This is a tad long-winded, I apologize in advance.

Now, I know most of you probably aren't too terribly interested in the 20-man raid dungeons, but I figured I'd put this out there for some discussion. I recently (5 months back) started my own guild from scratch, so this is something I've had a chance to experience myself. Keep in mind while reading the following commentary that this is coming from a guild who did not back-track to the 20mans as they were released (from MC or BWL respectively), this is from a guild who worked its way up from scratch, greens and blues. It's also worth knowing when reading this that the guys we ended up with in the guild are a very good crew, great players, and we have had a very high success rate, with little "learning" time. We've conquered ZG, RAQ, Ony, and are on Ragnaros currently. That being said,

Does anyone else feel like these two particular encounters are a tad out of place, difficulty-wise? Let me explain:


Jin'do the Hexxer
This guy is just flat out harder than Hakkar, the boss of Zul'Gurub. Given the level of dps your raid is expected to have after farming some of the other bosses in the zone (I'd expect Jindo to be a target pre-dating Hakkar), he's a bit out of whack. Even if you're doing everything perfectly, stacking -heal debuffs on Jindo, removing totems asap, and staying pretty well ahead of shades, he still requires a decent amount of dps to overcome before your (pre-mc) healers run dry. And if you're a caster heavy raid (and Jin'do is a caster-loot oriented boss), its even tougher, as you run into mana issues. Rogues/Warriors end up being your best bet by far. Basically we didnt drop this guy til we had farmed Hakkar 4-5 times. Easily the highest learning curve in the zone. Suggested solution? I'd say raising the cooldowns on all of his abilities by just a bit would tune it pretty nicely. A couple fewer totems to deal with, a couple fewer skeletons to AE down, and a couple fewer shades to kill, resulting in a bit more time dpsing Jin'do before your healers are dry.


Moam
This guy's a bit of a different story than Jin'do. Basically, you have to stack classes. And I hate hate hate stacking classes. Compared to the rest of RAQ, where you don't need to stack classes anywhere, its really frustrating to have a very balanced raid class-wise, clear everything but Moam with no problem, and then have to make the decision of either attempting the fight with difficulty turned to hardcore, or subbing in an extra 1-2 warlocks to just bring the fight back down to RAQ's average difficulty. Let me explain more:

With 3 warlocks (and 2-3 priests, and a hunter). You have sufficient mana drain to prevent the explosion, and keep in mind your dps isnt stellar yet, its just 20man gear and maybe some MC pieces here and there. You have your three warlocks to banish the three adds and just dps Moam down in stoneform. Even so, heading into add-spawn and stoneform, your raid is mana drained pretty bad (ending up with almost required consumable use per-kill, something rare in a 20man), so heals are fairly scarce. In come three big bad elementals, and the crux of the problem. These three elementals are almost a raid encounter of themselves (would be, if they had more hp). They are not snarable, fairly certain they are not stunnable, they have a harsh 1k arcane AE, and to top it all off, they can counterspell. So even with the 3 warlocks, you're going to take some hefty AE damage on average, due to at least 1 badly timed counterspell on your warlocks, or simply if they launch an AE before the 1.5 banish cast time. All in all, doable, but still very challenging (With stacked classes!)

With 1-2 warlocks (and 2-3 priests, and a hunter). Here's my issue. With 2 warlocks, you end up with 1 free elemental to be tanked, launching AEs and counterspells. With 1 warlock (we've never even bothered trying this), you have 2 free elementals to be tanked, launching AEs and counterspells. And again, this is on top of your already near-dry casters. At the appropriate gear levels, you have to have everything go extremely well, perfect positioning, no bad luck on counterspells and such to even have a chance with 2 warlocks. With 1 warlock I dont even see this encounter happening. These adds are just way too harsh.

Suggested solution? Simply toning down the elementals would go a long way to making this encounter balanced for RAQ's overall difficulty level. Options are adding vulnerability to snare/stun (again I dont remember stun's status, but I am sure they are not snarable), reducing availability or damage of the AE, and removing the counterspell. Any or all of this would help a lot. I realize they already dont have much HP, but the AE can rip your raid to shreds considering your available dps will mostly be melee, since the drain will have taken a toll on casters. Basically anything that removes the warlock-stacking requirement would be a huge plus.


Anyway, overall I am very happy with these two instances. Having been through the end-game a couple of times in other guilds, but never having been a part of the "guild building" phase from ground up, I am immensely enjoying the availability of 20man raid dungeons to help gear us up. Not to mention its just fun as hell conquering a zone with your guild (quite a bit more fun if you're doing it while its still a challenge, i.e. pre-MC/BWL). I just feel these two encounters are a bit out of place. A bit of tuning would go a long way towards making these zones masterpieces. Thoughts?

As far as I am aware, both Moam and JI'do are deliberately harder than the rest of the zone. They are optional bosses whose loot tables are, in my opinion, supeorior to everything bar the end boss. That's why consumables are needed for them - 40 player raids burn through pots constantly (heck, I'm alt-tabbed mana potion farming now), and these two bosses are the first indicator you get of that in the 20 player raids.

If they were progression bosses in the zone, then I would agree - but as it stands, they are fit for purpose I think. Really hard optional challenges you can do when you finish the zone for a bit of extra loot.
(BTW, 3 warlocks isn't stacking a raid for a 20 player force. You woudl expect 6 classes to have 3 members present, and 2 classes to have 2).

Agree with Maledict, it has been stated by Blizzard that these encounters are optional, hence they are harder then the progression bosses in their respective zones. A bit of risk/reward scenario here. You can let them rot, and still consider the raid a success, if you feel you don't want to risk failure.


They prime you for the massive usage of consumables that become much more common in the 40-man raids.

I'd agree on your warlock stacking argument, if warlock werent the least-played class globally.

And I can see your point about the optional aspect of these bosses, but Jin'do's loot is not any better for casters than Bloodlord's is for melees. Remember where my guild was coming from. Bloodlord's melee weapons were fantastic for us, huge upgrades. Same with Jindo's caster stuff.

As for Moam, while I can accept the fact that three of the bosses are in fact "optional" by definition, the zone is very empty without the inclusion of them in a clear. Once again, remember why a new guild is there. They're wanting to clear the entire zone for loot volume, not quality farming (Ossirian) like an established 40man guild is.

While Blizzard may have stated that they are indeed optional and tuned correctly, I was more after the opinions of people themselves, especially from the perspective of a starter guild.

I absolutely agree that it's fine that they are harder than the rest of their respective zones, but I still find Moam rediculous. The difference between having 3 and 2 warlocks is huge. The difference between 2 and 1 is even bigger. And I think we've killed him once or twice with no warlocks, but the entire raid was BWL level geared characters.

And it could be argued that bringing 3 warlocks is stacking the raid. Considering that a lot of 40 man raids these days consider anything above 2 a waste.

Exactly.

In 20 people raid, 2-3 representatives per class mean balanced setup, just like in 40 ppl raid 5 per class is. Thus it's can be hardly said that having 2 warlocks (the lowest number that can be considered balanced), 2 priests and 1 hunter is stacking. Even 3 are far from stacking comparable with taking 7-8 mages for BWL/AQ - it's basically equivalent of 5 warlocks.

Stacking would happen if having 4th or 5th warlock gave you something extra in this fight, which is obviously not the case - warlock DPS when mana draining is laughable and having more then 3 warlocks (and arguably, more then 2 as well) actually makes Moam harder.

We never attempt Moam without 3 priest and 3 warlocks; it's not worth it for us at this point. I think 3 of his drops are melee leather, 1 is balance druid gloves, and there is the Talon off-hand that I have never even seen. The fight is simply a gimmick fight for warlocks. Requiring a certain amount of mana-drain doesn't strike me as unbalanced, but the adds are way more powerful than Garr's (the only fight with similar mechanics) and so tanking them is usually a disaster, especially if you (as the OP's raid probably is) are skirting the edge trying to get enough DPS on Moam before stoneform ends to win.

I think we have to differentiate between Jin Do and Moam. Jin is doalbe with less than stellar gear, IF everybody is on his toes. If people show good teamplay and control of their class, this boss is doable with a variable groupsetup. Moam however requieres warlocks. As some folks mentioned, there are only a few of them, we had several runs where we didn't have one. Granted, we were able to solve this problem by dpsing as hell, using our gear to beat the encounter before an add spawn (usually we sport at least 3 rogues in our raids). But this is not viable for raids who haven't got BWL on farm yet. For this reason I consider this fight the worst designed fight in the zone (only comparable to the pre 1.11 Ossirian, nicknamed the unpyloned).

I can only imagine similar problems with expansion pack encounters, when all the sudden paladin/shaman will be needed - and while horde guilds will quickly incorporate 3-4 pallies, allies will stick with 1-2 shammies for some melee buff. All the sudden 3 shammies will be needed to do something... and that will be called stacking.

This fight is very easy with 3 warlocks, but perfectly doable with 2 as well. And 2 warlocks is just normal, minimal number of those expected in 20 people raid. Not having 2 warlocks means stacking other classes, not the other way around.

As for balancing this fight, if it's really needed.... I guess adds could be not only banishable, but also fearable (just like elementals in DM West). That would give you 2 classes that can control them - although their HP/damage would need readjusting to cope with 1 warlock being able to crowd control 2 at the same time and 1 priest being able to AoE fear them in right situation.

Krill, I think if you're saying its a very easy fight with 3 warlocks, then you're not looking at it from the right gear perspective.

It is still very challenging with 3 warlocks, at the appropriate gearing up stage.

Recenly I was doing this fight with 2-3 people in MC/BWL class gear and all the other people in blues/greens. Additionally, it was a PuG. We had 2 warlocks and 3 priests. So I would call the group being on level close or even lower then expected for this encounter.

We have killed her on the second try (first one was disaster on many levels - among other things, priests were healing not mana burning). DPS was really subpar because of gear and before the spawn Moam was still around 40%. But good banish and DPS coordination after spawn resulted in burning first add fast, then boss, then last 2 banished adds.

There are many tricks that can be used by not that well geared groups like starting with druids in hybrid gear and cat form to add to DPS and save mana for healing when shammies/palas run out of mana. Good coordination between warlocks can result in almost instant banishes and limited AoE damage.

But like I said, if this fight requires balancing it should not be done in making mana draining less intensive or lowering number of adds, but by giving raiders more crowd control means. Fear fits this fight - 1 warlock will be able to control 2 adds, 2 warlocks - all of them. And you can always use priests instead, if warlocks are not available.

Is this fight class dependant? Yes, of course. But there are many such fights in game - every raid dungeon got at least one.

The two encounters are optional. I feel Jin'do is fine, you don't need to stack anyone, you just need attentive raiders. Moam is a lot easier with 3 Warlocks, maybe it should be retuned.

I hope Blizz learns from Moam and doesn't do something like that again (or at least do it for a more popular class).

I am sure that having Shaman/Pallys will be make some TBC encounters easier (with their new level 70 spells), but that should be understood. I just hope this requirement will only be in 20 mans or higher.

:unsure:

Jin'do is not a dps fest. It's all about co-ordination. Use a bear tank so that Jin'do never runs loose and even if your raid is caster orientated, he's still doable. One trick we learned when we had a 5 warlock team in a ZG run, is when you are cursed, drop an infernal and putting him on aggressive. Those things are shade killing machines. Make sure you also have you priorities right. Healing > Mind Control > Jin'do. Make a spamable assist macro for totems and you should be able to beat the encounter.

Most imporant thing is that jindo does not run around.
The best way to achieve this is have a bear tank and have everyone stand in the exact same spot. There is no reason to spread out on this encounter at all.

Healing totems are much worse than mind control totems. Kill them immediately. The totems are backstabbable rogues can destroy them. Since a bear is tanking make sure that the dps warriors remember to sunder.

If everyone is standing together you will find the shades 'MUCH' less of an issue. If you can only kill 1-2 shades because they are spread all over the place then they will pile up.

I actually really like the jindoo fight because even a very well geared group can lose (and badly at that) if they do not play it correctly.

Moam I agree for a 20 man guild is a lot harder than he needs to be. For geared out 40 man guilds he dies prior to the summon even with 3-4 alts in the raid which makes him overly simple.

Jin'do comes down to a good bit of luck. Our raids tend to be healer heavy so if we get a string of healers catching Delusions of Jin'do, then it becomes a lot more difficult.

We've been farming Jin'do way, way before we even stepped foot into MC. Very much doable for a guild in DM / ZG blues and a few random epics.

Two basic techniques to attack healers running out of mana in a boss fight: rotation and down-rank spells.

The idea with down-rank spells is to have lots of healers casting slow, efficient spells that hit (non-crit) for about 1k health on the tank. (Heal Rank 2 is a popular one for Priests.) If your healers aren't wearing some modest amount of +healing gear, then they won't get any more efficiency out of these lower-rank spells. Make them do some basic arithmetic and figure out the hpm numbers for themselves. Go farm more +healing gear if they don't have enough.

With a rotation, you have some healers active while others rest and regen. One thing that works pretty well on Jin'do is to have pairs of healers tag-team: one chain heals, the other rests and regens mana. If the active healer drops below 50% mana, gets ported to the skelly pit, or has to kill shades, then he hits a macro to tell his buddy to come in for him. Two healers can swap back and forth this way on the fight for a surprisingly long time.

For Jin'do, only the MT should really be taking signifigant amounts of damage. Other folks should be able to bandage and help the healers out. Do not allow your dps to soak up lots of spot healing.

Presumably they were going to bring pliers and a blow torch and get medieval on his ass.

Jin'do doesn't need tuning, your raid just needs to step up. I actually rather enjoy the Jin'do fight because he can't be beat down ezmode style by an overgeared raid group.

I also don't think Moam needs any tuning. Doing him with 3 locks is trivial, 2 is easy and 1 is a pain. Doing it with 0 is possible, I guess, but I wouldn't want to try.

This is the same savant that quotes himself in his sig on the FOH forums.

Anyway, on topic:

The 20-man instances are not properly balanced for what they should represent to the populace. Even the loot was whacked, hence the reitemization and change to the token system. While it's fine to ramp up difficulty in a zone such that it requires return trips and parallel progression outside the zone, it's not okay to smack softcore players in the face with assrape bosses.

I strongly believe that in a 20-man raid zone, which is supposed to be like an introduction to raiding for traditionally non-hardcore players, the first boss should be a complete gimme. It should be "Oh, you got 20 people together? Super! Here's some nice loot. See how fun raiding is? Now let's try something a little harder..."

To be fair, Jin'do does drop some of the best loot in the zone, so I'm not sure that he is need of tuning. If you were going to tune him at all, I'd say a drop of about 50k HP would be in order. It's not a huge nerf, but it does give a raid with about 2k DPS roughly 25 seconds of extra time, which should mean they're cutting it close and running out of mana.

His trash is also probably the hardest in the zone, which should be a good indication of the assbeating to come. Because of the circular, open-ended layout of the zone (which I think is good), there's nowhere they can stash him away. Putting him near the entrance is probably a bit misleading for newer players and not a good design decision, but I expect there wasn't really a way around it after the level designer had already created the zone. On the other hand, the entrace does sort of lead you counter-clockwise, which is fairly close to the true difficulty order of the bosses.

As for Moam and AQ20, this zone is incredibly difficult for non-hardcore players. My roommates are fairly casual raiders. They do ZG once or twice a week, and after about 3 months, have brought down Venoxis, Jek'lik, Mar'li (snake, bat, spider), and Bloodlord (to be fair, they sploited it with the spears). They have a few epics scattered among them, but by and large, they're wearing mostly blues. Pretty typical casual raiders. I mention this because I've watched them try AQ20 ... with messy results.

Kurinnaxx stomped them. Introducing the concept of tank switches to new raiders is good, but combining it with the assrape (to non-epicced out players) AE sandtraps, it is a bit excessive. If you were going to retune this boss, I'd have the sandtraps occur less often and reduce their damage.

Now let's say they beat Kurinnaxx after a couple weeks of wipes and move on to Rajaxx. Even with the nerf, he's going to kick the living shit out of them. Rajaxx should be the boss of the zone, not Ossirian. Ossirian could very well have his HP doubled, add spawns during the fight, and hit harder, and he'd be a perfect boss for AQ40. For the people questioning this logic, have you ever seen casual players attempt Rajaxx? I have, and I can safely say that it's like watching a pack of down's syndrome eight year-olds try to take down Tito Ortiz.

Similarly, Moam is probably a bit too much for casual raiders. His explosion when he reaches full mana will flatten people not in full epics. Combine this with his adds (god help them if they don't have 3 warlocks) will destroy casual players. I would reduce the explosion by about half its current damage, or simply reduce it to a knockback.

Jin'do

In my mind this is an execution and an endurance fight. It's a test that your team knows their roles and that you can execute cleanly. It's also a test of whether your DPS and healing are "balanced". If you stack caster classes, as you've discovered, this fight is quite difficult (rogues and warriors are the absolute best classes at taking out the totems.) If you can't react to frequent target switching, then this fight will go badly. If people don't know not to decurse, it will go badly. If you can't endure the length of the fight, it will go badly.

Pacing and execution. It's, in my mind, one of the best designed encounters in the entirety of WoW. Even a tier 2 equipped group can (and I've seen it happen) wipe on this guy if they don't execute cleanly.

Moam

Moam is an interesting fight, and while I've only ever beaten him with 3 warlocks there's no particular reason you have to go this route. You should have at least 2 warlocks if you've got a balanced raid, and it should be possible to banish 2 and kill 1 add if you're on the ball. It's a lot like the Ragnaros fight in that you get adds on a timer while the boss goes AWOL (as far as doing damage, unlike Rag you can kill Moam while he's out of the picture) I'm betting you could even tank the adds out of the group if you had the warriors and burn Moam.

These fights are designed to test your group. Execution, class make up, endurance, consumable use. These are all standard hallmarks of higher level raiding bosses. These encounters are both excellent tests of your raid and good preparation for the future should you proceed to the 40 man instances. Moam, as I said, is good training for Ragnaros. Jin'do is good training for a variety of bosses (although I can't think of a single fight that's quite like it.)

So, no, I don't think they need retuning. You just need to step up to the plate. Yes, they're harder. That's intended.

Well, you can also frost trap them. This just doesn't buy enough time if you are raiding in blues I guess. It might be worth it if you would have to offtank one add and are short on mana. One could even retrap by having a warrior kite an add over a second trap. Bringing another warlock does sound a lot easier though.