iwln

I rerolled on Blackrock Horde about three weeks ago and was hoping to start a guild like SC. A fast progression, no frills, guild.

Personally, I've cleared it all up to Sunwell as a Resto Shaman and up through TK as a Warlock. I know there are lots of players like me who know what they are doing and just want a change. The real reason I rerolled though is simply because of how easy the game is now. 2.3/2.4 badge loot, Badges from every encounter, 25 Daily quest limit and finally epic gems from badges.

Honestly, if you can find 10 competent players who can get 70 in 3-5 weeks, you can EASILY gear yourself for t6 content within a month or two of getting 70. Here is a time line I thought of.

Week 1 - Kara Clear(bar prince), 20 Badges, lets say you don't kill Prince due to gear issues. Daily Heroic each day 5 days out of the week, 25 Badges. 45 Badges 1st week total.

Week 2 - Kara Clear, 23 Badges. More Daily Heroics 5 days of the 7, 25 Badges. ZA, 2-4 Bosses due to bear being tough for an under geared tank, 5 Badges. 60 Badges 2nd week total.

Week 3 - About the same as week 2. 60 Badges.

Week 4 - Everyone who was active should be geared enough to clear Kara, ZA and any heroic easy. 75 Badges.

So in a month you can;
1. Get your rep levels up to where they need to be for enchants/flasks
2. Have some t4 set bonuses
3. Have plenty of gold for flasks/food/ mats for progression otherwise
4. Have some of the top in slot items from your 240+ Badges you just recieved over a month.

Pretty much anyone who did that is set to blaze through SSC/TK in a month. After some more badges and a little t5 you are set for Hyjal/BT. The main problem with this though is finding those players. As I am level 64 now on Blackrock and have had a hard time finding other players like this.

 

rayijin

If you feel like "cheating", there's always the ability to recruit players that already have some gear/experience as well, maybe burnt out on raiding but willing to join if you have that special something.

IE, if there was a guild that started on my server with good leadership, no bad players and only wanted to raid 1-2 days a week, shizam, you've got yourself a skilled, t6 geared tank!

Wishful thinking on my part .

Back on topic, another thing that makes rerolls easier is the spirit buff to priests/druids. It's an extra free 50 mana/5 or more to a moderately geared priest or druid. The difference between a mostly t5 and a mosty crafted/pvp geared DPS class is sub-20%, more likely sub-10%. Good spell rotation/timer usage and maximizing damage between avoiding aoe is what sets great dps apart from good, much moreso than gear.

One dedicated and two moderately dedicated tanks is all you need, this is the only thing I can see holding back a reroll guild's progression - and even then, incredibly skilled healers can work with any tank that can take at least one hit before dying .

 

Sui

I can speak from experience I took a fresh 70 lock in T4/badge loot and went into sunwell with a guild as a trial for them and was #2 on their meters for trash and top 3 caster on Kalecgos. Considering most of their casters were 1450 damage 25% crit and capped spell hit to my 1200 damage 15% crit 13% hit, I would definately support the fact that skilled players in TBC will win out over gear and this was certainly not the case in vanilla wow.

The hardest part I have found is finding a home for my lock as most people I have found don't like you when you outplay them in half the gear. WTB raiding guild heh.

 

◊ manly

Because god knows kalecgos meters are accurate...

 

iwln

QFT.

How about a WWS from Brutallus? Also you are a lock... the most simple OP class in PvE raiding. None the less the game is to easy now for any competent player to have an excuse for having bad gear/gems.

 

Sui

I am sorry I never realized that wild magic constituted enough of a reason for meters to not be accurate? Maybe I missed some aspect of Kalecgos that makes you think its more difficult then it really is? Last time I checked it was Cthun 2.0 I guess any fight thats not stand still and mash keyboard isnt a good fight to see dps on? Go troll somewhere else honestly.

 

Tempestra

Combat logs don't track well between the different realms (edit: shadow and "dragon" realms). You probably just were in the WWS parser's group. I basically don't even bother looking at Kalecgos, as it won't tell you anything outside of what the parser did.

 

◊ Penguin

It's more of the fact that combat logs can't see people in different realms, and thus you'd need to merge logs from almost 15+ people to ensure a 100% accurate WWS report from the encounter. He's not trolling, he's legitimately telling you that Kalecgos is absolutely no dps yardstick since even mods like Recount won't be 'seeing' everyone at all times. Saying "top 3 caster" is wildly inaccurate.

There's not some hidden "but he tries really hard" variable built into the game. -Slake

I always love the "it doesn't fit my style of play" line. There are only two styles of play; Correct, and Incorrect. The only people that ever use this line are people with the incorrect style of play. -Sebudai

 

Nurru

Aside from that "minor" detail of parses for Kalecgos being all sorts of fucked due to the wonders of merged logs between both realms, you're claiming that the red, purple, black and white Wild Magic don't impact dps. You're also completely discounting that Mages typically have a more important job in decursing in the later stages of the fight. It's almost as if you've never actually done the encounter.

"Go troll somewhere else, honestly"

< Aislinana> Why would it be my job to sleep with vontre? Don't I have standards?

 

• Arawethion

Yup, this definitely happened.
<---

EDIT: Ok, I should read the whole thread first.

More on-topic, reroll guilds work much better now than they did pre-TBC. Blizzard's process of systematically nerfing content (by increased gear accessibility or otherwise) caters absolutely perfectly to people who are trying to do this. A group of competent raiders who rerolled now would roll through the contect faster and more easily than the people before them. Unlike in Naxx, where you'd probably never "catch up," you could start now and be in Sunwell before long.

Answers to Moonkin questions:
0) Read the TTT/use the spreadsheet: http://elitistjerks.com/f47/t66856-moonkin_pve_dps/
1) Maintain high DoT uptime. Use WiseEclipse.
2) Nothing beats 2T8.
3) Sometimes you cast many Wraths and no Eclipse procs. Deal with it.

 

• Intermission

Recently a guildmate of a friend of a friends guild (!?) had some real life changes. He was raiding in a US guild, but he is an Australian and he now has to work regular hours. Raiding was no longer possible with his old guild. He was a good raider and a raid leader in his old guild, so we didnt have any qualms about some random joining our guild as a casual. We run with a hunter-heavy raids already (usually 4, sometimes 5 per raid), so we didnt really expect him to be a full time raider.

Within 2 weeks of him being 70 he had 4pc t6 and a few offset items. Ironically, our only Warglaive in 40+ Illidan kills was when this re-roller was in the raid. He was still using mostly greens and blues at that stage. The moment he got some epics the loot turned to shit again! He just got his badge bow the other night. It was funny watching him do Kalec/Brutallus/Femyst/Twins with a blue ranged weapon, some Kara epics and quest reward trinkets.

Anyway, moral of the story is that gear is irrelevant when a single person is rerolling into an established guild. Within 3 weeks of hitting 70 this hunter was attempting Eredar Twins. The hard part is finding a half decent player to give the gear to.

 

grzesieq

I wish there was a reroll guild like SC being made right now on some eu server. I've been thinking about rerolling horde, but always the lack of people to progress with was holding me back. (wow-europe forums rerolls don't count ;-))

 

Valarauko

Perhaps this is the wrong place to bring it up, but the thread has inspired me to ask.

Is there any guild in a similar position as that described in a few posts here? Notably Intermission's.

I haven't raided actively in quite awhile, but venturing into the murky depths of the WoW forums appeals to me about as much as running Heroic PuGs all day.

I have a couple of 70's, notably a fury warrior and warlock, who are sitting on piles of badges and are about as well geared as mentioned earlier in the thread - crafted/pvp welfare epics/badge loot/t4 or equivalents. I won't drag the thread into a further personal derail, but a PM if anyone is interested in a "returning raider" would be greatly appreciated.

Back on topic:

At what point did Serious Casual move from the original concept of "hang out, theorycraft and kill a few bosses if we feel like it" to pushing into BT and Sunwell? Was there a turning point moment, or was it more of a gradual process realization that you now had the gear to do big things, and that you had the people and the knowledge to do so, so why not?

 

Paddlok

In reply to the few posts on the last page about required level for a re-roller to enter a tier 6 guild.
I'm a raider in quite a successful guild, we have 4 down in Sunwell and have, as I am sure a lot of guilds have lately been struggling with recruiting shamans.
Lately we have had 2 guild members reroll from there fully geared tier 6 mains to there shaman alts that barely had kara gear. Even though the pretty low gear level, the rest of the raid were at a sufficient gear level to be able to carry these 2 through hyjal / bt and by the end of there 2nd raid they were wearing full tier 6 gear, one enhancement and one resto.
What I am trying to say is that if you clear black temple and hyjal and are in need of a class, but you just cant seam to get someone of the gear level that you wish, don’t forget about people in the guild that may have alts. Gear really isn’t the issue, what is the issue is that they understand how to play the class and know basic information about the encounter.

 

Mem

I totally agree that skill (ingame and social) matters much more than gear. A pretty well known warrior on our server rerolled some months ago from alliance to horde on a different realm. He is now in in 3/6 sunwell raiding guild and already geared to the teeth because the guild recognised him as a skilled and motivated player.

We are doing pretty much the same right now, gearing up a Karageared resto shaman to T6. He had some of the new badge stuff but after two IDs where he enjoyed loot priority over those raiders wanting to complete their secondary set he got 4 T6 tokens, a new shield and some other stuff. Having 3 tokens drop from a drop is really a godsent for gearing up recruits.

For large scale rerolls the main problem is that people have to fit together not only skillwise but also socially. Obviously this did work for SC, but most guilds who did this in classic on new realms had their members return to their old realms 6 months later.

If I were to start a reroll now I'd probably do it for a fresh start in WotLK. If you reroll now you will be ready to raid in 2 months, perhaps even 3. Which means that there won't be much progression left in BC (assuming that Kil'jaeden is killable and not a C'thun 2.0 fiasko).

 

◊ Bekah

Was there at the front. Signed the charter with a level 60 transfer alt, actually rolled Asharte (see left) a week or so after the guild started- she's homegrown Mal'ganis.

Basically outside of what Airhorn's blog post said, it snowballed. By snowballed I mean it started slowly and once it got running, it felt rather like a force of nature.

Asharte hit 70 with the first wave of full rerolls (this was before the leveling changes) and it was pretty laid back then. Still is, really, but what would come to be the main raid group hadn't actually formed up yet. The fast levelers made some plans for Karazhan fun runs and we just went. We had more than our fair share of ex-raid leaders and guild leaders among the group and there really wasn't any time spent wiping in Kara. We did that for a month or so gearing up- about that time, the NME runs began happening- which are mostly a function of the alts of EJ raiders and some of their casual friends and family. Some of the fast levelers got invited along for when NME was working on TK with what was essentially a pug (NME has gotten a lot more formulated since as well) and that's when the lightbulb clicked that maybe we can play around a bit with T5. See, the first wave of levelers were also mostly the people who had been raiding full time in the past and were bored. Clearing Karazhan once a week is fun until you realize you've moved well beyond it and you still have time on your hands

Once we got a handful of people running in TK with NME, it seemed pretty natural to think about an in guild SSC run. AS more and more people hit 70 and jumped in we just kept building T5 runs and shut down recruitment to keep the numbers from swelling out of bounds (we were approaching 400 characters then, we're now close to 500). At one point we were running 2TKs 2SSCs and Hyjal between NME and SC. Once we broke into the point where there were enough people attuned to T6 to roll double Hyjals- SC and NME cordially split off their combined organization. SC members still run with NME and NME/EJ people still run with us (Sup Diospadre!) but we no longer coordinate schedules. Once we got into Hyjal reliably it was natural to go to BT and once bosses started falling over in BT... people kept wondering where we'd stop.

I remember getting to Council and half the raid was just speechless. A lot of us had rerolled from guilds stuck on Vashj/Kael and had never expected to see BT, much less contemplate the possibility of Illidan. Killing Illidan felt a lot like winning the lottery and we had to really face the fact that Sunwell was coming and that we'd be going.

We'll see where it goes. We're working on Felmyst. WoWJutsu says we're 10th on server and in the top 350 in the US. I still have no damn clue how I got here. I rolled a shadow priest alt and the next thing I knew I was zoning into Sunwell Holy specced.

Like my title says, we're just killing rare spawns until WotLK drops >.>

 

◊ Bekah

Different branch of the topic, new reply.

What CAN be done? Well I know it was possible to reroll in August and hit Sunwell with the big kids. If it's just one or two people, the opportunity is much greater- we've had a few later rerolls with much shorter turn around time.

As a full raid group though? It does take time to gear. Expect to spend 3-4 weeks after killing Illidan getting people out of most of their last blues and T4 before you can even contemplate the gear check of Brut. They're practically throwing gear at players now, but you do have to reach a basic threshold of it to progress. Badges take time to earn, especially if you're doing a full gear up from them with a fresh 70.

Perhaps the most important part of a full reroll is a group of people actually interested in it with sufficient leaders/good players/class balance to manage. That's a lot harder than it sounds. Starting over from nothing can be pretty heartbreaking. I still miss a lot of stuff on my old server (it's not transferable- PvE Alliance to PvP Horde) and it can be really rough to stick with it if there's an easier way via transferring or finding a new guild on your old character.

A fresh restart group utterly dedicated? I'd expect you to finish Sunwell before WotLK. Anything short of that dedication (or in our case extreme luck) though and you get a fizzle.

 

Daedalix

I've been apart of two reroll raiding experiments. One failed drastically and the other is currently working well. A major ingredient in getting over the hump, in my experience, has been doing ZA almost as soon as you finish killing Prince. The drops in there are relevant into T6 content and the fights are more coordination and group comp than gear.

Both guilds I've been in formed around january and were basically complete rerolls. 3/4 5/6 1/5 2/9 in a matter of months. If we wanted to we could skip Vashj/Kael and prolly be much further in Hyjal and BT but we aren't for a number of reasons.

Recruiting, as usual, and finding a solid base of players is the hardest part. Have to find the right situation. Our guild is a combination of a bunch of transfers who were looking for the same thing and close friends who have been around. Not sure how far we'll get before WotLK.

In my old guild I was the recruitment officer and basically spent 80% of my time fishing for people on the server and in the guild recruitment forums. It was an RP server with no BT guilds so there were ZERO ripe raiders to be had. I was barely able to scrape together 25. Can't imagine what it'd be like if we needed 40 regulars. It failed because the raid leader didn't know what he was doing and was an egotistical maniac.

Even if you have a core (let's say a tank/RL, geared healers, and a really really good dps to set the bar) it doesn't really work unless A) you have 20 other solid people around you or B) you want to spend the time to teach people how to play and push the edge of content.

In Summary: Learn how and who to recruit. Set a pace and try to meet it. Get lucky.

 

Kannojo

I've found myself in countless guilds where a core group of 20-25(Vanilla) or 10-15(chocolate) consistently drag lesser players through content. This is evident in alot of 5/6ssc 3/4tk guilds. These two fights (although probably more kael than vashj) are probably the first raidwide competency check in TBC raiding. This guild that I started began to look this way mid SSC/TK. Mass recruiting for a brief period of time along with extreme reprimand/borderline harassment on my part fixed this. Although I've earned a reputation for being a huge asshole my guild has flourished.

In retrospec I would like to mention that those players weren't bad because they were generally bad. They were bad because the leadership let them be bad.I think it boils down to leadership. People, while human are still a resource at least in this environment(wow).Poor management or neglect of resources doesn't fair well in any analogy we put it in.

After 3 months of constant critisism I found myself saying the first "Great Job" to the entire raid the other night.Afterwards there was nothing but silence for about 15 seconds due to stunned/mesmerized people. I'd never noticed this but it really made me think about how people have evolved from subpar players that no tier 5 raiding guild would even take to marvelous players I have to beat sunwell guilds off of. I've finally beaten that "Survive" mechanic into the minds of this guild.

 

Swyfter

I think there's still plenty of time.

Cairne is a brand new server (PVE) if you're looking for a fresh start. The server is nine weeks old as we speak but there's plenty of time for catch-up tim. Finding a Kara guild, farming badges, and dabbling in PVP would gear you up enough to make your application appealing to any of the raid guilds running. Obviously, you run the risk of picking a class that is low priority, but that's the challenge of the crap shoot when you reroll.

Either way it's never to late. Come check us out!

WoW Forums -> Cairne

 

Sabyn

I am in the process of rerolling. I had to take a prolonged break and really fell out of touch with the community on my old server / guild, and with the coming of WoTLK it is a good time to start fresh. I've also had an itch to heal again, and with shamans being in such high demand it seemed like another good reason to try something new. I think I should have enough time to get 70 and reasonably set up for the expansion.

The worst part about rerolling solo is that it just gets lonely while leveling and not knowing anyone. It is so hard to form any kind of real reporte with people while leveling up. Joining a "leveling guild" is always an option if I just want a chat room, but they tend to be pathetic, and probably not something I really want to associate with. Having serverwide channels would be such a help. How does a solo reroller reach out to others? I dread dinging 70 and barely knowing anyone around.

I rerolled horde on Black Dragonflight (name's Sabyn) if anyone is out there.

 

Russta

I played on American servers for nearly two years. The day I hit level 60, I was in AQ40 and then held 99% raid attendance for 16 months. I ended up as leader of my guild from SSC and lead us all through that, TK, BT and Hyjal. Excluding Sunwell, with the exception of Viscidus, I've done every single encounter in the game and have tanked the majority of them.

In January, the prospect of farming BT and Hyjal for one more day with 24 other people equally as sick of it got the better of me. Going to bed at 8am and waking up at 6pm every single day just for that was no longer worth it, so I packed up and moved on.

I took a two month break and played a lot of games that had been on the back burner forever. I sorted out many aspects of my life and was enjoying a lot of the things I'd missed out on. However, I found that nothing I played filled the hole missing from an MMO. I thought I could go back to FFXI (I played it for over 3 years) and lasted 2 days before knowing I could never accept such a primitive time sink again. The choice seemed clear - go back to WoW on EU servers.

I hit level 62 in 13 real days. I then took a necessary two week break, went back and hit 70 within a week.

Since then, I've spent as much time as I can running heroics, building contacts and generally doing what I can to better myself. For how long I've been 70, I don't think I've done a bad job but I still don't have a guild (the one I'm currently in is just a placeholder to stop the relentless requests).

Now, read the first paragraph again.

If I applied to a top-end guild in full T6 with the type of e-résumé I could put together, I'd feel confident of being accepted.

If I did the exact same application to one with the gear I've got now, I'll get laughed out the door.

Maybe I'm setting my bar too high, I don't know. I realistically know how raiding works in the sense of gearing up. I know if someone took a chance on me and dragged me through Black Temple and Hyjal, in all likelihood, I'd upgrade half my gear and almost immediately be at a point to aid their progression. I know that I could hold 100% attendance, not have to have the fights explained to me and be a good member but getting someone else to take that risk is nearly impossible.

Thus, I'm at a crossroads of figuring out what to do guild wise. Hold out for the minute chance of falling into T6? Resort to pugging Karazhan? Join one of those mid-range guilds that always seem to blow up? Just hold out for WotLK and be on level ground again? I'm really not sure. I certainly don't think it's impossible to catch up to the progression curve but it seems like a considerable amount of luck aids it more than anything else.

 

oldmandennis

Maybe there's a largeish guild on your server that still pushes content? The problem is that most guilds are going to have room for exactly 1 prot pally in their regular raids. If they have a good one and you apply as a raider, you are going to get rejected. If you apply as a "casual who wants more" to a guild that has some casuals and is alt friendly, maybe you can get in - tanking for 5/10 mans is in short supply these days. Once you are in I'm sure their regular tanks will want a night or 2 off every now and then and you can get into the T6 farm runs.

Either that or look to app cross server... I'm sure theres tons of 4/5 6/9 guilds who need a good pally. Good luck.

 

sveno

The problem with applying to a guild that can gear you up is, if they don't know you personally, or you know noone in the guild, they're not going to gear you up. And the problem with applying to a progressing MH/BT guild is, they can't gear you up. So you'd probably be best off just getting the best badge/craftable gear you can, and maybe try to build some contacts with good guilds on the server.

 

dakalro

There's also the issue that Paladin tanks are vastly underestimated, and treated as such. And to be honest, most aren't that great even if it's the only tank that can actually click all skills without many issues. Best test tbh is Morogrim tanking murlocs, I've seen so many of them fail at catching both sides and requiring help that it's not funny and yet my former guild's tank (and a couple more) never required any kind of help.

He also got underestimated at start (healing on Bloodboil f/e while using him as the starting tank later meant insane threat compared to any other class + instant debuff removal) but once we got the 1st kills fully in BT, warrior MT went PvP and our paladin tanked everything except Illidan (training new Fire blaze tank = nono, training Fury awrr to tank boss is a lot easier), RoS P2, Archimonde (no FW rotations so druid is best suited to get owned from the back), Brutallus (only some 6% enrage wipe) and Felmyst.

It's either you're holy with offspec prot (which is very high majority of cases) or a real tank (rare but when the only target healers heal in Hyjal trash is 1 Paladin holding all melee mobs you can notice they're not as squishy as advertised, a 29k hp pally will be very unkillable with a 10k AD cutoff, wonders for taking full Stomps on Brut).