World of Warcraft™

Thinking of starting up some pugs if it's not too tough.

If you're pugging with well-LFR-geared alts of mains who've been clearing the place for two months, yes.

If you're pugging with people who can't click heroic will, or get out of the way of the void on Zonozz, or do a barrel roll (i.e. anyone trained by LFR), then no. It's not easy enough for that yet.

Depends greatly on your server. But its not easily puggable. Morchok is fairly straightforward, Yorshazz a bit harder. Zonozz is a real roadblock for inexperienced people though.

Pugged upto Spine a half dozen times, Madness I've killed two or three times with pugs..

Biggest issue is people saying they know fights because they did it on LFR, then !@#$%ing out healers when they die to something like Hour of Twilight, or they complain about barrel rolls being a waste of times.

Warlord Z can be easy if you have 2 people who know what they're doing, mark a range + melee, and have everyone follow the mark, I don't think people can fail this, no matter how braindead, especially because in a normal group there's accountability for being a moron.

Unless you're absolutely pro at cooldowns, and get a really solid group of healers, you'd probably still die a lot tanking it. You're at a pretty big health and mastery deficit vs DS tanks, OP. You don't have to have 200k health, this toon is overgeared for normals now (my heroic group fell to the Sith), but stuff hits pretty hard even on normal.

On one of my servers heroic DS is pugged on a daily basis. On my other server we did decent up to ultraxion. That being a stiff dps check and most of the people in there were undergeared, we hit a wall. The major stumbling block on ultrax though was 2 dunderheads refusing to hit the button for heroic will.

The biggest issue ive had when forming pugs on my main server is telling people to whisper you the madness kill and they link the fall of deathwing from lfr achiev. They simply cant understand that there is a difference.

Hmm, ok, thanks all. Any other personal anecdotes would be great.

02/21/2012 06:05 PMPosted by Benedict

Unless you're absolutely pro at cooldowns, and get a really solid group of healers, you'd probably still die a lot tanking it. You're at a pretty big health and mastery deficit vs DS tanks, OP. You don't have to have 200k health, this toon is overgeared for normals now (my heroic group fell to the Sith), but stuff hits pretty hard even on normal.

My apologies; I was tanking 5 mans. Gearing it up still. I actually dps MS - just logged out in the spec and gear. I think I'm ready to dps normal ds. Don't mean that in a nasty way btw - if I'm not tell me now - I've not been there yet.

Warlord Z can be easy if you have 2 people who know what they're doing, mark a range + melee, and have everyone follow the mark, I don't think people can fail this, no matter how braindead, especially because in a normal group there's accountability for being a moron.

You know its a bit more complicated than that, and inexperienced is not that the same as stupid. Melee and heals have to be at just the right distance. With a pug you can't afford to let the debuff tick and you have to dispel it fast - but if you dispel at the wrong moment the ball explosion is lethal. And you definitely need vent or some other voice chat because the buff on the ball stacks up fast and at 5 stacks you want the melee group to run to the side pronto.

Oh, yeah. Much better.

@Ghatok's Unholy setup.

In my experience the three pug blockers are Zon'ozz, Warmaster, and Madness. Each of these requires a LOT more out of the group than the other bosses. Even Ultraxion isn't bad assuming everyone clicks the button.

Zon'ozz stresses your healers assuming the ball bounces correctly because of the dispel + healing output requried. They will need to work out raid heal cooldowns during each black phase. The ball also likes to get off track which requires your melee and healers to be raid aware.

Warmaster has so much going on it can be overwhelming. Some dps tend to suck on this fight more than others too. I've usually had problems with the boat blowing up due to not enough little circles being soaked, sappers reaching their destination, people dying to the melee charges or people dying to part 2 because they get stuck in a corner trying to dps the dragon when warmaster stomps them.

Madness is a super hard dps check which likely won't be killed by a pug who has only been in LFR before.

Oh, yeah. Much better.

@Ghatok's Unholy setup.

Sweet, thx :) I tend to over-prepare before I start - don't wanna drag a group down.

In LFR on ultraxion I can approach 40k dps (think I spike over it, but normalize around 37k or so fully buffed with food/flasks/pots).

Yeah, if you were representative of the DPS, the 'dps checks' would be a complete non-issue. It would be communicating and executing the mechanics. And none of them are hard, we all just have no faith in humanity.

Ive been leading pugs on my server for a month now and we usually go 5/8 so it's pretty easy considering my server rarely pugs.

02/21/2012 06:58 PMPosted by Mnevis

Yeah, if you were representative of the DPS, the 'dps checks' would be a complete non-issue. It would be communicating and executing the mechanics. And none of them are hard, we all just have no faith in humanity.

Sweet, thank you :) Not sure how many like-geared ppl I'll get. But I will try. Think I'll give it a shot. Thank you all!

It can absolutely be done.

I put together a PuG to finish off Madness, and we one-shotted it. Five people got the achievement. I was dumbfounded, but it really did happen.

It's a matter of who you invite. For a smooth clear, you generally want people with ilvl 390+. You can get by the first four or five at 385+ without much trouble. Not only is the gear a lot better, only the better players tend to bother to get their gear to that point. Mind you, I two-healed that Madness run with an ilvl 383 druid, but he had 8/8 heroic experience on another toon. So, be flexible.

Starting on Tuesday helps. By the weekend, many of the good players are saved.

Get a good composition. Make sure you cover as many buffs as you can. They matter.

Don't be afraid to take some new people, assuming they are adequately prepared. Just make sure you explain the fight well so they know what to do. The Raid Finder makes this a lot easier.

If you have to juggle, go with strong DPS over strong tanks or healers for this tier. With the exception of Spine and Morchok, all the fights have an important DPS component.

Don't take people with missing enchants or gems. They are almost always terrible players. PvP gear is also a big red flag, although one or two pieces are OK, especially weapons and shoulders.

Strong raid leadership matters. Calling out when to move where, when to bloodlust, which slime to kill, when sappers appear, and so forth, helps a lot. People occasionally tend to tunnel on their healing raid frames or their DPS rotation, so something to get their attention can stop a wipe. If you can't do it, get someone else to do so.

Bring a combat log parser (damage meter). If you start having problems, look at it to determine if people died to avoidable mechanics, if someone's DPS is low, or someone's healing+absorb done is low. Check if those guys are serious impediments, and replace them if so. Thank them politely for coming and giving it a shot. (Almost) nobody plays badly on purpose.

Finally, it's much much easier on a high-population server.

Thinking of starting up some pgs if it's not too tough.

Based on the wowprogress ranking of your server, I would honestly try and recruit a consistent bunch of friends to run it every week over taking random pugs. It's not that it takes anything crazy to complete but if you don't have an average sized raiding community on your server, you may find it difficult to pick up capable players for it.

(http://www.wowprogress.com/realms/rank/us uldum is 175 out of 245, so in the lower third for raiding capable wow servers.)

3/8H is puggable on some servers, 8/8N should be pretty easy on most.

We run half alt runs (maybe 3-4 alts + cherry picked pugs from friends list/trade chat) and we clear it every week. If you know some decent players and can armory people to weed out the real idiots then it's definitely doable.

8/8N should be pretty easy on most.

No.

Blackrock is a pretty progressed server. The average quality of raider is far, far greater than most servers.