Well my guild is at the point where we are keen to down Rag. We've had about three tries and find that our melee gets hopelessly minced particually.

Fr is a biggie I know and I was wondering if you coud give me advice on these aspects :

What is a good strat for rag(or a link to a good guide) for horde?

What Fr do melee and casters need minimum?

How do we encourge our melee to farm Fr gear? Are there any good meothds or tactics to do this?

Any advice to help us with downing Rag for the first time would be massively appreicated, as well as any good insights into the fight (I have downed Rag before but mainly as a warlock spamming shadowbolts wheras now I will most likely be raidleading it :<)

I hope I can glean off your guys experiance here :P

I suggest being more specific about this part. What, precisely, is happening to your melee dps?

LBL 1
Two tanks wear FR gear.
Rest wear dps/heal gear (and *good* FR gear.)
Melees avoid knockback by running out when warning comes.
Ranged spread out so they dont knock eachother.
Damage Rag.
Heal stuff.
Drink potions.
Rag goes under.
Gather, kill sons.
Rag comes back.
GOTO 1

More detailed explanations can be found in a ton of places. I recommend starting with wowwiki, they usually have heavy spoilers.

Is it just a lack of DPS that caused the failed attempts? Are you getting to phase 2? 3 attempts is not alot to go by. What is the typical amount of FR that your melee is wearing? Are your melee(outside of the MT that has aggro) moving out at the knockback? Are your tanks dropping too fast? are the melee stealing aggro off the MTs?

Wrath of Ragnaros is a huge deaggro. Even if resisted, it still deaggros. If your melee, who have backed out, get back into range right after a WoR, Rag will kill them. Your tank needs to taunt Rag after every WoR. Melee shouldn't go back in until they see the taunt debuff on Rag. Ranged DPS should go all-out from the start to build as much aggro as possible for the warriors to piggy-back on.

It sounds stupid, but before you spawn Ragnaros, practice the positioning. Melee should know exactly where to go when the wrath warning goes off. All DPS should know how and when to collapse to the south (preferably without eating the last wrath, which I did on my warrior alt the first time I went as DPS). Even practice jumping out of the lava from places where you're liable to get knocked into it.

http://thottbot.com/?n=654202

Tanks need max FR of course.
Melee should have at least 150 FR unbuffed. Casters should have 100 FR.
At least at the beginning, you should definitely be using fire protection pots at the start, and then at the start of the sons. It helps immensely.

Farming FR? You should have plenty of core mats now, your melee should be getting some FR pieces made, casters can get a piece of flarecore, etc. We didn't make it odiously expensive to purchase them in terms of DKP, I think my Flarecore Gloves cost 12 DKP for example (avg Tier 1 item is ~75), and it was well worth it.

Over TS/Vent you should be announcing "melee in" and "melee out" for Rag's knockback. They need to wait a second or two before meleeing when they go back in, to make sure the MT still has aggro.

That's the Rag 101 version anyways.

First time we downed him I think I was wearing barely any FR as ranged DPS. If you just farm enough FR pots and are smart about staying at max range (as well as spaced from other members in the raid) you really should take minimal damage.

This probably goes without saying, but the rings handed out by the Hydraxian Waterlords are one of the best sources of FR available. Find out if anyone in the guild hasn't completed the Hydraxian Waterlords quest line. Encourage them to do so by witholding DKP from anyone who hasn't finished it yet. Or something. Just make sure everyone knows about it and understands the importance.

Ocean's Breeze and Tidal Loop are +15 FR.
Onyxia Scale Cloak is +16 FR.
Lord Incendius is easily farmable and drops +10 FR bracers of all armor types.
Do some coffer runs while you're farming Incendius for a chance at Burning Essences. You need those for the +20 FR enchants to a head or leg slot item (Libram of Resilience).

Those are all reasonably attainable FR pieces for a guild that's made it to Rag. The libram enchants are kind of a pain in the butt, I guess. But they're still doable for everybody. At a minimum, the first three items get you 41 FR. Mix in a few Tier 1 set pieces, Ward of the Elements (+8 FR), and Imp MoW (+27 FR), and there's pretty much no excuse for anyone to be at less than 100 FR buffed. That's plenty for healers and ranged DPS. Your MT and OT should be as high as possible, and your melee will notice a huge difference as they approach 200 FR.

Other than the basic strat, read what Gurg said about aggro and beat that into your raid until they want to kill you. It's not a difficult concept, and the fight goes amazingly smoothly once everyone understands it. Hopefully your guild will soon experience the high that comes with beating Rag for the first time. And after that, hopefully you'll experience the "whoa" sort of feeling that comes the first time you burn his ass down before the Sons even spawn.

EDIT: Forgot the Drakefire Amulet (+15 FR) and Dire Maul class trinkets (+10 FR).

Find out where you can stand to avoid being knocked away.

Find out where the optimal spots to stand are so that the knock away won't kill you or disable you for more than 10 seconds.

If melee DPS is dying, it's not an FR thing. They shouldn't be getting hit by "By Fire Be Purged!" (it hits mana-users only -- keep people with mana FAR away from your melee cluster) so they take much less damage than the typical raid member. Were they getting punted? If so, they need to react faster and get out when they see the warning (you are using some form of mod, right? WoR is every 25sec.), and they need to wait until Rag has a taunt debuff on him before running back in. And they should tread lightly when re-engaging unless they're very comfortable with aggro on the fight. When re-engaging a mob that has just deaggroed your MT and been taunted, as a rogue, you really don't want to open with two quick backstabs right off the bat.

This should show you everything you need to know about positioning. http://pacifistguild.org/ragnaros/

But making my healers heal me through not one, not two, but THREE seperate moments of Ragnaros going "Oh, look, a gnome!" is so much fun. Then again, I don't wait for taunt, I just wait to see if my MT went flying or not - Vanish and Feint make up for a lot of mistakes.

For your rogues, I'd also remind them that Burning Essences are easy to duo with either a pair of rogues, or a rogue and a druid, and that doing Incendius on the way is easy too. Some rogues can solo essences, but it's a lot more reliable as a duo (some rogues can also solo Incendius, but if you can solo Incendius, FR is not a worry for you).

Melee DPS shouldn't be getting hit too hard; basically, it's lava splash damage and the occasional punt (they do spread out, right?).

Remind your ranged, especially casters, that they effectively cannot pull aggro on Ragnaros and should just be focused on burning him down as fast as they can.

Use 2 FR pots per raider to start; with time you can cut it down to 1, and then zero. One drunk before engage, one drunk as the sons spawn.

If FR is a problem, you can always split your raid up into separate raids, zone in to ubrs. Make sure you have a priest in each raid and have them mind control the spellbinder, and have them use the FR buff (I think its like 80-85)on everyone.
Yes, this takes a while to do, but if you really really want to kill Rag and your guildies cant farm FR gear, this is cheap way out of that.
Just make sure no one dies on the way back to MC...

I agree with you entirely on this point, most of our early Ragnaros wipes were because of the ranged DPS not staying in line, and/or people were having trouble collapsing for the sons.

Positioning is the key to this fight. DPS? You can use consumables for that? Survivability? Make your tanks some DI gear, farm Incendius, etc.

Now, one thing that I would wholeheartedly recommend is to make the DKP price on "resist-only" pieces (ie. Flameguard Shoulders, Core Forged Greaves, etc.) somewhat lower than on the "everyday usage" gear pieces. Note that the T1 helms do *not* count as "resist only" pieces in this system, even if they will in practice.

Now, here's the thing that you have to beat into your Rogues' heads: They do not make or break this fight, their DPS is supplementary, but not the main source, as they may be used to.

Their biggest job is to stay alive to burn down the sons that will spawn, which means A. No pulling aggro, B. coming out for the Wrath of Ragnaros in a timely manner, and C. wearing appropriate amounts of FR such that the Aura doesn't kill them (this is also somewhat guild and gear-level specific, with the healers that my guild currently has, I can wear about 165 buffed FR and stay alive pretty well, but this isn't ideal for learning the encounter).

Yeah, make sure your mages and locks know that this is their opportunity to shine and chain-cast high-damage frostbolts at Rag to knock him down quick.

One piece of advice for the sons: Cast "Dampen Magic" on the caster-classes. Ideally, they should require little healing anyway, and this will VASTLY reduce the amount of mana damage caused by the Sons of Ragnaros.

But, yeah, the collapse is key, and test-wipes are the only way to know if you're ready for it. I'd hold off on consumables until you have the collapse down pat, and after that, it's just a matter of time before his hammer hits the lava.

Grats

Gratz
Soon you will have no interest in that buff since it takes more time than it is worth. Now that people understand the mechanics of the fight and their role throughout it try to not use it so that you dont lean on it as a crutch. Blizzard has stated it is fine to use but trust me you eventually dont want to be wasting the time.