Raid = Tough !

Hi,

It took a while, a lot of practise and a whole lot of DB.com reading, but I think my main team (Paladin Tank + Shaman Healer + 3 x Elemental Shamans) now does pretty well. We have most heroics down, with several of them on farm, and the gear is slowly improving. Most importantly, I am having a lot of fun. Here is the armory link of my tank and one DPS, for illustration purposes.

Now, with an online friend of mine getting his 5 x Druids team to 80, I thought we could try to run a raid. I crafted him five full rare/epic (two epic pieces of armor + maces) sets, gave him a bit of time to practice, and the we headed to Naxxramas, spider wing since it seemed to be the easiest.

The trash was easy. Then we arrived on the first boos, the big evil-beetle-looking thing. We just could not beat him ... So we changed wing, went to the plague side. Easy trash until we got to these two gargoils keeping a passage. When they get to 30% life, they cast a spell that will regenerate them completely if they are not killed during the 7s it takes to cast. We could never beat these two ...

The whole thing really felt like my first time in heroic UK : no way to keep the tank standing, impression of doing no DPS at all, etc ... Does it always "feel" that way ? Am I still too short on gear to raid ? Is it all down to practicing and knowing the encounters ?

Another surprising thing : My friends caster druids were close to 3000 dps, when my shamans with supposedly much better gear couldn't reach 3500 dps (measured with the Violation addon). Am I doing something wrong, or are druids just that good ?

Thanks for any tips.

Fef

You should look at tankspot.com for raid videos, Have your friend watch them too. These videos are very good at explaining encounters and they're not just for tanks, they're for every role in your raid.

The gargoyles, everyone nukes 1 and you have to kill them before they finish the stoneskin cast. then focus the other one down. If you can't heal your tank through this, or if your DPS can't down them before they cast stoneskin, you really need more gear.

Quote:

---

The whole thing really felt like my first time in heroic UK : no way to keep the tank standing, impression of doing no DPS at all, etc ... Does it always "feel" that way ? Am I still too short on gear to raid ? Is it all down to practicing and knowing the encounters ?

---

Are you running a dedicated healer? If you are running a dedicated healer, and can't keep your tank up in heroic UK, you will really have issues in Naxx.

In think gear may be an issue, especially for your buddy. Endurance makes a huge difference on fights that are long ish and nuke powa are key to one that require the cowbell!

For the gargoyles I drop 4 healing totems and a nature resist, and spec all shaman for dps. I focus on one until it gets to just under 50%, heal up, drop fire totems and nuke.

For evil-beetle, to save me running around, I leave the group at the door and tank boss at max range (side on, not standing between boss and group, L shape). Healing is turned up when there’s an add around. If you’re able to heal the tank though insect swarm (with the add attacking someone else) then this strategy may be worth pursuing as it doesn’t require movement.

Anyway, I hope you crack it some way or another, good luck :)

Those first few steps in to Naxx are the hardest ones. Best of luck there.

Honestly though, you should not be going in to Naxx looking for gear. Farm some heroics, get some badge gear and ilvl 200 drops from there, and then head back. You'll have a much easier time of it. Bottom line, raid gear is only worth the trouble if you're pushing the stuff as soon as it comes out.

Not that I don't appreciate a good Raid Dungeon tour, mind you. I just don't suggest farming the things for upgrades.

Badge gear is now better than Naxx gear sadly. The toons that I hit 80 on after the badge changes got geared in heroics extremely fast, and my walock is now my top DPS despite his later Ding. Go run a few more heroics, and get as much of the badge gear as you can. There's still some nice gear in naxx, weapons, trinkets, shields, etc.

And next patch is gonna have ilvl 219? stuff from the new 5 man in icecrown. In regular mode. I think its ilvl 232 in heroic? Correct me if im wrong.

And the regular heroics will be dropping the triumph emblems, so you can get even better stuff pretty soon.

Also, if heroics are too tough to clear, try and do the regular daily, it's a free badge, and when you are lucky, its a lower lvl dungeon, which can help. A combo of badge gear, and BoE epics can get you from whelp to Heroic farmer soon enough.

That method is my personal favorite :)

edit: removed by me

Thank you all for the tips.

Maybe I was not clear in my OP (English is not my native language) : Heroics are not a problem anymore, I have quite a few on farm (UK, Nexus, Culling of Stratholm, Drak'tharon, Gundrak, HoL ...). This enables me to gear through badges rather rapidly. That's why I expected the first raid in order of difficulty to be rather ... easy :)

According to Furshpere's link (www.wow-heroes.com, great site, thanks), my team basically over-gears Naxx. So the problem is not here.

I guess it all comes down to strategies and practicing, then.

*heading to tankspot*

I see several problems:

1 ) Your toons lack hit rating. Farm the PvP Cloak, neck and ring for 5% extra hit rating. Lack of hit rating affects DPS way more than you think. You need around 8 - 12% hit rating to be viable in raids.
2 ) You seem to not know the boss encounters. Raid bosses usually have some kind encounter that requires a bit of extra multitasking usually.
3 ) Your mana regeneration is a bit low, but still doable. Probably you will need to use thunderstorm from time to time.
4 ) Your tank has no ardent defender talent. It's a nice wipe prevention every 2 minutes on hard fights.

Once you fix these points, get your friend and go to Patchwerk. You can reach him in naxx10 and naxx25 with your current gear and without friends help.

Get your tank and your friend tank on patch and then pew pew. Burn fire elemental totems and heroism 15 seconds after battle has started if your two tanks are still alive.

Patchwerk is a traditional tank and spank boss. If you cannot down him before enrage or you run oom during the fight, then you need to fix either your DPS or your mana regen... or beef more your tank. As for the tank I see it's ok geared, I have tanked ulduar with worse gear than yours, so it's more ebout your casters than the tank.

If you cannot kill patchwerk, you can usually forget about naxx until you gear more. As a multiboxer you will need to ignore some boses mechanics and heal through them, so that boss is just a DPS/healing/endurance test.

Very good point on the hit rating, Powerwar. I never took that into consideration, actually. I got new gear since then (chest on the casters) that comes with +hit, I will also work on changing some gems to get my hit rating higher.

Ardent Defender is also a good point. I don't remember reading about the healing part of the talent. Was is added recently ? Anyway, I respecced to include that talent.

Mana was never really an issue, except on my dedicated healer. I am now experimenting heroics without a dedicated healer, all four shamans on DPS. It is more stress. My tank used to never go under 90% life, and now he regularly drops under 50%. I don't seem to wipe more, though, and I can really feel the DPS difference on the time it take me to run a full instance.

Thanks for all the advices.

Sounds like next month you will have this beat with time spent at tankspot, tuned gear from your badges and perhaps seeing the encounters first hand with friends.

I am about a month ahead of you at ~20 or so badges with my new paladin and shaman team gear wise and working on my mixed group sidebar to a degree. I just started where you and your friend are.

While I have no doubt the druids push out a lot of damage, they are not lending a lot of synergy and have redundant group buffs. But I am sure everything is still ok. Both teams are silly efficient when geared for the content.