We'll never see 40man content again, except for AV. SADLY.
I really miss the epic feel of 40man encounters; although so much of it was badly designed and took way too long to do.
But with flying mounts in old world in Cata, doing 40man PvP city raids will be much more common I think. Should be a LOT more fun. IMO they should have the city leaders drop PvP loot/honor tokens/something as an incentive too. Would make the cities a lot more active.
tehmarken on
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Dhalphirdon't you open that trapdooryou're a fool if you dareRegistered Userregular
edited December 2009
the problem with 40man raids is it does not allow for very different raid designs.
if you have a fight that requires six tanks, which isn't too unrealistic in a 40man raid, or even five tanks, then you suddenly have a fight that requires one, your other tanks better have DPS offsets. This is less of a problem with dualspecs than it was in TBC or vanilla, but not every tank likes DPS...some of them are tanking because *gasp* they want to tank and the smaller raids mean that is less of a problem.
the problem with 40man raids is it does not allow for very different raid designs.
if you have a fight that requires six tanks, which isn't too unrealistic in a 40man raid, or even five tanks, then you suddenly have a fight that requires one, your other tanks better have DPS offsets. This is less of a problem with dualspecs than it was in TBC or vanilla, but not every tank likes DPS...some of them are tanking because *gasp* they want to tank and the smaller raids mean that is less of a problem.
Don't get me wrong, I don't think they should just abandon the 10/25 setup they switched to. Afterall, even in Vanilla, the 25s were often more fun.
the only zone that had NO leadup to it quest-wise was Naxx, and that only because everyone knew about it, and it was ominous enough doing quests in Dragonblight with Naxx hanging over your head.
edit: also i guess Obsidian Sanctum wasn't really well explained but it was a pretty cool zone nonetheless
Alliance got some Naxx build up quests - the the reaveling and defeat of the lich leading the forces outside of the alliance keep below Naxx turns out to be the priest you gave Kel's shard to back at 60. You bust his face in alongside Bolvar, then you go off to Wrathgate.
I guess OS had some lore in a book or the comic or something but yeah Blizzard dropped the ball on that one.
Dhalphirdon't you open that trapdooryou're a fool if you dareRegistered Userregular
edited December 2009
that i can agree with
perhaps if the one-boss zones had a 40man version, that would be cool.
the only problem is, as I said, if you have the same fight in a 10man, 25man, and 40man, you have to try to scale it to the amount of each class in the raid.
a 10man raid cannot be guaranteed to have a certain type of dispeller in it, and cannot be relied on to have more than two tanks.
a 40man raid cannot be relied upon to be have less than 4 or 5 tanks at minimum, probably more than that. so you have to make changes to the fight to accomodate certain sizes and there are only so many changes you can make before things start making the fight completely different between sizes.
Even between 10 and 25man they have trouble avoiding making the fights too different.
Unless you mean have a raid zone that ONLY has a 40man version in which case I would be interested to see how many people ever actually did it.
How many people are going into ICC without testing and studying strategies first? I know some of my guilidies don't like it, but I enjoy seeing new content completely fresh. I'd rather get a brief explanation 30 seconds before the fight, and here panicked commands during the fight. Knowing the whole fight ahead of time really ruins the experience for me.
It's like having sex with a pornstar. You've already seen it all, so it's just not as fun.
40 man raids were exercises in logistics instead of, you know, PLAYING. Fuck organization that many people. Took AGES.
And outdoor bosses were stupid. It was content only the crazy people who could have 40 people online at any time of the day or night within minutes really got to see. If you were lucky enough not to get ganked by the enemy while trying anyway.
shryke on
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Dhalphirdon't you open that trapdooryou're a fool if you dareRegistered Userregular
edited December 2009
I agree with that, however it is REALLY hard to justify going into a zone blind and just wiping over and over without resorting to looking for help anywhere.
in addition, you generally want to discuss and crosscheck opinions after each wipe if you're using no strategies to do fights, and there's just no way to guarantee that someone who is a part of those discussions does not have their WoWWiki page open and is presenting the strategies there as their own ideas for execution of the fight.
40 man raids were exercises in logistics instead of, you know, PLAYING. Fuck organization that many people. Took AGES.
And outdoor bosses were stupid. It was content only the crazy people who could have 40 people online at any time of the day or night within minutes really got to see. If you were lucky enough not to get ganked by the enemy while trying anyway.
perhaps if the one-boss zones had a 40man version, that would be cool.
Unless you mean have a raid zone that ONLY has a 40man version in which case I would be interested to see how many people ever actually did it.
Yeah, it would work best as say, a summoned/spawning world boss or a WG style encounter that people pug more often than guild run.
I'd say the world option would be cool just to get non-instanced raid bosses back in as well as a 40 man fight, without conflicting in any way with the 10/25 setup.
Because, as you said, you can't just shoe-horn a 40 man version into those.
And outdoor bosses were stupid. It was content only the crazy people who could have 40 people online at any time of the day or night within minutes really got to see. If you were lucky enough not to get ganked by the enemy while trying anyway.
Sillythus had summoned raid bosses. (I *think* they were designed for 25 people, I don't remember since I don't think it required any specific number but I think their loot was ZG/AQ equivalent). They were awesome.
40 man raids were exercises in logistics instead of, you know, PLAYING. Fuck organization that many people. Took AGES.
And outdoor bosses were stupid. It was content only the crazy people who could have 40 people online at any time of the day or night within minutes really got to see. If you were lucky enough not to get ganked by the enemy while trying anyway.
Kazzak griefers...
Hey now, Kazzak gave us the brilliance that was 1 Paladin Soloing a 40 man raid boss in like 3 seconds.
And then they nerfed the shit outta Reckoning.
/sigh
shryke on
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Dhalphirdon't you open that trapdooryou're a fool if you dareRegistered Userregular
edited December 2009
I could see VoA being a 40man encounter but then you'd have to remove their 10 and 25man versions for the aforementioned reasons that you can't make the same fight in three different size versions.
Sillythus had summoned raid bosses. (I *think* they were designed for 25 people, I don't remember since I don't think it required any specific number but I think their loot was ZG/AQ equivalent). They were awesome.
If I remember right, they were officially designed for 10, but some of them were just unfair with less than 20, which made more sense anyway since the loot was comparable to 20 mans. Most guilds just splattered them with 40.
I liked outdoor bosses, but there was just way too much grief and drama surrounding them. I wouldn't mind seeing more one-off bosses like Malygos or Ony. Wrath's had more of them than vanilla or BC did (I still think of VOA as one, even though there's three and soon to be four bosses in it now), I think partially to make up for no world bosses.
That's basically what all of them work out to be on PVP servers. Or do you mean a step farther, like that rare spawn outside Dire Maul that's inside the free for all PVP area?
I not only played on an rp-pve server back then, but also one with a huge population imbalance, so I never saw horde anywhere near the world bosses except sometimes a lone scout.
I'd love to see world pvp back. And if its connected with pve bosses, why not.
I know, I know, thats what WG is, but that feels more artificial.
Sillythus had summoned raid bosses. (I *think* they were designed for 25 people, I don't remember since I don't think it required any specific number but I think their loot was ZG/AQ equivalent). They were awesome.
If I remember right, they were officially designed for 10, but some of them were just unfair with less than 20, which made more sense anyway since the loot was comparable to 20 mans. Most guilds just splattered them with 40.
I liked outdoor bosses, but there was just way too much grief and drama surrounding them. I wouldn't mind seeing more one-off bosses like Malygos or Ony. Wrath's had more of them than vanilla or BC did (I still think of VOA as one, even though there's three and soon to be four bosses in it now), I think partially to make up for no world bosses.
Silithus spawns were the fucking DEVIL.
Hours of worked pissed away in seconds by 2 gankers.
I only saw one Silithus raidlevel spawn during vanilla and it was promptly a target of everyone in the area. Sure a huge PvP battle broke out and that's obviously "cool" to you Disruptor, but to the people who spent forever and a day farming mats to summon, watching as it all goes up in smoke, it's horseshit. That's why they removed world bosses, because there's really no way to stop a small group of people from ruining every one of your attempts by cleverly abusing the boss's abilities or by killing your raid members and triggering whatever the boss has to fight against GY zerging.
And in TBC you still needed to get attuned to enter Naxx and very few people would take the time to gather the mats and/or grind rep to get the attunement done. It was still designed to need tanks out the ass so running in there with a random gaggle of people didn't work, but that didn't prove that it was still hard it just proved you needed more tanks. If you managed to get the amount of tanks you needed and didn't fill your raid full of inept looky-loos then it was a cakewalk.
Also, hilarious tip: Block tank should be sure to REPAIR HIS SHIELD between attempts. /facepalm
The asshat trade chat spamming lead paint eating guild features that in their first Heroic Anub kill video: The MT runs to the back during one of the kite phases to a Jeeves to repair his shield...
Heh, we had a few attempts where he asked for a Jeeves during a kite phase. This one time, though, he didn't notice. Fatal error.
How many people are going into ICC without testing and studying strategies first? I know some of my guilidies don't like it, but I enjoy seeing new content completely fresh. I'd rather get a brief explanation 30 seconds before the fight, and here panicked commands during the fight. Knowing the whole fight ahead of time really ruins the experience for me.
It's like having sex with a pornstar. You've already seen it all, so it's just not as fun.
I'm always torn by this. Back in the day, we didn't read about fights. We heard vague rumors of boss abilities and running jokes. Our raid leader and maybe a handful of other people did things like "research" and "watching videos." We'd get an explanation of what not to stand in as we buffed up before the boss. Nowadays though, if you want to be competitive at all, you can't really do that. I mean if you don't care about killing the bosses in any timely manner, then the "Get 'Em, Lads!" strat is just fine, figure it out as you go along. But if you're being competitive, then you know everyone else has done research from PTR info, and you better do it, too.
I won't watch videos before I do a boss, but I will read lists of abilities and strats. It's sort of the best compromise for me.
P.S. We ran Naxx a fuckton of times in BC with random idiots, and we only had a couple tanks, and miscellaneous alt healers. The mage running them really REALLY wanted his Atiesh, so he had piles of attunement mats on hand, which he would give people who wanted to come. He did eventually get the staff, a mere two or so weeks before 3.0. It was pretty cool.
riz on
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Dhalphirdon't you open that trapdooryou're a fool if you dareRegistered Userregular
edited December 2009
even if you aren't being competitive, your entire raid needs to be on-board with the idea of "go get em tiger" or they'll just go read strats on their own then pass it off as their own ideas.
and in this age of reading strategies, having 10 people onboard with that philosophy would be difficult...25 would be near impossible
Yeah even if you yourself want to be surprised by a new boss encounter, other people will have read about it and watched videos and maybe fucked around on the PTR, so they'll just keep spouting information anyway.
That is why the PTR is fun though.
My 10-man has been hard to wrangle lately just to get our real raids done, but we did some Ulduar stuff on the PTR and it was neat not knowing what anything did. (We tried to kill Molgeim last, har har.) I remember doing ZA on that PTR too, also fun...
We're still hoping to get Beasts-25H down before Icecrown (I'm an eternal optimist!), but we're really struggling. Not on Gormok any more - he dies just as the worms come, give or take maybe five seconds either way, but the worms are owning us.
Our best go has the one remaining worm on around 1M health when Icehowl turns up, and I'm not too sure where to find the missing health. Certainly a part of it is deaths; the tank on the mobile worm needs to be more careful about poison clouds, and everyone needs to be more careful on the debuffs. But even if you take those out of the fray, I still think we're severely down on DPS despite - in principle - having enough since we get through Gormok without heroism.
At the moment we're going with:
Ranged on Acidmaw (static), Melee on Dreadscale (Mobile)
[first tunnel]
All on Acidmaw (mobile) - Heroism
[second tunnel]
Ranged on Acidmaw (static), Melee on Dreadscale (Mobile)
I'm sure Acidmaw ought to be dead before the second tunnel, but he's just not dying, and I can't quite see why.
I think I might need to stop being the last tank on Gormok, and instead move to tanking Dreadscale - I may be more comfortable with the tricks required to kite him nicely.
Does anyone have any tips? It's so frustrating given that we were so happy once we started downing Gormok.
We stick everyone on Acidmaw right out of the gate. Does it suck when the melee inevitably get poisoned? Yeah, but because we have three tanks it's easy for the third to pick up Dreadscale so the tank with red can pop them all.
I really don't think you can get Dreadscale down before Icehowl comes out if Acidmaw isn't dead before his second burrow. I know in theory splitting the DPS between them shouldn't make a difference in time killed, but the slower they die the more they burrow, and the more they burrow the less damage they take, and the less damage they take the slower they die (vicious cycle, I assure you).
Basically you need to do whatever you can to get Acidmaw dead before he burrows a second time. You're killing Gormok without a Heroism so you clearly have the DPS to do it. If you're running two tanks your Dreadscale tank has to get really, really comfortable with how to time popping the green melee without getting the worm to puke all over the raid. If you're running three, then by all means just slap everyone on Acidmaw and trade tank duties on Dreadscale when someone gets green.
If all else fails, it IS possible to have a warlock specced to ranged tank the worm just so you can tank trade on Dreadscale, but it is a challenge to heal.
We stick everyone on Acidmaw right out of the gate. Does it suck when the melee inevitably get poisoned? Yeah, but because we have three tanks it's easy for the third to pick up Dreadscale so the tank with red can pop them all.
I really don't think you can get Dreadscale down before Icehowl comes out if Acidmaw isn't dead before his second burrow. I know in theory splitting the DPS between them shouldn't make a difference in time killed, but the slower they die the more they burrow, and the more they burrow the less damage they take, and the less damage they take the slower they die (vicious cycle, I assure you).
Basically you need to do whatever you can to get Acidmaw dead before he burrows a second time. You're killing Gormok without a Heroism so you clearly have the DPS to do it. If you're running two tanks your Dreadscale tank has to get really, really comfortable with how to time popping the green melee without getting the worm to puke all over the raid. If you're running three, then by all means just slap everyone on Acidmaw and trade tank duties on Dreadscale when someone gets green.
If all else fails, it IS possible to have a warlock specced to ranged tank the worm just so you can tank trade on Dreadscale, but it is a challenge to heal.
This.
Our tanks face each worm towards a wall for their spray. Yeah melee on Acidmaw will get tossed back occasionally but you will be surprised how much faster he dies with full dps force, leaving dreadscale which is trivial if everyone knows to spread out due to fire debuff.
Then after that, you get to teach people to run! GL!
Out of curiosity, does Ulduar (or Naxx, or whatever) still give you a "dungeon crawl" feeling after the Nth time?
Actually, the best such feeling I've had in Naxx was Drak'Tharon Keep. I think it's because there's a sequence where you go from small room to small room with only one or two pulls in each. It doesn't last long, but I loved that bit the first time around. I'd like to see a raid equivalent. I guess you need space, though, and can't go for something with the claustrophobic feel.
We stick everyone on Acidmaw right out of the gate. Does it suck when the melee inevitably get poisoned? Yeah, but because we have three tanks it's easy for the third to pick up Dreadscale so the tank with red can pop them all.
I really don't think you can get Dreadscale down before Icehowl comes out if Acidmaw isn't dead before his second burrow. I know in theory splitting the DPS between them shouldn't make a difference in time killed, but the slower they die the more they burrow, and the more they burrow the less damage they take, and the less damage they take the slower they die (vicious cycle, I assure you).
The original logic for splitting DPS was that the knockback was a big cost to the melee, so it makes sense to stick them on the worm which doesn't do knockback. On top of that, if they got greened, they'd have to run a long distance to the Dreadscale tank when - if going the other way around - they're already right next to him. I guess that's not as big a benefit as it sounds on paper?
Basically you need to do whatever you can to get Acidmaw dead before he burrows a second time. You're killing Gormok without a Heroism so you clearly have the DPS to do it. If you're running two tanks your Dreadscale tank has to get really, really comfortable with how to time popping the green melee without getting the worm to puke all over the raid. If you're running three, then by all means just slap everyone on Acidmaw and trade tank duties on Dreadscale when someone gets green.
Traditionally - on our normal kills - I was doing the bolded bit, and I'm completely comfortable with it; however, I'm also the best-geared tank, so we felt it was smarter to put me on Gormok for (what works out as) the first and last tank swaps; the first so I can frontload threat, the last so I can survive the biggest hits (and then instantly fire off bubble+DG to remove my impales and ease healing for the start of the worms). I'm wondering if we want to rejig that so I end up on Dreadscale.
The trap you're falling into in regards to assigning the melee is treating the worms as a singular entity that needs to be killed before Icehowl enters, when in actual fact the fight is tuned tightly enough that they're basically two seperate entities with seperate timers that they need to be killed by.
Whether the melee lose time on Acidmaw is irrelevant next to Acidmaw dying before the second burrow. If your melee lose overall DPS by being on him, but he dies before the second burrow, then you're on track for the timer, regardless of what they lost.
I like to think the construct wing of Naxx is built specifically to punish pug groups who have no business being there. I was onboard a failboat Naxx25 last weekend where we wiped on Patch (undergeared tanks) and had to run back. By the time I finally jumped off, there were people who had died 5+ times trying to get through the slimes on their own instead of waiting for the rest of the group. Add to this three different locks porting people three different places (two of them being the Naxx entrance) and all sense of coordination goes right out the window. It would have been funny had I not burned my ticket going through spider wing with these chucklefucks.
The original logic for splitting DPS was that the knockback was a big cost to the melee, so it makes sense to stick them on the worm which doesn't do knockback. On top of that, if they got greened, they'd have to run a long distance to the Dreadscale tank when - if going the other way around - they're already right next to him. I guess that's not as big a benefit as it sounds on paper?
We have a warrior tank on Dreadscale, if melee "can't" run to dreadscale tank, he intercepts them. But our tanks keep both worms relatively close to each other so melee have no issue running.
Though honestly it's all RNG, i think it's only ever happened 3 times that acid spit landed in melee.
I not only played on an rp-pve server back then, but also one with a huge population imbalance, so I never saw horde anywhere near the world bosses except sometimes a lone scout.
Looks like you answered your own question-markless question.
Though honestly it's all RNG, i think it's only ever happened 3 times that acid spit landed in melee.
haha what
But speaking of luck, my Northrend Beasts kill this week was the absolute first time I got to see the quirk where Dreadscale doesn't enrage if he starts burrowing right before Acidmaw dies (since Dreadscale tends to burrow a second or two earlier). It's pretty nice and would be awesome to try to time for consistent abuse, but the window is probably too short/inconsistent for that.
I not only played on an rp-pve server back then, but also one with a huge population imbalance, so I never saw horde anywhere near the world bosses except sometimes a lone scout.
Looks like you answered your own question-markless question.
Population imbalances in 2005 were drastically higher than they are now. Far more people play horde than did back then.
CC was like at 3:1 alliance to horde back then.
DisruptorX2 on
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CorehealerThe ApothecaryThe softer edge of the universe.Registered Userregular
I not only played on an rp-pve server back then, but also one with a huge population imbalance, so I never saw horde anywhere near the world bosses except sometimes a lone scout.
Looks like you answered your own question-markless question.
Population imbalances in 2005 were drastically higher than they are now. Far more people play horde than did back then.
CC was like at 3:1 alliance to horde back then.
Where do you get your stats? Yes, there was imbalances between the factions but as I understand it the overpopulation was on the Alliance, not the Horde. Something about little kids loving to roll Night Elves.
I not only played on an rp-pve server back then, but also one with a huge population imbalance, so I never saw horde anywhere near the world bosses except sometimes a lone scout.
Looks like you answered your own question-markless question.
Population imbalances in 2005 were drastically higher than they are now. Far more people play horde than did back then.
CC was like at 3:1 alliance to horde back then.
There are still servers with dominant factions, though. Maybe the one you play on doesn't have one, but that doesn't provide much consolation for those who do play on one.
Out of curiosity, does Ulduar (or Naxx, or whatever) still give you a "dungeon crawl" feeling after the Nth time?
Actually, the best such feeling I've had in Naxx was Drak'Tharon Keep. I think it's because there's a sequence where you go from small room to small room with only one or two pulls in each. It doesn't last long, but I loved that bit the first time around. I'd like to see a raid equivalent. I guess you need space, though, and can't go for something with the claustrophobic feel.
I currently dislike DTK. It's been the heroic daily four times over the past week.
Posts
That'd stop them from dying the second they spawned, too, since people would have to organize unusual groups.
I really miss the epic feel of 40man encounters; although so much of it was badly designed and took way too long to do.
But with flying mounts in old world in Cata, doing 40man PvP city raids will be much more common I think. Should be a LOT more fun. IMO they should have the city leaders drop PvP loot/honor tokens/something as an incentive too. Would make the cities a lot more active.
if you have a fight that requires six tanks, which isn't too unrealistic in a 40man raid, or even five tanks, then you suddenly have a fight that requires one, your other tanks better have DPS offsets. This is less of a problem with dualspecs than it was in TBC or vanilla, but not every tank likes DPS...some of them are tanking because *gasp* they want to tank and the smaller raids mean that is less of a problem.
Don't get me wrong, I don't think they should just abandon the 10/25 setup they switched to. Afterall, even in Vanilla, the 25s were often more fun.
It'd just be nice if they had one or two 40s. :P
Alliance got some Naxx build up quests - the the reaveling and defeat of the lich leading the forces outside of the alliance keep below Naxx turns out to be the priest you gave Kel's shard to back at 60. You bust his face in alongside Bolvar, then you go off to Wrathgate.
I guess OS had some lore in a book or the comic or something but yeah Blizzard dropped the ball on that one.
perhaps if the one-boss zones had a 40man version, that would be cool.
the only problem is, as I said, if you have the same fight in a 10man, 25man, and 40man, you have to try to scale it to the amount of each class in the raid.
a 10man raid cannot be guaranteed to have a certain type of dispeller in it, and cannot be relied on to have more than two tanks.
a 40man raid cannot be relied upon to be have less than 4 or 5 tanks at minimum, probably more than that. so you have to make changes to the fight to accomodate certain sizes and there are only so many changes you can make before things start making the fight completely different between sizes.
Even between 10 and 25man they have trouble avoiding making the fights too different.
Unless you mean have a raid zone that ONLY has a 40man version in which case I would be interested to see how many people ever actually did it.
How many people are going into ICC without testing and studying strategies first? I know some of my guilidies don't like it, but I enjoy seeing new content completely fresh. I'd rather get a brief explanation 30 seconds before the fight, and here panicked commands during the fight. Knowing the whole fight ahead of time really ruins the experience for me.
It's like having sex with a pornstar. You've already seen it all, so it's just not as fun.
And outdoor bosses were stupid. It was content only the crazy people who could have 40 people online at any time of the day or night within minutes really got to see. If you were lucky enough not to get ganked by the enemy while trying anyway.
in addition, you generally want to discuss and crosscheck opinions after each wipe if you're using no strategies to do fights, and there's just no way to guarantee that someone who is a part of those discussions does not have their WoWWiki page open and is presenting the strategies there as their own ideas for execution of the fight.
Kazzak griefers...
Yeah, it would work best as say, a summoned/spawning world boss or a WG style encounter that people pug more often than guild run.
I'd say the world option would be cool just to get non-instanced raid bosses back in as well as a 40 man fight, without conflicting in any way with the 10/25 setup.
Because, as you said, you can't just shoe-horn a 40 man version into those.
Sillythus had summoned raid bosses. (I *think* they were designed for 25 people, I don't remember since I don't think it required any specific number but I think their loot was ZG/AQ equivalent). They were awesome.
Hey now, Kazzak gave us the brilliance that was 1 Paladin Soloing a 40 man raid boss in like 3 seconds.
And then they nerfed the shit outta Reckoning.
/sigh
If I remember right, they were officially designed for 10, but some of them were just unfair with less than 20, which made more sense anyway since the loot was comparable to 20 mans. Most guilds just splattered them with 40.
I liked outdoor bosses, but there was just way too much grief and drama surrounding them. I wouldn't mind seeing more one-off bosses like Malygos or Ony. Wrath's had more of them than vanilla or BC did (I still think of VOA as one, even though there's three and soon to be four bosses in it now), I think partially to make up for no world bosses.
I'd love to see world pvp back. And if its connected with pve bosses, why not.
I know, I know, thats what WG is, but that feels more artificial.
Silithus spawns were the fucking DEVIL.
Hours of worked pissed away in seconds by 2 gankers.
And in TBC you still needed to get attuned to enter Naxx and very few people would take the time to gather the mats and/or grind rep to get the attunement done. It was still designed to need tanks out the ass so running in there with a random gaggle of people didn't work, but that didn't prove that it was still hard it just proved you needed more tanks. If you managed to get the amount of tanks you needed and didn't fill your raid full of inept looky-loos then it was a cakewalk.
You couldn't grief them on pve servers and pvp servers, well. PvP.
Heh, we had a few attempts where he asked for a Jeeves during a kite phase. This one time, though, he didn't notice. Fatal error.
I'm always torn by this. Back in the day, we didn't read about fights. We heard vague rumors of boss abilities and running jokes. Our raid leader and maybe a handful of other people did things like "research" and "watching videos." We'd get an explanation of what not to stand in as we buffed up before the boss. Nowadays though, if you want to be competitive at all, you can't really do that. I mean if you don't care about killing the bosses in any timely manner, then the "Get 'Em, Lads!" strat is just fine, figure it out as you go along. But if you're being competitive, then you know everyone else has done research from PTR info, and you better do it, too.
I won't watch videos before I do a boss, but I will read lists of abilities and strats. It's sort of the best compromise for me.
P.S. We ran Naxx a fuckton of times in BC with random idiots, and we only had a couple tanks, and miscellaneous alt healers. The mage running them really REALLY wanted his Atiesh, so he had piles of attunement mats on hand, which he would give people who wanted to come. He did eventually get the staff, a mere two or so weeks before 3.0. It was pretty cool.
and in this age of reading strategies, having 10 people onboard with that philosophy would be difficult...25 would be near impossible
That is why the PTR is fun though.
My 10-man has been hard to wrangle lately just to get our real raids done, but we did some Ulduar stuff on the PTR and it was neat not knowing what anything did. (We tried to kill Molgeim last, har har.) I remember doing ZA on that PTR too, also fun...
Our best go has the one remaining worm on around 1M health when Icehowl turns up, and I'm not too sure where to find the missing health. Certainly a part of it is deaths; the tank on the mobile worm needs to be more careful about poison clouds, and everyone needs to be more careful on the debuffs. But even if you take those out of the fray, I still think we're severely down on DPS despite - in principle - having enough since we get through Gormok without heroism.
At the moment we're going with:
Ranged on Acidmaw (static), Melee on Dreadscale (Mobile)
[first tunnel]
All on Acidmaw (mobile) - Heroism
[second tunnel]
Ranged on Acidmaw (static), Melee on Dreadscale (Mobile)
I'm sure Acidmaw ought to be dead before the second tunnel, but he's just not dying, and I can't quite see why.
I think I might need to stop being the last tank on Gormok, and instead move to tanking Dreadscale - I may be more comfortable with the tricks required to kite him nicely.
Does anyone have any tips? It's so frustrating given that we were so happy once we started downing Gormok.
I really don't think you can get Dreadscale down before Icehowl comes out if Acidmaw isn't dead before his second burrow. I know in theory splitting the DPS between them shouldn't make a difference in time killed, but the slower they die the more they burrow, and the more they burrow the less damage they take, and the less damage they take the slower they die (vicious cycle, I assure you).
Basically you need to do whatever you can to get Acidmaw dead before he burrows a second time. You're killing Gormok without a Heroism so you clearly have the DPS to do it. If you're running two tanks your Dreadscale tank has to get really, really comfortable with how to time popping the green melee without getting the worm to puke all over the raid. If you're running three, then by all means just slap everyone on Acidmaw and trade tank duties on Dreadscale when someone gets green.
If all else fails, it IS possible to have a warlock specced to ranged tank the worm just so you can tank trade on Dreadscale, but it is a challenge to heal.
This.
Our tanks face each worm towards a wall for their spray. Yeah melee on Acidmaw will get tossed back occasionally but you will be surprised how much faster he dies with full dps force, leaving dreadscale which is trivial if everyone knows to spread out due to fire debuff.
Then after that, you get to teach people to run! GL!
There's a saying in our guild now.
We all have our yeti.
Actually, the best such feeling I've had in Naxx was Drak'Tharon Keep. I think it's because there's a sequence where you go from small room to small room with only one or two pulls in each. It doesn't last long, but I loved that bit the first time around. I'd like to see a raid equivalent. I guess you need space, though, and can't go for something with the claustrophobic feel.
The original logic for splitting DPS was that the knockback was a big cost to the melee, so it makes sense to stick them on the worm which doesn't do knockback. On top of that, if they got greened, they'd have to run a long distance to the Dreadscale tank when - if going the other way around - they're already right next to him. I guess that's not as big a benefit as it sounds on paper?
Traditionally - on our normal kills - I was doing the bolded bit, and I'm completely comfortable with it; however, I'm also the best-geared tank, so we felt it was smarter to put me on Gormok for (what works out as) the first and last tank swaps; the first so I can frontload threat, the last so I can survive the biggest hits (and then instantly fire off bubble+DG to remove my impales and ease healing for the start of the worms). I'm wondering if we want to rejig that so I end up on Dreadscale.
Whether the melee lose time on Acidmaw is irrelevant next to Acidmaw dying before the second burrow. If your melee lose overall DPS by being on him, but he dies before the second burrow, then you're on track for the timer, regardless of what they lost.
We have a warrior tank on Dreadscale, if melee "can't" run to dreadscale tank, he intercepts them. But our tanks keep both worms relatively close to each other so melee have no issue running.
Though honestly it's all RNG, i think it's only ever happened 3 times that acid spit landed in melee.
But speaking of luck, my Northrend Beasts kill this week was the absolute first time I got to see the quirk where Dreadscale doesn't enrage if he starts burrowing right before Acidmaw dies (since Dreadscale tends to burrow a second or two earlier). It's pretty nice and would be awesome to try to time for consistent abuse, but the window is probably too short/inconsistent for that.
Population imbalances in 2005 were drastically higher than they are now. Far more people play horde than did back then.
CC was like at 3:1 alliance to horde back then.
Where do you get your stats? Yes, there was imbalances between the factions but as I understand it the overpopulation was on the Alliance, not the Horde. Something about little kids loving to roll Night Elves.
I currently dislike DTK. It's been the heroic daily four times over the past week.