Forged Alliance

Tuesday's raid will be our first foray into The Eye.  We will be attempting Al'ar - so do your homework.  We're anticipating having about 4-5 attempts at him -- then taking inventory as to where we are.  Success could easily mean Void Reaver:
Al'ar @  Bosskillers
Al'ar #2 @ Bosskilers
Al'ar @ Wowwiki
Al'ar @ Worldofstrats Now to address some of the issues that came up yesterday after we announced this: Why are we going to Tempest Keep when we haven't finished SSC?
* Generally our Tuesday raid team has been our "main" force - we have to fill alts in on the off days.  With only approximately 8 raid hours a week, we will never make it to the end of SSC, and we shouldn't task our Tuesday raid to clear the same bosses repeatedly.  This is our progression night and it's stagnating behind the first bosses in SSC and Gruul.  We're more geared than many who head in there and being that they're both T5 instances, this is somewhat lateral progression. Does this mean we are stopping SSC raids?
* Absolutely not, it just means that when we're freshest - we'll be on bosses we're learning.  After we 5-6 attempts at Al'ar initially (or preferably - when we kill him), we might head to SSC and clear the first few bosses again, opening up the way to Leo / Morrogrim for whatever raid group we have Thursday.
What about Magtheridon / Gruul's Lair?
* What about them?  If you want to run them -- get on and express interest on Wednesday.  We have 2 full Kara badge runs running that night - very few people in the groups running for loot unless it's for their umpteenth alt.  This could easily be our backwards progression night.  Personally -- I'd prefer to use that "last hour" time as a learning experience working on a new boss or trash. Are we really capable of doing TK?
* Like I mentioned -- less geared guilds have done this.  I read an interview with a Blizzard designer, I think it was from a panel at one of the BlizzCon's -- he mentioned that the trash of an instance determines whether or not you're geared enough to be there.  Boss encounters are a completely different ball of wax, you have to work with the mechanics of a fight, they take getting used to -- and as we saw (and unfortunately continue to see) great execution can turn sour with one a couple people forgetting what they're supposed to do.  Pulling threat on a threat reset fight, standing in the wrong position, relying on Omen instead of your own brain (you crit - you take a break, knowing that 2xcrits will pull threat).  If you're singing in a choir, you better know the words -- if you're playing football and the coach calls a play, you better know where you're supposed to be and what to do.   Using caps because this is important -- HAVE THE SAME FOCUS.  Sprinkle in some situational awareness and you have yourself a dead boss and purply loots to strut around Shattrath with. What do I need to do to get into this raid?
* Well obviously since it's a progression night - we'll be stacking the raid with people who are the right class/spec; attentive enough in our current progression to not screw up; coming prepared to spend the coin on having the right consumables / gems / enchants; coming with forehand knowledge of the enounter by consuming videos/guides.  This means that we'll be asking people to step out, friends even.   You might get replaced mid-raid by someone -- this is brutal.  However, we need everyone to be working as hard as they can on this stuff.  When it's being farmed, the restrictions will be less painful - but as it stands, we're going to make the necessary, albeit tough decisions.

Woot TK!  Another option would be to start with lootreaver as he is probably the easiest of all in there, but they are both fun boss fights that involve coordination

They changed "lootreaver" - there's no longer any prior warning of where the orbs are heading, requiring full raid awareness and s no longer the loot piñata he used to be.

ah, finally out of bosses i've done before. never done al'ar, tsuni and riggins have AFAIK. I've done voidreaver, but only in lootreaver form. ps. rock face

Fargol wrote
They changed "lootreaver" - there's no longer any prior warning of where the orbs are heading, requiring full raid awareness and s no longer the loot piñata he used to be.

Damn you free loot!!!!  I needed some help getting out of capt negative dkp status

Woot, nice job raid organizers planning this out.  See you all Tuesday for the new instance try.

Sweet, I'm looking forward to this.

From what i been reading, Solarian is now a loot pinata too, so we can attempt her after Alaar while waiting for them to fix Loot Reaver.

I am definately down to go, the only 25s I've been to are Gruul and Mag. Let me know if you need a pally.

I may be late to this.  Hopefully I can get on by 8pm server.  I have a concert to play that night, hopefully it will be done no later than 7:30pm server.  Just a heads up.

200 posts!

i will be on and ready just may be close to the 7:30 pull

I'm reading on Bosskillers that Al'ar is immune to fire. I have alternative gear to my spellfire and can respec to frost. But it looks like only 8 ranged DPS is needed... I'd love to go and wouldn't mind respeccing, but if I'm not needed, let me know and I won't respec.

What I would like to do is respec for frost at beginning of raid and take down Al'ar, then port to IF to respec and then have warlock summon me and be fire for rest of raid, repeat weekly. I don't have to relearn spells anymore since the last patch and can save my bongos config for each spec, so easy switcharoo. I'm thinking waaaay to much about this at work, lol

If I was you, I wouldn't respec, esp on a learning night.  Just use your arcane spells, and throw some frostbolts for mana conservation.  I think you are wearing spellfire so that ups your arc damage too.  If not, just switch off your +fire damage gear for + all damage, and go with arcane.  When we do hydross I just use arcane and fire during the frost phase, and still put out like 800 dps during that phase.  Just my 2 cents

That's a great idea Benvolo! I was worried about arcane because of mana regen issue but mixing w/ frostbolts sounds like a good solution.

well, if you spam arcane blast you'll go oom something awefull, but if you just do like 2x blast, and then frost bolt or something, and then start the next blast just before the buff ticks out, you get the decreased cast time, but low mana cost, since mana is caculated when the spell is thrown, and not when it starts to cast.  if that made any sense.  i can explain more online if you want