So, as an outside observer to all the uber guilds speaking about Naxxramas and such, the fights sound pretty fun. Just wondering if there are fights were large portions of your raid need some of the more playing "skill" as opposed to farming time or equipment gut checks? The only ones that seem to fit the bill are Heigan (I guess?) and Thaddius, though Thaddius seems somewhere between equipment and player skill, where something like Patchwerk and Loetheb are more farming/equipment related to winning or losing.

Wondering how others view the fights in the game as I have yet to see a fight that really requires more than pure attentiveness in than game skill.

I guess what I consider to be more skill related would be things like adjusting position quickly enough to dodge the splash damage from a rocket quickly enough at close range in like Quake 3 or something. Compared to that just about any sort of skill requirement in WoW is pretty weak. Though the larger (non-fps) demographic probably prevents Blizzard from ever implenting a skill chech that high.

That's the sort of thing I can do pretty easily. The farming of pots and such is not so fun :(

Unfortunately, use of consumables is pretty much a given at the bleeding edge of new content, and probably always will be.

Having said that, I would say that not just Naxx, but even most of BWL requires skill in the way you're describing. Molten Core is really boring for most people because you only really need maybe 10 out of the 40 man raid group to be paying attention to what's going on. Most fights, the tank holds aggro, the healers heal, the dps throws damage around like crazy and the fights are pretty static.

Most of the fights in BWL are not like this. Aggro is much touchier, dps has to pay very close attention to how fast they're doing damage, when they're doing damage, and where they're standing when they do it. AQ40 is even more demanding in this regard where the fights are very dynamic and the situation is constantly forcing the raid to adjust.

Yes, the conversations about Naxx tend to revolve a lot around gear and consumable use, but that's because the level of skill that you're talking about is a GIVEN for any guild that's attempting to make progress there. Even the easiest fights in the zone require very technical coordination and the complete attention and fast reactions of the entire raid.

That said, you're not going to find any fights in any raid instance where you can go in with substandard gear and pull your weight. The scale of 'substandard' may change from zone to zone, but it doesn't matter how elite your skills are, you can't walk into Naxxaramas with a fresh 60 in blues and get the job done, because that would make all the other raid zones pointless.

Sartura faerlina and razuvious require no gear... cept maybe 2 blues with a total of 4 hit on raz.

Well, for example in Naxx you need around Tier 2+to survive (and do enough dps before Enrage).

I hope that the new dungeons in TBC (with difficulty levels), don't require as much gearing to do (just do it on Normal until you are ready for Hard or Elite levels).

Personally, I'd like a mix of both gearing requirements and skill. I think fights like Fankriss and Sartura are perfect examples of this. My guild is working on Twin Emps now. We just finished our 3rd night of attempts, and after a couple executions of 18% and 19%, it's kinda frustrating. I can understand where requiring some amount of skill is ok, but it seems even the smallest error is going to wipe the raid.

BWL (the current one anyway) has been changed in such a way that you can get away for the most part with not worrying about aggro and such if you have tanks that aren't incapable. Sure you can pull off the off tank for Razergore or Broodlord pretty easy, the rest it is kinda hard to pull focus really unless you are some hardcore fury warrior going to town with heroic strike or something :P

Taunt wing buffets, moderate damage on Broodlord and Razergore and easy epics :(

As a former FPS player I'm always amazed at how slow and sluggish people can be in this game. As far as enemies go, it's helpful to see that your opponent moves with his keyboard only and probably clicks all his spells -easy food, right? Then comes the time when those kind of people play on your side, in your raid, and were probably the reason you'll be paying 4 extra gold in Orgrimmar later that night.

A very big part is gear and consumables, I'll admit that. Hell, we save up the weekly worldbuffs just for the Loatheb fight. But fights like Thaddius and Heigan always manage to piss me off. I announce the debuffs at Thaddius on voice comms, it's kind of part of our strategy now. I imagine I don't really have a soothing voice especially when I raise it slightly so noone misses out that their debuff will be changing in 2 seconds, but still people fuck up. It's a shame it IS a really laggy fight and is known as such, because I've heard the same excuse over and over again. I'm inclined to believe it when I'm lagging myself, you know skills not going through when you click them, taking seconds to see the global cooldown, etc. But when we come back around midnight and most of it has cleared up, and people still don't make the jump and still don't move fast enough, that just eats me up. It wasn't a problem when you ran into lava in MC and got your sorry ass killed, but when you take down 3-4 low health people with you and screw up an attempt it IS a problem. Potions, gold don't bother me that much, it's the damn run back, rebuffing and starting all over that annoys the hell out of me.

Same deal with Heigan. We spent so much time in that room and people still die to the splashes. There's a lot of ways to die there, I've been there. Getting the second teleport on a fight phase is SO rigged, you have like 20 seconds to make that run before the poison gas comes and if you get stuck with two rogues you're basically fucked. But the dancing part should be obvious after a few times and some people still die to it.

And then there's the most basic of encounters, the froggerslime bit after Patchwerk. Everyone dies at least once on it, me too. But in my former guild there was a guy that died every-single-fucking-time we had to pass that bit. It just stopped being funny, especially when he cried about needing a repairbot when we were at like 60% durability. I mean seriously, you can have a bit of lag, you can have a shit computer but at least you can learn to anticipate on that right?

Anyway, don't underestimate the actual skill needed sometimes. I smirk at people that post how a 25 man cap is gonna open up the game for more people, that raiders just get epix because they tug 39 other folks into an instance, press 5 buttons and a boss tumbles over. I suppose FPS experience helps -you're more aware of your surroundings, you have higher alertness to sounds and you have a better sense of timing. It all helps.

As a casual (don't compete at a high level) FPS player, I'm still shocked and amazed at how poorly people are with moving around in the game. You know, everyone dies once to frogger like mentioned before, everyone will eventually miss a Thaddius jump... but when that happens over and over again, you really have to wonder. Also, going into Naxx, the first fights really do feel easy, then you realize that it's so easy to screw up when you start bringing in recruits to fill spots in the raid.

How many people out of 20 usually die when you're in a raid jumping down into Buru's lair in AQ20? :)

We found out that a few of our newer members move their char with a keyboard, watching a tauren do a truck type manouver @ cthun is quite possibly the funniest thing i've seen in wow.