I, personally, love going into fights under level, under geared to try and figure out just how to beat that encounter when there is no way in Hades that I should be able to stand a sno-ball's (the Hostess treat) chance in Rosie O'Donnell's love shack of surviving.

PS: I do want some t3 and to complete Naxx because its freaking right there.

Grats on 4h, and WTB pics of the loot being put into good use.

Not looking for strats but I have to ask the question:

8 Warrs?
6 Warrs?
6 Warrs + 2 Druids?

We had 8 warriors tonight. We've done nights of attempts using druids to fill in and they were not appreciably different from our other rounds of attempts. The fight can absolutely be done with 6 wars and 2 druids.

Give Molten Helm and Boots, k.

That's not what I meant at all.

You seemed to be implying that people were not in to min/maxing or progression-oriented or somehow less worthy or not "successful" if they didn't want to push on now with the expansion (and forced obsolecence of gear) in sight. Indeed, you said it was lazy. I dispute that.

My argument is that for many guilds, long-term, it will not better the guild to force them to put in hundreds of farming hours to beat a couple of extra encounters which will be rendered easy-mode and relatively unimportant very soon.

Is that lazy? That depends. If you want to get rid of the stereotype "successful = plays 40+ hours per week", why so adamant that people are lazy and "unsuccessful" if they choose to only put in as much time as the game remains fun?

The goal of most guilds isn't to be #1. It's to have fun and get as far as possible while staying fun. It's fun to beat more bosses and get more loot, but it's not fun to spend hundreds of hours fishing for eels and farming dreamfoil and mushrooms, and guilds and their members need to balance how much grind they're willing to take for the fun of progression raids. For a guild dedicated to trying for world firsts (or close enough), obviously nothing will suffice, nothing will be fun for the core members, if the end isn't achieved. For a guild which began raiding in January 2006 and is just trying to see how far it can get before the expansion? The end isn't as important.

Edit: Oh, and grats on the 4H kill!

the deepest, darkest fear of all those that read these forums i am sure.

I'm not sure that's true for Naxx as a whole. As we've said dozens of times now, almost every single Naxx fight would work as a 25-man encounter. The only exception is the Four Horsemen, I think, where scaling it down to 25 would make the fight far, far simpler. But basically every other fight would work with few or no tweaks.

Derail: I see there is some talk (again) about 25 vs 40 man instances. I've seen (in different places) that ppl think that fights as involving as C'thun will not be possible with only 25. Now, I'm no expert on that fight, and this is from a rogue point of view, but I dont get it. Stage 1 is pretty meh, and stage 2 while pretty fun and crazy at times, would it really make that difference if the circle was a bit smaller and there was 15 less ppl in the room? I know from my view, I wouldnt even notice the difference I think.

The main aspect that will make 25 mans easier than 40 for most guilds is simply that it's 15 less people to make that big screwup or to get screwed over by lagged/disconnected/blahblahtechnicalcakes. I don't think anyone's really going to complain that stuff's easy because they had less ways to be wiped by things beyond their personal control.

It's not like most of ZG (pre-nerf) and AQ20 (likewise) weren't harder than MC and even some BWL fights. And those weren't even tuned to be really hard. A fight like Buru or panther boss would fit right into a top tier instance mechanically, just tune the numbers to the required DPS and the required length of time to control the chaos while sustaining that DPS.

No, Blizzard are certainly capable of doing more than just tank and spank in 20-mans, so 25 (and with the ability to count on the unique abilities of both shaman and paladin in raids)? I have confidence in them.

Edit: I especially have confidence in them because of all the personal survival talents popping up. It suggests even more of a focus on personal responsibility and multiple sources of damage/multiple serious targets rather than encouraging single target throughput (be it healing, damage or threat) than is currently the case.

That or it really is all for pvp and they're expecting to focus on pvp-as-endgame more than they currently do.

I expect encounters in the 25-man TBC raids to require a helluva lot more out of the individual player than any of the stuff people are currently experiencing. As a rogue, I sit there hoping for encounters that require me to dps, stun, blind, evade, hell even disarm traps. While they can easily tune bosses for 25 people, what will really solidify this as a good design decision will be if they manage to create encounters that break the mould the way C'thun did. If Illidan turns out to be a combination of Kazzak, Kel'Thuzad, Taerar and Mekgineer Thermaplug, I don't think many will complain about it only being 25 man.

ps - congratulations on 4H guys, great to see you down em :)

Yeah, I know that wasn't what you meant. I just used what you said out of context to make a statement regarding that particular stereotype. Everytime a guild kills a boss first, it's inevitable that people are going to chime in about how the members of that guild have no life, no job, etc. That and the "All PvPers are bratty, 12 yr old gankers!" Ugh.

And you're right. I was headed the wrong direction in my thinking when it comes to slowing down before the expansion. While I still don't think it takes an inordinate amount of time to finish the current content or loot the current gear, it probably doesn't make sense for a lot of people to make the effort if they're nowhere close to begin with.

You've both got a point. If you play for the fun, and the challenge, and you're into Naxx, then sure, keep on going as hard as you have been, just and get the most done that you can pre-TBC. If you play mostly for the fun and the challenge and you're substantially pre-Naxx, you might as well give everyone an extra raid day off or whatever, let everyone recharge a bit before the ex-pack. If you play for the loot alone, then you might as well put the box back on the shelf 'til TBC, I suspect.

Absolutely, the Suppression room is a great example of how to totally destroy enthusiasm for perceived utility.

"Let's have this dumbass aura that everyone hates. Let's have rogues be able to turn it off, but not be able to stop it popping up 1 second later and spamming the aura again. Oh, let's give the whelps that respawn every couple of minutes stealth detection. Yeah, this room's gonna be a blast."

What I was more referring to was a twist on the Thermaplug dynamic, whereby certain things need to be disarmed or nullified, but Rogues simply have a better chance of success. It doesn't have to be a direct obstacle to success, but simply an additional layer of an encounter to add complexity and dynamic challenge. An example off the top of my head - random group member gets thrown into an Iron Maiden. You can either destroy the chamber, risking the death of your group member, or have a rogue unlock it. One is faster, one is safer.

I agree to a point. BWL Suppression room was a poor use of Disarm Traps in a raid setting. Examples of non-conventional raid abilities being put to use on raid mobs: Battleguard Sartura(Intercept, Kidney Shot, Cheap Shot, etc), Instructor Razuvious(Mind Control), Grand Widow Faerlina(Mind Control). Traps in BWL could have been done in a much better way than they were, so hopefully going forward if there are traps in future raid zones this is taken into consideration and the traps are more involved in boss fights rather than trash clears.

Edit: It definitely doesn't need to become a tranq shot situation. Tranq shot is used far too often on bosses. Every now and then having traps to disarm in a boss encounter would be cool though.

Out of all the learning attempts and wipes and banging our heads against the wall, that room is still the most frustrating, ill-conceived load of horseshit in the game, and I hope that whoever designed it developed at least a huge, karmic cold sore for it.

Of course we were doing it back when Broodlord was untauntable, but still. Shame on you, Mr. Developer. Shaaaaammme.

Back when his deaggro was a bitch and a half is what he's talking about I guess :)

Broodlord is still untauntable, surely? Or I have I been tanking him wrong the last 4 months...

Interestingly for us, we actually found the supression rooms very easy. Now by the time we were doing it, a lot of guilds were working on C'thun, so we obviously had a lot more hints and tips to go on, but we were all pretty terrified of how awful they were going to be, but I think we had one wipe before getting it almost flawlessly, and have only wiped about twice since then (normally due to a rogue going to far ahead, getting destealthed and aggroing Broodlord).

Kaubel is confused. Firemaw was untauntable. He means when Broodlord's Knock Away was a full aggro wipe, period. In the days before things like passive mage deaggros and Tranquil Air totem, 100%-aggro-wipe Broodlord was a really, really fucking stupid fight for a Horde raid. I think we killed him 3 times in that form, and it sucked a lot. We used to stack the raid with 7 warriors and 7 hunters to make it possible.

And the suppression room is not "hard" as such. But when you are wiping to Broodlord at 30% 6 times in a row because of the aggro plateau described above, it makes you want to gouge your eyes out.

Yeah that. I'd blame it on coffee but I've had mine this morning, so I'll just say I'm old and stupid.

Gratz on the kill, on further kills would you always use 8 warriors or sneak a few druids in there?