Last night Reversion and I decided to see how badly nerfed Firelands was by taking our less geared alts, some guildies, and some trade chat pugs in. We had Reversion’s other druid tank who is pretty well geared other than having a blue weapon, my mage who can manage11k on trash, 13 on bosses, two well geared shaman healers from guild, Bocat, and two other guildies: a well geared dps warrior who knew the fights, and a somewhat geared mage who also knew the fights. Then we grabbed a resto druid and two dks from Trade, one dk as a a tank, and headed in.
Trash was fine. Our dps was so low that the nerfs meant things died about as fast as I’m used to. My dps was the worst at 11k, I believe, but only Bocat and the warrior really performed well. It was a bit painful. The dk tank was pulling about 5k so no help there.
After we got it cleared, it was Shannox time. Everyone said they knew the fight so we pulled. We had a couple issues:
The dk tank was on the dog and was using a different strat than we used…. basically trying to trap the dog before spear time, not after. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t, and often Reversion couldn’t clear his debuff
The dps was low. We had the melee staying on Shannox and Rageface just would. Not. Die.
People were standing on traps. To be fair, it was mostly two people who did had known computer issues (lag and addon problems). But that didn’t make it easier to deal with the traps.
The resto druid wasn’t a raid -level healer. His spell choice was bad (did not want to use Lifebloom. Seriously?) and his gear was light. It wasn’t a deal killer but it hurt.
Did I mention the dps was low? I’m an arcane mage, I ought to be able to do more than 13k. Bleah.
On the third try (Reversion: was it only 3? I think it was 5 or more. Ug.), we got Shannox down. That was the first time everyone stayed alive to phase 2. P2 didn’t take any time and the healing seemed way less intense.
So basically, the nerf meant a group that had no business being there could kill the easiest boss, after a few fails. But it wasn’t a total pushover. The “bads” that some elitists seem worried will get “free loot”, won’t. If you couldn’t down Shannox before it’s probably because of mechanics, not raw numbers, and the mechanics still have to be handled.
I may be complaining this weekend when we go in with our real crew, but at least it’s not a complete joke.
Oh, and did anyone else notice a buffed epic drop rate? We cleared Shannox trash, got one, and Beth trash and got another (Rev’s other bear now has a purple weapon!). Could be coincidence but after all the nights we’ve gone in there without a single BOE trash drop… Got a crafting ember on our one boss kill too, but that’s not a big enough sample size to make any guesses there.
No, what that tank was doing was not a ‘different strat’. It was simply wrong. Post incoming.
Cool, we get to disagree on our blog. Can we have drama and huge numbers?
Drama, sure, but what do the numbers do?
/popcorn
ouch, does not sound like a fun time
The nerfs did make dealing with the mechanics a lot easier. We have 2 different 10-man raids and ours had been working on heroic Rhyolith for a few weeks until we finally got it down just before the nerfs. The other group was making progress on heroic Alysrazor, but wasn’t quite there yet. This week we easily killed Rhyolith again and took only 7 tries to kill Alysrazor, which we hadn’t seen on heroic at all yet. The other group was similar; they quickly killed Alysrazor and then got Rhyolith in 10 tries.
I’m looking forward to getting in there on Friday and seeing. We’ve only just started on normal Rag – 6 pulls last week – but I think we should have lots of time for him now, even with our mage needing to do all the weird stuff for her staff quest.
[…] Looking For More decided to have a go at FL with an undergeared group, and found that for them, Firelands was still somewhat of a challenge – “So basically, the nerf meant a group that had no business being there could kill the […]
Thanks – that’s really interesting to hear, particularly with a lot of other great posts focussing on how hardcore raid groups are finding the nerfs.
I’ve featured this post as part of our FL nerf reactions roundup on the Melting Pot.
Are you planning on doing more of these? I’d be interested to hear how a more casual group did with later bosses.
It’s possible, but our raiding focus is our ten man. Friday was just too far away last night so we hauled out some alts and gave it a try. Thanks for the link!
Yeah we will probably try a few more casual runs. Of course that run was only partially casual. At least half the people there were on undergeared alts but they already knew the fights cold. Only a few were outright pugs. If we had eliminated the computer issues two of our raiders had then we might have 1 shot Shannox despite the other tank or anything else. But our few attempts at Beth were very painful.
Wish i could have been there… Maere could use better gear ;). But I did get the judgement legs for Grom! Only need the bracers for the whole set, and those aren’t very important.