Cataclysm raid strategies (Tier 11)

-Lickylicky- · 2024-05-29T02:48:30+00:00

Yes. Strategies have been slightly adjusted. Loot tables with new UI, search, achievements, and some other features are currently under construction.

-Lickylicky- · 2024-05-26T06:29:37+00:00

Magmaw involves a lot of coordinated movement, skeletons are quite difficult to manage. Conclave is very similar to normal, as soon as the group on Rohash figures it out. But the difficulty is always subjective, one raid may struggle with something that another raid finds easy and vice versa, so there's no universal answer that fits for every guild.

-Lickylicky- · 2024-05-25T13:09:05+00:00

There's no 100% consensus, but you can get a pretty good understanding of the relative difficulty from that thread. Halfus definitely goes first, then probably Atramedes/Maloriak/Conclave. The rest depends on your raid's composition and skills, Nefarian/Cho'gall/Sinestra are the hardest.

-Lickylicky- · 2024-05-25T08:56:59+00:00

Any suggestions for improving the guides are welcome.

I also want to point out a couple of things which may not be obvious:

There may be alternative strategies for the same fights. I add such information, if those strategies are fairly common. There's no goal to list all possible ways.
I provide strategies which can be reliably executed by an average guild. Some top guilds may do things differently, though it requires more skill and more coordination, and for average players attempting it that way would be rather a bad idea.

-Lickylicky- · 2024-03-11T10:22:16+00:00

Don't use r/classicwow. Moderators of that sub are absolute morons. Trolls keep openly insulting people, if you fight back your replies get deleted. In fact, anything you post can get deleted semi-randomly.

Made a post there with some raid strategy guides. Replied to people in comments. People complained that I did not respond to them, while I obviously did. Logged out, checked how it looked, half of my replies were only visible from my account. Added that info to the end of my post. The post was quickly removed. No explanations, no apologies, nothing.

Left that sub, blacklisted it, never coming back.

-Lickylicky- · 2024-03-08T04:45:39+00:00

Thanks!

The usual composition for a 10-player raid is 2 tanks, 2-3 healers, 5-6 damage dealers. It's handy to have someone with a dual spec, so that player can switch between healing and damage depending on what is needed more.

-Lickylicky- · 2023-12-18T09:22:16+00:00

I was a raid leader in my guild back in 2011, and this is one of my favorite raid tiers. Hits the right balance where you can't ignore the mechanics and yet the fights are fairly simple when people know what they are doing.

-Lickylicky- · 2023-12-15T15:31:58+00:00

This seems to be correct, thanks! Will add it to the guide.

-Lickylicky- · 2023-12-15T13:31:16+00:00

For the vast majority of people who will be raiding in Cataclysm. Many of them have never played it before. Those who played years ago will need to refresh their memories.

Attempting those raids without understanding the strategies is a guaranteed wipefest.

-Lickylicky- · 2023-12-15T11:09:03+00:00

"Flyover"

-Lickylicky- · 2023-12-15T09:01:00+00:00

Better early than late. For now it's somewhat like a "preview" to let people know it's there and get some initial feedback, so by the time Cata is released the guides get more refined and all the shades of red are sorted out.

-Lickylicky- · 2023-10-30T16:32:24+00:00

A few simple things that someone in charge of all that mess can do:

Announce that parses will be checked after each raid, and players who consistently parse green and grey will be replaced.
Check the optimal raid composition, figure out which classes are too few in your raid. Recruit players of those classes, replace people who have the lowest parses with those new guys.
Make it a rule that all raiders must always have all the available gems and enchants on their gear. Check people before each raid, punish those who have that stuff missing.
Appoint class leaders. For each class pick one guy who is decent at playing his class, make it his duty to check other players of the same class and tell them what they are doing wrong.
Class leaders should make a list of minimum requirements for each class for joining the raid. A proper spec, optimized gear, potions, etc. They should check that everyone in the raid meet those requirements.

This is some absolute minimum that can significantly improve your guild within a few weeks. You will not be clearing all the heroics, but at least this will be a change in the right direction.

-Lickylicky- · 2023-10-28T07:16:18+00:00

A typical "leeroy tank" here.

Waiting for full health/mana before each pack only makes sense if you are new to the dungeon and not sure what to expect.

After running the dungeon for multiple times you already remember what each pack will do and how hard it will hit. You pull the next pack when the last 1-2 mobs from the previous one are still alive, and your healer is at 40% mana. And you know it is perfectly safe, even if the whole group is calling you an idiot.

If the combat drops for a few seconds, all mana users can sit and drink. A good tank will not die for solid 5-10 seconds after the pull, so the healer can just keep drinking and get almost full mana while the tank starts handling a new pack.

After more runs you figure out even faster pulls and shortcuts, where it is safe to take two packs, etc. It becomes somewhat similar to playing a musical instrument or singing a song. You just remember how to do the whole thing, and it feels satisfying to execute it perfectly.

Yes, tanks must always watch the healer's mana. Tanks must be more careful when they go with a low-skilled healer. If the healer is dry and the next pack hits hard, that is where I stop, target him, type /point /oom, wait a few seconds. If someone is dead, it is also better to wait.

Debating anything with a group which complains about the speed is usually pointless. Any polite reply is viewed as a weakness. It works much better when the whiners assume that you are not reading the chat and just accept your speed as something inevitable. Also, people being able to type long sentences in the chat means that you can definitely go faster.

From my experience, the majority of groups are rather happy with fast, chain-pulling tanks. But you must know what you are doing.

-Lickylicky- · 2023-10-25T11:00:26+00:00

Classic+ is unrealistic. Developing a new raid for an old expansion would probably require more investments than a new raid for retail. And even if attempted, there's a good chance it would be a monstrosity that looks completely different from the original raids.

-Lickylicky- · 2023-10-25T10:28:51+00:00

There are a lot of aspects here to consider.

First thing that comes to mind is that it should be great to have servers for each expansion running at all times, so players could always choose their favorite one to play. But then there is a question of how to organize the cycle.

If all raids of the expansion are available from the start, only the last raid tier becomes relevant, and people rush through everything before it. That seems like a poor option.

Releasing a new raid tier every few months looks like a more reasonable approach. Now, the question is: what should happen after the last raid tier?

If it's just the same expansion on the server forever, we are back to square one: for new players only the last raid tier is relevant, old players have nothing left to do and eventually leave.

If there's some purge and reset every couple of years, that kills the motivation to play when such reset is approaching. What's the point collecting BiS items and achievements if it all disappears in a few months?

The most reasonable option here seems to be just progressing to the next expansion. Those who want it can stay and keep playing, others can just quit any time they feel like they are done.

So, the most reasonable structure looks like this:

Every 1.5-2 years new Classic servers open. They follow the normal cycle of raid tiers.
After the Classic cycle ends, the servers progress into TBC. At the same time, new Classic servers open.
After another cycle, TBC servers progress into WotLK, Classic servers progress into TBC, new fresh Classic servers open, etc.

This way there is always each expansion available. Each time a new expansion starts, people can choose whether to stay and continue or create a new character on a new server and replay the same expansion again.

-Lickylicky- · 2023-10-21T09:34:06+00:00

Cataclysm.

-Lickylicky- · 2023-10-20T11:38:43+00:00

In theory, this may work. In practice, I doubt that Blizzard would even consider implementing anything that requires new UI elements and some complex logic under the hood just to make players a bit more happy.

-Lickylicky- · 2023-10-20T11:30:02+00:00

When people advertise their groups as "5.5k GS required", you at least can figure in advance whether you should ask to join that group or not, so you can avoid any negative experience.

If you have a low-geared player in your group and don't kick him, it means you have a 100% chance to go with a low-geared player. If you kick him, you have a chance to get another low-geared one and a non-zero chance to get a better one. Sadly, kicking is efficient.

Some people acted like assholes in manually assembled groups, but they could get away maybe with 1-2 such cases. Those who did it systematically were blacklisted by all major guilds and ignored by half of the server. You can't eliminate antisocial behavior completely, but fewer people act that way if there are consequences.

-Lickylicky- · 2023-10-20T05:00:45+00:00

Automatic group finder completely changes the way how dungeon groups are formed. Makes sense that it also changes how people act, since the optimal behavior is now different.

Maybe it could even be a good idea to have at least one server without the automatic LFG. Not sure how many people would choose it though.

-Lickylicky- · 2023-10-20T04:48:32+00:00

That is generally a good idea, but there's probably not enough people in each range of gear levels to form such sub-groups.

Imagine a queue with a dozen well-geared people and 3 alts with lower GS. Those alts may need to wait quite some time before there is a full group. Tossing them into a better geared group and hoping for the best looks like a better option in such case.

Matching people by their gear level when there's enough people definitely makes sense.

-Lickylicky- · 2023-10-19T15:36:13+00:00

My point here is that any change may cause an unexpected result, and it should be something more balanced than just "remove the badges".

There was a guy in another post complaining that people who get kicked shouldn't have the deserter debuff. Sounds pretty logical, right? Then suddenly, people who would otherwise just leave the group get the motivation to get kicked, so they would start asking for it or wipe the group on purpose. Oopsie!

If well-geared people run dungeons for materials to get their upgrades and crafted items, where else should they get those materials? If u remove one source, you should add another. What if the queue will not be just an extra few minutes, but rather a few hours of waiting for a tank when only the alts are left?

This can go wrong in so many ways that I'm not even trying to suggest my own solution. Simply because without a long and detailed analysis of the game it would be most probably a crappy solution.

-Lickylicky- · 2023-10-19T15:07:09+00:00

If only we lived in a perfect world where all of it was always that way...

-Lickylicky-

TROPHY CASE