TBC, natural raid progression - Page 3

Bubba · 02/07/07, 7:07 AM

Originally Posted by Elerion

As far as I can tell, Heroic instance difficulty is more about boss mechanics versus group setup than anything. See the discussion in the other thread about Omor for details. With 4 melees and a single healer, we needed a significant amount of luck to win. With a stacked group of tank, a shadow priest and 3 other ranged dps, it would have been as easy as on Normal. I'm sure there are fights that act similarly towards other group setups.

There are no fights where melee is more useful than ranged. I have not come across a single fight yet where we've said "wow, this would be easier with more rogues".

It's at its most extreme in the Heroics, but the 5man bosses in BC are basically a catalogue of evidence that melee classes are by and large less effective, and thereby less useful than ranged classes. You can be the best player in history, but when encounters are explicity designed to screw you a lot more than the guy standing 20yds away, the odds are against you.

If it's not a whirlwind, or a thunderclap, or a goddamn immolation aura, it's a cleave or a swipe or an aoe. How often do you encounter abilities that affect ranged classes and not melee?

(apologies for the rant, sore topic)

snape · 02/07/07, 7:11 AM

Romulo/Julianne & Shade of Aran spring to mind when considering fights made easier with more than 1 Rogue.

Bubba · 02/07/07, 7:18 AM

This is true. I should add the caveat that I was speaking specifically about 5mans/Heroics, hence the quote from Elerion.

• Shalas · 02/07/07, 2:05 PM

Originally Posted by Banelion

Originally Posted by Scorpicore

Originally Posted by Banelion

How do you guys deal with loot? Considering only one raid will get it, and you can't exactly rotate a raid boss, as he's open to everyone.

since we teamed up with another guild the loot was split (had 2 drops only so no drama), had a /random 2 roll which guild could get to choose first which item they want for their member and those where auctioned via dkp

Sorry but how do two Seperate raids, loot the same boss? As far as I see it we were talking about over 40 people, correct me if I am wrong.

You have people from both guilds in the raid.

cladnin · 02/08/07, 8:10 PM

Kazzak respawn timer? Anyone know?

cladnin · 02/11/07, 4:02 PM

Having killed Doomwalker myself, This comment sprung my curiosity:

From Nihilum site (from one of their members):

Yeah we had 38-40 something, it's not needed at all though. Doomwalker is totally cake and is easily doable with 25 people, we got him on the 3rd try.. The first try where we acually had a strat and knew about his abilities.

Am I missing something about the fight? We killed it with 32 and it was pretty difficult. We had five wipes at 1% and multiple sub-20%. We must be missing something, if 25 people could somehow have the dps to kill him in one minute, before he completely destroys the raid with earthquake, sub-20%.

♦ Malorum · 02/13/07, 1:52 AM

http://www.thottbot.com/?qu=10888

Anyone else notice this? If this were true then the Diagram posted in the first couple of posts would be wrong. To even GET INTO TK you have to complete said heroics and kill Magtheridon.

Ultramax · 02/13/07, 2:17 AM

Use the power of your imagination and insert it in there then.

Playered · 02/13/07, 2:28 AM

Originally Posted by Michad

http://www.thottbot.com/?qu=10888

Anyone else notice this? If this were true then the Diagram posted in the first couple of posts would be wrong. To even GET INTO TK you have to complete said heroics and kill Magtheridon.

Yes its been known for awhile, no one completed the first 3 trials when the diagram was made, and it was assumed that there was nothing else after...)

I do think that blizzard have gone abit OTT on the cap around raid progression which means that sure, while the very top elite raiding guilds (5-10) may start on the first 25man raiding zones shortly, its most likely going to be impossible for the quantity of guilds that did BWL/AQ etc to come close to the amount that will be able to do The Eye or Serpentshrine Cavern before the next 'Expansion' is ment to be due.

Sure its a nice way to make sure content isnt rushed/skipped, but the majority of it is going to be completly inaccessable to around 50% of the raiding population, and most likely knowing blizzard, they will wait about 4-6months and then say "oh theres a bug with Gruul and his shatter is only ment to be 5yards, not 20, oh and we accidently had him with 2mil HP more than we intended" - resulting in everyone and their mother being able to kill him, the guilds who had to deal with the pressure of the old encounters being screwed over.

Its not even like there is much gear currently available which will noticably boost overall DPS or survivability to make these 'cockblock' level encounters relativly easier.

Maybe I was just wrong when I interpreted Blizz saying Mag & Gruuls would be akin to Onyxia style encounters, they seem more like "Welcome to Loatheb and Sapphiron v2, Please remember to bring your Mass Consumables, Plethora of Resist Gear, and Significantly Stacked Setup, Enjoy your stay" - and the sad part is this is only the starting level of raiding, the probable consumable/setup cockblock that will be Lady Vashj, and Resistance nightmare that Kael will make you endure is going to be far from enjoyable.

♦ Malorum · 02/15/07, 1:46 PM

Originally Posted by Ultramax

Use the power of your imagination and insert it in there then.

Pointing it out to those who might have been informed otherwise.

spronk · 02/15/07, 3:08 PM

Yeah at this point I am considering just playing WoW casual and giving up raiding, which will likely just lead to giving up WoW at some point.

I'm sure there may be good reasons to make the keying process so difficult but whereas before I could reasonably pug up the keying process for BWL/Naxx/MC now it requires running heroics with people you know on voice-comms, and worst of all to progress beyond Gruuls you will need to gear up 30+ people in the guild with crazy FR gear (from said heroics), and I have no desire to run them dozens and dozens of times.

I have to say though playing more casual is fun, the gear gap between stuff you get from shadow/arca/etc is so minimal with stuff from kara/gruul. Not really sure where Blizzard is trying to go with raid itemization.

♦ Praetorian · 02/15/07, 3:14 PM

If you run every single heroic instance twice you will get 102 badges, which is enough for a full FR suit, if that's your concern. Just saying.

Ghostz · 02/15/07, 3:27 PM

How often do you think Blizzard plan on releasing expansions? The earliest I could see the next expansion coming out is about 11 months from now (a year from TBC) and even that's pretty unlikely if you ask me. To say that most people won't be anywhere near done with TBC by the time it comes out is a pretty big overstatement.

It's been under a month since the expansion came out. In that time, most people have levelled from 60-70, gone through all non-heroic 5man content, cleared most (if not all) of Karazhan and done at least a few heroics. A significant number of guilds are starting to finish up the first 25 man raid zone. Again, this is less than a month since release. In another couple of weeks, as people keep doing heroics, clearing Karazhan, etc... you'll probably see more and more people killing Gruul and working on either Magtheridon or Serpentshrine Cavern.

At this point we have 4 zones that have been virtually untouched by most: Serpentshrine, TK, Hyjal and Black Temple. Equate that to MC, BWL, AQ and Naxx, take away the 2 month grace period between the patches that implemented those zones, add in the skill, teamwork and knowledge of the game people now have and you're looking at a very well laid out progression schedule. The only issue I forsee is that without the period between raid zones were released, some guilds are just going to blow through the content unless there's a nice "cockblock" along the way and either solution is gonna lead to complaints. Either "this is bullshit, why are you stopping us from progressing artificially" or "ok.. we've done all there is to do and everyone else is 2 months behind us.. we want content." Plausible solutions? I have no idea, maybe thats why Black Temple isn't released yet.

As for playing casually... I don't really understand what people are looking for. If you don't consider 5man instances (heroic or not) casual, what do you? Surely you can't expect all of the content to be instantly accessible and as easy as running Steamvaults on normal difficulty... There has to be some form of difficulty or time consumption to reward progression, and having to farm heroics for badges is easily one of the most fun solutions to that problem since there are upwards of 15-20 instances each giving multiple badges and each being a lot of fun for the first few times they're ran, so I wouldn't really classify that as hardcore farming/grinding.

Apate · 02/15/07, 3:37 PM

Ghostz, I don't know about "most people" clearing most of Karazhan and Heroic, and the "significant number" of guilds finishing up the first 25-man...

That may be true of the people who post here, if that's what you are referring to, but I don't think it's true in the context of the subscriber base.

♦ Praetorian · 02/15/07, 3:43 PM

Originally Posted by Apate

Ghostz, I don't know about "most people" clearing most of Karazhan and Heroic, and the "significant number" of guilds finishing up the first 25-man...

That may be true of the people who post here, if that's what you are referring to, but I don't think it's true in the context of the subscriber base.

That's the group for whom the TBC 25-man raid content is designed, though. TBC raid content is absolutely more exclusive than it used to be. But Blizzard can get away with that, because they have far, far more for non-raiders to do than the pre-expansion game did.

♦ Birdemani · 02/15/07, 3:45 PM

Originally Posted by 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.

I don't agree with this. Our first kill was with 30 in the raid, one of which was a 67 shammy...the rest were a mix between good level 70 blues and Naxx epics. He died a bit faster on our second kill with 35 but I can easily see Doom Lord dropping with a 25 man raid once most are wearing level 70 epics.

• Kestrel · 02/15/07, 3:47 PM

Originally Posted by Apate

Ghostz, I don't know about "most people" clearing most of Karazhan and Heroic, and the "significant number" of guilds finishing up the first 25-man...

That may be true of the people who post here, if that's what you are referring to, but I don't think it's true in the context of the subscriber base.

Agreed-I don't think it's necessarily even true of those who consider themselves raiders. My guild only started Karazhan this week and we're made up largely of people who cleared 2+ wings in Naxx prior to the expansion.

Ghostz · 02/15/07, 3:49 PM

Originally Posted by Apate

Ghostz, I don't know about "most people" clearing most of Karazhan and Heroic, and the "significant number" of guilds finishing up the first 25-man...

That may be true of the people who post here, if that's what you are referring to, but I don't think it's true in the context of the subscriber base.

On Mal'Ganis alliance side, I'm pretty sure every raiding guild has cleared most (referring to more than half I guess) of Karazhan, some with more than one group as well. I wasn't really referring to the overall WoW population, more so the people that actually plan on raiding and doing the 25 mans. There's a large section of people that never plan on stepping inside Serpentshrine/TK/Hyjal and I don't think they really need to be looked at when discussing raid progression.

As for the Gruul kills, I based my comment mainly from these forums since I don't really check on progression sites and such, but it's certainly more than just DnT and Nihilum killing him with an inhumane number of consumables and a fully flasked raid. I also think now that people know he's possible you're going to see a lot more guilds actually putting time into it and killing him within the next week or so. The fight isn't overly complicated, just takes some practice and gear/consumables.

♦ Praetorian · 02/15/07, 3:52 PM

Originally Posted by Birdemani

Originally Posted by 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.

I don't agree with this. Our first kill was with 30 in the raid, one of which was a 67 shammy...the rest were a mix between good level 70 blues and Naxx epics. He died a bit faster on our second kill with 35 but I can easily see Doom Lord dropping with a 25 man raid once most are wearing level 70 epics.

That was an old post based on the impression that you had to kill him within one minute or the fight was over.

Apate · 02/15/07, 4:08 PM

Originally Posted by Ghostz

On Mal'Ganis alliance side, I'm pretty sure every raiding guild has cleared most (referring to more than half I guess) of Karazhan, some with more than one group as well. I wasn't really referring to the overall WoW population, more so the people that actually plan on raiding and doing the 25 mans. There's a large section of people that never plan on stepping inside Serpentshrine/TK/Hyjal and I don't think they really need to be looked at when discussing raid progression.

As for the Gruul kills, I based my comment mainly from these forums since I don't really check on progression sites and such, but it's certainly more than just DnT and Nihilum killing him with an inhumane number of consumables and a fully flasked raid. I also think now that people know he's possible you're going to see a lot more guilds actually putting time into it and killing him within the next week or so. The fight isn't overly complicated, just takes some practice and gear/consumables.

Yeah, I get it now, and I don't disagree with the rest of your post. It just happens that there are servers, even release-day (ish) servers, where the Prince hasn't even been defeated. I'm not pointing any fingers, but*cough*khadgar*cough*...

♦ Birdemani · 02/15/07, 4:30 PM

Originally Posted by Praetorian

Originally Posted by Birdemani

Originally Posted by 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.

I don't agree with this. Our first kill was with 30 in the raid, one of which was a 67 shammy...the rest were a mix between good level 70 blues and Naxx epics. He died a bit faster on our second kill with 35 but I can easily see Doom Lord dropping with a 25 man raid once most are wearing level 70 epics.

That was an old post based on the impression that you had to kill him within one minute or the fight was over.

Sorry, just started reading this thread, should have dug deeper and read the entire thing first.

cladnin · 02/17/07, 8:03 PM

Doomwalker got mad nerfed. Enrage is just +melee damage now and he's a complete joke.

Copernicus · 02/19/07, 3:15 PM

This goes under the category of "Haven't been there yet." but one of the persistent rumors about Magtheridon is the requirement of heavy FR for the entire raid. For those of you who have attempted it- Does the encounter feel like a simple resist check that your guild hasn't built up to yet or is there some tactical element missing? The main reason I'm wondering is the heroic badges FR gear. It's a question of if it's necessary to be bypassing loot that could help us now for a future set of resist gear that helps us later.

Plea · 02/19/07, 3:31 PM

Blue fire resist gear when gemmed come very close to the epics worth of a hundred badges. While any little more helps, it cant be a check of 20 stamina.