Raiding in blues: The <Undergeared> Chronicles

[ardoRic]

I like this project. Personally, if it were me in charge of it, I'd also allow any 'epic' items that are purchasable with rep - they are iLvl 200 and were available right at the start of WOTLK.

PS - are you keeping all the loot so you can use it to level in Cata?

The problem is that people like their shiny purples. Someone with a blue, enchanted, ilvl 200 item will be called on as being "undergeared", but if he has an unenchanted, ungemmed purple, even if it's only ilvl 200, people will overlook it. We are raiding with the gear people laugh on in pugs.

I'm personally not taking any loot, some people are saving the loot they get to when Cata hits (or the project is over).

[Siar]

This seems like a lot of fun. I raid in a 10 man guild on my server currently the top of the 10 man guilds and come out alliance second on overall 10 man progression (including the 25 man guilds), so I do like the kind of underdog achiever feel.

I'd like to get involved but exam time atm, then its the fifa world cup (I live in south africa) and a cata release soon after that deters me from leveling an alt right now. So my question, do you plan to do this in cataclysm aswell? I'm keen if so.

Oh and do you not use epics that u can get from the original 5 man heroics?

[ardoRic]

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 Saurfang. 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!

[diemor]

Not sure if this has been said but BQL is going to be a pain in blue gear. We barely beat the enrage on her our first few times, and while we've gotten better I just don't see it being possible with blue geared DPS(Hopefully you prove me wrong but just don't see it happening).

Like the idea though If I hadn't just recently rerolled on another server for fun I'd try and get in on this.

Good luck guys!

[ardoRic]

Unfortunately, the US guild has only five 80s and three characters in the 70's. The other seven in the guild are lvl 49 or under. Does this mean they gave up or are still working towards 80?

I'm sure they would try to raid if they had the people for it. If you're interested try contacting their Guild Master and try to find out their status.

The project has a forum, with a sub-forum for the US branch. You might also try getting some information there.

[draticus]

Cool achievement but honestly you're completely failing to make the point you think you're making.

Can hand picked skilled players who work together on a semi regular basis clear harder content with lower gear? Yes.

Does that have anything to do with random people recruited out of lfg/trade for a one night run? No.

If you're going to say that people recruiting for pugs should choose people/gear based on whats POSSIBLE then everyone should just be looking for a rogue to solo 25 man content for them, right? Its possible, so you should expect to find it in lfg right?

If you want to prove that people shouldn't require gear for raids then start your recorder, recruit 9 random people in all blues from trade chat, and then clear content with them. You can't because when you recruit random people you get crappy players with no chemistry or coordination and the only way to make up for that is by having enough gear. Does everyone need 5.5 for ICC? No. Good thing most people aren't asking for that. I usually see people asking for 5.0 and then those people are getting bitched out by idiots telling them people in blues can clear it.

[ardoRic]

Updated the OP with a video from a hunter's PoV on one of our Saurfang wipes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIsEGZ8NzKw

Cool achievement but honestly you're completely failing to make the point you think you're making.

Can hand picked skilled players who work together on a semi regular basis clear harder content with lower gear? Yes.

This is the point we're making. How are we failing, when you agree to it?

You guys are just making up the other points we're trying to make.

The point is not that a random moron is skilled enough to clear content, the point is that when someone says they're failing due to their gear, they're wrong. They're failing due to their lack of skill.

[Lafleur]

As far as I know,gevlon tried this for the first time with my previous guild (windwalkers) just before I joined (killed yogg in blues in august).
I didn't know he started his own guild to focus only on that purpose though. :-X

[Deleted]

Mad props guys, must be fun to push yourselves to the limit to down these bosses with no gear

[Possiblyreef]

Aye the problems you will encounter on saurfang is not the enrage. But its a fight that gets progressivly harder the more marks. More marks are caused by less dps. and as you have less dps than the average icc10 group could get v interesting.

[petninja]

It's also probably worth noting that the 15% buff doesn't make you 15% better at everything. It's a pretty straightforward buff to DPS in general, but tanks don't get more avoidance so they're going to take more damage than normal even though they have a health boost, and healers aren't going to have nearly as much mana regen. This is far worse than running into ICC without the buff and a few tiers lower gear.

[Vorondil]

I do not see the point of this.

no casual would ever be interested in this; aka only semihardcore/hardcore will do this.

having no XP in a class doesn't matter since you'll learn the class soon 'nuf.

and you haven't even cleared Yogg-saron?
Windwalkers (stormscale eu) did that last summer.

3/12 icc10: *clap* *clap* *clap*

[ardoRic]

and you haven't even cleared Yogg-saron?
Windwalkers (stormscale eu) did that last summer.

They had extensive experience with Ulduar, the people we had going there didn't.

And... it's all coming from the same person: Gevlon. He was the one who incited Windwalkers to do this, he was the one who started this guild for taking it further ahead.

[prince0gotham]

I do not see the point of this.

no casual would ever be interested in this; aka only semihardcore/hardcore will do this.

having no XP in a class doesn't matter since you'll learn the class soon 'nuf.

and you haven't even cleared Yogg-saron?
Windwalkers (stormscale eu) did that last summer.

3/12 icc10: *clap* *clap* *clap*

The point is that this is what a real hardcore/semihardcores should be interested in, not just and only the shiny items from HM. By the dictionary definition of heroic this is more of a heroic feat than HMs (even though they might be still harder even with good gear than in 10m normal) because in HMs there's item and stat progression while here they'll be using the same items for the whole project even if they get stuck somewhere on the way and can't go on. My point is if we strafe away from wow context then doing something from which you do not profit is something heroic so uhm yeah.

[klaps_05]

Everyone who does something not ordinary in the game deserves respect. Perhaps we could see some hard modes in the future as well

[Gemazarus]

Very impressive indeed. Very well done guys. Keep us updated

[Skullmaster]

Good luck guys, better you than me, just thinking of the wipes makes me feel bad for you . Good luck and have fun!

[rsxarmyfan]

This is the ultimate anti gearscore thread, props to you guys, keep it up. Rotface shouldn't be a big deal at all for you guys, and if you have the dps to best fester great job, since I happen to (unfortunately) have run with people with a 5.5k gs who cant pull 4k...i guess their acct didnt come with a user manual when they bought it off ebay.

Keep it up.

[draticus]

This is the point we're making. How are we failing, when you agree to it?

You guys are just making up the other points we're trying to make.

The point is not that a random moron is skilled enough to clear content, the point is that when someone says they're failing due to their gear, they're wrong. They're failing due to their lack of skill.

So we agree then that since people in pugs will lack the skill and coordination of a regular raiding group like your own, you would need to require enough gear to make up for it?

You're talking about whats possible at the cutting edge but then making comments about people requiring gear in pugs to do ICC. Its possible for a rogue to solo patchwerk, does that mean pug leaders shouldn't look for tanks? Of course not. Its possible for people in blues to kill a few bosses in ICC, does that mean pug leaders shouldn't require gear for it? Of course not.

You dont build pugs around best case scenarios. You build them around probability of success. Whats the one and only piece of information you have about strangers to increase the probability? Gear. Does it always work on an individual level? Of course not, its a measure of gear, not skill, so there are no guarantees. Does it average out enough to guarantee success in almost every pug? Yes.

[cookiekrysp]

Good luck with your endeavors! Skill > Gear