?Pop Quiz: Probability of Success . . .

[Valshenna]

Ok all you experienced Karazhanlings--how would you rate the probability of success for a raid as described below? Assume you've got 5 hours of raid time, starting from the beginning. How far do you think you would be likely to get? Here's what you've got to work with:

Maintank: Feral Druid--Well geared, skilled, very experienced in Karazhan. Has tanked most bosses including Prince Melchezaar successfullly.
Offtank: Protection Warrior--Undergeared, first time in Karazhan, only 469 Defense Skill.
Main Healer: 42 Disc/18 Holy Priest--Experienced in Karazhan and well geared.
2nd Healer: 38 Disc/23 Shadow Priest--Experienced in Karazhan and well geared.
DPS/Backup Healer: 15 Holy / 46 Ret Paladin--Experienced in Karazhan and well geared for both healing and DPS.
DPS: Fire Mage--Adequately geared, borderline skill, low experience in Karazhan.
DPS: Destruction Warlock--Adequately geared and skilled, low experience in Karazhan.
DPS: Marksmanship Hunter--Well geared, skilled, and experienced.
DPS: Marksmanship Hunter--Borderline to undergeared, decent skill, no prior experience in Karazhan.
DPS: Assassination Rogue--Moderately geared and skilled and experienced in Karazhan.

So how well do you think the raid would go? How many bosses down after 5 hours? Any particular weaknesses or shortcomings for any particular bosses? Lets see who gets the closest prediction!

[Nitsujcm]

probability of survival is 32.33, repeating, of course

[The Grailmaster]

probability of survival is 32.33, repeating, of course

Oh wow, that's a lot higher than normal.


I love me some leeroy.

[Stigg]

probability of survival is 32.33, repeating, of course

Geez...you beat me by an hour! /wristz

Anywho...I don't see why it isn't do-able. Give it a try...thats the only way you will know!

[The Grailmaster]

The OT may be an issue on Moroes, its hard to keep second on the aggro list if you are undergeared and unexperienced.

Also, possibly and issue in the room at the top of the stairs by maiden, on the way to Opera. There are the guys that freeze the person with top aggro, so the ret pally needs to be ready to OT that part. We usually use 2prot warriors and a feral druid, the druid builds aggro on both at once, so if one of the prot warriors gets frozen he has aggro.

If everyone is as you say they are, but have not raided together before, I see you almost to curator in 5hrs. If you have raided together and work well together i see you past curator into the library, possibly at Illhoof, which with that group make up should be fine if the dps is solid. And obviously skipping the beast boss.

[rgirty]

You will do well if you odn't have trouble with your OT.

Your MH is disc spec, and you don't have a great backup healer..

sub par ot (469 defense) paired with subpar healing for him = not good.

Strong suit? Great MT

[TeamRamrod]

Too many variables would dictate how well you do imo. Depends if your group knows the fight well enough, will your less experienced players be able to learn the fight fast enough? What if your MT goes does, will your offtank he able to handle it? (you said he is undergeared). Does your group coordinate well? Going back to your OT there are those mobs(specters?) that ice block or w/e and drop all aggro, those were a pain for us for a while so an undergeared OT might not work so well......like i said too many variables. I know i might get flamed for this but your dps seems lacking with 2 hunters and a pally as 1/2 of your dps.

[Valshenna]

Oh, we already had the raid. It was last tuesday night, and once this post has been going for a bit I'll post what the results actually were. I'll add this though--our A-Team for Karazhan has already cleared all the way through Shade and Prince, but this raid was maybe half A-team people and the rest were pretty green.

More details to follow later :wink:

[rgirty]

OH so you took 50% of the people that have cleared it and mingled in people who were new?

100% success is expected.

[Herald of Doom]

OH so you took 50% of the people that have cleared it and mingled in people who were new?

100% success is expected.

I remember my first time in MC with the same setup...

50% succes :p

HoD

[rgirty]

I remember my first time in MC with the same setup...

50% succes :p

HoD

20 people are harder to replace than 5.

[Valshenna]

Ahh but is 5 newbs in a 10-man raid better or worse than 20 newbs in a 40-man raid?

[Valshenna]

Perhaps a basis for comparison would be helpful. With our core group of raiders (the A-Team), Attumen is cake, Moroes is easy with the right set-up but otherwise is still problematic at times, Maiden sometimes take a few tries but isn't too bad, and the Opera is cake (all versions), as is the Curator. Shade of Aran has been downed the last two weeks in a row, but only after clearing trash a second time, and we one-shotted Prince last Saturday after six or so wipes the night before.

[The Grailmaster]

Perhaps you should just post the results!? or this thread will die a slow death...

[Valshenna]

Oh yeah! Thanks for the reminder :grin:

Just looking at the roster, I would have predicted pretty sad results overall. Undergeared and inexperienced players are a huge liability, and unless whoever is leading the raid is very careful to guide things, disaster is the most likely outcome. Actual results were as follows:

Trash: No problems. I was the Maintank and have pulled the whole instance plenty of times. We had plenty of crowd control, and I was using raid icons to make targets so everyone knew exactly what they were supposed to be doing. Also, the offtank was able to hold aggro and stay alive perfectly fine.

Attumen: One-shotted. I was tanking Midnight and the warrior was tanking Attumen (for disarm), and once they joined I went catform to DPS and the warrior continued to tank. The Warrior died (not sure exactly how or why) when there was about 10% left and Attumen ran over and ganked a priest. I was able to shift into bear and grab aggro before any further damage was done, and we put him down without any further difficulty.

Moroes: I lost count of the number of wipes. We had respawns, and then more wipes. The problems? Many! Our general strategy was to keep 2 adds shackled, keep a third add feared / ice trapped, and kill the fourth add right off the bat. The add that was supposed to die was the Shadow Priest. That's the same strategy we use with our core raiders and it works just fine.

I was tanking Moroes, but the Warrior wasn't experienced enough and either didn't keep aggro on the add that was being killed, or didn't keep aggro on Moroes. Thus, either the add being killed would gank someone, or if I got gouged or blinded then Moroes would go gank someone. There were a couple of times that the mainhealer priest got Mana Burned too. I guess people weren't on the ball with their interrupts.

CC on the adds was also a big problem. The mage was telling her husband stories about something funny that happened during the day, and hit a CC'ed mob a couple of times with a fireball. The priests weren't moving away from their shackled target and if it broke early they got ganked by it. The feared mob ran out of the room a couple of times because the pally would stand in the middle of the room. And there were a couple of times that the warrior did a thunderclap with shackled mobs nearby.

On top of that we didn't have enough healing. With only 1 healing specced healer, all three were running out of mana pretty quickly even if we weren't having trouble with the adds. Best attempt was probably around 20%, when there just wasn't enough healing to keep the Garroted players and the tank alive.

After about a total 2 hours of that, we swapped one of the hunters out for a Holy Paladin, then took Moroes down on the second try. After the kill, we returned to the original roster of characters.

Maiden of Virtue: First attempt we tried having the Warrior tank. After he got crit for over 8k and died right after the pull, we realized that he was lacking defense to tank bosses. Back to bear-tanking. Next attempt we got to maybe 40%, but as with Moroes, we simply lacked the healing output to keep up with the Maiden's significant burst damage potential. People were already tired and frustrated at this point, and for some reason the DoT's weren't getting cleansed. As MT I watched one of them tick away for the full duration.

We wiped and wiped and wiped until we had respawns. At that point the hybrid priest had to bail, as did one or two other players. We replaced the priest with the Holy Paladin we had brought in for Moroes, dropped one hunter for a Disc/Holy Priest, and swapped the warrior (who had pitiful dps) for a well geared and experienced Fire mage. Maiden dropped on either the first or second try with the modified group.

And at that point we called it a night. Subsequent raids that week we had a proper roster with core raiders, and one-shot the Wizard of Oz, the Curator, the basement, and the Shade of Aran. We had a little bit of trouble with Prince, but put him down as well. For some reason we didn't bother with either Netherspite or Illhoof though.

Moral of the Story: In Karazhan, you simply cannot underestimate the importance of a proper roster and properly geared players. A retribution paladin is NOT a main-healer. A Disc/Shadow Priest is NOT the same as a Holy/Disc Priest. And an undergeared protection warrior CANNOT tank bosses, and probably can't dps either.

In order to be successful in there you've pretty much got to have at least 2 properly specced and geared healers, and an additional one or two hybrid healers who can heal or dps as the situation requires. People also have to be focused, know what they are supposed to do, and do it without being distracted. A 10-man raid isn't like MC where you can have a couple of people be completly undergeared and more or less stand around doing nothing and still do just fine. All it takes is one screw-up, one undergeared person, or one person slotted for a role that they aren't qualified to fill, and you're going to have a painful experience.

[Regrets]

Hmm best record with full force, no sub in with new guys, about 3.5hours with abit of afk here & there , clear everything except Prince/Nightbane/Netherspite. Should be considered fast, 0 wipes run, but thats quite rare, usually we bring in 1-2 new guys & 3 1/2 hours only up to curator :( cuz they wipe the raid with stupid mistake like pulling patrol etc.

[Pongle]

Warriors gearing has little effect on their aggro, provided their weapon is not crap.

Druid on prince is like asking for a triple crushing though.

Edit: Warrior with sub 6% -crit is like asking for his face to get rocked though an 8k crit would only be ~60% on a decently pre-kara geared warrior with raid buffs (my ALT has over 14k raid buffed w/ mostly crappy enchants).