My guild raids two nights a week, three hours a night. One week of the month, we have an extra night just to try to push progression but attendance for even one more night a month is iffy. Every week I have to look at the people logging in and make a decision - do I push progression or do I farm?
With the amount of rotation in the last 2 slots that I can't seem to fill with stable people, I have to spend at least one week a month just training new folks or gearing them, and then if the stars and moons align, and I have a well-geared full team that can show up two nights in a row, I'll push my luck and go for progression.
Most of the bosses we had to work on typically dropped within a night or two - for reference, Ascendant Council took maybe 2 hours. Cho'gall took about 5 hours of work total, and he was fairly difficult. Al'akir, with 2 nights work, maybe 4 hours, all said. We can kill stuff if we just get there, and have a good team.
Yet, we still have trouble pushing all farm content in one night. A full farm night would entail 12 bosses in 3 hours, if you include Baradin Hold; to leave the second night open for straight progression. I just don't think that's possible for us (yet).
There are guilds on the opposite side of course, who are raiding three to four nights a week, and man would I love the luxury of knowing that I can spend a night or two farming and devote the later half of the raid to progression (or Vice Versa).
On top of that, if I want to progress on Nefarian, I have to clear all of Blackwing Descent first, or I have to extend my lockout. This is how we got our Cho'gall kill, was by extending our lockout after killing Ascendant Council at the end of the previous raid week. I certainly am not opposed to pushing lockouts, and we did plenty of this while working on Heroic ICC but I don't know, what about those 2 people who are new? Wouldn't just one more run through BWD get them the Valor and gear to make that phase 3 go just that little bit faster? Between three different raids, and the end-wing bosses buried behind several bosses each, and in Bastion of Twilight, behind a ton of trash, timing is tight if you're raiding two nights a week.
And let me take a minute here to say, man, do I hate the elemental trash before Council. godDAMN that trash is annoying. I know how to pull it now and I can do it in about 5 minutes, but learning how to pull quickly without getting half the raid killed was annoying as hell.
Sitting at 11/12, I have to decide, do I make killing Cho'gall and Al'akir weekly a priority just to give clothies a shot at tier shoulders (which seems to be the only viable epic slot for priests and mages) or do I push for Nefarian? I cannot do both. And those shoulders will help on Nefarian won't they?
All said and done, these are interesting problems to have. With guilds collapsing or not being able to raid at all due to lack of interest or whatever, I'm happy to progress and kill bosses and get gear. I'd rather have these problems.
What's your method for pulling the elemental trash before the Ascendant Council? I, too, hate that trash with a blazing passion. Or rather I hate the water/fire eles. The earth/air eles just require a tank swap. However no matter how speedy things are the water eles always manage to get at least one aoe cast off before their shield is down.
ReplyDeleteThat portion of the guide should go up on Monday when I post the full Ascendant Council guide with it, but briefly, here's how we do it:
ReplyDeleteIt is imperative to pull fire first, and have everyone group up near the entrance where the tanks can stand to pull without drawing agro. When the fire add casts a fire patch, you know where it will land - right near the pull-zone.
After that, the tank with the fire elementals pulls back into a safe area and the second tank picks up a water elemental and drags it through the patch, dispelling the bubble and you are immediately able to start interrupting the AoE.
As you said, earth and air are very easy and you don't even need to pull them together, you can pull them individually and just have tank swaps - this is what we do in fact, very quickly, just to thin out the adds and then we can pull the fire and water adds more leisurely.