Heroic Modes for Casuals:possible?

[zloitima]

hello everyone!

title pretty much says it.
Are the heroic modes possible for casual guilds?

When I say casual i mean only about 4 hours a week of raiding without a stable group.
My guild is in quite interesting situation, we're a guild of expats playing on chinese servers.
We usually raid 2 days a week, 2 or even less than 2 hours each day.
on the 1st day we would down Morchok, try Yorsahj 3-4 times, and then change to normal, kill 3 bosses of 1st part(simply because otherwise we won't be able to finish the whole raid 2nd day)
we don't have very stable group, with only 5-6 people joining every raid and 4 others changing week from week, so basically every heroic mode is like 1st time for us.

so my question is how many tries/raid time does 1st heroic kill take?
I don't mean only DS, but just raids overall. Maybe we could make some changes for MoP and slightly increase raiding time.

thank you!

[Grannos]

I wouldn't say my group is casual but we aren't much more than that either. We cleared 8/8N pretty easily, but we spent like 4 weeks on yor'sahj heroic. Granted we didn't have a blood dk, it was pre-nerf and were swapping people in and out to try different make-ups. We raid Tues, Thurs and Sunday for 3 hours. We are 5/8H currently and happy with that. The majority are taking off until MoP to get a break in. I think given your time restraints doing 3-5 pulls and seeing if your make progression or not is where it really matters.

If you don't make progression or seems like its just a wall, kill it on normal and try again later.

[Deleted]

I remember a 8/8 hm pre (or 5%) nerf guild that raided 2 nights for like 2-3 hours a night.
It comes down to playing your class well and learning the encounters fairly quickly

[Deleted]

My friend is in a full irl-mates guild. They raid 1, maximum of 2 night per week, and they're 5/8 hc. So yes, its doable
One of our top guilds on my server raids like, 2 days a week, and as I said, they're on of the top guilds.

[420rogue]

I remember a 8/8 hm pre (or 5%) nerf guild that raided 2 nights for like 2-3 hours a night.
It comes down to playing your class well and learning the encounters fairly quickly

A guild like that may only raid so few hours, but I guarantee they have geared alts they use.

[Derpyhooves]

People say casual like it is a specificly defined catagory of player. Too many variables to answer since everyone has a different definition of what casual is.

I pug a group once per week on an alt for 4hrs. Its mostly alts with a few people being regular and a few people being switched in or out each week depending who is online and also just some random trade pugs. At the moment we are 5/8h that was before the 15% nerf. It took about 1 week per new heroic boss. So yes it is a casual raid group but some people are more experienced on their mains.

[Shanudis]

Amount of time won't prevent you, but I think an unstable roster will cause issues.

[magicism]

We raid 2 nights a week, 4 hours a raid and got 8/8 just after the 5% buff. Although we have missed a total of 6 raids this tier, so we are pretty far behind. We don't have well geared alts that we can swap out for our mains to get a better raid setup but we do prepare in teh week, make sure we have the best possible gear outside of the raids and make sure we know the tactics. And we do have some top notch tactics

[Herecius]

My alt DK raids only a single 4 hour night, and he's 6/8 heroic, so doing heroics with a single four hour raid night is obviously possible. Granted, as it's my alt, it means I'm also getting the benefit of experience (as are the others who are alts in that run), but still.

[Deleted]

We sit at 6/8 hc (dinged that number at 10% debuff alrdy) easily with 7 hours a week. Nothing more, sometimes even only 4 or even 3 hours, cause too many members arent available.

[-KeenaM-]

Time won't kill you, your roster stability will unfortunately.

[MuskiER]

Amount of time won't prevent you, but I think an unstable roster will cause issues.

^ what he said,

nothing is worst than having to teach new people the fight every week honestly.

[Deleted]

Consider skipping clearing the entire place on normal when you want to progress on a boss.

[oberetta]

we only raid two nights a week for a few hours and cleared it, but the key is clearly a stable roster with people that have awareness and know how to play their roles. there is so much little stuff that comes from roster stability, especially beween tanks and healers, so I imagine heroics will be challenging for you.

if you can get stability at the tank/healer/utility positions you would have a good shot...for example its a lot easier to plug in a mage to just bomb the boss than it is to swap in a 2nd tank that has never seen the fight or played with the other tank (no offense to mages!) maybe you have a core you can build around in that way?

[Naedrim]

I run a second group in my guild that started out raiding 1 night a week for 3 hours. We went 3/8 H, and once we added a 2nd raid day we cleared up to 6/8. Last week we didnt raid one of our days cause of easter and were still able to clear 6/8H in one night so yes it's possible

[Torstein]

8/8 HC in roughly 2 Hours nowadays, 6/8 HC in alt run, 2 - 3 hours

[Zeek Daniels]

Doing heroic modes has nothing to do with how much you raid it has to do with how good your team plays their classes and executes the encounter. If your group knows how to maximize damage, properly mitigate damage and heal through damage and doesnt die to 1 shot mechanics you can kill any boss. But if your players are always standing in fire/void zones and your healers cant manage mana and keep everyone alive then you wont succeed in heroics.

[hellboyy]

i raid 2 days a week, 8 hours total. cleared 8/8 heroic. wud u call that casual?

i know there's a top 50 guild sumwhere that only raids 2 days as well.

[BloodGutter]

I would say maybe extend the amount of time you spend raiding on your 2 days by just an hour or two, you will spend a lot of time figuring things out on certain heroic bosses before nailing the kill. My guild is currently 5/8 HM and we only raid two nights a week for 4-5 hours per night.

That said, get a stable raid core first, heroic progression with the same core is very fulfilling and a fun activity to do.

[Kaiuri]

I remember a 8/8 hm pre (or 5%) nerf guild that raided 2 nights for like 2-3 hours a night.
It comes down to playing your class well and learning the encounters fairly quickly

Yeah, that's my guild. We downed H spine pre-nerf, raid 3-4 hours a night, 1-2 nights a week. We only used one alt, and it was a rshaman that was 379 ilv when we killed H spine :x