Greedy Goblin

Monday, May 10, 2010

LFM ToC10 5.5K GS, achie or no inv

If Gormok failed to oneshot us, Anub will surely do it. Definitely:

If you peek into the logs, you see that Jarraxus and Anub were oneshotted. The twins would be oneshotted too if the palatank wouldn't forget righteous fury. The only problems were caused by the faction champions, but that's not a surprise if you consider we run around with 16K HP full buffed.

It is widely known that ToC was easier than Ulduar. But this was meant by everyone as "ToC in Ulduar gear is easier than Ulduar in Naxx gear", while the sad truth is that ToC is significantly easier than Ulduar in the same gear. ToC is at the same difficulty as Naxx, just gives 232-245 gear. We wiped more in upper Naxx than ToC.


After ToC we oneshotted Onyxia, who is also Naxx dificulty boss:


While the WotLK content is near its end, we are still recruiting, both because it would be great to raid in 25 man, but mostly because we want to be a progression raid guild in Cataclysm, clearing recent content. Of course, only in lvl 85 blue gear.


Note: lot of readers would participate if we would be in the US. There is a branch of the project there, just had less players (we had less players at the start). Check them out!

Internal note: some readers want fraps. If any of the members could do it, I'd obviously link it. But I will definitely not spend my time making it myself

PS: Dear naysayers, you have exactly 5 more days left to keep commenting "Marrowgar cannot be done in blue gear"

PS2: don't miss Misaka's post on the WoW forums.

44 comments:

Andru said...

Marrowgar can be done in Blue Gear, Festergut can't.

Not yet anyway.


(Or maybe it is, I haven't checked the new buff in action).

Victor Praxedes said...

i just wonder why the hell people ask for so much GS and they still manage to fail.

Anonymous said...

You should fraps some of these kills. I'm sure it would be great and having a video where you kill Marrowgar in full blue gear would be a great start.

Betty said...

Marrowgar can probably be done by a guild in blues, PuG in blues? probably not.

I don't think 4/12 is possible, although that will change with the buff. I look forward to you disproving me.

Anonymous said...

righteous fury is for wimps, its more challenging with out it.....

Anonymous said...

great work. keep it up.

Onéira said...

What about Yogg? Did you manage to down it? I know it is much more difficult technically than ToC but thus a real prof that skill>gear.

@Andru: buff is now 15%, it is already really OP, and will finish at 30%. I guess any T9-10 hunter in auto shot can meet the dps requirement for Festergut

@Betty: I think the more difficult would be Saurfang because of the mark and the limitation of "healing power". But again with 20%-30% buff...

Cirian said...

Ya, actually knowing the content I would say the only fights that can not be done in blue gear would be BQL and Festergut.

There is almost no mechanics in the game on normal at this point that a blue geared team could not beat, but neither Ulduar nor TOC and flat out DPS checks, which would be the only numerical hamper of being blue geared if the skill is there.

Definitely with going as far as you can I guarantee that 8/12 ICC is most definitely doable, but unless you can significantly improve your numbers you will not be able to down Festergut.

The math is more hassle than it is worth to determine required DPS for BQL due to mechanics, but Festergut, assuming you run only two healers, and assuming your tanks can pull as much DPS as your DPSers (not too likely, but given the mechanics of this fight its maybe possible) it requres for your DPS average to be 3921.

That is 941200 HP in a 5 minute enrage timer requires a raid DPS of 31374, or with 8 members providing DPS, an average DPS per member of 3921.75. With the 15% ICC buff this requires your AVERAGE DPS from your members, with the exception of the healers but including the tanks, to be approximately 3450. This is higher than any of your DPS did on any of the fights in TOC with the exception of Twins. (for obvious reasons)

Even beyond that, while this fight is mostly a tank and spank, it does have some mechanics to lower DPS of ranged characters.

I think that if you are able to do either of those fights it wont be until the percentage bonus is a fair bit higher. Still, 8/12 is probably higher than the majority of raiding guilds get, which just goes to prove your point.

Unknown said...

The problem you'll encounter in ICC is that the DPS-check fights are actually tuned at a vaguely appropriate level (some of the Ulduar ones were too, when it was first released, but they were quickly nerfed).

For example, Festergut-10 has 9.4 million HP, and a 5 minute enrage. Given that your healers and tanks are in blue gear, I'm fairly sure you will need 3 healers in order to keep tanks and the raid up, leaving 5 DPS slots.

Your logs suggest that your tanks pull roughly 1.6k DPS and your DPS raiders 3k each. We can handwave the Festergut tank debuff as ~150% DPS per tank, so your net raid DPS, pre-ICC buff, will be roughly

(2 * 2400) + (5 * 3000) = ~20k DPS.
With the zone buff (currently at 15%), you will have ~23k DPS.

Festergut requires ~31k raid DPS to meet the enrage timer. Each DPS raider therefore needs to pull around 5.3k DPS, versus the 3k (3.45k w/ 15% buff) they are pulling in ToC.

While there are many fights in ICC that can be overcome purely with good play, Festergut and co. also require some contribution from gear, even with the self-nerfing ICC buff!

Flawlless said...

Are you going to be using the buff for ICC?

Anonymous said...

@Oneira: Yogg was the very first down for the Undergeared project, before it was even a guild. Check the post history for the undergeared category.

Gevlon said...

Yes, we of course use buff. That's normal mode.

Yogg is still inside, raid lockout extended, we'll do him later, mostly if we have to wait for buffs

Festergut people: at first the buff increase healing and tank health too, so I'm sure it can be 2-healed. While our current damage is low, it can be improved by proper raid stacking. By getting more and more people online, composing a raid with all important DPS buffs is possible. Also we can switch talents for all DPS instead of survivability on that fight.

And above all: never underestimate Blizzard's will to allow all "casuals" into see ALL content.

Unknown said...

But then, if you stack the raid for complete melee or caster synergy, and/or make use of the ICC zone buff, how is that different from using higher iLevel gear?

Currently the zone buff does not provide the same power differential that moving from i200 blues to i232/i245 epics would (remembering that the early bosses of ICC-10 are theoretically tuned for a raid wearing primarily ToC-10 + badge gear, without the full array of potential raid buffs and synergies). However, when it reaches 20, 25%+ it does approach that level.

If you need the current zone buff to be able to conquer Festergut, then that's very little different to saying you need mostly i213 - i226 epics.

The zone buff is a unique nerf in this respect, in that it is the only nerf that can be turned off at the players' discretion so that you can experience the fight at it's "intended" difficulty level. For all previous raid tiers, it is only possible to experience them in their post-nerf state, where, as you have shown, gear quality is almost completely irrelevent.

Fetzie said...

I thought the reasoning behind this project was to prove that content could be cleared by a casual 4 hours a week type guild.

How do you defend stacking a raid, respeccing on a boss to boss basis with the "we are casual" statement? That seems pretty hardcore to me.

Oh, and festergut swings for 20k per second without tank cooldowns for 30 seconds (on a tank with 32k armor unbuffed, your tanks have 24k armor). with 35k life raidbuffed (with the ICC buff in place) you will need 3 healers to keep the tank up, but even then I can see mana being a problem.

Anonymous said...

@Fetzie

Casual has nothing to do with stacking or not stacking raid, respeccing on boss by boss basis, etc. Being skilled AND casual do not exclude each other.

It means nothing more than raiding (playing) without a predefined schedule and no attendance implications.

Anonymous said...

The buff is meant to allow everyone to experience the endgame. It *is* the intended difficulty in ICC (at least for casuals).

Inquisitor said...

Marrowgar's bonestorm mechanic has him pick one of the furthest away three raid members, and move to them, four times.

A strategy that some people use for hardmode (i.e. 'can't just overgear it') is to put most of the raid in the middle, with four designated bonestorm soakers arranged in a square around them. Nobody else should get bonestormed at all.

Since armour applies to his AoE, you'll want high EH people on those corners.

(And, I have to say, I'd be interested to see a fraps of the kill, when you get him...)

ardoRic said...

I took the liberty to post about this on MMO-Champion.

http://www.mmo-champion.com/raids-dungeons/lfm-toc10-5-5k-gs-achie-or-no-inv/

Maybe it will give us some visibility and some people will be interested in joining us.

From the looks of some of the comments, I hope I haven't cluttlered your comment box.

Tonus said...

"i just wonder why the hell people ask for so much GS and they still manage to fail."

Bad players tend to believe that they are bad because of their gear, and not their lack of skill or understanding of game mechanics. So for them, the higher the gear score the better the player. When they still fail, they are utterly baffled and assume that others are sabotaging them deliberately.

zi said...

good luck with marrowgar.
and it indeed would be nice for someone from the guild to fraps your kills. (perhaps someone could fraps, and then someone who agrees, could edit and render the thing. Just an idea.)

pippen1001 said...

so i was wondering if this would be a good time to revive my old hunter sitting at 71 or so since start of wotlk. Gevlon how is your dps slot situation?

Gevlon said...

@pippen: have better DPS than the residents and you got yourself a spot.

Emmanuel ISSALY said...

you might consider raising your gear barrier to 200 epix (or 213)for ICC?

Althought it wouldn't be "in blues", it'd certainly still prove the point.

Anyway i'm expecting very much the first wing clear in blues, which a lot of 5.5k GS pugs still fail at ^^

Lite said...

Can't wait to see how Festergut treats your blue geared tanks.

Andru said...

@ Tonus

Bad explanation.

GS is asked because, simply put, PuG members SUCK. And they suck bad.

Now what would a rational raid leader do? Choose the guy who sucks in questing greens, or choose the guy who sucks in ilevel 264 epics?

Obviously that later. While the green one would fall over dead the moment flame is spit at him, the other will hopefully survive because the healers will hopefully be able to heal through stupid.

In the process, the epic retard will manage to put out 2k DpS in a 25 man, which is about 4 times as much as the 500 dps huntard in SP greens.

Even more, it applies to the other end of the spectrum. A good player will be better with good gear than a good player with bad gear.

Assuming as EVEN and UNLINKED distribution of gear across all skill levels, and coupled with the fact that there is no accurate metric for 'skill', it means that ANY raidleader who wants to see their raid work, measures the only other metric they have available, gear.

Guilds have application processes and trial periods. PuGs do not benefit of this luxury.

There is no "Skillscore'. Sorry.

Often a moron will remain hidden until after at least a boss has been killed. Then I ask you, who has the patience to replace him, knowing full well that started PuG runs are the bane of raiding? Any potential replacement will be put off by the fact that the raid is already saved.

Note. I assumed that 'Skill' and 'Gear' are unlinked. If we admit that there is even a slight positive correlation between them, the above argument becomes even stronger. The only situation where you could argue about it is by claiming that 'Skill' and 'gear' are negatively correlated. In which case I'll laugh at you since you're basically saying that the worse the gear, the better the player.

I just knew that someone would read this and go "Look at this guild herp derp GS is bad cause you don't need it!"

Of course you do need it. As opposed to 'Undergeared's' self selecting mechanism, which basically removes the PRIME motivation for a PuG (loot), PuGs are run on a vastly different premise.

PuGs are there to gear its members. PuGs are not there to pursue the noble and lofty goals of 'challenge' and 'progress' or even 'showing M&S that they're bad'. Anyone who says otherwise is deluded.

GS is not needed for guilds or projects like these. It is however very much needed for PuG raiding. (And before you get pedantic, I use Elitist Group, which doesn't have the drawbacks you were just about to mention. Gemming, enchants, Pvp gear, yada yada... I only used GS in my reply as a blanket term covering all kinds of gear-evaluation mods.)

Quicksilver said...

Marrowgar is doable. And so are the other 3 bosses from the first wing, which is exactly what the "LFM ICC10, link achie and GS5700" pugs are managing to do.

I believe the Deathbringer will be pretty tight.

Managing to do [Stornming the Citadel] in full blue gear, would be an awesome feat, especially as most fail raids stop at this point. Would be a nice slap to the face to all those fail players.

Upon completion, Frapsing an encounter (Marrowgar or Deathbringer would be nice), and a master post will all the progression so we can link to it would be very nice.

Afalach said...

I really wish you guys were not on euro servers. I already have my best in slot blue gear on my do, I wear it when I do random heroics. It's always fun to embarass those free t9 tards on every single encounter. Thus whole project gets a huge thumbs up from me, you guys are doing fantastic. Oh, and to the festergut is impossible crowd, looking at any fight in toc and comparing those numbers to the theoretical numbers needed, that's just plain dumb. It's a pure stand and burn fight, the tanks get a massive dps and threat boost, I don't know about you guys but when I'm raiding him hard mode I see my effeciency go way up, which translates into dps that's comparable to what I get on twins if I don't get empowered. Not only do I think it's possible in blue gear, but they'll get it done with time to spare.

Deepfriedegg said...

Hi Gevlon,
congratulations on your Anub kill.
Marrowgar shouldnt be any issue with current (15%) ICC buff since there is no enrage timer and tanks will be getting 10K from Saber Lash.
However you will struggle a lot on Lady DW with her 10 minute enrage timer. You will have to nahd out minimally 8.8 million damage. Than there are reanimated adds that will need some more damage, target switching that will gimp your DPS,
a bit of running for the ranged and a bit more for melee will gimp it even more). You will do it later with higher zone buff but PROBABLY not now with 15%.
However (sorry to say) Saurfang will be impossible with your current DPS. 12.3mil HP + 2.3 mil HP of adds throughout 8 minutes requires 30K raid DPS before zone buff and you ha 23K on Valkyr Twins.
I wish you good luck beating both of those two encenters, looks like you will need it.

Before bashing me, please note I am no naysayer, I just brought up numbers that you will have hard time to beat.

Iiene of Kul Tiras said...

Ok, I'm impressed.

I'll be honest, Based on my own raiding experiences, I did not think you'd be able to clear ToC in blue gear. But your rag tag crew of scruffy looking nerf herders has moxie, so I wasn't going to say anything once it got started.

I like to equate raiding to a sports team. There are many tiers of sports competition, from 'Tee-ball' leagues for kids to the majors. But they all have one thing in common, you can SEE the people play. It's easier to judge someone's performance when you can see them play.

If someone is standing in a fire, you don't know if they're standing in a fire because they didn't see it, are distracted by the TV, have a really slow connection / crappy computer, or were being nagged at by the wife.

The only excuse for that on a sports field is "I didn't see it". A fact that forces the player to see that they suck at playing and need more practice.

Imagine the social faux pas of being distracted by, say, a phone call while playing short stop. The pitcher is about to throw... and the short stop pulls out a cell phone and starts talking to someone. The rest of the team would be stunned.

I submit, then... that people in raids do similar things ALL THE TIME, except that to everyone else, it just looks like they didn't get out of the fire and/or didn't DPS the spikes.

If you have 3 or 4 (out of 10) people in your raid not paying any more attention to the game than is required to just stand there and do a spell rotation... then the rest have to have 5.5K GS and the reaction time of a Squirrel on Red bull to compensate.

People don't suck because they're stupid, they suck because they aren't paying attention. And they don't pay attention because there is no social pressure forcing them to.

They die in Snobold fires because the part in "Transformers" where Megan Fox is checking out Bumble Bee's engine is on...

Or they're talking to their BFF on the cell phone...

Or whatever.

Imagine all these people, all with 6K GS on a Baseball field, all distracted by something different... One is talking on a cell phone, one has a portable movie player, one has a table out and is doing his homework... only 4 of the 9 players are actually paying attention. Their opposing team? In blues but concentrating on the game. Who would win?

Anonymous said...

Funny how folks who said you couldn't do this now amend their "NO WAY YOU CAN DOWN. . . IN BLUES" to different bosses. Great job Gevlon, even though you are proving how easy this game is. That's depressing for someone geared to the balls in a 9/12 HM 25 guild.

Justisraiser said...

Gevlon,

Congratulations. I predicted a long time ago you wouldn't be able to get past ToC, at least not without struggling mightily. Instead in a total of 8 attempts you streamrolled the whole place.

Very interested to see what you can do in ICC, although I suspect it'll be a lot like Ulduar. After the first few bosses it'll be slow progress, lots of adjustments required between fights, etc.

-JR

Wilson said...

@Anon-

"Casual has nothing to do with stacking or not stacking raid, respeccing on boss by boss basis, etc. Being skilled AND casual do not exclude each other.

It means nothing more than raiding (playing) without a predefined schedule and no attendance implications."


Well, by that definition Undergeared isn't casual either, since they do have a predefined raid schedule. Which underscores the flaw in trying to prove that casual guilds can do X - there are as many definitions of "casual" as there are guilds, and anyone can say "well, you aren't casual because you do Y or don't do Z."

Chopsui said...

@ the dps is too low people

We started out as not knowing our classes well. We do have people getting near to the 4k dps spot in Ulduar etc. I think we'll make it.

Tonus said...

"GS is asked because, simply put, PuG members SUCK. And they suck bad."

I wasn't explaining why GS should not be used. I know and understand why people use gear score. I consider gear score to be more useful than others do, for the reasons you stated.

I was responding to the question about why some people fail even after setting such a high bar for gear. The reason, as I said, is because gear doesn't make a bad player less bad, and it doesn't make him realize that he is bad. I think the latter is more important, because a bad player who wants to improve will eventually become a competent (and possibly even good) player.

Anonymous said...

see the problem is that the average player is not nearly as good, and they are certainly right to set a GS. For a majority of the players, GS=Skill

Anonymous said...

I've said it before, but normal modes have always been easy. From Naxx right up to the Lich King the difficulty hasn't notably changed. That was always the point, normal mdes are meant to be accessable to all players. I don't think any group of good players would have much trouble doing any normal mode content regardless of gear. The real challenge has been the hard modes and meta achievments. For ToC this is especially true. Without the gated content most guilds would have downed Anub the very first night. Doing it in blue gear isn't really much more impressive than doing it early and tons of people did that. Hell, on my server the alliance downed him with pugs within a few days. If you can do it on hard mode, that would be something. Until then it's just not a big deal.

In addition on the subject of pugs asking for gearscore and achievement linking. It's not that they think that level of gear is needed or that the content is hard. They're trying to make the run smooth and fast. Nobody wants to pug longer than they need to after all. It also acts as a primitive retard-guard. It's not perfect but you don't have access to another players skill level except by previous experience or reputation, so asking for a certain level of gear and proof they've done the fight before is the best that can be reasonably done. It doesn't make it any less obnoxious of course, but that doesn't mean it's done without reason.

Cevari said...

First of all, congratulations on your recent success and massive kudos for taking on the project in the first place. I love the fact someone is calling Blizz out on the appalling tuning of normal mode raids.

As for ICC and more specifically the dps check bosses, I think people are underestimating how much dps a properly played character can deal when in a stand&nuke situation and really pushing it. Consider that back in TBC, after 3.0 it wasn't even difficult to push over 3k dps on Brutallus for a top-geared dps (depending on class ofc). The gear they are using is better than any sunwell loot, with 10 levels worth of spell rank scaling. I imagine with practice the dps will go up quite a bit, and I really hope to see both fester and BQL down for Undergeared before the 20% buff.

Best of luck guys!

Unknown said...

Marrowgar certainly can be killed in blues. You have a 15% buff, and no enrage timer.

Saurfang is iffy. Always has been. The buff is the only thing giving you hope. Festergut and BQL? You're going to be waiting on 30% to even have a shot in hell.

And all things considered, you might as well just say "Black Temple can be 5 manned".

Anonymous said...

However you will struggle a lot on Lady DW with her 10 minute enrage timer. You will have to nahd out minimally 8.8 million damage. Than there are reanimated adds that will need some more damage, target switching that will gimp your DPS,
a bit of running for the ranged and a bit more for melee will gimp it even more). You will do it later with higher zone buff but PROBABLY not now with 15%.


Don't forget that alternative strategies might be possible. You could try to burn down her mana as fast as possible, off-tank all the adds and cleave-kill them in phase2.

Emmanuel ISSALY said...

imo, no you can't. In blue gear, the OT can't handle a lot of adds. We're looking at what? 25k buffed? and healer mana pools are not gonna be endless. The lich is gonna be the first difficulty of that wing. That said, challenging == interesting :)

If the schedule had suited me, i'd certainly have joined the project :)

ardoRic said...

«Don't forget that alternative strategies might be possible. You could try to burn down her mana as fast as possible, off-tank all the adds and cleave-kill them in phase2.»

With tanks and healers in blue gear? Really? If we are to make the kill we need to think out of the box, not like we overgear the encounter.

So far the most effective tactic I've seen on Deathwhisper is nuking the adds as soon as they appear and nuking the boss' mana in between waves. The problem with the adds is that they do a lot of Bad Stuff (tm):

* Fanatics cleave,
* Empowered Fanatics (the zombies) do a silly amount of damage (our blue geared team will most likely *have* to kite them),
* there's that nasty curse (don't wanna have more than two guys casting that at the same time

On the other hand we can make use of some of the stuff. Vampiric Blood (25% more damage and your damage heals you) can be spellstolen (or dispelled). This means it might be worth to keep a Fanatic alive to get the buff, if we're having problems with downing the shield in time.

Marrowgar does not have an enrage timer, but our healers do have an OOM timer. It'll be an interesting first hurdle.

I'm not even gonna underestimate Lootship.

Saurfang will have to be dealt with as if it were hardmode: we can't let him gain Blood Power. This will mean BoPing the first couple of Boiling Blood if we get the luxury of having paladins, perfect Beast kiting, damn near perfect taunt rotation, the works. His Frenzy WILL be tough.

I was trying to avoid this, but I might actually find it useful to activate Deadly Boss Mods when we get to ICC. There's just so much important stuff that having the timers for is a bless.

Saithir said...

@Ardoric - thx for posting that on MMO-C, I don't have an account there, just can't be bothered with all these trolls there ;)

I posted one on official forums though. http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=13200797914&sid=1

And we should really fraps it in ICC. Unfortunately I can't due to my laptop being too crappy for that, but if someone does, I can edit/render/upload it somewhere.

Saithir/Misaka

The Gnome of Zurich said...

"Consider that back in TBC, after 3.0 it wasn't even difficult to push over 3k dps on Brutallus for a top-geared dps (depending on class ofc). The gear they are using is better than any sunwell loot, with 10 levels worth of spell rank scaling."


10 levels worth of spell rank scaling does very little (at least between 70 and 80) and it's not enough to make up the loss in hit/crit/haste scaling.

My mage lost dps between 70 and 79 as only a few pieces were minor upgrades from my 70 raid gear (I was nowhere near sunwell 4/5 MH 6/9 BT -- only gaining it back at 80 after equipping some i200 blues and epics, but I still wasn't that far ahead of my level 70 numbers until i had a solid pre-naxx set (superior achievement) fully enchanted.

I actually believe that with current talents and spells, that you could probably do close to 4k on a tank n spank at level 70 in sunwell gear, and 4k is about what a solid blue raider does in a 25.

The Gnome of Zurich said...

If anyone wants to join the US undergeared, I will try to be on for at least some time in the evening EST every night this week.

We haven't been doing anything because the player base is currently too small, but if there's some interest generated by this, I'll start scheduling 5mans, and if we have 10+ 80s, I'll schedule a naxx raid, etc.