Greedy Goblin

Monday, January 18, 2010

ICC5 normal cleared in blues

The undergeared guild made its first step in its progress towards clearing all raiding content of WotLK in blue gear*: cleared FoS, PoS and HoR in normal modes. There were no wipes and we were not even close to wipe, except when someone messed it up badly (like I did at Brohnjarm). I thought we go to HC instantly but the others wanted normal first. Next week we'll try HC.

For the first time I downloaded gearscore addon. My current gear has 3298 pt. Back when I was healing Ulduar 10 in blues, I had 3067. And still, two ilvl219 contents (ICC5 and U10) went down. It's unlikely that my gear will grow. There are some items that would add 1-2 DPS, but I definitely won't farm for them. The others had the same level of gear. And as the logs below prove, 3K DPS was the #1 position, and not 800. If someone damage below 1.5K, he is not undergeared. He is a moron. In blues you should be doing 2K+. And no one (besides us) runs around in blues. Even my mother is full epic and she doesn't even play WoW.

Brohnjarm log
Devourer of souls log
Gearmaster Garfrost log
Ick and Krick log
Scourgelord Tyrannus log
Falric log
Marwyn log
Arthas event log1, log2, log3

As it was announced in the recruitment, these are new or previously unused characters, with no significant experience, simulating the "newb" state as much as possible. We do group play once a week and don't farm any content. The ICC5 run was firstkill for all of us:

ICC5 normal is a well known farming spot for beginners, we also gained lot of great loot.


We have enough players for 10-man raiding, but I have serious doubts that those lowbies you can see in the guild will grow up in large number enough to raid 25 mans. So there are still spots for you! If you also want to prove that gearscore means nothing unless one does hard modes of the most recent content, if you want to prove that no-life is not necessary for raiding, transfer or create a new alt. We'll rotate in every able raider to our raids, so you won't be sitting outside. Detailed recruitment here.

And those naysayers who claim ICC25 can't be done in blues, I have one more thing to prove: that Blizzard will make it available. They will nerf it enough that everyone who bothers to sign up for any raid in his badge gear gathered in 5-mans will have ICC cleared. And we will have it cleared too. We'll just have much less (practically zero) farming and much more challenge. Remember, there is no tankspot article on raiding in blues: we'll figure it all out by ourselves.


* blue gear means rare items. The only exceptions are:
  • engineering head. I have no idea why it's epic when the JC and alchemy trinkets are blue. It's available at lvl72, so I really don't see the point.
  • "epic" leg enchant. It would make tailoring or LW mandatory to enforce "blue only". It's not a huge buff and its materials are farmable without doing any "epic" content.
  • PvP shoulder enchant: most of its points are wasted in resilience. It just saves the very lazy from hodir quest chain.
  • head enchants (heirloom now)
  • TBC epics, except Hyjal, BT or SWP

PS: before someone would give me the "gear makes the run faster" crap: yes, but you must farm for that gear first. Running 5-mans zillion times for T9 won't be repaid by the saved minutes and few prevented wipes.

51 comments:

Anonymous said...

I really, really, really doubt that you're going to clear ICC10.

First couple bosses? Not impossible. Saurfang and up? Not a chance in hell. Even with the faction buff, there is only so much skill can do. After a point, gear will start holding you back. Numbers WILL stop you. And if you're honestly waiting on a nerf, you're probably going to be waiting until Cataclysm.

And I don't know about you, but that doesn't really count.

Jeanie said...

"And those naysayers who claim ICC25 can't be done in blues, I have one more thing to prove: that Blizzard will make it available. They will nerf it enough that everyone who bothers to sign up for any raid in his badge gear gathered in 5-mans will have ICC cleared"

Well, this time, Blizzard wont nerf the encouter, instead they will buff the players ....

Anonymous said...

Hey Gevlon, do you still have low level members too? I'm thinking about joining your project as a paladin tank. Leveling with instances, so said. If there are still low level guildies I will have to deal less with morons in pugs. Then I can level faster and maybe get some gear and start tanking.

Gevlon said...

Yes, I still take members of any level. You cost me nothing until you get a decent blue set, so why not? If you get bored in winterspring, one more inactive I'll kick a month from now.

Unknown said...

I don't think you've got a shot at saurfang. Even if you switch in 2 disc priests for bubbles, so that he absolutely NEVER gets any blood power, you're still going to hit the 8 minute enrage timer. I mean, you said your mage is in blues doing 2k? Even if you buff him well, he can pull maybe 3.2k. As a mage. That means you'll see 2.8k from many other dps... I don't know, gevlon. That's not ICC material.

Anonymous said...

Gevlon, you can upload the log from a whole playing session to WoL and just pick the single fight to link to it. No need to type /combatlog before and after every bossfight.

This would make the logs more interesting to look at because it'd show the whole run including trash and wipes (if there were any).

ToboId said...

"ICC5 normal is a well known farming spot for beginners, we also gained lot of great loot."

Given the goals of the guild, what do you actually do with the loot?

Unknown said...

As for ICC10, I believe Lord Marrowgar is doable, since there is no enrage.
Lady Deathwhisper - very hard, but most likely doable.
Gunship battle - of course doable, since the encounter barely relies on gear.
Saurfang - no way.
Plagueworks - no way.
But the point that these encounters could become doable because of future nerfs, still holds. I imagine that Saurfang could get nerfed to a point that his energy generation is like 50% lower, and the encounter requires like 2.5k dps to clear, etc.
But the first thing:
Good luck on HoR heroic :)

Lisa Treadway said...

Congratulations!

I look forward to seeing how far you guys get in the Icecrown raids. :)

Anonymous said...

I think the AC is a tad right where ICC10 is concerned.

Marrowgar? Yes. Lady Death - Probably. Though it'd be close to enrage. Gunship? Probably might it might be a bit dicky on the tank who goes over - the enemy boss hits hard and bleeds. Saurfang - probably not. ONLY because of the mechanics of the fight. Adds need to die in order to stop blood power being generated. And when Mark of the Fallen Champion happens (and it will) your healing will need to be higher as its a fixed amount of damage to the target, not a percentage.

Other than that best of luck! Its great to see people challenging new content besides the tired old "I am first, therefore I was challenged the most."

Gevlon said...

@Anonymous: I did uploaded the whole log, I just selected the bossfights for you. You can see the whole log there.

@Robert: have you clicked on the "loot" link?

Zeran said...

First, better gear makes it easier and allows room for errors, which it's only human to make.

Second, as it stands now, they don't have a shot at ICC raids. However, their not doing ICC as it is now. They'll do it after it's nerfed and depending on the nerfs it gets, they'll clear it.

Finally, grats on the 2nd ilvl 219 content cleared.

Wildhorn said...

Well, the engineering googles are epic to allow an higher item budget to the item. That is the only reason it is epic.

Xaxziminrax II said...

@Naysayers

If none of you have actually done the math, why bother posting "it cant be done"? You prove nothing.

Someone post some math for Saurfang, I dare you.

Dun said...

any problems with people who cant speak english? understanding is no prob... speaking is a prob for me ;)

Gevlon said...

@Dun: since we have NO VOICE COMMUNICATION, if you can read and write English, you are good to go!

Leeho said...

Would be interesting to see is if unbalance on that level of gear will be important or not. I mean, Blizzard devs clearly balance game only for top level of gear and content. When they apply some patches to talents and abilities, they doesn't take in consideration will it make, say, warrior tank inferior to bear tank in best blues available, taking ICC debuff in consideration, or no. I'm pretty sure that this imbalance does exist, and there are some classes and specs that are better in blues now. But how much better, it's interesting to know. I just think that you've posted that race selection is important, but class selection may be way more important here, and harder to make.

Unknown said...

@Xaxziminrax the Second

Some basic maths about Saurfang:
In case of *perfect* execution (he leaches 0 health), the minimum dps required to make it in the 8 min enrage is his health + add waves = 10 million. 10m/480 = 20.8k dps.
I won't go into all possible class/spec setups, but that's something that not sustainable as blue geared, especially since GCDs need to be "wasted" on kiting adds, tanks can't go full rotation, since they can't afford to aoe aggro adds, etc.
Of course, I may be wrong.

Enthion said...

Saurfang has a 3631 dps requirement, not counting tanks. Easily doable.

Festergut 25 has a ~7094 dps requirement (this includes epic geared tanks who can do around 4k here). This is not possible in it's un nerfed state.

It'll have to be a pretty drastic nerf to get drop the requirement by over half.

Anonymous said...

Well I doubt they will nerf the content, but as new content is released, blizzard has stated that there will be a zone wide buff to improve players damage/stats or whatever so that will probably help.

Dread said...

So is the new system going to even let you into the ICC 5 man heroics?

Anti said...

with all the abyss crystals gained i wonder if Gevlon can work a profit on this deal :)

Anonymous said...

I seriously doubt you will be able to get by the 1st wave of trash in ICC25. This whole idea is nonsense to begin with and I think you are in for a world of hurt.

Gevlon, why don't you just join a guild and do it like everyone else. You don't need to be in a top tier guild to enjoy yourself and be part of the team. I know there is a closet social in you that can't wait to bust out and with your previous raid experience there isn't a reason that you couldn't be a valuable memeber of any raid team - possibly even a raid leader.

Forget this blue stuff it is all rubbish and will be destine for failure after failure.

Roger said...

@Dread: The gear requirement is only for LFD, and I don't think they're running pugs. :)

Kraazy said...

So it's ok to lose 1 or 2 dps here and there because you don't want to "farm content" or you don't want to do the actual rep farming to get the better enchants for head/shoulder, but it's not acceptable to roll an undead dps? I do believe that is hypocritical of you. If it's you that it pertains too, it's not a big deal I'm sure right? If it doesn't, than they are wrong you are right? Hmm.....

Saturas said...

Dread

It only doesnt let you enter, if you are using the LFG tool.
If you group up, then go there like before, you can go in.

Gevlon said...

@Kraazy: it IS acceptable to roll undead DPS. It's just silly. I won't exclude anyone for being undead. I exclude them for having low DPS. Selecting the "proper" race is just a click if you make a new character.

Unknown said...

@Anonymous@18 January, 2010 14:54

You seriously overestimate the strenght of the first trashwave, since I can solo first 10m trash wave on my prot paladin, not even overgeared for 10m, since I pretty much don't do 25m raids. Yes, ICC trash is exactly that hard!
If you think the first trash wave in 25m is so strong that 1 tank tanking 1 of the trashies can't be healed by 2-3 blue healers... no comments :)
Of course, the trash clearing for blue geared won't be such aoe fest as it is for 232+ geared people, it will involve very careful CC, more wipes, etc.
Triggering the 'who goes there' guys is another story tho :) But these also can't be undoable with at least 4 blue tanks sharing cleave.

Hesston said...

@Anonymous "doubter"

Wow, way to completely miss the point. Good job on not being able to see past your own nose.

Anonymous said...

Is there any particular reason the shaman never used Bloodlust?

Good luck with ICC, I think you will not beat Lady Deathwhisper in her current state. You will have a very hard time killing the adds before too many mutate, mutation means even more damage needed.

Perhaps it's possible to go all out on her mana and try to tank the adds into phase2, dunno :-)

Looking forward to your reports, go Ungeared go!

Dartol said...

Wow...a guildie posted this on our website and I thought "Great, now all the morons/kiddies/whatever will have to bite their tongues when they go on and on about GS being all that matters"...except that they still won't care or read things like this (at least not pay attention). A couple posted in here too I think...

Way to prove that it's more about the skill than the gear.

Grats and happy Raiding/Killing!!

Anonymous said...

Congratulations and looking forward to your report on the heroic versions of the same dungeons!

Iiene of Kul Tiras said...

What's important to note is that you didn't have 800DPS wonders in your group because there are none in your guild, you didn't have them because:

1) You clearly laid out the requirements for becoming 'raider'.

2) You tested the applicants on the test dummy as part of the process, so you could verify that they DID have a viable rotation and could use it.

3) You made it clear that raid performance would be monitored.


It's NOT that your group was so good that it could clear it in blues, it was that your group had no slackers in it.

The problem with your presentation of the "Undergeared Project" is that it says "Blues are good enough", instead of "Blues are good enough if you don't allow slackers to raid"

Raiders don't keep slackers out of raids... Raid leaders do. THOSE are the people you should be putting on the carpet with this project, not slackers who do 800DPS.

The Gnome of Zurich said...

The US side has one raider ready so far. He's a dk who was doing 2500 unbuffed on a dummy, and close to 3k when I put on leader of the pack.

He cranked over 3000 in a random heroic with my bear tanking, both overall and on each of two single-target bosses. I gave him two enchants after the fight, and he was missing a few other prof based upgrades, did not have his leg armor yet, nor full BiS blue, etc.

4k should be doable for him if we stack buffs correctly, and I think that may be enough. All we need is 5 (or 15) others who can do the same, along with the equivalent for tanks and healers, and we should be able to do ToC10 for sure and have a real shot at ICC10 or some 25s.

Enthion said...

"The problem with your presentation of the "Undergeared Project" is that it says "Blues are good enough", instead of "Blues are good enough if you don't allow slackers to raid"

I feel like that is the point. There are two excuses bad players use :

1) I dont have time
2) I dont have gear

After clearing ICC25 on a casual raiding schedule + geared with blues, both of those are ruled out. The only reason left for them (or the guildies boosting them) is

3) I am not skilled.

Eaten by a Grue said...

Liene,

I do not understand the distinction you are drawing. The point is - blues are good enough. It is understood that this means that everything else (i.e. player skill level, class/race combos, builds, rotations) can be optimized to the hilt. This obviously means that slackers are not allowed, as there is no room for error.

Anonymous said...

@ liene

slackers = bad;

non-slackers = ??? (Personally i'd go with good, but hey that is just me)

Why should a raid leader be put on the spot for an idiot that only pulls 800 dps?

Any decent raid leader wouldn't bring such a person.

And it seems you are suggesting that 800dps is ok since they won't be in your group if you have good raid leader.

Its like saying a known rapist in your friends group irl is ok as long as you don't actually have to interact with him, but merely hear of his exploits on the grapevine.

But that makes no difference compared to the real moron group that this project is hitting, which is the 'but i'm not geared enough for X' (in ilvl232-245 epics).

Anonymous said...

You absolutely will NOT do Saurfang or beyond in blues. It is, in it's current state, mathematically impossible with your 2.8k top dps.

Plus, you said that was the TOP dps, not the bottom dps. So your group average is even lower.

Yes, blizzard may nerf this encounter into the ground and you may then get it down in 6 months to a year... but.."yay"? What's the point. It still won't be you proving that Blues are good enough to do current raid content. It will be blizzard nerfing the heck out of it to make it possible for scrubs (and your blue guild). It will be Blizzards doing, not your doing.

And to top if all off... this project is 100% pointless since the end verdict (if you can do it or not) can be achieved with a bunch of basic math in very little time.

Anonymous said...

And to top if all off... this project is 100% pointless since the end verdict (if you can do it or not) can be achieved with a bunch of basic math in very little time.

Once upon a time some bright people did advanced math and came to the conclusion that things like Hodir hardmode or Yogg without watchers was "mathmatically impossible" at the time but there were raids trying it anyway and finding solutions.

Only if you try and fail you know it is impossible, and even then i bet a couple guys remain hope.

This project is not pointless at all. Silly maybe ;), pointless not so much.

Unknown said...

[quote]Yes, blizzard may nerf this encounter into the ground and you may then get it down in 6 months to a year... but.."yay"? What's the point. It still won't be you proving that Blues are good enough to do current raid content. It will be blizzard nerfing the heck out of it to make it possible for scrubs (and your blue guild). It will be Blizzards doing, not your doing.[/quote]

That is also exactly their point: to proof that Blizzard will nerf the encounters to a level that *anyone* (ok, maybe not a raid full of uber-retards) will be able to do it. The content will be current all they way till Cataclysm even if nerfed down for 2k dps required, etc.
In 6 months, even to most uber slackers will have accumulated enough frost emblems to have at least 2-3 frost emblem pieces. I predict that /2 will be full of "LFM ic10 w achiment and ned over 5.7k gs!!!!11 or ignore!!!1", when in reality it will be most likely doable comfortably even in 4.2k or so average gearscore geared group. Now they want to push the limit even higher, and do it around ~3.1k average. Even if they don't do a full clear until Cata, whatever bosses they *will* have killed, just will prove the point that "endgame" content is a joke. And that it does not really help to have a 5.7k gs Death Knight dps in your raid that '*accidently* lol-deathgripped' raid boss and died, while doing the sky-high 3.3k dps for that gear the first minute of the enounter.

Anonymous said...

@Last anonymous:
In theory you can calculate that. However, it would take a long time to calculate just the effect of all the buffs the group brings. Not to talk about procs of spells. If you put 10 characters together, their dps is not just what they did solo added up. They will most likely get higher crit, attack power, spell power, haste, and other stats from buffs and effects. So 3k top dps might get to 4k, or even higher. It's way too much work to calculate all those buffs and effects, plus you can't know how often things will proc, you can only guess a rough number of times, while a group may get lucky on an encounter.

TLTR: You cannot calculate if it's possible or not. There are too much unknown factors witch may effect calculations. Plus that you don't know if some group combinations work better then others with blue gear. Add healers? Add dps instead? Let a hunter kite tank? Those things may aswell influence your calculations.

Foo said...

Some members of our guild just wiped in Heroic Halls of Relfection, and the claim has been made that they just need more gear. I called them on it. So I have two questions.

How much gear would be required to clear ICC5 Herioc without a wipe?

When do you think you will clear ICC5 Herioc in blue gear?

Ladron de la Noche said...

Festergut 25 has 40,440,500 hp. In order to beat him before the five minute enrage timer is up all 25 members must do at least 5,392 dps. The fight requires two tanks and is currently presents a challenge for five geared healers, so you need to account for that as well. If I'm generous and say that your tanks will put out 3k dps over the course of the fight, all 18 of your dps will need to do over 2,146,694 damage each to Festergut, which comes out to approximately 7,156 dps.

Good luck, you're going to need it.

Iiene of Kul Tiras said...

Anonymous, (Assuming that's your real name)

"Why should a raid leader be put on the spot for an idiot that only pulls 800 dps?"

Because he let him in the raid.

You're missing the point. People that do 800 DPS don't know that they do 800 DPS. Sure, they have a clue that their DPS is 'A little low" but that's just because they "Don't have enough gear". In their mind, they're pulling their weight.

Why don't they know they do 800DPS? Because they don't monitor their own performance. The use excuses like "I don't know how to use addons", or "Addons make my machine crash."

And yet, in fail guilds all over, these people get into raids.

The guy who does 800DPS and is enabled to do so by a social guild that won't call him to the carpet has no incentive to read about a bunch of guys in blues.

For EVERY guild that raids, there is a person or persons who dictates policy on "Who gets to raid". The onus of qualification is on THEM, because they have the incentive to bring able raiders, and the responsibility to shun non-able raiders.

The way to turn a non-able into an able with the least drama and effort is to set clear qualification goals.

In social parlance, the barrier to the non-able is then shifted from ambiguous details like "My computer won't run addons" to simple performance that every able raider does easily.

Unknown said...

@ Ladron de la Noche

Dps needed for 25man Fester is just 1 side of the coin.
I have no clue how is a blue geared tank going to survive even 2 inhales long enough for healers to even land some heals. Not to mention that CDs do not last full duration of 3rd inhale.
I really doubt that even for 10m Fester, blue tank can last longer than 30 sec with blue healers (who have to raid heal like mad too).

Noak said...

Gevlon-
I'm a US player, is it possible to join this project anyway? I have a good latency on US servers, but most likely it will be high on a EU server if it's even possible to get in one.

Anonymous said...

I think everyone is jumping the gun here. I seriously doubt that the blue team can get further than Nax. Even with the nerfs, Uldaur has not been cleared by most purple guilds since they jumped straight into Toc / Ony for upgrades.

That is a lot of fights to learn and I am "sure" Gevlon's guild will disband around Freya due to Gev's head imploding from frustration, if not sooner - probably Ignis if they don't pick and choose.

Here are my predictions assuming these will be 25 man Raids.

Os - Yes
Nax - Yes
EoE - No
Uldaur - No
Ony - ?
Toc - ?
Togc - No
ICC - No

Wiggin said...

I think this experiement brings to light how the gear system in wow works, and maybe is deficient.

Once you become 80, once you start to experience "end game content" it is no longer perception, purple is everything literally. There is no iLVL blue gear post 200.

From the standpoint of Gelvon and his blue raiders, this puts them at a severe disadvantage to regular raidings not adhearing to the "blue only" goal. Regular raiders get upgrades for each level of content they complete, while these blue raiders have only more difficult challenges ahead of them.

Then again, these people are the exception. If raids started dropping iLVL 250 purples and blues, people would throw a fit.

Joakim said...

Last Anonymous: A blue-geared team has already cleared Ulduar before, Gevlon was in it. That's what inspired this whole challenge.

Anonymous said...

Ulduar has already been cleared with blue gear. That's the thing which gave Gevlon the spark to start this project.

Anonymous said...

PS: before someone would give me the "gear makes the run faster" crap: yes, but you must farm for that gear first. Running 5-mans zillion times for T9 won't be repaid by the saved minutes and few prevented wipes.


But if you equip the epics you get from clearing 5-mans and heroics(without farming! You did clear Icecrown 5-mans and will try raids later) you're not farming them, right? ;)