I know there have been several threads on whether to try naxx without clearing AQ, and this is not a question of whether we could feasibly kill bosses in naxx, but whether we should or not.

A bit of history:

So my guild recently killed the twin emperors after a long period of attrition after huhuran. For a point of reference, there was four months in between first kills for the guild. Due to steady change in guild members, and a lack of consistent raiders in those four months, we only spent 4 or 5 nights of wiping on the emps. When naxx came out we checked out anub'rekhan for a couple nights, but were trying to rely on visual cues for locust swarms and it didn't go too well.

I've killed anub'rekhan on test, and razuvious with another guild, and am certain we could easily kill them, but my question is one of focus. We only raid 4 nights a week for about 4 hours a night. Having a lot of new people joining the guild during our attrition period leaves several new members lacking in gear. We were able to kill the emps with nothing non-standard other than flasking the tanks, and the typical raiding consumables.

So the question is what to do with our time. One night is dedicated to bwl, and occasionally we have enough time to kill skeram afterwards, but that's not a guarantee. If we start going after the first 2 naxx bosses, my concern is that it won't leave us enough time to clear to C'Thun in a reasonable amount of time, as well as if we do start killing bosses in naxx, do we run the risk of people just wanting to stay there and go after other bosses (regardless of whether we can actually kill the other bosses, as in they just want to be in the new instance)?

We would love to see C'Thun die, as having an unfinished instance is demoralizing in and of itself. So do we forego killing the first two naxx bosses that would be essentially easy loot, so that we stay focused on C'Thun, or do we consider the time spent in naxx an investment towards killing C'Thun, and work on them while practicing on C'Thun?

There has also been the suggestion of putting bwl on hold until we kill C'Thun, giving us an extra night to spend in AQ, but given our new recruits, I have advised against that.

What sort of raid schedule would you suggest given 4 days of raiding per week? As far as speed goes, we can clear to the emps in one night, but probably wouldn't have time to do them before we started losing the east coast members to sleep needs.

Momentum is the most important part of rallying your guild. Plan for clearing AQ40 up to C'thun on Tuesday, clear all the trash before C'thun so on Wednesday, it's a clear shot at C'thun. Rally everyone to farm as many consumables as possible for a few days in advance. Focus your people on preparing for The Big Night. Everything should be building up toward killing C'thun. When everyone logs on Tuesday loaded for bear and filled with consumables, you've given yourself a larger margin for error and a significant boost to your raid power. If you've made any progress whatsoever on C'thun, the excitement built up around this night should give you the momentum needed to finally kill C'thun.

Caveat: I would advise waiting to plan this night once you can reliably get to phase 2 and make a good dent into him. If you've never made it to phase 2, this will be a night of tears and broken glass.


[edit: fixed days, thx Chalon!]

Well, I'm sure you don't mean to clear it on Monday since the instance resets on Monday night :P.

Our guild is pretty much exactly in this position, what we have been doing so far is:

Wed: Bwl/Naxx first few bosses (swap weeks)
Thus: More Naxx
Friday: MC/BWL (if enough ppl)
Sat: AQ to Cthun trash or cthun if fast clear
Sun: Cthun attempts
Mon: Cthu attempts

We only have 3 core days Wed, Sat and Monday where we reliably get 40 people, the other days happen if we get people - which we have been recently. Making good progress got emps down 2 weeks ago and 75% p2 cthun last week and been taking him reliably to p2. Hopefully get him down next week or so. Got anub down in Naxx and taking a poke at the other first bosses.

Your best bet might be to add another 30 minutes to an hour to your raiding schedule.

If you can go AQ40 through Emps and BWL plus AQ40 trash over two nights, that would leave you with two full nights for C'Thun. If you're stuck with AQ40 up to Huhu, then BWL with an Emps, then the first thing to do on the C'Thun nights is trash clearing, it's a bit demoralizing.

My guild is in a somewhat similar position. We went about 3 months between killing Huhu and killing Twin Emps, mainly in my mind due to the fact our guild master and about 4-5 buddies rerolled on a PvP server. The fallout from that took quite sometime to fix to say the least. Regardless it's now been a month since the Twin Emps went down and we still have yet to really have any night where we spend a good portion of time on C'Thun. We've killed both the Instructor and Anub, the guild is probably split 50/50 on keeping going on Naxx or finishing AQ40.

The main issue in my mind is that we almost always kill through the Twin Emps and then people leave which leaves the trash in place. Until you actually do the pre-C'Thun trash I don't think it's possible to understand how mindblowingly annoying this trash is. Last week we had four pulls in a row of 4xmindslayers, needless to say it was not fun and there was very little C'thun attempts that night. Therefore I really think it is key in doing everything possible to have the pre-C'Thun trash killed the same night you kill the Twin Emps so you have however many remaining nights for the week of just zoning in and doing C'Thun.

Off-topic: On the mindslayers, in doing a search on these forums for dealing with them it is suggested repeatedly that druids be used because they are immune to MC. Last week our druids got MC'd repeatedly when trying this and also when on my alt druid I got MC'd during Jindo. Has this been changed recently or am I missing something??

Druids aren't immune to MC. They never have been. They're immune to polymorph.

Jindo occasionally casts poly on a target turning him into a frog. If this hits the MT, Jindo switches targets and the MT can now be hit by a mind control totem, resulting in an aggro wipe for him. This doesn't happen to druids.

Jin'do has a hex ability that turns someone randomly into a frog. Druid tanks are immune to that.

Edit: Beaten. :|

Ok, then do mindslayers have a similar ability??

Sorry for the derail :-(

Ah, I guess rolling with 8-9 warriors on a regular basis makes this a bit redundant :o