How goes the progression for your guild's raiding, if you raid? Are you doing 10 mans or 25 mans and what made you decide to go with one or the other? Do you like the Cataclysm style of raiding? Have you been working on hard modes? Are you all done until the next patch or just barely getting started?


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I'm in a slow and steady guild. We're just going to start raiding this month. We raid to see content and interesting bosses and to have fun together. Loot is icing on the cake but we don't really care that much since it's going to be replaced next patch anyhow. We do 10 mans because they are easier to organize and coordinate. Our guild is family friendly and casual so there's a lot of dancing schedules to work around so it's just plain easier to coordinate 10 schedules than it is to coordinate 25. We have enough people to do 25 mans but no one's schedule ever matches up that well!

I'm hoping the curve into raiding isn't as steep as it was into heroics. Sure, heroics got easier once we had heroic gear, but starting them out with our 85 blues was brutal. That kind of brutality will kill a casual guild's desire to raid at the start. Yeah we want to have a challenge but we don't want that challenge to look like an impassable mountain. I like challenges that are deeper in the instance. So I'm hoping the first bosses or two are relatively easy, then I'm happy to hit a wall/gear check boss 3 doors in.

 

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My guild can't push progression too fast due to limited raid times. Our guild has shrunk since WOTLK/ICC days when we kept enough people around to do 25-man (and ran tons of 10's to keep everyone busy outside of 25).


We do blackwing on tues (3 of 6 now) and bastion on weds (3 of 4) and haven't even touched throne (hopefully start hitting that on sundays soon). So far we're not extending since I want our people doing clean kills on (and getting gear from) the earlier bosses.


Due to scheduling conflicts and such we're only doing 2 days of raiding split between 2 instances, with slightly different lineups. So, it *feels* like it's going slowly, but I'd say our progressions isn't too bad for *us*. Our guild is also somewhat casual (ie, not ultra elite raiders although some of our folks are pretty capable). The majority of our raiders were kingslayers from icc days with a decent amount of heroic modes done, and decent ICC25 depth.


As a raid leader, the raids feel harder. The fights are generally more involved execution-wise, comprable to 2nd half of ICC, and it seems like the more casual raider types who got used to being able to do first half of ICC10 relatively easily would be kinda hosed. I would definitely not compare the first cata raids to naxx from WOTLK - not even close. Naxx bosses are less complex than cata heroic bosses.


Overall, I'm enjoying it, I just personally wish my guild had more raid days so we could progress quicker and get more people and alts involved. Most of us wanted a challenge in 10 and 5 man, and got it, although the 5-man is already feeling too easy with nefs and gear - you can already faceroll northrend style a lot of the time if you want to.

 

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9/12 w/ one 10man, 8/12 w/ another 10man group. The content is a bit more challenging this time around possibly but also I am not playing WoW as much as I used to. Not to show my ego too much but when I tank or DPS, raid groups win.

 

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Contrary to what I thought would happen, my guild has actually gotten stronger since Cata.

While we have lost people to another guild, they weren't people that raided with us in WotLK, and people that didn't raid in WotLK are now raiding.

This is a guild that has never been on the cutting edge of content, we got our Nef kill in BWL the week before the TBC pre-patch and never set foot in AQ or Naxx. We cleared Kara, never finished SSC, TK or ZA and never stepped into Hyjal, BT or Sunwell. We cleared Naxx, ToC and ICC (a week or so before the 4.0 Patch), never finished Ulduar and RS, and I don't think we ever attempted EoE.

We didn't start raiding in Cata until February and we have now downed 6 bosses (4/6 in BWD and 2/4 in BoT).

Not much compared to others, but considering one of our regular raiders is 10, I don't think we've done too bad lol.

 

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12/12 then we did our first Hard Mode attempts and we did not have the best raid make up but people were already bored before we wanted to start Hard Modes and 4 of our 10 people quit

Similar story here. 12/12, then we did get Halfus on hardmode, but basically enough people aren't really interested in doing the same content a second time except brutally more difficult. Can't muster a balanced raid that are enthusiastic to do so - and I have to say I'm not particular enthusiastic myself.

But I will say, normal-mode Cataclysm, imho, is the best balanced tier of raiding that Blizzard have ever produced. The difficulty ramped up smoothly, with several clearly divided steps of difficulty, and no bosses that were incorrectly tuned easier than earlier bosses. From Halfus and Magmaw to Nefarian took my guild precisely eight weeks of raiding, every week upping the challenge and imho nothing until Nefarian shook our confidence.

Just great stuff. Even the bosses that I hated at first grew on me (like Chimaeron).

 

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1/13 heroic. Meh.

 

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12/12. We had some people who had to stop playing or reduce raiding because of time constrains so we needed to recruit a few new members, and since we don't take just the random kiddie in trade chat, that takes some time, or we would definitely have at least 2 heroics down, Halfus and Chimaeron. Wiping on Chimaeron heroic at 3%... bleh - he'll die next time!

And I have to agree with Stormie, while heroics are challenging, it's still just more of the same in the same places. For now, I'm having fun trying to beat them, but I don't see myself still farming BoT and BWD in 4 months, so I hope the new raids won't take too long to be released.



I think there's one exception to this. We found the Council to be significantly more difficult than Cho'Gall. We do them in 25 man mode though.

 

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0/12 and we have just started our wipe nights

3 nights on Magmaw could not even get him chained down properly and our kiter needs lessons in moving.

So all we need is 3 people who can do these key jobs and we have cracked it.

Lets hope with better gear we will be able to do it before the next tier comes out.

 

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