It’s been a long time coming. I’ve heard about these big, bad 25 man raids in BC for some time. I’ve hoped to get there some day, and it’s difficult with the playtime I have available. Well, my druid is nearly as well equipped as he can be, short of a drop or two in Kara and the new badge loot in 2.4. It was finally time for me to start participating in SSC raids and beyond.
Saturday night was actually my second trip to the instance. 2 weeks ago I went along and got to experience Lurker for the first time. That nasty old spout must have gotten me 4 times, but we did take him down. Now fast forward to last night.
This time I was there from the beginning. We started by clearing our way to Hydross. As far as trash goes, there are large groups of hard hitting mobs, but they really don’t see all that difficult. As long as people are staying on CC an the healers are doing their jobs, it’s fairly straightforward. Also, as a healer, it’s nothing more than whack a mole, yet again. I swear my grid layout is going to burned onto my retinas at some point. I’ll find myself walking around in real life wondering who the tanks are.
Anyhow, we get to Hydross and the explanation ensues. Hydross is an interesting fight, what with the two different aspects and the tank dragging. Still, for a healer it’s more of the same. The only question is whether I’m responsible for a tank, the raid or whatnot.
I’m going to step back from SSC in particular here to talk about healing. You’ve heard me mention before how playing a healer is kind of like whack a mole, and this is especially true for a druid healer. I have no useful CC, and I have no real utility to add to a raid. I’m there for one thing only: healing. Does it get boring? Sure, in a manner of speaking. There are times you kind of get on autopilot and lose sight of the fight in general.
However, there are also many whiteknuckle moments where you wonder if you’re going to land that big heal in time. Those times when you wonder if you should burn Nature’s Swiftness. Those times when you have to stay on healing while locating a downed raid member to battle rez. Healing IS fun, and it can be very exciting. The only issue is that, when you get down to it, it’s the same thing over and over again. I suppose you could argue it’s the same for every class, though, just in different ways.
So anyways, back to that unstable guy. We wipe the first two tries. In one instance, a couple of healers went down to the adds that spawn occasionally. In the second wipe, one of the DPSers got overzealous, and the tank couldn’t get Hydross back quick enough.
The third try, though, was pretty cake. We didn’t even come close to the 10 minute soft time limit, either. He dropped the [Idol of the Crescent Goddess] and I grabbed it. I didn’t necessarily want it, but nobody else did and I was at the bottom of the SK list anyhow.
We moved onto Lurker, and it took us a few tries again. I believe it took us four to take him down. We still have quite a few people that are new to these fights, myself included, and we had quite a few deaths due to that nasty old spout. (Thankfully, yours truly learned his lesson last time and was in the water in PLENTY of time and didn’t get spouted once!) We did take him down eventually, and that was it for the raid. We had a 3 hour time limit and reached it just after taking down Lurker.
So, there’s the summary. What do I think?
Honestly, I’m a bit underwhelmed. It’s fun learning new boss fights, and I do like the way the two I have seen are set up. Afterwards I took the time to look through the loot tables a bit. For those first two boss fights, there is literally nothing I want. The real problem, then, is that I can really only raid once a week. That means there is a good chance that those will be the same two bosses I see most of the time.
Hmmpph.
Am I better off farming badges in Kara?
Maybe, with the new uber loot on it’s way once the vendor opens up, farming badges in heroics and Kara is a better short term proposition for me than raiding in SSC.
Long-term, however, I do realize that the only way for me to REALLY progress is to stick with the raiding. It’s just that the thought of devoting my one raid night a week to something that doesn’t have a lot of payoff early is a little problematic. There is a pair of bracers that drop, whose name escapes me, but they don’t seem like much of an upgrade at all over my [Windhawk Bracers], especially if you factor in the set bonus I’m getting for 8 MP5.
So what should I do with my one raid night? I’ve been organizing Kara myself, and the 23 badges or whatever in 5 hours or so is pretty nice (This is still a “new” Kara group, so I expect if we can stick with it we can trim that time to clear significantly). There are drops there for my Druid still as well, like the T4 helm.
Then again, don’t I want to some day see Hyjal and Black Temple, and actually be able to contribute? With Wrath not all that far away, do I really care? I suppose, at this point, I still enjoy Kara more, as I like the smaller group setting where I feel more “important.” I should also add that I’ve still only done Kara about 6 times now. Decisions, decisions…
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Hey,
interesting thoughts you have there. I have the same exact ones myself. My feral druid and my lock are part of a raiding guild that goes into TK and SSC every week. This week we tried Hydross for the first time. I think seeing the bosses for the first couple of times is interesting, but if there is a strict timing thing involved / strict strategy and no room for error, and you have 25 people in the raid where every one can make an error at any time, and there is no interesting rewards from it (aside from the 50g repair bill after a wipe fest), it’s hard to stay motivated sometimes.
If at the same time you could clear Kara in 2/3 hours, get 20+ badges, or do Mags and Gruul and get ‘quick’ kills and some loot.
But I do support the progression of a guild. I want our guild to progress. I just need a reward every once in a while or something to look forward to
Our most-elite group clears Kara in one day. So, 22 badges from there plus badges from any boss we drop in TK, SSC and now Hyjal… it adds up pretty darn fast!
I believe you need to be questioning the reason why you are raiding.
From a pure gear perspective your best bet is to run ZA constantly for drops/badges. With the addition of 2.4 badge gear, it renders all but very few T5 drops obsolete. The time investment is not worth the gear in T5 content.
With that being said, raiding is not purely about gear upgrades though: comradeship, skill advancement, consistency, and learning how other classes interact are big things to focus on. Having raided T5 content for months with no gear advancement, and nearly completing my T6 wish list, I can honestly tell you that I would have quit this game long ago if I was only interested in gear. Gear is a nice method of advancement, but personally nothing rivals the feeling of triumph after beating a boss that you have been working on for awhile, gear is just icing on the cake.
SSC/TK offer some pretty interesting boss fights that force you to do things that aren’t just healing, these are the sort of things you just can’t experience outside of 25 mans. Leo for instance requires you to nuke down your demon in a set period of time or you get mind controlled by the boss.
Yes, healing is a game of whack a mole, but that is more complicated than what dps does. DPS gets a damage cycle, for instance: mangle, shred, shred, rip. Rinse and repeat, the entire fight…thats auto pilot. At least with whack-a-mole you have to use your brain and decide what mole you need to whack. Individual roles for the most part are rather easy once you’ve done them a few times, the true challenge of raiding is getting the right 25 people to show up consistantly.
I have to say Sheshonk is right on. I would have given up raiding a long time ago if its all about gear. For me its about the challenge, the gear is a secondary bonus. I see the difficulty of T4, T5 and T6 instances as a stairway with each Tier being a bit harder than its predecessor. Pummra may not remember but there was a time when we were really stuck at Aran. We made adjustments, changed the group makeup, ran some more heroics and persevered. Now we can clear Kara in 3.5-4.5hrs. Za, same thing. We’re now downing 4 bosses like its old hat.
Being one of the tanks for the alliance I know the pains. I shell out something liek 500-1K gold a week between consumables and repairbills. I also remember the days, as a pally, when playing my toon could be done by me sitting there and watching TV while I kept my toon on follow and pressed one key every 8seconds. Sometimes you just have to step back and look at where you’re going and not at what you’re doing.
Since this post, I have decided to dedicate myself when possible to raiding over Kara. I decided I don’t even care about the gear, and it’s a LOT of fun learning the new boss fights. (New to me and a lot of the raid, anyways.) I’m glad we are progressing, though I wish it was faster, and I enjoy my nights there. Sure, I’m not earning many badges anymore, but I’m not in any hurry to do so.