f13.net

Hi! I'm Nonentity, a troll shaman. Trolls are the best race in the game. Not for their racial abilities, but for their sheer awesomeness.

If you wanna ask a question about raiding, feel free. I will tell you how terrible it is.

My street cred is that my guild is currently in Coilfang, working towards Lady Vashj. I was there for the first Kel'Thuzad kill (we were like, rank 8 worldwide or something).

But I've done plenty of it, and beat my stupid head against a wall enough to say that I know it pretty damn well.

If any other raiders here wanna chime in, feel free.

Ask away!

Here's my question:  Why do people raid?

That's kind of a difficult question to ask, as it's completely based on personality.

There are a few different kinds of people:

- The people that raid because they love the sense of getting a bunch of people together, getting them to coordinate properly, and completing and achieving goals. These people need to be punched in the face.
- The people that are the same as the above, but lust over being the first to kill something, over other guilds/server/world first/whatever. Also facepunch-worthy.
- I raid for gear to PvP better, because some upgrades are only obtainable through raiding. I hate raiding, I really and desperately do. I know plenty of other PvPers agree with me.
- There are people who raid because they have nothing better to do while they wait for the next big thing. I know we have a couple of guys who do this. I also am doing this.

Either way, I think it's a stupid part of MMOs and desperately needs to change. That much of a time sink and investment is just flat out stupid.

Ok, before BC that was why i raided but now? i hate raiding, but now theres absolutely no reason too! the pvp gear is vastly superior for pvp while the pve gear is better for pve like it should be.  I don't know what you could possibly need from raiding that is better than the pvp gear.

Wow, it's like raid discussion on the official forums.

It burns when I urinate. Is that a sign of frequent raiding?

- What qualities should I look for in a good poopsock?  Synthetic/Natural fibres?
- If my mom refuses to bring food to me what can kind of provisions can I keep at my desk that won't go rotten, trailmix?
- What are the best excuses to use for missing work the day after a very long night of wiping (I'll use these if I ever get a job)?
- What brand of air deodorizers are best at covering up the scent of rancid cat litter combined with body odour and putrefying Mountain Dew Code Red?
- In the unlikely event that I am forced to go outside is there a good website that I could print out raid strats from so that I could at least be reading about the game?
- Red Bull versus Ballz energy drink - do we have a definitive answer as to which is superior yet?

What's the best alcoholic beverage to consume during a raid to dull the pain but doesn't lead to passing out before the raid ends?

How does one get into a raiding guild?  The only guilds I've ever been in I've found from the general Guild Recruitment channel, or just via random "plz Join me guild" tells, and that tends... to not turn out so well (as in, they rarely even do 5-mans, and I don't think anyone's ever tried to organize a raid in one).

Prereq: max level.

1. Find their website and apply (if they're looking for new members).  You can usually find the site through your realm board, through Google, or by just asking a member.  If you're not even sure who the raid guilds are.. usually each realm board has a content progression thread.

2. Jump through hoops if they accept your app.  If your gear sucks and you're not a healer, you may get rejected offhand.

Hoop jumping usually requires: grouping with guild members, attending raids (on time) where they don't let you do anything but sit outside the instance, get keyed for raids, and generally not appearing to be one of the following: suck up, n00b, loot whore, jackass, pussy, or moron (this does not apply if you're female).  This may take a couple weeks.

3. You're accepted and now a usually a "lesser" member until you're deemed worthy.

Bingo.

I would love to see the numbers on how many people actually enjoy Blizzard's system of raiding. 

I don't to the point where I'd rather not play if the only thing to do to get better equipment is to raid.

Maybe that explains my lack of motivation to log in lately.

You forgot to mention being attuned/keyed for all the raiding zones - noone likes backflagging new members - which is not a small amount of work in BC.

Question.  Does consumable usage suck as much as what people are bitching about?  My guild is stumbling along at the Moroes/Maiden level of Kara - so we haven't hit the serious raids yet.  Do you really need to spend 1-2 hours picking herbs for every 1 hour of raiding?

I actually enjoy it (this is the important part) to a point. The problem with BC raiding is that from about the middle of Karazhan on it requires a level of skill or time commitment that I'm not willing to give anymore. While Molten Core may have been much maligned it was a great thing to do on a Friday night with your entire guild. Not everyone's cup of tea, granted, but it wasn't onerous. That doesn't exist in TBC.

Yes until 2.1. Gruul forward is tuned for massive consumable usage (massive being a relative term in Gruul's case) and it ramps up exponentially until the first boss in SSC requires huge consumable usage from top to bottom from what I hear.

I like raiding with people to basically have a good time, kill some new stuff, and basically have something to do on a weeknight that's not farming or watching sucky TV. As for killing things first, I'll pass. Killing all your time to stay ahead of other people with little outside social interaction isn't on my list of lifegoals, nor should it be on anyone's list who actually enjoys reality. Some people do not.

I hate certain aspects of raiding. I hate that Blizzard favors ranged fighters so much over melee fighters. I hate that to roster a raid I have to bring a defined number of classes because the fight requires it. I hate that healing is so boring in raids that people hate doing it. I hate grinding consumables to be remotely competative early in the learning curve of an encounter. I hate that 1-2 Tier pieces of loot drops off a boss, and that boss has a weeklong lockout. Even with perfect drops, it'll be 6 months before all my raid ever sees a full set because of that horrific fact.

You are correct, that is the reason I raided prior to this.

As of right now, however, I'm actually raiding much, much less then I used to, as I quietly level alts, and wait for the impending slaughter of PVP based MMOs to come out.

I've had a candid conversation with some of the officers in real life, and they even agree with me that the raiding is bullshit, as the reward curve has been lowered so greatly, that it isn't even worth it to raid at this point in time.


Yes. Play 3 hours of Bejeweled and call me in the morning.



No, you don't understand. You WANT to pass out. It will make your misery end sooner.

Take your pick. Something ghetto, like Mickeys.


Ask around, find the uber guild on your server. Go to their website and fill our their application.

Chances are if you never raided before you are not going to be geared well enough to join any uber guild.  If you just hit 70 and have done a few 5 mans, but you are far from having your complete blue set or being keyed for every heroic your best bet is to join a guild that hasnt started raiding yet but is planning too.  Theres a lot more wiping involved but at least you are on even ground with everyone else rather than being the scrub in half greens.

I get the impression that being able to type this post without seeming like a whiner is what this topic was started for.

I mean come on, you were #8 to finish Naxx but you hate raiding?  Sounds pretty love/hate to me.  Gear to PvP better?  I'm sorry, but WoW PvP might be a lot of things, but worth doing something you hate for is not one of them.

Assuming you have full raid buff and best spell critical gear how high can a shaman lightning bolt spell critical rating get? (11% from talent included)

Holy shit. How did I end up in here? That's the last time I click on the Last Posted In button without looking at the thread.

Raids are clownshoes. I don't see why it's worth discussing.
/me shuts the door on the way out.

Is it worth pretending to be promiscuous female to get into raiding guild and/or beg for loot out of turn?
Where can you get good program that will scramble voice to appear more female-like?
One uber dagger drops, someone ninjas it and disenchants it, what happens next?

Not even close, USA Horde 8th probably but definitely not world 8th nor world horde 8th.

Did you just emote?

Anyway, I'll ask some stuff too:

-How is your guild feeling about the loot progression in BC? Even the stuff in the Black Temple doesn't seem to be all that huge of an upgrade over the raid before it.
-Speaking of that shallow loot curve, after you get geared well enough to clear Karazhan without much trouble, is a lot of gearing still required to move on to Gruul/Mag/SSC/The Eye?

You mean voice fonts. Some are here (http://www.screamingbee.com/product/FemaleVoices.aspx).

You are totally correct. I typed that wrong. I meant USA Horde 8th. Nihilum was World 1st.


You'd be very surprised the kind of walking contradiction that raiding turns you into, let along BECOMING ONE.


IM SORRY SCHILD. Yes they are. Stop stalking me.



I don't know how some of us feel, but the loot progression curve has dropped dramatically. They're attempting to try to compensate for it by adding itemization with weird effects. Take a look at some of the Black Temple faction class rings, that's the kind of stuff I think they're gonna go for.

Gruul can be finished with BC blues, after the nerf they did to the shatter effect. It's pretty good. Some gearing up in Kara will be needed to do Mag (stuff like getting tanks and healers stuff, DPS isn't as important). SSC will need most of the raid members in a decent chunk of Kara loot, but honestly, for the most part, I've been healing SSC using old Naxx Tier 3 gear, with a mix of BC blues. The gear curve just really isn't that significant, it's a minor, minor upgrade at best.

I've got a question. What do you think about the type of encounters that Blizzard has put in the same instance. For example, the need for a ton of healing on Maulgar vs. the ton of DPS on Gruul in the same place? Did you do a lot of swapping to compensate for certain encounters across certain instances?

I'm curious what percent burnout you see in high end raiding post tbc?  Also I'm curious if you recognize my name.

I don't know what's worse :  That product or the casual way it's thrown into a raiding thread.  Shame, Lum, shame.

You naughty minx Lum!

Allowing for Cloth / leather? Or Mail only?

Also, where were you checking to see what rank you were at killing Khel?  and was this Pre or Post BC.  I was under the impression that there was only one or two Horde guilds that actually killed KT when the level cap was still 60.  Would also be interested to know where my guild stands, since i am pretty sure we are still the only Horde guild on our server to kill him at all.

Daddy needs an epic mount. Not that epic mount, a real one.

Anything goes as long shammy can wear it. It's PVE. You don't get hit in raids much.

Dear great Raider,
is this http://thottbot.com/i27926
worth it for elemental shaman who is looking for mana pool longetivity in raid?

www.worldofraids.com i think had pre-tbc rankings.  More than two horde guilds killed Kel'thuzad while the level cap was 60.  Overrated beat everybody by like a month horde side on the US then Blood Legion on Illidan got second beating out some other guild who I forgot by like a day.  On Illidan alone there were two horde guilds that kill kt, Blood Legion (who I was a member of) and Team Ice (which Nonentity is a member of).

I think a lot of people have views of raiding and raiding guilds because a lot of them have people that are annoying. Raiding is great when you're with a great group of people. Working together to beat difficult encounters is very rewarding when you've been able to make steady progress and not get cockblocked.

We swap in and out of raids all the time. We'll never have the same group mockup twice for any given raid, especially with the smaller group sizes now.


Lots. There has been a lot of burnout post-TBC, after people realized the amount of new content they were getting was not comparable to the original world's amount of content.

I see you're a character on Illidan, but I didn't join TI until after they had already started in Naxx. I did my pre-Naxx raiding on another server with my alliance warrior.


http://armory.worldofwarcraft.com/#character-sheet.xml?r=Illidan&n=degorn

This is one of our Elemental Shaman, and he has cranked himself for max crit chance, managing to get himself to 21% spell crit, bringing himself to a whopping 32% chance to crit on lightning spells. Needless to say, he rarely ran out of mana, and had to stop casting in order to not pull aggro.


No, it's not worth the loss of other stats in the slot you're sacrificing for that small chance to get mana back.

http://www.wowhead.com/?item=29370 - If you're willing to do heroics for badges, get that instead. The spells you'll cast in that period will make ultimately more damage for your mana. http://www.wowhead.com/?item=28418 from Arcatraz, and to be honest, it might be worth throwing a mana over 5 trinket like http://www.wowhead.com/?item=27828 in there, if you're really concerned about mana efficiency.

Maybe this is still a derail, but I don't see WoW raiding as clownshoes.  I did it, fairly in depth, over about 3-4 hours a night.  This was before TBC.  "In-depth" means we had MC, ZG and AQ20 on farm and were working BWL at a good rate when the guild broke up.

The difference is that I'm not interested in being the nth guild to finish something where 0 < n < 10.  I'm just interested in seeing the content and getting a few nice items in my character's old age.  I think there are two very different games here.  Competitive raiding and (I guess you could say) casual raiding.  WoW supports both.  I gather that EQ did not (though I have no idea in reality, maybe a casual EQ raider can step forward).

So, to summarize the questions here:
Is WoW raiding a totally different animal than earlier raiding games like EQ in its causal doability?
Is TBC raiding still possible in 3-5 hrs a night like pre-TBC was if you don't care much about progression speed?

You could just as easily replaced 'raiding and raiding guilds' up there with 'LARPers', 'CCG players', 'Wargamers', etc.  I was at the local gaming store with my spouse during a big WH40k meet.  We sat at the end of a table playing the WoW TCG, while about 6-8 males between 14 and 30 had a large battle.  One of the younger kids, prolly under 16, was the most arrogant idiot I've seen in awhile, and I was beginning to wonder if maybe he had Tourette Syndrome, or something.  Voice had all the tonal quality of the lead in Rainman, and quality comebacks like 'That's not retarded; YOU'RE the one who's reTARded!'.

After checking out our new cards and playing a quick game, we decided to go home where it was... quieter.  At least, I think that was the wife's way of putting 'fewer raging idiots' in a nice way. 8)

--
Alkiera

Oh i can take this on since i was a raider in both games.  In EQ killing the mob was an afterthought, the main challenge for raiders was beating other guilds to the content.  Not for any desire to be "first", althought there was a lot of that too, but because at least when i played content wasnt instanced.  You couldn't be casual and raid, you were either ready to jump the moment a call was made or you simply got nothing.

This is very true. Since the raid content is instanced, unlike EQ, it can very much be a casual-centric game. To be honest, I would consider myself more of a casual raider then a hardcore raider, mainly because I don't go on every single raid. I'm in a hardcore raiding GUILD, this is true, but I mainly get called in for boss fights or whatever, if they need an extra healer.

It is also possible to do TBC raiding 3-5 hours a night, just as before. The length of the dungeons hasn't changed at all, but with the friendlier group sizes, it makes it even more possible to just grab a handful of people and go (especially for dungeons like Karazhan).

So tell me. Who should really be punched. The people who raid because they enjoy it, or the people who raid but hate it and complain about it, yet still do it?

Everyone. I'm sure I deserve a punch.

I'm passive aggressive about my hatred for it. I do it, but complain.

I want a game where PvE raiding is not the endgame, so I'm not tempted to get sucked into it, just so I can say I've experienced all the content.

The metagame is ALWAYS defeating your own temptations.  :lol:

Indeed. Alas, I am a sucker.

I suggest BSM, you almost certainly will enjoy it.

I kind of read that wrong ....

(http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/output/motivator3450115.jpg)

What is the best way to test how good is my mana bar longetivity?
Specifically for Elemental shaman because it involves my spell crit and that trinket I've mentioned.
http://armory.worldofwarcraft.com/#character-sheet.xml?r=Kilrogg&n=Vegmund

EQ did not support casual raiding. The instancing in WoW is the biggest boon to casual raiding on the planet. EQ's lack of it made for all sorts of shit that killed casual raiding. On Karana, we had rotations for raid events and keeping track of your spot in the the rotation as well as the spawn times was a full-time job. Add on the tracking of raid policies, the fact that most of the larger/more uber raiding guilds would recruit all the server's priests (the one class that you could not raid without) and the lack of good gear without having raided, casual raiding in EQ was a sure way to burn out a guild's leadership.

Then tack-on the #1 uberguild of the server getting frustrated with seeing other folks wipe, or bored with waiting their turn in the rotation.  After a month or two, they'd always say, "Know what, fuck you all.  If we have the manpower to kill it, and want to kill it, it's going to die." That's when things got really, REALLY fun.    :x :roll:

Go shoot some spells at Dr. Boom.  If you're positioned right he can't really retaliate and he's got enough hp that you will run oom before he's dead.

I was lucky in that that sort of thing didn't really happen that often, and my influence helped keep a lot of folks away from the "rogue guilds" that would spring up every once in a while to try to challenge the rotation hegemony. The worst time was right before I quit, when one of the guilds from the rotation split off and decided to ignore the thing completely. What was worse is the guild was run by two of my ex-members who had quit/got kicked for being raging loot whore douchebags. Lots of personal animosity there, some of which certainly contributed to my burnout and eventual exit.

Personally, I enjoyed my time in EQ uber raiding back before instances when it was race to the mobs and often have another guild breathing down your neck if you didn't pull fast and not wipe.  Make a mistake and they kill the mob standing on your corpses while you try to CR.  My server had little to no 'rotation' stuff.  By the time guilds actually bothered to consider rotations, it didn't really matter anymore (Qvic goats were the last things I can recall that are on a 'rotation' and that was absurd, since they respawn every 8 hours and even 5 expansions ago could be killed with one group).

Hasn't been that way for a long time though - everything Time+ pretty much is instanced in EQ now, and everything Time level and below is no longer a raid in EQ.  I don't know if I'd enjoy the racing and the competition anymore, though...might be something I would no longer like.  I can only say I loved it back then.

And they say that EQ was a PvP- game.

Yea, that was good times.

Hypothetical question:

I've heard that the level 70 quest gear is better than the best pre-BC raid gear, generally, correct?  I've never seen any of the pre-BC raids.  How many level 70 players would you need to go back and run through the old raids?  Would you be able to do it reasonably with 40?  20?  I don't really care about the loot (obviously), but it'd be nice to at least see some of this stuff once or twice.

Yeah, its pretty rare to see a Lv70 in their old tier1/2/3 Lv60 gear.  Quest/Lv70 dungeon drops are pretty superior all round, even if only in the huge amounts of +sta that all BC gear has.

How many lv70s?  Not a lot.  I seem to vaguely remember hearing 12 people doing Loatheb - too lazy to search for it now - I'm guessing you could do 4 Horsemen with 15-20?  Something like that I'd say.

Did Onyxia with 10 here.

It was actually hard.  The bitch has a LOT of HP and our DPS was slow.

All creatures with the "Boss" label were adjusted to autolevel when the expansion released I believe. So Ony will be 3 levels about for purposes of armor, evade level, resists etc. This initially caused a lot of problems which have supposedly been patched out.

Yeah, Basicly, when dealing with ANY "Boss" creature, YOU will always affect IT as if it was 2 or 3 levels higher then you are, for purposes of it resisting your spells, dodging your attacks, etc, etc.

on the flip side however, a level 60 "boss" still affects YOU as if it is 10 levels LOWER then you, IE, you will resist Ony's fire breaths and the like much more often then you would normally, it will mele hit you for less, etc, etc.

Hmm, well, I think i could give you a fairly decent breakdown on the old 40 man content if you wanted to go back and check it out (assuming all level 70's with a good assortment of at least quest / 5 man blues):

(DISCLAIMER - If you ARE going to do this, at the very least, read up on the general strats for the encounters and shit)

Onyxia - easily doable with 10 (though it might take 10-15 minutes to dps her down, just because you dont have the extra 20 people or so DPSing), heck, my guild used to do her with 15 people in BWL / AQ gear BEFORE the expantion.

Molten Core - you could likely 10 man this pretty easily also, 15 would likely be a more comfortable number.

BWL - you could likely do MOST of BWL with 15 people.  I say most, because im not exactly sure how much DPS you would need to bring to kill Vael before most of your raid simply exploded due to Burning Adrenalin, and im not sure at all how neff would work with too few people.

AQ 40 - We went back there at around level 66 or so to get our Aitesh when we finally killed KT in Naxx, and royally wafflestomped the place.  I would say 20 people would give you a pretty decent challenge, but most of AQ 40 is all about the execution of the fights, not really how much DPS you can pump out really fast (with the exception of burning down Huhuran i guess.

Naxx - naxx is an interesting one, cause many of the fights have important gimmics built in.  I would say you could do most of naxx with a 20 man group fairly easily (provided you are willing to wipe a few times learining the strats for the fights).

I will break it down into wings:
Abomination Wing
- Patchwerk - not sure if 20 would be enough here, mainly due to the need to DPS the shit out of him before he enrages.  Tanking him shouldnt be nearly as hard as before tho.
- Grobulous - free loot
- Gluth - as long as you have a working strat for dealing with zombie chow and enough AoE to kill them after Decimate, you are good
- Thaddeus - same as Patchwerk, but also due to the fact that less people means less stacks of Pos / Neg buffs when grouped for damage

Spider Wing
- Anub'rekan, Lady Faerlina, Maexxna all should be fairly easily handleable with 20

Plague Wing
- Noth - Pretty much free loot
- Heigan - Same as noth, if you can dance.
- Loatheb - Loatheb could be interesting, depending on your group makeup.  20 people could prob easily handle it, especially since you will never have to worry about not having the spore buff, and hell, if you had everyone stack +stam gear and put a feral druid in each group, you could probably heal through most of the impending doom simply from mele / wand crits and leader of the pack.  Heavy netherweave bandages, Higher rank spellstones and bigger Health pots would pretty much trivialize this fight.

Deathknight Wing
- Instructor - fairly easy, especially since your priests should get less resists when MCing students.
- Gothik - might be interesting, since this is a fairly CC heavy fight, but might be doable with 20
- 4 horsemen - i REALLY doubt you could do this with 20 unless you had already done it before.  30 would probably be a more comfortable number, just because of all the crazy shit that happens, and the need to rotate tanks and groups all over the place.

Sapphiron - FROST RESIST COCKBLOCK.  might be doable with 20, but your ENTIRE raid better have at least 150+ frost resist or you are going to get smoked. 

Khel'thuzad - i REALLY doubt you could do this with 20, and 30 might be pushing it.  KT has a LARGE number of abilities that really dont care what level you are (100k damage void zone affects, and % of total health based damage), so this fight is actually VERY challenging regardless of your level. Sure, you might resist a bit more of his spells now and then, but in the end, the fight is still chaotic as hell, and VERY unforgiving.

Just a few comments regarding your post SurfD, although it should be noted I have no personal experience in doing these post 60.

Vaelstrasz : Arcane blast spamming mages will be hilarious, assuming they can not pull aggro instantly.

Patchwerk : Almost free loot if you have about 20 people.  With proper planning doing with 15 wouldn't be unreasonable.

Loatheb : This boss was 5 manned with the new shadowpriest talents before TBC came out.  To say it wouldn't be that bad at 70 would be an understatement, just get a paladin to put blessing of light up there, get all the healing on hit, bandages as mentioned....yea, cake.

I dont know about Patchwerk with 20.  Like i said, you have, i think, 6 minutes to kill him before he enrages, and my guild, on our best runs, were only dropping him with 1 minute to spare while totally potted out the wazoo (this is at level 60, pre bc).

If you figure that our of a 40 man raid, only 25 of those might have been full spec dps (the other 15 would be healers and tanks), then im not sure how well a 20 man raid, with maybe 13 or so dps would do.  Then again, I dont know how things like paladins for horde, crazy +damage on shadowpriests and all that fun stuff would swing the numbers.

All i remember is that when we went back to Naxx with a full raid of 63-65's, we melted trash like it didnt exist and made pretty much all the bosses except 4h / Sahp and Khel cry like little girls.

Captain Morgan spiced rum.  Especially when you get to be on Vent or TS.

I've got a question for you Nonentity.

Do I know you?

Used to game and chat with someone who ran with the screen name Nonentity88 a few years back. I'm wondering if the name similarity is just a coincedence, or if you might be the same person. He was into gaming/rpgs too, etc.

And to keep this post on topic...

Do you feel that raiding is where it needs to be now with the recent nerfs to consumables, certain bosses, and the amount/hp of certain trash mobs? That is to say, is the risk and reward now balanced with the recent nerfing of raid-specific timesinks and the buffs to raid gear across the board?

-Rokal (would have been known as L0RDTemplar back then if this is indeed the same person)

I think I've played that instance.  It was fun while I was in it but afterwards, well, let's just say that there were better places I could have been that only would have taken a little more effort to get too...

I have 5-man'd Onyxia.  1 Warrior, 1 shadow priest and 3 affliction warlocks.  EZ mode.   

I have seen a vid of a warlock soloing most of ZG by kiting and playing with pathing restrictions.  If I even get bored with the outlands content, I'll probably give that a try, but it seemed like more trouble than it was worth.  I am sure he died a few hundred times before he got that vid just right.

Everything else is doable with 15 max, although Vael is still a bit tricky with less than 20, if everyone is not very well geared.  We managed to 9-man MC up to Garr, then we had some issue

Other than epeen factor and completionism, there is absolutly no reason to do any of the old instances.  I replaced my Naxx gear before we even hit Karazhan, and my current gear stats, while working through SSC is almost twice as strong as pre-BC.