Noobing Molten Core

[Hedon]

The day had finally come!
Since I started playing WoW in the European Final Beta and set my virtual foot in the Shadowfang Keep Instance and enjoyed the hell out of it, I was determined to visit one day the holy grail of instancing in WoW, the Molten Core.

It was a mellow saturday night on the Kil'Jaeden (EU) server and I was waiting for the zeppelin from Ogrimmar to Undercity to arrive, as I received the tell I have been dreaming about since those days of final beta:


[Slaanesh]: "Hey there, do you want to join a MC raid tomorrow?"

I must say I reread the line again just to be sure that I wasn't dreaming indeed .

[Me]: "MC? Sure count me in"
[Slannesh]: "Fine be on 3. p.m. tomorrow"
[Me]: "I will be there"


Let me explain a bit the situation on our server. There isn't a real big hardcore raiding guild on our server so far, resulting in MC raids being still a very rare event on Kil'Jaeden(EU). In fact Luciferon had not been slain up to this day this particular raid had started, so it was a big event indeed.

I would like to think, that I had been chosen because of my exceptional playing skills (I had done some instances with Slaanesh before), but the truth is probably that the pool of lvl 60 priests is very limited, so that they were happy about every priest who could make it ;)


So I logged in the next day and was promptly invited to the raid group and flew to Kargath. In Kargath (the staging point of all groups and raids headed to the Blackrock Mountain instances series), I had a deja vu from the days I had played "Saga of Ryzom" where we raided the Prime Roots to get access to other continents. What I mean is the joyful anticipation that precedes such a big event, when the raid members meet, final preparations are made, raid subgroups are formed and organisational orders are issued.



Used to the organization of raids in "Saga of Ryzom" it was all very similiar "Voice Rights" were only given to to the raid leaders to and sub group leaders, all other raid membes could listen to the conversation and act upon voice orders, but had their microphones muted. Also only those people people with voice rights had the right to write into the "raid channel", all other members were confined to the "group channel" to discuss tactical details. This is necessary to ensure that the raid channel doesn't get spammed and the voice channel doesn't become absolutely confusing.

After frantically organizing materials for some repair bots in the last minute, we all set out to Blackrock Mountain.

There are two ways to enter the Molten Core. You can make your way through the BRD, at wich end there is the green portal to MC, or after you have been there once and collected the item for the "Attunement with the Core" quest, you can take the short way and jump through the window left of the High Elf (who also isues the attumenment quest) which stands at the lower floor of the Black Rock Mountain central hub, right there where you take the the entrance to the right if you head to BRD. Of course if you have not the attunement quest finished you will just take a rather painful and probably deadly dive into the lava.



As we trickeled through the portal and were gathering on the other side, people had another chance to take a closer look at their fellow raiders. This is were I took this screen of the "Sisters in Faith". It was funny because the two priests were all like "omg, we look almost exactly the same".



But after the small talk was all done and final bio breaks were taken, it was time to get serious. There were "things" at the end of the short tunnel and their time had come. The raid leaders gave final orders "You are aware that those things in here have very high fire resistances? I don't want to see a single fireball flying"

As neither of us had great experience in MC (the raid leaders have only been there one time before themselves) our strategy was pretty simple. We had two designated main tanks, a priest in every group, in the group of the primary of the two maintanks an additional druid, and the rest was basically assigned to be damage dealers. When everything worked out, it looked something like this.




A thing that I noticed there as priest: A lot of the inhabitants of MC have the nasty habit of dispersing magical debuffs on raid members. As a priest you have to decide wether you want to dispell those debuffs, thus risking not being able to heal for a full second because of the global cooldown, or keep on healing for the tradeoff of not dispelling, which decreases the debuffed members efficency or deals additonal damage. Theoretically one shoud have priests just dedicated to dispelling, and others to concentrate on healing.

Another thing that had caused frequent problems were rougues. Not being able to absorb large amounts of damage like warriors, but being prone to get hurt through AE because they have to move into melee range, they are quite difficult to handel for healers, putting an additional strain on their timing issues and mana pools.


We weren't really that bad at those first pulls, and people were already making remarks like "Hey this is going really well, considering it is a pick up raid" etc.
Every time I hear someone saying something like this in an instance, I know doom is not far away. And indeed then came the doggies from hell, or ancient core hounds, if I correctly translate the German name back to English.




Those beasts were much thougher to handle than those golems and elemantals before. Raid leaders were trying to instrcut the tanks to turn those away from the raid, so that they wouldn't AE all the people but this was apperently easier said then done. High time for Prayer of Healings, alternated with frantic shielding, squeezed in dispells, last fraction of second flash heals.

Anyway we managed the first couple of core hounds and were rewarded by our first epic drop, from one of those lava elemantal things. Of course this was accompanied by a wave of cheers from the raid.



I could translate the name and stats of this item, but i will leave it to your patten recognition skills to indentify it ;)


Unfortunatley this sould be the apex of our little expedition and things went badly downwards from this point on. Concentration suffered and we fetched some unnecessary adds.



As mentioned before, we had our problems with one of those corehounds, two of them devasted our raid in seconds. It was surreal to watch those fields on the CT-Raidassist panel grey out completely in less than a minute.



We never recovered from this wipe. I think I was rezzed three times just to be eaten by another corehound patrol. These patrols are really vicous, and there was no safe zone, to rezz and regroup the raid successfully. When then decided to take a corpse run and enter the instance anew.

One of the raid leadres mentioned we should next time install timers, for repop of patrols. Does someone of you has any experience with such things? Where does one get those, and how do they work?


Anyway on our second attempt, we made it to the bridge, behind those core hound patrols.




Just to be greeted by another one of our old friends. People panicked, concentration and discipline was at this very point already very low, some people backed up on the bridge and aggroed some golems, that stood somewhat right of it, and there we go: another wipe.





Once again no safe spot to recover, no discipline whatsoever left, we decided to make an end to our ordeal and ended our little MC adventure.




Things I have learned from our MC failure:

1.) Random pick up raids in the magnitude of 40 people simply don't cut it (big insight isn't it, considering the troubles one often enough has with 5 man instance groups).

2.) Unlike in many other instances recovery from wipe is very difficult, as you don't have safe zones and time to recover sucessfully (at least in the zone I have seen so far; it is perhaps possible if erveryone knows what to do and acts accordingly, but see point 1). Very much like traversing the prime roots in "Saga of Ryzom" knowledge about pathing and timing of mobs is key to sucessfully master this area of MC. This quite surprising because most of WoW Instances are rather static were you move from one pullto another without any significant time restraints (although in Dire Maul West there are also pathing and timing issues with patrols to consider).

3.) Fire resistance, nuff said.

4.) Dedicate some priests to dispelling and secondary healing (no shamans can't dispell magic like paladins do)

5.) We need a German Version of CT-Raidassist, because the English Version on top of the German Client doesn't display debuffs (some really sadistic devoloper also translated the internal script language for the German and French versions, so that debuffs are not identified because of their new German/French names by the English CT-Raidassist).

6.) Yes doing MC is insane, but I will surely do it again :)

[russ]

2.) Unlike in many other instances recovery from wipe is very difficult, as you don't have safe zones and time to recover sucessfully (at least in the zone I have seen so far; it is perhaps possible if erveryone knows what to do and acts accordingly, but see point 1). Very much like traversing the prime roots in "Saga of Ryzom" knowledge about pathing and timing of mobs is key to sucessfully master this area of MC. This quite surprising because most of WoW Instances are rather static were you move from one pullto another without any significant time restraints (although in Dire Maul West there are also pathing and timing issues with patrols to consider).

Once you kill Magmadar, the big version of those Core Hounds, wipe recovery becomes a thousand times easier. The Core Hounds have a remarkably short respawn timer (18 minutes!), and the large wander path is a bit of a pain. You guys were rather unfortunate in that you wiped at one point where 4 of their paths converge... which is pretty much where you should just corpserun.
Excluding the Ancient Core Hounds (and core surgers, but those are CC'able), most of the mobs in Molten Core are static, so once you get past the second bridge you really do get chances to recover normally from wipes.

3.) Fire resistance, nuff said.

Fire resistance is actually fairly overrated until you get to the "Flame Packs", piles of elementals that have a bad habit of chaincasting two or three 3k damage fireballs at any druids nearby. Before them, you really shouldn't be getting hit by fire enough to justify the loss in stats.
For tanks, a large health bar is preferable to spiky damage absorbtion. Once they've got enough health, FR can be a viable loss for encounters, but not as many as you'd think.

4.) Dedicate some priests to dispelling and secondary healing (no shamans can't dispell magic like paladins do)

This is incredibly important, and one of the biggest pains for Horde raiding guilds. Wait until you get further into the instance. Soul Burn isn't even the worst thing you'll find - nothing says love like a manaburn DoT or a ShadowWord : Pain capable of killing a tank on its own.

5.) We need a German Version of CT-Raidassist, because the English Version on top of the German Client doesn't display debuffs (some really sadistic devoloper also translated the internal script language for the German and French versions, so that debuffs are not identified because of their new German/French names by the English CT-Raidassist).

I'll tell TS about that bug, but I dunno if he or kayun will be willing to fix problems for a client they don't own. In the meantime, you may want to use Decursive, found here http://www.curse-gaming.com/mod.php?addid=643, which is supposed to have German compatibility. It's a bit of an easy-mode thing, but in the short term it's probably better than manually clicking every member of a raid.

[Rinnhart]

Beweglichkeit is by far a better name for agility.

[Phoenix]

Beweglichkeit is by far a better name for agility.
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Gesundheit > Health, too. It's like "Sneeze 5342/5462".

[Taeme]

The important thing to realise about MC is that it really isn't as hard as it first feels like. If you read the guides and have solid pulling, the trash mobs are usually quite friendly to a prepared raid.

Oh, and wiping isn't so bad. Trash mobs in MC drop the cores for crafting, core leather and epic BoEs. There's nothing wrong with spending more time in MC.

[Hedon]

@russ

Thx for the input :)

It's a relief to know that the patrol situation eases up later in the instance and that we were caught in a bad spot.

Your remark regarding the usefulness of fire resistance gear is interesting, because everyone on our server drools about fire resistance gear. Everytime such a piece drops you read chatlines like "ooh, nice for MC". Fire resistance gear is very sougt after on our server in the moment (quite useful in PvP Situation
either), followed by anything that has shadow resistance on it. No one seems to care about arcane, frost and nature though.

I'm a bit wary of the Decursive mod. Can you interreput the cleansing algorithm? If it not, then I would imagine that a priest would get timing issuses, with getting off heals quickly, because of the one second global cooldown. I would rather not risk it not being able to shield someone or get off a flash heal in time and thus letting someone die, if the mod blocks my healing in order to compute X dispells first ;)
For a dedicated "dispelling priest" it would be very convient of course.

[russ]

Thankfully, it's not that bad. Decursive, due to the limitations of the UI system, only casts one Dispel for each button press. It's similar, although much less intelligent, than the CTmod functionality - it spends around 0.1 seconds scanning to find the first person in your raid with a debuff you can cleanse, and then removes it. Not particularly smart coding, but it's seems like it would be better than nothing. There's no long-term effect other than the cooldown from the dispell magic cast.

I won't deny fire resist is useful, but it's not worth giving up a large amount of stats for, particularly if you're not a tank.
Since many of the fire effects you're likely to be hit by are either environmental which get no resist chance (Magmadar's Flame Spit, Geddon's Living Bomb, Garr's Firesworn Self-Destruct) or debuffs which are easier to get dispelled (Soul Burn, Ancient Dread, Impending Doom, Ignite Mana), the extra health to survive often seems more important. Tanks are more likely to get inferno'd or hit by an elemental, which makes it a more beneficial choice for them, but the extra damage reduction is not worth too much of a loss of stamina.
For PvP, resists are a lot more reasonable, but that's because a good many times when you PvP you don't have 6-14 healers staring at your healthbar.

For a timermod, CT_timer seems to be one of the easier to use programs. The readme included in the zipped folder explains how to use it. Hopefully this works in the German Client.

[Hedon]

Yesterday we finally managed to slay Lucifron:




This time it wasn't a completly random raid, but a coalition of four guilds: Infacted, Dunkle Schaar, Forsaken Heroes, Hauer und Huf. The real challenge to doing endgame raiding isn't really killing the mobs, but the tedious administration of organizing 40 people and keep them happy throughout the course of the run. So Kudos to Bletasur <Infacted> and Craven <Forsaken Heroes> for stepping up to the task.

Things were much better coordinated then last time, and we "only" wiped once on the way to Luci and two times attempting to kill Luci himself.

We successfully off tanked Luci and killed his two guards first, then Luci himself. Having Decursive installed really helped getting rid of those nasty debuffs quickly. It is, besides CT_Raidassist, mandatory now on our raids.

Some people also sat down and rewrote parts of CT_Raidassist to make it is more compatible with the German client, and now all Buffs/Debuffs are shown except for those that contain the special German characters ä,ö,ü in them. Mana conserve is also working now; great for keeping your mana budget in line for these prolonged boss fights.


We also tried Magmadar but failed. We have to work on our strategy to deal with the fearing he does every 30 seconds or so (maintank gets feared, looses aggro and the healers become doggie food). We were making progress by rotating Maintanks, i.e. immediatly replacing the maintank when the current one got feared, and our coordination was getting better, when one pack of those core hounds that stand right next to him respawned and added during the fight and we were wiped for good. Anyway we are pretty sure we get him the next time :)
The Alliance on our server already got to Gehennas though; oh my...


Funny sidenote: Between slaying Lucifron and our attempt at killing Magmadar there was a prolonged waiting period as someone went on a shopping trip to Orgrimmar to buy reagents for the raid (why people always don't have enough reagents with them? One of the WoW mysteries that remain to be solved...) and things somehow generally didn't seem to get on. Suddenly Mahlmaust, one of our Druids lost temper, took a Noggerfogger Elixir and rushed off to the next core hound pack, screaming "LEEEROOOOY JENNNNKINS". I stood right next beside him and was thinking he was just joking, until I realized that he really wasn't going to stop out of aggro range and then he came back training the doggies. We didn't wipe and it was so funny he only got a mild reprimand from the raid leaders. :) Unfortunately I was too baffled to take a screenshot.

[Icebird]

Hedon: There was a thread about strategies for dealing with Magmadar's fear in the Blizzard Raid forum. Alliance raids can use the dwerven priest's Fear Ward to nullify Magmadar's attack but the Horde have to be more creative. A common tactic was for the main tank to use a "stance dance" technique: switching to Berzerker stance a couple of seconds before Magmadar is due to cast Fear, and turning on Berzerker rage (which provides immunity to fear for 10 or 15 seconds). After the fear passes the MT would then switch back to Defensive stance.

Magmadar casts his fear once every 30 seconds. Someone suggested using the Plaguebats in the Eastern Plaguelands to practice the technique.

Chris

[MongoJerry]

Hedon: There was a thread about strategies for dealing with Magmadar's fear in the Blizzard Raid forum. Alliance raids can use the dwerven priest's Fear Ward to nullify Magmadar's attack but the Horde have to be more creative. A common tactic was for the main tank to use a "stance dance" technique: switching to Berzerker stance a couple of seconds before Magmadar is due to cast Fear, and turning on Berzerker rage (which provides immunity to fear for 10 or 15 seconds). After the fear passes the MT would then switch back to Defensive stance.

Nah, there's no need for that. We just have a shaman drop down tremor totems near the main tank. It works well.

[Olon97]

Nah, there's no need for that.&nbsp; We just have a shaman drop down tremor totems near the main tank.&nbsp; It works well.

I found the stance dancing quite useful on the last Basin core run. I wasn't maintanking, but on one of the two times I was feared (over three Mag attempts), the fear sent me out of totem range (totems only trigger on pulses), into one of those sticky fireballs, making me take unnecessary damage. That's either wasted healer mana or wasted bandages. When Champain, our Main Tank, started stance dancing more, the battle didn't shift nearly as much, making positioning for all the caster classes (who generally try to stay out of the fear AoE range) much easier to maintain.

There's a mod that starts a 30 second timer after each fear and gives a 5 second warning. Using that mod, it is quite easy to never get feared while only being in zerker stance for an extra 4-5 seconds each cycle.

Conquest guild forums discussing horde & magdamar.

Champ vouching for stance dancing making a difference. (all attempts used tremor totems)

[russ]

It really depends on the group you have. Stance dancing increases the damage you take very significantly, as Frenzy and Fear often go off around the same time, but let you keep the big puppy in one spot. Tremor totems let you skip that problem and stay in defensive all the time, but then you're going to bounce around a lot, possibly putting nukers and even healers into the fear range.

I find it easier to get one good tank rather than 8-16 healers that pay complete attention, so we tend to go with the stance dance, but you may want to try out the other possibility if your group doesn't do too well.

Mags is a hard fight. Taking him on with one Tranq shot used to be nearly impossible, although thankfully they've adjusted the miss rate on that. But he's still a good tank killer, second only to Geddon in my opinion, so bring at least two major mana pots and be ready to take a few tries on him.

[MongoJerry]

I find it easier to get one good tank rather than 8-16 healers that pay complete attention, so we tend to go with the stance dance, but you may want to try out the other possibility if your group doesn't do too well.

That's so wierd. I don't want to minimize what you guys are saying, but seriously Magmadar has been a cakewalk for us for months now. We only need a three-step healing rotation composed of pairs of healers healing at maximum range for a total of six healers in order to keep our main tank alive. The main tank keeps Magmadar held down in the middle of the room while the dps classes attack him to the sides and behind him. There's nothing special that we do. As long as the healers heal from range and therefore don't get feared, Magmadar gets held down by the main tank and the dps classes kill him. I'll ask Sabik the next chance I get to find out if he does anything special like stance shifting to counter the fear, but I haven't heard of anything like that until you mentioned it just now.

[lemekim]

That's so wierd.&nbsp; I don't want to minimize what you guys are saying, but seriously Magmadar has been a cakewalk for us for months now.&nbsp; We only need a three-step healing rotation composed of pairs of healers healing at maximum range for a total of six healers in order to keep our main tank alive.&nbsp; The main tank keeps Magmadar held down in the middle of the room while the dps classes attack him to the sides and behind him.&nbsp; There's nothing special that we do.&nbsp; As long as the healers heal from range and therefore don't get feared, Magmadar gets held down by the main tank and the dps classes kill him.&nbsp; I'll ask Sabik the next chance I get to find out if he does anything special like stance shifting to counter the fear, but I haven't heard of anything like that until you mentioned it just now.
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Yes, Magmadar almost requires stance dancing, and is probably the most intense fight for a MT out of all MC bosses (save possibly Geddon). You can probably do it with just tremor totems and dispells, but it really, really makes it much easier if your MT knows how to stance dance against him, which I can bet is what Sabik is doing if he keeps the Magmadar locks down in one place. Healers tend not to notice such things, looking at bars all the time =)

[Taeme]

Magmadar is pretty easy. I find Shazzrah and Geddon way more frustrating. It's impossible to wipe on Shazzrah, but he's far more annoying than Mags is.

But yeah, you do have to stance switch. You can't do the fight otherwise. The MT getting feared will loosen his aggro control over Mags.

Mags isn't hard. In fact, most of the bosses in MC are pretty easy once you've run through them a couple times.

[MongoJerry]

Mags isn't hard. In fact, most of the bosses in MC are pretty easy once you've run through them a couple times.

We got together today at 5pm with the goal of going into MC to kill Luci and Magmadar just to start the timer. We had no plans to go much farther than that tonight. We ended up clearing all of Molten Core, including Ragnaros, by 10:30 without a single wipe. The accomplishment just amazed us all.

[Quark]

We got together today at 5pm with the goal of going into MC to kill Luci and Magmadar just to start the timer.&nbsp; We had no plans to go much farther than that tonight.&nbsp; We ended up clearing all of Molten Core, including Ragnaros, by 10:30 without a single wipe.&nbsp; The accomplishment just amazed us all.
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... and that's how you know the raiders need new content. Some people from IA have been going on interesting diversions while waiting for their timers to clear.

[DarkCrown]

That's so wierd.&nbsp; I don't want to minimize what you guys are saying, but seriously Magmadar has been a cakewalk for us for months now.&nbsp; We only need a three-step healing rotation composed of pairs of healers healing at maximum range for a total of six healers in order to keep our main tank alive.&nbsp; The main tank keeps Magmadar held down in the middle of the room while the dps classes attack him to the sides and behind him.&nbsp; There's nothing special that we do.&nbsp; As long as the healers heal from range and therefore don't get feared, Magmadar gets held down by the main tank and the dps classes kill him.&nbsp; I'll ask Sabik the next chance I get to find out if he does anything special like stance shifting to counter the fear, but I haven't heard of anything like that until you mentioned it just now.
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Mongo I'm spurprised that you can't see what's going on here. You've been raiding MC for months. That means you have months worth of the 'phat lewt' that drops in this place. Which means that the group you're playing with is far better equipped than a group just getting into MC.

You also have months of experience with these mobs. I've found that experience is just about everything in MC. Once you have a group that knows what to do, things get a whole lot easier.

You might want to try getting a bunch together who's never been before. Make sure they have mostly green and some blue gear. Then make sure the raid leader has only been in the place once, and doesn't have any notion about the mob respawns. Tell us how that goes. I'd be surprised if you were still calling it a cakewalk. :)

-DC

[russ]

That's so wierd.&nbsp; I don't want to minimize what you guys are saying, but seriously Magmadar has been a cakewalk for us for months now.&nbsp; We only need a three-step healing rotation composed of pairs of healers healing at maximum range for a total of six healers in order to keep our main tank alive.&nbsp; The main tank keeps Magmadar held down in the middle of the room while the dps classes attack him to the sides and behind him.&nbsp; There's nothing special that we do.&nbsp; As long as the healers heal from range and therefore don't get feared, Magmadar gets held down by the main tank and the dps classes kill him.&nbsp; I'll ask Sabik the next chance I get to find out if he does anything special like stance shifting to counter the fear, but I haven't heard of anything like that until you mentioned it just now.
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Well, I'm just going from my experience with my guild. The first time we take anything down, it's quite an adventure, and each little trick that you figure out ends up mattering a lot. Mags is a cakewalk after you've downed him a few times, regardless of gear (I and a lot of guildies aren't wearing anything epic simply 'cause the upgrades are minimal), but getting everyone to work together RIGHT is tricky. After a while, sidestepping out of lava spit is easy, but the first time through... not so much. And while you can list off the "nothing specials" your guild does, some of them take a lot of work to get used to -- my guild didn't manage to hammer healer rotations into our heads til we had already killed Golemag.

I know Hooft, my guild's MT, stance dances, as do the other warriors. You only have to be feared for two seconds to have all your healers in range for the next fear.

[lemekim]

Magmadar is pretty easy. I find Shazzrah and Geddon way more frustrating. It's impossible to wipe on Shazzrah, but he's far more annoying than Mags is.

But yeah, you do have to stance switch. You can't do the fight otherwise. The MT getting feared will loosen his aggro control over Mags.

Mags isn't hard. In fact, most of the bosses in MC are pretty easy once you've run through them a couple times.
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Shazzrah doesn't count because like you said, it's almost impossible to wipe on him =) Annoying? Hell yes. Probably much more annoying then Mag. Especially when people run through the raid instead of towards main tank when they get the random aggro. But I think Mag fight is more instense for MT since you always have to pay attention to timers and watch for fear =\ Not hard either. Just can't watch TV during it unlike in some fights.

And yea, after first few bosses, rest are cake.