Zynth

This might be on the border of an R&D topic, but...

Are any other guild in Karazhan yet? I heard DnT has it almost fully cleared already.

What i'm really wondering is how much gear would the typical Naxx farmed guild be looking to replace before entering. I realize DnT was one of the only guild with 25+ lvl 70s on beta, so they would have a huge advantage as far as strats go, but for those of us that went through Naxx, how much gear do we really need to replace before hitting Karazhan. Obviously weapons are a no-brainer for melee's and hunters. Personally, I think some of the lvl 70 blues seem more like side-grades, or minor up grades to Naxx epics. For the people that like to push the bleeding edge, is it possible to skip the 20 runs of each lvl70 dungeon and start working on karazhan? Or is one more like a supplement to the other?

 

kais[bo]

i think every 2nd guild that had nax clear is in kara. at least. you only need 10 ppl and the key chain ain't that slow.

 

Cesar2000

I'm sure there are a lot more doing it atm than you think. We will likely start it tomorrow, and we are far from a 'top' guild.

 

Tel

Yup, we're taking it slow atm, and we'll be probably fielding two karazhan groups tmrw, out of our 40 or so raiders.

We're slightly behind, as we had no one in beta basically, so have been working stuff out ourselves, its been great not caring about 'progression' and just having fun :)

 

◊ Bekah

We could push it this weekend with 16 70's in guild- but we're still a bit class skewed (5 warriors... one priest = lol) and a few of our 70's are still recovering from the push. I don't see why guilds wouldn't already be in there and nearly finished if they were more militant about leveling/keying than we are (and we've been pretty laid back- letting the guild set the progression pace)

As for gearing, hit some 5 mans to cover gaps in gear coverage- people with one or more pieces left over from MC/BWL (it happens!) if they didn't get covered in questing- see about a little bit of warrior gear (can never have over geared tanks imo) and if you were already in mostly T3, you're probably safe to just march in with those bases covered.

Which doesn't mean you stop running the 5 mans/Heroics to put polish on gear sets- if you go in with mostly T3 you're still going to be stamina light.

 

Zwink

Your tanks will need to eventually be geared in the best blues available from 5 mans. No class other than your tanks need to be outfitted in the new level 70 gear. Karazhan can be started with a Dreadnaught main tank, but certainly won't be finished until that tank replaces almost all of his gear with TBC blues to hit the new level 70 defense cap and raises his mitigation stats back up to pre TBC levels. Curator is probably the first place you will see the need for new TBC gear.

Additionally Karazhan does not include many items that are better than the blues obtainable in 5 mans for tanking.

http://vodka-guild.com

 

Zynth

Ya, i know my guild has been working on keys, mostly grinding rep for heroic keys, but I didn't really expect so many people to be hitting it so soon. I guess i assumed that there would be more gearing up for it. Honestly, I've been having so much fun lately i totally forgot about progression and raiding.

 

kamii

I don't know about caster itemization but most meleestuff i've seen on the Karazhan lootlist is dissapointing. Most of it is easily outclassed by lvl70 (and lower) blues. Some of it (statwise) almost matched by pre-TBC gear (...). As a fury warrior (suffering bigtime from downscaling crit and hit) i can safely say i have no business running Karazhan for loot.


There seems to be a big problem with the current melee itemization as a whole. Lots of Attack Power, while all you really need is insane crit- and hitratings to keep things effective. Noone needs a dps cannon that misses half his attacks.

Kamii - Warrior - Orc

 

Itto

Was there any word of a possible heroic Karazhan in the works?

 

Vytae

Im finding Karahazan alot like AQ40. Spectacular Bossfights,boring trash clears and low amount of true upgrades.

It's a place you go too to say "yeah,i did that and it was fun as hell (ie C'thun) but check out this sweet blade i just got from Arcatraz"

The only thing i don't like about Karahazan is that it almost requires a fantasticly balanced group and hybrids.

Money is not happiness. Yachts are not happiness. Hot women are not Happiness.
Being stinking rich on a yacht with hot women sure as hell is though.

 

Kody

It's a raid zone - raid zones require you to balance your raids in all but very few cases where you can stack, so it makes sense that it's no different in Karazhan. We've kind of taken it slow(some of our planned 10-person group were busy with school, or out of town, etc), but we'll be plugging away at the zone for the rest of the week I'm sure.

And yes, when you have trash mobs hitting for 4k, you're going to want your tanks in TBC level 70 items over stuff like Dreadnaught - the HP difference is enormous. Romeo can still drop a 15k hp tank if shield block is on cooldown when he gets his buff. :(

Quick question for people who are doing the zone: Which Opera House encounter did you get? I personally felt from my beta experiences that Romeo and Juliet was the hardest, and boy was it ever when we beat it tonight. Also, [Masquerade Gown] seems bugged - Thottbot claims a 10% proc chance on its spirit buff, but our priest that got it only had it proc once in 200 casts. :(

 

• Navaash

That sounds like either:

- a decimal point got shifted on the server data file
- Thott parsed the information wrong

Occam's Razor makes either equally likely.

 

Kody

Well, a 145 spirit buff for 15 seconds doesn't seem very good if it only goes off 0.5% of the time when you cast. Add to that this item: [Bangle of Endless Blessings], which Thottbot reports at a 15% chance to proc. From my beta experiences with that trinket, it's fairly accurate.

At any rate, the encounter was good fun to do with a group of friends. I think we had as much, if not more enjoyment from beating it as we did clearing the bosses in Naxxramas the first time around.

 

• frmorrison

I doubt it, since Heroics were made to extend 5 man content, not raid content. Also Karazhan already drops Epics, so I doubt there will be a Heroic mode anytime soon.

DK - Ashbane Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.

 

Vosk

My guild put together a karazhan group, and I'm the only one that is wearing very many TBC items. Due to only one warrior being above 66, we had to get a 2nd tank somehow. Druid power ahoy.

Seems like we shard a few items here and there, but we mostly are using the karazhan loot we've acquired. A few pieces are pretty lackluster, as people have noted.

We're running with a slightly 'gimpy' group, but we're doing pretty well. I really wish we could trade a hunter for a rogue, priest, or warrior. Though it is fun being the only leather dps.

Druidx2
Warriorx1
Priestx1
Magex2
Hunterx3
Paladinx1

[13:49] <manly> buu: RIGHT NOW, ALL THE DATA WE HAVE IS 7.3% MULTIPLIER
[13:49] <manly> FUCK

 

sulliwan

It's suprising how blizzard have managed to not learn from their mistakes and make the second boss in karazhan incredibly dependant on raid composition. It ranges from extremely hard to quite easy depending how many priests and paladins you have in the raid. (Which sucks since we got a total of 1 priest at 70 and 0 paladins and we're trying to run 2 groups, bleh)

Just had to write this little piece of whine somewhere :P

 

parsimony

Our guild is having a lot of fun with kara. We've gone in the past two nights and cleared up to the shade of aran. We had some trouble with him last night and Im not sure what we could be doing wrong. Its probably a raid composition issue, we don't have a warlock. We got the wizard of oz event by the way, and it was tremendously cool :) I got some ruby slippers for my mage.

 

Abaxial

I believe we are running one group tonight. However we seem to be rather light on healing as far as 70's go and I won't be able to make it seeing as I'm just shy of level 68. Full time job and being sick is really hurting my leveling.

http://sig.gamerdna.com/quizzes/INFL...ks/Abaxial.png

 

koaschten

got [Luffa] ?

 

Cord

I wish I never vendored that now.

 

Elendril

A warlock is SUPER important for Shade of Aran, from what I can tell - by far your best option for controlling the elementals in Stage 2. Besides, if you brought a warlock, you'd have had someone who can't portal to give the portal slippers to ;)

 

• Lurchington

It's great for hunters. We don't have to knock our heads against a DW hit cap, and the attack power directly affects our pets too :). Crit is always nice though, especially for those who took points in Go for the Throat.

 

padrote

Ruby Slippers share a cooldown with your Hearthstone so they're only good for freeing up a bag slot (if you use them as your main gear).

The fast progression in Karazhan by T3 guilds pretty much quiets the neysayers about Naxx gear becoming obsolete in TBC.

 

• frmorrison

The Ruby slippers item seems like it uses your healthstone (and the same timer and effect). Is Thott wrong?

The good thing is it saves an inventory slot if you used those boots as your 'main' boots.


Haha, beat by 5 seconds.

DK - Ashbane Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.

 

xkmonkey

We made it to Prince Malchazaar last night, and I'm fairly certain he's bugged right now. Otherwise, the only boss that required more than 1 wipe to learn was the Shade of Aran. We did have two people in the guild who had previously run Karazhan on beta, so we had a preliminary idea of what the bosses did, but even then it shouldn't take too long for most naxx guilds to have it cleared.

The chess event is a lot of fun once you figure out what you're supposed to do. Might be a tad on the easy side though.