With WoW: Burning Crusade Classic, every guild and raid leader faces special challenges. Our editor, Karsten, has already experienced the Outland adventure from these positions, and with this article he wants to prepare the officers of the Classic guilds for what could have the potential for drama and plenty of gray hair in the coming months.
When the first WoW expansion Burning Crusade was released in January 2007, not only Outland was waiting for me, but also a promotion from rogue officer to guild council member and raid leader. At that time, I was able to experience up close what special challenges the transition from vanilla WoW to TBC brought with it. And many conversations over the past few weeks, as well as Preach’s newly released video , tell me that many other communities have been struggling with similar issues.
In order to make your transition as smooth as possible, I want to prepare those guild and raid leaders in particular for what may lie ahead with the launch of Burning Crusade Classic – with the hope that you will find ways and means early on to avoid these potential trouble spots or defuse drama mines.
TBC Classic: First 40, then 10, then 25
As is well known, the Blizzard developers have changed the raid sizes with Burning Crusade. If up to 40 people were still romping around in a raid in vanilla WoW, only ten people were allowed to enter the first raid instance Karazhan at the same time. Then it was on to Gruul’s Lair or Magtheridon’s Lair, with 25 warriors each. 40 minus 30, plus 15 in mind … even a blind orc can see that according to Adam Riese this cannot simply be transferred.
Some guilds were lucky back then: A few players stopped launching TBC anyway, but it was enough for three Karazhan groups. And since not every player could do it on every raid night anyway, there were never too many players on the substitutes’ bench in the first 25er raids. In many other communities, however, rosters have had to “shrink down” (or “grow back”, for two raid groups of 25 and five of 10), and such forced changes often mean (interpersonal) friction.
The challenge of mastering this transition phase is exacerbated by the following points:
Players level up at different rates and progress through the Attunement process at different rates. In other words: Karazhan group 1 may have an ID lead because not enough players for raid groups no. 2 and Co. have met the requirements.
Those who are theoretically ready, but are not allowed to come along, are in a bad mood because they are of course also as hot as frying pan fat for the new content.
If several raids are running in parallel, there are often problems like “But I want to raid together with player x” or “Why am I in Karazhan group 3 (the worse players are definitely there)?”
All the drama involved can only be minimized with a lot of planning and good communication. Part of the planning is to decide right now whether you want to organize one or more 25-raids for the guild in TBC Classic. However, if only a large main raid is an option, you should refrain from immediately replacing any currently pausing guild member who wants to take a breather for a few weeks before TBC with new recruits.
This only inflates the squad unnecessarily, which inevitably causes trouble in the first raid IDs of TBC Classic. Rather form a temporary coalition with another guild to jointly handle the weekly Naxxramas ID. With the launch of TBC Classic, both communities can then go their separate ways again.
TBC Classic: Attunement Antipathy
Speaking of attunements: We have already summarized for you what you have to do on your own to be able to see Karazhan from the inside . And that’s not the only milestone every raid enthusiast needs to cross off their to-do list. For example, reputation wants to be farmed en masse, for the heroic dungeons, as well as for the offerings of certain faction traders. And in the further course of the Outland adventure, there are some long quest lines waiting for you, through which you can earn access authorization for later raid instances.
You can sometimes master these tasks alone, but you also have to fulfill them within dungeons or even raids. Many players who are currently in the mood for TBC know this and will certainly get on their knees. Experience has shown that there are always some people who only get limited information in advance, who want to be taken by the hand and hardly show any initiative. It’s them who are suddenly standing in front of a locked raid entrance because they haven’t progressed on quest line XY.
In fact, I had to have a few one-on-one conversations back then because players wanted to complain that the guild’s tanks were always with the same players. How to increase reputation and complete quests when internal guild groups are constantly full? With “Randoms” into the dungeons? LoL! It was their wish that the guild leadership regularly organizes internal dungeon runs in which they too can find a place. We should sort of do the work for them (as if guild and raid leaders didn’t have anything better to do…).
The subject of attunements not only created a bad mood in the first days and weeks of the TBC era, but also came up on the table whenever players wanted/had to switch to a new character or when reinforcements were recruited for the squad that hadn’t yet had gone through the entire attunement process (which was very common back then, in the course of the TBC era an enormous number of newbies started with WoW (buy now) on). In other words: as guild and raid leaders, we had to constantly check that there were also groups for dungeons and raids on the program that are actually not relevant for most players in the guild – at least until the patch that then defuses the corresponding attitudes or even deleted it completely. Something similar will happen to guilds in TBC Classic.
TBC Classic: The “perfect” raid setup
In my article TBC Classic – the most important buffs and debuffs / optimal raid setup , I had already made it clear that Burning Crusade Classic does not have THE perfect raid setup with which you can master all raid challenges. On the contrary, raid leaders who want to get through the content as smoothly as possible will have to constantly tinker with their setup. Here are some of the reasons:
Sometimes you only need one tank and every additional protection warrior or protection paladin is not optimal (because they hardly cause any damage). Sometimes you go into the boss fight with three or four tanks.
Protection Warriors are the most reliable choice with their emergency abilities and comparatively easy provision of crit and crush immunity at the beginning. However, you definitely don’t want to tackle some of the bosses of the TBC era without a protection paladin. And in the later raid tiers, druids become the strongest boss tanks.
With some bosses of the tier 4 and tier 5 era, you can make the fights noticeably easier if you pack as few melee fighters as possible. Especially since the DpS strongest specialists in these phases come from the camp of hunters, sorcerers and – with slight drawbacks – magicians.
With some bosses, however, it can help if you have at least a few offensive melee fighters at the start who reliably nip dangerous or healing spells from the opponent in the bud with their interrupt options.
In addition, rogues (and warriors) develop into strong DpS specialists with better equipment. At the latest when they own the Illidan Warglaives, they compete in Tier 6 with the best damage dealers for the DpS crown.
The number of healers can also vary greatly. If many guilds use six or even seven healers in the progress phase to be on the safe side, the number of healers – depending on the actual level of difficulty and the healing requirements – could quickly drop to five or even four healers (only to be increased again in the next progress phase ).
In Burning Crusade Classic there are many more important buffs and debuffs for the raid or group. If you want to get the most out of your raid squad, you always try to provide the raid or special groups with the most important buffs and debuffs. At the same time, it is not optimal if you pack more than one character from certain specializations, because this one can already provide the buffs and debuffs and another representative of this type would only deliver mediocre damage.
You can of course only build the best possible raid if the squad of the guild is built up accordingly. If the 20 offensive warriors from the classic raid want to stay true to their favorite class, the TBC raid has a problem. It looks similar when everyone levels up a protection paladin with the pre-patch, because they are known to be really great.
In other words: the guild and raid management has a lot of work to do if they want to set up a powerful troop for Burning Crusade that is well prepared for all boss fights. In WoW Classic, this task was (and still is) much easier.
TBC Classic: Expensive resistors
Similar to WoW Classic, in TBC Classic you also have to equip some players (and sometimes the entire raid) with resistance clothes for certain bosses so that your raid even has a chance of sending them to the ground victoriously. The good news is that you don’t need your first resistance gear until Phase 2 , and then all you have to do is equip your tanks and potential off-tanks, and at least one Warlock. The biggest task then awaits you in phase 3, when you have to prepare the entire raid for the fight against Mother Shahraz. Only two bosses later, in addition to the sorcerer tank (which should already have sufficient shadow resistance thanks to the mother), you will need two well-equipped tanks with high fire resistance values.
The big challenge is to get all these items for the raid squad in a timely manner. You can buy many items from vendors for Badges of Justice, but you’ll have to explore the dungeons countless times to get them. The sooner you start doing this as a community, the better. Other important resistance clothes are available through the professions. You have to get the recipes in a timely manner and then get hold of the countless, expensive resources. A bottleneck here could be the Heart of Darkness , which you need to build the shadow resistance parts for the Black Temple. Hearts drop from Trash in Mount Hyjal and Black Temple. Getting all this together quickly only works if you pull together as a guild and follow a clear line.
Last but not least, especially with the tank positions, you have to be 100% sure that you equip the right players with the resistance clothes. At that time, we had the problem in our guild that our two main tanks, which we had already fully equipped for the last bosses in the Black Temple, were poached by another guild. For us, this meant a glaring setback from which we were only able to recover after a few IDs. The same can happen if your equipped tank suddenly finds that it is tired of Burning Crusade Classic.
What is WoW Classic?
World of Warcraft Classic is a true recreation of the original WoW as you know it from 2006. All parts of the game – from combat mechanics and talent trees to character models and zones – have been recreated, contributing to the authentic experience.
Getting Started
All players with an active World of Warcraft subscription or game time on their accounts have access toWoW Classic at no additional cost.
- Open the Blizzard Battle.net Desktop App and select World of Warcraft from the menu.
- Select World of Warcraft Classic from the Version menu. If you have more than one World of Warcraft account, you’ll see a second Account drop-down list. In this column, select the active account you want to play with.
- Click the Install button. The progress bar will tell you when your game is ready to play.
- Click the Play button when the installation is complete.
You will need to select the realm you want to play on from several different realm types. Make sure you choose the same realm as your friends – in World of Warcraft Classic, you can only group with characters that are on the same realm as you!
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