f13.net

So I got invited to this casual no-kiddies-allowed "hey let's do some ten-man raids when we're all 80, that would be cool" guild a few days ago. The other night they decided to hit ZA with a group of average level maybe 74 or 75 wearing whatever they were leveling in Northrend with.

All I can say is that those levels and Northrend gear must count for a lot, because we actually managed to kill 3 bosses with hardly anyone having mods installed, practically no potions or anything, and the leader reading strategies out of a wiki into Ventrilo since no one had done it before.

I just did my usual DPS thing while not standing on bombs, won a roll on a disenchant, and got a purple thingy that sold for 6g on the AH. It's a really fun group of people, so I suppose at some point I'll be trying an actual raid with them.

So anyway, what's the best kind of sock for pooping in?

All the old TBC instances were super nerfed a month before WotLK, so it's even easier then it would have been thanks to all the level increases and new abilities and gear.

But most importantly: Congrats, you are already ahead of the fucking curve  :awesome_for_real:

You want something thick (like a work sock you'd wear on a cement factory floor) and preferably black.  That way, both the smell and the color are obscured for as long as possible.  Goldtoes could work here.

I prefer an empty coffee can.

But you have to get up and go get that coffee can.  If you start out your MMO experience wearing socks, you can just take them off and fill them with feces as needed.  It will save valuable seconds. 

Obviously, its smarter still to just start with an adult diaper, but I don't think that's caught on yet.     

Or portable chemical toilets. Really, it's that level of preperation that seperates the uber achievers from the common scum.

Yes. You fail at that. Chemical toilets need to be emptied. I moved a desk into the bathroom and ran a power cable through so I could just sit on the crapper and play.  Thinking about getting a USB controlled flushing device though so I don't have to turn around to flush.

What a charming conversation.  I bet you guys are real hits with the ladies.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fr-FkWsvEcg

So depressingly true.

Hay guys, did the ground you're on change color? You might want to FUCKING MOVE.

But I have to finish this spel......

Just do what I do, grab the laptop, a twelve-pack and camp out in the shitter.

No I don't do that. But I've threatened to do that.

I had forgot that video existed. Thank you.  :awesome_for_real:

I don't need to poopsock.  I'd actually just get up and go to the washroom, go to the fridge for a beer.  Trick is, I played a Hunter.  Just leave auto attack on.  Also, I establish that I'm a shitty player right from the get go and people don't notice as much when I'm gone.

ZA is a fun instance if you ignore the Dragonhawk trash. It's also a very short run compared to Karazhan, which is ridiculously huge.

Hawk trash is extremely annoying, especially when you get people disconnecting and shit keeps respawning around you.

Raiding is made a lot easier by installing something like Deadly Boss Mods.

Standing in fire is bad.  Except for that one guy in Kara where standing in fire is good.

For info on how to spec, gem, and gear, you can't beat Elitist Jerks.  Well, you probably can, but it's a nicely centralized repository for all classes.

Use consumables on progression fights.  They are optional otherwise, but often still used to speed through content.

ZA was a fun instance.  Malacrass was probably the hardest fight in there.  In many ways, Zul'Jin was a reward for getting past him.  Except for Eagle Phase.  I used to hate Eagle Phase.  (Paladin healer, yeeeargh.)  Although, after 3.0, Malacrass was one of the easiest fights in there.  Just gathered up him and all his adds with the paladin tank, and AE'd everything.  It made me wonder if we couldn't have been doing that all along...

Oh god. If anyone ever forgets how full of fail SOE is, there's that video to remind them in one easy step.

That and this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-CHG_To7Ag).

those chicks are at least 5 beer ugly

Lightweight.  :grin:

I always hated Jan'alai personally, and he was probably the hardest post 3.0 as it was very easy for DPS to overshoot and wipe the raid with adds.

You can totally duo him post 3.0 when the rest of the raid sucks and dies.  :awesome_for_real:

I've seen a pug clear to Illidian after 3.0 but before the Wrath launch.

Their first pull a rogue got one-shotted because he was eating while sitting between the tank and Illidan as they pulled.  :awesome_for_real:

Our guild is just now working on 10 man Naxx.  Is it just me or does it seem a bit heavy on the trash?  I've been on 2 runs this week and was not really having much fun either time.  The spider section was pretty simple and wasn't too bad (still pretty trashy,) but the rest was just aweful.

In comparison, the heroics and normal lvl 80 instances I've been doing seem way more rewarding AND fun.

The trash is actually extremely light. You should have seen the place in the 40 man version, it was ridiculous.

All in all, I'd say Naxx 10 man has less trash-to-boss ratio then Karazhan.

Man, it didn't feel that way.  I'm going to have to do some research.  We must be doing something really wrong. 

On average it's 3-5 trash packs give or take the boss. Patchwerk has the most with gluth having zero trash after grobbulus. At first I thought the achievment in ten man for killing maexxna 20min after anub rekhan was crazy but i actually managed to do it this weekend and it wasn't nearly as hard as I thought.

Is it just me, or does Anub'Rekhan seem overtuned? I tried tanking him with the little running away from locust swarm tactic and he was still too fast for me to get away even with an intervene on someone. Finally we just put the druid on him so he could sprint when he started casting. Compared to the ease of the two bosses after him, it just seemed off.

Suggestions:

-Find out which trash packs are skippable.  This is a matter of trial and error.

-Clear entire wings.  They frontload the trash.

-Chainpulling.  If you're just tanking it in the middle and AOEing it down, you really need one tank most of the time.  The second tank should be pulling the next pack while the first one is being blown up.  If the trash is tanked close or your tank is really bored, you can chain pull with one tank.

-moar dps.  We decided to take a bunch of scrubby guildies through the plague wing today.  Trash took a lot longer because they were just as bad now as they were at 70.  The shadow priest, death knight, and fire mage were all below me (the tank) and the ele shaman on the trash meters.

-Get people to stop failing at frogger and the pipe boss.  I believe I am the only person in my guild that hasn't died on frogger.

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Paelos,

You don't avoid the swarms, you just minimize them.  If you just stand there and tank him he'll gib you every time, so you kite to keep the damage healable.

Have an Unholy DK with their runspeed Aura in the raid, or have a Hunter turn on aspect of the go fast after you intercept.  However; The range on both of them is smaller than the room, so they'll need to run in front of you to keep you in the aura, rather than dealing with the guardians. After you've repositioned Anub, they can work on the adds (and the hunter can turn off the aura.)

Learned this the hard way our first time in.. after 11 deaths.  :awesome_for_real:

Can you do 10-man Anub without a hunter or unholy DK? We're starting Naxx-10 day after tomorrow.

I was running 10 man.  If your tank has speed potions and downs one right before the first swarm, that should work.  Maybe.  I don't know if runspeed counts as your "one potion per battle."  Anub seems to run slightly faster than PCs do, which is why he catches even tanks that intercept a strategicly located player.  That swarm dot eats tanks fucking quick (as is intended, of course.)

Personally, I think it's busted, but people are finding workarounds. From what I remember in the 40 man version, his run speed went WAY down when he swarmed. Now, it doesn't even look like he's moving slower than usual. If i'm running at normal speed after an intervene and his buff is still catching me, I think it's a speed bug. Either the range on the swarm needs to be shorter, or he needs to move slower.

We don't bother moving the tank at all.  Healers range the swarm, tank stands and takes it, everyone else bugs out to deal with the adds.  Both on 25 and 10 man.  Of course you should expect your tank to clear 30k health and be uncrittable, but that's a requirement for heroics much less Naxx. 

All that silly running around nonsense just complicated things.



Re: Trash -  Be sure you aren't in the Heroic version with 10 guys.  That makes the trash seem hard. 

How geared are your healers, how many are you using and what comp?

We'll probably be druid-priest for our first run, maybe druid-priest-paladin. I'm debating whether to spec Disc or Holy, what's the AoE damage like for the entry-level bosses?

AE damage early on is fairly minor. Most of the damage comes from random adds and debuffs that can mostly be dispelled. What I wouldn't ever go in there without is a druid or shaman healer. They went completely over the top on the poisons, and they are the only ones who can dispell those.

You do not need a druid or shaman, or paladin healer.  You need a druid, shaman, or paladin to be in the raid.
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Our only disc priest abandoned the spec after one naxx run.

Paladin's can cleanse poison. We did 10 man naxx in one night with a Discipline Priest and Resto Pally healing. If your healers are good they'll be fine, if they arent then you'll struggle.

I'm confident in my ability to heal, I'm confident in my tanks. I'm not confident in my DPS' ability not to suck though.... I guess I'll stick with holy since it's pretty failsafe, although I have to say, disc is more fun.

I guess we'll give it a shot. What's the best order for learning bosses? I was thinking of starting with Raz, then trying Anub and the other Spider bosses, maybe Plague wing, any suggestions?

deathknight wing is NOT hard, gothik is a giant loot bag in 10man(his add spawns are very tame) and the four horsemen is just all about positioning and is not a gear check at all. Abmon is probably the hardest as several of the fights are gear checks with spider being the easiest.

I would go.

1.spider
2.plague
3.deathknight
4.abomination

I need to figure out an order that puts the 'dps has to run in these exact places at the right time' fights last. :P

That would have been simpler by far, to be sure, but we have 0 level 80 priests at the moment.    My current guild is a bunch of of "guys with jobs and families" that were also decent players who decided not to move on to the "you must raid x nights per week" guild everyone else migrated to after our GL took the guild bank and transferred servers.  :awesome_for_real:

   It means we'll level slower on average and see content later, but we've got a good group of 20-25 people who aren't asshats and we're already 10-manning Nax so we're not THAT far behind.   

PUG Druid-Druid-Paladin did make for a rough few fights, though.

Just have it in your head we're doing these with 8 people instead of 10.

Also, we'll only have one healer.

We just have the tank take a few hits of the swarm and heal through it.

That's 25man, in 10man the tank can just outrun the swarm if he starts as soon as the boss starts casting.

Having a feral druid in the raid doesn't do a ton of good on heavy cleanse fights because it shoots their damage in the foot, and opens them up to major damage. This is especially doubled if you are using them as tanks. I've also yet to find many paladin healers roaming around.

We use two priests, and it seems to work ok so far. I would have loved to have of them be a druid/shaman for better healing balance though.

I'm RIGHT HERE!   :ye_gods:

You act like the people we run with like to run towards bombs for warmth.

That would assume they see the bombs to begin with.  :oh_i_see:

Those were FLAMES, not BOMBS.

Difference.  :heartbreak:

In 10 man we just have the tank stay in and heal through it. It's very minimal damage in 10. That's with 2 healers, too.

Can you mitigate the swarm at all? Or does tank gear (other than raw HP) count for nothing?

Also, how does Sartharion (minus drakes) rank for a freshly-80 guild? I know Malygos is tuned to be on the level of the end of Naxx, but I have no idea for Sarth.

We're going to start with Sarth before we do much in Naxx probably, to get everyone used to raiding again. My understanding is that with drakes down he's quite easy, and it doesn't take long so you can squeeze in a lot of attempts if you're on the SS Failboat.

With no drakes up, he is the easiet raid encounter in WoW next to Archavon the Stone Watcer.  Malygos is like Nightbane; you can't do him yet unless you have a summoner.

I demand that be the name of our all protection spec arena team.

Maly is also by far the hardest raid in wotlk, he's definitely a tier up from Naxx in terms of difficulty.

We have a Paladin and a Druid who are really good at their class.  We had no lvl 80 priests until this week, and they all but one mysteriously spec'd Discipline.   If you are going to be a healing priest, take CoH and make it work (mana is hard).  Discipline is proper fucked right now.  

The stand in one place strat works even without ringer healers (http://wowwebstats.com/nwjspiysvuy6m?s=149-7077) though.  If you can get HoTs out of one healer and 3k HPS out of the other you should do fine.  On 25-man encounters the aforementioned Paladin and Druid will triple up the other healers (like the two above).  I suppose that would trivialize a lot of encounters, and would if we didn't need 5 other healers to get to 4 total.  


I second the easy-mode nature of Archivon and Sarth (minus the adds).  First time in you'll probably find Archivon's trash (a whole 4 of them, one at a time) to be harder.
Spider < Plague < Death Knight < Abomination in order of difficulty.  We do it in reverse order so people haven't lost focus by the time we get to Thaddius or 4Horse.

Both Archivon and Sarth are "easy on the hours" encounters, great for a raid of indeterminate ability (e.g. you can find out if you should bother with Naxx before you go).  Anub and Noth can be easily low-manned if you just don't have enough guys, but they are good guys (our first kills were with 20 guys).