Stealthing Kara attunement key fragments

[nonumberswtf]

In regards to stealthing to the key fragments for the Karazhan attunement:

i've read that the 2nd and 3rd fragments can be stealthed to but from my patchy memory of a shadow labs run i can't see why this can't be stealthed as well? what is the obstacle to stealthing to the key fragment in slabs? (i've read that you can get to the fragment without aggroing Murmur).

also, how difficult are the recently added elites that spawn with the key fragments? soloable as a freshly 70 druid? what kind of fight is it (dps down or outlast?)

any information/advice on this would be great!

--
Blacktoothe
<Reagan Smash>
70 Druid
Barthilas

[Felix Niebuhr]

In Arcatraz and in Shadow Labs you click on an urn, that then spawns a 70 elite you have to kill. Its the mob that drops the key fragment and I think it will be hard to solo. Not sure if a druid could maybe cause its not the most difficult elite.

[Aerath]

You can't solo it as a Druid (the Arc fragment at the very least). I think it can no longer be stealthed as a Rogue either - remember something about it being 'fixed' in one of the patches. You simply won't get there.

In SLabs, you need to kill the second boss before you can continue on towards the Keyfragment, which would be fairly difficult to pull off solo.

[ecanem]

I solod the guy guarding the first key frag, he is easy. The one in arc has pat's right near it though so you would at least need a second person to help you out and the one in SL, you don't need to kill murmur to get.

[swaldman]

The fragment guardians aren't too hard to kill; but the second boss in SL might be (!), and you have to kill him to open the door behind him.

[Zalath]

The thing is, if you can't get a party for something as simple as the fragments, you won't be able to get anywhere in Karazhan. It's quite easy for a guild to go through it in a few hours if you're just looking for the attunement.

[moopy]

The thing is, if you can't get a party for something as simple as the fragments, you won't be able to get anywhere in Karazhan. It's quite easy for a guild to go through it in a few hours if you're just looking for the attunement.

A few hours? Not even that- the only instances you need to complete (morre or less, Murmur is optional) are Shadow Lab and Black Morass. As long as you have people in place to summon to Tanaris, the whole thing can be done at an insane speed.

[dwarfenhelm]

as said its unliklyy that if you need to solo these key frags that you will ever get to kara and with a guild run it should only take 1/2 hr to get the frags from SL and arc. BM will take 45 mins from going into the instance to leaving.
kara takes a guild to run so the guild should help you get the frags

[Falchan]

What's the hurry? If you don;t have gear from these instances, you will be a detriment to any Kara10 you join. Being successful in Karazahn requires more than simply having the key.

Heck...you can zone into Gruuls at 65....though I wouldn;t recommend it...

[ZaxGreia]

What some folks are forgetting is that some guilds are already maxed for time, and aren't interested in helping other guildies or alts to get keyed for Kara. My guild is on this "hardcore" kick right now where you only get a group if you're in the "elite" clique.

So, guess who's looking for a new guild...

At any rate, the point is that knowing easy ways to get keyed may help a person who doesn't want to get into a new guild participate in their current guild runs on Kara without begging/harassing people in guild chat.

[rgirty]

What some folks are forgetting is that some guilds are already maxed for time, and aren't interested in helping other guildies or alts to get keyed for Kara. My guild is on this "hardcore" kick right now where you only get a group if you're in the "elite" clique.

So, guess who's looking for a new guild...

At any rate, the point is that knowing easy ways to get keyed may help a person who doesn't want to get into a new guild participate in their current guild runs on Kara without begging/harassing people in guild chat.

I can understand this mentality and started to see it happening in my own guild.

I dealt with it in this manner.

Kara group 1: Raiding every night, only sign up for this group if you are available to raid each night at the raid start times.

Kara group 2: Weekend raiding and occasionaly weekly raiding, 3/4 days a week. Sign up here if you want to raid some, but not all the time or your schedule does not allow it.

Group 2 people help people get attuned and run heroics on their nights when not raiding.

Problem solved.

I forsee us having even 3 kara groups going, we have the tanks and healing I believe and can PUG dps easily..great recruiting tool.

[clevins]

Solo Blackheart?? ROFLMAO... there is NO WAY any player is soloing him. Not happening, no way, no how.

[nonumberswtf]

Thanks for the input (especially menace, that's exactly the info i was after).

Zax has it right, why would i bother my guildmates for an instance run if i can just solo it?

People seem to be keen to jump on the 'you're a noob' bandwagon...

[Big Guns]

You cannot get the first key fragment solo. It does not matter which class or the equipment.

You have got to down Blackheart the Inciter. The only way further into the instance where the key is locked until Blackheart is downed.

That alone is enough to stop anyone solo.

I also suspect that the door to Murmur's room does not open until Vorpil has been downed. I cannot say for sure as I have never had time to check before Vorpil went down. Not that it matters. No-one would get to Vorpil solo anyway.

[clevins]

nonumberswtf ,

I wasn't calling you a noob... and it's not a bad idea, but I had just done SL... and Blackheart is TOUGH...

Frankly, if a guild wouldn't help you, i'd find another... that's one of the reasons FOR guilds... an SL is only a 90 minute run... it's not a 3 hour thing

[SideLabel]

...,you don't need to kill murmur to get.

Oh but you should. Murmur is by far the easiest boss in the entire instance and has some great drops.

[Zalath]

I can understand this mentality and started to see it happening in my own guild.

I dealt with it in this manner.

Kara group 1: Raiding every night, only sign up for this group if you are available to raid each night at the raid start times.

Kara group 2: Weekend raiding and occasionaly weekly raiding, 3/4 days a week. Sign up here if you want to raid some, but not all the time or your schedule does not allow it.

Group 2 people help people get attuned and run heroics on their nights when not raiding.

Problem solved.

I forsee us having even 3 kara groups going, we have the tanks and healing I believe and can PUG dps easily..great recruiting tool.

No offense to you, but if you need to raid Kara every day of the week to clear it, you seriously need to reconsider some things. Does the first team have all the heroic drops they need? Rep rewards and possibly quest rewards? If you need to spend that amount of time on it you're quite possibly undergeared and need to consider other options, so the second team seems to be doing a much better job IMHO :)

[moopy]

What's the hurry? If you don;t have gear from these instances, you will be a detriment to any Kara10 you join. Being successful in Karazahn requires more than simply having the key.

QFT, and well said :)

To some of the other posters.. In a mixed-ability/playime guild, there are always mismatches. Also, in my guild., we got to the point where signups for Kara were huge, and people generally got into 30-50% of the raids they signed up to. Thus, by massive popular demand, we formed two kara groups this week, to give people more spots.

This did lead to one member throwing a hissy fit- there's always one. He's someone who while he doesn't have as much playtime as others, doesn't use it well. He gets upset and logs out when people are discussing raids or planning upgrade paths with raid loot- something I noticed and deem a little rude and counter productive (he usually leaves with a sulky comment). This just isn't reasonable, as we have a very inclusive policy for rotations, everyone has an equal chance to get in, we're very flexible on composition etc., and if he wanted to get attuned, all he has to do is ask at a time when people aren't actually raiding (a non-raid day or before/after raid time), and there's usually a tank, healer and some extra DPS to make up numbers. His attitude seems totally at odds with the easygoing nature and style of the rest of the guild, the drama is utterly out of place. His unwillingness to do things for himself, expecting things handed to him is a bit grating.

You really do get what you give in a lot of cases. He complains when people go into heroics because he doesn't have the rep, yet most of them got off their butts and made sure they got the rep themselves, PUGging even, if they needed to (this includes the guild's MT- who I orginally met when I healed for him in a PUG). Even in a busy and helpful guild, there are evenings where people are busy, or not online, so you take it in your stride, and be glad that most of the time, there are tonnes of lunatics ready to go anywhere with you.

Even our retri pally and enchancement shammy get spots in heroics and raids- because they're nice people and contribute a lot, even if they aren't the perfect class/spec for an ideal setup. I'm afraid I don't have a lot of time for our compadre's whining- in my previous guild, I pugged most of the rep needed for heroics on two lv 70s (because the guild's two decent tanks tended only to be around when they wanted something, otherwise they weren't interested). It was a pain, I put up with a load of crappy PUGs. I can see that my current guild is a LOT easier and more supportive for people who need groups- when they're forming, people always consider "oh, X said he needed to go to Y, shall we ask him if he wants to come?", and try and be as fair as possible to avoid cliques forming, even if it means crazy party setups for hard heroics (which can be loads of fun, by the by).

Honestly, it is like night and day, and while it's not a very hardcore raiding setup, it's a nice way to be. However, however generous, relaxed, understanding and supportive you are of players, someone will always want the moon on a stick, that's just the way it is.

Bah, rambling now, sorry about the wall of text :)

[Wintrow]

Heck...you can zone into Gruuls at 65....though I wouldn;t recommend it...

I hear Gruul's a pushover, just Mind Control his adds :tongue:

[moopy]

Gruul has no adds. There may be a little trash between Maulgar and Gruul (I forget, my memory isn't the best), but the big G himself is just standing pensively in the middle of his cave, drooling a little.

[Aerath]

Gruul has no adds. There may be a little trash between Maulgar and Gruul (I forget, my memory isn't the best), but the big G himself is just standing pensively in the middle of his cave, drooling a little.

I do believe that was a 'joke post' you're taking serious here :smiley:

[moopy]

It has been a long day, obviously my last remaining braincell has shut down to conserve runtime :-)

[Justinledwards]

Yah we have a druid we recruited last week that's been asking all week for attunement runs - unfortunately, sun, mon, wed and thu are the key raiding nights. He got a little stroppy in gchat last night, but it worked for him - lots of folks piped up and said they'd help out :)

His problem was timing as well - at 6.30, you'd see - hey, who's up for shadow labs! And my response was - sorry dude, raid starts soon :(

[clevins]

Justin,

one thing i'm trying to do in our guild (i'm not an officer or anything) is to get people to use the forums on our site to plan things... it needs people to be active on them, but if you can get even a core group reading them, it can help as a way to arrange things.

[Justinledwards]

90% of the posts on our forums seem to come from me... I am always pointing people at them... I even have the most posts in the druid forum (and I'm a shammy / hunter). I'll be done for trolling our guild forums next :P

[dwarfenhelm]

i think every guild has the players that just seem to think they will get every thing handed to them on a plate. we have lots in my guild who have the key to kara and think well ive done that so i can go and raid. then we keep wiping on trash mobs because the mages are pulling agro of the tank or the tank is still wearing greens or low level shield. half our guild live in heroic dungeons and when we run kara we have the main heroic group in team 1 and then we have a back up group made up from all over in group 2. now ive turned round to members and said if you want to come to kara come back when you have finished a few heroics.
we have 2 members who wont be with us much longer who come on early evening and say i still need ... then we go ok and try and sort a group out only to find then saying oh im of for the night and then next time moan again they never get groups. but as they say you cant please all the people all of the time or even some people some of the time

[moopy]

i think every guild has the players that just seem to think they will get every thing handed to them on a plate. we have lots in my guild who have the key to kara and think well ive done that so i can go and raid.

Well, that's just it- it does mean that, in my guild. That's how easygoing and inclusive we are, and you'll have equal footing in the rotation system with the guild's MT or best healers. I can see the upside of being this way, it gives everyone a chance to join in, and means things can stay really friendly. This is why getting snippy about not getting everything on a plate seems so wrong.

Yeah, so it hampers progress like crazy, as our chances of having a solid lineup for Gruul/Mags is low, as we'll have tonnes of undergeared/inexperienced folks and a strange class balance, but that's the price you pay. Eventually, almost everyone will reach a minimum standard- it's socialism, of a sort :)

People will also help out with almost anything if they're not already committed to doing something with someone else, too- it really isn't hard to find the help if your timing isn't actively awful. However, as you said, demanding people right at the start of a scheduled raid isn't so smart, that's something else this problem child did too :)

However, it's true that no matter how supportive you are, no matter how much people decide to help out rather than doing something personally challenging/useful, there's always gonna be a malcontent.

Yeah, so it's easy for me in a way- I soon made a name for myself as a fearless and reliable raid/heroic healer, and thus there's often something interesting to do, but still.. I get rotated, I have to sit stuff out. I was miffed the first time it happened until I realised that our MT was also rotated, so the MT, the GM and some of our killer casters formed a heroic group and cleared blood furnace and ramparts heroic while others were raiding- I am sure I had just as exciting a time as the raiders did :) Failing that, there's always something that needs farming, some PvP rewards that you've been meaning to get and so forth, if there's nothing shaking, and you're in a mood to play WoW that evening- also often vital for advancing the more spotty bits of your progression.

[YamahaGuy]

No offense to you, but if you need to raid Kara every day of the week to clear it, you seriously need to reconsider some things.

Skipping aran/ illhoof / spite, we were bagging prince/bane in 2 evenings after reset; 3 if things didn't go well. Some guilds do it faster than that; but they start a lot earlier in the day. Not really an option for day job people.

Then we have a couple 25 man content days.

Thing is, if we bagged prince / bane in 2 days, we found ourselves starting at tiles in the city day after day, bored out of our skulls. Not to mention I was tired in the mornings. Heroics are kool.... but I've spent about 120 badges (I think) and I have all my FR gear, and nothing to buy, so really I just tank them when guild mates wanna go. I have like 35 in the bank should blizzard ever add something usefull to the vendor =S

So,"optional" skipped bosses became required bosses
Then, we also scheduled less bosses per evening

Thus giving us SOMETHING to kill every day of the week, whether its this/that/those/10/25. I mean, shade is the suck, but it SURE beats standing around aldor bank.

This also helped out attendance.

Whereas everyone logged in Tuesdays, Wednesdays when they knew there was stuff to do. The rest of the week, people log in, sit around for a bit, then take off if nothings going on. Thus, making it hard to do anything at all.

[Zalath]

Skipping aran/ illhoof / spite, we were bagging prince/bane in 2 evenings after reset; 3 if things didn't go well. Some guilds do it faster than that; but they start a lot earlier in the day. Not really an option for day job people.

Then we have a couple 25 man content days.

Thing is, if we bagged prince / bane in 2 days, we found ourselves starting at tiles in the city day after day, bored out of our skulls. Not to mention I was tired in the mornings. Heroics are kool.... but I've spent about 120 badges (I think) and I have all my FR gear, and nothing to buy, so really I just tank them when guild mates wanna go. I have like 35 in the bank should blizzard ever add something usefull to the vendor =S

So,"optional" skipped bosses became required bosses
Then, we also scheduled less bosses per evening

Thus giving us SOMETHING to kill every day of the week, whether its this/that/those/10/25. I mean, shade is the suck, but it SURE beats standing around aldor bank.

This also helped out attendance.

Whereas everyone logged in Tuesdays, Wednesdays when they knew there was stuff to do. The rest of the week, people log in, sit around for a bit, then take off if nothings going on. Thus, making it hard to do anything at all.

I think we're looking at different things here, it was under my impression that the guy I replied to had a guild where the first team more or less raided Karazhan every night of the week. Raided as in trying, not farming, which was why I suggested that they improved their gear/tactics/composition instead of banging the head at the wall every day of the week :)

[moopy]

It is a problem- you get to the point where you can kill everything in kara in a couple of evenings long before you have enough properly geared people for 25 man stuff. Blizz know this is a problem, and have made faint promises that they have something up their sleeve, but I guess it will be a while before it materialises. Most guilds end up throttling back/splitting up the kara raids once they get to the point where they expect to kill the prince every week.

[ZaxGreia]

So back to the OP's question - I'm understanding here that it's pretty much impossible to solo the Kara key fragments. We figured out that you can't solo the first one very easily - you have to tail in on another group's cleared instance, and even then you're better off bringing a friend.

I don't think we've discussed the Arcatraz fragment very well... What would it take, since it's not soloable anymore? You know, let's help solve the problem we've identified. If my guild did this, they wouldn't be hemorraging members.

And for all those talking about the stuff I brought up earlier - I wasn't trying to derail the discussion, I was just giving a context that would explain why people might want to get through the keying process as quickly as possible.

Most of the suggestions on how to handle the issue I'm facing in my own guild won't work, since all the guild leadership are in a "hardcore" clique. They don't think there's a problem at all, and are confused by those of us who mention that it's been nearly impossible to get in any kind of guild group lately, be it heroic or otherwise.

So now that you all understand my context, don't worry about it, except to give the OP some helpful information, since there are many people out there who could use that information (for potentially varying reasons).

[clevins]

Zax,

I hear what you're saying, but if someone is in that situation, they're screwed. You can do the last 2 fragments in about 45 mins each if you have a decent group (less than that actually, but... ). I think you'll spend just as much time figuring out how to stealth run them as getting a group together (even a PUG).

And you HAVE to have a group for the Black Morass run, so if it's really that hard to get people together you'll run into the issue there. And, really, even after you HAVE the key, you might not be ready for Kara gear-wise. I wasn't. I am now. Friday we went into Kara with a good guild group, cleared the first 3 bosses pretty easily (even though we didn't have the right composition for Romulo and Julianne they died). The week before we had folks who were not as geared up and prepared - and wiped 4x on Attumen.

Really, if the guild is just flat out unhelpful and refusing to get people geared or keyed (and the OP isn't asking in really off times, etc) then it's time for a new guild. I mean, that's one of the core reasons FOR a guild.

[nonumberswtf]

ok, time to put this thread to rest.

as has been stated, you can't solo the first fragment (slabs) because you need to down the 2nd boss to progress to the fragment.

the 2nd fragment (steamvaults) is a piece of cake to solo. watch out for the bog lords (they see through stealth) and its pretty straight forward. i do have the improved stealth talent and was wearing the The Master's Treads (improved stealth level by 1). the first pull of 2 naga is probably the tightest fit; stealthing directly between them they both looked at me so you might be hard pressed to get past them without any improved stealth. i pumped myself full of every potion and scroll i had in preparation for the elite that spawns from the arcane container but needn't have bothered, its a pushover. you can bash it to heal and probably cyclone (i didn't even need to use it). i'm in pretty average gear, having just hit 70 a couple of weeks ago. i would imagine that a rogue could stunlock/dps it down solo no worries.

the 3rd fragment (arcatraz) is not soloable as a druid. there is an Arcatraz Sentinel in a narrow corridor that spams an aoe lightning attack every 2 seconds and can't be stealthed past on your own. you'll need a partner in stealth to pull the mob away to get past it. it does high amounts of magic damage and i would say definately can't be soloed (i didn't go back for a second try). i've read that a rogue can get past it using cloak of shadows and/or vanish.

so thats the lowdown.

and as has been said before... this has nothing to do with my guild not helping me out, this is about me helping out my guild. why would i waste anyones time when i can get the 2nd key fragment in under 5 minutes solo? and all i need is another druid or rogue as a partner and we can both get the 3rd fragment in about 10.

of course its nice to have guildmates help you out but too many people expect a free ride. chances are the guys at the top in your guild have had to get there the hard way and they want to spend their time making the most of the benefits of their time and effort. my guild are a pool of players that i get along well with and i know are talented. they're the first place i go when looking for a group and there's usualy 1 or 2 who are up for whatever i'm running, but if no ones up for it i go out and find a pug like everyone else. nothing is more irritating than having people constantly hassling for favours.

i enjoy helping people out and have run many a lowbie through an instance over the years but recently i'm flat out finding the time to get everything i need done for myself let alone doing any charity work. not everyone can put 30+ hours a week into the game. people should see help from their guilds as a bonus not an obligation.

just my 2c.

[moopy]

Well said. Nice summary.