The Weekly Marmot - Ragnaros and the Rest of Us

[Rowdy]

The "kill your own and spread" method hasn't been very successful either for us yet.

Its possible, just keep practicing it We had the same issues and have no problems with that phase anymore at all. The fight just needs you to dump triple digit tries into it.

If you could post your usual setup, maybe I could give some additional advice (via PM or so)

[Varst]

The thing that's killing me, and my guild, right now is the fact that class balance changes in 4.3 would probably net us a H Ragnaros kill. My guild currently runs under a "Bring the player not the class" mentality. We managed to get 6/7 H pre nerf but right now are dps is just a few seconds too slow to push through phases smoothly to make phase 4 easier. Not to mention getting rag to 10% having him wait to go into phase 4 because he's casting is annoying as all hell. NO RAG YOU SUBMERGE AT 10% NOT 7%.

One of healers is actually switching classes just because his priest can't keep up. While I do enjoy a difficult fight I feel to some extent some guilds are having a harder time due to composition than mechanics.

[leethaxor]

I feel to some extent some guilds are having a harder time due to composition than mechanics.

Comp is very important, on 10man its almost as important as knowing the strat.... It punishingly hard with any healers other then Holy Pally, Resto Druid. I know we ran resto shaman/Hpally at some points in progression, and the affect is noiticable.

You need a good class doing dreadflame, YES good class. I don't care if they are the best fury warrior on the planet they cannot move as fast as a mage, shaman, hunter, or rogue and just get plan out classed for this job.

[Desuka]

I think a problem with the idea that Heroics are super hard and only the super elite should be able to kill the final guy on Heroic is how Blizz is treating heroics not just as a 'come see how tough you are" tier but as progression. To the developers, Firelands isn't 7 bosses; it's 14. The idea is that you progress from regular Shannox towards normal Majordomo to normal Rag, then progress to Heroic Shannox towards Heroic Domo and then Heroic Rag.

So my raiding guild wants to work on the current boss for a couple weeks, kill him, then move on to the next one. Because that's fun! Learning bosses is fun, wiping is fun, killing bosses is fun. Raiding is fun. This process needs to last a raiding guild from the week the patch hits till the next patch hits, or there's nothing to do and the guild will fall apart. But when the progression movement leads us directly into Heroic Rag which is apparently a god tier boss that only the greatest of players are supposed to kill.... that's disheartening. What are we supposed to do until Dragon Soul hits? We love raiding, we don't mind wiping, but like Lore says in the Marmot.... Once you wipe enough times on such a tight fight.... it just starts being frustrating and not so fun. With the next patch a month or more away, what are you to do?


I'm not necessarily saying that having the Heroic versions directly be a part of progression is a bad thing, but we identify ourselves as raiders, and we've gotten to Heroic Rag, but apparently it's not meant for us. It's not time for Dragon Soul yet though, so what are we supposed to do with our raid?

[Trahvolta]

Lore, people are still getting hit by lava waves? o.O

[Dabeefmaster]

Comp is very important, on 10man its almost as important as knowing the strat.... It punishingly hard with any healers other then Holy Pally, Resto Druid. I know we ran resto shaman/Hpally at some points in progression, and the affect is noiticable..

We're in the same boat (see my post above). We are forced to use resto shaman/disc priest and while they seem to be able to deal with things so far we just don't have the AoE to get seeds down. We've intermittently tried the kill your own method and that seems to go worse for us. We have the possibility of taking a pally who is playing as ret for this fight and put her back holy, then making one of the other two healers go DPS but the priest hasn't ever played shadow and the shaman has a very mediocre enhance set. We're up to about 150 tries I think now, but we're still stuck on seeds and can usually only make it through 2 or 3 seeds.

If we had a different composition I'm sure we'd be farther along but it's getting super frustrating to spend entire raid nights wiping to the same mechanic every time. At this point, morale is so low and possibility of burnout so high we seem likely to be spending some time to go back and finish the T11 drake achievements.

[Ion]

We're in the same boat (see my post above). We are forced to use resto shaman/disc priest and while they seem to be able to deal with things so far we just don't have the AoE to get seeds down. We've intermittently tried the kill your own method and that seems to go worse for us. We have the possibility of taking a pally who is playing as ret for this fight and put her back holy, then making one of the other two healers go DPS but the priest hasn't ever played shadow and the shaman has a very mediocre enhance set. We're up to about 150 tries I think now, but we're still stuck on seeds and can usually only make it through 2 or 3 seeds.

That's all you should need...2 or 3. If you're not getting it in 3 it's pretty dubious that you'll have enough DPS to get through P3 without too many meatballs (1 is ideal, 2 is ok, much past that you're probably screwed).

Also, the idea that you need to AoE down seeds seems to be a common misconception. We have virtually no AoE...we just spread out (you need to assign very specific spots so that you are reasonably far from each other so as not to buff the elementals) and kill our own. I'm dubious that any comp without a moonkin (and perhaps a bop'd demo lock) can seriously expect to AoE the elementals in P2. Our DK and spriest put some AoE on them (it's sketchy for the DK...being close without being TOO close), but they're mostly handled individually (bursty classes (like me, enh shaman, and our mage) will help the healers').

[leethaxor]

That's all you should need...2 or 3. If you're not getting it in 3 it's pretty dubious that you'll have enough DPS to get through P3 without too many meatballs (1 is ideal, 2 is ok, much past that you're probably screwed).

Also, the idea that you need to AoE down seeds seems to be a common misconception. We have virtually no AoE...we just spread out (you need to assign very specific spots so that you are reasonably far from each other so as not to buff the elementals) and kill our own. I'm dubious that any comp without a moonkin (and perhaps a bop'd demo lock) can seriously expect to AoE the elementals in P2. Our DK and spriest put some AoE on them (it's sketchy for the DK...being close without being TOO close), but they're mostly handled individually (bursty classes (like me, enh shaman, and our mage) will help the healers').

Hi arcane mage, shadow priest, aff lock, MM Hunter... We do it every week.

We get a little help from Earthquake (ele shaman, and our tanks DnD)

[Karoht]

Just my personal take on the instance. My guild runs 10 man exclusively, if it matters.
6/7 Normal? We spent something like 10 attempts per boss to get them down initially, with the exception of Rhyolith because he was buggy and they kept changing him all the time. Took us 1 week or so to get 6/7.
Took a full week (might have been two) for us to get Rags on normal. I can't put my finger on exactly what mechanics were delaying us so much, but he was a bit of a jump in difficulty for us.
6/7 Heroic. Barring a few guild related issues, we blasted through 6/7 pretty quickly and easily.
H Rags? Spent about 4 weeks on him, we've only barely made it to meteor phase, once. And when I say 4 weeks, I mean we literally kill 6/7 in under 2 hours, and spend the rest of our week on Rags.

There is a significant jump in difficulty, no question. Don't get me wrong, I actually enjoy H rags, except of course the attitudes of others that come with not making progress. I don't have a suggestion on what needs to be done though.

How much of wow's raiding population saw H Sinestra while she was current? Any idea how that compares to H Rags?

[Ion]

Hi arcane mage, shadow priest, aff lock, MM Hunter... We do it every week.

We get a little help from Earthquake (ele shaman, and our tanks DnD)

I replied in SB, but I'll reiterate it here for ... everyone that's not leethaxor heh:

I'm not saying that you CAN'T or even SHOULDN'T do it...I'm just saying that it's not NECESSARY to do it, and that it'll probably be easier for most people to NOT AoE it, especially if they don't have a moonkin.

I've just been seeing a lot of people talking about trouble with P2 and it can probably largely be avoided by not bothering to try to AoE the elementals down.

[klausi]

and that it'll probably be easier for most people to NOT AoE it, especially if they don't have a moonkin.

Moonkin looks awesome at first.. but with some thoughts any frost dk (capable of hitting howling blast up to five times in a row with enough haste..), hunter (both speccs) or demo warlock can keep up. I helped another group out some weeks ago with their spread tactic and it just looks way less reliable to me. They weren't capable of instagib those lonely adds and had them alive during world in flames. We regulary just aoe them down with four strong aoe classes and two dps regulary not dealing with them at all (eg that poor melee, unless he isn't fixated). If you have two paladins present (or playing with a ret) you can also use bop twice to avoid getting fixated and even have that melee assist on bombing if necessary. And don't underestimate your tanks damage, with heroic leap + thunderclap (rend spread) + shockwave i contribute about ~ 10% of the total damage dealt to molten elementals on every kill.