Russell Cox

w00t! Broodlord down Drops were: Maladath, Runed Blade of the Black Flight Boots of Transcendence Bloodfang Boots Flamemaw is going to be fun. He hits about as hard as Broodlord, pulses a fire aura that does minor DoT at first, but stacks. I does 150 initially, then 300, then 600, then 1,200, then 2,500. It also is the first boss to breath Shadow Flame -- a move that does a 4-6K intial damage + 8K DoT over 20 seconds. Onyxia's Scale Cloak lessens the initial damage *slightly* and removes the DoT portion. Sadly, we don't have one for everyone in the guild ; ; His breath does a piddly amount of damage at first; the MTs died on our first attempt and I was the first one he turned to (which, as a Druid with -20% threat talent meant other healers were being pussies) and it did only 600 damage. However, the first breath gives you a debuff that increases fire damage taken by 250, then 500, then 1,000, then 1,500, and finally 2,000. He likes to spam fire breaths alternated with Shadow breaths on the MTs :\ The good news is Firemaw, Flamegor, and Ebonroc are the "minor" bosses of BWL (Zircon, think of Shazz, Lucifron, and Gehennas) and once you killed one you've killed the other two basically since they act the same. Then we clear the trash shit, free Chromaggus (he's the screenshot you can see on the main site -- looks like a cross between the Dragon Footsoliders and The Beast) and stomp his ass (however long that takes), and then we'll be at Nefarion. The rush is on for Horde side still, as last I checked there is *NO* Horde guild that has killed Nefarion...yet. Only Alliance side with their "omg it's not unbalanced" unbalanced Blessing of Salvation.

Weee! Ysondre, the female green dragon from the patch, spawned today in Duskwood. We ride up from Grom'Gol, get buffed up, and start going; we'd already killed Taerar and Emeriss several times so we knew the basics of the fight. The key thing on these dragons are their special move, and their 75/50/25% moves. Her move is to spawn a legion of Druids equal to the number of half of your raid. They spam Moonfire, and occassionally toss out a 2 second silence. They're non-elites, so mages can AE them down in about 4 seconds. She dropped my CORNCOB OF DOOM (scroll to the bottom, I have a picture posted), as well as some nice tanking shoulders for our MT. I'd say without her 25% ability (which is a joke, I'm willing to be she gets hotfixed to be harder), your guild could take her Zircon; imagine Golemagg without the adds up front basically, tank gets about 30 seconds of hate building, then everyone engages full throttle. In the event a tank goes down a new one steps in and DPS backs off for another 30 seconds. All healers just focus onhealing the tank, as the dragons hit hard -- 1,400 is the average hit, with crits floating around 5K.

Plus, Un'Goro is where you can start the "Legend of Zelda" series of quests.

If you're horde, there's a lot of easy quest lines around low 50s. The cauldron series in Western Plagueland is one (close to 40K), the tablets series in Azshara is another (40K again). Un'Goro has a lot of quests that are gathering but mixed in with killing quests; you'll end up full bags and have to sell a lot of shit before you complete them all (almost half a level in quest EXP alone, nevermind kill EXP). Winterspring is gorgeous....but has very few quests. Silithus you can start questing around level 55/56 safely and actually make progress. Also, make your way to Moonglade and pickup the Silithus quests there before heading that way; it's 3 quests that nets a total of around 30K, plus you'll have the new quests that just opened up there. If you haven't done any, there's also the Thorium Brotherhood quests in Searing Gorge, which is easily a level in itself due to sheer number of kills.

Read what I wrote again. I didn't say it wasn't harder; I said it's nothing more than the same thing as those instances *on a larger scale*.

Nah, MC was more or less just an introduction to a raid size group of people; it's really nothing more than clearing Scholomance or Stratholme on a larger scale. Blackwing Lair and Zul'Gurub are examples of what the real shit's going to be like; every encounter is different and the classes don't do the same thing all the time. For examples hunters kite in Razorgore, go all out on DPS on Vael, and on the way to Broodlord melee while *very lightly* DPSing Broodlord himself in 2-5% increments due to hate being so shaky. Plus, judging from your tone you've already done ZG so you know how different it is from Molten Core. Coming from FFXI, where *every* fucking 'boss kill' is the *exact same* I can honestly say I've not been really bored in WoW stuff. Seriously, I'd rather do Molten Core everyday then ever have to do an FFXI boss. If I had a Druid do that in one of my raids (aside from Vael, because you have infinite mana and it's the only heal fast enough), he'd have one warning before I talked to Scott to kick his ass.

Then roll another class. The raid size doesn't determine the difference in the encounters, the dungeon does.

And now for something... TOTALLY UNRELATED!!! Source: http://www.goblinworkshop.com/news/story.html?StoryID=699 It should also be noted that Spybot is the one that's released leaked patch notes in the past, and *every* single one released by him have been correct. So, take what you will from whatever he posts; he could be entirely correct, or wrong, but he has yet to be wrong. We'll know in about 8 days either way from Blizzcon.

Pacifist is overrated. Their raid leader gets his strategies from people in Conquest, so it's not theirs in the first place. Plus, you have to consider that the MT's hate does not decrease when Ragnaros is submerged -- he gets another 10 seconds before everyone engages on Stage 2 and you can literally open the floodgates on him. But yes, we've had a few cases of 2 waves of sons. We had that happen this past Friday as a matter of fact; two of the MTs healers, a Rogue, and I think a few mages and hunters got disconnected and couldn't log back on. We went into Stage 3 Ragnaros with him having only 3% health. As far as UBRS is concerned, the only responses I've heard from GMs personally have all stated it's fair game, since the developers have to manually code which abilities you gain from the monster if they're mind controlled -- out of all their abilities and spells only 4 fit on the bar. Tigole and Caydiem CMs even responded that it wasn't an exploit on the forums, but rather it's one of the surprise eggs in there "for players who are willing to find them". The ability was discovered by Reign of Darkness on our server (alliance guild), and we waited a few weeks before even trying it. We use it for every Ragnaros and Vael attempt, and for the first time we used it there was a GM literally watching us at our request. Take from it what you will, since if they're going to ban your guild (which I doubt) they'd have to be 95% of the other guilds on every server.

I wasn't calling you 'tards Half of our guild refused to get tubers and such until we told them "Get it, or we're booting your ass." I've never seen so many people log on a Monday night farming session... The UBRS buff question I asked because it's a new thing, about 2 months old and not a lot of guilds do it or even know about it. And yes, the MTs need more time. By giving them 15-20 seconds, you'll allow them to have a firmer hold on hate. It'll allow the DPS to push a little harder, and since people won't be dying to losing aggro so much you'll have more overall DPS on an attempt due to just more people throwing shit out at him. 50% before he submerges is fine. We've been doing him with 35 usually and that's about how far we get before he submerges. As far as Sons are concerned, I would suggest each Warrior grabbing one, as soon as they pop (when CTRA announces he's about to submerge I'd have everyone haul ass south to that section). Have *one* Warlock banish one elemental *once* and the rest have Warriors fear bomb, priests included. If you have mana, you should not be anywhere NEAR the elementals because they drain 300-400 mana everytime their fire shield goes off. Oh, and if you have Resto Druids, they need to make sure Insect Swarm is on him at all times; every case of the debuff is 2% to hit, and that's applied before crits are calculated.

(Gnome Warrior 4tw! I'm tinkering with one on the side this week; I've got a funeral to attend so I can't rog in much for raiding). K, first of all, is everyone engaging when the MTs does? If that's the case, BIG NO NO! The MTs need about 10-15 seconds on Ragnaros to build up a good amount of hate. THEN everyone can engage. Secondly, people dying are Rogues I assume (or Rogues + Warriors). *Everyone* in the raid should have the following for this, and every encounter after Ragnaros: Heavy Runecloth Bandages Whipper Root Tubers Night Dragon's Breaths Windblossom Berries Greater Fire Protection Potions Whipper Root Tubers will heal 800 on average every 60 seconds and is on a separate timer from potions. Night Dragon's Breath will heal 400 on average every 60 seconds, and is on a separate timer from potions AND Whipper Root Tubers. Factor in... half of a bandage and that's 2200 health non-tank melee have access to every minute. To be able to loot those items, I would suggest doing a guild run one night to 'farm' them. The prequest is in Felwood, as are the plants -- just do a Thottbot search for "Cleansing Felwood" based on your faction to find the NPC. She'll send you to find 15 bloods off of the Shambler elementals in the north, and then well open up a few ways to turn in various items for Cenarian Salve. Once all that crap is done, then you can start harvesting the plants. 1 Salve = 1 plant, so one person in the guild should be in charge of hording the turnin mats for the Salve. You find a NDB, WBB, or WRT plant in Felwood, the person in charge cleanses it and then comes the most important part everyone in my guild has problems with --- *EVERYONE* in the area should right click the plant to open the window that says "Do you wish to harvest this plant?" but DON'T harvest it. You wait until everyone has said "Ready," the person in charge says "GO," and then everyone selects collect. BAM! You've just looted 2-20 items per *person* in the raid per plant. Respawn on NDBs are 25 minutes, the rest are about 10 minutes. What this does for Ragnaros, and *every* boss fight afterwards, is allow non-tanks a way to keep themselves alive. You'll find for Blackwing Lair, the new dragons, and even parts of Zul'Gurub that everyone that *ISN'T* a tank is on their own for healing. Shit hits *that* hard. Mages, Warlocks, Rogues, Hunters, and non-Warriors are on their own in the future boss fights. For example, Vael in BWL (second encounter) can easily crit up to 4K instantly. His normal hits are 800-1,200, and he attacks lightning fast; factor in breath attacks and cleaves and that'll give you an idea of how much healing is needed to keep one person alive -- and with Vael you need around 5 tanks. Also, are you all getting the UBRS fire protection buff? If you haven't, I'll post how to get it when you respond.

http://www.wowjuice.org/ Ignore the front page, they're humoring some retard with his newly found 'photoshop skillz'. Zircon, post your raid makeup from what you had on the last attempt. Also, what is killing everyone? Sons, or too few alive after phase one?

W00t! Downed three of the new dragons so far. Taerar Friday night, Emeriss twice Saturday, and Ysondre Sunday afternoon. Lethon is the one no one's beat, as he just laughs before WTFPWNing you.

Yeah, almost all of WoW's events are nice; we were doing Ragnaros last night due to lack of healers being on Saturday and our MTs tanked him as a bat and a Leper Gnome. I really like the Children's Week with the orphans, though. FFXI's Halloween consisted of creating a trade macro, spending shittons of money buying fruit/juice/food from vendors, finding an NPC that participates in the event, and then spamming the macro. You either got one of the 8 ridiculously fucking rare items (that did absolutely nothing and looked like the same items every year), or you got a costume that you had to manually remove to be able to talk to the NPC again (so it became trade, take off costume, trade, take off costume, etc.). I know some people that spent millions of gil just to try to get these items, with one person I personally know spent over 5 million gil (before the massive inflation 7 months ago of FFXI currency, that was easily 200-300 gold).

Lies! lol... Seriously, Vael is merely a matter of control like Onyxia. You never have to worry about running out of Rage, Mana, or Energy because you get 20/500/20 every second on him. Plus, once you get him down to 19 percent (he starts at 30) Warriors take over and Execute his ass into the ground. People that breezed through Broodlord did so because his Mortal Strikes were only hitting 1K max. When BWL came out and people got to him, they were cock-blocked by the 7-9K MSs. When they hotfixed Vael and Razorgore the last time, they messed with his damage table and it shrunk to 1K. Now it's back where it originally was and he's NOT SO EZ. To be honest, I find the Razorgore fight harder than the Vael. Razorgore's an encounter where one person's fuck up will screw up the entire raid. It has to be done nearly perfectly to get past the puzzle part. On Vael, it's just a matter of aggro control and tank switching when one gets hit with Burning Adrenaline.

Yeah, people don't give Hunters enough credit. A properly specced and geared Hunter and rival and even surpass a Rogue or Mage DPS if they know how to dance the aggro threshold perfectly. Usually, unless a specific encounter calls for a certain class to go apeshit with damage (Rogues for Kazzak/Ragnaros, etc.) Hunters are almost always near the top in our guild. On a side note, FLJOPDH)@(Y@)($&)(*&EU)@E& I HATE BROODLORD LASHLAYER IN BLACKWING LAIR! Jesus fucking CHRIST that is a bullshit encounter. If any of you have ever been to the Lycieum in Blackrock Depths, you'll KNOW what constant instant spawn of 10+ monsters is like. It's like that in the suppression chamber in Blackwing Lair.... ...except there's no torches to turn off spawns like there is in BRD, there's no place to stop and rest at the end, and there's also the added bonus of the Suppressors; they're traps basically Rogues have to disable. If a Suppressor goes off, Attack speed is reduced by 80%, casting speed by 80%, and walking speed by 80% -- in short, if you let this stay on longer than 5 seconds you're almost guarranteed a wipe. Sound fun yet? It gets better. The 'trash' mobs are whelps, which have 4K HP each, and come in groups of 5-20. There are also Blackwing Taskmasters, which are like a Warrior/Mage hybrid -- they hit fucking hard and their Flamestrikes can do well over 2K, with 500 a tick additional. PLUS, there are Dragonkin casters that give off an aura doing 50 damage a second for 5 seconds -- this can stack unlimiited times and I've seen it get up to 1,500 a second damge. WAIT! It gets better... because... YOU HAVE TO FIGHT THE BOSS WHILE ALL OF THIS SHIT IS GOING ON! That's right! Broodlord can one-shot a Protection specced, Molten Core geared, 8K+ HP wearing Warrior with his Mortal Strikes. Fun shit. Plus, he has not one, but TWO knockback abilities that COMPLETELY reset hate on the tank -- the AoE is blastwave and reduces movement speed to 50% and does around 3K damage, the single KB does about 2K + fall damage if you go high enough. So, what essentially happens is the gap from healing to tanking aggro is very narrow, and WILL eventually tip the other way. Now, because hate is so tricky, Mages are literally demoted to AoE bitches on the constantly spawning whelps and/or wanding Broodlord -- but watch it, because you CAN pull hate via wanding on this guy. It's a race against the clock to down him via DoT tactics, surviving the respawns, Rogues being on top of the Suppressors, and trying to survive without pulling healing aggro. So yeah, fucking goods times are after the first two bosses.

Right! Grats on your progression, though. Usually I reccommend AMAP for tanks, 150ish for melee, and 80ish for casters/ranged DPS. 46% is *VERY* good for a starting point upon entering your first Sons phase. As for the Sons, what I'd reccommend is enforcing everyone to have the newest CTRA installed; period. On the MT list, put slot 1 as the MT (i.e. Ragnaros's slot) and on MT list 4 or 5 put a non-tanking Warrior. The Warrior's job is to focus on one target during Sons of the Flame and *everyone* in the raid burns them down; each Son should be dying within 7-8 seconds. Use fear bombs, freezing traps if Hunters can get it done, but don't use Banish; you're under a time limit and you can't wait for that to run its course. While this is going on, the MTs should NOT be engaging unless they get the aggro of a Son. Their job is to stand near Ragnaros so that when he emerges they can quickly get aggro again. If no one is in melee range of Ragnaros, he does his 1-2 shot move, going down the hate list, so it's imperative that the MT (and their healers) are ready when he comes back. If you've got 1 Son left when Ragnaros is back, don't sweat it, just get the damn thing killed. Any more (unless he's down to 20% when he emerges) and you probably won't have enough mana/people alive to burn him down.

That's because your server isn't down. The login servers are fucking up, not the realm servers. It happens every patch on most MMOs, just relax.

Same, it's patch time. I'll start getting back into playing sometime Wednesday.

Horde, Stormscale

If you're behind the NPCs and you're all dying then something's wrong. The NPCs are elite, and 99% of the monsters in the waves are NOT, so you're essentially wiping to 4-5 non-elites at a time. At most you'll see 5 elites throughout the entire encounter (not including the 'boss' at the end of the runs). AoE is never the answer in WoW unless it's a *finite* group of monsters in a solid pack -- the ZF event is a staggered spawn cycle. Have the tank focus on one monster at a time, and everyone else assist him (with an " /assist PlayerName Here " macro); it's required later on in the game so people may as well start getting used to it in Zul'Farrak. The NPCs will heal themselves occassionally as well as heal your team, but still focus on keeping them alive mostly otherwise the quest at the bottom is null and void.

Sounds like someone was on the steps of the temple, so the monsters never took their 'breaks' between waves.

Nah, we have some items per person from Azuregos and Lord Kazzak (we dominated the spawns for about 4 months) and we DO have Molten Core gear, but there's not a lot of equipment per person. I'd say, on average, we've got 4 epics per person on JUICE and that's including all slots and PvP rewards as well (Alterac, Arathi, etc.). A lot of our best people are still in blues. We also have close to 90 people altogether in the guild as well. Try the Greater Fire Protection pots (1 Crystal Vial, 1 Elemental Fire, 1 Dreamfoil); they're cheap, the mats are easy to get (best place for Elemental Fire are the Burning Exiles in Arathi Highlands, Dreamfoil = Un'Goro) and most people will use 2-3 per Ragnaros attempt. That's 7K absorbed *PER PERSON* on the raids. And yes, it absorbs the lava bursts as well, and if you don't get hit by his RSTS (BY FIRE BE PURGED!) that's usually 3 bursts on average you'll absorb per pot. This alleviates a lot of aggro from the healers and they can in turn put DPS on Ragnaros as well with wands. If your MT doesn't have problems holding hate and ranged DPS don't get a tons of bursts (crits from mages, Shadowbolt crits, etc.) then that basically means you won't really need heals until 1:30-2:00 into the fight -- that's a LONG time to be DPSing and a shitton of mana saved by not having to heal. The only advice I can really give, without being there in person, is that the MT engages Ragnaros for 5 seconds, 2nd MT engages and after 5 more seconds everyone else engages and go full-throttle without being fucking retarded (you know what I mean). There are three 'key' places you can stand where the half-walls are on the C-Island; Usually we put MTs + their 4-6 healers on the one closest to Ragnaros, groups 1-4 spread out along one wall, groups 5-8 on the other, and melee stand close to Rangaros, then just jump/swim through the short lava to land at his back to cut-time and start engaging when it's called.

None of our tanks have more than 2 pieces of DI gear. Their FR is over 300 because of the UBRS mind control buff as well as librams and other gear. Secondly, the only classes that have more than 4 pieces of ANY Molten Core gear are Druids since we only have 4 and Cenarion drops regularly. Stop assuming we're geared out the ass. "wipe before phase 2 at 75%" is ambiguous. What are you dying to? The Sons themselves, or few people left alive after he submerges? If most of the raid is dead before Phase 2 then it's a problem with you healers, their positioning, and people that are NOT Rogues ripping hate and not backing off. If they're not using Greater Fire Protection potions, they should -- 2.5K absorbtion (roughly) goes longer on this fight than a Major Mana/Health pot will. The pot mats are dirt cheap and the absorbtion lasts 60 minutes; you can put one on before battle and wait until your timer is up again before engaging. Whether or not you killed him doesn't mean he's hard. He isn't and that has nothing to do with the fact that my guild has killed it; if your people pay attention and do their job (and Rogues don't forget they have a damn Feint) you have him in the bag -- the practice is just to nail it down. None of the bosses in Molten Core are (except Majordomo *before* you could Polymorph the Priests...); it's a dungeon that's designed to get people used to working together in a 40-man team to prepare them for the truly hard dungeons later on. If Ragnaros was "hard" you wouldn't even have gotten him beyond 99% if you've only had three attempts. (On a separate note, hopefully you aren't killing him JUST as Majordomo summons him -- he's fucking PISSED then and I don't know of any guild kills him then since it's not worth the hassle. Usually you have 39 people log off on the © island, the 40th person naked and sacrifice themselves after talking to Majordomo, and then everyone logs back on in 2-3 minutes.)

Um, sorry, but Ragnaros doesn't change difficulty based on server. He's nothing more than a glorified Lord Kazzak; the only difference between the two is your tank needs Fire Resistance gear for Ragnaros and you have to deal with his Sons (wow, 6 mobs that die in 5-10 seconds each to 40 people). In the end it's just a race of massive DPS burst by the Rogues, and success is measured by whether they remember they have a "Feint" ability or not. Pat yourselves on the back for doing Majordomo Executus with ease, no Ragnaros. Most of the guilds that are just NOW getting to kill Ragnaros are going for massive fire resistance gear on *everyone* in the raid, whereas only the tank need as much as possible. 120-150 after buffed on the Rogues and Warriors, as much as possible on the main tanks, and 50+ on the rest of the classes. Guilds go for this massive hunt for gear for everyone and spend months doing this, and then when they get to Ragnaros realize all the work was for naught because they end up needing more and more DPS/Healing gear than FR.