As the people who visit EJ forums tend to be very level-headed, I'm curious as to opinions on this particular subject.

Assume you have a guild where about 75% of the raid has 'good' gear (Most of the better stuff from AQ/BWL), and the remaining 25% is composed of members whose gear is better classified as BWL/AQ and not AQ/BWL - Some trialists, old members coming back, whichever.

You want to progress in Naxxramus, and thats your main priority. Raids are five days a week (sunday through thursday), with sunday being a 'long' day (14.00 - 23.30 ).

Some people within the guild think that obtaining loot from AQ/BWL is a waste of time now, as we will evt. replace that gear with Naxxramus gear. I completely disagree, and think that the 1 (possibly 2) days spent on getting the remaining people geared up will pay off in the end.

DKP only serves to compound the problem, as newer people are less likely to be getting Naxxramus loot to begin with - You essentially have a situation where the better geared players are getting slight / solid upgrades in Naxxramus, while those with worse gear continue to be at that level until Naxxramus is at farm status and all of the well-geared players are suited up.

My argument is that its going to be a crutch and a problem on fights in Naxxramus, if 5-8 of your players gear doesn't reflect the level of content you're currently at.

So it boils down to this:

Take 1 (possibly 2) out of 5 days away from progress, and clear AQ/BWL every week for CThun loot to continually gear up the newer people.

OR

Continue to spend 5 days a week in Naxxramus, trying to progress.

There are some other smaller factors as well (More variety = Less burnout, generally; BWL/AQ clear = Repairmoney to spend in Naxxramus).

Thoughts?

It's definitely worth one night a week to gear up the undergeared people with an AQ/BWL run. Most Naxxramas fights have a built in gear-check by virtue of their time limit. You basically have 6 minutes to kill Faerlina. You have 7 minutes to kill Patchwerk. You have three waves to kill Noth. If you're bringing undergeared people, they're not maximizing that raid spot, which cripples your raid.

Get people geared up and you'll save time, gold, and tears on learning content.

With 3/4rd of the guild being geared up you can kill Razu easily and fairly easily kill Anub. Faerlina and Noth is a tad bit harder, but should be possible too. That's all the encounters I'm intimate with, so can't comment on the rest .. other than Patchwerk of course, but he's no play for you guys for sure.

So first option is a no-brainer to me. Spend 1 day in BWL gearing your last 25% up and get some good secondary gear for some of the players in the 75% group and maybe even kill the first 4-5 mobs in AQ40 on the same evening as well. Then next raid day you clear the rest of AQ40 and kill Razu + Anub. Then you've got 3 days for progressing in Naxxramas. Since you didn't mention how far you are in Naxx, so I just picked the two easiest encounters to share raid day with Twin Emps/C'Thun.

We're currently doing 3 days in Naxx and 1 day in BWL and damn I miss AQ40 already, especially since we were working on C'Thun phase 2 when Naxx was introduced and I like to finish what I came for. :) But alas I'm no officer and Naxxramas really isn't that bad for a new instance.

Just to clarify:

We have some VERY well geared players which top +900 healing, all our warriors are geared to the max, etc.

We're mostly talking two druids, a few hunter trialists, and in general I get the feeling that we're D/Eing nowhere near enough loot from AQ to warrant not going there.

We've killed 5 bosses in Naxx (Spider wing, Noth, Razu) and Patchwerk is 'mostly' within our reach - I definately feel the difference in the fact that I can sustain almost 200 HPS less than our best geared druid on patchwerk, though (And in Naxx in general, sitting at +400 healing mostly sucks).

We clear every instance, every week, including Onyxia.

EJ still does BWL and AQ, but if we end up not being able to progress more in naxx because of time restraints we might skip BWL or AQ for a few weeks.

Even MC?

MC can be cut down to 75 minutes; so you could do Ony, MC and BWL on a weeknight. Unless you're dragging a ton of alts through them.

AQ can be done in about 4.5 hours if you don't do any optionals, when properly motivated. Last week we told the guild we were spending 1 Sunday night day in AQ and if we didn't kill C'thun that night then tough shit for them. We had C'thun down and went back and killed Bug Family and were done by 12 with a 7pm start.

Even MC, even Ouro, even Visc :p

Even with that our guild can't justify stepping into Molten Core for an extra day. We usually raid 6 days a week with Saturday off. Sunday is AQ40 5PM-cleared zone, Monday-Thursday is Naxx w/ BWL on Friday.

MC just seems like Nexus Crystals we don't really need. However we're having "alt runs" or pug groups on Saturdays for anyone interested, but not mandatory raids for the guild.

AQ is definately worth doing weekly at least if only to get gear for your healers to level up come burning crusade. There is of course several items which are better than most the early-mid Naxx stuff as well making it even more favourable to run.

BWL if you can do it quite fast and raid enough is still a good idea simply because of items like neffies tear.

Sweet do you guys have forums where I can ask you how to speed up our 7 hour aq40 clears.

Then you can reply with pull faster and do loot faster.

Between Nef, Emps, Ouro, and Cthun, you're passing up a fair amount of naxx quality ilvl 80+ loot skipping those.

How do you do MC in 75 minutes.

Pull very quickly.

There are likely many videos that show how to do this. The most famous is by the Axeman, an EU guild.

For MC 75 minutes, split the raid into 2 groups of 20. One kills Magmadar, the other clears to Garr. Summon to kill Garr, leave a small group behind to clear to Rangaros, take the majority to rampage up to Domo, then summon back to Rag.

LOL

And exactly which fight in Naxx could you not beat upon release without gearing up more for?

As far as I know, there are none. All the fights we have done so far have simply been learning the fight. Not gearing up for it. Loatheb might be different, but we have yet to spend significant time on him.

Of course you could easily take a weekend day to clear out AQ and BWL. But I really get cranky if I have to raid more than 5 hours. Actually, I don't think there is a single guild on our server that has gone back to AQ since release of Naxx. And only two guilds actually managed to kill C'Thun.

Conquest amazes me for that reason. You have some TERRIBLE gear for your Dps classes, yet you get by because you bring 12-13 healers. Still, not every guild can beat encounters without the gear making up for the skill. Gear just makes everything have a much larger margin of error.

C'thun has better loot then most of naxx , why wouldn't you spend a day clearing it. Your rogues must be crying.

I don't understand why the answer to this question is so tough for people to reason out.

The Goal:

Clear through Naxxramas as fast as possible.

The Choices:

1. Spend a day farming gear in AQ
2. Spend a day learning an encounter in Naxxramas.

The Logic:

Gear will undoubtedly help you clear through Naxxramas quickly: your healers can heal longer and for more, your tanks have more survivability, and your DPSers kill shit faster. However, experience helps you clear through Naxxramas as well. No matter how much gear you have, you're not gonna kill Heigan, the Four Horsemen, Loatheb, etc unless you are getting hours and hours of practice on these fights. So logically, this is a question of what is more valuable: a day's worth of AQ gear or a day's worth of Nax experience? Neither one will always be the most important for all guilds, as it depends on circumstance.

What if you are a relatively well-geared guild that's been farming BWL and AQ for months? Chances are these types of guilds will experience most (if not all) of their Nax wipes as a result of people either not understanding fight mechanics or not executing their jobs correctly. Will more gear fix this? No. Will experience fix this? Yes. Why should they spend a second of their time farming C'thun? They're goal as a guild right now is to clear through Naxxramas, not to get C'thun loot, so if the latter gets in the way of the former then it should be cast aside. I highly doubt their rogues would cry about their guild focusing on progressing rather than getting them loot, especially since progression means more loot in the long run anyway.

On the flipside, there are relatively undergeared guilds who have only recently started farming Nef / AQ. If their tanks can't survive through fights, if their healers can't last through fights, and if their dpsers can't take bosses down before the timers, then it won't matter how much practice they get... they lose. Obviously it's worth it for them to spend time farming gear.