The Immediate Future

BRK » 09 October 2007 » In Raids »

“Dear BRK, I’ve been a reader of yours for several weeks, and I really enjoy your posts. Around the time you made your first Gruul post, I noticed our guilds were at a similar level of progression - 2 Kara clears per week, just downed Maulgar, working on Gruul, etc. Also our Wowjutsu rankings were almost dead even so I started looking over your WWS logs for any insight into how we could improve.

“Last night we dropped Gruul for the first time. So this morning I check your blog and what do I see? Our twin ally guild has dropped him too!

“So my question is, where do you plan to go from here? Get him on farm till 2.3 and then do Zul’Aman? Move on to Magtheridon, or the “Loot Reaver” for some T5 shoulders? Just curious what you think your next step is … Thanks, Maturin.”

What is Aetherial Circle going to do? Thanks not our call. We shall give our input if asked, but the Raid Leader and the GMs will make that decision.

What will we recommend? More Kara-Prince runs and more Gruul at least for a few more weeks. Gruul is not like Netherspite or Illhoof. He’s not optional, he’s required. He drops gear that we’re going to really need to move forward and we need to gear a bunch of people up to continue.

Due to yesterday being Canadian Thanksgiving, one of our druids was unable to go last night so we had to pug a slot. It’s really hard to image that we’re ready for Mag or SSC or anything else until we can get 25 of our own people every week for Gruul and get them geared up.

Our guild’s gearage (a new word, brought to you by BRK Worldwide Amalgamated!) is very varied. One of our hunters is now 3/5 in Tier 4 while someone else just got their first piece phat purple raid-loot. We need more people to get some purples to go along with the “uber-geared” folks we have now.

Even though we’ve had some scheduling issues lately, the one thing we haven’t had is an exodus of players. We’re not aware of any of our raiders packing up and leaving for greener pastures. That makes progression so much easier because, not only are the same 30 people getting gear, we’re learning how to work together.

Remember, regardless of the number of people in a raid, teamwork and trust are just as important as gear when it comes to success.

Raids | October 9, 2007

Comments

11 Responses to “The Immediate Future”

  1. pelides on October 9th, 2007 10:30 pm

    @BRK

    I would actually say that teamwork and trust are MORE important than gear. Gear makes a good player better. Gear does nothing to help a bad player if they die constantly or engage in raid wiping behavior.

    Our first Gruul kills were ugly and at 20+ growths, but we could do it because the ranged dps knew we had to fend for ourselves while the healers took care of the tanks. We were not even remotely gear-ready for Gruul, but teamwork and coordination pulled out those first kills when we shouldn’t have been able to do it.

    Now that we have better gear… we get him at 15-17 with more people alive (last night being an exception!). The gear accentuates the teamwork in the guild. The “lesser players with pHat EpixZ” still die early.

  2. Guy on October 9th, 2007 10:31 pm

    First I want to say grats to all.

    Downing Gruul is huge as it shows you can do 25 man content and opens the game up for you.

    good luck in your adventures, you truely have taken your first step into a larger world.

    Lastly, after nearly a month of searching, I have found the perfect job, I start tomorrow.

    While I doubt I’ll ever be as much into the BRK community as I was in the past, You can expect to hear from me more offten now.

    Also, look for a new SV article comming to a BRK blog near you ;)

    GRATS AGAIN ALL!

  3. Tom on October 9th, 2007 10:57 pm

    Tier 4 is over-rated.

    If you want a challenge, go do the TK trash. Its great for building trust and shi, the trash is easily as hard as maulgar, maybe even gruul.

    And uh, don’t go to VR or Mag right away, wait a few weeks :P

  4. pelides on October 9th, 2007 11:03 pm

    @tom

    I agree that the T4 set isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, but getting the arena season 2 set requires A LOT of effort and it is a definite improvement over the Beast Lord set.

    I have 2 pieces of T4, shoulders and legs, and the rest of my gear is a mixture of heroic, kara epics, crafted armor and arena/pvp gear.

    With only 2 pieces of T4 and my other mish mash of stuff, I’m ranked 16th on the alliance side on my realm in terms of paper doll dps!

    But you can get non T4 gear through heroics and arena and Kara that rival or surpass T4 without all the horrible competition for Kara slots.

    Personally, I’m going to round out my stuff with more arena gear and hopefully the sweet sweet chest piece that Hydross drops!

    Now, just what the heck was my point again? Been a long day at work.

  5. Jezrael on October 10th, 2007 2:16 am

    Grats on Gruul’s BRK! I couldn’t agree more on the trust and teamwork thing. My guild is in a similiar place progression wise and our goal is definitely to get everyone geared up and working together for further progression. We’ve just started Gruuls and hopefully our 3rd visit this weekend will see us down Gruul himself.

  6. Bachus on October 10th, 2007 7:47 am

    You’re definitely not ready for TK or SSC as a guild yet. The trash pulls in TK alone are as hard as HKM. You need to have at least 8000 dps to kill Void Reaver, and the running around you have to do in that fight to avoid orbs makes Gruul look laughable. Lurker and Solarian are almost as easy as VR, but have some nasty add phases that take a lot of practice.

    I’d argue that the gear from Gruul is very optional. There’s a couple really good pieces of gear, but nothing that is vastly superior to Kara drops. The main reason Gruul is so necessary is to practice 25-mans. Going from 10 to 25 people is a big step.

    You don’t need everyone in all Kara gear, but once you get most of the people in mostly Professor Plums you’ll be clearing Gruul’s Lair with a one-shot in 35 minutes and you’ll know it’s time to move on :) . And incidentally, don’t even both with Magtheridon. He’s far harder than the first several bosses in SSC/TK for less reward.

  7. William on October 10th, 2007 8:27 am

    In Project Mayhem (Lightbringer US) we are dropping Gruul and Void Reaver on a weekly basis. We start with Gruul, then head to VR. We also are making going through our learning runs on SSC.

    VR is a great complement to Gruul. You can usually fit both into a single raid block of around 3 hours with no problems.

  8. Borrodir on October 10th, 2007 12:58 pm

    Um… VR isn’t as hard as everyone is making it sound. Our guild got fed up with not taking down Gruul and put him on the schedule 4 nights last week. We took him down on night one (first EVER guild down)… so the officers decided to go after VR the next night. They took him down on the 4th attempt.

    So first Gruul down was one night before first VR down. Don’t be afraid to give it a shot.

  9. The Egotistical Priest on October 10th, 2007 2:17 pm

    Congratulations, that’s excellent news! And learning to trust and lean on each other is crutial!

  10. Urgele on October 10th, 2007 3:49 pm

    What next after Gruul?

    The easiest boss after Gruul is actually Hydross… with the huge *but*… but you need 4 tanks with resist gear. Hydross is a coordination fight, isn’t very difficult once people get the hang of it, and is a breeze if you have two good well-geared MTs.

    Magtheridon also isn’t too bad. Steeper learning curve. What makes Magtheridon hard to learn is the need to have 5 tanks–we use a fury warrior for the first channeler. Second very difficult thing is controlling the infernals. Everyone with some form of CC needs to help control infernals–ice traps, fears, frost novas, banish, etc… The key to Magtheridon is getting poeple comfortable with clicking the cubes when they’re supposed to. Expect many unnecessary wipes.

    Void Reaver is a dps race. Don’t be tempted to swap melee out for range. If anything… if you have the heals for it (2 resto shaman with chain heals is FTW), stack melee dps–means fewer people getting orbs, less running around, and more consistent dps. We found that it works best to have 4 tanks fighting for aggro. The trash in VR’s room can be rough. Love your locks.

    Lurker is highly enjoyable, and can be a lot of fun for hunters. You can bypass hydross (walk along the edge to avoid the elementals, which have low hp) clear lurker trash and deal with boiling water. This is a fight that also favors having multiple tanks and good CC.

    Anyway, grats to you and your guild BRK. Keep it fun.

  11. Melnayo on October 10th, 2007 4:53 pm

    After what seems like far too long, my guild finally defeated Gruul for the first time as well, last night. The gear wasn’t spectacular, no, but finally NOT having 4+ people die in the first two shatters was beautiful.

    On Sunday, we’re poking our heads back into SSC again, just to look around. As a tank, i should be putting together some resistance gear. Ever since i learned that, i’ve been saving the pieces that i come across, but i really need to hit the AH and get some more. :/

    …Void Reaver sounds a lot easier than any of the fights in SSC. I think i’m going to recommend we head there instead.

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