Nemo Nisi Mors

In this post, which will most likely be quite long, I would to cover the near future and expectations at Level 70 for NNM.

From where I am standing we really should be looking at the following things, in no particular order at level 70 - both to keep us entertained as well as to make progress as a guild:

[list:6fd9616cb0]
[*:6fd9616cb0] Level 70 Instances
[*:6fd9616cb0] PvP
[*:6fd9616cb0] Heroics
[*:6fd9616cb0] Raids
[/list:u:6fd9616cb0]

[b:6fd9616cb0][u:6fd9616cb0]Level 70 Instances[/u:6fd9616cb0][/b:6fd9616cb0]

These are of course a given. We cannot progress with any of the other things in-game without doing Level 70 instances. These are also required to grind reputation with the 5 factions which sell heroic keys and are thus a vital part of our plans. Once we have sufficient level 70's in the guild, these instances will become the weekly guild events.
This is also the first point where we have to spot weaknesses in the guild and improve upon them. This does not mean get rid of members, it means help these members to improve through advice and acquisition of new gear.

To achieve this at some point we will have forums per class, where we expect all people of this class to share their experiences, specs, tips, quests, etc.


[b:6fd9616cb0][u:6fd9616cb0]PvP[/u:6fd9616cb0][/b:6fd9616cb0]

This is going to be a sore point in some people their eyes, but every member is expected to at least make an EFFORT to learn how to PvP. This is a PvP realm, live with it!
I expect people to work for battleground reward gear if this improves their gear and they can't handle heroics (yet).
I expect people to form arena teams at level 70, I don't care if your team sucks arse - it doesn't matter. 10 games a week in arena is all your team needs to qualify for your weekly arena points. The arena rewards are WORTHWHILE. Seriously - split the costs of starting a team with your team mates, make sure to create a team that will actually be online together one evening a week to do the 10 games and go for it. Every season the ratings reset and you will surely improve after a season of messing about - with arena points in your pocket to buy gear with. Arena matches take 2-5 minutes each.
Note that some classes/specs can get jack all in Arena, so this applies to classes who can get gear which benefits them only. Would be nice to see people having fun together regardless though :)


[b:6fd9616cb0][u:6fd9616cb0]Heroics[/u:6fd9616cb0][/b:6fd9616cb0]

Most instances in the outlands have a Heroic difficulty setting. In order to access this mode, each party member needs the heroic key for that particular instance location. There are 5 major locations:
[b:6fd9616cb0]Auchindoun [/b:6fd9616cb0]- Terokkar Forest
[b:6fd9616cb0]Hellfire Citadel [/b:6fd9616cb0]- Hellfire Peninsula
[b:6fd9616cb0]Caverns of Time[/b:6fd9616cb0] - Tanaris
[b:6fd9616cb0]Coilfang [/b:6fd9616cb0]- Zangarmarsh
[b:6fd9616cb0]Tempest Keep[/b:6fd9616cb0] - Netherstorm

In order to acquire the heroic key, you will need a "Revered" reputation with the corresponding faction, as per below:
[b:6fd9616cb0]Auchindoun [/b:6fd9616cb0]- Lower City
[b:6fd9616cb0]Hellfire Citadel [/b:6fd9616cb0]- Thrallmar
[b:6fd9616cb0]Caverns of Time[/b:6fd9616cb0] - Keepers of Time
[b:6fd9616cb0]Coilfang [/b:6fd9616cb0]- Cenarion Expedition
[b:6fd9616cb0]Tempest Keep[/b:6fd9616cb0] - Sha'tar

Heroic mode is a mega-difficult instance compared to normal. The mobs are the same, but their health and power has greatly increased. If the tank loses aggro - the party dies. If a trash mob hits a caster or healer - they die. Seriously, don't expect mobs to hit for less then 10,000 per hit. These instances required a GOOD group with the right gear.
The rewards are huge, each Heroic has a GUARANTEED Epic drop from the last boss, and there is a lot of chance on other high-end drops. Not to mention epic recipes, Primal Nethers and also very important: Heroic Marks.
Each boss in a Heroic instance drops Heroic Marks, every party member gets 1 per boss. (NO rolls, all get one)
For an x amount of marks, usual 25, 40 or 50 - you can buy epic rewards in Shattrath.

So besides for the epic drops, you "save" for epics too! Again I state though, this requires a well oiled party, who play extremely well together and know what they are doing. This is not a place for players who haven't fully learned how to play all aspects of their class yet, those should focus on level 70 instances and pvp to get better gear first.


[b:6fd9616cb0][u:6fd9616cb0]Raids[/u:6fd9616cb0][/b:6fd9616cb0]

Looking realistically at our guild, the amount of members and the difficulty of the raids, our main focus is at this point going to be Karazhan, a 10-man raid.
In order to access Karazhan, you need to be level-70 and also attuned. When the time is there I will open a seperate thread about this and we will as a guild get attuned for Karazhan together. I will schedule guild instances around the Karazhan entry chain to get multiple people keyed/attuned in one go each time.

Karazhan is very rewarding. There are no less then 12 boss encounters and each boss drops at least 2 epics. These encounters are difficult and require patience and understanding. In due time there will be a thread covering Karazhan and how we will handle things there - you will be guided through this step-by-step so don't worry!

For now what I would like people to know and work on is that in order to achieve any resuly in Karazhan / Raids in general, only certain setups work. There is some flexibility in this, but some things simply don't work.

What we need minimally is:
2 Tanks
3 Healers
4 DPS

This only leaves 1 flexible slot. Yes, in [u:6fd9616cb0]some[/u:6fd9616cb0] encounters we can do with 1 tank - but this is not prefered.

Class wise, for NNM we are looking at:
(this is not the amount we want in the guild, this is the amount we want in Karazhan at any given time, we need additional people from each class to make sure we can always form a group during raid nights.)

[b:6fd9616cb0]Tanks[/b:6fd9616cb0] - Any 2 from:
Feral Druid
Prot Warrior
Prot Paladin

[b:6fd9616cb0]Healers[/b:6fd9616cb0] - 3
1-2 Holy Priest
0-2 Holy Paladin
0-2 Resto Druid
0-2 Resto Shaman

[b:6fd9616cb0]DPS[/b:6fd9616cb0] - 5
1-2 Warlock
1-3 Mage
1-2 Rogue
0-1 Hunter
0-2 Shadow Priest
0-1 Warrior


Our current ideal setup (this varies between some encounters, but the AVERAGE ideal setup) would be:

1 Feral Druid
1 Prot Warrior / Prot Paladin

1 Holy Priest
1 Any Healer
1 Any Healer

1 Warlock
1 Mage
1 Shadow Priest / Mage
1 Rogue / Mage
1 Hunter / Rogue


--
Above is of course only an indication - there are variations but we should strive to achieve groups such as these.


[b:6fd9616cb0][u:6fd9616cb0]Epics[/u:6fd9616cb0][/b:6fd9616cb0]

One of the most important criteria to progress in raids and heroics as a guild - after rl skill/experience - is gear. In order to defeat some encounters the group needs to be as well geared as possible, in particular the main tank and healers.

In order to achieve this in the way the guild benefits the most overal, I have spoken to a lot of people in the guild and the consensus seems to be that gear should always go to main characters first. E.g. if an epic drops that multiple people want, the people in the group playing their mains have priority over the ones on alts, so that we don't spread good gear across a lot of characters and progress much slower as a result.
The guild leaders also reserve the right to "veto" an item directly to a specific person - but only with a good explanation and a majority agreement in the group. Such decisions would apply to for example the main tanks, if an item upgrades 1active person MUCH more then it does another, or if a person can get a set bonus out of an item which would give a much larger benefit then the gain it would give the rest.
Such veto's will be extremely rare and usually are not needed as the group will be sensible and people will let others have the item if it benefits them more without any help from guild leaders.
Rolling on any epic without consulting the raid first should be strictly off limits - we all want epics but nobody should get greedy. Once we get Karazhan well underway and learn the encounters properly - everyone will have a chance for their epics. There's plenty to go around every week.

Mains / Alts

To avoid people abusing the main / alt system, changing main / alt around will have to be requested to the guild leaders. We will vote on it together with the officers and see how your suggested change fits into the guild and how it affects the raiding group. It would simply be unfair to the rest of the guild to have people swapping their alt and main all the time in order to gear them quicker.

Before this system goes in place during the coming weeks, BEFORE we do Karazhan, you have plenty of opportunity to change your alt - without the need for approval. Please make your mind up for your initial main, I have no problems changing your main the coming weeks but we need to start seeing a clear picture of what we have and what people want. Please do let us know which character you intend raiding on and ask me or an officer to change your main / alt in the guild ranks in-game and change it yourself in your profile on this website.
Once we start Karazhan none of the officers will be allowed to change people their main / alt around anymore, only James (Momar) and myself should do so.


I look forward to any and all feedback on above - and look forward even more to start tackling the end-game content with you guys. I am sure we can clear Karazhan (after many weeks of practice and death ;-) )
Thanks!


[b:6fd9616cb0][u:6fd9616cb0]References[/u:6fd9616cb0][/b:6fd9616cb0]:
http://www.wowwiki.com/Karazhan
http://www.wowwiki.com/Heroic
http://www.wowwiki.com/Arena_PvP_System

really good setup Peter 8) , easy to understand, i see that i got some things to learn, but im looking forward to it.

It all sounds very nice, and to be honest, a little scary too. There is so much yet to learn, but if I fail, it wont be for lack of trying. :wink:

Hey Peter.

This was really great, good job. I am really looking forward takeing this guild to a higher lvl. Though I have many thoughts in my head.

Which charater should I main suddenly. Well the guild got 2 high lvl rogues atm, Perp and me. And the chance that we would play toghether in instances look slim. So should I go for my Hunter? Or are there a place for 2 beautiful rogues :D

The other concern is who is the second tank, atm we only got u, are there some tanks in the horizion?

And I might have many more questions, but it is to early in the morning to come up with more.

At the end I would like to say that you are doing a great job with this guild and me and I'm sure others are finding it a blast beeing a member here. Thanks for contributing for a fantastic WoW experience.

Glad to hear you guys are pretty excited about taking the guild to the next level as well :-)

Darkk: There is room for 2 rogues, in some cases 2 rogues is nice, in other cases you can do with 1 or even none. It is one of these classes that have a specific use in some encounters. In the grand scheme of things a rogue in the group is very nice though. Whatever characters people choose in the end it is a 10-man raid, so we can never take everybody. It is good to have spares for each class, in some cases due to being a small guild people might be asked to come on an alt specifically just to improve the setup.
Having about 3 rogues available in total is probably just fine - then we should always have at least one at our disposal.

Second tank: I agree that we lack tanks. Fortunately James (Momar) is making a tank with Bearheart, who is close to level 50 now. I am confident he catches up with the rest of us before we are ready for Karazhan anyway and at that point he will serve as off-tank until he gathered sufficient gear. Hopefully we are able to acquire at least one more tank afterwards. Mind you - recruitment is easier once we are doing Karazhan.

Healers: Not mentioned but something we are working on too. We have Richards right now, and for 5-mans Ally often comes on Succubus. From what I know we currently also have the following under development:

Alratan - To-be Healing Druid
Zyle - To-be Resto Shaman
Valcanies (spelling is wrong but Gary always has characters I can't spell) - To-be Holy Paladin

I could be wrong and people might have chanced their mind since then, but above means 3 extra healers, all from different classes which gives an awesome flexibility.

It is hard to say where things go until people stated their main raiding characters and their inteded specs. We potentially have to look into recruiting very specific classes / specs to fill the gaps, or develop them internally. I'll stay on Kaets for the sake of having a tank who fully dedicates himself to getting geared well enough to tackle end-game encounters without the risk of said tank leaving the guild and going elsewhere. Worst thing for a raiding guild is to have a main tank leave ;-)

First step now is the level 70 instances, revered reputation with the factions above, and the quest chain for Karazhan entry. After this we move things up a level!

Hey

This sounds Absoultely Faboules :P

Myself have a lvl 41 hunter in the making which stats can be changed for the better of the guild. Perp has also a Feral Druid in the making, we are the same lvl. But I will pursue the main goal and get Darkken to lvl 70 and the rep that is needed. To reach the end-game instances and gear everybody up to the max will take a while, so by then my alt Hunter will also be at a high lvl.

I really looking forward to this, the game just keeps getting better and better. Hope the server dont give us to much problems in the future :roll:

I cant wait till I get home from work so I can play :D

Let's kill some Gnomes :twisted:

Those are nice classes. I am absolutely not opposed to people having 2 different characters to raid with - we just simply give the epic drops to the "mains" first. But it only takes so many runs before no mains want a certain epic anymore and alts start grabbing them too :-)

And that takes less runs then you think!

Only problem is us as a group managing to clear bosses. We have a plan though - and hopefully every week we can progress just a little bit further :)

For now - let's get to level 70 and start doing some proper instances and sort everyones reputation and Karazhan quest chain!

All looks good to me, My Main will be Dalthanar and I will be focusing on getting to level 70 and being top of the damage league :P

In terms of alt's I have a couple of options and I am trying to work out which to level next (giving Dal a bit of down time to get some rested XP but still keeping the focus)

Shammy
Warrior
Pally

No idea what will be best, I though Shammy but looking at our roster maybe the warrior will be better allthough if I go Prot Pally over Holy then maybe he will be better to play...so many descisions and not enough time to make them!

any input will be greatly received.

As for PvP my admission is that I dont really get into it I have had some success when I have but only in but groups and never top of the table. If anyone wants to take the time to team up with me and hit the arena's I am willing to learn allthough dont expect anything other than Newb to start with a high learning curve. :)

My experence lends to the bottom line

The more we play together the more we learn each others ways the better we will become.

Excellent post Peter :)
Hopefully within the next week or so (hopefully) I'll hit 70 on Wraeththu and then get some serious levelling done on my pally.
Do you think for levelling the pally I'd be better off going for protection or retribution spec, then respeccing to holy much closer to 70?

Gary: Retribution for Leveling, Prot or Holy for end-game content. As it stands Holy is the best option :)
Healing Paladins are btw awesome.