Raiding in Classic Era - an Update

Back in August I wrote a post about my early experiences with raiding in Classic era - how some raids weren't run that often by my guild, and how I got a lot of loot early on. Looking back at that post now, so much has changed that I thought it might be a good time for an update.

AQ20

Back in August this was the raid that nobody wanted to run... but eventually a lovely shaman stepped up to put it back on the calendar, and since then it's been run on average once a week - a good thing too, as we've had so many newcomers requesting books and idols that the guild bank has actually had trouble keeping up with demand despite of having had a huge stockpile of all of them at one point.

I'll admit that AQ20 is probably the least interesting place in terms of gear, so it didn't take long for my hunter to run out of things to get from there, other than Cenarion Circle rep, which I don't really need to max out. I started bringing my druid instead, but even she's starting to run low on items to soft reserve at this point. Still, I'm sure I'll keep coming up with excuses to go, since it's just fun.

ZG

Not long after I joined, the officer who'd been running the regular ZGs at the time had to step down from that task and since nobody else was available to take over, there was a period where no runs happened at all. Fortunately the aforementioned shaman picked up the slack here as well, and like AQ20, ZG is now being run about once a week.

I'm still going to this one on my hunter even though she stopped benefiting from any potential gear drops a long time ago, simply because the grind to exalted reputation for the shoulder enchants is looong - I never actually got my night elf to exalted in original Classic. However, I feel like I can see the end of the tunnel this time, and then I'll be happy to start taking my druid to this one as well.

Also, the other week the guild actually saw one of the rare mounts drop for the first time, Mandokir's raptor - it went to a loyal long-time officer, so even though we teased him about it, it felt well-deserved.

Molten Core

Back in August I noted that the guild rarely seemed to do full MC runs - with all the recent newcomers those times are long over as well, because we have lots of new raiders that want to gear up and Molten Core is the natural first stop. We still go for the bindings every week, but do full runs pretty much every other week, and they are no longer the severely understaffed affairs of the early days either. With a full group of forty it actually goes by pretty fast even at a casual pace.

We haven't had another Thunderfury since Tefflar's in December, but we've got two more people that have Garr bindings sitting in their bags, so it feels like it can't be too long now until Geddon will cough one up again as well.

In terms of loot, my hunter has nothing useful left to get from there, just Hydraxian Waterlords reputation for fun, so I do try to bring my druid when I can but I have to admit I haven't been super enthusiastic about it since I realised that being a resto druid in Vanilla raids sucks ass. I mean, I knew in theory that the HoTs didn't stack and all that, but even that aside, it just feels so clunky. I've seen people debate the usefulness of resto druids in multiple places and there's always someone arguing that they're totally awesome if you can only get all these specific gear pieces from higher-end raids, but that doesn't help your average druid alt at all. Even downranked Healing Touches are slow AF compared to other classes' heals, and I just end up feeling like a geriatric paladin without any of that class's fun tools.

I don't mind so much in the 20-mans because when you're doing AQ20 with only three healers, there's still something to do even for the slowest healer, but in the 40-mans with multiple Naxx-geared priests and shamans... forget it.

Either way, despite all that I still enjoy going to MC to some degree, simply because with it being the easiest of the 40-man raids, it usually has the most amount of silliness and the best banter.

Onyxia

Ony is another raid we rarely seemed to do when I started but which we now visit quite regularly - and both of my level 60s are attuned as well, hurrah! Mostly the guild needs that never-ending supply of dragon heads for world buffs, but the 18-slot bags she drops are nice as well.

Funnily enough, unlike how I experienced the fight in original Classic, the boss always dies so quickly in these runs that she doesn't even do her Deep Breath mechanic. I think I remember one run where she actually did a Breath, and everyone promptly went "oh no, she's actually doing the thing", followed by half the raid being burnt to a crisp while running around like headless chickens (including me) because nobody's used to dealing with it anymore.

Blackwing Lair

I still like Blackwing Lair. It has such great loot and bosses that are interesting without being too tough or tedious. In an ironic twist of fate, after getting Ashjre'thul in what was only my second BWL back in Classic, it has stubbornly eluded me in era for the past eight months. I've got absolutely everything else I could possibly want from BWL for my hunter, including the coveted Prestor's Talisman from Nef, but the bloody crossbow just never drops when I'm there.

As there's also been a huge influx of new hunters lately, I think I'm starting to make my peace with potentially using my Rhok until Kel'Thuzad, cause even if I'm not in the raid whenever the crossbow does drop, at least some other hunter will be able to use it. This last week I finally gave up and brought my druid to the raid instead, and it felt worthwhile. Healing BWL was a bit more fun than MC (Vael is a great boss to be a druid on for example), and I scored no less than three pieces of druid tier two, which is very strong.

AQ40

The strengthening of our roster has fortunately meant that AQ40 has become slightly less of a slog and we can actually kill C'thun more reliably. Though we still haven't ever gone for Viscidus, and for some reason we also stopped visiting Ouro after originally going for him every time in the earliest AQ40 raids I joined.

AQ40 has always been kind of crappy for hunter loot, and unsurprisingly I'm running out of gear to chase in there as well. I could technically go for the ring from C'thun, but Patchwerk is in reach now and he drops an even better one, so... I'm thinking that taking my druid there some time might be interesting both in terms of as an experience and in terms of loot opportunities, but we'll see.

Naxxramas

Naxxramas remains the main destination of interest for most of the established raiders, but progression has been absolutely glacial. Within seven months, the guild only went from 6/14 to 10/14. Mainly this was due to a prolonged shortage of healers, which turned Patchwerk and Loatheb into unsurpassable roadblocks for many months. This has now been overcome, but I think progression is still being held back by the fact that only one of the three main raid days is dedicated to Naxx, which just isn't enough to achieve much of anything in there at a casual pace. I can't say I envy the officers having to square the circle of "focusing on Naxx" on the one hand, and funnelling a never-ending stream of newcomers through the earlier raids to gear them up for Naxx at the same time.

Personally I rarely go there because the regular Naxx night is Sunday, which often clashes with other commitments for me, but I have been a few times at this point - enough to get all the intro quests done and pick up three pieces of tier three. I'm just glad that I got the whole "progressing through Naxx" experience done in Classic, meaning that I feel little pressure to achieve anything in era on a personal level. I'm happy to be there whenever I can and to see the guild progress, but there's no clock ticking down to Naxx becoming obsolete, so more bosses will happen when they happen.

The Horde Onyxia Attunement Really Sucks

If you raided as Horde in Vanilla or Classic, you're probably going "duh, no shit", but I've got to say that as someone who didn't, working my way through that quest chain over the course of the last few weeks has certainly been... something.

I technically did it once before, back in late Wrath when I was working on my Loremaster achievement, but at that point it was soloable (I think?) so it wasn't quite the same. Yet I noted even then that it was "tedious and annoying". (Real shame that YouTube's removal of annotations broke Wowcrendor's epic recreation of the quest in interactive video form.)

Doing it at level though, with all the grouping requirements intact (and on era, where getting groups for anything other than whatever raids your guild has set up that week is extra tough) - that was something else entirely. I used to think that the Alliance version with its repeat visits to BRD and the inclusion of Jail Break was pretty demanding, but that quest chain has nothing on its Horde equivalent. At least people have various incentives to go back to BRD for other reasons.

On Horde side, things start relatively innocuous with a quest from the Badlands that basically asks you to do a full run of Lower Blackrock Spire. There's some demand for that, but compared to BRD the loot's a bit naff to be honest, so there's less interest than in BRD.

Then Thrall asks you to do Upper Blackrock Spire and kill Rend. This is immediately a big step up, as it's a ten-man and one with an annoying key quest of its own. My experience with this on era has been that there are always alts that need it for one reason or another, but nobody wants to be the one to deal with the hassle of putting the group together. Good thing I'm confident enough about what's needed at this point that this hasn't stopped me...

Anyway, you kill Rend, give everyone in Orgrimmar a nice world buff, and then get sent to seek out Rexxar. This step became the stuff of legends due to the fact that Rexxar's pathing takes him through no fewer than three zones, meaning that it can require quite a time-consuming ride to even find and talk to him. (I'll admit though that I was lucky in this regard as he was always pretty close to Shadowprey Village when I went to look for him.)

Rexxar sends you to a gnome called Myranda the Hag in Western Plaguelands (the same one that makes your Scarlet Crusade disguise for the Tyrion Fordring quest chain) and she asks you to go back to UBRS and kill the dragonspawn there as their eyes are needed for her illusion spell. I'm not sure if you can do this in a single run if nobody else is on the quest or whether it requires multiple runs regardless, but fortunately the eyes also drop in Blackwing Lair (even though that's not specified in the quest) and I got all of mine after two runs of that place.

With your newly acquired disguise, you chat to the dragon Emberstrife (the same one you have to mind-control to make the UBRS key) and he tells you to kill three elite dragons of enemy flights residing in different corners of the world. This is probably the worst part of the chain simply because it has no other purpose than for this attunement, so you need to find a bunch of people who are on the exact same step as you at the exact same time, or ask someone else for help who'll basically have to donate their time at zero benefit to them. The dragons are sufficiently tough that you can't solo them at level sixty either, not even with great gear.

Anyway, this was the step on which I probably stalled the longest, because nobody was responding on Discord when I asked whether anyone else needed the quest, and I just hated the thought of asking people to come help me just for the sake of it. The other night I finally gave in and popped the question anyway, and I felt very touched by how many people were happy to help. I was kind of lucky with my timing as well, as people were talking about Onyxia for some other reason just as I logged in, so it was easy to turn that into a segue: "Speaking of Onyxia..."

Anyway, while I really appreciated the help, the insanely long time it took to complete this step made me feel pretty guilty to be honest. My hearthstone came off cooldown twice just doing this quest, which means that it took over two hours! Not only do you have to swap continents again to get all three dragons, one of them is at the back of a cave full of elites (I'd completely forgotten about that part), and once you're finally ready to hand in to Emberstrife, he gives you a fourth quest to kill another elite dragon in the Wetlands. Why he couldn't give you that one at the same time as the other three and required that extra step of coming back to talk to him again, I have no idea.

So you travel to the Wetlands, kill a red dragon there, go back to Emberstrife again, then back to Rexxar again, and then Rexxar asks you to run UBRS again, for what must be your third or fourth time at this point, and it's only after this that you earn your very own Drakefire Amulet.

In a nutshell, this quest requires you to run LBRS once, UBRS multiple times, requires the killing of four different elite outdoor enemies, and makes you hop back and forth between Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms no less than eleven times, and that's without even getting into the considerable amount of cross-continent travel time that's also required. For a single-boss raid that requires attunement on every single character, this is absolute insanity, and I'll admit that this sort of attunement is not something I miss in later iterations of WoW.

I'm glad it's done now for my hunter, but the thought of having to do it again on my next character to sixty makes me quake in my boots a little to be honest. At least there'll be less pressure when it comes to getting an alt attuned as opposed to attuning your very first character (on that server and faction).