There has been a lot of questions on whether or not killing Ragnaros in dirt gear is even possible.
This thread is to prove once and for all it is mathematically very possible to kill Ragnaros with a fresh raid of level 60s.
Essentials
Ragnaros’ HP : 1,099,230
Total Amount of Raid DPS: 26
Time Till First Submerge: 180 seconds
Minimum amount of dps required per body to beat the submerge timer: 235 dps (in reality, slightly lower due to tanks contributing damage).
Resistances:
How they Work and why no one in your raid outside of the tanks need it.
Resistances are generally very limited in how they stack. The following five sources of resistance are all independent, but whether they stack within each category depends on the category:
- Equipped items and enchants all stack
- Potions, auras, totems, and buffs all overlap - the maximum will apply
- Flask of Chromatic Resistance
- Racial bonus (Dwarves have +10 Cold Resistance, Gnomes have +10 Arcane, Night Elves and Tauren have +10 Nature, Undead have +10 Shadow)
There are at least two exceptions to the above 5 categories. Demon skin stacks with priest shadow protection, and the UBRS scarshield spellbinder’s fire resistance stacks with them.
Proof that UBRS FR buff stacks:
https://web.archive.org/web/20060118050002/http://pacifistguild.org/library/ragnaros/gm_4.jpg
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/alt.games.warcraft/napu__Ryb5Y/71VwnGH-qX8J
What this means
Paladin A has MOTW (20 resistance to all) and turns on fire resist aura. He has 60 FR from his aura, and 20 resist to everything else. Give him the UBRS FR buff and now he has 143 resistance without taking any gear with +FR.
https://web.archive.org/web/20060412020324/http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/basics/resistances.html
This paladin is going to take
50% damage from fire attacks 24% of the time
75% damage from fire attacks 49% of the time
25% damage from fire attacks 7% of the time
Now let’s look at how we can extend this paladin’s life to go past the 3 minute submerge timer.
Pre Fight:
https://classicdb.ch/?item=13494 Average 2600 damage blocked
As soon as it fades, pop another one. You will get an average of 5200 damage blocked. If you’re unlucky and had your first one popped early (30-45 seconds in), you can pop a 3rd one to really stretch those last few seconds out, but for the following calculations, only 2 will be used.
https://classicdb.ch/?item=9421
1200 life. If your warlocks are running low on shards for whatever reason, https://classicdb.ch/?item=11951 average 800 life can be used as a substitute. They share the same CD.
On top of a health pool of around 4k, the paladin will have more than 6000 hitpoints on average that Ragnaros needs to do to him before the healers even need to look at him.
Ragnaros’ Raid Damage Capabilities
Wrath of Ragnaros Inflicts 1000 Fire damage to nearby enemies, knocking them back. Used on units in melee. 25 yard knockback (25 sec cooldown)
Hammer of Ragnaros — Ranged knockback and damage “By fire be purged!” This attack targets a random player with a mana bar and knocks back all players (excluding the target) within ~20 yards. They are knocked back from the impact point which is at the foot of the target. (20-30sec cooldown)
Lava Splash — Localized damage: At various times a lava splash will be triggered which cause large damage to all those hit. It will affect anyone within close proximity to a lava flow.
Most Understand Wrath of Ragnaros well enough to dodge it by moving in and out of the melee range for it, and most understand the hammer of ragnaros so I am only going to discuss the Lava Splash, as that seems to be the biggest point of contention for the “muh fire resist” community.
The lava splash does about 1000 damage +/- 50 damage from all videos from 2004-2006 pre mitigation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udNuUbvD8Dg
1:45, 2:00, 2:23, 2:59 // large break due to positioning // 4:37, 4:50, 5:22, 6:04, 6:23.
Minimum Time per splash: 13 seconds.
Maximum: 32 seconds.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICutNYqNxKM
2:02, 3:28, 3:47, 4:23, 6:12. 6:58
Minimum Time per splash: 19 seconds
Maximum: 75 seconds.
Anyone wishing to contest the above video please do, the quality is awful and I might’ve missed some lava splashes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2a2KMGUNw2E
0:39, 1:49, video cut, 2:02, 2:10, 2:17, video cut, 3:02, 3:34 boss end
Minimum time: 7 seconds
Maximum time: 70 seconds
Mage also appears to have 27 or 37 resistance.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n61G8w5DxPM
1:22, 1:33
Min time: 11 seconds
Max time: 42 seconds
As you can see, the average time per splash is a bit on the longer end.
Averaging out all the splashes with the super long splashes (40 seconds and beyond) removed from the data as they are outliers, the average time per splash is around 24 seconds.
So let’s say Ragnaros splashes 8 times, just above the average, within the 3 minute period. These splashes will on average hit for something like this (not necessarily in this order)
1000 (full damage)
1000 (full damage)
750 (25% resisted)
750 (25% resisted)
750 (25% resisted)
750 (25% resisted)
500 (50% resisted)
500 (50% resisted)
For a total of 6000 damage on average.
Note that all the lava splash damage on average is completely countered by 2 greater fire protection potions and a healthstone/whipper root tuber.
B-but what about the hammer of ragnaros knockback?
It will hit around 9 times during the 180 seconds. This is where having a healthy population of melee dps in the raid helps you out, as the pain of the hammer of ragnaros is severely mitigated by having fewer ranged dps due to spreading out.
Because of the UBRS FR buff and greater fire protection potion usage, healer mana isn’t taxed at all to keep their dps alive and they are able to keep a potentially undergeared tank alive better. And because the dps is in dps gear…they can end the fight much sooner.
Raid DPS Thresholds
How likely is it to get a raid with 26 DDs that can reliably put out 235 dps?
Let’s look through every class. In all calculations I am filling in gear that would be appropriate for someone who just hit 60. This includes easily farmable gear such as mask of the unforgiven, and does not include stuff from UBRS nor ideal items like Baron’s Cape.
Warlock
With Greater Arcane Elixir, Wizard Oil, Shadow Power Pots, Warlocks are capable of hitting around 260 spell power just with the easily farmed by 60 felcloth set.
Using https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1DHC3JY9oaPIH08JMlfBcAWWGTPway52qffa61634oMM/edit#gid=1501193101
Pumps out 278 dps. If for some reason a guild was able to get a flask of supreme power, this number jumps up to 332 dps.
Actual number might be slightly more or slightly less, as I manually entered in the total spell damage.
Mage
With Greater Arcane Elixir and Wizard oil, mages are capable of getting around 215 spell power with the easily crafted frostweave/dreamweave sets.
Using https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/10SSs5KyI0RaSbvCZdKQgX5oEA_bDKO5IEncSvKM5Jco/edit#gid=0
Pumps out 265 dps. If flasked, 316 dps is possible.
Actual number might be slightly more or less, as I manually entered in the total spell damage.
Hunter
http://www.mediafire.com/file/699b32s9r30uzps/HunterDPS_1.12_by_Soyoen.xlsx
With no pet help, the hunter is capable of putting out 205 dps with the mongoose potion. If the hunter is able to properly micro the pet in and out of melee range and chooses to spec 20/31/0, that number is able to be somewheres between 230-260 dps. It’s possible 31/20/0 might be even better for raid dps with a horribly geared hunter.
Looking for a warrior/rogue spreadsheet that works, but I doubt they’ll fall flat when it comes to hitting the 235 dps mark. Especially with a min/maxed debuff roster.
The ideal debuff slotting would be as follows
Curse of Elements
Winters Chill
Curse of Shadows
Sunder Armor (-2250 armor) OR Improved Expose Armor (-2550 armor)
Faerie Fire (-505 Armor)
Curse of Recklessness (-640)
The remaining two would be for taunt and something else that would benefit the raid (improved shadowbolt/shadoweaving/judgements/etc)
I will write another topic that gives definitive proof on FF stacking with Sunder/CoR sometime next week because this has taken too much time already.
I hope all of this clears up a lot about what is possible with regards to Ragnaros. If a guild takes the time to prepare on their journey to level 60, and they will, then killing Ragnaros on the first reset they enter is not only possible, but probable.
TL;DR:
Easily farmed consumables make it so healers can focus on healing undergeared tanks on Ragnaros.
MC FR buff makes people able to wear full dps gear and still resist a lot of damage.
Casters benefit greatly from easily made consumables/gear. Only one person needs a tradeskill in order to benefit the entire raid as long as the guild feeds that player materials.
Combine all 3 and you have a 2 week ragnaros kill.