I’m really curious what it will be like for those coming into the game late or maybe picking up raiding after stage 4 has already been released
I can see guilds being more intrested in player class and ability than what they’re wearing as they will literally be throwing gear away on their farm nights.
Yeah I can see that too. At least as far as established guilds go. I was wondering what raids a new guild could clear after stage 4 is released with fresh players equipped with pre-raid bis if anyone knows about that too
I only have Vanilla to compare to, and I was a launch day server for all of it. But that will partially depend on how well geared other parts of the raid are, and how good those players are at playing their class. If even a quarter of the raid is in Tier 2, or close to it with the other three quarters in 1.12 BiS blues, they could probably clear most, if not all, of BWL even without being in the top several % of players. (Their challenge would be Nef; Onyxia Scale Cloaks are very helpful)
I know this is kind of off topic, but whatever guild I join, I’m going to be trying to convince the guild leader to invite people, even non-guildies, to soak up some of our sharded gear in exchange for the Nexus they would produce.
I just think it’s the right thing to do to build people up on your faction. I’m very much of the mind that I want the faction I’m playing to be the best that it can be and I want to help any way I can to make that happen.
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Pre-raid bis changes once catch up gear is added via cenarian pvp and AD.
That said MC, ony and ZG would be clearable. BWL I think you would need the cloaks.
I would expect a raid of pre raid BIS players to clear MC, Ony, ZG and possibly AQ20 provided they are playing the characters appropriately and managing their debuff slots well.
I would not expect to get an invite to BWL, AQ 40 or Naxx with pre raid BIS unless the rest of the raid is willing to carry you and they have a open slot to fill or they strongly desire some utility your Class would bring to the raid.
(Providing Blizzard does progressive itemization like what happened back in Vanilla) As far as people picking up raiding later in Classic, they have the advantage of having access to better gear pre raid that was updated or added post launch to dungeons, they will have have access to crafted items that people got from raiding but wont require them to actually do the raid before they could obtain items like Lionheart helm or the Bloodvine set. Blizzard actually added most of the items that drop in MC in patch 1.5 and Blizzard buffed many items that drop from the higher level dungeons as well as MC and BWL numerous times in vanilla. T1 is generally bad for most classes untill it gets buffed. People starting after the Pvp system and battle grounds are added will have access to that gear as well. When Blizzard added AQ and Naxx they also added quests that can give you a really good item or 2 depending on your class and spec.
So there where ways people can catch up in Classic but you likely wont skip a raid tier unless the guild is willing to carry you. And its not like guilds wont still be Clearing MC or Ony when Naxx is out. If nothing else a guild will clear MC for Thunderfury for tanks and they will clear Ony because its quick, easy and drops a 18 slot bag.
Tanks needs Ony cloaks for some of the bosses in BWL but every person in the raid would need a Ony cloak to kill Nefarian the first time. But they are BOE and its most likely that guilds will sell these after they have enough for their raid.
Preraid BiS is capable of
MC
BWL
AQ20/ZG
Most of AQ40.
From then, it becomes an issue of can the DPS do enough damage to kill the bosses before the healers run OOM.
Anyone saying otherwise doesn’t understand consumable stacking/buff stacking.
Nexus crystals dont get added till the AQ patch I believe. And you will want a good number of these in the guild bank to enchant guildies gear with the AQ glove enchants that are really good.
Not that many items drop in raids so dont expect that many items to get disenchanted. And while not every item that drops in a raid will be a raid dps increase alot of items that drop in raids actually make solid world farming /pvp items because they often have a good amount of stamina on them.
I don’t want to spend too much energy on this because I’m tired, but the top guilds on my vanilla server were sharding the hell out of MC gear in vanilla. They went back every week for Bindings/Eye like everyone typically does.
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Assuming 3 months per content bucket + a month for your raid to hit cap with 2-3 BoE tier belt/bracers dropping per week from MC
that’s easily 20-30+ Nexus crystals provided the tier items are “bad”.
Failing that you can craft MC patterns for even more nexus goodness when the crafting matts become surplus to guild requirements.
i wouldnt expect a big influx after classic has been out for 6+ months
You get significantly more benefits from world buffs and guess what, those buffs will fade when you die. People who count their dps output with world buffs must be a true pro, never dying.
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I suspect Nexus Crystals will be there at launch(added in patch 1.11; edit: I think WoWhead is on crack, I’m pretty sure they’re contemporary with AQ or even BWL–and found it, patch 1.9 patch notes), no real reason to gate that, although they won’t necessarily be useful for anything until later.
As to influxes of new players, agreed on not expecting large ones. That said, there will likely be a steady stream of new level 60’s happening through the first year. A lot of players won’t be feeling the need to “rush to 60” like they did in retail, they won’t be racing a clock ticking down until TBC releases and everybody disappears. (Although a lot still would disappear, should Classic TBC come to pass)
It just happens that the logistics end for players who do that(take their time) is going to be terrible if they intended to raid. Particularly if they intend to dedicate the same amount of time to Classic once raiding as they did before they were raiding.
The dynamics of that particular slow-motion train-wreck will be one to see play out. I’d be interested to see how raid leadership decides to handle them in the established groups, but I’d generally expect them to be second or even third string and most of their time would be spent raiding with alts. Not the main raid.
So don’t die then? What a concept.
Assuming preraid BIS is tailored to the fights, for example with crafted fire resist sets.
Wait, resist gear was even “a thing” for ZG? I’m dubious, but then, my group had a healthy helping of T1 by the time it came around so that may be why I don’t remember being concerned about it.
Onyxia required pretty minimal FR, the Drakefire Amulet, plus a couple other items usually was more than adequate. Much more than that and you were gimping yourself. Ditto for most of Molten Core, yes there were fights where more could be helpful for the entire raid, but there were consumables for that as well IIRC.
Otherwise the FR gear fixation was more of a tank/off-tank thing, and even then, they rarely ever wore full FR, they had the sets so they could mix/match as their better/worse pieces of gear changed.
Your average guild will wipe at least once a run or take twice as long as most of your world buffs will last. This is after progression.
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Yeah, the OP wasn’t specifying that the prebis raiders were also completely new to the game. He’s asking what was possible. You’re the one who assumed these raiders actually wipe.