We have somewhere between two hours and two weeks left before patch 5.2 and I think we would benefit from a short conversation about our goals in the next few weeks and once 5.2 drops. Skarn has done a fantastic job of guiding us through tier 14. We cleared normal mode raiding about 5 hours a week (officially 6 but let's be honest here), where MANY guilds that usually clear normal modes have been unable to do that this tier.
Personally, I know that I was talking about pushing a few heroic kills earlier, but I'm feeling over that now, especially given our very recent attendance. I have no idea how hard 5.2 is going to be, but I suspect that the normal mode bosses may be quite challenging at the outset in our gear level.
We've been pushing progression pretty hard for the past month and I would prefer to do some easy mode stuff before we start on the next tier. So, for me personally, I'd like to re-clear all of the 5.0 bosses in normal mode one more time, try to get everyone a Sha kill, and then proclaim victory over tier 14.
First of you are talking about the raids on Valentine's day and Presidents day...2 holidays. Unless I am missing something our attendance is fine. Rad's computer is back working again so that helps.
I can do whatever but I would like to try some heroics modes.
Our progression will be fine this time around as with this tier we worked in a lot of people at different times with different levels of gear. Our gear levels are fine for normal modes...Gear usually isn't the reason we don't progress.....execution(including me) is the main reason. this has been true of every expac.
Our attendance was rough this week, but it was mostly caused by the dual holidays. Amusing (and annoying) that they'd fall on our two raid days! Fortunately we shouldn't have that problem this week. It's totally reasonable for people to miss out on the raid due to family holiday stuff. I highly support that, actually! That doesn't make it less disappointing for those that do show up though. ;) (Ok, a little less disappointing since we know you'll be back!)
The end of the PvP season was announced today, so the patch date is as solid as it will ever get from Blizzard. That leaves us just two weeks left. I do like getting Heroic kills, but with just two weeks left, I think we should focus on getting as many Sha and Empress kills as we can. They drop the best loot and offer Feats of Strength that will be unobtainable after March 5.
Heroic Vaults does have higher ilevel, but the loot from Terrace is still likely better. For example, the Sha-Touched Gun is better for me than the Heroic bow. Getting 4-piece set bonus is likely a bigger DPS boost for most of us than a few ilevels of stats.
So I'd like to do as much as we can in Terrace and Heart of Fear. A quick clear of Normal Vaults may be worthwhile if people want to do it for fun and off-spec pieces.
What does everyone else think?
For Science!
I am not a fan of heroic modes and learning curves with ONLY 2 weeks left before we are going to be hitting a new raid. I think that when the new raid comes we SHOULD still be going back at least to Terrace as that gear/Tier pieces will benefit us a lot more into making things more smoothly as Swipe said Gear isn't the reason we die it is usually execution but as we have seen with a lot of Terrace bosses having a Berserk phase we barely reached it in each of our kills so that little bit more DPS is going to be needed.
I can't remember where I read but they talked about if you can clear normal mode you may not have any issues with the first few bosses but you WILL need to gear up more for later bosses. I need to find the link to that somewhere....
Again the last few weeks for me should be clearing Empress/Sha in BOTH weeks to get people as much gear/tier/sha weapons/etc that we can prior to the next part dropping. Just my opinions!
Darkguns - Level 90 DK
Autogun - Retired Lock
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Shamgun - Shaman fun!
I'd like to try heroic modes but with new content hitting it may not be worth the limited raid time left in this tier. If we do pick some heroics we need to know as much as we can about the fight ahead of time instead of relying on Skarn to tell us what to do. Maybe pick Stone Guard and Feng for this and put in some solid attempts if we can clear the other stuff? Or another fight that plays to our strengths?
I'd like to focus on making better use of our time during raid. Unless there are adjustments to discuss we should drop food, buff, and countdown to pull a little more quickly than we are to try to get a couple more fights in during our raids. There's usually little reason to AFK when we have a planned break in the 10:00 to 10:30 range. Lets all get some food out of the guild bank to drop instead of waiting on Skarn. Lets also get better about buffing early when everyone is around instead of watching the unreliable Blizzard buff counter or waiting for someone to complain about a missing buff.
Lets focus on clearing out Terrace and the half raid ID for HoF this week. We're still sloppy on some of those fights, lets focus on cleaning up execution on Amber Shaper, Empress, Tsulong, and Sha. On a good week we'd clear all of this content and have a couple of hours left over for learning some heroics.
My vote is for normal Terrace and Heart of Fear clears. I like the idea of doing heroics, but not with 5.2 so close. We're likely to get more upgrades from normal modes with the time we have left.
I agree with running ToES/HoF to gear people up/get achieves.
Would also like to see pulls done a little faster then they have been, as Muta pointed out. I would gladly drop feasts, but I'm not a vet raider =(
Doh! Time for some ranks review.
Maybe you should have been online on Monday night! HMMM
;D
For Science!
I was busy drinking fine craft brews with my brother while catching up on last years F1 races.
Oh, I meant Serelyn. I was gonna promote him and Bluepea on Monday, but they both had better things to do! :)
Thanks for taking care of that, Muta. It was definitely time.
For Science!
I appreciate all the posts here. It's very helpful to know what everyone wants to do. Thanks for starting this Aanvil!
We did very well in Terrace on Thursday and we're primed to clear out Heart of Fear on Monday. Given that we should have time after both instances are cleared, we should do some Heroic modes in Mogu'shan Vaults on Monday too!
I think we are absolutely capable of getting at least four of them down, the real question is where to start? Which will take the least effort? That one is hard to say. Elegon is actually the one with the least mechanics changes. That doesn't mean it's the easiest, since all the numbers go up, but it would require the least strategy changes.
So let's do Elegon!
For Science!
Never got a single tier piece drop or pattern in this entire expac from raids.. even LFR. 5.2, will you be my friend?
that said I am fine w/either direction, but pref Heroic trys. What time is first pull tonight!?
I do want to kill Empress first tonight so I can get the achievement however. Also Krok... you got tier from the sha so quit whining, and patterns dropped when you were gone.. doh!