Ogri'la mandatory for raiders?

[Skandranon]

Yesterday, while I was doing Ogri'la & Skyguard quests I stumbled upon the Unstable Flask of the Sorcerer (armoury link). Not only gives me Ogri'la faction the benefit of walking on the doorstep of Gruul's Lair unmolested (I'm Queen of the ogres after all!) but this flask should help raiders considerably. I have no direct experience, I'm not seriously raiding anymore, but it seems that Blizzard gives more options now to defeat "hard" encounters.

Neither Gruul nor Maulgar are hard enough to make any kind of consumable use at all required or even really helpful. What Ogri'la does is make the initial step into raiding very, very easy - and truthfully, that's exactly what intro-level raiding should be. BC has mostly lacked a Molten Core, and as much as some people like to say that MC was way too easy, I don't think that a way-too-easy intro instance is a bad thing at all. Especially with all the people taking their first steps into end-game with TBC, either new players or old players seeing it as an opportunity to get in on the ground floor, there's definitely a place for content which is just about getting 25 players together and running over stuff. Gruul's is actually easier than parts of Karazhan, which is, again, a good thing. It eases you in.

On another note, Ogri'la also eases you into a different aspect of raiding. Just like Molten Core taught the basics of large-scale tanking and healing and not pulling aggro, Ogri'la teaches, in a relatively inexpensive manner, the mindset required for another defining aspect of TBC raiding - flasking and potting up.

It doesn't really cross the minds of players pre-endgame, and it really shouldn't. Flasks feel like special things for special occasions, not the least of the reasons being the cost (and while the cost is not what it was, it's still appreciably more than any other alchemical consumable). Most players, and especially players new to endgame, don't think of them as something that you should consider using on a regular basis.

Now, thankfully, most SSC and TK fights have been nerfed to the point where you don't really need flasks, though they still help a lot. There's still the odd fight, though, where going in without flasks on nearly everyone means that you're basically not playing. People need to be open to that - and I don't mean any insult by that. I know that prior to Naxx I wouldn't have been open to the idea of regularly flasking everyone to farm a boss at all; I would go so far as to say that it's the default mindset of every player. Ogri'la flasks just crack open the door a little; super cheap, super limited flasks that break down the innate resistance to the idea of flasking the whole raid.