When I was raiding, I would have loved for someone to have told me: "Hey, Urso stop doing X Y and Z, you should try it this way."
But I think most of the older members only saw me as a way for them to get more DKP in their zero sum system. Guild was trying to crack AQ while farming MC/BWL every week.
Seg on
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Nova_CI have the needThe need for speedRegistered Userregular
edited October 2007
A long time ago I was in SH (So, not a raid, but relevant to the learn your class thing) with a hunter who was clearly new at groups. Anyway, I was on my priest main, but pre-BC my main was a hunter so I was just made a couple recommendations to his trapping procedure. He didn't respond and I just shrugged and kept healing.
So, in the area with all the guys who fight each other and then heal up his dog just shoots off and agroes a group way down the hall, pulling like, four or five groups of guys to us. After the wipe I asked "What happened with your pet?" and the guy just freaks out, demanding that if I have to criticize him, I do it in a whisper. I was like "You just killed four people, all of whom deserve an explanation."
He passed it off as some recurring bug and we finished SH without any further incidents. But you know, I LIKE it when people offer constructive criticism to me, especially on a character playing a role I'm new at (I desperately wanted help learning to heal as I leveled my priest and no one would offer it. It was a very rough learning curve for me since I had just been dps since release). Why people who are terrible at their class get mad when you try to help them is beyond me. All that results in is a guaranteed refusal to take them on raids.
If you are in a kara guild and dont have enough numbers for 25 mans, why not combined guild raid?
Its not that hard to find another guild with 10-12 people that are in the same situation as you.
I know of close to a dozen guilds that combine raid gruul/mag/ssc/TK
In the end, it works out rather well as long as everyone is civil about loot distribution
We tried that.
What happened was that the other guild's GL was absent most raid nights, leaving it entirely to our GL to coordinate between the two guilds. Even when the other GL was logged in, 90% of the time it wasn't him at the keyboard since all of their officers apparently shared characters, so any type of coordination was done with the other guild's officers on a inconsistant basis. This slowly lead to lopsided raid participation, where we'd scratch together say, 20 of our guys and fill in with 5 of theirs (if any of them actually wanted to go). There were attempts where they had 10 level 70 people on, but only a couple were willing to go to gruul, or attempt mags or ssc.
Eventually we ended up breaking off the alliance, and poached one of their feral druids (who could/would spec resto every now and then). Of the other guilds on the server, the rest were either happy just running kara, weren't at the point where they could put together half of a decent raid, or weren't interested in running an alliance.
Not to say it can't work. I've been on servers where there was a huge raiding alliance where free roll was used. The framework just wasn't there on Arygos.
Nobody on
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UnbrokenEvaHIGH ON THE WIREBUT I WON'T TRIP ITRegistered Userregular
edited October 2007
I guess I'm the only person here with good combined guild raiding experience.
Back in the pre-BC days I was an officer in a guild that could, if everyone was online, fill a fairly solid ZG group, but even that wasn't reliable. To stem the flow of otherwise good guildies ditching us for a chance to see some 40-man content, we hooked up with an existing alliance of 3 or 4 other guilds that was working on MC. I'm not saying there wasn't a bit of politics, and some time spent debating loot policy and gear requirements (we were all casual guilds with different ideas on stuff like DKP and whether or not going to MC in greens was a good idea). But beyond that, it was good. By the time BC came out, we had Rag on farm and were having weekly Razorgore wipefests - our progress wasn't as fast as a unified raiding guild would have been, but none of us wanted to be in a "raiding guild".
Fast-forward to BC. We can run Kara by ourselves of course, though along the way hooked back up with one of the smaller guilds from the old alliance, because we liked playing with them, and were trying to run 2 Kara's a week. We're back down to 1 Kara now due to some folks losing interest in the place, but the smaller guild is still running with us, and while I'd love to have them join us, I'm never going to ask as it was never my intent to absorb them unless they chose to be. And now we're working with another Kara guild as well on Gruul's, though how that's going to work out remains to be seen. They're a bit more casual than we are, and even on the weeks when we're able to scrape together 25 70s at the same time to try, we end up having to bring some alts/new 70s that shouldn't be in Gruul's yet, and haven't been able to down Gruul himself.
I think for a 25-man alliance to work, 3 Kara guilds would be best. That means you have a pool of at least 30+ people who have the gear and skill to down Prince at your disposal, rather than 20+. Two guilds can work, but you'll always be cutting things close.
If you are in a kara guild and dont have enough numbers for 25 mans, why not combined guild raid?
Its not that hard to find another guild with 10-12 people that are in the same situation as you.
I know of close to a dozen guilds that combine raid gruul/mag/ssc/TK
In the end, it works out rather well as long as everyone is civil about loot distribution
We tried that.
What happened was that the other guild's GL was absent most raid nights, leaving it entirely to our GL to coordinate between the two guilds. Even when the other GL was logged in, 90% of the time it wasn't him at the keyboard since all of their officers apparently shared characters, so any type of coordination was done with the other guild's officers on a inconsistant basis. This slowly lead to lopsided raid participation, where we'd scratch together say, 20 of our guys and fill in with 5 of theirs (if any of them actually wanted to go). There were attempts where they had 10 level 70 people on, but only a couple were willing to go to gruul, or attempt mags or ssc.
Eventually we ended up breaking off the alliance, and poached one of their feral druids (who could/would spec resto every now and then). Of the other guilds on the server, the rest were either happy just running kara, weren't at the point where they could put together half of a decent raid, or weren't interested in running an alliance.
Not to say it can't work. I've been on servers where there was a huge raiding alliance where free roll was used. The framework just wasn't there on Arygos.
6 weeks wasted on hitting GL once a week, at best, if we were lucky. Had we just recruited and spent those week doing 2 KZ runs things might have been different.
However, on Durotan I'm actually involved in a raiding commune, which is basically a freeform entity, bound by a singular DKP system, participated in by 4-5 guilds. Everyone does their own Kara (or leans on each other for filler) and raiders are selected from the overall pool. It's essentially a metaguild with its own channels, etc. The reason it's successful is that KZ / farm heroics basically are left to be PUG'd leaving fresh nights for new content. Everyone is required to gear themselves up to a base level on their own time and show up to 25 mans prepared.
It also doesn't hurt that the server has 1 other endgame raiding guild Horde side and this commune is actually #1 in progression, which drives people to it and keeps recruits flowing, usually from KZ guilds looking to hop aboard the epic express.
I raided for months on end in a guild alliance back in the MC days. We were the most progressed MC group horde side (at the beginning, we were the only group in MC on the horde side). There was the share of difficulties sorting things out, the occasional people across guilds that couldn't get along, etc, but we managed to clear all of MC and Razorgore before we stopped being an alliance (as a result of a large part of alliance merging together into one, new, guild). It was generally a great time to raid, most of us got along great, we had a special forum for the alliance, any new rules were discussed with all the participating guilds guildleaders/officers.
Then again, although they were good times, I still prefer my current guild. Maybe it's me, but the drama seems easier resolved because they're not ego/personality related, which was a problem sometimes back then. In a guild situation it's also easier to filter out the trialists that don't get along with some of your guildmembers. It wasn't exactly possible in an alliance to say "well, that guy doesn't get along with anyone, let's kick him".
Based off all the examples presented, I think we can agree combined raiding has possibility for great things, or terrible terrible guild killing results. I haven't had too much experience, but it seems as if the guild you raid with isn't trying to backstab you, there's a decent chance at success.
Or the PAA, which I kinda wish I was on every now and then... maybe I'll roll an alt there when 2.3 hits.
I'm in a guild alliance on my server... we have 4, maybe 5 small to medium sized guilds who share a chat channel, we use it as our own private LFG channel. Which is nice. Also, we all run 2, maybe 3 soon, Kara groups, as well. Most of the people in this alliance had never run Kara (save a few cracks at Attumen and Moroes) until we started up the groups a month or two ago. (Because all the people who wanted to raid would leave to join more raiding-focused guilds).
Because signups for the Kara runs are on a first come, first served basis, there is no incentive for someone to leave one of the guilds and join another, unless they feel that they have a better rapport with the other guild.
The alliance has been going on for a while, we used to run ZG back in the day. Not often, and not well, but we did.
We shall see if we ever make it to Gruul's lair. I hope so. We've had our ups and downs during the past year or so of the alliance, but I think it is currently at a fairly lofty "up" point.
I miss the PAA.... they were on proudmoore a long time ago and i had friends in <Cardboard Tube Samurai> but they all vanished in one of the 4 forced/optional server transfers
I wish they would come back to proudmoore... nice people... they introduced me to this site 2+ years ago
CTS was never part of the PAA. It was just all the Penny Arcade forumers that wanted to be on a PvE server long before Dark Iron was even around. The guild as a whole took the free transfer to Muradin but is now dead.
On topic, CTS actually started out raiding in a few different alliances. Several of them were very bad and there was a decent amount of drama over the forming and reforming of some of them. The last one was decent enough to make it through MC long enough for CTS to start raiding on its own.
even one guild literally stealing members from the other and moving on.
This. Right here. This happened every time I saw two guilds do combined runs in raids. Without exception.
The key is getting two guilds together that are polar opposites in attitude. Pre-TBC, we combine raided through Twin Emps. And it was successful because our guild was a bunch of stoner college kids who were stupidly obnoxious. And the other guild was older couples and families. They had rules for cursing and being obnoxious in guild chat. We relied on each other to fill the raid and get the bosses down, but no one had any desire to swap guilds because the atmospheres were so different.
If you are a big PvE guild who likes 5 mans and karas, look for a PVP guild who has hardcore DPSers that hate white people. For some reason, PvPers (good ones atleast) mesh the best for a 2 hour periods with pve people. Most my guild was working adults and the guild we raided with we a bunch of stoner college kids much like what Jotate described
Btw, the paladin they used as the healer on their arena team was freggin amazing
Gnomeland Security on
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UnbrokenEvaHIGH ON THE WIREBUT I WON'T TRIP ITRegistered Userregular
edited November 2007
All that stuff I said before about having a different experience with raiding alliances, where we didn't merge/poach from each other?
Scratch that. The guild my guild has been running with approached us the other day to start talking about a merger.
Got Vashj to Phase 3 on our second night of attempts, so we've got that going for us. The one big issue we had our first night, strider kiting, was pretty much sorted out, while the one thing we pretty much had down, killing Tainted Elementals, went to shit. Kek.
We've got one more night of attempts for us before the reset, and, win or lose, I'm really looking forward to Tuesday. These Vashj tries are draining me, beating the crap out of the likes of Lurker or Void Reaver is looking pretty good right now.
We're trying Hydross tomorrow, then it's just Leo to go and we're at Vashj. We've had VR down for ages but we've never attempted any of the others in TK.
Rami on
Steam / Xbox Live: WSDX NNID: W-S-D-X 3DS FC: 2637-9461-8549
We're trying Hydross tomorrow, then it's just Leo to go and we're at Vashj. We've had VR down for ages but we've never attempted any of the others in TK.
Solarian is almost as easy as VR, especially after the changes in the last patch. Anyone that raided MC should handle it fine.
Al'ar can be tricky because of those goddamn flame wreaths but if your raid has a high alertness factor it shouldn't be too hard.
Wow, Solarian is a joke. We downed her on the 2nd try last night. Easier than VR by far if you bring the right group (people that can run in away from the big group).
We got Hydross down on the first night, we're missing tanks here and there for a week or so I think so Al'Ar and Solarian is out of the question for the moment, we'll be trying Leo next.
Rami on
Steam / Xbox Live: WSDX NNID: W-S-D-X 3DS FC: 2637-9461-8549
After 5 nights of tries, we can reach phase3 of illidan roughly 60% of the time. p3/p4 only needed about 3-4 tries to get sorted (mostly positioning/aggro issues). Sadly, the one time p5 was reached with 23/25 alive the MT got conflicting orders where to move him during a trap, and in this process first turned him on the raid, and then walked out of the range of some of his healers while enraged. A lot of cursing went on.
Still, tonight we may kill the bastard. And i don't have to listen to his 45s speech again. Trust me Illidan, by now I AM prepared.
If you are in a kara guild and dont have enough numbers for 25 mans, why not combined guild raid?
Its not that hard to find another guild with 10-12 people that are in the same situation as you.
This is what we did. This Sunday we downed Maulgar after five wipes and took Gruul to 5%. Finishing him off tonight.
However, it took us a long time to find a second guild to do it with, because we're kinda picky about the kind of people we bring to raids.
We were doing a Mechanar run. Three from my guild, two from another guild.
And they were both so goddamn good at their classes. Sure, the gear was dungeon blues and maybe a crafted epic or two, but skill > gear. Even better, they had humor and we spent the entire run quipping back and forth.
So we did Arcatraz too. And then Botanica.
We had two of our officers in that group (me being one), so we started plotting in /o, and then inquired as to their raiding progress. They had almost cleared Karazhan, with Prince/Netherspite left (we have it fully cleared).
They have about 10 active raiders. We have about 15.
10 + 15... hmmmmm!
That was our first cooperative run this Sunday, but I'm hopeful for the future.
There was (and will be?) a combined raid on Maelstrom-H... of sorts.
Basically Roll Initiative, one of the top five hordeside (I think they're in the middle of BT) decided they'd grab five of their guys and recruit 20 more from the general public to go take a stab at Gruul. So five guys were definitely overgeared, but the remaining 20 (self included) had maybe one or two pieces of T5-level gear among them. I don't think we overgeared on the whole, but those five could have skewed matters. At least 15 had never seen Gruul before (though several had seen Maulgar).
Anyway, after 45 minutes spent getting everyone on vent and explaining Maulgar, we proceeded to one-shot him. Admittedly with only eight people left standing from 30% on, but by god he got one-shotted. We then went to Gruul, who fell down in one shot at Grow 12 with only one death--me. Unlucky cave-in and shatter placement, what can I say.
Anyway we did so well that we decided to try Magtheridon. On the third try (really, the second-- the second one doesn't count because someone mispulled) we got him to phase 2 with all the channelers dead--then someone missed their cube, we wiped and called it a night.
RI said that they intend to do this again next week--hopefully we do so well again.
even one guild literally stealing members from the other and moving on.
This. Right here. This happened every time I saw two guilds do combined runs in raids. Without exception.
The key is getting two guilds together that are polar opposites in attitude. Pre-TBC, we combine raided through Twin Emps. And it was successful because our guild was a bunch of stoner college kids who were stupidly obnoxious. And the other guild was older couples and families. They had rules for cursing and being obnoxious in guild chat. We relied on each other to fill the raid and get the bosses down, but no one had any desire to swap guilds because the atmospheres were so different.
There is perhaps something to this. Back in the day my small guild teamed up with two or three other small guilds to do ZG and then MC. It was messy at first because one of them aspired to be the Uber Raiding Guild on the server and started mass recruiting and demanding more spots in our combined raids with new people, and we were annoyed, and soon they revealed that they were just preparing to split off and run their own raids anyway. It was no big loss and we quickly outpaced them. Of the remaining three guilds, two of us with similar personalities/purposes decided to just merge, and the third remained our ally, because they were foremost an RP guild with strict recruitment rules, not as many members as us, not all members interested in raiding, etc. We got up to C'thun with this arrangement. They only brought 1/4 or 1/5 of the 40-man slots every raid but it was a fairly consistent balance and it worked. We did zero-sum DKP and there was hardly ever loot drama.
Things only fell apart when we got to BC and started doing Karazhan and Maulgar, and many MANY of the old guard did not make it to 70 quickly or became disinterested in raiding entirely. With 10 or 25 people we struggled to find a place for the well-meaning RPers who would have been harmless sponges in a 40-man. Eventually their GM, who was the driving force behind reminding us to try to fit in some of their recruits, quit raiding and then quit logging on, so we've begun this weird period where the other guild's new recruits all seem to think we're assholes, and they recruit separately for Karazhan runs, and we do our thing with 25-mans and two of their members who've been with us for the long haul. We don't even try to pull their recruits into 25-mans anymore because the last times we tried it was like "mage with 400 fire damage who things he only needs to cast pyroblast to DPS" and "hunter who dies three times to Aran's arcane explosion", and the old GM isn't harassing us anymore to keep trying out noobs.
It makes me a little sad because it used to be a really good alliance, and we were all friendly, but now I don't even know most of the people with their guild tag on, and they pretty much hate all of us. I wish we could just snag those last two guys and stop pretending we're an alliance. Putting two guild names on our kill screenshots is such a fucking joke.
In addition to what riz mentioned, I was always kinda unhappy with the situation between our two guilds. We were the "hardcore" backbone of the raid. They weren't really into it as much. Which was fine, as long as people were decent and put in the same amount of effort then it really wasn't a problem. And we didn't suffer very much in 40 mans for (to generalise) what was often the less-than-desirables from the RP guild, which weren't quite up to par.
But what was always a problem, is that we recruited specifically for raiding. If friends and family joined, we were very clear that they would probably never see the inside of a raid instance with us. But this other guild recruited people based upon RP. Which was fine except for the fact that a lot of these recruits seemed to think that by joining that guild they were now entitled to raid. I wish we were more strict with who we let in, back then. But often it was either kill Nef with 39 people, or bring this shaman in greens who doesn't have any ankhs. That didn't really last through BC. Though we were often forced by politics to sit out decent raiders in favour of shitty raiders simply because of a guild tag, eventually we put our foot down. Thank god.
There are.. two? people in that guild now which raid with us. I really wish they would just make the move over. It would make kill screenshots a whole lot cleaner :P
We don't really do kill shots like this, but we should:
Hey, that's a good idea. I used to raid with another guild... 24 of them and 1 of me. I'm the odd man out in a lot of the earlier killshots... I should post on their forums, demanding something like that added to their earliest killshots.
Yeah I made those alternate screenshots of our Kael and Rage kills last week. I wonder how pissed off they'd be if they saw them.
The other thing is I sometimes wonder if any of those new people they've picked up might actually be decent if undergeared players who we are missing out on, meanwhile we're bumping our own recruitment thread. It's probably unlikely but I dunno. It's awkward that neither guild's leadership wants to bother with talking about it at this point.
Yeah I made those alternate screenshots of our Kael and Rage kills last week. I wonder how pissed off they'd be if they saw them.
The other thing is I sometimes wonder if any of those new people they've picked up might actually be decent if undergeared players who we are missing out on, meanwhile we're bumping our own recruitment thread. It's probably unlikely but I dunno. It's awkward that neither guild's leadership wants to bother with talking about it at this point.
Well I think things are markedly better now because there's no confusion about what each guild means. If you want to raid, apply to SO. If you want to RP, apply with them. So people that actually want to raid (and there were some of those that applied to the RP guild for the specific purpose of weaseling their way into the raid) will know where to go.
That's the theory, anyway. In practice people probably don't entirely realise just how different our raid makeup is to what it was six months ago.
After 5 nights of tries, we can reach phase3 of illidan roughly 60% of the time. p3/p4 only needed about 3-4 tries to get sorted (mostly positioning/aggro issues). Sadly, the one time p5 was reached with 23/25 alive the MT got conflicting orders where to move him during a trap, and in this process first turned him on the raid, and then walked out of the range of some of his healers while enraged. A lot of cursing went on.
Still, tonight we may kill the bastard. And i don't have to listen to his 45s speech again. Trust me Illidan, by now I AM prepared.
Just ignore the traps, they are by far the least useful thing ever designed and usually end up with him deciding to decimate your aggro happy people. Enrage isn't difficult to heal through so it's usually preferable
After 5 nights of tries, we can reach phase3 of illidan roughly 60% of the time. p3/p4 only needed about 3-4 tries to get sorted (mostly positioning/aggro issues). Sadly, the one time p5 was reached with 23/25 alive the MT got conflicting orders where to move him during a trap, and in this process first turned him on the raid, and then walked out of the range of some of his healers while enraged. A lot of cursing went on.
Still, tonight we may kill the bastard. And i don't have to listen to his 45s speech again. Trust me Illidan, by now I AM prepared.
Just ignore the traps, they are by far the least useful thing ever designed and usually end up with him deciding to decimate your aggro happy people. Enrage isn't difficult to heal through so it's usually preferable
On our very first kill our MT spazed out trying to drag Illidan onto a trap, turning him into the raid right as he was casting Draw Soul (or whatever it's called). Healed back up to 15% and then died.
It seems every "major" boss fight we've ever done has followed the pattern of "perfectly executed wipe that falls apart at < 10%, 5-10 absolute fuckup pulls in a row, VERY last pull of the night several fuckups perfectly reacted to, resulting in a kill. Nefarian, Twin Emperors, C'thun, Patchwerk, Kael, Vashj, etc. In the case of Illidan it was the last pull of the reset, two pulls after our final flasks of the night had expired. Killed the fucker with elixirs.
Svidrigailov on
Neither the whole of truth nor the whole of good is revealed to any single observer, although each observer gains a partial superiority of insight from the peculiar position in which he stands. It is enough to ask of each of us that he should be faithful to his own opportunities and make the most of his own blessings, without presuming to regulate the rest of the vast field.
Im raiding again on my old guild, the one i left is deep in BT, this one just downed Tidewalker in SSC. I havent had this much fun in a long time, and couldnt be happier!
I love you very very much. I think you are a fun instance, with many great bosses. I enjoy running you a lot.
But why do you feel you should hurt me so by being so very bleed immune? I like bleed, it keeps me from bottoming out on the dips charts because I can Rip you.
Love,
Ledneh
----
Serious content: Feral Druid DPS. Here's a WWS, I'm Haze. On Rippable bosses I do well for my gear level on the DPS charts (top on Aran woop), but when they're not I bottom out very very badly (Netherspite particularly). I tried to compensate by Ferocious Biting at 5 points and just enough energy, but obviously that didn't help a lot. Should I be biting at full energy? Not biting at all? Oh god help
Posts
But I think most of the older members only saw me as a way for them to get more DKP in their zero sum system. Guild was trying to crack AQ while farming MC/BWL every week.
So, in the area with all the guys who fight each other and then heal up his dog just shoots off and agroes a group way down the hall, pulling like, four or five groups of guys to us. After the wipe I asked "What happened with your pet?" and the guy just freaks out, demanding that if I have to criticize him, I do it in a whisper. I was like "You just killed four people, all of whom deserve an explanation."
He passed it off as some recurring bug and we finished SH without any further incidents. But you know, I LIKE it when people offer constructive criticism to me, especially on a character playing a role I'm new at (I desperately wanted help learning to heal as I leveled my priest and no one would offer it. It was a very rough learning curve for me since I had just been dps since release). Why people who are terrible at their class get mad when you try to help them is beyond me. All that results in is a guaranteed refusal to take them on raids.
We tried that.
What happened was that the other guild's GL was absent most raid nights, leaving it entirely to our GL to coordinate between the two guilds. Even when the other GL was logged in, 90% of the time it wasn't him at the keyboard since all of their officers apparently shared characters, so any type of coordination was done with the other guild's officers on a inconsistant basis. This slowly lead to lopsided raid participation, where we'd scratch together say, 20 of our guys and fill in with 5 of theirs (if any of them actually wanted to go). There were attempts where they had 10 level 70 people on, but only a couple were willing to go to gruul, or attempt mags or ssc.
Eventually we ended up breaking off the alliance, and poached one of their feral druids (who could/would spec resto every now and then). Of the other guilds on the server, the rest were either happy just running kara, weren't at the point where they could put together half of a decent raid, or weren't interested in running an alliance.
Not to say it can't work. I've been on servers where there was a huge raiding alliance where free roll was used. The framework just wasn't there on Arygos.
Back in the pre-BC days I was an officer in a guild that could, if everyone was online, fill a fairly solid ZG group, but even that wasn't reliable. To stem the flow of otherwise good guildies ditching us for a chance to see some 40-man content, we hooked up with an existing alliance of 3 or 4 other guilds that was working on MC. I'm not saying there wasn't a bit of politics, and some time spent debating loot policy and gear requirements (we were all casual guilds with different ideas on stuff like DKP and whether or not going to MC in greens was a good idea). But beyond that, it was good. By the time BC came out, we had Rag on farm and were having weekly Razorgore wipefests - our progress wasn't as fast as a unified raiding guild would have been, but none of us wanted to be in a "raiding guild".
Fast-forward to BC. We can run Kara by ourselves of course, though along the way hooked back up with one of the smaller guilds from the old alliance, because we liked playing with them, and were trying to run 2 Kara's a week. We're back down to 1 Kara now due to some folks losing interest in the place, but the smaller guild is still running with us, and while I'd love to have them join us, I'm never going to ask as it was never my intent to absorb them unless they chose to be. And now we're working with another Kara guild as well on Gruul's, though how that's going to work out remains to be seen. They're a bit more casual than we are, and even on the weeks when we're able to scrape together 25 70s at the same time to try, we end up having to bring some alts/new 70s that shouldn't be in Gruul's yet, and haven't been able to down Gruul himself.
I think for a 25-man alliance to work, 3 Kara guilds would be best. That means you have a pool of at least 30+ people who have the gear and skill to down Prince at your disposal, rather than 20+. Two guilds can work, but you'll always be cutting things close.
6 weeks wasted on hitting GL once a week, at best, if we were lucky. Had we just recruited and spent those week doing 2 KZ runs things might have been different.
/postmortem
It also doesn't hurt that the server has 1 other endgame raiding guild Horde side and this commune is actually #1 in progression, which drives people to it and keeps recruits flowing, usually from KZ guilds looking to hop aboard the epic express.
Then again, although they were good times, I still prefer my current guild. Maybe it's me, but the drama seems easier resolved because they're not ego/personality related, which was a problem sometimes back then. In a guild situation it's also easier to filter out the trialists that don't get along with some of your guildmembers. It wasn't exactly possible in an alliance to say "well, that guy doesn't get along with anyone, let's kick him".
Or the PAA, which I kinda wish I was on every now and then... maybe I'll roll an alt there when 2.3 hits.
Because signups for the Kara runs are on a first come, first served basis, there is no incentive for someone to leave one of the guilds and join another, unless they feel that they have a better rapport with the other guild.
The alliance has been going on for a while, we used to run ZG back in the day. Not often, and not well, but we did.
We shall see if we ever make it to Gruul's lair. I hope so. We've had our ups and downs during the past year or so of the alliance, but I think it is currently at a fairly lofty "up" point.
I wish they would come back to proudmoore... nice people... they introduced me to this site 2+ years ago
On topic, CTS actually started out raiding in a few different alliances. Several of them were very bad and there was a decent amount of drama over the forming and reforming of some of them. The last one was decent enough to make it through MC long enough for CTS to start raiding on its own.
The key is getting two guilds together that are polar opposites in attitude. Pre-TBC, we combine raided through Twin Emps. And it was successful because our guild was a bunch of stoner college kids who were stupidly obnoxious. And the other guild was older couples and families. They had rules for cursing and being obnoxious in guild chat. We relied on each other to fill the raid and get the bosses down, but no one had any desire to swap guilds because the atmospheres were so different.
If you are a big PvE guild who likes 5 mans and karas, look for a PVP guild who has hardcore DPSers that hate white people. For some reason, PvPers (good ones atleast) mesh the best for a 2 hour periods with pve people. Most my guild was working adults and the guild we raided with we a bunch of stoner college kids much like what Jotate described
Btw, the paladin they used as the healer on their arena team was freggin amazing
Scratch that. The guild my guild has been running with approached us the other day to start talking about a merger.
We've got one more night of attempts for us before the reset, and, win or lose, I'm really looking forward to Tuesday. These Vashj tries are draining me, beating the crap out of the likes of Lurker or Void Reaver is looking pretty good right now.
Solarian is almost as easy as VR, especially after the changes in the last patch. Anyone that raided MC should handle it fine.
Al'ar can be tricky because of those goddamn flame wreaths but if your raid has a high alertness factor it shouldn't be too hard.
Still, tonight we may kill the bastard. And i don't have to listen to his 45s speech again. Trust me Illidan, by now I AM prepared.
This is what we did. This Sunday we downed Maulgar after five wipes and took Gruul to 5%. Finishing him off tonight.
However, it took us a long time to find a second guild to do it with, because we're kinda picky about the kind of people we bring to raids.
We were doing a Mechanar run. Three from my guild, two from another guild.
And they were both so goddamn good at their classes. Sure, the gear was dungeon blues and maybe a crafted epic or two, but skill > gear. Even better, they had humor and we spent the entire run quipping back and forth.
So we did Arcatraz too. And then Botanica.
We had two of our officers in that group (me being one), so we started plotting in /o, and then inquired as to their raiding progress. They had almost cleared Karazhan, with Prince/Netherspite left (we have it fully cleared).
They have about 10 active raiders. We have about 15.
10 + 15... hmmmmm!
That was our first cooperative run this Sunday, but I'm hopeful for the future.
Basically Roll Initiative, one of the top five hordeside (I think they're in the middle of BT) decided they'd grab five of their guys and recruit 20 more from the general public to go take a stab at Gruul. So five guys were definitely overgeared, but the remaining 20 (self included) had maybe one or two pieces of T5-level gear among them. I don't think we overgeared on the whole, but those five could have skewed matters. At least 15 had never seen Gruul before (though several had seen Maulgar).
Anyway, after 45 minutes spent getting everyone on vent and explaining Maulgar, we proceeded to one-shot him. Admittedly with only eight people left standing from 30% on, but by god he got one-shotted. We then went to Gruul, who fell down in one shot at Grow 12 with only one death--me. Unlucky cave-in and shatter placement, what can I say.
Anyway we did so well that we decided to try Magtheridon. On the third try (really, the second-- the second one doesn't count because someone mispulled) we got him to phase 2 with all the channelers dead--then someone missed their cube, we wiped and called it a night.
RI said that they intend to do this again next week--hopefully we do so well again.
There is perhaps something to this. Back in the day my small guild teamed up with two or three other small guilds to do ZG and then MC. It was messy at first because one of them aspired to be the Uber Raiding Guild on the server and started mass recruiting and demanding more spots in our combined raids with new people, and we were annoyed, and soon they revealed that they were just preparing to split off and run their own raids anyway. It was no big loss and we quickly outpaced them. Of the remaining three guilds, two of us with similar personalities/purposes decided to just merge, and the third remained our ally, because they were foremost an RP guild with strict recruitment rules, not as many members as us, not all members interested in raiding, etc. We got up to C'thun with this arrangement. They only brought 1/4 or 1/5 of the 40-man slots every raid but it was a fairly consistent balance and it worked. We did zero-sum DKP and there was hardly ever loot drama.
Things only fell apart when we got to BC and started doing Karazhan and Maulgar, and many MANY of the old guard did not make it to 70 quickly or became disinterested in raiding entirely. With 10 or 25 people we struggled to find a place for the well-meaning RPers who would have been harmless sponges in a 40-man. Eventually their GM, who was the driving force behind reminding us to try to fit in some of their recruits, quit raiding and then quit logging on, so we've begun this weird period where the other guild's new recruits all seem to think we're assholes, and they recruit separately for Karazhan runs, and we do our thing with 25-mans and two of their members who've been with us for the long haul. We don't even try to pull their recruits into 25-mans anymore because the last times we tried it was like "mage with 400 fire damage who things he only needs to cast pyroblast to DPS" and "hunter who dies three times to Aran's arcane explosion", and the old GM isn't harassing us anymore to keep trying out noobs.
It makes me a little sad because it used to be a really good alliance, and we were all friendly, but now I don't even know most of the people with their guild tag on, and they pretty much hate all of us. I wish we could just snag those last two guys and stop pretending we're an alliance. Putting two guild names on our kill screenshots is such a fucking joke.
But what was always a problem, is that we recruited specifically for raiding. If friends and family joined, we were very clear that they would probably never see the inside of a raid instance with us. But this other guild recruited people based upon RP. Which was fine except for the fact that a lot of these recruits seemed to think that by joining that guild they were now entitled to raid. I wish we were more strict with who we let in, back then. But often it was either kill Nef with 39 people, or bring this shaman in greens who doesn't have any ankhs. That didn't really last through BC. Though we were often forced by politics to sit out decent raiders in favour of shitty raiders simply because of a guild tag, eventually we put our foot down. Thank god.
There are.. two? people in that guild now which raid with us. I really wish they would just make the move over. It would make kill screenshots a whole lot cleaner :P
We don't really do kill shots like this, but we should:
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
The other thing is I sometimes wonder if any of those new people they've picked up might actually be decent if undergeared players who we are missing out on, meanwhile we're bumping our own recruitment thread. It's probably unlikely but I dunno. It's awkward that neither guild's leadership wants to bother with talking about it at this point.
Well I think things are markedly better now because there's no confusion about what each guild means. If you want to raid, apply to SO. If you want to RP, apply with them. So people that actually want to raid (and there were some of those that applied to the RP guild for the specific purpose of weaseling their way into the raid) will know where to go.
That's the theory, anyway. In practice people probably don't entirely realise just how different our raid makeup is to what it was six months ago.
Just ignore the traps, they are by far the least useful thing ever designed and usually end up with him deciding to decimate your aggro happy people. Enrage isn't difficult to heal through so it's usually preferable
It seems every "major" boss fight we've ever done has followed the pattern of "perfectly executed wipe that falls apart at < 10%, 5-10 absolute fuckup pulls in a row, VERY last pull of the night several fuckups perfectly reacted to, resulting in a kill. Nefarian, Twin Emperors, C'thun, Patchwerk, Kael, Vashj, etc. In the case of Illidan it was the last pull of the reset, two pulls after our final flasks of the night had expired. Killed the fucker with elixirs.
I love you very very much. I think you are a fun instance, with many great bosses. I enjoy running you a lot.
But why do you feel you should hurt me so by being so very bleed immune? I like bleed, it keeps me from bottoming out on the dips charts because I can Rip you.
Love,
Ledneh
----
Serious content: Feral Druid DPS. Here's a WWS, I'm Haze. On Rippable bosses I do well for my gear level on the DPS charts (top on Aran woop), but when they're not I bottom out very very badly (Netherspite particularly). I tried to compensate by Ferocious Biting at 5 points and just enough energy, but obviously that didn't help a lot. Should I be biting at full energy? Not biting at all? Oh god help
Unbuffed:
Health: 6k
Mana: 7.5k
Heal: 882
Regen (in-combat): 68
Try being a Mutilate Rogue on all the fuckawesome poison immune mobs.
HUGE SUCCESS
You should be fine.
http://armory.worldofwarcraft.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Sargeras&n=Rubycurse
This must be what it was like to be a Fire mage in the era of Molten Core. :sigh:
It kinda is.
You normally want to shoot for 1k+ healing, and maybe 8k ish mana.
1k healing is the bear minimum, and there is nothing you should sacrifice for it other then mana.
I mean, I have 9k with a few kara epics and such, with about 1.1k ish + healing, and Mana intensive fights still drain the hell out of me.
Make sure you grab a Crystal Pulse Sheild, Essance Focuser, and the healing mail craftable chestpiece, first and formost.
You an grab the Kurenai revered leather kilt and socket it with some green socket +healing gems.
If you have LC revered rep, grab two Lower City Prayerbooks.
Do the Nagarand group quests at the forge camps to get the healing mail helm.
And then, pop in some +healing greens/elemental blues if need be, and you should be pretty set.