Raiding in blues: The <Undergeared> Chronicles

[ardoRic]

Undergeared is a project started by Gevlon. It consists of a level 80 guild intent on clearing whole the WOTLK normal content using only blue gear. The purpose of this project is mainly to show that the "I'm not geared" excuse for not being able to do a certain instance, is not a valid one. This is the reason Gevlon created the project, not necessarily the reason people are in it, some of the <Undergeared> raiders, like me, are there for the challenge, or fun of doing the content whilst undergearing it.

The goal of the project is also to show that normal mode gear requirements are so forgiving that it will be possible to clear all of WOTLK content in only blue gear, and this includes the Lich King. Obviously we will be using everything Blizzard gives everyone else for this purpose (yes, talking about Hellscream's Warsong).

If you want to know a little secret, part of the reason we can't use gear as a barrier to entry any longer is because the skill of the raiding population has grown so dramatically. The guilds who got the first kills in Icecrown probably could have done it with gear from a couple of tiers prior (with the possible exception of heroic LK). Skill trumps an enormous amount of power from gear.

Where we are

Our guild is <Undergeared> on the EU-Arathor realm, Horde side.

We raid Saturdays from 19:00 - 22:00 server time.

There is also a US branch of the project based on the Alliance side of The Forgotten Coast realm.

READ THIS if you are interested in raiding in blues in the US.

Rules of the game

The philosophy is that we do not use epic items in our ventures. This means that we cannot use epic gear, epic enchants, or enchants that would require an epic item to be disenchanted. We cannot enchant our gear with enchants requiring Abyss Crystals, and we cannot use epic gems.

We are permitted to make full use of the professions perks we choose, disregarding the above rule. This means we can use the epic Dragon's Eye gems if we're Jewelcrafters, and in particular (and more controversly) we can use the epic helm which is the perk of Engineering. In order to make choosing professions more a matter of personal taste, Gevlon has also allowed the use of epic leg enchants. We can't, however, use the Sons of Hodir epic shoulder enchant.

We raid one night a week, for three hours. This serves to prove that previous content does not need to be farmed in order to progress further.

In order to avoid the "you're just pro at your character, doesn't matter if you're in blues or epics" argument against the guild, all Undergeared members are to choose a class/role they've never played on. We intend to raid as class-inexperienced casuals.

No voice communication. People should know what they're doing without having to be called on it, so we do discuss tactics and such in raid chat and there is no need for ventrillo or any other form of voice communication.

What have we killed so far

The project started by doing the ICC 5-man dungeons, then heroics, then followed the normal raid progression path, from Naxxramas to ICC, where we're currently at. In particular, we've cleared

• ICC heroics (including the dreaded Halls of Reflection)
• Naxxramas 10
• Ulduar 10 - 12/14
• Trial of the Crusader 10
• Onyxia 10
• ICC 10 - 8/12 (lower + rotface + festergut + blood prince council + dreamwalker)
• Ruby Sanctum 10 - 3/4

What we're trying to prove

Gevlon said it best, so I'll just quote him here:

I want to prove them that:

• "I don't have gear" is a lie, the normal content needs no gear (beyond readily available to any lvl 80).
• "I have RL, I can't farm like Ensidia" is a lie since no farming is needed.
• "I was unlucky with void zone" is a lie. While luck chooses who get void zone, but staying in one is not matter of luck.
• "I have no time to raid 5 days a week" is no excuse for being useless. We play 1 day a week.

Join us

We only raid 10 man content because we do not have 25 raiders available. If you want to grow the project so that we can tackle the 25-man content, roll an alt or transfer a character you haven't raided much with to EU-Arathor (H) or US-Forgotten Coast (A).

You will get some financial support for your new character. At level 10, you will receive 100g to get you started (buy bags, mounts, seed gold for making more gold). At level 80 you can talk with Koltas (Gevlon's character in the guild) for a promotion to Raider where you will have to prove you're not a complete moron. After being promoted to Raider you will get your gear enchanted for free and 1000g for re-rolling a proper raiding profession (you should raid with crafting professions while you level with gathering ones for gold).

What should I join as?

This question gets asked a lot. The only answer to it is: whatever you want.

The reasoning is simple: If you're not playing something you want, you're likely not to play it, and if you're not playing your character it doesn't matter if we could use it or not.

You are only restricted on what you play by the "class-inexperienced" rule of the guild. You shouldn't play something you are raiding current content with.

Videos:
Festergut kill from Hunter PoV: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnVKNyEkv78
Festergut wipe at 5% from Hunter PoV: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Botv6gEGtKY
Valithria Dreamwalker in Tank PoV: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXWeBuFfOJs
Valithria Dreamwalker in Hunter PoV: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Q-Vj_u53Eg
Blood Prince Council in Hunter ranged tank: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPgFl4ZIgR8
Blood Prince Council in Melee Tank PoV: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwNxkjDHip0
Our first try on Festergut: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIyVPnemNOU
Rotface kill in Tank PoV: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZwtEIIzucA
Saurfang wipe from a Hunter's PoV: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIsEGZ8NzKw
Saurfang kill in Tank PoV: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGgL80CLkAs
Marrowgar in Tank PoV: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfXLDRCxiYI

Logs:
Ruby Sanctum 1
Festergut kill and Putricide tries
Festergut wipe night
Valithria Dreamwalker save and failed tries
Over 9000 tries on Blood Princes
Saurfang, Rotface and one Festergut try
LDW, Gunship and Saurfang
Marrowgar night
ToC (Jaraxxus-Anub)
Onyxia
Upper Uduar + Gormok
Thorim
Hodir + Freya


Last Call

Gevlon has issued a last call to arms on <Undergeared>. We'll try to raid on Aug 21st to finish off Putricide and show there's still enough interest in the project for it to be worth going on. If we don't get enough people, <Undergeared> disbands.

Again, if you want to participate in this unique World of Warcraft guild, get a level 80 char to EU-Arathor, fit him up in blues, and help us kill Putricide on the 21st of August. After Putricide we got Blood Queen, Sindragosa and Arthas himself to kill. Come help us finish up WOTLK in blues.



Undergeared VS Summer Slack original

I haven't posted here in a while, mostly due to not having much to post.

Couple of weeks ago we killed the last mini-boss in Ruby Sanctum and did a couple of tries on Halion. Last week we were 8 and could do nothing more than assess Halion's enrage timer, which we did. We confirmed Halion has an 8 minute enrage timer, that we can live enough in phase 1 to withstand it, and we also concluded that he needs a nerf in order for our blue geared team to be able to beat him. Not because tanks will die or healers can't manage (although it is pretty challenging, I must say), but mostly because there's no way we can do the dps required in our gear while doing all the movement and holding back that the fight requires.

So, with Halion out of the picture the idea for this week was to go back to ICC and finish what we started. Kill Putricide. Bad news everyone, we didn't make it. The Professor still lives. Not because we can't kill him with our gear since last time we were there he was down to phase three and the buff was only at 25% while it's grown bigger now. We didn't kill Putricide because we can't kill him when we're only 6, 2 tanks, 3 healers, 1 dps. So, Summer Slack kept us from the Putricide kill, and that's why I'm posting here again.

We can't fight Summer Slack in game, so I turn to the forums. We need more members to combat this unworthy foe. We need YOU to join us.

If you got time this summer, a level 80 character you don't use much, and the will to do ICC and still have a challenge with it, consider transfering to EU-Arathor Horde Side. You can also join in re-rolls or lower level characters, but that's pretty useless against Summer Slack as we need raid capable characters.

We will provide with the challenge to raid the hardest bosses in ICC10 (Putricide, Lanathel, Sindragosa and the Lich King) with a raid entirely decked out in blue gear.

Want to show that it's not GS that matters? We're the place to do it.

Join <Undergeared>, help us finish Icecrown Citadel and you can say you've really done something unique in World of Warcraft. We're currently the ONLY group doing this, the ONLY place you can experience ICC in blue gear and /laugh at all the people requiring 5.8k GS to kill Festergut.



Going against bosses we killed over 9k times on our mains original

<Undergeared> seems to only be able to kill bosses we've already killed over 9000 (!!) times on our mains, in an instance with a buff to all our damage, health and healing. We couldn't possibly even think of going into unnerfed content which we didn't have extensive experience on.

<Undergeared> stepped into Ruby Sanctum, which was released this week. Ruby Sanctum doesn't have any 25% buff, a blue geared group would certainly not even be able to handle trash, much less *gasp* kill bosses.

But alas, we did and we have the logs to prove it. Two of Halion's Lieutenants down, and the third being only a matter of time were killed by a group made up with people with no more than 3.3k gearscore.

Saviana Ragefire is a joke. She was dead on our second try, but make sure you bring someone who can dispel Enrage or you might take 8+ tries like I did on my druid with a 4.9-5.8k (or so people told me) gearscore group.

Baltharus the Warborn hits hard. And when you can barely survive his bladestorm, he splits into two equal bosses who hit equally hard. You'd think four 4.9-5.8k GS healers could heal 5.8k GS tanks better than five 3.3k GS healers can heal 3.3k GS tanks, but my druid's pug proved otherwise.

Next week, <Undergeared> faces General Zarithrian and Halion. That Twilight Dragon has his days numbered.

If you want to show people that gear is overrated, join us in EU-Arathor or US-Forgotten Coast. We can always use people so we don't always have to 9-man trash in blues.



The Demise of Festergut original

Last week we approached Festergut and got him to 450k HP. This week, we finished the job. Festergut has been defeated by a raid in full blue gear. This raid, to be exact:

Tanks: Hugmeh Manahog
Healers: Triev Solaire Misaka
DPS: Koltas Ardoric Koushirou Ulatekso (video) Chopsui

"The Cult of Festergut", as Gevlon calls it, has lost its deity. Festergut is no longer impossible to accomplish in blue gear, it is very much doable. We went in with a much different raid that we had last week, got a couple of embarassing wipes due to some errors and downed him pretty fast.

Bad news, everyone! I don't think I'm going to make it.

After Festergut was downed, and since Rotface is down too, we went on to meet their master: Professor Putricide. As we're running in someone says on raid chat something in the lines of "can you explain this boss to me, I've never done it". After a lengthy explanation of what's going to happen: "let's just pull and see the fight. We worry about details of last phases when we can reach them", and so we did.

After no more than three or four tries we reached phase 3, and got owned because the person who didn't know what was going on on phase three was one of the tanks. So we explained him about the debuff on tanks and went on to try again. We got to phase 3 a couple more times but didn't manage yet to get Putricide down. Like his minions, Putricide is going down, and his killers will be in blue gear.

"One impossible boss per week is enough"


Festergut farts original

Fun time!

Festergut is mathematically impossible. We can't pull it off with our blue dps, even if for some magical reason our tanks can survive the pounding and your healers heal it. Or so they say.

This week <Undergeared>, the guild who raids in full blues, went on to ICC 10's first real "gear check" boss, Festergut. This boss pounds the tank, does a lot of AoE healing and gets really mad at us 5 minutes after the fight starts. If that wasn't enough, he has 9 million health points to burn through.

I'll just say it here in the beginning: we did not kill Festergut ... this week.

Ever since <Undergeared> set foot in ICC10, we've been killing something each week: Marrowgar on week 1, Lady Deathwhisper and Lootship on week 2 (15% buff) , Saurfang and Rotface on week 3 (20% buff), Blood Prince Council on week 4, Valithria Dreamwalker was saved on week 5. Since we're doing tier 10 in gear which wasn't really very good three tiers below, there was bound to be a week where we wouldn't down a boss.

So, what happened?

Raid time comes, none of our usual tanks was online. We had two healers with tank spec, so they went tank, which means some of the people who are usually DPS needed to cover for the healing (glad we could, otherwise we wouldn't be able to raid). This was our setup (after trying with two healers and dying miserably):

Tanks: Triev Manahog
Healers: Koushirou Misaka Ardoric
DPS: Koltas Baitra Ulatekso (video) Chopsui Yiska

First tries weren't very famous, we were dying very quickly due to bad healing (yes, I was one of the factors), but it got better. Sometimes our tanks would die, we tried again. There was even once where taunt missed, we went again. After some tries, we started surviving a bit more, and a lot less mistakes after: we got him to 10% and hit enrage. Few more failed tries later and we got him to 5% and hit enrage (video of that try here). After a lot of wiping on Festergut, people were getting tired, lost focus and making more mistakes than those affordable. Raid time ended and we called it, without a kill.

I for one am to blame for a few wipes and some lost time. I remind you this was my second time healing on my shaman, first time I did it was on Blood Prince Council, with 3 other healers, so I was just there to pick up some slack, which was rather unstressfull. This time I was in charge of healing the MT on Festergut. A full blue geared MT, on a raid made for 3 full tiers above his gear, a raid with a 20% dodge nerf to all tanks because of how much gear inflated tank stats. Our blue geared tank did not have the gear that warrented the 20% less dodge, but still got the nerf. He had 13% dodge (talking about Triev, Manahog did not comment on his stats). This means that the blue geared tank is taking more hits than an epic geared tank would take. He is also taking bigger hits (armor on gear scales directly with item level) and getting healed by blue geared healers.

As I said, it was the first time I was really healing on a blue geared raid, so I had some issues to take care of: In the beginning I was using my throughput, haste heavy gear. By the time we got past the first 3 inhale phase, I was out of mana and couldn't heal past that (even after getting Innervatted and using Mana Spring Totem). I went to the bank to get my MP5 set (which I collected in fear of getting OOM in raids with haste gear... guess it was a good call). After a few tries and a mana restore cooldown rotation set, my mana was lasting until the enrage. I was getting better, which is nice. I wasn't the only one getting better, our first time to enrage timer, we got him to 10%, whilst on our second time to enrage timer we got him to 5%, this is 5% less health taken to the boss, and we could've taken more by using gimmicks.

During our first tries on Lady Deathwhisper (the first boss with a measurable enrage timer) Chopsui said: "we worry about the enrage timer when we die to it". That was our philosophy on these Festergut tries: live through as much as possible. And we hit enrage timer twice. We have proven we can live through the 5 minutes it takes for Festergut to enrage, so next time we'll need to worry about how to take 9 Million HP in that time.

Fun time over!

We can heal too original

On June 12, <Undergeared> stepped into Icecrown again setting out to heal Valithria Dreamwalker. And so we did.

We stepped into the chamber she's being held with 4 healers (2 out, 2 going in portals), 1 tank and 5 dps, but it turned out that dps was low this way and we were getting raped real soon by overwhelming adds. So we went with a more classic setup for this fight: 3 healers (2 in portals, one out healing the raid).

Tank: Maladroite (video)
Raid Healer: Solaire
Dragon Healers: Misaka Triev
DPS: Koltas Ardoric Ulatekso (video) Underfear Koushirou Tazar

We didn't start out with this setup, and after a couple of fairly decent tries we had lasted a couple of minutes and healed only 1M health on Dreamwalker. Everyone's surprised at what happens next, Koltas (Gevlon's character) says something in the lines of "We only healed 1M, do you think it's doable? Should we go Festergut?" (I regret not having his words screenshotted). Our leader faltered and thought we weren't ready for healing Dreamwalker, the raid disagreed and convinced him to keep trying. And so we tried a bit more. Some tries later our dps and healers started getting more efficient in killing the right mobs at the right time and at gathering stacks of Emerald Vigor and we had a try where we got her up to 95% Health. It's certainly doable.

My strength is returning! Press on, heroes!

The time at which Valithria gets to 75% was a major turning point in our battles. Shortly after she told us to press on, adds were starting to overwhelm us. This point became a major turn of events in our kills, from here on we needed to push healing a bit further and be more selective on our kill priority. Bloodlust was to be used shortly after this to push that major extra healing that came from our healers having 30% more haste and also having had the time to build decent stacks of Emerald Vigor. The final strategy we used to beat the encounter and be able to heal Valithria was:


* Kill priority: Blazing Skeletons > Archmages > Suppressers > Abominations
* Ulatekso soloing the Blistering Zombies through kiting
* Triev and Misaka go in portals
* Solaire beacons boss


After the 75% emote healers would only go into one more portal and pop Bloodlust after getting out from it. DPS would start ignoring Abominations so the worms aren't spawned and we can focus on Blazings, Archmages and Suppressers. Cleansing totem would be used so that the disease put on the tank from the abominations isn't an issue.

Very messy towards the end, almost everyone is dead, and Triev comes out of the portal to heal those final few thousand health points left on her, Valithria finishes off all the adds in the room, <Undergeared> wins again.

The logs will show that a noob elemental shaman spent half the raid without flametongue imbued on his weapon. They will also show many other mistakes, like bad decisions on kiting or stacks dropping. This was the first time healing on this boss for most of our healers (all, dare I say?), so they all had to learn how to properly and efficiently stack Emerald Vigor without letting it fall.

This is our final stand. What happens here will echo through the ages. Regardless of outcome, they will know that we fought with honor. That we fought for the freedom and safety of our people.

Remember, heroes, fear is your greatest enemy in these befouled halls. Steel your heart and your soul will shine brighter than a thousand suns. The enemy will falter at the sight of you. They will fall as the light of righteousness envelops them!

We have been steadily clearing ICC in only blue quality gear.

From here on we have finished the "easy" bosses in ICC 10. From here on we have two "mathematically impossible" bosses (Festergut and Blood Queen Lanathel) and two very hard ones, Professor Putricide and Sindragosa, standing between us and the Lich King. Every further step we take will be an impossible one.

If you'd like to join in on the challenge, or if you wish to prove by doing that Skill > Gear, <Undergeared> on (H) EU-Arathor is the only guild doing it, so it is the guild to join. We would love to be able to raid 25-mans (the "real" content) in blue gear, so the more people we can muster, the better.

If you play in the US you can either get an EU account and join us in EU-Arathor, or do like a few people have shown in this thread and join the US branch of this project in (A) Forgotten Coast. I'm sure that if enough people join, we will have an <Undergeared> group running on the US too.


Who needs Buffy? original

Naxxanar was merely a setback!

I'm sure we all remember Keleseth from Utgarde Keep, Taldaram from Old Kingdom and Valanar from Naxxanar. They are all back as vampires in Icecrown Citadel and make up the Blood Prince Council encounter, which is the first one in the Crimson Halls wing. Unfortunately Buffy, the Vampire Slayer, isn't around much in World of Warcraft, so we can't count on her to kill these particular vampires. If you need to kill vampires in WoW, who you gonna call?

<Undergeared>, of course. We'll get the job done!



We went in with the following group:

Tanks: Maladroite Liviann Koltas (ranged tank on Keleseth)
Healers: Triev Solaire Misaka
DPS: Ulaketso Ardoric Underfear Baitra

Gevlon (as Koltas) brought TBC shadow resist gear and a strange spec for spell resistance. We learned that Empowered Shadow Lance does not seem to care much for spell resistances and it would still hit very hard. And so we wiped.

At first we wiped very fast, with Koltas dying before Keleseth's Evocation of Blood, since he was having a hard time picking up the shadow resistance orbs. But after some time we even got a few decent tries where we went through all the evocations. And still we wiped.

There's a lot going on on this fight, and it's rather easy for someone to die if they make small mistakes, and in a blue geared raid, every member is important. So we wiped some more.

Since the problem was people dying, we went with an extra healer. Since I was the only one capable of it in the raid, I went to Thunder Bluff, changed my Enhancement spec (which I kind of fail at) to Resto, and went back. My first time as resto shaman in a raid... had to be deep into ICC and in blue gear. Of course it spelled disaster, I got out of mana very quickly, with the healing style I was used to in heroics. Next tries, no more LHW for me. It started to go better, but we still wiped.

Another change that also occurred was Koltas going back to pure dps and Ulatekso taking Keleseth in some stam pumped blue gear, which drove his health pool to circa 40k (he was collecting such gear for BM tanking, it seems). With Deterrence to ease up on the damage taken when Keleseth first takes the Evocation, he proved to be a pretty decent tank for Shadow Lances. And still we wiped.

Come the end of our raid time, and still no kill, Liviann had to go. But we still wanted to push a little more so we brought Koushirou to heal and put Solaire on tanking, replacing Liviann. After a few more wipes, circa 9 minutes into one of them, Orb Whisperer popped up, and we were through with wiping. <Undergeared> wins once more. In blue quality gear, just as a reminder.

The group who made the kill was:

Tanks: Maladroite Solaire Ulatekso
Healers: Triev Misaka Koushirou Ardoric
DPS: Koltas Underfear Baitra

Such wondrous power! The Darkfallen Orb has made me INVINCIBLE!

Sorry to break it to you, Keleseth. They definitely don't.

All the wiping we went through, and the changes in strategy, comes to say that even a blue geared group can adapt to overcome the challenges in ICC.

Next week, <Undergeared> will not kill any boss. Doesn't mean we won't raid, and I'm told I'll be asked to heal again.

Heroes, lend me your aid! I... I cannot hold them off much longer! You must heal my wounds!

The first boss of any substance original

You've failed to kill Saurfang, the first boss of any note. You've done, effectively, nothing.

You are nothing!

Both Terragh and Saurfang thought we had done nothing, however we have now been able to kill Saurfang, so I guess we have now, and only now by some people's opinion's, accomplished something.

Like I said last week, Saurfang was pretty much a sure kill with some improvement of our performance, and also that with the 20% buff he would sure be downed. I never actually thought we would down him in the first try even with the 20% buff, but alas we did. Saurfang went from repeatedly owning our faces with his last available strength (15% and 6% wipes), to not being of any consequence.

The group that killed Saurfang was:

Tanks: Maladroite Solaire
Healers: Manahog Koushirou
DPS: Ardoric Koltas Triev Chopsui Ulatekso Yiska



As can seen, we stormed the citadel and made a mess of things. BP gain was so low that he only cast one Mark on our space chicken, who ended up dead on the floor. No matter though, he died for the greater good: the death of the Deathbringer. His sacrifice was not in vain.

I think I made an angry poo-poo. It gonna blow!

After killing the Deathbringer we went on to the Plagueworks. After killing the first Herald without much issue, Koltas turns and says "stay back, I'll solo the other one". Half the people in the raid went "huh?". Turns out Koltas brought the Herald to Crok Scourgebane and we only had to deal with a couple of spawned essences.

The trick even worked rather well on Stinky, after a few adjustments on the pull (Koltas tried it alone and his corpse soon splashed the ground). And off we went to Rotface.

Yiska gave his spot to Metrios (a warrior) since he wasn't totally secure about the tactics for Rotface. Turns out neither was Metrios and one of the healers. We went with one tank, a dps (Koltas with a resistance spec) kiting, and three healers:

Tank: Maladroite
Healers: Solaire Manahog Koushirou
DPS: Koltas Triev Metrios Ulatekso Ardoric Chopsui

After some grief learning the fight, correcting mistakes, and whatnot...

Terrible news, everyone, Rotface is dead! But great news everyone, he left behind plenty of ooze for me to use! Whaa...? I'm a poet, and I didn't know it? Astounding!

Having some people not knowing the fight caused some learning wipes. Having low geared tanks and healers, made some tunnel visioning on the tanks causing some diseases not to be dispelled. But we got our acts together, and downed another ICC boss in blue gear. I think this one can be considered of substance too, so two bosses of substance are down.

Since we still had half an hour left on our raid, we went to see how Festergut would treat us.

Dead, dead, dead!

Yes, we died to Festergut, but not without living through a 3 inhale phase. Our tanks can take the pounding. We died since someone didn't know what the spores were for and didn't take all of them. That person died to Pungent Blight, which cascaded to everyone dying soon enough.

The question in everyone's mind is: "was the dps enough?". Well, the answer to that is: "not on that try". The dps on that try clearly wasn't enough to beat the enrage timer, but we only had one try, and I'm sure things would improve with further tries. Even if we can't pull enough dps on him with the 20% buff, he'll most certainly be down in circa 2 months, with the 30% buff.

Enrage timers?! pfff original

I have become...DEATH!

Enrage timers are the bane of undergeared raiding, right? I mean, even if we find a way to keep our tanks alive and our healers are so good that they don't run out of mana while keeping our tanks alive, our dps simply won't be enough to beat enrage timers.

The first bosses in ICC with enrage timers are Lady Deathwhisper and Deathbringer Last raid we tackled them, with raising success.

The sooner you come to accept your condition as a defect, the sooner you will find yourselves in a position to transcend it.

We are indeed defects, and as such we used alternative tactics for this fight. We ran with

Tanks: Manahog Liviann Lyssander
Healers: Triev Solaire
DPS: Koltas Nommie Ulatekso Koushirou Ardoric

Yes, three tanks. The decision to take three tanks was to better control the adds, since on our last raid they were getting lost and killing some raid members.

Our last week's wipe session, which someone said was pointless because it didn't get us a kill, made us better realize which adds are really dangerous, so this time we were nuking the Adherents HARD as soon as they appeared.

After one or two wipes, don't remember exactly why, we got to phase 2. This wasn't the best transition to phase 2 ever, though, since she lost her shield mere seconds after summoning adds. Adds killed a few of us, her un-interrupted frostbolt finished the job. We wiped.

Next time around, we made sure the shield went down without adds and interrupted as many Frostbolts as possible. A shaman (yeah, me) was so focussed on interrupting the Frostbolt that he died like a true nab: little ghost explosion while standing on DnD. No matter, apparently we can afford one death and three tanks to beat LDW's enrage timer.

You DARE board my ship? Your death will come swiftly.

Then came Lootship (ironically, we won't be using any loot from it). The time it took us to beat the Gunship battle shows how inexperienced in ICC (or their roles) some people were. We had tanks jumping too late, DPS jumping too soon (because the tank wasn't there yet), tanks jumping before the Mage, tanks tanking adds too far from healing, DPS focussing on the riflemen while marines and sargeants were up, a lot of nabbish mistakes.

But we pulled through, like most people would expect. Lootship is even doable in blue gear, what a surprise!

In comes Saurfang.

Come then heroes. Come and face the might of the Scourge!

This is a fight where the class-inexperience showed a bit.

Our first try we wiped after two marks with Saurfang at 100% HP. Yes, he was healing THAT much. Since we had a range heavy group, handling the Blood Beasts was never a big issue, it was the taunting that needed to be primed. And getting primed it did. Our last try of the night we wiped at 6% to his berserker rage. A little less healing from him, and we would've killed Deathbringer Saurfang, possibly even making a mess of things.

The composition changed a bit, since we didn't need 3 tanks, and we were doing Saurfang with:

Tanks: Lyssander Solaire
Healers: Misaka Manahog (yes, two-healing it like the pros)
DPS: Ardoric Koltas Nommie Ulatekso Triev Koushirou

I'm not used to depending on other people for my hit cap (my dps char is a hunter), so it took me quite a while to realize we had a Balance druid and a Shadow Priest on the raid, and that it meant I could do away with 3% hit on gear for better stats. I swapped some gear from Elemental (with hit) with some haste gear from my resto set, and was able to improve my performance.

There are people making math to say we won't have enough dps to beat Festergut (they're already assuming our tanks can take the beating, nice). But they are doing that math with the wrong numbers: they are taking numbers from Marrowgar and LDW, which is way below what we can do if we just stand there and nuke. Their math was running with (at most) 3.5k dps. On Saurfang (which still has some target switching and all that) we were doing more than 4k consistently. There was a try where my recount said I had 4.9k dps (with around the same damage done as Triev with 4.3k). Please redo the math.

Even if we don't get to kill Saurfang with the current 15% buff (I believe we can), he will certainly be a piece of cake with 20%.

no matter how dire the battle... Never forsake it!

Blue Fire VS Blue Gear

A mighty blow has been dealt to the Lich King! You have proven yourselves able bodied champions of the Argent Crusade. Together we will strike at Icecrown Citadel and destroy what remains of the Scourge! There is no challenge that we cannot face united!

Last week I made a post reporting that Undergeared had cleared Trial of the Crusader and were thus heading out for Icecrown Citadel.

[...] the buff is only 15%, and it just hit 15% it's not gonna go up for a few weeks, and certainly not in time for your marrowgar attempt that's in a few days.

He was right. The buff didn't go up from 15% for our Marrowgar raid. We killed him nonetheless. And he didn't even squirm that much: 4 tries, one tank respec and 4 healers later and he was down. We weren't running into healer OOM, in the first tries we were dying in less than one minute to heavy damage. So we switched the druid's spec to healing. The fight took long (and the video shows the rather uneventful PoV of a tank), but I repeat: we downed Marrowgar in blue gear.

Some people say we have perfect group composition... We raid with whatever we got online, and that usually doesn't give much choice. We had 11 level 80s online at the time of raiding and one of them was lagging up to 6k ms. So we took the other 10.

Some people say that this is easy because we all have extensive ICC experience. Someone asked in raid what was everybody's experience in ICC, and the answers varied from 0 to 10/12 HC. I personally sit at 11/12 in ICC on my other realm. Previous experience is basically irrelevant, since we're doing it way undergearing the content. We all have to relearn the fights and figure out how to handle what ICC throws at us all over again.

Our raid was comprised of

Tanks: Maladroite Lyssander
DPS: Ardoric Chopsui Gartok Koltas Ulatekso (only on Lady Deathwhisper)
Healers: Manahog Misaka Solaire Triev (switched with Ulatekso on Lady)

After Marrowgar was down, we went to Lady Deathwhisper. Handling the adds when they don't die in the first 10 seconds is hard, specially when we had a magical heavy composition. After a few failed tries we had a hunter online and switched our Balance Druid for him. In our last try of the night we 9 manned Lady Deathwhisper (rogue died on first pack) until phase 2, where we had three Reanimated Adherents making short work of our raiders.

Next week, she'll go down.

If you want to help us getting better raid compositions than "who's online?", dust off that old unused alt (or level a new one) and join us in EU-Arathor Horde side.



LFM ToC10 5.5K GS, achie or no inv original

We need all that, right?

Wrong!

ToC has now (last Saturday, at least) been cleared by a raid in full blue gear. This is part of a project (check my sig for further details) to clear WOTLK content in blue gear. And we're actually doing it. Many people thought that ToC would be a hard hurdle to get by (even me, actually), but in fact it was easy as pie.

The only boss that wasn't one-shotted was the champions. The first attempt at the Twins only failed due to the paladin tank forgetting to turn RF on.

Next step: ICC 10. I'm fairly confident we can kill (at least) 4/12 next week, which is where most raids tend to end. Wouldn't that be embarrassing for the people requiring 5.6k GS and 11/12 achievement end up killing only up to Saurfang?

[Bielz]

GJ, impressive. Good luck on Saurfang

[Gallador]

Really impressive indeed. Gunship could bring some problems though seeing as Saurfang can hit like a real bitch, be prepared for that. (Our tank actually thought he would be a sissy, eh.)

Keep us updated!

[ardoRic]

Really impressive indeed. Gunship could bring some problems though seeing as Saurfang can hit like a real bitch, be prepared for that. (Our tank actually thought he would be a sissy, eh.)

Keep us updated!

I'm pretty sure Saurfang will be helping us on the ship. That pesky dwarf will be the one pummeling our tanks.

[Gallador]

I'm pretty sure Saurfang will be helping us on the ship. That pesky dwarf will be the one pummeling our tanks.

Right, sorry. Being Alliance for nearly 6 years gets you to think them Hordies are nothing more then some NPC's.

Until they absolutely, totally own me in BG, but that's why I stopped PvPing. ^^

[Herecius]

Random advice for Deathwhisper if you're magic heavy especially: treat it like the heroic mode encounter, and burn down the casters that spawn - 1 on the left, 2 on the right - as quickly as possible before they bubble, if your blue-gear dps can manage that. A bubbled caster slows things down a lot. Good luck! Awesome work, good players.

[ardoRic]

Random advice for Deathwhisper if you're magic heavy especially: treat it like the heroic mode encounter, and burn down the casters that spawn - 1 on the left, 2 on the right - as quickly as possible before they bubble, if your blue-gear dps can manage that. A bubbled caster slows things down a lot.

This was precisely what we were doing in the last tries. I had never realized how annoying those adherents really were to kill: 50k absorb shield, full health when empowered, full health when Revived. Immune to magic when revived and the shield reflects magic. With so few physical DPS these guys were lasting too much.

Our blue DPS could handle the ones that come from the left (only one), but we were having trouble taking down the two (actually, the extra one) from the right (he usually already had a shield when we switched to him after killing the first)

[CarlingBlackLabel]

Really good work guys. Great to see that you got Marrowgar down with relatively few problems and without the luxury of picking and choosing your raid composition.

Props to Gevlon for starting this thing rolling and to you ardoRic for posting these updates... I hadn't got round to checking Greedy Goblin yet today.

On a related note, I would be interested in transferring my Demonology Warlock to Magtheridon and joining you - I just need to get a blue set of gear first. : I'll contact you in game if I do decide to go ahead.

Keep sticking it to the elitists and haters, guys.

[ardoRic]

On a related note, I would be interested in transferring my Demonology Warlock to Magtheridon and joining you - I just need to get a blue set of gear first. : I'll contact you in game if I do decide to go ahead.

The blue geared guild is on Arathor, not Magtheridon. That's the ganking guild.

You can get the blue set on Arathor too.

Also, you shouldn't have much raid experience with the char you're using on Undergeared, As Gevlon said: we want to see those achievements popping up when we kill new stuff.

[Annoying]

Wait, why do you care about what we think again? Aren't you "above" the rest of us social beings?

[ardoRic]

Wait, why do you care about what we think again? Aren't you "above" the rest of us social beings?

If that question is for me, the simple answer to that is: I'm not Gevlon.

I didn't join this project for the same reasons Gevlon started it. I do care about what this project shows, and think this is a worthwhile place to report our progress.

[Ormula]

That's surprising. Your paladin has 18k mana, your tanks have probably 30k and 35k respectively, raid buffed.

That would be very fun. Congrats to you all, shows that enough skill can really compensate for no gear.

[Kinettik]

Been reading this post, plus Gevlons blog and i must admit i really like the whole concept. That being said however, i did notice that all your characters use the top end Epic leg enchants. Doesnt that go against everything that this guild is about? Or am i mistaken in some way and that was allowed?

[Ormula]

Been reading this post, plus Gevlons blog and i must admit i really like the whole concept. That being said however, i did notice that all your characters use the top end Epic leg enchants. Doesnt that go against everything that this guild is about? Or am i mistaken in some way and that was allowed?

It looks like they're using everything you could get when you were starting Naxx. Blue quality gems, but some are using JC gems, et cetera.

[tibben]

I love this post and the ToC predecessor. For those people claiming that WotLK is not too easy because "Have you killed LK 25 Heroic?" is the only argument they can come up with...how bout this argument, "have you downed the 3rd tier of content wearing full blues and started clearing the 4th tier of content still wearing full blues?". I'm so glad that someone out there can answer yes to that second question I'd love to see you get a full 25 man group together to try clearing the 25 man version. I imagine some of the enrage timers would end the progress, but if you could actually hit the enrage timer and the only thing stopping your progress is lack of dps that would at least be an interesting conclusion to this project.

[Annoying]

I love this post and the ToC predecessor. For those people claiming that WotLK is not too easy because "Have you killed LK 25 Heroic?" is the only argument they can come up with...how bout this argument, "have you downed the 3rd tier of content wearing full blues and started clearing the 4th tier of content still wearing full blues?". I'm so glad that someone out there can answer yes to that second question I'd love to see you get a full 25 man group together to try clearing the 25 man version. I imagine some of the enrage timers would end the progress, but if you could actually hit the enrage timer and the only thing stopping your progress is lack of dps that would at least be an interesting conclusion to this project.

My issue with the whole "in blues" thing is that it makes up for laziness on blizzard's part. I shouldn't have to artificially lower my stats to be challenged.

[SilkforCalde]

Right, sorry. Being Alliance for nearly 6 years gets you to think them Hordies are nothing more then some NPC's.

Until they absolutely, totally own me in BG, but that's why I stopped PvPing. ^^

Playing on a server with 90% Horde for a couple years, to me, Alliance are those guys I occasionally see leveling in STV.

[Armond]

I don't see any tanks getting one-shot in that video. That said, because of the ICC buff, I'd be more interested in a yogg video.

My issue with the whole "in blues" thing is that it makes up for laziness on blizzard's part. I shouldn't have to artificially lower my stats to be challenged.

For those people claiming that WotLK is not too easy because "Have you killed LK 25 Heroic?" is the only argument they can come up with...

I get this feeling that there's no "just right" difficulty for most raiders... Either it's way too hard (i.e. top end of the spectrum hard, designed to challenge Paragon/Ensidia/Premonition/etc), or it's not hard enough (i.e. guilds running in and downing 6-8 ICC bosses before their first coffee of the morning).

[SilkforCalde]

My issue with the whole "in blues" thing is that it makes up for laziness on blizzard's part. I shouldn't have to artificially lower my stats to be challenged.

... what?

Where, when you sign up for WoW, does it anywhere guarantee challenge?

Why would you say that personal limitations intended to enhance difficulty would EVER be an insult against the game?

I played Resident Evil 4 so many times that even pro mode was no challenge. So I challenged myself by limiting my weapon choices to nothing but handguns. Sure made it more challenging and I had a blast doing it. Is this a knock against the game? Of course not. Only someone absolutely delusional would ever even insinuate that it was.

[Armond]

Where, when you sign up for WoW, does it anywhere guarantee challenge?

Why would you say that personal limitations intended to enhance difficulty would EVER be an insult against the game?

Games that aren't challenging aren't fun. When the main way of being challenged is to impose irrational restrictions on yourself - not because you're so good that hard modes aren't hard, but because there simply isn't an appropriate difficulty level otherwise - that's kinda balls.

The difference between your RE4 example and our discussion of WoW bosses is just that - you mastered RE4 and still had fun with it by imposing restrictions on yourself (and this could be said about a lot of games - the Final Fantasy series springs to mind), but I'd venture to guess a fair number of us have problems with ICC because the first half is faceroll but required to get to the challenging part. My old guild had that problem, and it wasn't like we could just turn on hard modes since we hadn't downed LK by the time I quit.

(Am I making any sense? I should just go to sleep. The point is that player-imposed challenges because it's fun and you've mastered all the other challenges are ok, but player-imposed challenges because the game otherwise doesn't have an appropriate difficulty level for you feels artificial.)