f13.net

Given that I have no account just now, I can't post on the forums.  But if anyone could post this on the Stormrage server forum, I'd be gratified.  Please reply to this message before doing so; if multiple people post the same message, it'd probably annoy their mods.

Drama!!!

It's not unusual for people to reach the endgame to want to participate in it.

Raiding isn't the only endgame content to be had.  And there's no drama involved; if I can find a non-raiding guild, I'll resubscribe.  If I can't, I won't.  No muss, no fuss.

I'd wait tell WotLK to resub if your looking for something small scale. The inevitable slide from "Hey we can do two kara groups now" to "SSC/TK/BT/Hyjel nightly, show up with flasks or not at all" is a slippery one. I'll post your request however, just don't be shocked at the replys:

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=7353018405&postId=73010990807&sid=1#0

This is World of Warcraft we are talking about right?  Your endgame choices are:

1) Play the same 4 BG maps over and over
2) Arena
3) Raid
4) Do the boring dailys.
5) Heroics

Am I missing something?

I think he means 5-10 instances.  Yes, 10 man instances are raids.

"Raids" is really too general for WoW anymore.  There are RAIDS and then there are Raids.

Thanks, Kirth; I appreciate it.  I'm not expecting much from the WoW boards other than piles of stupidity, but you never know.

As for waiting for WotLK, if I do that I'll be hugely behind the curve at 61.  It's the hope of hitting 70 and being prepared for its release that spurs me to resub early.

Oh he means the 25 mans.  Yea, they blow.

Yeah, 25s.  (And 20s and 40s, though I know they're obsolete now.)

And Kirth, you might wanna mention that the post isn't coming from you.  I expect there'll be a fair bit of flames, and wouldn't want it to hurt your reputation.

I posted on a alt I use for trolling/flaming so no fear.

Level that Ret Pally. I've got mine to 40 last night (free mount!) and it's fun as heck.

I leveled a Ret Pally too, but as you hit Outlands you will start to slow down as mobs start to hit harder and harder, and you end up doing more and more healing after each fight resulting in more downtime drinking - blessing of wisdom does not quite cut it vs the rate you use mana.

Comparatively, early to mid 60s other classes get significant buffs - warlocks get fel armor for significant boots to drain returns, hunters get aspect of viper that really help the mana regen for major shot spamming, shamans get watershield i.e. unlimited mana, druids get lifebloom e.g. unlimited heals. etc

Its still doable to level to 70, and much faster than earlier builds of pally. But I lost steam for my pally when I slowed down to the point of drinking every 2 (when SOC refuse to proc) to 4 mobs in Outlands when all my other classes can grind single mobs non-stop till my eyes/fingers hurt.

Prot pally wise it might be a different story though - they are now very strong tanks, and they can grind ridiculous amounts of mobs at the same time. My pally is on a pvp server, so AE grinding comes with extra danger - if someone targets you mid-pull, chances are you are dead. Come to think of it, even without mobs on you, a prot pally is in big trouble if they are targeted by any range/caster class.

I instance a lot, I don't like questing, so I don't expect I would be bothered too much. However I don't think I'll play the pally much past level 60, there's nothing much to do at 70 that I want to do and I have my Warlock if I need to get gold or anything. Plus I don't want to bore myself of outlands even more than I have to (Outlands sucks, generally speaking--shit zones and worse isntances) seeign how I'm going to have to do 58-68 there on my DK later this year.

Also, why not just solo w/o using crusader strike if mana is an issue? Is it that huge a DPS increase?

Its not just crusader strike taking up mana - it's the heals after the fight as the mob damage scale up. A ret pally just do not have enough +int and +healing, so healing up from fights can take a large chunk of your mana.

By not using dps abilities the combat lasts longer, and you chalk up more damage and require even more heals. Also, outland have a significant number of mobs that enrage on low hp - if you don't burst them down you will take a chunk of additional damage. Hammer of wrath, the pally's execute, also requires a hefty chunk of mana to cast.

And crusader strike is the gem in crown of the Ret tree - its a insta strike that does 110% of weapon damage - with a good slow 2hander it scales very well, as well as being an additional chance to crit to proc Vengance, which adds up to another significant amount of damage.

I've stayed with a more Holy/Shock build that allows me to heal very well with a large mana pool.  I just change gear to a more DPS mode (more +crit and +damage rather than +healing) and strap on a big two hander when I need to do DPS.  It is certainly more than enough for solo work and sometimes helps out when we need a DPS position in a group/raid quickly.

Many times I'll supplement my main healing position with some added DPS if the fights aren't too involved.  It really speeds things up.

Granted, my pally has nearly 3 full sets of purples to play around with between PvP, Healing, and DPS.

Don't heal up after fights. Eat/ Drink/ Bandage like the rest of us schlubs.  Prot pallies have to do it, and Hell, even my priest never healed after fights.  If I was hurt that bad I had to mana-up anyway so it was eat/drink at the same time. If I wasn't hurt that bad, that mana was better served killin something.


Replay some of the old zone again.  Plaguelands was worse than the worst zone in Outlands (pre-flight) - Netherstorm.   Ashenvale also sucks tremendous amounts of cock.  The Outlands zones are ok, they just get tedious due to the time spent in them.  I haven't spent anywhere near as much time in a zone as I have in Zangamarsh since my first run through Stranglethorn back in 04.

I 100% agree on the instances, though.  The best one in the expansion was ramparts and that's just because it's so damn short.

I actually like the zones in Outlands, except for Netherstorm, and Blade's Edge.  Ok, so I like 3 of the 5.  BE and Netherstorm are fine with flying mounts, but before that, they can be tedious.  Still, they are better than Ashenvale, Darkshore or Plaguelands, in my opinion.

BEM is fine as alliance because you get thrown around to the various places you need to be by a helpful gnome in Toshley's Station, you even get gold and experience for it!

Nagrand eats away at my soul. It's beutiful, but horrifying at the same time. There's just way too much "kill shitloads of this mob" one after the other and not just from old Nessy. I typically skip it entirely now. Other than that I quite like outlands. I also disagree on the instances being bad. I like all of them except for BF because those mines just suck so hard.

There are so many original zones thought that I can skip the ones I dont like. Outlands is a straight rail in comparison where not doing stuff fucks you over.

I like plaguelands btw. Ashenvale is awful though, awful awful. I'm glad we will never see shit like that again.

Hellfire is ok. Ugly but passable. Zangarmarsh is nice, really. Terrokkar is good, except for the blasted bit, that's meh. Nagrand is too large nad too all over the shop. Too much killing random shit. Design is good but the questing is much more meh. BEM is just fucking annoying. Netherstorm is ugly as hell and boring.

The instances for me:

Ramps: Quick rail with one kinda intersitng boss. Doesn't feel like a real place at all though.
BF: This is just horrible. More rail, more boring nonsense. One interesting boss (beholder-like guy) and that's it.
SH: Feels more like a place than the others but is still a rail. Bosses are boring. Heoric mode is fun for the timed runs that's about it.

SP: Ugh. This is ok. Better than the others but still..
Underbog: Thre first passable instance. Some variety with not everything being a humaniod pull, feel move like a cave and a bit sprawling. Bosses are a bit meh but are fun.
SV: Feels more like a place if a bit generic with the boss placements, bosses ok.

MT: Fun bosses but horrible design. Hardly ever run because the trash is so fucking annoying.
AC: Boring and easy. Feels like a rail. Take too long for a rail.
SL: Would have been much better if it wasn't a rail. Had some great parts but doesn't come together in feeling for me.

OHB: Good instance.
Black Morass: Good instance.

Bot: Ok.
Mech: Feels halfmade. Last boss is like wtf. Biggest letdown ever.
Arc: Fun.

Compare to the fantastic instance design in original:

RFC: Completely shit.
WC: Feels exactly like what it should. Not a rail. Has an event.
SFK: Feels like a fucking place. Is a rail but it doesn't take away from the feeling.
SM: Feels like a place. Lib sucks but apart from that is good.
Ulda: Feels like a place. Lots of bosses. One of the best bosses. (Annoying to get to for horde, though)
ZF: Feels like a place. Lots of bosses. Some voluntary. Not a rail.
Mara: A little bit off but still feels pretty good. Doable from a couple of directions, can skip to just the last few bosses. Great lore/quests tied in.
ST: Fuck people who don't like this. Clear up the trash by cutting it in half in places and this is one of the best instances ever. Fucking awesome.
BRD: Best instance in the game by streets. Suffers from not having alternate start points like Mara, and from being a leveling rather than end game instance.
DM: I don't like this as much as others. Feels a little generic. But I've not leveled up while it was in the game and done quests associated with it, so manybe that makes it better. Still good for design.
Strath: Fucking awesome. Nearly as good as BRD.
Scholo: Nearly as good as strath.
BRS: I don't really like spire. Too much trash, too big for the number of bosses.

Original did a few things wrong, one being that BRD, Ulda, and ST should have been level cap instances or raids (BRD would be an awesome raid) while others like SM (sans-lib), SFK, Mara, were prefect leveling instances.

But blizzard too the wrong message from the enjoyment of SM and assumed that all people wanted were rails, and thought they could get away with putting in heaps of them without bothering to make them make sense.

I would pay for an expansion that turned BRD, ST, Ulda, into raids and gave us heroic versions of Scholo, Strath, Mara, ZF, and SFK and nothing else.

Why in the world are people talking about worst zones in history and leaving out Silithus?

Worst zone in history.

Of course, for people who don't remember the worm charges knocking you halfway across the zone or the mobs having no loot at all on their loot table but being required for the stupid Molten Core quests probably don't have the same feeling as us old farts do.

Seriously, I despise several parts of outlands, but I would rather have every zone be a clone of Durotar for the entire game than ever set foot in silithus again. I don't even think my shaman has ever been to silithus I hate the place that much.

Silithus is also where you get the sandworm meat and its recipe to push cooking to 300 without fishing.

Ally my chars drop by there to do the sandworm recipe quest and grind a few twilight cultist for the first quest or two since they are nearby.

These two statements convince me that you and I have completely different opinions on what makes a "good instance".

No shit.  BRD was boring and long.  Most of  the pre TBC instances save a few I'd characterize as "boring and long".

And, IMO, Sunken Temple was hard to get a group together for because having to deal with poisons, sleep, polymorph:frog, AND diseases meant bringing a druid AND a priest, and back then healers were rare and feral kinda sucked (or at least that was my impression at the time).

Every flavour of druid but resto kinda sucked back then.

For all the crap you get doing 25-man instances, I do like the design of Mags and Gruul's.

Do a few "way easy by comparison" pulls and you hit the bosses.  The boss fights themselves are hard and need a ton of cooperation, but that's what everyone comes for and has fun with.  Trash pulls just generally suck, so I was glad to see them take them out.

I'd like to see more instances designed around 2-3 boss fights with maybe 2-3 trash pulls between them.  The rest of it can be eye candy.  Throw in some optional quest items/bosses/summonings/etc. and that would be spiffy.

If they need to keep with the illusion that the instance is filled with tons of enemies, then provide a unique way to bypass them with something other than combat.  If people want to get through it with brute force, go ahead.  If you want to do it quicker and with more finesse, figure out the trick.

And the TBC ones are really boring and short?  :grin:

You need to read more carefully.

BRD does have problems, as I said. It is certainly too long for a leveling instance, and it is too big for just having one enterance. But putting it at the level cap where people have more desire to spend time in a place instead of just pop in and out on the leveling process would chance much of that, as would giving it three alternate enterances unlucked whenever you kill up to boss x and y so that is becoems 'winged' a-la SM, DM, etc.

I fail to see how you could think BRD is not far far better than any TBC instance when it comes to the quest/lore involvement however. Nor when it comes to the zone feeling like a real place. It feels like a sprawling city too me, and has events, variety, quests, can be done in a whole number of different ways depending on your requirements.

ST, Ulda, BRD, and some others also suffered from the annoying length of time it took to get to them. Not so bad now that there are the summoning stones. Back in the day getting together a PUG was hard not just for the instance itself but all the futzing about to get everyone there. Being Warlock it was probably a little less annoying for me, too.

But anyway: People like Kara, yes?

BRD is better than Kara and if it was a level cap 10man with another enterance, like Kara's back enterance, many people would enjoy the place a whole lot more. They should have made it the UBRS, in which case I think people would have a different view of the place.

Even as it is though it is still the most fun instance I have done in the game. I've only completed it in full a couple of times, which speaks to its problems, but still.  We'll never see leveling instances like it again, but at least we'll see stuff this good and better (if they learn from Kara) in future 10-mans.

DM I have only done as a level 60 so I dont know. I'll see if it feels any different when I do it again this time on my Pally.

I like Gruul and Mag a lot too Dren, though the timers on Mag trash originally were a bit fucking annoying. I dont think they shoudl put in too many 1 and 3 man boss instances though, you need to keep the balance there. I think you need a Naxx/Kara  with a couple of Gruul/Ony types and some TK length stuff also. TBC got the mix pretty well, though maybe SSC could be a little shorter.


People will complain though. I mean, look at BRD.  :-)

What do I need to read more carefully? I wasn't neccessarily commenting in your general direction.

You like BRD.  Fantastic. I didn't.  I didn't like the 60s instance scene enough that I instead I tortured myself by diving headfirst into the raiding (boy was that a bad idea).  The only stuff I would even do outside of the 20/40 man instances were DM North chest runs or Strath dead side. I liked the rails. I liked SM, I liked DM. I liked gameplay that could be accomplished in small digestable chunks with decent challenge.  The rails of TBC accomplish this for me for the most part.

I'm making comments about preference, you're trying to make this into some sort of debatable science about the absolute merits of WoW 5 man instances.  Given a choice between coherent level design/lore and stuff I can get done before it's only 6 hours before I have to wake up, I'll choose the later. 

It's somewhat lamentable that for the most part, instance design has been somewhat of a binary thing.

IMO, BRD and BRS all seem like they were conceived as a public dungeons and then just flipped to a single group instance. They are both huge, with various "camps" and both have entrances to raid instances inside of them.

I notice things like this alot in WoW, that is areas where design work has been done but then the concept or whatever changes but they keep the foundation. Karahzan makes me think it was designed for a larger group initially but didn't make it into vanilla, and when they brought it back for TBC they kept the zone layout and just scaled it for 10 man. 

BRD is awesome, I agree.  It doesn't even need the back entrance. You can go 3 different routes from the front. 4 if you count the ring of law, which is only a few short pulls from the entrance.  Like you said, though, it's put at the wrong spot in the progression and sucks in that manner.

My favorites are still the old UBRS, LBRS and Strath.  The new instances just aren't as fun as they feel like they were supposed to be "a challenge" rather than "someplace to go and kill shit in a dungeon crawl."  Fuck, as with everything else, the trash is more annoying than the bosses in all of the BC instances.

Ah, I thought you were commenting in my general direction because the person you were agreeing with quoted me. My bad.

I agree with a lot of the issues with BRD. I stated they are issues in my original post (hence me assuming you missed that because I assumed you were refering to me) but think that they are played up a lot.

I love Strath. Strath is great because it feels like a place and has two sides to it that you don't have to do at the same time, but could if you want. It's not a rail. Not only is there Dead/Live but there are different ways to do both sides and elective bosses.

You can do much of BRD the same way. You probably haven't, probably never will, and probably don't care, but you can. You can do fast Emp runs if you want to. You can do long epic runs that take ages also. But you can do that in Strath to a degree if you want as well; just run dead and live both.

I'm not going to tell you what to like and dislike, but the misconception that BRD is some kinda of 5 hour monster is just silly, especially as you admit you've hardly ever visited the place.


That might explain a bit of it, though it would have had to come early in the design stage before they instanced things, as I'm pretty confident they were always going to be epic areas with bosses.

As far as I'm aware Kara was in development for a long time, as in started before original release, so I guess it has probably gone through a varitey of movements before it was finally settled as a 10man.

I do wonder what they're doing with the crypts though (for those that haven't visited there is a section under Kara from the crypt enterance which has heaps of room and some really nice design). There must be a fair bit of stuff they have lying around still that they haven't used yet. Why though? When you have all that stuff already basicly finished and have people clamouring for content why don't they put it out? I can only assume that it is tied to some lore stuff they want to save for later.

I liked UBRS a lot because it was one of the first places outside of raiding that you might see an epic drop outside of a 40 man at that time. I like Strat because the design is really well done and the flavor of the instance just feels right. Also, the trash is what I would call perfectly balanced on the dead side in terms of spacing.

The TBC instances are ok, but there are only a few I still like to run. Sethekk is a good balance for me, but it doesn't really stand out in terms of cool design. Mechanar looks really neat with the all the cool see-through designs, and it's relatively short with cool first boss fight on heroic. Underbog is a lot of fun for me, and I think the place really feels like it's supposed to in terms of overall design.

As for the stuff that bothered me, Magister's Terrace trash annoys me because the pacing just feels wrong, and it's needlessly repetative. I had major problems with Karazhan until they took the shears to the place, and everyone started to outgear it. The trash in the middle was horribly excessive and punative at the time to get to the point where you could port past most of the trouble. Now, it's just a non-issue. ZA was nicely put together, but something about the place never clicked for me. We killed all four of the animal guys eventually, and got most of the chest stuff, but we just couldn't force ourselves to put in the efforts on the last two due to boredom or time constraints.

I'm still hoping they tame down ZA soon.  I haven't even been able to get into a run for that place because nobody is interested.  The hardcores from the guilds I raid with all went there and hated it so they won't lead anything back in there.  So, we just keep farming Kara, Mags, and Gruul's.  There have been some foray's into the other 25 man instances, but I really dislike those.  Too long, too many people, and too many trash pulls.

Karazhan seems to have the balance people enjoy.  Being a 10 man is a good start.  Having multiple paths to chose from helps with managing everyone's time and availability for the night.  Trash pulls are evident, but there are probably only like 5-7 pulls between most bosses.  Much less in some cases which helps keep things being too repetitive.

Trash is linked to bosses, so you don't have to do complete cleans every night when you return.  Shortcuts are available once you get to a certain point in the instance (teleport to the Library.)  This was the first place to start putting multiple badges on all the bosses (except for Attumen who has 1.)  Everyone gets something from the runs regardless if they got a purple or not. (Rep, Rep rewards, badges)

The lewtz are done quite well.  It seems like everyone, no matter what class, wants to come along because there is plenty to be had by all.  Getting geared in Karazhan means you have a foothold on even more content in the game.  You can start feeling confident in Mag's, Gruul's, PvP (until you get some PvP rewards,) etc.

Lastly, it isn't easy.  Sure, if you have 10 veterans with full gear it is a joke.  The first run we do for each week is called our "Badge Run."  We chain pull and blow through the place in just over 3 hours.  DE items at the end and grab your badges along the way.  However, once you have an inexperienced person or a few that are not quite geared right, the boss fights become a challenge and you can't seem to chain pull anymore so it takes longer.  Even with our "Badge Runs," we respect Karazhan because she can smack your ass if you start to get too cocky.

Way to much trash in Kara.

I'd be fine with fewer, but they are easy pulls.  We always have a tank and offtank in the group.  Each tank grabs a group and leapfrog.  DPS and Healing can keep up with it and we whip through it all very quickly.  We can hit Moroes in probably 20 minutes.  We are probably at opera in about 30 more minutes.  Nightbane is summoned 10 minutes later.  Then we go take on Curator in about 30 more minutes.  Aran is 20-25 minutes after that.  Go back and do Illhoof in 2 minutes.  Netherspite is 15 minutes away.  Chess another 10 minutes.  Prince another 20 minutes.  Then go back and clean up Attumen and Maiden.  Each of those is probably 20 minutes.

3.5 hours, 11 bosses, 22 badges each, tons of purple lewtz.  Of course, you just can't screw up anything!

I think it's more that as a healer, trash healing is incredibly boring.  To make it more interesting, I drink whiskey on the rocks during kara raids and type random drunk comments in /raid, but even that gets old

 What.. are you tired at this point or are you including time to kill bosses?  Getting to NS after Illhoof in 15 mins makes sense.  There's all those fucking 5-ghost pulls in the way and then the room of ethereal thieves.  But after that Chess is only 2 ethereal caster kills away from NS and Prince after that is just 4 of those duo blood beast pulls.


This is what killed healing for me back in MC/ BWL days.  The ONLY good solution was pulling way too much shit, but then either the tanks couldn't keep aggro on it all or the DPS wasn't focused and pulled aggro on mobs that tanks were only supposed to be aggroing enough to keep off of healers.

I quit doing Kara because everyone in my regular group wanted me to tank it because I have no alts, and they would bring in their worthless DPS alts into the raid. I geared up with one set of toons already, but I wasn't really ready to gear up a second set. Also, I don't understand the obsession to gear an alt in raiding gear. You already saw the content once. Now you are just kicking yourself in the nuts again for gear that will be useless in 6 months or less.

The purple, man, they call!

I geared up my Pally alt because my guild needed a heroic tank (since the tanks were raid geared and didn't want to blow time in heroics) and a pally tank because we didn't have one for SSC at the time.   

Other folks do it because they figure it'll give them some kind of edge. Edge at what I'm not sure of.  Farming dailies?  Getting spots in heroics on their alts?  Leveling up to 80 come the x-pac?

I suspect most do it because they're bored and have hit a wall where they can't progress any farther with their 'main' toon.  They want to do SOMETHING, but since there's no raid that day working to gear-out the main isn't going to happen.  Sooo, let's gear out the alt!

Being in a casual guild with delusions of grandeur, Kara is never a slam dunk unless you're in one of the overly geared, off the books runs.  The exceptionally l33t don't even run it with the guild. 

Having no real stable schedule, the runs I'm on are inundated with the undergeared tanks (stam stack, you stupid fucks), dps, and healers.  Some runs I outheal both healers combined.  Some you can't even expect to keep an offtank up on a trash pull.  There's always lots of real amateur hour shit, like tanks failing to get second on the aggro list where it's important, people going AFK without telling anyone, ninja pulling bosses (my favorite is when locks do this placing imps), pulling aggro on trash, healers landing big heals before a tank hits a mob, etc etc etc.  It's absolutely amazing how many people haven't mastered the "do not stand in the fire" boss mechanic.  The overal lack of concetration and attention to what's happening situationally is maddening.

Due to a string of unlucky runs, there's  still quite a bit of upgrades I can get from there.  My last few runs the amount of offpsec to healing gear is probably 3 -1, which doesn't help (my future WOLK leveling set is happy). 

I don't know why I really bother though.  Only reason I suppose is that they have me fill in a lot for SSC when healers start bailing later in the evening. I can heal heroics fine and most ZA groups want some sort of commitment written in your own blood. My main motivation nowadays is helping two RL friends that just bought TBC and need the occasional healer for group quests.

So.. tl;dr: Yah, Kara is always a bit long for me.

Even more off topic: Anyone notice a general decline in the amount of people running instances at all?

Yes.  I'm starting to get multiple tells a night with people literally begging me to run Kara and various heroics.  Must be a shortage of healers.

Yes, my run down included bosses.  Yes, those are complete swags with no guarantee at accuracy.  Overall it does take us a bit over 3 hours when we are really clicking and our A-group is doing it.

Yes, healing does become boring on the trash, but when you have two tanks chain pulling it isn't so much.  We always have two tanks and two healers.  2 of the DPS need to have decent CC.  The rest can just bomb away.  With this combo we have no problems.  Somebody dies during the chain pulls?  No big deal, just res during a lull and keep going. 

Yes, I have 3 alts that are now fully Karazhan and partially Mags/Gruul geared.  Two are healers.  One is a lock.  I run alts through more from basic boredom, but I also enjoy having a variety of characters to offer to the guild during runs.  We are running Karazhan 3 times a week now.  That means lots and lots of alts because we don't have enough people to field a 25-man run ourselves.  Not even close.  We probably have 15 regulars that each have 2 or more alts.  Sprinkle in maybe 5 more that have single characters that can go to Kara.

Yes, nobody is doing normal instances, not even heroics.  It has been driving me nuts lately. 

Nobody was doing normal instances at least as far back as 3 months ago.   It was Heroic or nothing.   I imagine the drop off of Heroics has to do with "hey I've got all the badge gear I need." Folks should have gotten their upgrades by now, andt here's not going to be any new gear coming out prior to the x-pac. No reason to stockpile badges when we're not 100% certain there will be BoJ gear in the x-pac,  (They might be called something else? Maybe? Just speculation here.) and if there IS BoJ you'll have plenty of warning to stockpile again.

It's just pre-expansion blues, or whatever you want to call it. Everyone has done all this crap 500 times over already, want new shiny now, please and thank you.

Kara has too much trash, especialy in certain places. The fact it can be done quickly doesn't change this. I did runs in April last year where it only took 1.5-2hours for the whole thing (no beast or netherspite) but for all that does for message board posturing it doesn't change the fact that there was(is?) too much trash. I havn't been in there for over a year so it may have changed, but the curator-aran trash was too significant especially on the low timer it was on originally. Going from Opera to curator was also a bit annoying if you didn't skip out and go in the back way (any people didn't like to because they wanted to ninja loot--read: drop raid and loot--the fucking benefactors).

You don't judge trash once you've mastered the instance and are over-geared, you judge it from learning attempts when at the entery gear level. Kara was by no means the clusterfucks of original SSC and TK, but the trash was still tuned too high in parts.

Asking why would you gear an alt up is kinda like asking why would you level an alt up isn't it? People enjoy it. Going back and running Kara again with 9 friends on poorly geared alts would probably be a lot more fun for me than many others things I could do in WoW for me.

As for running instances. Well, more people are doing them now than they were before TBC dropped. All I can think of running bck then was a couple of 45min Baron runs for the sake of it and farming orbs in Strath live. My server atm has quite a few heroics going on however. I'm leveling my Pally and I'm often in LFG and people are always looking for people for heroics and ZA. Maybe not as many as before, but still a few.

And I'm able to get an instance run of whatever dungeon I'm at on my pally most times I make the attempt too. Have to wait around 30mins questing while you get that last person at times, but they're still there.

IIRC april last year was before they removed a lot of the trash.  There's  still a decent amount but it's about 1/2 what it was when Kara was new.  Yes, there was WAYYY too much trash then.

I still think there's too many pulls between Curator and Aran, but at least it's gone from "OMGWTFMAN" to "fuck this is irritating"

Ran Kara last night and was able to use my Lock.  I had fun again, but really only because I was testing out my POWAH!  I died several times because I kept testing that agro line just a tad too closely.

I'll agree with "too much trash between Curator and Aran."  I guess they wanted to have that big area with all the quest NPCs, but they didn't have to fill it with trash too.

I remembered a huge pet peeve too.  Those worms that are immune to magic.  If that isn't an obvious road bump to slow you down, I don't know what is.  They do very little damage, but it takes FOREVER to kill them because we are typically heavy on magic DPS for obvious reasons.  I got some much needed skill points on my sword though...

I guess they could take out more trash, but it begs the question:  How much is too much and how little is too little?  Do we measure this in time or is it the quantity?

Curator to Aran is my guilds natural stopping point. We'll do everything up to Curator/Nightbane, then call it a night, and finish it off the next day from Aran to Everything else.


It's just not worth it for us to try and squeeze Kara into one sitting. 2 hours at a time is about as much as we'll stand for.