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.

it isn't really possible to outgear/outpot any naxx fights atm. even the most straightforward 'gear check'/pot check fights still have pretty meaningful execution demands.

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.

Except that the raid has to kill GWF before all the worshipers are killed. And Sartura has a berserk.

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 :(

Your example fits perfectly with the Heigan encounter. I haven't seen too much of Naxx, but that's one that might require more skill than gear. (To a certain extent).

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.

Polarity Shift, watch your debuff.... and GO!
<3

I remember having the same train of thought the first time I saw people at Grand Widow Faerlina (Rain of Fire). Granted, they might have died anyway, due to the then-bugged effect radius, but still...
I guess it makes it funnier watching other guild's movies though, try to spot the person moving with keyboard only =)
Edit: I still can't spell.

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.

Apart from laughing and pointing, how do you guys handle this in a guild? We've got some in my guild, and it's a damn hindrance to progessing at a satisfactory speed.

I have no problem moving with just a keyboard. My standard playing is WASD and numpad. It isn't like PvE requires players to turn completely around instantly. PvP is a different story of course, but still... the keyboard strafes and rotates easily fast enough for every PvE encounter.

Just gonna say this.

How...as a healer...do you move with your mouse while playing whack a mole with 39 people? You do not circle strafe to heal your target, or have to stand perfectly behind him. Basically, to play a healer is counter-intuitive to the FPS mentality/playstyle. You are required to be slower than a melee class, as you have massive casting time. You are required to take a few aoe ticks...in order to finish that spell which saves the offtank noone else is watching.


These people you guys mock? i can assure that they are mostly healers. People trained from lvl 1 to stay stable and in range of their tanks. People that watch Sartura bearing down on them whirlwinding, while they watch the last second left on their casting bar...hoping it gets off before she gets to the tanks. Maybe half a second too late to dodge the spin.

I advise you guys to watch movies from a healer PoV, and watch the movements of the healer. We cant jump around when we are bored...or take a second to reposition...or do a cool pivot thing when we are FRAPSing. 60 levels taught us to stand still or move to get back in LoS. Not to twitch jump and backstab and circle strafe and intercept/charge where we need to go. Or to dodge spinning mobs or aoe effects or cone shaped breath attacks.

You guys wonder why a healer doesnt "OMG get outta rain of fire!" or "switch sides!". We are trained not to...and half the time we trying to keep some whiny tanks up at the cost of our bills. Hell...half the time i cant even see the mob through my healthbars.

Flubber, a healer having to stay in to get the heal to land is something I can fully understand and sympatize with (although there are times when they could have run, knowing that the random rogue 20 yards away wasn't going to get killed within 3 seconds - depends on fight though, of course). What I can't really sympatize with is mostly regarding DPS, casters staying in to finish casting the spell, or melee seemingly refusing to run out, wanting stay in and compete for damage meter positions, even if it ends up killing them, or just failing to comprehend how much damage they're going to take.
But still, making a single jump after a couple of attempts shouldn't be too hard, should it?

Edit: Single != simple

Invest in a good mouse (I use a MX1000), it has a multitude of extra buttons you can bind to. Renew, Flash Heal, Shield, Dispell, are all mouse bound. Also, mods such as RDX have bindings for the raid frames, so depending on what you click it with (Left, Right, Shift Left / Right, Ctrl Left / Right clicks ect) you can bind different spell casts. Not only is this good for maximizing your efficiency / reaction times it also allows you to use your mouse to move your character. I find this much more fitting for my playstyle, as prior to this game, all of my gaming was done in FPS (ala CS ect).

So in the end, people who wear conrete boots while raiding get no slack from me.

I've missed that simple jump in WC 5 times in a row before when running lowbies through... :(

I bet those same healers PVP in shadow form too. As a PVP healing priest you learn to MOVE because your life depends on it. It's interesting you mention sartura because that's my favourite fight to heal because it reminds me so much of PVP healing. Trying to pump out quick heals to keep people alive through large bursts (if healing sartura tanks) while making sure to get the hell out of the way when something gets close. PVP healing also teaches you to WATCH the fight because your health bars are often useless. That rogue that's losing health on your raidbars? He's not even on the same side of the map as you. You have to heal by target of target, straight clicking on them (which is still pretty hard for me), or by at least registering who it is being hit by direct visual before clicking their health bar. It also teaches you to ANTICIPATE because damage in PVP is so rediculous you can't just see someone get hurt and then heal the damage. If a mage suddenly gets a sparkly effect and rising red circles around his body (or an orange glow) somebody is going to die unless you shield them or start up a heal (you might wanna dispell and/or fear the mage too). Hunters winding up the aimed shot are the same, and as soon as someone gets charged by a warrior they're going to want a shield to both stave off damage and starve the warrior of rage.

Every priest should heal in PVP from time to time, it could teach them a lot about how to play their character beyond standing around and pressing the heal button. I guess it doesn't help that the seemingly preferred method of priest PVP is to stand around channeling mind flay between mindblasts.

sorry, but no. those guys you describe sound like the type of people who still havent figured out the max range of their heals and how to utilize that range or when they need to stop healing and get moving (ESPECIALLY on sartura). those are the people that stand right next to their tanks, then wonder why the hell the mob turned around and smacked them.

and its also odd that people keep mentioning pvp in regards to pve awareness. something i have been wondering about for a while now since for us it seems the higher peoples pvp rank is, the higher the possibility is that they will die to something like sartura or those retard ghosts in naxx (the ones that you cant target and just get away from).

PvP healing definitely prepares you for any kind of movement-based PvE encounter. Targeted AOES, slow moving insta-gibs, etc ain't got nothing on ten guys gunning for your ass.

I remember a long time ago when we first learned Ony, after some people got killed by a deep breath, some frustrated guildmate asked in vent if any of them had ever played a nintendo game before. You can pick up pretty much any action game off the shelf and it will have way way more complex manuvering than Sartura or C'thun, yet there's still people who have the hardest time dealing with environmental awareness.