(bolding mine)
Although I intend to attempt raiding with my guild when I hit 80, and I can understand where you’re coming from, it still baffles me. Raiders are weird.
I took a little rest from leveling my main and worked on one of my alts, a blood elf warlock. I had a good time doing a quest to gather party supplies, afterwards getting a bit drunk off some of those same supplies. I like this character a lot, especially the pouty expression on her face. The trouble of questing is obviously very annoying to her. 
I wanted to train her on staves but I can’t do that yet, so for now she has a decent green sword (a lucky drop) that she uses when she wants to conserve mana. I need to pick up a wand for her as well. I find that if I hit a mob with Corruption and then Immolate, there’s not much I have to do to it after that; my imp mops up the rest, and I will hit the thing with Shadow Bolt if I have to. Hooray for easy leveling at the moment!
Think of gear exactly the same way you think of level. Just like you can take a low level through an instance you out level, you can bring an undergeared one through a raid you out gear. Similarly, you don’t bring a low level with you when you’re trying something at the edge of your abilities, you don’t bring undergeared characters to raids that are still progression.
Not all epics are created equal. Higher ilvl, better itemization, set bonuses all play a part in how effective a given piece is.
Oh, certainly. It just seems odd to me to dismiss anything below 25-man gear as though it were quest reward greens and blues.
Well, for Ulduar, it kind of is. Yes, that’s an exaggeration–for example, Uld-10 is built so that a team of raiders fully geared from Tier 7-level raid instances (Naxx, OS, and EoE) should be able to perform decently in it. You don’t need 25 man gear to be able to handle 10-man content–but it helps. And you certainly need at least some 25-man gear to be able to handle 25-man content. Otherwise you just aren’t going to be able to down the boss fast enough, before your healers run out of mana and your tank(s) are dying (or you hit the enrage timer).
My guild is currently raiding both Uld-10 and Uld-25. We’re up to General Vezax on 25 and Yogg-Saron on 10. There’s no way that somebody would be able to walk in wearing heroic-level epics and be able to make a meaningful contribution in the later bosses in Uld. They might stay alive, they might help out, if the rest of the team is well geared. But it’s just the way the encounters are designed. And it really depends on the role, too–you can run with a few undergeared DPS more easily than with undergeared healers–and undergeared tanks, unless very skilled, are almost always going to be a liability.
That said, though, I’ve seen some very good players with lousy gear (lousy level, that is–not lousy itemization). Skill does play a part, and being able to do what you’re supposed to do while avoiding as much damage as possible is a highly prized skill. When we see these people, we make it a point to try to get them into the guild and get them geared, because they’re going to be amazing when they have the purples.
I’m not sure exactly the point you are trying to make. Blizz has been very clear that they expect the natural progression of guilds to be OS->Naxx->EoE->Ulduar all within the same raid configuration (10-man or 25-man). I was part of a raid that cleared all the way to Mimiron (although we skipped Ignis and the Iron Council, and I wasn’t there for the Thorim kill). I put out reasonable DPS and only had one iLvl 213 piece of gear (a T7.5 chest that dropped in a VoA 25-man). Hell, I was wearing PvP boots cause the only PvE gear I have is a heroic drop, and my pants and back were still crafted epics.
Now I have a few more thanks to emblem gear and an extremely lucky roll on the T8 pants (had to beat a 94… woot 97!). It’s entirely possible to put out 3k+ DPS with iLvl 200 gear in a 10-man raid and that seemed to be all that Ulduar (in its current, possibly nerfed state) requires.
It’s certainly possible that the tank and healers were more geared (although I don’t think so - the tanks didn’t seem to have HP beyond what I’ve seen from Naxx tanks) and there seems to be no debate that many of the fights are very healer intensive.
Most of the fights, however, seemed to be more a matter of just doing the right thing (in particular the DPS needs to know when to switch targets - Freya in particular was tricky about that, one DPS mistake and you just have to wipe it up and try again).
I’m going again on Wed with a group that is similarly geared (basically has everything from 10-man Naxx they need and a few pieces of 25-man gear) and we’ll see how it goes.
ETA: What winterhawk said. You need almost entirely 10-man epics from Naxx, OS, or EoE rounded out with crafted epics if required, all appropriately itemized, to be useful in Ulduar. You do not necessarily need 25-man gear - Blizz’s stated intention is that a strong 10-man team will be able to see all raid content without having to form a 25-man raid.
My head, she hurts! 
I have seen this in a very exaggerated way. I mentioned a little while ago that we were running some level 60 instances with two 60s and an 80. Being talented for Retribution (and geared with whatever I could find), I found that I could barely tank the trash (I could do okay in a 1 on 1 fight, but in a group I got slaughtered), and while I could heal the 80, it was slow (Flash of Light does jack at that level of difference) and I was out of mana after every trash group. It was bad enough with just three friends; I’m pretty sure I would have gotten booted out of a full group by then. 
Of course, a full group would be properly distributed and I could do the job I’m specced for.
This is very similar to me, after a few months levelling a human paladin I went back to my belf Warlock and he has just dinged 30, Felsteed goodness! I found a wand exceptionally useful early on and added it as the last step in my grinding macro and found I had little or no downtime taking on one mob at a time. When I got Life Tap, Drain Soul and Drain Life I used it less and now not much at all.
I trained staves as soon as I could - Kelantholas looks a lot better with a stave across his back than a sword at his side.
Tonight I will attempt to get the Felhunter though the quest looks quite a slog and I may never use it as I think I may be in love with my blueberry because I can’t stop using him.
“I…must…feed” go on Kraknuz you hungry boy, eat that Hilsbrand miner. Good demon, good demon…
Reading this further reinforces in my mind that solo players, PVPers, and casual instance players aren’t even playing the same game as raiders.
Poorly-geared? Someone with full heroic epics would be considered AWESOMELY-geared for 99% of what I do.
That is indeed the case. Basically, gear is oriented towards what the “intended” purpose of it is. So, if you want to PVP effectively, you need PVP gear. If you want to raid, you need raiding gear,. If you want to run heroic 5-mans, you need heroic gear. If you have no intention of getting into one of those aspects, then there is no need to try for gear oriented towards that aspect; I have no intention of ever stepping foot in a raid again, for example, therefore, I have no intention, need, or desire to ever acquire raid gear. What I have (a combination of crafted, rep and badge gear) is good enough for 100% of what I do in the game. Sure, I can make some improvements on some pieces, but there will never be a need, for example, for me to get any “best in slot” item.
Quasi, look for Cenowyth. That’s me on WoW; L35 mage as of today. I’ll help you out any chance I get.
This is somewhat true, but Blizzard has made the decision (and I agree with them) that this shouldn’t be the case. As such, they are trying to make raid content available to more of those “casual instance” players. To make this work, they put some really-quite-nice epics in heroic 5-man dungeons and added some really-quite-nice craftable epics. Combining these with a few BoE auction house purchases and you can very easily jump into a Naxx 10-man raid (hell, you can go with quest blues and probably not get laughed at).
Even for Ulduar they are trying to scale the fights so that folks with 10-man Naxx gear can clear it. In order to keep the “hardcore” raiders happy they are adding hard modes to these fight that require significantly better gear and teamwork.
I guess what I’m saying is that ashman is right that a full-heroic-geared player can’t run Ulduar, but I disagree with Invisible Wombat’s claim that referring to them as “poorly geared” means they’re playing a different game. They’re playing the same game, they’re just at a different portion of it - once they’ve cleared Naxx for a few weeks and gotten a good set of Naxx gear they’ll be good to go for Ulduar (at least the first few bosses).
This is not to say that every WoW player should be raiding - clearly they shouldn’t and very many have no interest. But Blizzard has been very clear that they are never going back to the world of 40-man raids where only 5% of players (if that) ever see the end-game content.
Yeah that run was crazy, sorry about that. As far as the staying behind thing that was only so I could get initial aggro on the trash mobs. With Skadi there’s really no aggro issues (if the tank is doing their job) and there’s no special attack that would determine where you would stand. The problem is that, when he whirlwinds, he goes off in any old direction and it’s imperative for people to run like crazy to stay out of it, whether that is towards the side where the tank is standing or the opposite way. Our first attempt also had me getting battle-fatigue after so many waves of trash mobs spawning without Skadi being shot down(had two people looting spears and only one firing, LOL) so I was slow on the pickup and some clothie got one-shotted. I should have explained that mechanic better. Our final attempt was just bad luck in that a new wave of trash spawned just as Skadi landed and I was trying to position him and thought you guys had the trash under control, heh. Next time, next time.
Except for Alagon. 
I do think there needs to be content that challenges people at every ability level. There need to be rewards for those challenges too. I think the hard modes are an exceptionally good way to handle this. Everyone will probably get to see Yoggy that wants to. Not everyone will get One Light in the Darkness, or kill Alagon. That seems about right to me.
Uludar, at least 25man, is harder than Naxx, but it’s not so much harder that groups that can farm KT/Sarth+3 will have to get massively better just to be able to clear content. Hard modes, though do require a better level of communication and awareness than the previous tier of raids.
I have to disagree about people playing different games though. I don’t think it’s a bad thing, really. But the heavy PvP crowd isn’t playing the same game I am, any more than people who have close to the max number of toons, but none above level 50. Not a bad thing at all, just because I enjoy raiding doesn’t mean it’s the only, or best, way to play the game.
Raiders probably are wierd, I consider myself to rather poorly geared, I’ve only got a couple of Uludar drops, and I’m still using Life and Death. To me, this means that there’s a great deal of room for improvement. To someone who occasionly runs heroics I probably look very well geared, while within my guild I look a bit undergeared.
Just as an aside about Skadi, there’s a really easy way to do this that’s a lot less hectic.
- Start the event, killing the oncoming adds until you’ve picked up 5 spears (doesn’t matter who picks them up).
- Run out of the room into the previous room, resetting the encounter.
- As soon as it’s reset, run back in (Skadi and his dragon won’t be there, nor will any of the adds).
- Run quickly down to the far end. Skadi and the dragon will respawn at their initial spot.
- Hand out the spears to the DPS, and make sure they all know which harpoon launcher they’ll use.
- Have somebody aggro Skadi. Fight the adds until the message appears that Grauf is within range.
- Have your DPS fire off all their harpoons to bring Skadi down.
- Deal with the remaining adds and kill Skadi. (Mind the whirlwind!)
- Collect loot.
We do it that way all the time now, and I’ve even been able to take newbies through the encounter easily doing it that way.
2 things about lock spell casting priority when questing: immolate comes before corruption simply because immolate has a cast time while corruption does not. It makes no great sense to cast your instant cast, which starts a 1.5 second global cool down (during which time you can use NO spells) before you even start to cast immolate, which has its own cast time. During that global cool down (GCD), the mob is running towards you.
If you do it the other way around, then you have no GCD to fight and can immediately put corruption on the target when immolate lands. So, by wisely altering your spell rotation, you can reduce the amount of the time the target has to get to you by upping your dps.
Not so much. Blizzard has asserted many policies, but the content speaks otherwise. Bring the player not the class has been an abysmal failure such that, still, without certain raid compositions, Naxx 25 cannot be finished. It isn’t debatable, either. You can’t what if it to death. Without the right number of priests, the raid stops at a certain point beyond which it cannot progress.
So, there’s a gimmick which requires that priests get a raid spot.
And then there’s Maexxna; this fight all but requires a druid to heal otherwise the poison dramatically reduces the healing on the tank (90% debuff). Sure, a paladin can cleanse, or a shaman can drop a cleansing totem, but a paladin can’t cleanse during web wrap and the totem has a long interval between ticks. This fight isn’t designed around the idea of ridding the poison debuff whenever you get around to it. If it clips even one heal, there risk of losing a tank increases dramatically.
Your premise that Blizzard wants people to at least be able to see the Ulduar raid speaks against how raid is actually designed. Between believing their assertion or how the raid is actually designed, I can conclude with high confidence that they’re full of shit. Also, you should be more circumspect about how easily you listen to marketing campaigns.
For instance, let’s say you choose the 10 man-line of raid progression. You finish off Yogg, and then what? Oh, there’s one more boss remaining that you will never be able to do. 
Sorry. You aren’t finished and that last boss will remain forever beyond you, because Blizzard has designed it that way.
I agree whole-heartedly with the metaphor that casuals are playing a completely different game. It isn’t factually true that they’re playing a different game; we’re all in WoW. But casuals do indeed play a different a game within WoW, one in which skill, progress, and ability are all useless attributes. What matters to them, I’d imagine, is getting a pretty dress to run around Dalaran waiting to get the mana-bonk wand or something.
Sure, that’s fun. But the serious or “hardcore” raiders also do those things because we’re interested in seeing all of the game’s content. So, we arena (although, I didn’t arena for a couple of seasons; season 6 doesn’t seem horribly done so, I’m back at it), do BGs, raids (10 man, 25 man, normal and hard modes), and we do the seasonal things as well. Well, I don’t, but I have no great interest in spending a week of my life trying to get a certain piece of chocolate or whatever.
A casual, I suppose, can be defined a person who’s happy with being mediocre. If they enjoy having crappy gear, then that’s fine. And 3,000 dps isn’t really that impressive. That’s like, um, about a third to a half as much dps as my raiders are pulling. Consider, in Ulduar, I average about 3,000 HPS (healing per second), but I can sustain upwards of 7 if need be. My raiders are all over 6,000 dps, and some are pushing 10+.
It essentially this, we like knowing that when we go out, things get done. I enjoy knowing that I can throw out a near 40k greater heal if it’s needed (granted, it takes a lot of CDs at once from me, but that’s why they’re there).
Perhaps on your server. =P Mine is a free swinging server of love, and the horde liberally stick it to us. I’m on Gul’dan, which is a horde dominated PvP server with about a 5 or 6 to 1 ratio. Yet, we still manage to rally and defeat them in world PvP, which makes it all the sweeter.
If someone’s trying to invade my alleged virginity, they’re definitely going to hear “you can’t do that yet”, “that ability isn’t ready yet”, or most likely, “can’t do that while stunned.”
Fortunately, I have no virginity of which to speak, but attempted to trod where it once was will likely result in such error messages. =P
Would you mind if I asked you what guild you’re in, on what server? Those are some pretty impressive numbers, and I’d like to take a look at how your raiders are geared. If you don’t want to post it here, could you PM me?
My raiding team, which is almost all the way through Ulduar on both 10 and 25-man (barely touching hard modes yet), generally pulls somewhere in the range of 3.5K - 5KDPS (with spikes higher, of course, depending on the fight). We still have a ways to go gear-wise, of course, since we need more kills on the last few bosses, but our problems don’t seem to be with DPS but with situational awareness (or lack thereof) among some of our team.
Good job at being condescending. I am a casual. I don’t care for raiding, not because I can’t, but because it doesn’t interest me in the slightest. Go out and read strategies that someone else compiled, in order to play a game? No thanks. Devote much of my “free time” in game to gathering materials for “the raid”? No thanks. Having to devote x hours per week to “progression”? No thanks. I have a job already.
Raid gear is only useful for raiding, so I have no need to get any better gear. I have no need whatsoever for 6,000+ DPS or 10K heals. What matters to me in a game is having fun. To me, raiding simply isn’t fun.
I realize you’re coming at this from the perspective of a hardcore raider, but this is kind of offensive nonetheless. It’s not crappy gear if it allows them to perform the tasks they want to accomplish. It only becomes crappy when it cannot stand up to the task at hand, such as running Ulduar. If the player never intends to run Ulduar, then the gear isn’t crappy.
Same goes for calling players mediocre: what if you choose never to run instances, or play PVP, but instead craft, farm, and play the market? You surely don’t need gear for that nor do you need to know how to work within a party. But I wouldn’t call that player mediocre.
You can only evaluate effectiveness against the task being performed.