Ogri'la mandatory for raiders?

[Arnulf]

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.

[Taelas]

It's nice, but not required. Gruul really isn't that hard anymore.

[ima_nerd]

It's nice, but not required. Gruul really isn't that hard anymore.

A tad bid elitist, you think?

A guild who is just starting Gruul could make excellent use of that, I'm sure. Naturally, once you get the fight down and get better geared, it's value and use will decrease.

[Xanthix]

The flasks are nice to be sure. I think a regular flask or an elixir combo is more potent, but the 30 sta on the unstable flasks are useful.

On the bright side, you can get enough apexis shards for 3 flasks per day by doing the skyguard quest to wrangle 5 aether rays, and the ogri'la quest to play Simon. These are both very easy to do in 5 minutes, for any spec/class.

[oldmandennis]

30 sta will help a bit with shatter. For your average Satura-ish guild, neither fight is trivial to learn.

If you really have something against the quests, grinding out 20 shards for a night of raiding is not difficult. Keep an eye out for the 3 demon pat that goes all over the area - each one drops 2-3 shards.

There are more flasks to be had if you can complete the beginning of the Skyguard event. It starts every even hour, server time. It shouldn't take more then 5 to get to that point of the event. There are 5 other choices for flasks, search for "unstable" to see them all. The "beast" is available in the demon camp and the "sorcerer" is available in the ethereal camp all the time. The others you need the event for. They all feature 30 sta, then 20 of two other stats.

[Xanthix]

I suppose it's also worth mentioning that these flasks are tradeable and auctionable. I don't know if they sell well but I see them on the AH from time to time.

[Zarathustra]

For those who've progressed past Gruul, these things are still worth it. Combine the flasks with the potions sold at Ogri'la to Honored players, and Gruul's lair becomes a quick, cosumable-free clear. You don't have to spend a cent on healing/mana pots and can chug them every cooldown.

If not for these additions, I probably wouldn't bother with consumables for Gruul's Lair at this point. Their addition gives me a reason, and makes the farming run that much smoother.

So I'd say whether a guild is learning Gruul's Lair or past it, these things are worth the half hour it takes to do the daily quests.

[oldmandennis]

Yeah - the repeatable quests are up there with the best farming I can think of for g/hr. Once you are doing those on a regular basis, you should have shards coming out of your ears. 2 quests will give you 3 flasks - I'd use a flask just to try and save a repair bill if I slide out of LOS of a healer on a trash pull.

[Trien]

And for those melee DPS without an agro drop... a flask could end up putting one high enough threat-wise to suddenly befall one of those things known as a 'hurtful strike', leaving one lifeless on the ground...

:P

(Yes, from personal experience. And yes, spamming cower on every cooldown!)

[Artega]

And for those melee DPS without an agro drop... a flask could end up putting one high enough threat-wise to suddenly befall one of those things known as a 'hurtful strike', leaving one lifeless on the ground...

:P

(Yes, from personal experience. And yes, spamming cower on every cooldown!)

And that's why you have KTM:P

[Tal]

And that's why you have KTM:P

Death - the ULTIMATE aggro dump.;)

[oldmandennis]

And for those melee DPS without an agro drop... a flask could end up putting one high enough threat-wise to suddenly befall one of those things known as a 'hurtful strike', leaving one lifeless on the ground...

:P

(Yes, from personal experience. And yes, spamming cower on every cooldown!)

Are you using a warrior as off-tank? A bear OT who goes for armor and not dodge makes this a non-issue, he will have to hold off to avoid passing the MT.

[Trien]

Are you using a warrior as off-tank? A bear OT who goes for armor and not dodge makes this a non-issue, he will have to hold off to avoid passing the MT.

This has varied; the last few weeks I've been the only druid there. Though the last few weeks I've been hitting that threshold with no consumables... but found that chain-spamming cower as well as Timelapse Shard keeps myself safe... so it's a thin line. (OT died last run somehow, and I picked up the hurtfuls next. Thank goodness for upgraded T4 armour...) Usually its a 2nd prot warrior as OT, though we have had another druid OT as well.

As to KTM... it just trivializes it so much that I've decided not to use it. Even if it does mean a dead kitty every now and then:P.

[oldmandennis]

If you have a feral druid on hand and choose not to use him as OT, you are deliberately choosing to make the fight harder on yourself. If a feral druid is threat capped, your enhancement shaman and especially your rogues and dps warriors are completely crippled.

[Artega]

As to KTM... it just trivializes it so much that I've decided not to use it. Even if it does mean a dead kitty every now and then:P.

Losing an extra Rebirth and Innervate could mean that you fail the encounter. I think it's kinda selfish not to use KTM and not care if you die because you can't watch your aggro.

[Treesh]

Losing an extra Rebirth and Innervate could mean that you fail the encounter. I think it's kinda selfish not to use KTM and not care if you die because you can't watch your aggro.

And you can manage your threat without having KTM installed.

[Trien]

If you have a feral druid on hand and choose not to use him as OT, you are deliberately choosing to make the fight harder on yourself. If a feral druid is threat capped, your enhancement shaman and especially your rogues and dps warriors are completely crippled.

Oh, I definitely don't mind it when the other feral druid is OT'ing... but I guess I'm not so picky as to argue the point if the other prot warrior wants to be doing something useful. The rogues can get away with it unlike myself (last screenshot I have from a few weeks back shows them running a good 70-80dps above what I'm forced to keep myself down to); enhancement shammy/dps warrior are not issues. Switching me to OT would be the other option if I'm the lone druid, which perhaps would let the rogues push the limit a tiny bit more, but exchanges a feral DPS for a prot warrior DPS.

Losing an extra Rebirth and Innervate could mean that you fail the encounter. I think it's kinda selfish not to use KTM and not care if you die because you can't watch your aggro.

What were players to do before KTM came along? Learn by trial and error, living and dying, figuring out the limits. I'm a coder at heart, I love writing addons to do nifty things, make life easier, and all that, but I draw the line in a certain place, and KTM for me is on the other side of that line. A lot of people haven't drawn the line in the same place, obviously, but for me, for how I want to play the game, KTM is 'cheating', and I shouldn't have to 'cheat' just to beat that encounter. Will it be harder? Sure, a bit. I'm not calling everyone who uses KTM a 'cheater', but for my own choice, I choose not to use it.

I suppose my philosophy is still to play the game as closely to the default design as possible. I'm at last count, up to 70+ distinct addons, yet none of them really alter my playstyle terribly from the default UI. This is in part due to occasionally running off an addon-less computer... where I can still sit down and play without my usual mass of addons. The only one I really do miss is DruidBar (estimates mana while shapeshifted). The rest of the addons? Data-collecting, rearranging the visual display to be more efficient or informative, but really, none of it is needed or should be needed.

Getting offtopic now, but back to the original question. We did use consumables to a some degree when learning Gruul; these days the top DPS'ers don't really need them. Never hurts to flask up your tanks of course, since there's always the chance he may not be fully topped off during a silence. And since we are subbing in other players who are not necessarily in the top gear, flasks can do them benefit as well.

[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.