f13.net

NWS: Language, lots of it.

http://78vin.orcon.net.nz/Onyxia_wipe.mp3

Hit it like you mean it!

Where in THE HELL is this dude from? That's got to be one of the most annoying voices I've heard in a LONG time.

Sounds almost like a sterotypical Indian. I picture one of those guys from Bad Boys singing "You must lick it, before you stick it!"

HAHAHAHAHA. Ohh god, I was dying at the end.  His voice + swearing + wiping = gold. A raid leader shouldn't need to talk that much.

The guild I'm in had something similar happen during the time I was away.  One of the officers, he was either the raid or warrior officer, just went batshit insane in Vent after a messed up core hound pack kill (he's not around anymore).  Kinda sad that I missed it.

Oh god this is priceless...id get my ass booted from that guild so fast from laughing non stop.

I really want to know what this idiot was talking about when he says "you run to da center" "you run to da center".  Im assuming this during phaze 2, since he also says not to stand next to each other, but anyone who has ever done any reasearch on the Ony encounter should know that having people in the center causes deap breaths.

That, added to the fact that this moron doesent think there is an aggro wipe (there is, she wipes aggro when she does her phaze three landing shout) and the fact that this dude (seems to be the main tank) has somekind of gayass pseudo-techno music playing in the background of ONLY his mic, leads me to believe that they are probably the last guild I would want to run Ony with.

Then again, we get some pretty funny shit happen during our ony runs (we are sufficiently uber at this stage that we can run ony with 30-35 people, have someone fuck up pretty bad, and still recover and down the bitch on the first try).  I should probably record one of them some day, might make for some good laughs.

MANY WHELPS!  NOW HANDLE IT!

Priceless.

Off Topic:

There has been a lot of different theories about Deep Breath, this was the common though about 6 months ago, but has since been disproven. The current thought on Deep Breath is that it has to do with periodic hate wipes while she is flying, and having a certen number of people on her hate list with in a certen time after the hate wipe.

To answer the initial question posed :  Me.


I went on my first MC raid last night with a tight group who were there for fun and entertainment and epics.  We got two bosses down no trouble at all and didn't wipe once.

It wasn't fun.  It really, really, really wasn't fun.

Is it just me ?  Is it the fact I was playing my Rogue ?  I can't fault the group or the raid leader.  The only bit of 'drama' was someone who got locked out of the Master Looter list and couldn't get her epixx (and whined and whined and whined) but that was it.

It's just me, isn't it ?

It's not you, it's the zone.

Trash mobs suck, period.  They are the cock block prior to the content. MC's trash mobs are slow to die and numerous, so you have a lot of suck before you get to the fun, the boss fight.  I put my priest on auto-follow for some trash mobs last Friday in MC, and nobody noticed one of the healers was AFK. You just don't make much of a difference individually for most of the zone, so it's boring as fuck. 

ZG is a much more fun zone, becuase in addition to being a smaller group of people, the trash mobs aren't nearly as annoying.  Also, the pulls are mixed groups of mobs that need different tactics and more frantic so it's not a simply; pull one mob, kill using correct strategy, drink, repeat.

Edit:   Oh, and lest anyone say, "Well yeah, any experienced MC group can have a few people go afk..."  We're not experienced. Last friday was our first time in MC in any sort of a serious fashion, and in 4 hours we downed the first 4 bosses.  We had an experienced leader, but that was the only real advantage. 

I finally was able to hit BRD with a 5 man last Saturday and I can now understand why nobody wants to go there.  Boring.  Damn, that place is too big, too many trash mobs, etc.  We got a lot done, but I still have to keep going back there to get my Ony pre-quests done and other non-related quests.

You can tell  they put some of their apprentices on some of the instance designs in this game.  Hell it is really simple, in my mind.

Good instances:
1.  Make it so you can hit important areas and either save the instance to come back for others OR just make them small sections like SM or DM.
2.  If you do put trash mobs in, then make them challenging for the whole group and put in loot tables that make it worthwhile at least from a tradeskill perspective (gems, metals, cloth-felcloth please, hides, trash greens/blues for DE, etc.)
3.  Only my opinion, but make 15 man or less instances.  From my experience, past 15 just gets to be painful and not fun overall.  Yes, that last battle or 2 may feel epic and rewarding, but just not worth the price of admission.  If you have to have 20 and 40 man instances, make them about that huge end boss like the Onyxia one.  Don't put a ton of resources into some huge dungeon that takes 5 hours to complete.

I have an idea to mix small group raids with larger.  Have instances that follow "My Rules" above.  When a group completes one, they get a choice to lock in to a queue for a multi-group/raid ending.  When 3-5 groups queue up together the ending raid starts.  It would consist of 3-5 individual groups that would coordinate against a big foe/s.  Loot would be split evenly amongst the groups.  Each group would manage distribution.

Yes, I think about this stuff way too much.

Part of it is that the zone is boring. They are right the trash mobs are tedious and really just a speed bump to your progress, basically turning a 2 hour run of bosses into a 6 hour snoozer. The worst are the lava surgers/annihiliators, only because they are banishable, annoying, toss people around and don't really do anything but serve to piss you off. I've never seen a lava dude wipe a group ever, they just don't hit hard enough.

The other part is you are playing a boring role as a rogue. You don't do anything really on raids except run in when the dps call comes. Hell, on some bosses you don't even do that. I have fun on raids because I'm the MT, but if I was random warrior in the back, I'd be bored to tears. It's all about the role you play in there, and the problem with MC is the rolls aren't nearly as involved as those in BWL, nor is there the sense of urgency. You are basically playing beat the clock in MC.

EDIT: you eat rolls, you play roles. This is why writers need editors.

BRD is one of the worst instances in the game in terms of time waste. Just tons and tons of trash mobs and bosses that are far apart and don't drop a whole lot of stuff worth having (now, not to say BRD's loot sucks...it's just that the good stuff doesn't drop hardly ever. Second Wind and Hand of Justice anyone?).

I'm sort of agreeing with Paelos.  I'm not the MT but I do OT a fair amount of the time, so I have a ROLE to play.  If I were a DPS bot , ahem rogue, I might not like it as much.  Rogues do have to manage their aggro using feint, vanish etc but I haven't played one to end game so I can't say.

I think though that strictly saying "it's not interesting, it sucks, the end" is not generally true.  If you don't have fun, please don't go, but to date I have always enjoyed it.

Which is fine if it wasn't for the fact that MC is REQUIRED for other End Raiding.

Gah, how did this thread turn serious?

You guys are no fun.  :-(

WE SHOULD HIT IT LIKE WE MEAN IT!

Fair point, though I can't imagine that if you hate MC you would love BWL or AQ40.

I cant stand MC. Its a snore fest. But I love BWL and AQ. So there.

BWL just has much more strategy and interesting fights.

Hate it or love it, MC does seperate the raiders from the wannabes. If you don't have a good core of guys who at least like raiding and can work together on the simple stuff, BWL would eat you alive. It's a good basic raiding tutorial for the other fun instances, but unfortunately it is also a much larger gear stepping stone that you must grind through long after the challenge has faded. The bosses are cookie cutter versions of each other, and the gear dictates how you will do far over your tactics or ability.

There's a reason they call Vael, "The Guild Breaker". 

MC is terrible.  MC is the reason I got burnt out when I quit six months into the game.  As bad as it can be now, it was worse when people were hitting MC with AT BEST tier 0 and not a whole lot of refined strategy to mull over.  Nothing like 6 hours in MC when you're continually wiping to Lucifron. The boss fights are fun until you've got them on farm status and then it's just pretty much mechanics.  Only Rags really is interesting every time you try it.  And yah, like others have pointed out, the trash mobs are fucking terrible and there's just too much of it.  Designed better, the zone should be doable in around 2 to 2.5 hours instead of the 3.5 it takes now.

BWL is pretty interesting.  There's a few fights that are pretty much a snore (all of the drakes) and STILL more uninteresting, pointless trash, but the Razorgore encounter, the Vael fight, the gauntlet run, the Nef right, etc are all worth the price of admission.  Hell, the Nef fight is a blast even when you've had the fucker on farm status for months. 

AQ40 is great.  I just did the Satura fight for the first time last night.  That thing really keeps you on your toes. There really isn't too much aggravating trash yet, except for the crap leading up to twin emps.  Trash that's more difficult on an individual level than any boss in MC and most anything in BWL is really fucking ridiculous.   

Dots. More DOTS. MORE DOTS. COMMON MORE DOTS.

I'll probably crack up before I see AQ40, or the expansion will hit. I hate bugs.

You can't ever have enough dots.. most of our priest/healer claseses don't put any dots, even though SW:P is a great one to throw on... I guess it's a targeting issue or something. I dunno. I'm just a completely replaceable DPS machine (aka rogue).. the only thing I'm needed for is to stun satura (wow they gave us something to do, finally!) and to eat the charms on sekram.

Oh boy, hard as shit trash mobs, I can't wait. We're currently cockblocked on Princess Hahrurahrarhrahrahan due to low NR... It's going to be fun trying to get past her...

I fucking HATE molten bore. there's NO Reason for most of us to run it except to get to ragnaros... and even though we're downing it shy of 4 hours, it's still an incredible waste of time. As for Vael, frankly, the onus rests (as it seems to always rest) on the tank/warriors for a smooth tank transition in terms of actual playing.. high FR gear takes care of the rest. It's just a giant FR cockblock, and once you get the appropriate FR it's not overly difficult... I tend to give more props to bosses that require flexibility and whose strategies require quick thinking and delicate timing from a number of classes. So far I really like satura and fankris... and, strangely enough, sekram - the randomness keeps people on their toes and you really have to pay attention to assists.

I would disagree.  We used to get deap breaths frequently on our ony raids, then we changed strat a bit, and smooth sailing.

Basicly, when she takes to the air, we try to keep 95% of the raid on either her left, or right side.  Takes a bit of paying attention when she is over the welp pit entrances, but otherwise, easily doable.  Alot has to do with her movement patterns while airborne. She always sits at a position in the zone relative to the 8 primary directions (North, NW, W, SW, etc.) and moves from one to the other in order (when she deap breaths, she immediatly crosses over to the opposite side she was on).  When she moves, we shift with her.  The only time we EVER get a deep breath is if there are too many people standing infront of her.   And by infront, i mean, relative to the oppsoite compass point that she is on, NOT the direction she may be faceing, since she turns to face people when she picks them to fireball. 

Deep breath is a frontal cone aoe, from what we have managed to dig up.  So if she is in, say, the North position and DB's it only hits people in a cone from north to south, if you are off to her side, directly under her, or a little bit behind her, it misses you completely.  We have been doing ony with this strat for going on 6+ months now, and i could probably count on 1 hand the times we have been deep breathed in that period.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

As to Raid instances, MC iis probably hell for guilds just starting on the raid scene.  Will totally agree that the trash is irritating, and overly boring to kill.  There is NO raid involvement in them,  You jsut stick a tank on it, heal the tank, and DPS.   The packs are about the most entertaining mobs in the place, and likely only because there are 4 mobs a time to manage, instead of the standard 1 or 2.

BWL is MUCH more fun.  2 boss encounters pretty much right off the start, large and involving trash pulls, that are not boring, and keep your raid on its toes.

AQ40 i have only been in once so far, up to Huhu on a guild clear.  Trash is interesting, with different challenges (Anubisath guys have got to be the most entertaining trash mobs i have ever seen).  Boss fights are a blast.

For the people wondering about the trash leading to Twin Emps (argueably some of the NASTIEST pieces of work in the game to date), go have a look at AQ20.  Imagine the Anubisath mobs from Ossirian's room, but scaled to 40 man raid proportions.  Not uncommon to lose 1/4 to 1/2 of your raid to one, even if you are paying attention.  Of course, if you know the tricks, they are easy.

My problem with Molten Core is not the encounters. It's the look. I mean, you get to 60 and learn to raid and the first target is a generic lava cave? It's the most boring-looking zone in the game. As an EverQuest veteran, I finally bothered to level up a WoW character and raid, and after I saw MC and Onyxia, that was enough. I quit for five months because they just weren't interesting (eventually came back because I can't stay away from the WoW phenomenon, I want to experience what all these millions are doing).

I can buy that.  If you feel that way, try ZG - interesting boss encounters, trash lowered as of last patch, and the look is less generic than lava caves.  Hell, you can even ride your mount inside, which is strange for an instance in my experience.

I love ZG. It's far and away my favorite instance because you need less people than a 40 man, the loot is great in places, and you can relax a little while doing it. It just seems my alliance jokes around and has a better time in there than in MC.

I like ZG, but I just cant really do it anymore, especially now that there is AQ20.  ZG has a shit ton of trash all along the way, while AQ20 is very limited on that, AND it doesn't respawn.  Loot is just as good as well.

They took maybe 1/3 of the trash mobs out of ZG, and increased the drop rate on items.  The amount of shit you kill is really really reduced.

Yeah, you literally fly to the bosses in ZG these days.

It's a thing of beauty really when you couple it with the rep bump on trash now. We go out of our way to pull gators and fish in the rivers now because they are so fast and rep lucrative.

ZG is a joy to do now, last night we did the whole thing including hexxer in 2.5 hours and got a cool 2600 rep + shit tons of bijous and coins.

Is ZG at PUG state yet in terms of strats?

You could easily kill every trash mob in zg (with the possible exception of the zerkers and the large packs in hexxars room) with a group of 10 people.  Couple mages and a druid for croud controll, a tank and a healer, and then top it off with whatever else tickles your fancy for dps and you are golden.

Hell, when extreemely bored, people in my guild do 3 man fish runs.  Take a healer and some dps in jump in the water.  Kill fish non stop as you circle around Hakkars platform in the water (watch out for crocs).  Each fish gives you 4 rep, and you litterally will never kill them fast enough. Could easily make 1k+ rep an hour killing fish

Some of the bosses could be, provided you found that one in a million PUG that actually has their act together and knows their ass from their elbows as well as understanding the strats for the boss.  Snake, Bat and Raptor are among the easiest (IMO).  The chances of you finding that in a random group, however, are so small it's laughable. 

In terms of a PUG I think me and 4-6 of my guildmates max, with the rest filled in by the odd small cluster of people from other guilds. I've had great success with 15-20 man groups made up of smaller groups of like 3-5 people from the same guild, with maybe the odd straggler.

wow, i must have been wonked out when i read that, I thought you said 'in terms of trash" not "strats".   No onder my post didnt make sense when i read it again just now.

Oddly enough I had a paragraph along these lines but I deleted it.  I've heard of them being downed in PUGs of this nature, but haven't witnessed it personally.  So long as you all have your wits about you and are willing to eat a few deaths while learning the strats, there's no reason this kind of a group wouldn't work.  You just have to be sure it's cool with everyone's Guilds first.   My guild prohibit folks from doing it, because once you down a boss you're then locked-in with that group of people and can't help the guild out if we need you.

 

Getting back to the OP heres another hit from our favorite raid leader:

http://ragnarosisserious.ytmnd.com/

Jesus.  That bloke is totally insane.

Yet to get there, 40+ people must have followed him, or the people who allowed him to lead raids, for months.

I think this is a statement of how much it sucks to get locked into one server. I'd guess that there's one guild in that faction on that server that has enough people to make MC runs, so if you want to do MC, you're stuck with Guild Leader Jackass.

Proof that evil exists only by the consent of the good. No-one wants to leave the guild, and so Jackass remains raid leader.

razorgorekiting.ytmnd.com

Appearently, this dude is actually from a guild called "Wipe Club" on the server Chromaggus.  Both this, The Ony Clip, and the Rag clip look to be completely staged.  I love the way the dude breaks down laughing half way through the Razorgore clip.

What? Next you'll be saying that the Pals 4 Life attempt on the Rookery (vid clip) was staged. That's why it's so hard to find a good guild, no-one takes these kinds of problems seriously.

You FUCK UP MY KITING!

Endless hours of fun with the ony wipe soundboard!

NWS
http://teamwarfare.org/triston/ony_wipe/?d=1

I'm going to have to use this next ony battle on TS, it should be hours of fun

Guilds aren't about DPS, they are about relationships. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FuIrqS1838)

Yes, it's an actual vent conversation [from one of my server's uberguilds] between an officer and a rogue, ending in the rogue getting the /gkick.
Apparently it's an episode in the as-of-yet-unreleased movie "The Guild"... I can't wait. :P


-- Z.

Good for the guild master. 4 epics and crappy dps. He's a rogue and not doing his job. /gkick. And he's a lot nicer than I would have been. He's giving the guy a reapply option.

Edit: we get these people all the time, he was in the application process and didn't measure up. There are two parts to a membership, technique and socal; if you fail either one you don't make the cut.

What's funny is, 90% of the apps that can't make it are mostly purely for social/relationship issues unrelated to player skill.  You do run into the occasional player that just can't hack it for whatever reason.  You get the person that wants to PVP when a raids on.  You get the guy that won't leave his DM East pickup group when a raid's called.  You get the applicant that feels the need to give raid scheduling and strat advice.  You get the annoying motherfucker that won't shut up about loot even though they got 4 set pieces on their first run.  Or you get the person that quits and you lose two people because their significant other plays also.

A rogue that can't put up decent DPS should be cut.  They add nothing else beyond a rare occurence where stunning  and trap disarming is needed. Anyone can do that.  I wonder what they were measuring the guy up against? We have a warrior, some mages, and a lot of our hunters that continually beat our rogues on the DPS meters.  Was he like losing to the main tank or a druid in cat form? Playing my rogue in some raiding situations, a good rogue can make up for somewhat crappy gear through a more agressive DPS build and playing their class a little closer to the edge.  What's aggravating is the rogue that likes to bitch about their DPS due to bad gear when there's suitable builds available for their guild that would suffice until they get better geared.

I wish we could give any DPS applicants a final test.  Either you out DPS my rogue alt (in a mix of blues/greens) on Golemagg  or you get the boot.

Yep; It gets difficult to decide where to draw the line, though. Even when you CAN point and say "His DPS/healing is average/good/awesome" there is generally a large variation in day-to-day efficacy even amongst your core raiding group. It's based on a number of factors such as time of day, morale, zone, and general distractions. The fact is there's no tried-and-true way to tell, especially during a trial period.

If it's 1am and the raid in general is getting tired or inattentive there's a large drop in skill. Frustration in not being able to beat a boss often exacerbates problems. Having a zone (like MC) on farm status means only half the people pay attention, healers start to slack off, and all it takes is one careless pull to doom the raid (We can take a dog and two giants, but two dogs and two giants? I think we MAY have lived through that, once, barely.) I can't count the number of people who watch TV in the background, or listen to audiobooks, or have other random distractions like a GF naked blowing in their ear. This SEVERELY decreases general effectiveness of the raid. I'm no saint; and I fully admit to watching episodes myself of shows on my second monitor in boring zones like MC. It doesn't affect me as much as others, being a rogue, and it's easy to tell if I'm distracted (standing there once a mob is dead and not moving to next one is a big flashing "I'm not paying attention" sign) but for ranged DPS and healers it's much harder to notice and is just as important. There's a term for it - situational awareness. You develop it partially by pvping, and some people are better at it than others. It's one of the reasons I wish certain people in my guild had interest in pvp.

These people can wipe the raid on shit you have farm status on. Everything from blowing up the raid or getting it deep breathed, there are any number of mistakes that have been built into the higher end raiding game where one person not paying attention spells doom for all. It's simply a problem for a guild as a whole to overcome, and there's no real way to judge this, one of the most important aspects of skill, during applicant periods.


In a trial period, people are going to be at their absolute very best - so if they aren't up to par then you should cut them immediately. Some might say "They don't know the zone, you should take it easy on them" and I think that's a cop-out. They should start out fumbling and asking a lot of questions but by the end they'd better show marked improvement. We ALL learn just like that, every time a zone comes out, so if they can't learn and need strategies spoon fed to them, or panic and run if they get aggro instead of standing still so the tank can drag them off then we don't need them. There are a thousand level 60s out there so we can afford to be picky. Our roster stands at ~60. Don't have gear? that's ok, we expect to you be out of mana half way through the fight or have half the DPS of our tier 2 geared rogues. You'll catch up fast as you rot block all of the nightslayer. If, however, I see you have full mana at the end of the fight, or I don't see that energy meter bouncing up and down constantly, or I see frostbolts firing at a different target than the MA has, then we have a problem.

We actually caught one of our recent applicants because of a variation in skill - we thought it unusual, and, upon investigation, it was discovered that the applicant had actually gone back to China because his/her visa was up and had given the account (back to) to a friend without telling us. Because his/her english wasn't overly good and they were fairly quiet, we didn't notice the change in personality. We did notice the change in play skill which dropped severely. Needless to say, APPLICATION TERMINATED. If they had been up-front about it, maybe, but the person who took over has a lot less skill then our initial applicant (who was on track for getting in).

Here's a question: What role do new warriors have when you already have a pretty much maxed out tank and two more experienced offtanks? I'm slowly edging my way up to the larger content (10-20 man) and I usually end up the main assist on everything since I'm not familiar with most of the strats. I am deathly afraid of wiping raids and groups so when I used to get main tank in the 10-man candy runs through strat/scholo I always asked a hunter friend of mine to do the pulls since he has this magic touch for it. I step up and easily peel the group when they come in, but people think I'm fucking crazy for some reason.

That's the standard way to do it; hunter puller and tank peels it off them. You're crazy NOT to do it that way - what happens if he accidentially brings too many? He can FD, you can't. Mistakes WILL happen and having a hunter as puller minimizes that risk.

As for new warriors, well, the answer is if they are good at controlling aggro, DPS. They're also very useful in many boss fights. Consider this. Sulfuron and Domo require 5 tankers, vael requires ~5-6. A MT and two offtanks often isn't enough; you can sub druids in if they have the armor, otherwise warriors are it. Sword and board even with a DPS build can do just fine as an offtank for adds.

Edit: you said 10man; I barely remember scholo/strath and it's simply a black seething pit of hatred my mind shies away from... but they've changed the zones since then; you don't need that many IIRC in those zones. in AQ 20, Rajaxx is easier with multiple tanks to handle the adds but generally 3 is enough for the zone. The simple answer is they can go as DPS but if you're in a 10 man you don't need more than 3.

Offtanks.  We're having new warriors (2 of them) tank trash in BWL and they're doing great.  There's a lot of situations when you're going to need 4-5 tanks picking up stuff.  You need offtanks for everything and every instance and in a lot of situations you can get away with being under geared.  Hell, some of our new initiate members could probably tank Fankriss just fine but would get mauled by the crap you'd need to offtank (so in that situation, we lose nothing by having them maintank). Plus there's fights like Vael where you have to transition between tanks.  For some reason we were sucking balls on Vael during last night's BWL clear and it was mainly due to tank fuckups (how does a goddamn tank manage to die in 2 seconds or actually get punted on the start of it). 

A good raiding guild should be able to field 5 tanks on any night.  And don't worry about pulling, our guild has hunters pull.  You just got to be able to pull the crap off the hunter when he brings it to you, and it sounds like you're already good at that.

They can also fill into a semi-decent DPS role since a lot of warrior DPS gear goes to rot.  With a MC guild you'll be able to get an Obsidian Edge Blade rather easily or if you're in a BWL guild, an Untamed Blade or Drake Talon Cleaver isn't hard to get. 

AQ20/ZG are great for gearing up new warriors.  None of our warriors that have been around for a while really want any of that stuff.

Edit: And yah, like bhodi mentioned, a lot of new warriors in a guild can get away with having DPS builds.  MS tanks are somewhat useful from time to time.

I am in a guild that is at the MC stage.  I respecced arms based on my equipment and the fact that I realized wouldn't catch up to our MT and MA gear-wise anytime soon.  A recent piece I picked up cemented me in that role - I'll post it when I can.

I do a fair amount of offtanking even with this build, and there are places where it's indisensable.  We also have a fairly new fury warrior that gets close to the DPS of our rogues.

Now I need to figure out a good DPS/crit build based on 2h maces.

Rag hammer?

Here's (http://www.ctprofiles.net/75514) the profile of the top DPS warrior in our guild.  He's usually #1 or #2 overall.

Good guess... when it dropped I was as surprised as anyone - 4th drop for alliance on our server ever. But when they gave it to me, I was even more surprised.  Third surprise - they (my guild) got the mats together in 2 days.  I contributed what I had of course but I think a lot of favors were called in on my behalf.

Update: thottbot link : http://www.thottbot.com/?i=40103

Hell why make a movie.  For the quality I've been seeing in reality T.V. they may as well make one around a guild on WoW.  I think it would do well.

Yes, I feel dirty now.

Heh, I was hording some DKP incase a the eye dropped, but then I blew it all on my t2 bp.  I had to throw out some manly DKP bids to scare off a guy that could have outbid me and still have 6 months worth of DKP left.

We'll never see it drop anyhow, our guild has been clearing Molten Core longer than anyone on the server and we've never had the Eye of Sulfuras or bindings for windseeker drop.  Our drop luck is just horrendous.  1 Ashkandi, 1 nef mace , no nef staves and we're at the point where we can drop him at 1am with 10 healers on. But our druids all have their full t2 set.. /wrists

That's just awesome though, have fun topping the DPS chart in BWL where you can melee everything.  Our DPS warrior was basically also given ashkandi since he got it for a min DKP bid. 

As an aside, "given" the hammer?  Do you just run a simple NBG or are there certain rules in place for special drops?

Yeah, the random loot drops in MC are a massive source of hatered for my guild.   Without bragging or anything, we can say we are THE horde guild on our server. 
- First guild to down Neff (somewhere like 2 months before any other guild even got to him horde side)
- Farthest progressed Horde Side in AQ (on twin emps)
- Only Horde guild at the time who had a chance in hell at opening the gates, and first guild on server (horde or alliance) who had the AQ scepter finished).   
- MC /BWL / AQ40 up to Huhuran on farm status
- Raiding regularly since god knows when

Number of Legendary weapons to date: 1 Hand of Ragnaros......

There are scrub guilds on our server who can barely get past Vael in BWL, who have been raiding MC maybe half as long as us, who have so many Rag Rammers they give them to Shaman, and have Thunderfury coming out of their asses, and we have so far scored 1 Big Orange Hammer...

Im glad im a mage, at least they havent bothered to impliment legendary caster weapons yet.  I can imagine what a clusterfuck that will be.

Ordinarily, we use an RCP system (random cap points) where anyone can roll at any time, including first raid with us, but if you have accumulated some points you have a much higher chance to win.

Our guild was totally unprepared for a legendary drop.  We have been running MC since around the end of November, and this is only the second time we've downed Ragnaros.  Since this was such an important drop, the officers led a quick vote to determine who gets it instead of making it a straight roll.  They took into account time in guild, frequency of raiding, personality, etc.  I think they didn't choose a MT or MA because they are needed in that role and they wanted the winner to respec based on it, though we usually don't dictate specs either.

At this point I personally was sort of halfway paying attention since no warrior loot dropped and I figured there was no chance in hell of me getting the eye.  Then the guild leader sends me a tell - "would you be willing to spend your RCP on this?"  When someone asks if you want a legendary item, the answer is almost always "yes".  So I said that, and I got it.  I was probably the most amazed of anyone there.

Sounds a lot like my guild. No horde guild on our server has even killed Nef although two are currently on him. One guild has been on him for MONTHS (shitty guild with a large chinese base, really fucked up DKP system).  Only real difference is that we let the zerg Alliance guilds do the scepter.  We're the only horde guild to kill a green dragon harder than Ysondre (easier than Ony).  Our progress is identical to yours.

Hell, the fourth place horde guild has at least 2 legendary weapons.  They had a Thunderfury when they couldn't even get past Razorgore (gee, I wonder which guild sold them the ore, rang rang).  It did produce one of the funniest lines on the server forums that I've ever seen: "I guess if you hit MC mobs really hard they drop elementium ore." They've got a rag hammer with a 22 int enchant on it.. /cry.  There's an alliance warrior with a Thunderfury and rag hammer.  I don't have enough fingers to count the amount of a paladins I've see with either a rag hammer or ashkandi (or fucking Thunderfury) strapped to their back. 

My personal luck is just as bad.  I've been on more MC runs that I care to remember, yet every time I've seen EF leg, EF bp or EF shoulders I've either be an initiate or app and outbid by a member.  Yet anytime I miss Golemagg or Geddon they drop without fail and get disenchanted.  Having 6/8 TS and only 4/8 EF (need belt too, grr)  is really starting to annoy the shit out of me.  It's the only reason I don't bring my rogue on MC night since they opened it up to alts.  Plus there's always the cherry picking assholes that only log on for certain mobs so they can push the bids up to the point where you'd have to be fucking insane to keep bidding.

Damn that sounds familiar. Our guild has had one eye, one bindings drop so far. Meanwhile guilds way behind us have 2 or 3 thunderfurys and hammers. We have yet to see a crossbow from Chromagus or a Ashkandi from Ony (or whatever sword it is Ony drops for everyone but us).

Question:  Have you all been using the same raid leader for every MC/ Ony/ etc run?   I've seen it denied several times, but my own experience says the loot seed is based off of the raid leader.  I know when I'm the one running U & LBRS/ Strath we get different drops than when the raid leader is our guild leader. (Used because they're quick and we've run them at least 50-60 times by now to equip recruits & train folks.)

For example, we never see Druid or Priest shoulders when he leads, but I see them all the time when my hunter does. We always see Beaststalker boots, when hea leads and never the CSX.  Ditto between my gl setting the MC run group vs the other leader from the guild we're aligned with.   Anyone else had similar experience?

We almost always have the same raid leader, and a wide variety of things have dropped.  It -is- very streaky though.  We joke that this one pally who left the guild was preventing lawbringer from dropping.  We literally had Might drops almost every boss kill when he was around and pally gear was extremely rare (like, often none dropped in an entire MC clear, or at most one).  After he left the guild the exact opposite has been the case.

Part of the problem is that it's too random. Did any of you read that article dealing with probability and finance a few weeks back? It turns out that people don't cook their books with enough randomness, and, when compared with real books, say the ones digit is all out of whack and favors particular numbers much more than others. Given a coin flip a hundred times, when asked to write down a random string of numbers, this mathematical formulae they devised was easily able to pick out the real coin toss from the flip. The reason is simple - mathematically, it's a sure bet that there will be 5 heads in a row, but almost no one wrote that down for fear that it didn't seem random enough. We simply aren't very good at randomness; we create patterns everywhere (sometimes even when there are none.)

With that said, I think it was STUPID to go with a randomness system such as MC, and apparently Blizzard agrees. After the sixth nexusstrike (previously vendorstrike) drop, you really start to want to hunt down the loot table designer, reach down, and pull his testicles out through his mouth. You start to get really tired of those wild growth spalders, too.

I don't think there's any foul play or bad random number generator at work. It's just poor design. Hell, our guild's killed vael over 30 times without a single DFB drop. Our main rogue who's been waiting for it and is at the top of the DKP chart to win it has been getting progressively more and more insane week by week... I'm not sure how much more he can take.

_{Edit: Periods go on the INSIDE of parenthesis.}

We change raid leaders (and go so far as to get them to zone in first all the time) every single week out of fun since none of us truly believe the theory but it doesn't hurt and it's fun to mock people when their "seed" is bad. We get WAY too much lawbringer, cenarion, felheart, and hardly any arcanist at all when doing MC. We almost always get lots of weapons in a run (last 6 weeks been perdi->bonereaver->bonereaver->spinal->none->spinal from rag). For BWL we get lots of trans and netherwind (4 trans belts last 2 weeks, also chrom dropped double trans shoulders last week), and hardly any (read: 1) bloodfang, also no weapons, no non-class trinkets, and way way way too many mantles of the blackwing cabal.

Our stupid, streaky patterns while always changing the raid leader tells me the whole idea is a myth. Fun, but a myth. :P

We have alts in 5/8 Earthfury, and yet we just saw the second pair of Gianstalker's Boots ever drop a few weeks back. Also, the Black Book is the bane of our existance  -drops every single Razorgore kill. If you consider, though, the number of variables that could be used to generate the random numbers for loot drops, the idea that the raid leader's race or class or the combination thereof seems a tad farfetched.

Ok serious question time.

My alliance is now at Ragnaros, haven't killed him yet, but we are looking at moving to BWL in the future, probably in about 1-2 months. Here's the question.

To be successful in BWL, could someone please do a class by class checklist of the minimum requirements needed to start trying runs there? I mean how much FR, tier one, what kind of weapons, etc each class would need to try this out. Also, any items that are necessary or extremely helpful to those classes that they should be gunning for would be helpful (ie - good warrior FR items that they should have, weapons you can't miss, etc). Thanks.

It took everquest a few expansions to learn their lesson, it seems WoW already learned it judging by ZG and now AQ sets.  The "random drop for any class" system of raid loot is incredibly frustrating, you can go months at a time without seeing a particular piece while other guilds are disenchanting it and wishing they had your drops.  I heard tales of people doing the planes for months in EQ and not getting their particular drop.  Thankfully luclin introduced the "generic armor piece" style of raid loot for set armor, the same thing thats being used in ZG and AQ.  Intead of a 1 in 10 chance for your class you get a piece of generic loot usable by several classes that redeemable for your epic lewts. 

I don't think I've ever been in an MC raid where we didn't get at least one piece of Felheart.  Hell, I've been in raids where we've had 3 Felheart belts drop off trash in the same run.  Conversely, I almost never see Arcanist drop, and Prophecy isn't much better.

As for ZG and AQ... meh.  They replaced some of the randomness with faction farming.  You can't farm zg faction outside of the instance, and twilight kill rep is only +1 per kill.  So, you're basically forced to raid the zone 10+ times before you can get the purple quest rewards.  I guess it's better than watching 9 leafs drop before you get an eye of divinity though.

Or they could just implement a system that limits drops based on what your group needs. There's already a rudimentary form of this in place that limits Paladin plate drops to Alliance raids and Shaman drops to Horde raids.

Getting back to the original spirit of the thread:

http://huhuranisserious.ytmnsfw.com/

some guy discussing some loot of a boss from the new instance. 

Hmm, to be honest, if you can get to Rag, and have a good expectaition of downing him, you are probably pretty good to go on most BWL encounters.

Razorgore - Cant really say much about this fight if you are alliance, as i have only experienced it from horde side.  Lots of kiteing involved, have a few someones who are intimately aquainted with controlling mindcontrolled people.  No real fire resist needed.

Vael - Good healing required, and from here on out, you are goiing to need a good bunch off tanks who are VERY on the ball.  Vael requires moderate to high fire resistance gear, unless your healers are REALLY on the ball.  Not sure what the reccomended FR for the tanks is, but probably at least whatever they would tank Ony in.

Broodlord - Minimal fire resistance, good armor on the tanks (guy hits like a truck).  Aggro management is key on this guy, and you probably want to go slow burn to kill him if your healers have the mana pool.  The clear to this guy is usually more of a pain in the ass then the actual fight.

Firemaw - High fire resist on the tanks, positioning is the key with this fight.  Also going to need tanks tradeing off aggro and eating wingbuffets in an effort to keep his dot from stacking too high.

Ebonroc - Lots of mele damage from him, shadow resist on tanks helps resist his debuff.  Be prepared for LONGASS fights to kill this guy untill your tanks get the hang of managing his targeting to minimize the debuff healing.

Flamegore - Magmadar, but as a drake.  Probably same gear as tanking for Ony, just tranq him when he enrages and he is free loot pretty much.

Chromaggus - I have limited experience with this dude, but it is one intense fight.  Much of it depends on what 2 "breath" combos you get.  The rest is positioning, debuffing, and dancing around to do dps between breaths.

Neff - Long, hard, and highly fun.  The only way to really do this fight is to experience it first hand.

oh, and Tanks should ALWAYS have ony cloaks on when fighting the drakes, and EVERYONE should have ony cloaks on when doing neff.  When in doubt, if it can cast shadowflame, put on an ony cloak.

We just downed Ragnaros for the third time and it seems that we can do it reliably, so we are going to BWL now.  After reading the post above, I am TOTALLY stoked.  Thanks for posting that.

BTW, for Paelos, our MTs have about 300 FR unbuffed.  Most everyone else has in the 150-200 range.  We have an assortment of epics but people still wear some blues and greens.

So how different is Rag from the rest of the MC bosses?

This weekend was our co-op's 3rd time in MC and after a VERY rough start on Friday night where we only downed Luci and had several wipes on Mag. (people act dumb when there's no Dwarf with fear ward.. how does the Horde counter this?) we managed to clear the place up to Baron, who we couldn't summon because we don't have enough folks with water yet.

 With performace like this I'm thinking we might be able to move on to BWL as soon as we've replaced all the greens the partners in our little adventure are wearing, but I want to know what to expect from Rag. and judge our ability from there.

The same way everyone else does - stance dance.

If you can beat domo, you have the teamwork to beat rag; All you need is the FR gear.

As I thought, thanks. We've been doing the stance-dance, but once in a while the MT is slow or lags and he'll get feared. It then becomes chaos as mag eats healers and runs amok among the casters.

 I think I'm going to reccomend we try something similar to the ZG spider this weekend with Mag. (Second tank out of fear range, runs up and grabs the doggie if/when MT loses aggro, pulls it back to his spot.)  Ideally I know this is what the secondaries should be doing anyway, but since they haven't been TOLD to do it they're not.

Tremor totem helps somewhat also on Mags.

Another important thing for Rags is DPS.  You're going to need lot of it.  As long as you have the DPS, everyone is over 135 FR unbuffed, and people pay attention to what they're doing (ie no one going afk during sons), you should down him with no problems.  The mods people have developed for this over time help a lot.  Being a healer though, the only thing I really need to know is when the sons are coming.

We had a really annoying Baron fight this past weekend.  We've taken to doing MC on the spur of the moment (since the GM wants more Emp attempts during the week) and it always turns out to be very few healers on, a non-full raid, and lot of people bringing their alts.  We've never been a fast clear due to simply people not wanting to pay attention and when you bring alts, apps and are 5 people short it tends to drag on a bit.  The Baron fight was just a fucking pain in the ass due to people fucking around.  Someone gets the bomb, runs over to 3 priests and explodes.  Some other jackass gets the bomb, boom, there's goes 2 mages and a hunter.  It got to the point where the raid leader had to tell people to quit fucking blowing people up because we were down like 10 people with Baron only at 50%. Heh, it's to the point where I need Earthfury more than Ten Storms and I'm going to start skipping out on Molten Core because it's done with a lack of precision and professionalism, that is not characteristic  of my guild.  Losing more people in a Shazzrah fight than in a Nef encounter is fucking annoying.  Gah, at one point fighting trash, 50% of the healers were sitting at full mana and people were actually goddamn dying. /rant_off

Edit: awkward wording in spots.

In case no one has seen it, http://www.wowwiki.com/Main_Page has a variety of strategies and lays out how to beat all the current bosses in glorious spoilerific fashion. I've contributed minorly to some of the later AQ bosses and have glanced through the BWL stuff - It's all pretty solid.

Edit: Wow their Ragnaros guide is sad both in terms of grammar and in layout. It's time for a re-write...

Alll warriors that are not taking Mag should be stance dancing around the time he fears - either use the CTRaid boss mod or just count out the seconds. If you do it right you will never get feared.  And then as you say, a secondary can pick him up if the MT gets feared.

You don't really need huge resists until you get to the drakes and then only the tanks really need it. You do all need to have ony cloaks for nef. Having a couple of warriors with piercing how will make rezorgore a lot easier so I recommend you do that.  Other than that you can get by on the fr you have for rag really.

Now if they'd just learn from EQ and put resists on epic pieces so I didn't have to carry around 2 backpacks of nature grear and lose 400 atk power to do tougher fights I'd be happy. This farming nr gear from L45 intances blows chunks.

My guess is that the lack of high end NR gear was actually an oversight in their raid progression.  MC gear seems to mostly have the Resists you want when procieding to BWL, and BWL gear would mostly have the resists you want when heading into their next instance, which was probably origionally intended to be Naxxramus.

I believe they said something about adding in some new craftable NR gear soon.  Cloth is really hurting for NR.  About the only classes with good NR gear at the moment are Mail wearers, due to the silithid craftable stuff.

Even with a full set of MC gear your resists would suck for BWL. I'd love it if gearing up in one instance geared you up for the next but that's not the case here. If Naxx is going to be shadow resist like so many think, the BWL gear still doesn't have much shadow resist on it either, so I don't think there's any forethought at all in this direction.

I believe Blizz stated it was a mistake to put the resisitances on tier 1/2 gear due to its impact on PVP. So... yea, I think the days of gear that doubles as main and resist gear are over.

Yay. let's fuck up the pve game for the sake of pvp balance.

The pendulum has to swing the other way somedays.

Boo fucking hoo, cry some more.

You say that like its a bad thing...

Onyxia wipe: the animation

http://www.partingvisions.com/onywipe/onyxiawipe.swf

Ha!  The childish animation went very well with the audio of the psychopath's breakdown. 

I give it a:

 :roflcopter:

It is if you could give 2 shits about PvP. I'd prefer they stripped pvp characters naked and gave them all standardized equipment based on their pvp rank when they zoned into battlegrounds to them putting resistance heavy PvE fights in the game and then gimping the resistances of the PvE gear because of the PvP whiners. Besides, the resistances on existing sets that were such a mistake are pitiful as it is. Even the tieir 2 stuff might add 20-30 to several resists if that. Hardly unbalancing. The whiners are focused on stuff like dark iron, put in specifically to make the heavy fire based fights doable at all. Trying to do ragnaros with even a full set of Tier 2 gear would be suicide.

It actually was pretty genuine. For priests. On my priest I have ~30-40 FR just naturally on gear I'd use in PVP. I then decided to up that with a few pieces with minimal sacrifice. I now sit on ~120 FR with mark up and it is actually pretty noticeable. I rarely ever take a full damage fire spell and 1/2 resists happen often enough to give mages fits I'd imagine. Naturally no other class tends to gimp their other stats for survivability, but PVP priests often do, and the results are pretty amusing.

Of course generally people only had 20-40 resistance if you were unlucky, which is minimal at best.

 :thumbs_up:

Le art. That's why God invented Flash.

I would be so dead in that group.  I wouldn't be able to play due to laughing so hard.

Wow, that...was...AWESOME!

I think this is taking it a bit far: http://mordots.com/
(meanwhile a domain parking company has taken http://moredots.com)

Also, to expand on the info someone posted above ... The voice is Dives (Tauren Warrior) the leader and MT of Wipe Club on Chromaggus EU server.

Original source: http://koti.mbnet.fi/djcowio/

People say his accent is Turkish, but he says:

Dives' posts on the official boards:
http://forums-en.wow-europe.com/thread-search.aspx?ForumName=wow-realm-chromaggus-en&Author=Dives&Cluster=Wow

Dives on whether they are real or staged:

RL pics of Dives:
http://irc-galleria.net/archive.php?nick=Dives

Wipe Club guild forums:
http://wipeclub.2cd.pl/Forum/index.php

Wipe Club guild website (not in use, but owned by Dives):
http://www.wipeclub.org/

I quit playing WoW, but someone asked what is needed for BWL. First off, get wiping now on Razorgore...the fight is all practice. Vael is as follows IMO:

80+ Unbuffed FR Healers
130 Unbuffed rogues
Around 250 for tank (we had our tanks put on non-FR tanking gear, find a good balance)

We found some cheap solutions, and remember for Vael you dont need ANY SPI or INT gear! +healing , Stam , and FR is where its at for casters. Look up Wizardweave Cloth items for cheap Vael gear to help get FR up. Also, there are DM drops for the rogues, and the bracers off Incendius.

Vael was my favorite fight, even though he can be a cockblock.

yeah, infinite Rage/Energy/Mana really allows for the situational gear selections needed to make vael an easier fight.  Essentially, Vael is a total Aggro management fight.  You MUST have tanks who know how to trade off aggro at the appropriate time, and rogues who know how to NOT take aggro from the tanks, while still doing good damage.   Vael is an easy fight, provided aggro is managed properly.  All it takes is one rogue pulling aggro and not losing it fast enough to get 2/3 of your raid breathed and then its game over. (Oh, and make sure whoever gets burning gets the hell away from teh rest of the raid to die :P )

I dont know that i would call him a cockblock.  Back when you could only attempt him for 1 hour every 24 hours, yes, but now, no.

have all the rogues go about 80% out (100% is simply slamming your backstab key) and vanish at 23%. Then, feel free to go all out (slam that backstab key!) and feint when it's up. Rogues will never get aggro.

Vael is all about the tanks IMO. It's utterly trivial to heal a Vael raid and if the tanks are good it's terribly hard to pull aggro off them as anything but another warrior. Hardest part is the transition of tanks, by far.