draghkar

After having completed all 5 man dungeons in normal mode I'm asking myself what to do next.

What is about you the natural progression in terms of difficulty in TBC encounters after having completed all 5 man raid in normal mode ?

5 man raid normal < Karazhan < Rampart Heroic < Furnace Heroic < Slave Pens Heroic < ....

or something else ?

 

Omelet

I'm not 100% sure what you mean by a "5-man raid"...

Having not done any heroics yet, I can't speak to their difficulty, but certain encounters in Karazhan are very techinical.

Progression in TBC is dictated by the attunement or key requirements for each given zone.

Karazhan requires the completion of a number of the max level 5-man zones.

Serpentshire Cavern requires defeating Gruul / Karazhan and Tempest Keep requires completing at least 4 of the heroic instances.

The Battle of Mount Hyjal requires completion of both Tempest Keep and Serpentshire Cavern raid zones.

http://worldofraids.free.fr/bc/diagramm.jpg is an excellent guide to the progression.

 

seped

Thanks for linking that guide, it's a huge help. Does anyone have a similar link with a more detailed information on some of the quest lines? namely just their starting location/npc.

 

• Arawethion

Karazhan quest line starts at the entrance to Karazhan.
Tempest Keep quest line is the Cipher of Damnation line, starting with "The Hand of Gul'dan" in Wildhammer.
Arcatraz line start with "Consortium Crystal Collection" in Area 52.
Shattered Halls Normal key starts by killing Smith Gorlunk outside Black Temple.
I don't know what Nightbane Quest line is.

Answers to Moonkin questions:
0) Read the TTT/use the spreadsheet: http://elitistjerks.com/f47/t66856-moonkin_pve_dps/
1) Maintain high DoT uptime. Use WiseEclipse.
2) Nothing beats 2T8.
3) Yes, sometimes you cast many Wraths and no Eclipse procs. Deal with it.

 

Elendril

Nightbane quest line starts at Karazhan at friendly, and ultimately requires Shattered Halls/Setthek Halls heroic (to the warlocks)

 

◊ Praetorian

The Nightbane quest line starts at the entrance to Kara once you are Friendly, eventually leads you to kill Aran, and then sends you to do a partial clear of Heroic Sethekk and Shattered Halls, in order to get the item to spawn Nightbane.

The Serpentshrine attunement quest starts in Heroic Slave Pens (you get it there) and requres you to kill Nightbane and Gruul. So there's a clear progression there.

 

• Arawethion

Basically, when in doubt, ask the flowchart. It will know what to do.

Answers to Moonkin questions:
0) Read the TTT/use the spreadsheet: http://elitistjerks.com/f47/t66856-moonkin_pve_dps/
1) Maintain high DoT uptime. Use WiseEclipse.
2) Nothing beats 2T8.
3) Yes, sometimes you cast many Wraths and no Eclipse procs. Deal with it.

 

Malan

So I'm sure everyone heard that Doom Lord Kazzak has gone down a couple times now - in one case to a 40 man raid. Now, is that encounter tuned for 25 man or 40 man raids? If tuned for 40 man, all these guilds that downsized will face problems. If tuned for 25 man the encounter becomes trivial. Then again, how do you prevent a 40 man raid from going there?

Shitting up every single thread on EJ since '06

 

draghkar

I mean "5 man" instances...

 

◊ zeidrich

I was wondering about heroic instance progression.

I know all the heroics are all roughly balanced around the same level, but some will obviously be easier than others based on pulls and effects.

What would you guys say would be the easiest -> hardest progression of heroics, and how well are those itemized?

Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you walk into an open sewer and die.
-Mel Brooks

 

Abaxial

We took a stab at Kazzak last night with 25 people. We probably didn't have the optimal group since we only had 24 level 70's and one 69 but the short of it is we needed a lot more dps, we weren't even close. We had cleared everything but kel in nax if you're curious.

Nihilum and DnT took 35-40 people if I'm not mistaken.

edit:spelling correction

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

 

• Wodin

Definitely tuned for 40.

 

◊ Praetorian

Yeah, Kazzak is in no way, shape, or form a 25-man encounter. Not for a year or so, anyway. He's not "hard" -- it's just numbers. Can you do 1m+ damage in one minute? If so, collect loot. If not, collect repair bills.

 

Bosch

Back to the point of the OP.

We should talk about true progression.

In my mind, I'm kind of thinking:

Normal 5mans get you into Karazhan and a few bosses.
Some Karazhan, Exalted faction rewards and maybe a heroic or two leads you to Gruul's lair (High King)
Gruul's lair farming and first half of Karazhan leads you to the end of Karazhan.
Farming all of the above will lead you to finishing Gruul's, Mag's Lair and ???....perhaps Tempest Keep...but what about SerpentShrine. Perhaps TK and SS are about the same difficulty....

But this is all just supposition. I've heard a lot of people say the heroics rape, and if that's true, not sure how we're going to run the majority of our people through them to get TK attunement if they're in blues....

 

◊ Praetorian

My understanding of the current progression, roughly, has been that TBC raiding is structured as follows:

1) Karazhan, Gruul's, Magtheridon
2) Serpentshrine, The Eye (TK)
2.5) Hyjal (?)
3) Black Temple

It's still unclear where Hyjal fits in -- the fact that it requires Vashj and Kael dead suggests it's a clear next step in progression, but Black Temple is supposed to stand alone atop the TBC raid pyramid.

 

Foxery

It's pretty daunting that a flow chart is needed to keep all of it straight. I'm not sure that's "clear progression," at least in the traditional sense. There's no more clear-cut "zone 2 > zone 1, in both difficulty and loot," as a bunch of them are interconnected now -- which Blizzard really wanted, rather than content becoming old and abandoned. Once we're all keyed for zones with "Tier X Sets," many people will remain focused on their sets and want these zones the most, regardless of other itemization.

Maybe the simplest way to write progression is:
5-man --> Karazhan & Heroic 5-man --> 25 man & outdoor raids.
(I wasn't in beta, so not sure where any other 10-man zones fit in.)

A slightly less detailed but easier to read chart, for your reference:
http://worldofraids.free.fr/bc/BCRaids.png

Good thing I like to see everything, eh? :)


edit: Ah, Gurg beat me on specific names for the 25s. (Zul'aman is also a future release.)

 

Vehn

I think progression is pretty clear cut for raiding. Karazhan, Gruul, Serpentshrine, Magertheridon after you get heroic FR gear, Tempest Keep (assuming this is after serpentshrine as the key quest requirements are much more difficult), Hyjal, Temple.

 

Bubba

The optimist in me believes that Black Temple attunement will simply require "Splinter of the Tree of Life" or "Essence of Archimonde" or something of that ilk. I think even the biggest pessimist would have a hard time believing Blizzard have an entirely new attunement line for BT, particularly after the standard set by Hyjal's.

On a slight tangent, I know many guilds often calibrate their recruitment policies around attunements. What sort of attunements would you seek from your typical applicants once your guild gets back into the raid rhythm? At this point I'm not sure that demanding anything higher than all 5 Heroic keys would be feasible for your "average" raid applicant.

 

Meddler

Just off what I've seen so far I'd definitely say include Karazhan key in there along with being up to the Heroic runs stage of Tempest Keep attunement myself. If they can't handle the Karazhan key chain/basic pre reqs for Cipher of Damnation they're, for various reasons, probably not people you want to be trying to raid with be it due to inexperience, laziness or just plain poor play or whatever.

Not to say not to invite/include people that haven't yet done that sort of stuff in guild depending on guild philosophy/atmosphere/approach but if looking for/accepting applicants specifically for raiding purposes who'll have expectations of a raiding spot no sense in not making sure they've done/can handle the pretty accessible preparation.

 

Z-Factor

I'm with Gurg on this: Hyjal has no clear place in the tier structuring. We can assume quite safely that The Eye and Serpentshrine are shared, not in the least if you follow the lore they're both Illidan's Lieutenants. This would suggest a need to defeat them to face him. We know from Fanatik and the like that a tier 6 warrior set is ingame (or was), which also indicates Hyjal/Black Temple carries something other than tier 5. Also, a blizzard statement a month or so ago eluding to internal BT testing already being underway. I have a feeling BT will be like KH and Nax in scope, so expect all of tier 6 to be there. Which leaves Hyjal in a unique position. Presuming you're against the Infinity Flight's leader/archimonde at the end, you can expect some clear upgrades from the tier 5 offered in Shattrath. But if Hyjal is going to be paced along the lines of Black Morass and Durnholde, then it presents an entirely unique raiding zone: the pace could become overwhelming.

Of course this is just speculation going by version 1 raid zones and the Caverns of Time area. But in 3-4 months it's something I will be following very closely.

 

Mist

Do you have to do the Cipher of Damnation line to get the Tempest Keep key? Or just to get the Arcatraz key quest?

 

Cryect

Tempest Keep Key, the Arcatraz Key quest is the triangulation quest.

I need to do something useless.

 

Brodda Thep

Not quite. You can survive the supreme mode and continue damaging him. A 25 man raid could win if they can handle the mana drains effectively. However, the fight is much much easier with 40 obviously.

We had to get through one round of his supreme mode to kill him tonight. Though we did get as close to 4% on previous runs before he enraged. And yes, we had 40.

 

Warstehgnome

My group of guildies took a stab at a steamvault heroic run last night. We are all decked out in complete blues from lvl 70 instances and have been waiting for our guildies to catch up to start khara, somehow we're still #1 on horde skywall as far as what we have killed cleared(not to say much).

Our tank was very well geared for someone who has not been in khara/heroics. We had minimal consumables, elixers, and that's it, no flasks.

First pull, 2 mobs. First wipe. We were not ready for the one non-sheeped mob to hit our tank for 6k and then 3k(noncrit) in about 3 seconds, we just were not ready.

Zone back in, we're ready, kill the first 2, then get to the bog lords. We knew this was going to be tough, real tough, and it was.

The pull, I put down disease totem, agi, str, and the priest and I get to healing. By then our tank had gotten hit for a 9k crit, and then 3k, then 6k. At this point we realized this was not going to be possible for the time being, at all without more consumables. We did down the bog lord healing like mad men and popping pots(i'm enhance/resto LOL).

Anyway, after that the instance would have gotten somewhat more technical w/CC involved and we probably could have cleared a good deal of the small instance with flasks, and top end consumables and maybe a few khara gears.

But believe me when you first zone in through that pulsing skull zonein, you will be surprised how much harder it really is. We're going back next week fully equipped. Look out skywall's Steamvaults!

Tsarurukai, Tank of <OP> Blackrock
www.op-guild.net
Tankspot Member Wars.

 

Warstehgnome

Just to add my thoughts on the progression: It feels very organic at the moment and when you get the opportunity to key for the next tier raid you will be able to beat your head against the wall fairly little and handle it. The progression is quite clear cut though.

5 Mans
Khara
Heroics
More Khara
Gruul's Lair
Mag/SP
TK
Hyjal
Black Temple(see ya in 10 months imo)

Tsarurukai, Tank of <OP> Blackrock
www.op-guild.net
Tankspot Member Wars.