Ask a raider!

[Nonentity]

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?

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.

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

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.

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)

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.

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

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.

[Jayce]

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?

[Alkiera]

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.

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

[Threash]

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?

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.

[Nonentity]

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?

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).

[Morfiend]

- 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.

- 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.

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?

[Nonentity]

- 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.

- 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.

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.

[Jayce]

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. 

[Nonentity]

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. 

Indeed. Alas, I am a sucker.

[sinij]

I suggest BSM, you almost certainly will enjoy it.

[Der Helm]

I suggest BSM, you almost certainly will enjoy it.

I kind of read that wrong ....

[rk47]

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

[HaemishM]

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).

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.

[Merusk]

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.   

[Shavnir]

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

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.

[HaemishM]

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.   

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.

[Koyasha]

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.

[Jayce]

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. 

And they say that EQ was a PvP- game.

[vex]

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. 

Yea, that was good times.

[Kail]

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.

[pants]

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.

[Ironwood]

Did Onyxia with 10 here.

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

[Phred]

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.

[SurfD]

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.

[SurfD]

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.

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.

[Shavnir]

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.

[SurfD]

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.

[Train Wreck]

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?

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

[Rokal]

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)

[Murgos]

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

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...

[Cyndre]

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.