from scratch.

- What, if any, are the experiences of those who have seen end-game content in BC (BT or later assumed), but have gone through guild breakups, or for whatever reason have rerolled? Has there been any success with this amongst the community here?

- Perhaps most importantly to my mind is this question: When does the curve of the impending Wrath expansion make "restarting" a truly impossible option for those wanting to work through end-game content? I.e. what is a reasonable time frame for a small group, or an entire guild, who create new characters and go through the entire process from start to finish? And is it really worth considering at all, given the unknown nature of Wrath's readiness?

- Also, what about the veterans? Those who took breaks from raiding for a period of several months, missed progression, changed servers, etc etc. Is it worth engaging in a "partial reroll" of a sort and taking those T4/Kara geared characters and attempting to brute-force them through to end-game? I question this from the player's perspective, not the guild's - naturally an understanding guild with personal ties to the individual would assist them in getting back into the swing of things.

 

◊ Merple

I don't really understand the question, are you asking at what point it stops being worth trying to conquer Sunwell Plateau, or are you asking when it stops being viable to reroll for WotLK?

And I don't see how there would be a limit for either.

 

malthrin

It may be immodest, but I think the Serious Casual Story may be part of the answer you're looking for.
Serious Casual: What the hell happened here - Elitist Jerks

I think there's still time for a reroll guild to finish the game. With hardcore 10-man farming, you can gear up well enough to jump straight into Tier 6. There are plenty of logistical issues with reroll guilds, but is it possible - yes.

 

Prinsesa

Echoing this sentiment heavily. I've healed through Bloodboil and Teron despite my Holy set not having a single piece of gear past Karazhan. Between Craftable, Badge and PvP gear, it's not terribly difficult to catch up with progression.

http://armory.mmo-champion.com.nyud....63815BffMm.png

 

Wickedgirl

It's one thing to have one person lower than presumably needed tiered gear - and a healer at that, who is always part of the team - and completely another thing having a few or even a majority of people below, again, presumed levels of gear that's needed or acceptable, after fast re-roll leveling and even faster gearing up.

I could as well say that I, as a 0/47/14 feral, with healing gear from Kara + random unwanted pieces from T5+T6 range (no tier items, no badge items) healed successfully on Bloodboil while we were learning him (I was of course lowest in effective healing done, not by much compared to first above me, but a lot compared to the top healer - i did 20% of his healing), and yet it doesn't prove anything.


[e] clarification on one point

 

Wickedgirl

[e] double post.

 

rayijin

Math it out?

Pretty simple:

1) Time to hit 70
2) Time to gear up
3) Time to learn/complete instances

Variables:

How many hours you/your group of rerolls plays per day.
How many hours it takes to hit 70.
How many hours of pvp/heroic/kara/10-mans to reach a suitable level of gearing in the guild (note: tanks require a little extra effort).
(optional) How many hours to learn or re-learn t5 fights.
How many hours to learn or re-learn t6 fights.
How many weeks of t6 farming to gear out the guild optimally for sunwell (This is easy at least: Assuming a fixed 30 man group and perfect 3-token distribution from each boss, 10 weeks).
Hours to learn and complete sunwell.

Plug in what you think is a reasonable expectation for your guild on all fronts, then go from there.

 

Nezralix

EDIT: Probably not relevant to the guild reroll thing!

 

Cathela

Not to take away from your point, but paladins seem to be especially able to perform well as undergeared healers. This is entirely anecdotal, but I've seen it mentioned a number of times in different places. Holy paladins in my guild have also mentioned that they don't feel like they're getting much of an upgrade going from T4 to T5 to T6.

Whatever the case, from the point of view of a reroll guild it shouldn't be hard to find your comfort level; you just keep pushing progression as hard as you can until you run into a gear-check wall.

My comrades are my weapons, and I am their shield.

 

◊ Vectivus

I would imagine this would be substantially easier in Burning Crusade than it was back in the AQ40/Naxx era due to the introduction of so many alternate gear progression paths (varying with character class) - between 10-man raids, Arenas, Badge upgrades, professions, etc., you could take a fresh level 70 character to "fully epic" and moderately raid-worthy in only a few weeks, if you were serious about it.

Using the napkin-math from above, I put my time to get back to Hyjal/BT on a new character at approximately 6 weeks (real-time, not online/in-game time). That's 2.5-3 weeks to hit 70, then 3-3.5 weeks to hit Kara weekly, ZA twice weekly, farm nominal Arena points weekly (or, at this point, buy them), collect relevant crafting profession mats, and so on. You wouldn't be amazing or mopping the floor with everyone around you, but you would certainly be at a point (as has been demonstrated by numerous guilds) to clear the available content up to the beginning of Sunwell.

 

oldmandennis

It's never been easier to gear up. I switched from feral to resto about 1/2 way through BT, and was competitive on meters by Illadin in mostly PvP gear.

It's also never been easier to level up. Break into 2's and 3's, and chew through kill quests.

 

Valarauko

Rayijin has a good point, I think.

I suppose an auxiliary question is: given the confirmed quality of badge gear for most classes, would you say that a small group (4-5 dedicated raiders) who level to 70, get the best gear they can pre-raid from "pvp/heroic/kara/10-mans" as mentioned, would be accepted by any established raid guilds? Or would the fact that they are rerolls and don't have the gear to prove their progression experience be a major turnoff.

I've noticed that more and more endgame guilds are stating that t5 gear is required to join them, and yet I would maintain that for some classes it is possible to be within a fraction of the gear quality of T5 with crafted epics, badge gear, the best items in Kara, and the "welfare epics" from s1/s2. But perhaps some would disagree with me?

How would a person who knows their own quality and experience as a raider, but has no corresponding character that reflects said quality and experience, prove themself to an established endgame guild?

 

◊ Neone

I just took a new resto-shaman w/ only badge gear and some 10-man gear. He was there on our first Council kill, and now he's in 2pc T6 after a week, and has very competitive stats. The new badge gear is that good.

I was a little skeptical about him until I learned that pre-BC he was part of the top guild on our server and was essentially the sort of re-roll discussed here. Since he did have a very good "wow resume" I was very happy to take him on, and he proved his worth very quickly by reacting to everything and doing all that was asked of him and more.

 

Kannojo

I'm not trying to fill the post with rhetoric by any means but my story may have some relevance. I played horde Kil'jaeden since Release, as did my Girlfriend, and two other people I know (another couple). Our guild died on kael/vashj (trendy). It was due to several different things which are irrelevant. I started leveling an alliance character in december (2007) very casually due to the holidays. As did the other 3 people. By early-mid January we were all 70 finally with the garbage quest reward gear 70 dungeon items, and crafted gear. On january 28th 2008 myself and the other people created this guild with the help, I might add, of 6 or so gold spammers in Stormwind City. We're now 4/5 hyjal and 6/9 BT
The availability of gear is absolutely amazing from a tanking perspective. On that note I don't think we would have faired as well if we picked up a tank on the way. Not trying to toot my own horn but it's a position that seems to be the make/break point for progression moreso than other positions at least from my perspective. We picked up alot of window lickers/keyboard turning and helped craft them into excellent caliber players.

Entry into sunwell it seems will be another ordeal all together. I'm not going to comment on that as we've not progressed that far yet.

 

◊ Binkenstein

Speaking as the resident Benefactor Re-Roller (people re-rolling to a raiding guild and doing T5/6 with blues/greens is called "doing a Bink" by some people), all I can say is that having a guild to join & help you level is the best thing possible, especially if you go cross-faction like I did and essentially start from scratch again.

It took me about 12 days or so in /played, about 2 months in RL, to get from 1 to 70 (and in a funny story, got ninja invited to a Kael attempt evening where we got our first kill, and then I spent the rest of the night doing quests while everyone else did a 24 man shits & giggles raid in MH), although that was before the 2.3 levelling changes. A friend did a similar thing after 2.3, and did it in about 6.5 days game time.

Just make sure that re-rolls get taken along to as much content as possible, for tokens, otherwise de'd loot, and badges! (assuming you're re-rolling for a raiding guild)

 

Ley

Members of this forum should create a re-roll guild. It could be epic because it would actually succeed.

 

Valarauko

True, if they weren't already quite well engaged in their current guilds and characters.

The "Bink" phrase is interesting. I'd be surprised if very many guilds are willing to do that sort of thing. If they were, I would probably get back into raiding.

 

Oaklin

It took me 4 months to go from a fresh reroll in Oct 07 to a raiding member of a guild thats now 3/6 Sunwell. It took a combination of time commitment, social skills and pure dumb luck. It can be done faster. I knew no one on my server, was heavily impeded by my timezone and somewhat disadvantaged by personal scruples. Realistically though? At this point, unless you're truly special, or amazingly well connected, you're unlikely to beat Kil'jaeden in under 6 months, and WOTLK is likely to hit around then.

 

◊ pewsey

It's a level of maturity thing. Getting gear is so easy in the game. Finding good people is hard. It took a little bit of encouragement on my behalf to the other officers to start the "Bink Experiment", but really not that much.

Due to how successful it was, we've also got a re-roll Resto Druid, and a couple of "main swaps" at various times.

I can't stress enough how relatively simple the game is, and getting gear is a trivial amount of effort (especially now), and absorbing re-rollers into a guild (even with attunements) is much, much, much better if you know the skill level than recruiting Joe Random.

Pewsey has heard about tact and discretion, but tends to regard them much as children view vegetables.

Macaroni (Shaman), Linguini (Warlock), Penne (Mage) and Pewsey (Deathknight) on Northrend for WotLK Beta.

 

• ayb

The benefactors did this a while back and are in Sunwell now.

 

Valarauko

I assume that's sarcasm? But it would indeed be a beautiful thing.

 

• norg

It's not sarcasm. Read the post about Serious Casual further up the thread.

 

Lovecraft

Nope, third post down on this page.

Serious Casual: What the hell happened here - Elitist Jerks

Edit: beaten.

 

james

4-5 of our ex-guildies re-rolled Horde on Twisting Nether around December last year. Well technically, they started playing WOW again after selling their Alliance chars in our guild.
They hit 70 and started raiding with their RL friends around January, some Kara, etc. and then killed Gruul for the first time on 24th January.

Sneakattack DKP DKP: Raid Summary

They killed Illidan for the first time on 25th February.

Sneakattack DKP DKP: Raid Summary

They killed Brutallus last week.

Now admittedly, some of their chars just "appeared" as lvl 70 on Twisting Nether so they either bought new or transferred most of their existing lvl 70 chars, I don't know - but this is basically 25 people without raid items and none were attuned to BT.

i.e. Dynn - WarcraftRealms.com

They religiously farmed badges, Kara and ZA. Their locks and mages used the still-good-but-low-on-stamina craftables, and everyone farmed PVP/Arena weapons. Kinda inspired me to push Tier 5 alt content within our guild, pre-2.4, based on how quickly you can progress. Having said that, they wouldn't have been able to do this as quickly without having other guilds that they could buy/borrow HoD from.

They aided their progression by giving all tanking items to their MT.

To summarise - all you need is the opportunity. To kill the Twin Eredar, we ended up taking some alt resto shamans through ZA/BT and throwing loot at them. They got some nice items very quickly.

There's a total lack of decent Resto shamans on alliance and recruitment is near enough impossible. I doubt we're the only Alliance guild to do this. We'd certainly do it again for the right candidate if they were able to prove their ability and worth.