I agree with this entirely, and it provides sort of a "final exam" on the skills you've learned throughout the raid instance, while, at the same time, adding something new.

Look at the various bosses you've killed, and the things that happened while you were learning them that caused you to wipe.

Mag: Tranq.
Gehennas: Move out of the rain of fire (Faerlina)
Garr: CC
Geddon: Watch your debuffs, learn some positioning.
Shazzrah: Blizzard hates melee
Domo: Assist-train and more CC
Rag: Collapse at submerge (Killed in 1/06, never dealt with v1.0)

Razorgore: Relearning to act as a small group.
Vael: Infinite energy is NOT as fun as it initially sounds.
Broodlord: Aggro, and healing heavy burst-damage (Patchwerk)
Chromaggus: If you aren't on point dispelling, you lose (Noth)
Nef: How to assist train burst damage (Anub'Rehkan)

Bug family: Interrupts and motion.
Sartura: Movement positioning and reaction
Fankriss: Sustained DPS is essential, and paying attention to new spawns that do naughty things (leads to Noth, very clearcut example)
Emps: Dealing with controlled chaos in a controlled manner. Also: How to evasion-tank something that hits for 15k damage (Gothik)
C'thun: Pay attention to where you are (Comes from Sartura and Rag, killed in 7/06, never dealt with v1.0)

Even if you, personally, don't learn better what buttons to press, you learn better what buttons your teammates are likely to press, and where you should be to press your buttons.

Granted, a lot of those lessons (assisting, paying attention being the key ones) repeat themselves in numerous new circumstances. But that's not to say that your skill as a player, and being able to react to new circumstances was the same at your first molten giant kill that it was at KT/Gruul.

Raid stacking and consumable abuse 101.

Well if you look at MC and BWL, it wasn't really a big deal to assemble a pug to take them out. Now if you have that kind of difficulty to kick off TBC, the top guilds would likely be at Vashj and Kael'thas already, and one might even be in Hyjal. Not exactly what Blizzard wants, to see all their content defeated in the span of 1 to 2 months. On the other hand, this is the corner that Blizzard has painted itself into. I dont envy the developers, it's an extremely fine line to find.

I think the real source of the grumblings for most is exactly what some people have touched on -- TBC was going from 40 man raids to 25, but really it's been to 10 man raids. Maulgar/Gruul/Mag will be a trio that can easily be done in one night. And in reality right now only Maulgar is doable for most, so that leaves the rest of your guild mucking around for something to do if they aren't able to run Kara that week.

Finally regarding loot: It's okay that some Kara loot is sidegrades or barely an upgrade. We experienced that back in MC. But the upgrades starting with Maulgar onward should be fairly noticable across the board. Otherwise what's the point?

Tell me if you think that this is doable (This is how the encounter was the last time I did it, about 2 weeks ago):

The encounter:
- You start with 5 Channelers. The second you engage them, you have 2 min before Magtheridon becomes "active."

Channelers:
- Each have a large HP Pool (1 Mil I would say, maybe lower, but it took our dps about 2 min to kill 1)
- They hit for 5k on Plate.
- They do a Shadowbolt Volley that hits for ~3k (can be interrupted)
- They can heal each other (so you spread them out, and you can interrupt it) And CoT works
- They summon infernals that can feared and banish and tanked. They will 1 hit anyone outside of a Pally or a Warrior. You have about ~6 infernals up at 1 time (they die after x min)
- After you kill 1 Channeler, the other 4 gain a buff were they gain 33% more damage, and 33% increase in casting speed (and this stacks upwards, or so I think, we never killed 2 :/)

Magtheridon
- After 2 Min, Magtheridon becomes active. He hits for 700-900 on a warrior, has a cleave that will one hit anyone outside of a warrior, and has 2 special abilities.
- The first is a knock-back that will launch everyone to the outside of the room, it lasts for about 8 or so seconds. He will do this about 10-20 seconds after he becomes active.
- The second is a Fire Nova that hits for about 2.5k fire damage every 2 seconds, lasts for 10 seconds. He will use this about 25-30 seconds after he becomes active.

The "Gimmick:
- There are 5 boxes that each of the channelers is at. When Magtheridon becomes active, so do they. If all 5 people click the box (and are able to channel it all at once) Magtheridon will be stunned, and take 100% more damage.
- BUT, Control of the Box deals 700-800 damage a second. After breaking from a Box, you get Mind Exhaustion, which lasts for 1:30 (I Think)

It's been mentioned by one dev that this is/was the plan. No idea if that has changed.

My guild just got to this block. We still have a few things to clear in Kara, but we tend to either have too many people on to enjoy it, yet two few to run a second group. We just killed Maulgar last night, and just looking at Gruul knowing what to expect feels like looking at a huge mountain.

Our guild is a new one reformed from a previously top guild on our server, but we haven't raided in months before BC. Not having that step up in progression is definitely a morale issue. Having other bosses to kill on the way to the big stuff really can make a huge difference in overall morale, and willingness to go up against the brick wall each raid day.

It seems to me from what I'm reading at least that, gruul's lair and beyond make perfect sense to most guilds who cleared naxx as, roughly speaking, more of the same and getting harder. And as such they feel that it is natural progression, and indeed to them it is.

What you're forgetting if you're at that point however is that many guilds never even completed aq40, much less naxx. There is no 25man raid equivalent to old BWL (except perhaps 1st boss in gruul's) that you can make decent progress in as a non-top tier guild and get yourself prepared for more. Even karazan, while it is not too difficult, is still alot more difficult then old MC and BWL to my mind, in terms of personal ability required. You actually have to *gasp* interrupt spells as a rogue, and a healer might have to actually move once during a fight, without getting someone killed in the process.

There was nothing all that wrong with naxx being that hard because it was something for the really hardcore people to do, and for the non-hardcore people to aspire to, while they were still capable of running MC/bwl/20 mans and getting what felt like meaningful loot to them. What's left for this huge segment of the "raiding" population that raided only up to let's say bwl? There is nothing they can do as a guild, and that is pretty bad. I'm really wondering what blizzard was thinking when they set it up like this.

To many people here who've probably played games since they were 10 (or for the older folks let's say 15+ years) this game might seem pretty easy but alot of people can't play that well. They were fine in MC/bwl but TBC raids are a huge step up.

Raid stacking maybe, consumable abuse? Hardly. On the world-first kill, we didn't use any expendables until after his first submerge at around 35%, and even then it was 1 fire pot and maybe a mongoose.

Looking back to the first Onyxia/Rag kills, almost no expendables were used at all. If raiding mentality was the same back then, and people were downing 40 flasks, getting rend buffs, and using every other consumable imaginable, I suspect Onyxia kills would have come months earlier.

I haven't tried Mag'theridon, but from what the Nihilum guy posted it sounded like it was hopefully a fight that was doable without mass consumable abuse. I hate Gruul because of the ridiculous random component, and the sort or raid-stacking of ranged DPS required to kill him before his timer. I don't mind using consumables or raid-stacking for a first kill, but any boss that requires it to some level is just retarded. The only thing that makes me happy about Gruul is that he's not something we'll have to kill on a weekly basis like Loatheb.

Edit: Just read the other Mag post, so I take back my initial hope that it would be doable without mass consumables

Yeah, this was about the extent of our experimenting with him as well, and fits with other things I'd heard. Right now it seems like you could just take everything else out and stick the 5 Channelers alone in a room with nothing else, and they'd be a handful, and then some.

I guess we'll never really know, but the point is regardless of whether it was doable pre-hotfix, Tigole expected him dead by now, and not just by your tier of guild. Either he was overtuned, or the rest of the raiding community is idiots. I'm inclined to say the former.

The "hotfix" was a non-factor.* Show me some proof that you have made progress on this fight.

And I dont want a SS of just his HP. Show me that you either have it all the diffrent aspects of the fight under control or have killed all 5 channelers and just have Magtheridon up.

Edit* - Unless this was a magical fix that they fix/tune many other things in the encounter.

Yeah, it's funny how that works. I think I made a similar observation in my consumables post a while back. GFPPs were the extent of the consumables used at that stage, for the most part. I remember Vehn's screenshots from Drama's first Nef kill, and the "holy shit, look at that consumables list" reaction at what would all-too-quickly become perfectly ordinary tank buffs for any serious encounter.

Have you read R&D?

I was clearly referencing his post?

"While the encounter is supposed to be challenging, it's not supposed to be more difficult than the encounters in Serpentshrine. It is a low tier raid in Burning Crusade. "

Heh I had the exact same reaction. I remember seeing that screenshot and thinking to myself: "why the hell are we wiping on average 5-6 times a week to Firemaw on account of unlucky bursts causing MT deaths, when we can instead just down a flask and a few other buffs to easy-mode it up through Chromaggus". I almost wish they changed flasks back so they don't persist on death, and tuned encounters without them in mind.

I think Rambar's point was that your question was a rhetorical one. :P

HP is a non factor in this fight. We've had all the channelers down 4 times. Where we've made progress on the rest of the fight (Below 70%). I most likely have screenshots somewhere - but you can chose not to believe me if you want. There is no reason for me to make up this though. Magtheridon would've died two days ago to us, but we had people mess up the clicking (which is where individual performance come into play) sadly. And today is an off-night.

It makes me sigh when people assume things like this on Magtheridon now.. previously it was on Gruul. Spend time and learn the encounter!

Edit: I'm speaking about before the hotfix, we (Nihilum) will not try Magtheridon until tomorrow again. Last time we did him was two days ago.

Well, thats fair. :-x

Fair enough, then -- that's impressive.

Gurg steals the words out of my mouth.

Sorry for the derail, but it's only a 500 armor difference between iron and stone shield. Fully buffed for me it's about 0.7% more mitigation. For the major defense it's a difference of ~100 armor. On a 20k base hit, that's a difference of ~124 less damage taken (8,375 vs 8,231). If I'm taking that much damage, odds are good I'm getting overhealed anyway. Given the price/difficulty in acquiring one vs the other I'm using the cheaper/easier alternatives. Funny how alchemy isn't scaling too well either...

Also don't forget that the majority of even the raiders in WoW are not "top end". Most are casual raiders, and even out of the hardcore ones, not everyone makes it to the top. So if only top end guilds can kill the entrance 25-people raids, what are the rest supposed to do? Be content with 1 year of Karazhan and heroics? That just can't happen. With the old world, MC wasn't that hard for the first raiding guilds there. Yet they nerfed the place big time soon after. Right now I do a lot of heroics with friends and sometimes PuGs almost all of them in family guilds and every time it's people fully intent to do 25-people raids. There's just no business sense to lock out the majority of the player base which is why it's no surprise to see nerfs to bosses and I expect more.