Heroic Ragnaros - would you even bother?

[morsei]

Well its definitly not unbeatable

we've been there for a month now, raiding 3 days per week 3/4 hours per day.

first week we couldnt get past the 2nd seed wave
2nd week we were getting to phase3 consistantly
3rd week we were getting to phase4 with 3 meteors and dead people
this week 70% of the attempts we got to phase4 with 2 meteors and everyone alive, got him to 30ish so its all about phase4 practice now

we got around 250 attempts in by now, the thing that really totally sucks about this fight is the length, 11 minutes to get a phase4 attempt, you can get around 15-20 attempts tops per raid (4 hours)

[Dancing Monkey]

This is a hypothetical question but it's based on reality.

Let's say you're in a good raiding guild that has become accustomed to clearing heroic content at an acceptable rate. I'm not talking about World Firsts here but a few Server-firsts here and there and a wowprogress positioning of roughly 400-600.

You raid 4 nights a week and generally make solid progress. You try to balance things out with real-life while maintaining overall good performance.

You've just killed Majordomo and Baleroc heroic, which were hard, but manageable.

Now the path is open to Heroic Ragnaros.

It is generally accepted that Ragnaros is one of the, maybe even THE hardest raid-boss in WoW history. He has at this point, still only been killed by 19 guilds and the kill-rate doesn't seem to be increasing much.

Knowing that Ragnaros is such a hard fight and your guild probably doesn't have the quality nor endurance to kill the boss, would you still attempt to kill him or simply wait for a nerf?

On one hand, practicing the fight might make it easier to kill the boss once a nerf does happen, giving you an edge in the competitive race.

On the other hand if you try too hard you run the risk of burning out your raid on a practically unbeatable boss.

Assuming you were in that situation, what would you do?

Well if you are in the 400-600 world wide spot, usually is an indication that you are and your guild is rather skilled, and part of the skill is the drive to defeat the hard bosses. I think you would risk the morale or progression drive, simply giving up and telling the raid, that the end boss is too hard, and therefore you aren't going to take the opportunity to do it.

Personally if I was in a 400-600 world progression guild, which I was at one time, and the consensus was, "gee this boss is too hard, so we are not going to do it", it would lower my respect for the guild, and I think would lead to low morale for the raiding core, if the officers, and guild leaders give up to easy.

Now, if it really an overall consensus of the majority of raiders, that they would like to skip the progression time on Heroic Ragnaros and take some time off, before the Deathwing raid, then I would have no problem with it.

[morsei]

Well if you are in the 400-600 world wide spot, usually is an indication that you are and your guild is rather skilled, and part of the skill is the drive to defeat the hard bosses. I think you would risk the morale or progression drive, simply giving up and telling the raid, that the end boss is too hard, and therefore you aren't going to take the opportunity to do it.

Personally if I was in a 400-600 world progression guild, which I was at one time, and the consensus was, "gee this boss is too hard, so we are not going to do it", it would lower my respect for the guild, and I think would lead to low morale for the raiding core, if the officers, and guild leaders give up to easy.

Now, if it really an overall consensus of the majority of raiders, that they would like to skip the progression time on Heroic Ragnaros and take some time off, before the Deathwing raid, then I would have no problem with it.

rank 400-600 guilds will never kill ragnaros heroic, not until it gets nerfed or after expansion maybe. my guild is currently ranked 125 or something and we are having a really hard time on it, hell, even Paragon took 500 attempts to kill it, now imagine guilds who struggled on beth'tilac or baleroc

[Deleted]

hell, even Paragon took 500 attempts to kill it

Gear makes all the difference in the world.

Doing Heroic Ragnaros 2 weeks after Heroic modes become available is a little different to doing Heroic Ragnaros 2 months after Heroic modes become available. (Assuming both guilds are 6/7 HC).

[inboundpaper]

I am perfectly okay with my character dying over and over again in order to achieve some sort of achievement, case and point, solo legendary in Halo Reach, so many deaths, but it was worth it when the achievement bloop-blip played.

[OrcsRLame]

If it was the last progression boss for my guild, I'd try for an hour a week at most, until we start making significant progress. As gear increases and we start to get into the later phases I would start pushing it as hard as possible.

[Senathor]

4 nights a week is pretty hardcore, def not casual

It's generaly considered semi-hardcore, harcore is 5-7 days.

[dd614]

What I'd do is work on clearing 6/7 heroic in 1 raid night and cut down your raid schedule to 3 days instead of 4 to reduce burnout. A couple nights a week working on heroic Rag isn't terrible. If it's looking really bad, go back to BWD/Throne/BoT and get people their glory stuffs to break monotony.

[Deleted]

Just do attempts until moral seems to have fallen as far as you're willing to let it fall, swap to normal and spank it.

[Bassch]

I would, even if we didn't kill it. It seems like a fun encounter. The practice would also come in handy for the future.

I'd give Raggy hc a good amount of attempts during the week. But at the last raid near the end of the raid time, I'd just change to normal and kill. People would still benefit from getting experience on that fight, and possibly getting gear.

[Detonation]

I probably would wait, if I were still raiding. It doesn't help I'm on the same server as Premonition (Sen'jin US) so that ruins any notion of getting a server first, as they've already done it. I believe my guild is 3/7 or 4/7 Heroic and raid 4 days a week, I don't really keep up much anymore, as all I do is PvP. So eventually they'll get to Rag, and spend their time wiping on it for a day or two, clear the rest, repeat each week.

Anyways, from what I've seen, the heroic fights seem doable for a good raiding guild (Not guilds like Vodka, Paragon, etc), with enough patience and practice, but Ragnaros itself? It looks like a nightmare of a fight, and back when I did raid I played a Holy Paladin, so I'm sure healing that fight would have been awful. So I just don't see the point in spending all that time trying to kill him, when instead you could be farming as much gear as possible awaiting the point in time where he gets nerfed, because it will happen, it always does. I'd still attempt him for a couple days, just to get everyone a feel for the fight of course, but I wouldn't wipe face week after week. I did that enough on H LK 25 back in Wrath. >.> But knowing my GM he'd want to keep on trucking lol, and probably will do so.

[Deleted]

Personally it comes down less to the difficulty of the boss, but the amount of time available to see it, currently my guild raid 1-2 nights a week and are progressing on Heroics, now if we were making 6/7 Heroic comfortably within one night (which we're nowhere near!) then yeah I'd definitely give him a crack, but if it meant doing more than 2 raids a week I wouldn't bother.

Yeah it's a casual approach but my guild is 12 real life friends so I'm under no outside pressure to progress.

[Deleted]

Sure, but just an hour or so every raid..

[Seriss]

As a resto shaman, I'll probably have to wait for a nerf. My guild's been progressing on him for 4-5 weeks now. *watches from the bench*

[cleotaurus]

It's disappointing that a few guilds on my server have given up even attempting this boss and the race for server first is only among like 3 guilds. We are in that ~500 rank range and we have made it through p2 after about ~60 or so attempts. Its definitely doable, but just requires a lot of practice, and we have a couple of "those guys" who still get hit by waves and crap in normal mode.

Everyone should probably consider the fact that it is the last fight of the tier, and is probably tuned for raids that are at least halfway heroic geared, which is probably a long stretch for most guilds so far. Unless you were clearing 6/7 on the first week of heroics, you still probably only have an average ilvl of ~380 for your roster which is probably less gear than blizzard had in mind for most guilds who would be attempting this boss. Going in there with less will require perfect execution and class play, and with such a long fight with many things to learn its going to take hundreds of attempts.

If you made it 6/7 already then your guild definitely has what it takes to down rag. You will need to think outside the box though and be creative with a strategy that works for your composition. Paragon's setup is only one way to do the fight.

[Asics]

There isn't an option for "yes and I will down him."

[Munk]

Any guild capable of 400-600 ranking is capable of working on Heroic Rag without burning out. Noone saying they will or wont get it but if youre good enough to get and hold that kind of ranking your raiders know how to not spaz over progression wiping.

[Deleted]

If I still played I'd just now be in a guild that has been world 20-90 ever since TBC and banging head against heroic Ragnaros ever since 3rd reset with Firelands live.

I am so f*cking glad I am not there .

My answer would be no (for the worlds 500 guilds you hypotetically describe) because if world's top 20 guilds (25man) are still not nearly all done after almost 2 months, this guild will be there banging their head against the wall for a year without a nerf. So wait for the nerf, chill...

[Gandrake]

what else is there to do, farm more gear? you killed everything else in the instance.

If your group is good for it, start practicing and get it right. It might get stressful bashing your heads against it 3 nights a week, so maybe only practice 1 and a half or 2 nights, do tier 11 hardmodes with leftover time for best in slot items you could still use.

[arden714]

Knowing that Ragnaros is such a hard fight and your guild probably doesn't have the quality nor endurance to kill the boss, would you still attempt to kill him or simply wait for a nerf?

If you're this far you'd already have put your guild through weeks of wipes on the other bosses, there's really no reason not to go for heroic ragnaros. Even if they do nerf him, it's only going to be enough to make a difference on a kill or no kill for the guilds who are extremely close. If you sit and wait for the nerf, you're still going to have a month of wiping on him before you get to the point that the nerf will help you any. In which case you won't be top 500 anymore, you'll have fallen down the charts to all the guilds who practiced to get their strat perfect.