learning curve for kara

[Ishin]

im curious as to how long it took everyone when ur guilds first went into kara?
how long did it take u to understand the strats for morseo(spelling?) and others
did u guys just walk in there and bam u cleared 3 bosses in 3 hours or less, or was it more like a ;
ok this is the strat i read, and someone else saying well i read this strat and ive heard it works great.
what web sites are u guys using for strat guides...

[Regrets]

I've read on some guild website that they smooth thru their first kara until opera event. (which is like 4 bosses) . For my guild my first kara is up to maiden, i was using wowwiki guide until I realise bosskillers is much more illustrated.

Well if u need a rough guide how long an average team clear kara including nightbane (all without kara experience) , here's mine

1st raid - 08 Mar 2007
Cleared kara raid - 15 Apr 2007

Total: 17 raids
Duration : 38 days (Roughly 58 hours spent in Kara)

[CorinthianSC]

Here are my guilds kill dates. Attumen is really simple, and a decent group should get him first night. Maiden and Moroes are quite a bit tougher, so expect some learning time on them.

Attumen the Huntsman - 2/10/07
Random Beast (Spider) - 2/10/07
Maiden of Virtue - 2/11/07
Moroes - 3/4/07
Opera (Big Bad Wolf) - 3/11/07
Opera (Wizard of Oz) - 3/25/07
Opera (Romulo and Juliene) - 3/29/07
The Curator - 3/22/07
Chess Event - 3/25/07
Terestian Illhoof -
Shade of Aran - 4/1/07
Netherspite -
Prince Malchezzar - 4/2/07
Nightbane -

[WatcherZero]

We raid for approximatley 4-5 hours 3 times a week, we downed a new boss every 1 or 2 nights so it took us about 14 raids to totally clear the place.

bosses that took more than one raid to kill:

Moroes (2)
Aran (3)
Prince (2)
Netherspite (2)
Nightbane (2)

Illhoof, Maiden, Attumen we did on our first boss attempts.

[Clavina]

Key is decent group. My new casual guild has raided kara twice and still not downed the 1st boss. 50% of the group have never raided before, 90% (think about it..) of the group had not read any tactics and most brought no consumables. It didn't help that on both occasions people decided they had to leave after a couple of hours and there were no replacements.

Add to that ninja pulls, insta-nuking as soon as a pull is made and the resultant deaths. It made it quite a traumatic experience.

I live in hope...

[Twoflower]

you should be able to clear your way trough the instance till curator, at least, in your first ID. I think we had the whole place on farm in 4 weeks. Up to curator is easy, the shade gets a little bit more difficult, netherspite is more difficult again, prince is hard, nightbane is hard.

But if you are in a guild whit people that raided before and know a lil bit about the encounters from reading, you should one shot evrything up to the curator.

[Valshenna]

We progressed steadily until we got to the Shade of Aran and then hit a roadblock. Took maybe 3 weeks to get to Shade, and then took probably 4 weeks to finally put him down. That was two weeks ago, and since then we've downed Prince and gotten a few attempts in on both Netherspite and Illhoof, but with no success. Haven't even thought about Nightbane yet.

We typically raid 3 nights a week for 4-5 hours each raid.

[CorinthianSC]

Haven't even thought about Nightbane yet.


We're just starting to work on Nightbane now, and from what I can see, the flying phases are the entire fight. Actually killing Nightbane is the easy part.

[bpaige]

Pretty much....my opinion is its the transitions that get you as well as positioning. We killed him last night on our 4th pull and this was our second night of tries.

[DraedynLei]

I just started raiding on my guild but they've been at it for a few weeks. Our guild is relatively new. I had my first run last wednesday and made it to prince (we continued from a previous raid). Curator was relatively simple. We wiped once then swapped out a rogue for a high dps mage. That fixed our add problem. And then the chess event was fun and easy. Prince wiped us a couple of times and we called it. Our tank was down to less than 10% durability. We were trying to do the hallway strat but the healers kept losing LOS when prince wacks the tank sideways. Going to start from scratch tonight.

[moopy]

Key is decent group. My new casual guild has raided kara twice and still not downed the 1st boss. 50% of the group have never raided before, 90% (think about it..) of the group had not read any tactics and most brought no consumables. It didn't help that on both occasions people decided they had to leave after a couple of hours and there were no replacements.

Kinda sad, as the first boss is a wimp. A lot of guides describe him as a "basic raid check" or something- checks your raid has the basics of team play down- tanking the right things, healing the right things, DPSsing the right things at the right time. Must be really frustrating for you to watch, /soothe.

We killed him first try, despite a stupid mage ignoring all our briefings about when to stop DPS on the horse beforehand, and repeating it at the time in vent- he kept channeling arcane missiles into the hoss, and we had the boss mounted and charging at full health. Still killed him.

Try briefing them to stop all DoTs on the horse at 35% and all dps at 30% (just to be on the safe side), and have someone shift the skull to the current DPS target- maybe they will understand better. If you don't have ventrilo or similar, use /rw to warn people, and don't be afraid to use BIG LETTERS.

(Really horrible mage BTW, I did the gremove personally not long after for unacceptable behaivior. For someone with 7 or so overgeared 70s, he sure didn't know how to play. Now I know why he was guildess when he joined us :)

[Twoflower]

Try briefing them to stop all DoTs on the horse at 35% and all dps at 30% (just to be on the safe side), and have someone shift the skull to the current DPS target- maybe they will understand better. If you don't have ventrilo or similar, use /rw to warn people, and don't be afraid to use BIG LETTERS.


if you tank the 2 away fromn each other then you see when the horse starts running towards attumen. that s the right time to stop DPS, not before :)

anyway, as said before, attumen realy is a raid check. He is in fact very easy, and the difficulty will increase ALOT for all the following fights. So if you can not down Attumen, you should probably practice group play some more in 5 man instances.

[moopy]

if you tank the 2 away fromn each other then you see when the horse starts running towards attumen. that s the right time to stop DPS, not before :)

Of course, with a smart group, but this didn't sound like a smart group. Also, there's a distinction between DPS and DoTs. If you're cutting the DPS a bit fine, remember than another 10 seconds of lock/priest/hunter etc DoTs can push it over the edge. People who don't have the basics down should be given huuuuge safety margins, make them stop the DoTs early, and the normal DPS a bit early too, they will probably take a few raid warnings to actually respond at all, I fear (I hate people who lose the ability to read/hear in combat!).

In any case, it's no big deal if the healers aren't AFK, even with the last phase lasting the whole health bar, he goes down pretty fast :)

[earindur]

dont worry about wiping on attumen, our guild did too, a month on and we've cleared to prince (2 weeks on aran /shakesfist f*cking stupid fight IMO).

if at first you dont succeed, gquit and find a better guild :P

[amgyn]

huntsman is a gear check.. and imo so is moroes and maiden... these fights are simple coordination fights. once you do it once, it becomes very easy.

opera event.. the fact that there are 3 different events might pose a hurdle or two in your way. proper raid composition will help with 2 out of the 3 (romeo and oz events) read strats and figure out what you need.. big bad wolf is easy :)

curator.. dps intensive, you might have to drop to 2 healers for this fight for an extra dps... his spawns are the hardest to deal with... aim for 6-7 second per spawn... healing should be done with DoT's Prayer of mending on the melee, and gheals on the tank/soaker... again an easy fight once you've done it once.

Shade of aran... hardest fight in the whole instance (imo) .. bring 2 warlocks your first time. rogues/warriors are also a big asset here he has low armor and for their interrupts. communication will be important here for the interrupts. the warlock banish on the adds and fear will help ALOT.. live thru that and gg.

Prince M.... by the time you get to him, you should be over geared for his encounter.. read the strat.. and execute.

[Ishin]

well the reason I was wondering is wtf we r doing wrong.
we make stupid mistakes and wipe on trash mobs.
we 1 shotted attuneman with only 9 ppl, me being the one that got dc'ed and coming back to hear that they finished with a caster ring dropping.
then we have 1 shotted the bat and spider, then we moved on to moroes and we have gotten him down to 48% but he continues to be a royal pain in the ass. last nite we went the oppisite direction and went to madien but after going over the strat, the tank ran in there and was dead before we even moved up past the columns and we said screw it, it was 4 am.
So im not sure if its a dps problem or we are just retarded, but its still fun and new so we will just keep chugging along.

[AeroJonesy]

I agree with calling the Huntsman a "raid check." It's your basic tank, off-tank, and boss phases. There's a few other things to deal with, but nothing like you'd find in even the Moroes fight. I can see how it'd be difficult if you didn't have any raiding experience. I'd put the coordination in that fight on par with something out of ZG.

[Telmar]

In our guilds first clear in KZ we took Attumen, Moroes, and the Animal Boss (Spider) with no strat guides at all, we then did Maiden, and had a few goes on Opera event the next raid in my group. Our other guild group managed Attumen, Moroes, Maiden first raid. Then got Opera the next, then stopped.

Its very doable with a focused raid group who WANT TO LEARN the fights. I would suggest that on every new boss, you charge in and examine the fight before any kind of strategy suggestion. Dont start with 'this is what we want you to do'. Start with 'ok, everyone test everything... we're all gonna die here'.

check what debuffs you get,
work out how much damage things do,
see how much damage things take,
check for CC ability of Adds,
see if there is any AOE type effects,
check for any phases in the fight.

Its the only way your guild will get good at fights, otherwise you end up with 25 monkeys following a guide. If something unexpected happens (Hi2U priest death at moroes) they wont know what to do.

[moopy]

I agree with calling the Huntsman a "raid check." It's your basic tank, off-tank, and boss phases. There's a few other things to deal with, but nothing like you'd find in even the Moroes fight. I can see how it'd be difficult if you didn't have any raiding experience. I'd put the coordination in that fight on par with something out of ZG.

I'd say it was easier even than the snake boss in ZG, no need to co-ordiante so many adds. It's certainly a lot easier than Jin'do TEH HAxx0R. Even if you screw up the first bit and get the charging phase with full health, he won't one-shot anyone with passable stamina- so people can just heal through that, give the tank a moment to rebuild aggro and nuke.

[Wintrow]

Gung ho learning attempts FTW !

[moopy]

Hell yeah. It's nice to see what dirty tricks get thrown at you before you're expecting them- it's both amusing and instructive, as then people have an idea about what bad things can happen if they don't behave :)

[Telmar]

Even if you screw up the first bit and get the charging phase with full health, he won't one-shot anyone with passable stamina- so people can just heal through that, give the tank a moment to rebuild aggro and nuke.

Hang on, what?

You can put him into phase 2 with less than full health? I'm gonna get it in the neck from my guild if you can :P We just nuke the horse, then when horse gets to 30% we let the tank get agro and nuke the rider and horse together. The horse/rider combo is always full health when he mounts up.

You can avoid the charge by the way. Just have everyone stand just behind the melee. It has a min-range, so you wont get charged at all if you get it right.

[moopy]

Not sure if you're being sacrastic or not, you can be a bit deadpan :)

Let's assume you aren't, as even if you know, others may not. The trick is to DPS midnight down to just above 25%. When either Attumen or Midnight hit 25%, phase two starts. So, get the horse down to about 26-30%- stop DoTs about 35, just to be sure. Then stop DPS on the horse completely and start burning Attumen down. When he drops below 25%, he will mount up and heal up to Midnight's health (about 26-30%, remember?). At that point, you have a really short charging phase, as he's nearly dead.

Of course, the charging phase isn't really too bad either, but the encounter actually goes faster without too much mob healing going on.

[Telmar]

ahahahahahahahahahahaha

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Jees, I'm retarded. I cant believe I didnt know that >_< Never even thought to try. Our first try we DPSd the horse, and then he mounted up and we killed him from 100% so thats what we've done every time since.

God I feel stupid now :P

[edit] Suppose it just goes to show that even when you think you have a fight down, and you know everything there is to know about it, there's probably still room for improvement somewhere :)

[moopy]

Well, it's not hard to do it with a full phase two- the first time we fought him, we did it like that because we had a crappy mage who ignored the "stop dps" instruction, and we still one-shotted him.

It worked for you anyway, sounds like you still kill him every time. Consider the refined method as "points for style", and don't feel too bad about it :)

[swaldman]

In any case, it's no big deal if the healers aren't AFK, even with the last phase lasting the whole health bar, he goes down pretty fast :)

We've actually found that it is easier to do Attumen this way than to try to coordinate things... this may say something about the raid group...

Attumen is simply a gear check. So is the Curator, I guess, at a rather higher level.

Moroes is a bit of a group-coordination check. (yes, I'm tired of wiping there because people can't notice what is going on around them and can't react when something doesn't go quite according to plan).

[moopy]

Attumen is simply a gear check. So is the Curator, I guess, at a rather higher level.

Moroes is a bit of a group-coordination check. (yes, I'm tired of wiping there because people can't notice what is going on around them and can't react when something doesn't go quite according to plan).

I don't know, I always thought Curator was a "sticking to the plan" check. At first, people were trying to sneakily get shots in on Dr. Robato while flares were still up, and the healers ran out of mana almost right away. Once they actually focussed, and targetted the flares right away, it went swimmingly. DPS need to be awake, and need to do as they're told. By its very definition, our early unsucessful attempts and sucessful attempts involved the same gear.

Yep, Moroes is a sticking to the plan check too, but a slightly more complex one, as people need to remember the kill order (much like High King Maulgar). Individuals need to be awake- I had problems with a healer who always edged back into the area where I was kiting the prot warrior while throwing big heals- which got him aggro greater than I could lay down with a top-rank distracting shot. I had a few breathless moments pulling him back off the healer mid-fight :)

[Valshenna]

Hmmm, that bit regarding Attumen about keeping the ranged people closer is interesting, and I didn't know about that. Can hunters be outside his Charge range and still be able to shoot at him?

[Telmar]

Hmmm, that bit regarding Attumen about keeping the ranged people closer is interesting, and I didn't know about that. Can hunters be outside his Charge range and still be able to shoot at him?

Nope, whip out those 2hers :)

Or just have the hunter at shooting range, it'll charge him every time, which means you only have one person to keep topped up, and your hunter should have plenty of hp.

[Valshenna]

Works for me!

/places hunter on sacrificial alter :evil:

[rgirty]

It isn't always the strategy often it is the gear.

Like moroes for example, if your dps isn't adequate the garrottes will simply be too much for your healers in the end no matter how good they are or how good your tank is.

Thats why a while back, i asked for starting stats for each class for kara. Having the playing field leveled is a good place to start.

However, I have pugged attunemen multiple times. He is very easy if you have decent healing and at least 1 fairly geared tank. Really he is just free epix. I've gathered the raid, downed him and looted in less than 1 hour from gathering time on multiple occasions.

[swaldman]

I don't know, I always thought Curator was a "sticking to the plan" check. At first, people were trying to sneakily get shots in on Dr. Robato while flares were still up, and the healers ran out of mana almost right away. Once they actually focussed, and targetted the flares right away, it went swimmingly. DPS need to be awake, and need to do as they're told. By its very definition, our early unsucessful attempts and sucessful attempts involved the same gear.


*g* But you need considerably better gear than you do for Attumen / Moroes / (Maiden).

Doesn't matter how good you are at prioritising targets, if you don't have the dps to kill the flares faster than they spawn you're doomed, and if you don't have the dps and mana pools to kill him before your healers go OOM you're doomed too.

[Telmar]

None of the bosses in Kara (before prince/nightbane) need anything more than blues on your raiders. We downed Curator on our second week in there, with some (most) people in levelling gear still, with no strat guide and no real strat other than 'nuke flares, wait for evoc, nuke boss'. With 3 healers, AND A SHADOWPRIEST the healing is sustainable indefinatly. We found that when we were learning the zone having a shadowpriest made a huge difference for that boss, as the mana his group get back on evoc is huge.

[moopy]

*g* But you need considerably better gear than you do for Attumen / Moroes / (Maiden).

Doesn't matter how good you are at prioritising targets, if you don't have the dps to kill the flares faster than they spawn you're doomed, and if you don't have the dps and mana pools to kill him before your healers go OOM you're doomed too.

Nah, you don't, not if people stick to the plan. The trick is to get those nasty flares down fast. If you don't, the load on the poor healers is massive. If you get it right, it's only the MT and the bolt tank who need a significant amount of healing. This is way kinder to the mana pools of the healers. The flares don't have a lot of HP. In the typical 10 man Kara raid, with two tanks and three healers, five DPS in blues can easily nuke them down if they're awake.

If people try and sneakily DPS the curator while flares are up, it causes problems. You just have to get all the dps on the flares- other than maybe the warlocks dropping the odd curse of doom. Once you get into a rhythm doing this, you can pew pew the curator a bit in evocation. Either way- if folks stick to the plan and execute it nicely, this fight is doable in blues (or greens in the case of the bolt tank sometimes). If they don't, amazingly-geared healers struggle. Essentially, the difficulty of the fight scales with folks' inability to do what they're told :)

[earindur]

curator is a cake walk once you have done it once.

spread all 10 people out and make sure they dont move (except the melee classes), only move forward during evocation and move immediately back afterwards.

if a bolt stops at the healers at the top, simply use the rogue to pull them back down.

this is what we do.

-------------------- Currator
Off healer ---------- MT/OT ------ main healer




Ranged DPS --------- rogue ------ Ranged DPS




Healer --------ranged dps------- ranged dps

[lofta]

bosskillers and wowwiki give the best resources, also the US wow forum for raids and dungeons

[Telmar]

bosskillers and wowwiki give the best resources, also the US wow forum for raids and dungeons

OMG

Please never ever post something like that again.

Wiki is hideously inaccurate. 99% of the time, the strats arent updated when they change bosses.

Bosskillers is ok, but doesnt really talk around the subject at all.

WoW forums are useless. Full of casuals going 'OMG ITS TO HARD' while talking about strats that simply dont work. Its like the people moaning about how to deal with Wrath at Solarian... Its possibly the easiest bit of the fight, yet they're all to busy shouting for it to be nerfed to make a strategy for it.

Edit: A good resource is the Elitist Jerks forum, if you want decent information. I warn you now though, its VERY heavily moderated, so dont go in there with 'OMGZ TEL ME HOW 2 KIL BOZZES PLX KKTHNX!!!!1'

[lofta]

Rubbish, we learned to 2-3 shot bosses between these sources

[earindur]

^^ agree.

stop being an ass telmar.

[lofta]

On Curator, we down him on second evocation, and only need 2 healers.

This is what we do:
MT
[then about 10 yards back]

Bolt soaker with high AR (Warlock for us)
Melee dps
Ranged dps
Healers

Basically, every group literally just stands on top of each other, but separated by just 1 character height, so that, the healers are at the rear of a big blob of people.

As we are all aligned in a straight line to the boss, it doesn't matter where the adds spawn, we always know they will come for someone in our blob/raid in a straight line.

DPS just zerg it down and then reposition for the next one.
Spot healing the minimal damage taken is easy this way.

The other healer looks after the MT and the bolt soaker.
Kill the last add even if evocation has started.
Rinse and repeat.

P.S. Nobody needs AR except the bolt-soaker, who boosts his res with fel hunter.

[Telmar]

Rubbish, we learned to 2-3 shot bosses between these sources

Whereas we learned bosses by actually attempting them, then discussing our findings on a raiders forum. I know its probably hard to conceive of, that some people might not just look up tactics and walk in for easy loot, but enjoy the challenge of raiding.

I'll rephrase my post above then...

'If you want a step by step guide of someone elses method to kill a boss with little to no understanding of the fight, use the above sites. Otherwise I suggest a discussion forum such as the one EJ maintain, where you can actually work out a tactic for yourself.'

Better?

[Telmar]

On Curator, we down him on second evocation, and only need 2 healers.

So do you swap out the 3rd healer that you had in for moroes? Sucks to be them i guess...
:undecided: :sad:

[lofta]

lmao, in the moroes thread, you pontificate on controlling the fight and making life easy for yourself, and here you look down on devising efficient strategies...

so I'll ask you, why reinvent the wheel for scripted encounters?

what's the difference between synthesising a strategy on a forum, to doing the same buy reading guides, watching videos and adapting to your own raid composition? none

[lofta]

sometimes we roll to curator with 2 healers, and yes i think we did moroes with 2 main healers a few times - edit - yes we did, but we have several hybrids who can emergency heal (enhancement shaman, feral drood, shadow priest)

[rgirty]

lmao, in the moroes thread, you pontificate on controlling the fight and making life easy for yourself, and here you look down on devising efficient strategies...

so I'll ask you, why reinvent the wheel for scripted encounters?

what's the difference between synthesising a strategy on a forum, to doing the same buy reading guides, watching videos and adapting to your own raid composition? none

You described the basis of the forums, to share and learn info. If you don't want to learn from what others have done then why come to the forums?

[lofta]

who are you talking to? i'm on the forum, answering the guy's question about where to get boss stats from

[Telmar]

Well, one of them involves doing the fight first so you have something to bring to the forum. Thats something of a major difference.

Secondly, Moroes is a control fight, Curator is a DPS fight. On moroes, you can take out a dps for a healer, and you can still happily do the fight. On curator if you fall behind on adds, you're dead, theres no mystery to it.

If you dont mind me asking, where are you at currently, raiding wise, as I've discovered alot of these arguements, can simply be the result of gear and perspective differences.

[lofta]

Our guild's just recently completed a merge so we've just been restructuring our groups. In that time, we got Kara on farm and our healers and MTs are geared accordingly.

Resuming GL this weekend with the extended membership.

[Telmar]

Our guild's just recently completed a merge so we've just been restructuring our groups. In that time, we got Kara on farm and our healers and MTs are geared accordingly.

Resuming GL this weekend with the extended membership.

Fair enough, I suppose if you have only kara to clear during the week, you probably have a little more flexibility with your group compositions.

Im in the unfortunate position of having to make sure we get at least two of our karas cleared on friday nights (the third is during the day on sat), so we have time for raiding during the week. This gives me very limited options as regards swapping people out, sometimes we'll have no one on standby, and have to finish up with 9 people if someone has to leave. Therefore my boss strats need to work whatever I'm throwing at it. This probably means I'll end up with a very different perspective on the fights to someone with the luxury of being able to have an optimal group, for each one.

[lofta]

OK, that explains a lot. In many ways, I would actually prefer a stable raid composition for the 10 mans.

[Qwertius]

small guild:

first week up to curator
second and thrid week stuck on Shade (we had only 1 warlock keyed, and even that one wasn't online much)
4th week downed shade
5th week downed Prince + Nightbane

skipped the optional bosses until later on in the 7th week or so.