Warning: the following is a long rambling wall of text with excessive use of caps and italics for emphasis. Enter at your own risk.
On Tuesday my guild totally curbstomped TOC10. We’ve cleared it several times before now, and what seemed like a hopeless obstacle before is now seeming laughably simple.
We were done in a total of approximately forty five minutes and had one total death (shadow priest slipped through the cracks during Anub phase 3) in our otherwise perfect run. We’re getting to the point where we DE as much loot as we equip in these TOC runs.
We’ve been running the content, what two months? No, I think less. Yikes, I have sympathy for all of you who ran it half a year waiting for ICC to drop.
Anyway, with TOC10 lifeless at our feet, we all kind of stood around twiddling our thumbs and wondering what to do with ourselves. We didn’t want to hit ICC that night (even though last week we got as far as Saurfang, YAY!) because the fabled Tuesday night lagfest was showing signs of starting up. Ally owned WG, so we couldn’t go say hello to Toravon, and the weekly raid is Malygos (AGAIN) which nobody wanted to put themselves through.
So we all hauled ourselves out of Anub’s den, turned on the giant door-guarding skull and went back in for TOGC.
We were not prepared.
****TANGENT****
Now, it wasn’t so bad as my elitist guildie warned us it would be. I think every casual guild has this guy, the guy who won’t come with and help out because he’s “out of our league” but who likes to make helpful remarks about how scrubs like us can’t possibly be successful.
In a helpfully superior tone, he informed us that for TOGC10 we’d need two tanks with 45k unbuffed health and three heals with 35k unbuffed mana and that every dps should average 8k.
*blink*
Thanks, helpfully superior guildie, thanks.
****END TANGENT****
Ok, so adding that little word GRAND in to the Trial makes it a LOT harder, doesn’t it? I really didn’t think we did that badly though. We managed to just about polish off Gormok before the Jormungars came out, and even though the nasty twin slugs made quick work of us, I didn’t think it was that bad for our first crack at a hardmode.
Then the lag monster reared its ugly head and swallowed our ret pally whole and we had to call it for the night because people were having four second casting times on supposedly instant abilities… but it left me wondering…
TOC10 was that hard for us the first few times we did it. We bit it on the Jormungars at least ten times before we downed them the first time. But in the wake of our recent thrashing to them, climbing the slope seems all but impossible again. I’m not sure I can convince the guild to give it another try… expecially not when there’s at least a few bosses in ICC we can down easily every week.
So, I’d like to do it, just because I like to be able to say that I’ve done the things that there are to do. TOC10 is the only raid instance I’ve ever full-cleared because of this crazy notion of progress. We only want to raid the newest, biggest and best instance because anything else is OLD and does’t give the newest and best shinies.
I sort of feel like I got cheated out of Naxx (missing about four bosses) and Ulduar (Missing all the Keepers and everything after) because I can’t get anyone to even go there with me… god forbid I should ask them to raid content with no gear upgrades in it!
Seriously, do we gear to raid or raid to gear?
My guildies, even my boyfriend to a certain extent, seem to think that the point of raiding is to get loot. I don’t understand it! I want to get loot to make me better so I can perform well when I raid! I gear to raid, they raid to gear. But what’s the point of having all that gear if all you’re doing accumulating it for the sake of the shinies? Isn’t there something inherent in raiding itself that makes it worthwhile to do, all gear possibilities aside? Isn’t it fun and fulfilling? Don’t they even want to see the end of Ulduar, just to see it? Isn’t there some satisfaction of having done something thoroughly and done it well? Or is the point of raiding just the stuff, the only satisfaction just seeing sparklies surrounding the corpse and opening up your presents?
I’m not at all into PvP, but I really think that at least in this one concept I’m right in their camp… In general, PvPers tend to get gear to make them better at PvP. I’ve never heard of somebody who wanted to get good at PvP simply to get good PvP gear… cause seriously, what’s the point of PvP gear if you’re not planning on using it?
Maybe that’s a sign that raiding really has been trivialized if entire guilds couldn’t care less about it, that they don’t think that being skillful at it is a skill worth having for itself, only for its social rewards? Maybe I’m turning into Gevlon to even look at it that way (haha yeah right), but it just feels like most of the people I know view ICC as some kind of status-factory… I go there to get gear that makes me look cool in Dalaran. Older raid instances are like abandoned buildings… why would I go there? It’s dangerous inside and there’s nothing good to find there…
Its depressing to me. I do like nice gear. I got an awesome pally skirt off Marrowgar the other night and it had me squealing with glee… first ICC piece and I didn’t even buy it with badges… but for me the gear is a tool of raiding and a perk of raiding. It isn’t the goal. And I’m starting to feel very alone in that.
{ 18 comments… read them below or add one }
sometimes it's necessary, especially if you want to tackle certain content. I find it quite frustrating that the ilvl-251 icc10 requires ilvl-245 gear to clear. obviously, outside of the head/shoulder/trinket/offhand you get from badges, you cannot get 245 gear from 10-man content prior to that. This forces 10-man guilds to raid in 25-man settings via pugs to accomplish, which really ticks me off.
Sure, sometimes it's necessary to do content to get gear that enables you to do better content… that's not what I'm talking about. If you're doing that, your end goal is still *the content*. For my guildies, the end goal is the gear… they want the 245 gear from 25s to enable them to get the 251 gear from ICC10. They don't want to RAID ICC10, if there was an easier way to get the 251 gear without actually raiding the place, I think they'd go for it.
*sigh* I think I need a new guild, really I do.
I might be wrong, but I think this is partly by design, and in a sense relates to the point Rhii is making. ICC-10 drops ilvl-251 gear, so if you only needed ilvl-232 gear to clear it, there wouldn't be any point in its actually dropping loot at all (except for its own sake). Plus it drops Frost Badges that you can use to buy 264 gear. I'd be very much surprised if ilvl232 gear wasn't enough to see you at least through the first wing, at which point you've essentially skipped ilvl 245 entirely.
I might be totally wrong mind.
My understanding of the intended design was that all the 10-mans are supposed to be progressive. So with TOC being ilvl-232, you should be able to get your foot in the door of ICC and down some bosses. And as you group gears up from the first bits, you're able to progress deeper and gear up some more. And by the time you're at Arthas, you're at that ilvl-245+ gear.
But I dunno. I haven't been able to down any bosses in that place.
My recent post Big, Red and in Wrath
I'm quite lucky with the guild I'm in. We're raiding to see content!
We're trudging our way through Ulduar right now. It's a beautiful raid and the fights can be rather fun. It's also nice that you can skip a certain number of bosses – so once you've seen them, you can move on to something new. I'm not sure if we'll go into ToC-10. We might, as there's plenty of gear in there that people can use. But with gear from the Heroic ICC-5's, that might be an easier fix to the gear concern for ICC.
I dunno about Krizz and yourself, but in regards to ICC, I'm waiting for the "ICC's been out long enough" nerf.
My recent post Horde Trauma and how I learned to heal
I agree with your point of view here completely. I get the gear so that I can do bigger and harder raids, not the other way around. We're still trying to convince people to go take a stab at Algalon just for the "cool" factor of it, but it's like pulling teeth.
@krizzlybear: I don't really agree with the view that you need ilvl 245 gear to do ICC-10. I run it with a group of alts that are all geared only from 10-mans and we've had little problem so far.
My recent post What’s up with Holy priests? (aka. so tired, can’t think)
Our guild still put a significant amount of time in on Ulduar hardmodes even with ToC and ToGC out – and we were still running ToGC pretty faithfully after ICC's release. We've still never downed Algalon but we go back and try – the problem is with so much ICC available now it's taking up almost all of our raid time. :-/
The jump up from ToC to ToGC -is- a significant one, the first time we tried it was like hitting a brick wall. There's just so much less margin for error in all regards, but you'll get there! We were stuck on heroic faction champs for I don't want to think about how long. Very long. With getting ICC upgrades too you should have an easier go of it, if you can get people to go back there! The 245 drops can still be quite nice and often fill slots that ICC just won't seem to drop!
Thats so awesome that you do that. Your guild has a very low turnover rate doesn't it? My guild only seems to want to raid ICC25 and it seems we invite 4-5 new players every week and thats because we lose 4-5 raiders every week. I can't help but think something isn't going well if the guild isn't growing.
You're still not raiding when the guild is inviting 4-5 new members to their progression weekly?
No wonder we haven't been hearing much from you on here lately… I'd be too depressed to think about it if my guild was taking recruits over me regularly.
How do you keep winding up in such mean guilds?
Yep…I've got a regular 10man ICC that I run in on Saturday nights that is primarily the "casuals" of the guild. The other guild members would rather invite in new blood then foster the player base we already have. If the initiates make it past their intro period, they become members which get auto invites to raids, if they don't they become casuals (like me) and its up to them to decide if they want to /gquit or not. But seriously…if you aren't getting any strong guild support as a casual, good luck breaking back into a raiding role.
The gearing to raid/raiding to gear dichotomy is pretty much endemic to RPGs as a whole. Nobody would play an RPG which didn't have character progression (hell, a lot of people would argue that character progression is what *defines* an RPG, at least on the computer) but this creates a totally weird dichotomy where you obviously *want* to do the content, but if you don't get a reward you feel cheated.
The more I think about it, the more I find myself liking the "pvp mindset" – the great advantage of playing against other people is that there's always a fresh challenge. It's not like you can overgear Arathi Basin.
I think the motivation for gear rather then content is fear of being left behind in the progression. Most raiding occurs at the end game, so if you are not in the current gear level, you could well be benched.
I spent six months chasing other guild members who were moving ahead of me in content. By the time I reached Outland, they were in Northend. When I reached 70, they reached 80. When I reached 80 they were clearing Naxxus. I found another guild.
This post is spot on and is in fact something that I've only realized about myself in the past 6-8 months of playing this game. In the past I used to be concerned about always pushing on into harder content to get better gear but honestly…I've gotten to the point that "hard modes" don't mean anything to me other then the chance at a fast mount. The status that comes with those high end raids and epikz gearz don't really motivate me anymore. I only really care about raiding to overcome a respectable challenge and then move onto the next patch Blizzard has for us.
In the end its all bytes anyway. Simple 1's and 0's on a disc platter that will later turn to 0's and 1's and not all that much will have changed. Was it worth all that you went through to get to that point?
I like the idea of hardmodes. Not that I'm good enough to do any of them yet, but I like the idea of them as a yardstick. I would like to say "I did this, and it was tough but I did it anyway."
I'm not really motivated by the acquisition of virtual stuff…. at least not in WoW. If they ever added player housing like LOTRO has, I imagine I'd become a stuff-o-holic overnight!
Yeah Blizzard has had Housing request from day one back in 2004. They've said on a number of occasions while they like the idea, the payoff doesn't quite compare to adding new PvE or PvP content to the game.
Remember "NEW DANCES!" That was mentioned in the WotLK Trailer? Over a Year ago?…..yeah…thought so.
"Playing house" doesn't have the excitement of 95% of the players yet so they just don't want to dedicate developer time towards that goal.
Yeah, well WoW and LOTRO are totally different… and i want totally different things from my time spent playing them. I'm happy to keep my stuff-o-holism there and be more about the game itself while I'm in WoW.
Apologies for the shameless self-advertising, but I stumbled across your entry more or less accidentally and it just so much reminded me of something I briefly mused about back in August. So, no, you are not alone
Very much the same line of though, but said more succinctly.
Shameless self promotion is approved as long as it provides me something interesting to read… which you've managed nicely. Thanks!