Mark My Words
The Brick Wall is coming.
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=14318705177&sid=1
Make sure to click to and read the Blizzard post in there. Here, I’ll quote it for you too:
I think this may have been stated previously, but let me just reiterate. The content here is an intro to raid content in Wrath of the Lich King. More content is coming.
I know I’ve indulged in a bit of ‘oh-so-easy’ QQing now and again, lamenting the times when we would spend a week, or even two (Lady Vasj) learning how a particular boss fight worked. Bosses felt much more ‘larger than life’ than they do now. You really got the feeling that this was an epic encounter, and yes, this is something that I feel is strongly missing from Naxxramas.
But do you remember your first Kharazans? What happened when guilds tried to transition to Sunwell right after they’d cleared Black Temple?
Brick
Wall
For guilds who are fielding people with all the necessary skills (spatial awareness, adaptability, obsessive knowledge of their class, excellent ping) Naxx and even Malygos are almost trivial. For guilds who are bringing people that don’t necessarily have all those skills some of these fights can be challenging, and that’s GOOD. Naxx is a training ground for the future. It is IMPERATIVE that a guild work to train its raiders to expect the unexpected and keep an eye out for ANYTHING, so that when Ulduar is released at least your first wipes won’t be because of incompetence. Laziness, maybe, inexperience with the fights, certainly, honest mistakes, absolutely, but not outright incompetence.
One very important thing that we haven’t really seen in Naxx are gear checks. It’s not unheard-of for people to step into Naxx wearing quest blues and even greens and still be successful. Killing Kel’Thuzad is not dependent on your raid having a certain number of upgrades from the preceeding instance. Sure, Saph requires either a certain amount of base stats or enough frost resist to make up for it, but the frost resist is crafted armor, and really the exception that proves the rule.
No, in Naxx mostly you’ve got ‘awareness checks’.
Come Ulduar, mark my words, you’ll not only have ‘awareness checks’, but regular gear checks as well. THIS is why I have no desire to be a raid leader. Troubleshooting these is going to be a headache and a half. If the healer dies and insisted they didn’t stand in the fire, but the log shows they died to the fire… were they inattentive? Were they lagged? Or is their gear not good enough that they just take too much damage before they could get out of the fire?
As for us, I think some players, and healers may need some practice on situational awareness, and as one of 4 tanks it’s probably going to be part of my duty to make sure they get the practice. This means I’m going to be running, and dying (a lot) in Azjol’Nerub this weekend.
God I hate that place.
