Tips on pugging KJ?

[HeiAggra]

on the topic of national bias, I have a mixed experience with Russians. They are either among the best or by far the worst in the group. Seems to be no middle ground with them. French I had no issues with but Italians and Portuguese... (realms Pozzo del Eternita or something like that and Aggra). I try not to be biased when making a pug for anything, but somehow these people almost aways prove to be the least reliable. And 99% of the time they don't understand a single word of English.

On the other side of the spectrum, players from German realms tend to be solid and reliable in most cases.

I'm Portuguese, i dont play on Aggra and let me tell you i speak 3 languages fluently and i speak german to a basic level. I understand italian and french but i just say some few words.
You would be surprised with the amount of portuguese ppl that speak near perfect english since it's a country that deals with turism.

[Deleted]

I'm Portuguese, i dont play on Aggra and let me tell you i speak 3 languages fluently and i speak german to a basic level

I was stating my experience from anecdotal evidence (my personal and experience of some of my guild mates). Definitely not enough for a statistically valid conclusion

Perhaps playing on Aggra (a localised realm) also plays a part? It's reasonable to expect people opting to play on a localised client & realm having weaker understanding of foreign languages.

Just wait until someone from the US wakes up and chimes in regarding Ragnaros. That bias is well known and often discussed on this forum. Players from that realm have notoriety for both not speaking English and underperforming in their roles.

[Deleted]

Blizz made bosses to difficult. Pugging becomes more and more a no go area. So much for the fun! I know people who dont botter anymore and skip endbosses. What good are they anyway, what experience they give? Next patch and all shit is redundant. Maybe a few expansions later i will zerg KJ and have fun instead of wiping and be frustrated. Have a nice day.

If you find the difficulty you are currently playing too hard, maybe try a lower one. KJ LFR is going to release soon. Also, if you don't enjoy raiding (wiping and learning encounters are part of raiding), nobody is forcing you to do it. A lot of people seem to enjoy it though, so I don't see much point in your tirade.

OT: The armageddon mechanic is a lot about patience and leads to wipes even in the most well coordinated groups. If you have people in your groups that take no damage from it or the associated dot, have a word with them.

[coprax]

tbh I don't bother with non curved groups anymore

some general tips:

- 2-3-11 for good transition so u don't get 2nd tankadd - don't bother with groupsizes like 2-4-12 or 2-3-7/8
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I pugged it a few days ago with 2-3-15, I think people are overly fixated on special compositions which you frankly don't need on heroic.
I also didn't use any voice chat, the only thing you need to communicate is the soak order and maybe the meteor kiter in p3. that's it.

[Deleted]

Get discord, and kick dps whoring or people falling to singularities
Value classes with immunities more

[TyrianFC]

No matter how hard I try, I just can't seem to get good enough of a group together to pug KJ.


Any tips on what to ask for, and how to coordinate the soaks? It seems like by the time we get a soaking order in we can get one good attempt in before people just leave and we have to spend a few minutes recouping.

In your raid description, tell people to whisper you with a) whether they have dischord and b) yes or no whether they have a mic and can/will talk on dischord if needed.

Definitely only invite people who use dischord. And give a strong preference for ppl who say they talk on dischord (especially tanks, soakers, immunities etc etc).

KJ is just a fight where you really want everyone (or at least a critical mass of ppl) to be capable of talking on dischord.

Count the number of people in dischord before pulling the boss, and kick players who 'forgot' to get on or are 'having problems connecting' -
ie lied their way into your group.

[dacoolist]

My lameass just got AOTC haha, I know - pretty late to the game. I only pug in WoW, I do run with a tank and dps (they are badass's btw), for mythic+'s - but I typically always pug ToS Heroic / all the past heroics... my point:

I kept joining "progression" groups. I would find that the people in those groups actually cared enough to get better. AOTC required groups that I snuck into were a bunch of mean people who just raged on a simple bad rng pull...

I joined an AOTC run and spend 3 hours on Heroic Avatar this week (my first kill btw)... I joined a progression KJ run (obvious because I didn't HAVE AOTC YET..) we killed Heroic KJ in 1.5 hours... And it was my first time even seeing heroic KJ (maybe he was nerfed into the group idk??)

Really digging progression pugs over actual pugs

[Riistov]

Blizz made bosses to difficult. Pugging becomes more and more a no go area. So much for the fun! I know people who dont botter anymore and skip endbosses. What good are they anyway, what experience they give? Next patch and all shit is redundant. Maybe a few expansions later i will zerg KJ and have fun instead of wiping and be frustrated. Have a nice day.

Uhhhh thats what LFR is for? Even normal has been easily puggable for just about every raid. Not sure what you're on about here.

[tennesine]

I know you said you require voice but I'd say boot them out if they don't join it or use the very typical excuse "I'm going to get a headset next week when I get paid." If they can't follow that simple of an instruction (or don't even have a headset) then they probably can't do the fight reliably.

[Deleted]

I mainly PuG raids, and my most progressed character is a hunter, although my main is a tank. I got my first KJ kill last week after pugging ToS normal since launch. It took me maybe 50 or so wipes in various raid groups over 2-3 weeks before I got him down, although throughout all of those attempts I was learning myself. I got my second kill this week in a one-shot.

KJ is actually quite simple, but very unforgiving, especially to PuGs. One or two soak failures and it's a wipe, and we all know any PuG group is only ever one wipe away from collapsing. Ironically, I feel I got my first kill when I finally knew the fight throughout. The biggest challenge is the second time adds spawn, as this comes at the same time as an Armageddon and is the cause of many wipes, sometimes just by screwing up your soak order or having an add spawn outside the raid. This means people don't often get to the dark phase, and panic the first time it happens. Again, you only need 1 or 2 DPS to die and he will enrage. If the raid can keep it's cool into the dark phase, the fight gets much easier - no more soaking.

I've seen pugs in general getting better, I think the pug raiding community is starting to realise if you don't soak, you will wipe, and over the past few weeks performances generally have got better, and ilvls have gone up. The enrage is very tight for a medium gear\skill pug raid, and 1 or 2 DPS dead and you might not get him down within 10 minutes - another challenge.

If you are banging your head against a brick wall I would suggest keeping the raid size small - 2/3/7 or so, and making sure everyone who joins has the achievement or at least decent experience of the fight. The smaller the raid, the less soaking there is to do and the less people there are to make a mistake and cost you a wipe - You really need to get to the dark phase with everyone alive and a combat res available in case a tank dies. This is all purely from a pugging perspective mind.

[Deleted]

We actually pugged KJ Normal without any problem with hunter for illidan and 4 dhs that soaked everything.

We had enough dps for spirits to die instantly and demon hunters to soak perfectly (their cd is like 2 min, lol)
We also had the hunter to soak for DH during some pulls coz sometimes rng happened and 3rd DH got spirits and was supposed to soak, so he stayed and hunter soaked for him (tho we also had pulls where we just let dh go with spirit away and soak the big meteor, the spirit was focused and died instantly too).

Generally I think it is a quite easy fight, there is nothing on normal that will make you go "what the fuck", you basically do the mechanics and win.
There are worse pug fights out there.

[Zython]

Best way is probably to ask for kill achievement even though you don't have it. Pretty common if a bit of shitty thing to do. People probably won't bother to check you anyway.

AotC will help you get into groups, but groups that REQUIRE AotC are in short supply and high demand, and isn't a free pass to farming. I have had AotC for about 3 weeks, and have yet to get a 2nd kill on H KJ.

The simple fact of the matter is that many people are still learning the fight, so getting a kill is going to remain difficult for a while. Honestly, I don't see it being easily puggable until 7.3 drops, and we get that new artifact progression system. Helped a ton in pugging H Gul'dan. But hopefully, it'll be easier sooner. Mistress was a tough boss to pug pretty early on, and now people are regularly 1-shotting it.

But if you find some secret to getting a group that can kill it in less than an hour, hit me up.

[Deleted]

Well, I pugged kj hc about... I guess almost 20 times since first week with my main and my alt... few advices:
- in a pug you dont know the people you are getting, so you need to do everything possible to lower the chances of having morons. Curve is a must, but not enough. At this point there are a lot of players that got it by gettin carried on a lucky try, so what you need to ask is at least 3 kills, that way its a lot more likely you are gettin people with a brain. Also, itemlevel over 925.
- discord obviously helps, but only if you have someone actually calling everything up to guide players, else its pretty much useless. if you get a rad with everyone having multiple kills on average they will know what to do and adapt, only give an order to soak big pools and kite orb in last phase. ive got about 8 kills in this and last reset and most were without any voice comm.
- have a good raid setup. 2 tanks (like a monk) that can easily soak big armageddons from the start until he lands back. stack classes that can soak and have good mobility (like mages, dh, hunters) and a warrior dps for execute and aoe, dont have too many (if any) other classes like shaman, balance, shadow priests... they just dont offer enough compared to others (my main is shadow and yes im pissed at blizzard for making so much content that favors so much cerrtain classes, but whatever).
- make sure everyone understand to stack at illidan during that phase for a bit to get healed full, one of the common mistakes is that a lot get the debuff then run away to find the adds and die because they cant get healed. dont rush that part.
- very important and somerthing a lot of pug leaders dont understand: DO NOT GIVE SECOND CHANCES TO ANYONE. EVER. giving second chances only leads to one thing: you push the good players away (because they are smarter and know u wont do shit so they leave) and keep the baddies (because they know they wont get kicked) that will make you fail all the time. again, we are not talking about rocket science, we are talking about an hc boss that yes is harder than probably it should be (im surprised it hasnt gotten nerfed yet), but still manageable. if you die because you get kicked off the platform, kick. if dps sucks (like you get armageddon before he flies off at start), kick them, their fault for not using vantus/augment rune knowing they are bad. do not waste your time with such people because it will lead nowhere. people joining the raid should know right away what to do and what to avoid, they dont need to "warm up". imagine in a raid of 20 if everyone needed a second chance, you would wipe so many times. remember you arent here to baby sit retarded kids, you are here to get a kill. i know it might sound harsh, but so is life. this boss is very little forgiving, there are a lot of things during the fight that can lead to a wipe that cant be controlled much, luck (or lack of it) plays a big role sometimes, you cant really get the kill if you go against the luck and with bad players. at this point, this boss requires EVERYONE in the raid to be at least GOOD in something. you can afford a dps (or a healer) that doesnt dps as much, but then at least that person has to be good with soaking/kiting/watching everything that could go wrong and help. you just cant afford people that are bad at everything they should be doing.

[Deleted]

But if you find some secret to getting a group that can kill it in less than an hour, hit me up.

I'm never THAT GUY, but last week I probably had the luckiest pug ever. Myself (frost mage) and a friend (fire mage), joined a 925+ group, with AOTC for our weekly kill and it was a one-shot.

We had the two of us on comms together, managing the hard soak (P2 armageddon with the adds, as if one of us with the add has to soak, it causes mayhem, so I was backup and visa versa, and the Orb). Group composition was 2-3-11, with a shaman / druid / priest combo for heals.

I have to say, having a spirit link totem in that fight is an absolute god send, unreal in fact.

If you're leading the run, I definitely recommend putting markers down for singularity, or stating that people should stand with their backs to the corners of the platform, as someone said earlier - there is NO excuse for getting knocked off, it's a no no no no no.

I'm always happy to help out pugs on it, and regularly search 'Guild run' or similar to help those guilds which are struggling on players. Feel free to message if you need a hand!

Best,
Marv

[Spl4sh3r]

For most suggesting different group sizes (in their tips) I feel like some are wrong. It is much better to go on a multiple of 5, such as 10, 15, 20, 25, or 30. That way you optimize the amount of Armageddons you get. With say 13, there is a chance you get between 2-4 Armageddons (other than the big one), 2 being the amount for 10 players and 4 being for 15. This is because the transition between First phase to Intermission gives almost 3 armageddons in a row causing 80% of the raid to get a stack unless someone takes multiple. With 13 players there is a chance 12 of them have to get a stack or some might miss and someone gets double and so on.

[harruin]

- very important and somerthing a lot of pug leaders dont understand: DO NOT GIVE SECOND CHANCES TO ANYONE. EVER. giving second chances only leads to one thing: you push the good players away (because they are smarter and know u wont do shit so they leave) and keep the baddies (because they know they wont get kicked) that will make you fail all the time. again, we are not talking about rocket science, we are talking about an hc boss that yes is harder than probably it should be (im surprised it hasnt gotten nerfed yet), but still manageable. if you die because you get kicked off the platform, kick. if dps sucks (like you get armageddon before he flies off at start), kick them, their fault for not using vantus/augment rune knowing they are bad. do not waste your time with such people because it will lead nowhere. people joining the raid should know right away what to do and what to avoid, they dont need to "warm up". imagine in a raid of 20 if everyone needed a second chance, you would wipe so many times. remember you arent here to baby sit retarded kids, you are here to get a kill. i know it might sound harsh, but so is life. this boss is very little forgiving, there are a lot of things during the fight that can lead to a wipe that cant be controlled much, luck (or lack of it) plays a big role sometimes, you cant really get the kill if you go against the luck and with bad players. at this point, this boss requires EVERYONE in the raid to be at least GOOD in something. you can afford a dps (or a healer) that doesnt dps as much, but then at least that person has to be good with soaking/kiting/watching everything that could go wrong and help. you just cant afford people that are bad at everything they should be doing.

I disagree with this. I've had to leave a couple of pugs over the years due to the raidleaders thinking the solution to a single fuck up is to kick them and then bring in some unknown player. It slows things down which causes people to leave, and why should someone stick around if they get kicked for a mistake 10 wipes in?

[javen]

Make the group as big as you can manage; most of the mechanics (Armageddon) don't scale very well for smaller group sizes, and there aren't any that really suffer with larger ones, so for this fight in particular, bigger is better.

[Deleted]

I disagree with this. I've had to leave a couple of pugs over the years due to the raidleaders thinking the solution to a single fuck up is to kick them and then bring in some unknown player. It slows things down which causes people to leave, and why should someone stick around if they get kicked for a mistake 10 wipes in?

This is a very wrong attitude and that's exactly what makes so many people fail. Its the same argument I hear from people that when asked to use rune, they say "hey me using a rune wont change much". True, you alone wont change much, but guess if everyone in raid did that, it would be a HUGE difference between everyone using a rune and everyone not using a rune.
Now you say making a mistake every 10 tries is not so bad? Guess what, its actually SHIT. Because you need to see the bigger picture. Raid is made of 15-20 people, if you're allowing everyone to make a mistake every 10 tries, it means that on average you'll have 1-2 people making a mistake every try, and guess what? KJ wont go down if every try someone doesnt soak, moves out of pool too early, or just dies to stupid shit like singularity push.
So no, sorry, you cant make such mistakes on KJ EVER, and if you do them, you dont deserve to be in the raid and get kicked right away. KJ isnt a boss for second chances like i said. And the problem is not people leaving, it's WHAT kind of people leave. If you kick people for a mistake (which in KJ case is obviously something important like not soaking big ones, moving out too early, dying to retarded shit, not moving under boss with images, and such) you wont lose the good ones since they understand you actually want a kill, otherwise trust me you'll have the good ones leaving right away because they dont want to progress on the boss after 7 weeks to deal with retards.

You confuse mistakes with something you cant really prevent. Obviously, if you die kiting ball in p3 because pillars are all very close where you kite, that happens and obviously you shouldnt be kicked. But if it's your turn to soak a big one and you dont, thats a mistake, you get kicked. If you're soaking and move away early before it hits you, you get kicked. If you have images and just dont move not stacking, you get kicked. You fall off to singularity? You get kicked. Dont confuse mistakes with random things that you have no control on.

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Make the group as big as you can manage; most of the mechanics (Armageddon) don't scale very well for smaller group sizes, and there aren't any that really suffer with larger ones, so for this fight in particular, bigger is better.

This is actually a horrible advice. On a fight like KJ where you have to rely on everyone since a single mistake will lead to a wipe, having a huge raid is actually a nightmare that will do more bad than good.
What you need is to cheat the system, which means not so big raid to lower the chances of haing idiots, and gettin classes that can deal with armageddon without problems, as i said stack DH/mages/hunters since they have mobility to soak fast when needed and even the ability to soak big ones.

[Deleted]

discord, no h in there *triggered*

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Could have understod your post wrong but im pretty sure OP is talking about HC KJ, nm mode is easily done in pugs atm.

[harruin]

This is a very wrong attitude and that's exactly what makes so many people fail. Its the same argument I hear from people that when asked to use rune, they say "hey me using a rune wont change much". True, you alone wont change much, but guess if everyone in raid did that, it would be a HUGE difference between everyone using a rune and everyone not using a rune.
Now you say making a mistake every 10 tries is not so bad? Guess what, its actually SHIT. Because you need to see the bigger picture. Raid is made of 15-20 people, if you're allowing everyone to make a mistake every 10 tries, it means that on average you'll have 1-2 people making a mistake every try, and guess what? KJ wont go down if every try someone doesnt soak, moves out of pool too early, or just dies to stupid shit like singularity push.
So no, sorry, you cant make such mistakes on KJ EVER, and if you do them, you dont deserve to be in the raid and get kicked right away. KJ isnt a boss for second chances like i said. And the problem is not people leaving, it's WHAT kind of people leave. If you kick people for a mistake (which in KJ case is obviously something important like not soaking big ones, moving out too early, dying to retarded shit, not moving under boss with images, and such) you wont lose the good ones since they understand you actually want a kill, otherwise trust me you'll have the good ones leaving right away because they dont want to progress on the boss after 7 weeks to deal with retards.

You confuse mistakes with something you cant really prevent. Obviously, if you die kiting ball in p3 because pillars are all very close where you kite, that happens and obviously you shouldnt be kicked. But if it's your turn to soak a big one and you dont, thats a mistake, you get kicked. If you're soaking and move away early before it hits you, you get kicked. If you have images and just dont move not stacking, you get kicked. You fall off to singularity? You get kicked. Dont confuse mistakes with random things that you have no control on.

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This is actually a horrible advice. On a fight like KJ where you have to rely on everyone since a single mistake will lead to a wipe, having a huge raid is actually a nightmare that will do more bad than good.
What you need is to cheat the system, which means not so big raid to lower the chances of haing idiots, and gettin classes that can deal with armageddon without problems, as i said stack DH/mages/hunters since they have mobility to soak fast when needed and even the ability to soak big ones.

Have you actually lead a pug? Because it sounds like you'd have a gap of 5 minutes between every pull if you're kicking people everytime they fuck up. You're basically toying with the collapse of a group since people will say fuck it when you kick a healer and nobody wants to wait any longer.