Group make up decisions

[Aelys]

So I tried Zul'aman last night and just wow. Things hit hard! I am sure my gear is good enough for ZA so thats not my concern. The fact is that my kara group breezes through kara in one night and we come here and I'm starting to think that a few things need to change with out group makeup sadly. We run with some offspec classes (Frost mage, Felguard lock) and no shadow priest. We tried narolakk once and got him to just under 50 percent (off tank died first phase and i managed to tank him through 5 phases with lucky dodges/parries) and our healers were extremely close to ooming while using mana potions. (Our freaking mage went afk for 27 minutes and didnt log out so we couldnt get a 10th person to attempt it more then twice :S)

So I'm think that the offspecs might not be cutting it for ZA and it might not be possible without the mana regen from a shadow priest to heal through (for our group at least).

What do you guys think? Is ZA serious buisness? Is the banning of offspecs and the need to have a shadow priest almost necessary for progression kills in ZA?

[Comma]

Depends on gears I think, if your members are T4 lvl or worse, you sure want every buff. If they are T5-T6 Level, its more of a execution problem, remmember casters are meant to use lots of mana pots as well.

[Levantine]

Lol @ banning off-specs. You do realise that if you're going to ban offspecs you had better fork over 50G to go holy. Ya, prot is still and always will be an 'off-spec'. So no, spec is not the problem.

[Worldie]

I'm going to take our boomkin in ZA, he can tank quite well on bosses that don't crush

[Kaelie]

Progression kills you pot every cooldown, what's with everyone saying "with mana potions?" That should be assumed.

T4 gear you're going to want to have all the buffs you can afford. Things hit way harder than in Kara and they have more health to stay up hitting you longer. Shadow priest mana regen is simply lovely, if you can get one, grab one.

[Vanifae]

What do you guys think? Is ZA serious buisness? Is the banning of offspecs and the need to have a shadow priest almost necessary for progression kills in ZA?

You should ban yourself.

[Vanifae]

Also progression content you should be using consumables to help yourself stay alive.

Zul'Aman is not Candyland.

But it is open to a variety of specs and play styles.

[Cimzar]

What do you guys think? Is ZA serious buisness? Is the banning of offspecs and the need to have a shadow priest almost necessary for progression kills in ZA?

Since when is a shadow priest not an off spec?

[Dorvan]

I believe offspec is being used here in the sense of "non-raid spec". The fact is that some specs (e.g. subtlety rogues, arms warriors) are certainly more oriented towards PvP. We're not talking about specs that weren't viable and traditional pre-BC but now are.

Either decision could work out, it really depends on your guild. In 25 man raids an expectation that your spec is focused on raiding is pretty much par for the course, whether written or unwritten. A player that shows up for one of my guild's raids spec'ed for PvP can plan on not raiding that night. Given that kind of ingrained ethic we don't run into any issues in ZA as people show up spec'ed for PvE out of habit.

It really depends on your guild. On one hand, make no mistake about it: you will have an easier time if everyone in the raid has a PvE spec. On the other, not all guilds are full of people able to fund respecs twice a week to PvP and PvE. If your guild values PvE progress above other values, make folks show up with specs maximized for raiding. If your guild is a bit more (please no flame wars >.<) casual, you might relax that and simply encourage folks to spec for PvE wherever possible or to maintain a balanced build that's somewhat good for both.

I hope that's at least a little helpful.

[Vanifae]

In that case then eyah if you want to stack your odds a PvE spec is the way to go.

[Splug]

The bear and lynx bosses look like they're largely gear check encounters. The dragonhawk and eagle bosses seem to be more execution-driven (though of course, more gear is still good!). If you're hitting mana and survivability issues on the gear check bosses, then the quickest short-term solution is to fix specs and burn more consumables to close that gap. I'd say until your equipment is sufficient to handle the fight without burning flasks and whatnot, then you're probably better off with full-on pve builds. If your pvp-spec players are unwilling to respec and you don't have replacements, you may want to focus on the execution-driven fights rather than the gear-driven ones. (That said, I've seen some fairly impressive damage out of demonology warlocks, arms warriors, and frost mages. Our fire/arcane mages and fury warriors still tend to come out on top, but with the right gear, it's not bad - and some of those tallents like Blood Frenzy have their place in a raid too.)

-Splug

[fuzzygeek]

Shadow priests stopped being off spec when they became more useful to a raid than a holy priest.

We killed the first four bosses last night, then got Hex Lord to 16% twice before calling it a night. Hex Lord is heavily biased towards a very specific raid makeup that includes melee DPS and a Holy Priest.

Neither of which we had last night.

Hex Lord is otherwise pretty much trivial.

And yeah, you use consumables when learning new content. I went through an entire stack of Elixirs of Fort and Mastery last night (yes, 40 elixirs -- granted I handed them out like candy on Hex Lord attempts), but when we go back tonight I expect to be able to do the 20 minute limit on the first three bosses easily.

ZA is tankadin candy. But there are some serious DPS and healing checks.

[Aelys]

just to clarify i shoulda said pvp specs instead of off specs, hope that clears things up.

I'm gonna try to get myself a shadow priest for tonights attempts on ZA and determine wether its the lack of dps after that. Thanks guys

[fuzzygeek]

just to clarify i shoulda said pvp specs instead of off specs, hope that clears things up.

I'm gonna try to get myself a shadow priest for tonights attempts on ZA and determine wether its the lack of dps after that. Thanks guys

Yeah, bringing non-pve spec into pve encounters is a good way to make things more difficult, even if you do outgear the content.

[Dorvan]

We killed the first four bosses last night, then got Hex Lord to 16% twice before calling it a night. Hex Lord is heavily biased towards a very specific raid makeup that includes melee DPS and a Holy Priest.

That's odd, having too much melee DPS was actually a bad thing for us on Hex Lord last night. We had 2 pallies and 2 rogues, with the result that we were having lots of problems with rogues dying to consecrate.