I'm wondering if anyone could give me some numbers on the difference in dps for warlocks, mages, rogues, and hunters (and perhaps also fury warriors), assuming optimal play, between the best available gear to a BWL clearing guild and an AQ40 clearing guild, on a stationary target like Patchwerk. (Assume that no dps classes have access to Thunderfury) I'm in a raid organization that is currently farming BWL, and is able to clear AQ40 through Huhuran. In addition, we've managed to kill Anub'rekhan and Razuvious, though we're unable to reliably one-shot either of these bosses. My impression is that a good number of the later Naxxramas fights require, or at least are made much easier, by having lots of dps. The issue is, we don't clear AQ on a regular basis, since most of the team wants to spend time in Naxxramas, and so we aren't getting our hands on any of the better AQ40 dps gear. I'm interested in getting some numbers from more experienced raiders to back up the claim that AQ40 gear really is worth it, in the long run.

To give an idea of our current dps, when we run damage meters vs Ebonroc, we're around 6500dps - our mages are mostly fire spec, so that hurts them, but the fact that the fight is shorter than Patchwerk allows all mana-using classes to sustain slightly higher dps for the duration of the fight. Would it be correct to say that most of the fights in Naxxramas are possible in BWL gear, but would require a substantially (or in some cases, extremely) better level of play than a team in AQ40 gear? Do you think that AQ40 dps gear makes Naxxramas fights substantially easier?

Maintain 10000 DPS for ~7 minutes and you can do Patchwerk.

Although you are probably going to need off-tanks for Patchwerk in at least a few pieces of Conquerors for the absurd armor to not get destroyed by Hateful Strikes.

5/5 doomcaller set bonus makes a pretty big difference for warlocks, especially on patchwerk. having fewer pieces of the set doesn't upgrade dps much.

Do AQ40 first and pray for our luck. 3 Death's Sting in 4 C'thun kills and we haven't even tried Patchwerk yet.

Sounds like us, except for us it's 2 DS, 1 DEoI and the caster weapon in 5 kills.

Content edit: Rogues gain a DPS upgrade. Deathdealer's is better than anything obtainable in BWL barring maybe DD boots versus Boots of the Shadowflame, and you get good off-set pieces for the rest of the slots (Qiraji Execution Bracers, Belt of Neverending Agony, etc), as well as new weapons. AQ40 is pretty kind to DPS warriors as well (Breastplate and Gauntlets of Annihilation, etc).

According to the rogue spreadsheet, the difference between a MC&BWL equipped and an AQ equipped rogue is about 65 DPS, which is an increase of 10%.
This includes full Deathdealer and Death's Sting.

You make me cry, we have killed c'thun 10+ times. We have yet to get a weapon drop, we have a ton of offensive warrior gloves, its really to bad that we only have 2 offensive warriors that raid on a regular basis nothing like gearing up your tanks in offensive gear.

I can't speak for warriors, but looking at the spreadsheet for rogues (as horde)
8/8 BF, Perditions, Veiled Shadows set, Ony Neck, Strikers Mark, Master Dragonslayers, DFT, HoJ: 643 DPS
5/5 DD, Gloves of Enforcement, Execution Bracers, Never-ending agony, Deaths Sting, Pugio, Barbed Choker, Strikers Mark, Qiraji Fury, Master Dragonslayers, Concentrated Hatred, DFT, HoJ: 726 DPS.

I would say that yes, 83 DPS is significant enough to make AQ worthwhile. That's not even looking at the healing gear.

Simply put: Killing C'thun will put you far better off in terms of gear for progression than farming Anub/Noth/Rav/Widow even if you aren't lucky enough to get his weapon drops. The rewards from his eye (guaranteed drop) won't be replaced in Naxx.

Bear in mind that patchwerk is going to be about the 5th boss 6th boss you take on, generally. Behind anub, razuvious, noth, faerlina and maexxna. You'll get some pretty decent upgrades there as well. It's be pretty early for you to start worrying about patchwerk. If you have the gear from those 5 bosses and then find your raid dps struggles, then maybe you could make the decision?

For my guild, as much as we wanted to get c'thun down, it was just too hard to conjure interest for. When you do a naxx raid everything (almost!) is new and interesting. When we kill huhu, the officers just get bombarded with "gtg out for dinner" "gtg work early tomorrow" "afk dinner" etc. Some weeks we don't even bother killing emps, much less clearing the extensive trash after them as well. We're now focusing on naxx simply because it was too hard to get the interest for c'thun.

Patchwerk dps requirements are actaully fairly flexible. Most guilds go in with 16 healers, but if you're fully (I mean fully) in t2, you can drop down to 15, and you gain 5% dps there. Drop down to 2 warlocks and replace the rest with rog/mages and you can gain another 2-3% dps. This bridges most of the dps gap.

However, whether you have the gear to tank and burn maexxna or even live through faerlina rof's, that's much more questionable. The hp gains from aqgear is quite underestimated imo.

yeah, we finally got our second death's sting a week or two ago. zero dark edge so far, and we've been killing c'thun every week since he was possible. we do have 3 scepters, though, which is nice. it's just been hard to convince some people that it's worth clearing AQ more or less just for c'thun each week when we always get cloth belts :-P