Forged Alliance

With two successful Guild TOC 25 clears behind us, it is apparent that FA has grown back to the point where we can do 25 man runs on at least one night (that night being Tuesday).

I consider the past two Tuesdays successful test runs. We still need to clean up a bit on raid mechanics. Some people are still not switching to DPS Snowbolds as they should be, getting hit by Icehowl or taking excessive amounts of balls in Twin Valks. As I'm tanking it is hard for me to see if anyone in particular is having trouble with these mechanics or if its just accidental.

I think we need to spend more time gearing up and raid-training people in TOC 25 before trying ICC 25. I know we have quite a few people familiar with ICC 10 and sufficiently geared, but not 25 I believe.

One thing that I think has helped us in TOC 25 is that its been 4 months since TOC has been out and in that time just about everyone in the 25-man has seen the 10-man version at least once if not many times. So if we continue to do TOC 25 a few more weeks and by then people will have better gear and more experience that ICC 25 shouldn't be as brutal. One concern I have is that going in there and wiping will demoralize people too much and lead to lower turn outs. I also worry about our healer and dps. In the two Tuesday 25's we were initially short on healers for both and for Anub'arak we didn't kill him first try or have a very big margin on the enrage timer.

The last issue at hand is DKP. Since the last two Tuesdays were test nights and I expected to have to pug or use non-guildies, I didn't use DKP. I used basic loot rules I've seen in pugs. 1 loot per boss, 1 trophy per raid. In the past we used a zero-sum DKP system which is pretty fair and helps evenly distribute the loot.

My personal opinion is that we should resume using the DKP system. I haven't heard anyone express discontent so far, but we've only gone two nights. Using DKP removes some randomness and rewards people for participation. Even if you don't get a piece of loot on that run, you'll get DKP which you can use to spend if loot drops the next run. As it is now, it's all /roll.

So, I'd like to hear some opinions. Should we continue with TOC 25 for a few more weeks (lets say 3 or 4) or after this coming Tuesday jump right into ICC 25? What are some thoughts on using DKP? I'm looking forward to replies. Please keep them civil. Tis the season.

My vote is to stick to ToC25 for a few more weeks while encouraging people to get ICC10 and 25man experience via PUGs. I also vote to go back to DKP if its going to become a regular guild run.

i think it would be best to continue with toc25 for now, and it would probably be a good idea to get back to dkp, if not only to get people accustomed to it again. thanks for organizing everything and getting things going again

We can do ToC25 for a week or two more to see if we can do the full clear cleanly. By cleanly, I mean evidence that everyone is on top of what they're doing and not falling into 'perilous habits' that would wipe us in ICC25. From what I know can go wrong,

Marrowgar:
1) Standing in fire. If the fire on Gorehowl kills you, the fire on Marrowgar will kill you.
2) Poor target acquisition. Marrowgar will impale raid members and ranged DPS need to immediately target the impaled person and break them out. If you're bad at DPSing snobolds during Gorehowl, it will be worse on Marrowgar because people will die instead of just be interrupted.
3) Poor positioning. Marrowgar will periodically whirlwind and target random raid members. As he moves, everyone needs to run away to minimize damage to themselves (even if you're the targeted raid member). This means at the end of this, the entire raid will be in disarray. If you position yourself poorly, you can be stranded from heals or even worse, you can be stranded from ranged DPS. If you're by yourself and you get impaled, you will die. If you're always caught in a bad spot during twin Jorumangar, it will only be worse during Marrowgar.

Lady Deathwhisper:
1) Mind controls. On the 25 man version, she will mind control raid members who will need to be crowd controlled. If we're sloppy at doing it on Kel'Thuzad 25, it will be just as bad on Deathwhisper.
2) Low DPS. What will wipe us on this fight is getting overwhelmed by the adds. If we're wiping on Anub'Arak because we're not taking care of the little scarabs while he's submerged, we're going to have problems on Deathwhisper.
3) Poor target acquisition. Similar to the low DPS problem, since she will periodically resurrect adds, DPS that has transitioned to the boss needs to be aware and ready to transition back to a resurrected add.
4) Standing in fire. It's called death and decay, but it's still fire.

Gunship Battle:
1) Standing in fire. It's Mimiron's rockets again. May not be as fatal, but not trivial.

Deathbringer Saurfang:
1) Poor execution. This fight is unique in that the boss' enrage is dictated by how poorly the raid executes all of the fight mechanics. All damage done to the raid is converted to a progressive buff for the boss. Messing up in the first 30 seconds of the fight will not wipe you immediately, but you will regret it when the boss abilities overwhelm the raid and the boss is still at 20% health.
2) Poor ability timing. The boss summons adds in the immediate vicinity of the melee DPS/tanks. If anyone in that group pulls aggro on the summoned adds, the adds will be in range of their target and add to the boss' enrage. Casters have seen this before when they had to suppress their non-instant abilities during Ignis' flame jets so they wouldn't be silenced. This will be new for melee who have to suppress their AoE abilities during the window when the adds are summoned and aggro'd by the ranged DPS.

Use the time in ToC25 as well as other 25/10 raids and heroic 5s to practice for the mechanics used in ICC25. In two weeks time, we can take a stab at ICC25 as a reality check to see how we do. Probably limit ourselves to 45 minutes of wiping (since it will take us 30 minutes to clear the trash). If we flunk, we go back to ToC25 for another two weeks.

That's my opinion.

-HP

I agree with staying in toc as well for a few weeks. It would be cool to do ICC as a guild 25, that place kinda reminds me of BT, so it would be like working on bt back in 2.3 during the glory days.

DKP sounds good to me...

Questions do we have an idea if we're going to run anything else on Tuesday before or after TOC?
These past weeks we've run more than one instance. It gets kind of late for me, and I dont want to miss out on DKP if we decide to run Ony25, then "try" ICC25 all in 1 night I just wont be able to stay up for all that.

No ICC 25. We'll do TOC 25 and *maybe* VOA 25 or the Raid Weekly (Depending on what it is). If we're short people we may do VOA or the Raid Weekly first. Again, it depends on what the raid weekly is.

Is tonight going to be the start of the DKP or will we start it when we start messing around with ICC? Also will we start over fresh or will we go back to the last time the guild did its own 25man runs?

Love 25 main raiding, thanks for organizing!
Perhaps we only need DKP for the mages j/k. I like the idea of DKP as I hope to get a trophy one day. However, i hope it does not burn out the organizers keeping track of the stuff. I certianly like the idea that I can store up a few points for ICC25.

Going to give DKP a try tonight. The DB will be reset, so we'll be starting fresh. Using the DB from our FA runs (which hasn't been active since July) or the joint raids with Benediction would probably be sloppy and unfair to all the people we've gotten that are now making 25's possible again.

Since TOC isn't "current" content though, DKP prices for TOC stuff will be half of ICC more or less.

Question about our new 3 tanking system...

is this something that we're going to need for ICC25? We talked about which set was going to be my main spec. currently both specs are about evenly geared with maybe my dps set being a little better.

I'm just wondering which set to upgrade for ICC25, I love doing both dps and tanking so its more what the raid needs from me.

I suggested the 3 tank strategy to Thandrenn because thats what Crisis does. I am FULLY aware that we are not Crisis and that we need to do what works for us but I think that if we are going to pick a strategy to use as a base then why not follow theirs. They usually work well, and anyone that pugs with Enve has practice with most of them. That said, I did not pay attention to how many tanks Crisis uses in ICC. I think Lord Marrowgar is 3 tanked for the Saber Lash. 3 Tanks would probably provide a little room for error on Lady Deathwhisper and Deathbringer Saurfang also.

Historically FA has always been full on tanks. I think as it stands currently Thandrenn is MT and Arnold is OT1. I don't know who is OT2, but there are many people that want/can fill the roll. Ravign, Vegimity, and Beiner have all tanked for us in the past. Hopefully you'll get an Officer response soon but if it were me, I'd spend my badges on DPS gear. Unless you REALLY want to tank, and then you just go full bore on tanking gear so that they have no choice but to invite you as a tank because your gear and skill level are so much higher then everyone else.

Historically we've always needed 3 tanks for 25-mans. I think we kinda got away with 2-tanking parts of TOC for a little while because of our gear. That won't be the case in ICC. We have other tanks, but they don't seem to be consistently available at our raid time.

So it depends on what you want to do. If you want to tank, then go ahead and gear that set up and I'll start having you on tanking duty more. If you want to dps, then go that route

ICC does require 3 tanks, so we would definately need to gear Ravign or another up if needed. I don't mind tanking, but my dps set is by far better than my tanking set.

This is The Veg....i dont mind tanking but i would rather dps on my hunter. I like the pew pew... tanking is a nice change from time to time when somone cant make it. so maybe i can have my druid be a backup if one of the three cant make it...but i honestly rather my hunter come every week. And as it stands my hunter and druid have almost identical GS 5044 and 5077(i know GS is lame but it does give people an idea of what kind of gear my toons have). Plus we have a lot of consistant druids and we rarely seem to have more than one or two hunters. Just about every week we have needed a tranq shot too for people failing on the charges in TOC 25. And it does seem to help when the adds on anub get tranq'd when they are enraged. SO i think my regular services are going to be more useful as a hunter than as a full time tank on my druid.

In summary...i am happy to help out when needed but would rather officially take my hunter.

With that said i do feel kinda bad for not passing that stam trinket to thandrenn the other night. Sorry, if i could fix it i would.

Upon reading some of the comments here and reading Inori's Op-Ed, and also what seems to be the trend. I am switching my main spec to Tanking. In the last Toc25 run I won 2 pieces of tanking gear, so please change my DKP accordingly.

in TOC25 the only fights I dps are Jarraxus and Twins. Leaving me tanking 3 fights.
in ICC it seems that we will need 3 tanks for all the fights.
I will be spending my frost emblems on Tanking pieces...

It just makes sense that I tank, and I like it

Woot!!! GJ Ravign!

Shit, This rogue here will Evade tank ICC25 Hardmode, suckaz.

ya'll recognize!

How do you evade tank when you can't evade a huge angry Yeti charging at your direction

Silly rogue.

I'll defense cap my moonkin, panzerkin!!!