The Ironsong Tribe

It's still getting T6 gear for doing a T4 instance Those of us that aren't at the T6 level obviously don't need it to succeed at T4/5.

I'm mostly concerned with the deleterious effect it's having on higher-end raiding - it's already being felt by a lot of raids. None of mine, so far, and knock on wood and all that. If you can go to SSC, spend 4 hours for a shot at T5 loot, or you can go to Kara and get 1/4 of the way towards a T6 piece of loot guaranteed, it removes a chunk of the motivation to do the SSC/TK level instances. 25-mans are tough to organize, and on a server with a low Horde (or Alliance) population like ours, keeping 25 raiders motivated through learning tough new encounters and such is tough. Sure, there's some of us that enjoy the teeth-kicked-in challenge, but there's some that don't, and those are the folks that the raids are already starting to lose. And once once the encounters are learned and the instance is on 'farm' to catch everyone up on gear, it gets even harder - you're gearing up for the next instance, and hey, T6 would be better than T5 for that...

A lot of us that are into SSC/TK really just don't have a lot of fun in Kara anymore. Imo, it sucks that it's now the best place to get loot for anyone not in MH/BT. Easier instance for better gear.. just a real logical disconnect there.

I guess the hope is that it'll hook more folks into raiding overall, and we'll get a better crop of raiders out of it.

It's not really accurate to suggest that completing the Karazhan attunement quest will gear up your character in any substantial way. When all is said and done, most of us did the bare minimum required to complete the quest. At best, you'll see two or three class-appropriate drops in the timespan between Shadow Labs and Black Morass.

It's a bit more accurate to suggest that the attunement process requires players to learn the ins and outs of their class, but that may or may not be relevant to the process of raiding Karazhan. For my own raid (competent players all), our real lynchpin was Moroes. For about a month we banged our head off that guy until we finally dropped him. Once that clicked into place, we progressed nicely. It leads me to think that the best way to get ready to raid Karazhan is by raiding Karazhan. It hones you in a way that the attunement doesn't. And at this stage in progression, crappy gear is less of an issue because poorly-geared folks can be carried by others until they catch up.

Easier instance for better gear... that sounds an awful lot like the Zul'gurub vs. Molten Core debate from back in the day. Most folks were puzzled by the addition of Zul'gurub to the raid roster a couple years ago: the loot wasn't as good and the fights were considerably harder. However, it was a point of pride for Ironsong that we used ZG as a step up to MC. When we got to MC, we one-shotted everything the first night we fought it, including Majordomo. The one exception was Ragnaros... he took us THREE tries on our first night.

I guess the point is challenge and unity over loot. Sure we all like the purple stuff, but somehow it's always felt good to me to eschew that stuff for challenges. That's part of why Sreng rarely goes to Karazhan anymore... I'm so not interested in bashing my way through the same old encounters just to get badges for upgrades that don't really matter to me.

I'd love to get Sreng involved in something like SSC or TK or something similar, but I'm not sure that's realistic for my current schedule. The fact that they're removing the attunement for Karazhan is a beautiful thing, as far as I'm concerned. Once the patch hits, I can take Degrang in and see the fights from a whole new angle.

Attunements are an obnoxious and unnecessary step in the game. The only 'attunement' the an instance needs is the player achieving the necessary level of gear and competence. Meritocracy > Glass Ceilings.

Sreng Wrote:It's a bit more accurate to suggest that the attunement process requires players to learn the ins and outs of their class,

A little bit. It represents a modicum of effort, rather than the 'hit-70-kara-time-now' view.

Quote:but that may or may not be relevant to the process of raiding Karazhan.

Quote:It leads me to think that the best way to get ready to raid Karazhan is by raiding Karazhan.

In my opinion, it really is. You don't learn to run without walking, and you don't drive on the highway before you can drive down your own street. I've raided Kara with a lot of different groups and people, and the folks that don't have a lot of dungeon experience really do much worse when faced with a tougher place like Kara. Raids are intimidating. When they get to someplace hard like SSC, it really shows. There's just a lot of things you learn in 5-mans that you aren't going to get a chance to practice in a raid. Raid fights are all set-piece battles, with very specific progressions and if you screw it up, odds are almost certain that you'll all die. In a 5-man, you get to screw up and then try crazy stuff to fix things, and in the less-tense atmosphere people are a lot more willing to try different things. It's also way more forgiving if you try things and they don't work out. Back when the 20s Windfury cooldown was just coming to light, I started fiddling with using 2h, WF+Flametongue, and all sorts of weird combos to try to improve my damage. I learned a lot doing that, and it's the kind of experimentation that really can't happen in a progression-oriented raid.

There's an ongoing thread where folks are talking about contributing to a 5-man. That thread is a really good example of what I'm talking about - level 70 warlocks that haven't used their succubus to seduce. If you haven't had the need to do it, it's not the kind of thing you're going to really be familiar with doing. With a good chunk of 5-man experience, that kind of gap in knowledge wouldn't likely be there. I've seen Eflu/Tet pull the fear+seduce trick, and nobody is ever going to learn to do that well while raiding. Not without wiping the raid And when you really know how to eke out the most of your abilities, that translates really, really well into hard raid encounters. Even really easy stuff like Gruul's goes smoother when people are familiar with how to move around and keep themselves alive without a healer.

Quote:For my own raid (competent players all), our real lynchpin was Moroes.

Yeah, for a raid that's still working through Kara, I can't see free BT gear at that stage being bad news Some T5 raids will really benefit from the change I'm sure, those that stick together and get better geared.

Quote:And at this stage in progression, crappy gear is less of an issue because poorly-geared folks can be carried by others until they catch up.

Well, I'm a big percentage Achiever, so carrying folks in raiding is a pet peeve of mine. I'll leave that aside :p It's not just that it helps people play catch-up, it's that while 10 people are in Kara, they're working on getting better gear than our 25 person raid can get in SSC/TK.

Quote:Easier instance for better gear... that sounds an awful lot like the Zul'gurub vs. Molten Core debate from back in the day.

Hrm, don't really agree there. It's inverse in terms of numbers. You could do ZG with half the number of people, and with a solid raid, it was actually easier than MC. Less coordination needed over less people. Some of the gear was inferior, but a good chunk of it was better. My priest preferred the ZG stuff to T1 by a long shot. And you couldn't get enchants from MC

Quote:However, it was a point of pride for Ironsong that we used ZG as a step up to MC.

Going from ZG to MC (20 to 40 people) makes sense though. Even at comparable difficulties, developing skills in a progression of group size is ideal. 5-mans to 10-mans to 20-mans to 40-mans.

With the 2.4 change, people that have been in Kara for a long while (have old badge gear, plus new badge gear) aren't really going to have much of a reason to even go to SSC/TK. SSC and TK are both coordination-heavy instances, and if the gear is sidegrades or even downgrades, then that makes for less motivation. We've seen that in our SSC raid already - ZA gear is better than a lot of what's in SSC (Dromand's been in SSC for months, and has yet to get a single healing upgrade). Sure, SSC fights are fun the first handful of times, but like you said about Kara, after that it's just the same old stuff, except SSC is much harder. If I'm going to do the same-old same-old, I'd rather at least get better loot for it to get ready for doing something new.

Quote:I guess the point is challenge and unity over loot.

Therein lies the problem. Prior to this change, SSC was the best of all three. High challenge, high unity (25p), and the best loot. It made it an ideal goal to shoot for. Now, the low-hanging fruit is a lot more attractive, and enticing people to take the challenge over the loot is going to be a harder.

Quote:Sure we all like the purple stuff, but somehow it's always felt good to me to eschew that stuff for challenges.

Get Entourage into ZA then 8-) Much, much higher challenge, and far less loot. The up side of the loot is that until the 2.4 stuff comes out, it's of better quality. The up side of the instance is that you'll really feel you've accomplished something the day you down Malacrass, and it's because you really have

Quote:That's part of why Sreng rarely goes to Karazhan anymore... I'm so not interested in bashing my way through the same old encounters just to get badges for upgrades that don't really matter to me.

Well, that's a pretty tough catch-22 for you though. Without better gear, getting to new challenges is much, much harder. The ZA raids I'm in (3 of them!) all beat Kara to death for gear, then moved onto ZA. That made ZA hard, instead of simply insane.

Quote:Attunements are an obnoxious and unnecessary step in the game. The only 'attunement' the an instance needs is the player achieving the necessary level of gear and competence. Meritocracy > Glass Ceilings.

I think the Karazhan/SSC attunement is reasonably superfluous, but past that, I don't really agree. Getting attuned for BT is a big deal - beating both SSC and TK. That's a major accomplishment for a raid, and achieving that as a raid is a pretty big milestone. Removing that kind of thing really cheapens what comes after it, imo. Victories that are hard-earned always mean a lot more than something handed to you.

Logros Wrote:I think the Karazhan/SSC attunement is reasonably superfluous, but past that, I don't really agree. Getting attuned for BT is a big deal - beating both SSC and TK. That's a major accomplishment for a raid, and achieving that as a raid is a pretty big milestone. Removing that kind of thing really cheapens what comes after it, imo. Victories that are hard-earned always mean a lot more than something handed to you.

Yes but there is a problem with this Logros there are some people who can't even get into SSC or The Eye who would really like to see that stuff and in my personal experiance unless you can get into a raid in the first few months a raid patch hits you will likely never see it so there for the better armor for heroic badges and no attunment required is probubly meant to alow those of us who haven't been able to to see SSC, The Eye, Mount Hyjal, and the black temple before the next expantion hits Cause basicly the reason almost no one saw Naxx was cause the introduced it so near to the expantion and gave it a rather difficult attunement for most people on top of rediulace gear requirements and a 40 man cordination content so there for these changes may seem cheap and demeaning to you but for someone like me they are great I love to see all the content I can hell I haven't even seen BWL or Ony yet and I still want to.

Bloodbound, for the sake of my eyes, I beg you - use punctuation!

As to content being generally closed to people soon after it is introduced... well, the guild Bloodbound started an Eye/SSC raid late last fall, months and months after the dungeons came out, with an open invitation to IST members to join them (we make up a solid half of that raid's usual roster). And the raid is going strong, very close to clearing SSC. Once SSC and the Eye have both been cleared, I will be confident in our ability as a raid, both in gear and in cooperation, to go on to the t6 content. When those attunements are removed, sure, we could go right in and try it, but I am not confident at all that we would succeed, and certainly not quickly. I think the point of the BT/MH attunement is two-fold: making sure your raid can work together well enough to face the encounters therein, and making sure your raid has the gear to last through said encounters. It's Blizzard's way of ensuring that players who don't yet have the experience or gear to possibly stand a chance in those places don't go in and try it anyway. In its own way, it's also a reward. Simplistically: once you have shown you have the ability to beat one level, you get to see the next. While there is no way to really say one has "beaten" an MMO, progression is its own reward. To an extent, WoW is a very forgiving and casual-friendly game, but there are aspects of it that you have to work and invest serious amounts of time in order to access. The end game raid instances are meant for those who have fought their way up through the previous ones. And no, I don't so much think it's fair that gear on that level can be obtained almost as quickly, and certainly more easily, by running a relatively easy and fast 10-man, which will require no attument process, once a week.

Karazhan, being the first in the line of raids at this point in time, is easy compared to the later content, but it still requires everyone to be able to work as a team, know their job, know their class, and be good at what they do. Having more 5-man experience and better gear will help with that. I know I didn't get my key by just running the required instances! I went with others through many different instances, trading off ("I'll heal for you in Botanica tonight if you'll tank for me in Black Morass tomorrow" etc) and running the same places multiple times to get others caught up on the quest line so we could move to the next step together, and so on. And I was much better prepared for Karazhan because of that. Do I think an attunement is neccessary, given the number of Karazhan-experience people likely to be in a given raid, and given the comparative difficulty of the place? No. But I think anyone not preparing for it, hitting 70 and expecting to go in quest greens and own the place (and I'm not saying anyone is doing this) is doing themselves and their raid a disservice.

Bloodbound Wrote:Yes but there is a problem with this Logros there are some people who can't even get into SSC or The Eye who would really like to see that stuff

There's lots of stuff that most people will never, ever see ingame. That's the nature of the beast. To keep the game going for a big chunk of people, you need to have progression available. Handing everything out to everyone undermines the premise of what makes MMO's so addictive - progression, whether it's skill points, levels, or raids. If you really want to see SSC, there's absolutely nothing stopping you from seeing it except the work involved. Attunements are used as one step of that required effort.

Quote:and in my personal experiance unless you can get into a raid in the first few months a raid patch hits you will likely never see it

That.. doesn't really make any sense. You can get to content whenever you can get people for it. Content gets easier as time goes by, not harder, because people's characters will improve, as will (hopefully) their player skill. We have more people available to do Kara now than we did 2 months ago. The only people that are pushing through content in a few months are solid raid guilds. For the rest of us, time is on our side

Quote:so there for the better armor for heroic badges and no attunment required is probubly meant to alow those of us who haven't been able to to see SSC, The Eye, Mount Hyjal, and the black temple before the next expantion hits

Well, honestly, if the attunement is difficult, then you've got next to zero chance of succeeding in the raid instance, with the exception of BT, since you could go in TK or Eye gear, not needing both. If you haven't learned how to raid by doing previous raids, the later stuff is just going to whup you in the coordination fights.

Attunement to SSC was a few heroics. No attunement to TK. MH requires beating Vashj (SSC) and Kael'thas (TK). BT, you have to beat a boss in SSC, TK, and then one in MH (all early bosses).

In a way, the attunement processes provide a bit of protection for the raids that have done them from what's often called 'Little Brother Syndrome'. Group A gets into someplace hard, puts in the hard work to learn it and get things figured out, and then 'farms' it. Once that starts, and the tough stuff is done with, lots of other people want to come along for the now-easier loot. I'm not saying that's anyone's goal, but it happens, and is more common than people wanting to come just for the sake of coming and seeing the content.

I personally see this in Gruul sometimes - when we get more than 25 people and I'm leading the raid, I have to decide who gets to go. Gruul has no attunement, so anyone that's level 70 can get into the instance. As a raid leader, I have to choose between what's best for the raid (someone well-geared and experienced) or what's best for one person (someone new and excited to go). I try to do as much of both as I can get away with (GL has been several folks' first ever raid!) and keep the raid successful, but having a slightly-difficult attunement would filter some of the new-and-excited folks out for a little bit, forcing them to take more time before coming, and presumably gearing up and learning to be a better player in that time.

Quote:Cause basicly the reason almost no one saw Naxx was cause the introduced it so near to the expantion

That I agree with. :o

Quote:and gave it a rather difficult attunement for most people

Attunement is a few items and rep, and always has been. Even if you were Honored with AD, it was only ever a few hundred gold to buy the stuff you needed. Again, if that was difficult, then you weren't ready for Naxx.

Quote:on top of rediulace gear requirements and a 40 man cordination content

Naxx was beat by guilds that were ready to beat him. Nothing ridiculous about that

Quote:so there for these changes may seem cheap and demeaning to you but for someone like me they are great I love to see all the content I can hell I haven't even seen BWL or Ony yet and I still want to.

That's the point I think you're missing, and it's one of my broken-record recordings over the last few months. Stuff like SSC and TK aren't like Molten Core was - you can't have 15 people that are experienced raiders with appropriate gear, and 10 or even 5 that aren't. In TBC raids post-Kara, you can rarely afford more than 1 or 2 people that aren't on par with the raid difficulty level. It's more forgiving on gear than it is on player skill - nearly all the fights have built-in mechanics where one person screwing up can wipe the other 24. Once you get any significant minority of people that aren't prepared for the raid, then it makes things a lot more difficult for the rest of the raid. Good of the many > Good of the few.

Narhiah Wrote:In its own way, it's also a reward.

Narhiah Wrote:To an extent, WoW is a very forgiving and casual-friendly game, but there are aspects of it that you have to work and invest serious amounts of time in order to access.

Yes. <3 Narnar

Mahiah wrote....wha?

Silly boards.

Give up, we know it was really you the whole time.

I r Treeee?

r fixud.

Now it says Narhiah?

*nods sagely*

We are....circle of healing tree now, or something, Nar?

Naruth does bark at me a lot.

Naruth sighs and flaps her wings at you in agitation.

Vilyave is the one that barks. Gosh. :nono: