There's a video floating around about a guild that does a < 2hr BT clear.

http://files.filefront.com/BT+1h+49m+sp ... einfo.html

I was wondering if we were considering copying any of their techniques? They skip a ton of trash, use the BT necklace to warp out ~2 bosses and port back up.

If we could use some of this to cut down on our BT time, we could spend more time in Hyjal/Sunwell.

What is skipped?

Looks like some trash from Najentus to Supremus, Port out from Supremus, heading to Akama they pull the pack that always pulls anyway and wipes us first and then the pack in front of the door. Can't tell if they skip anything in Akama room. Gorefiend a vast amount of trash skipped. Stick to the walls! Port out from Gorefiend BT neck.

They pull the next pack for BB before everyone is even back in place, they don't slow down for anyone. Nice!

Looks like they might skip some of the trash on way up to Mother by wall hugging.

Wall hugging near Council.

They get to Illidan in 1h 42m, he's dead by 1h 49m (thats a 7min Illidan kill).

Awesome soundtrack if you like 80s music.



Discuss.

first off, love the music. second, watching it i think we can skip alot more trash. lastly, even skipping the trash they do, it would take us more than 2 hours to clear. that guild has had BT on farm for more then a year. they have cleared sunwell. notice one of the hunters has the golden bow of quel'thalas, dropped from the eradar twins. most of the guild probably had full 8/8 t6 by the time they made this video. and they didnt take the time to discuss loot, which to them the loot in BT doesnt mean much. so they can afford to do whatever they did with it. also, they had 34 people in the raid. not saying they had more then 25 in the instance, but they had 34 different people ready to go for each of the different situations. still quite impressive to see it done so fast.

There's no way we can copy their time, but we CAN copy some of their methods of skipping and using the BT necks to port out and speed up our current runs. No reason not to learn from more experienced guilds.

Trash is a very significant portion of the time spent on a raid and any ways to speed it up by skipping/bypassing is great, IMO.

Another method used to speed it up is MUCH faster loot dist. If we could speed up the way we handle loot, if that's possible with our current system, we should look at ways to do it.

i agree. we can make the run go faster by skipping more trash. the loot however is a different issue. if we left it on group loot like them we could have some issues. like i previously said they can do that because BT loot for them is like ssc/tk gear to us. it doesnt matter who gets it. we have to distribute the loot we get so that it benefits the raid most. that is why it takes time for us to do loot. i agree with the way we do that because it does make a difference who it goes to. weither or not its seen at the time. untill we get to a point where not many need loot or no one needs the stuff that is dropping then we should continue to do it the way we are doing it. but skipping more trash is doable and we probably should to speed things up a bit. however, there are alot of random drops that some or most people in the raid can use so by skipping more trash we may miss out on the random drops that we dont get anyway lol.

its not so much as rushing through it. its bypassing trash mobs to get to bosses faster. if you watch the video they really arent bypassing alot of trash they are just running through different from us. for example: after the big room on the way to gorfiend they hug left and bypass that 6 mob pull that can turn into 8+ mobs if the ones that raise the skeltons aren't dealt with. another example they go a different way to RoS, they hug the wall on the left side around and dont get as many mobs as we get going on the right side. little things that make it simpler and more efficient for us to get through. less time on trash = less needless deaths. however there are still some random drops that people need like the healing cloak and if we bypass trash that means less chance they will drop. and they dont drop enough as it is :/

on to the raid schedule, since you brought it up. if we want to progress in sunwell to the end one of the two other raids will have to go or we will have to clear both in two nights. one night in sunwell will not be enough for us to get far or much experience in. we have seen it before. which is why we went to four raid nights. three nights was just not enough to get what we needed or to progress. we spent two nights in SSC and one in TK. by the time we got to kael'thas the week was over. so we did not get much practice in on him. if we were to clear BT in one night and hyjal in one night that would leave two nights for sunwell. otherwise if we want to get serious about sunwell progression. one of the two would have to be abandoned. most likely hyjal since most dont need much from there. for the start one night is perfect with that i agree. we get one boss down and on farm kalecgos. then maybe brutallus and felmyst can be done in one night. after that something would have to go.

which ties in with bypassing trash in BT. as i stated above if we can clear it in one night. then it would leave more time to learn sunwell. i think we have it in us to clear BT in four hours. and i think its a goal we should try to achieve. maybe work upto it. try to get to mother in one night. then try for council in one night. then illidan himself.

just thought of another example that would really benefit the raid. the pull right after na'jentus. with all the elementals, they bypassed that. if we bypass that it would not only save a bit of time but would save lives. they sacrifice one person to kite them away as the rest of the raid move through the side doorway. then summon the player back just after the first pull to supremus. i suggest either a hunter or rogue. because of feign death and cloak of shadows/vanish. also the whole using the medallions to port out and go back in will save time. that i think we should do regardless. as it doesnt bypass trash. it just gets us where we need to go faster then walking.

another thing i noticed is they do alot of chain pulling which we try to do. but doesnt work out to well for us sometimes :/

just watched it again and they only bypass 5 pulls at most.

Yeah. Later on, skipping trash would be a good idea. Especially when we get deeper in Sunwell. Hyjal will probably be non-existent after the 3rd boss of Sunwell. I agree. Hopefully the sign ups will get better to where we don't need to run Hyjal and we can give 2 nights each to Sunwell and BT early. But that's on ppl actually wanting to show.

Aurora. Your idea is good and will hopefully be considered in a couple weeks. I would like the see everyone show to where we don't need to run Hyjal anymore by the middle of Sept or at least by the end of it. When we're all here, I've seen us do things that weren't expected of us.

We got the ppl to where we can do BT and Hyjal in 2 nights and could have Sunday and Monday to focus on Sunwell. I don't know how many people are willing to push it. But we can get Mother on Wed. Then Council, Illidan, then all of Hyjal on Thurs. Again, that on ppl actually showing the fuck up!

We all got lives, I know, but we all knew that before we started this too. We all agreed to 4 nights a week and we should be willing to show or at least do all we can to do it. I'm not afraid to say it. If you can't show on a regular basis, I think we should find ppl who can. Because we're being held back by ppl not showing. I think another mage wouldn't hurt, then watch Chaste, Inflicit, and Peppen come back ready to go full time, but it wouldn't hurt. I think we're ok other than the mage shortage, right now, hopefully that will change.

Maybe, go back to an idea brought up a few months back about a 2nd raid group. Recruit ppl geared for SSC/TK, maybe some Hyjal. Tanks, Healers, all classes, and when someone can't show, we could have plenty of back ups and probably still be able to keep those ppl happy with Kara and ZA. Set those groups up on our off nights, to where we can help them and fill in, if needed. Just a few ideas. It can be a load, and I'd be willing to step up and at least give it a try. I know I can't be the only person tired of being held back. Now that I've started, I want to finish this.

Just some more of my wild ideas. Damn, I was just planning on agreeing with Dan and Aurora. Oh well. Take it however you want too. I'm not afraid to speak my mind.

To end this, it's all on ppl showing and willing to bust ass to do it. Yarr!!!
^^^^^Said it way too many times, but it's true.^^^^^

kriket, keep in mind that its still summer. almost the end but its still summer. people closing up thier vacations. visiting friends and family. sign up will get better. its just a matter of time, i wouldnt expect someone to cancel time with friends and family to come raid with us especially during the summer when the weather is nice....er

Fortunately the only trash drop that we really need, the helaing cloak, is replaceable with an item from Illidan thats even better. So while I think its nice that you guys are looking out for that, its still just a cloak slot upgrade. Obviously if Trash dropped critical weapons it would be a totally different story. I think trying to field even a ten man on top of our raids is kinda hard though, we've been going in with less than 25 on many raid nights so having 10 people leftover, I dont think thats gonna fly until after the summer.

At the moment Im having a hard time as it is finding any sort of reason to do Hyjal ever considering everything in there has a lookalike drop in BT and while I normally say Hyjal is worth it for at least the tokens, that flies out the window if your guild can kill Kalecgos. One of the two peices in Hyjal is necessary to get the 4 peice set bonus. And if your killing Azgalor for that one peice, it doesnt make sense not to do Archimonde. But remember everything Archimonde drops has a Black Temple equivalent somewhere. Kalecgos drops the bracers, 3 of them in fact, that can be used to tie together set bonus's for your players that dont have access to hyjal peices. They just have to have chest shoulders and pants. Then we could stop doing Anetheron and Archimonde, which are both pains in the ass.

So yeah if we could get Hyjal behind us, and then BT in one day. We could have 3 nights a week to "work" on sunwell. IMO Sunwell progress is going to be kinda slow and we shouldn't we get overly ........passionate..... about not being able to do some bosses. Its just that hard. But the loot is soooo good. Its like Blackwing lair versus AQ40. Was the AQ40 gear worth the trouble? Absolutely not, BWL had mroe bang for the buck. But it had a lot of lessons to teach to get people ready for the next big place. Everything in Burning Crusade was taught by a fight somewhere in Naxxramas. Im sure everything in Lich King will be taught by a fight somewhere in Sunwell, and what I am seeing is a lot of raid micro management (Individual spots for individual people) whereas BC was all "dont stand in fire".

That all being said, whats really holding up our BT clears is the bosses, not really the trash. We wipe on Supremus a lot, and we cannot do Gorefiend unless the right people get to play in the back of the room. We also are terrible at getting bloodboils, something that doesnt bode well for Kalecgos. And TBH we don't have the interrupting on RoS down, though its a lesser issue for certain. Each death on these guys could be a kill on the next one.

I dunno what the fuck is up with Mother killing our tanks our healers are all balls to the wall. Our mana regen is shit so we have to use efficient heals and then our +healing is shit too so its not enough Horsepower. Ive been thinking its because our tanks arent getting targeted for the lash for whatever reason, I wouldnt be surprised if it was because of reactive armors and melee pre engaging, much like Patchwerk and Supremus.

At the moment our BT runs look like this:

Naj'entus : Fine
Supremus : Shaky
Akama : Fine
Gorefiend : Butt clincher to the finish
Bloodboil : Room for Improvement, use those consumables! This fight is a lot like Kalecgos.
RoS : Fine I think we can excersize more control but its up to the DPS and only them
Mother : Always a random bullshit fest (3 main tank healers getting ported anyone?)
Council : Fine
Illidan : Dont stand next to Athee and fine, Im saying fine here because our tanks did quite a bit better our last kill though they could be more vocal about standing in fire. And besides that our 2nd through 4th kills all happened in under 3 attempts or something.

I think if we can get good momentum off of Supremus for the one shot, then ride that into a gorefiend one shot, BB and RoS should be one shottable as well. And that will open up the door for a one night BT run. But ATM we have too many DPS dieing to supremus (about 3 DPS dead every kite phase? random BS only accounts for maybe 2 deaths in a whole supremus) because I just think we arent taking the fight seriously.

All of that aside, I think tweaking our trash clears could definitly cut down at least a half hour of every night. We are very slow to pick up after a boss kill, and too many times the raid sits at 100 percent mana not doing anything, healers only need 30 percent mana to handle any trash pack and DPS hardly needs any. If we really need to mark each group, designate someone to do it while the previous group is being wrapped up and then pull the moment the combat flag goes down. You do not need a hunter to pull every trash pack so this "yoohoo mister hunter person come grab the stationary and unmoving pack" kinda has to fade. Unless the group is around a tricky corner, or patrols tightly to other groups the warrior is a better choice for pulling anyway when group sizes are greater than 3.

That and the AFK's are really killing us.

i agree with most of what medrea says here with the exception of one thing. which is pretty uncommon for us to agree on so much. hunters were put into the game as pullers. they were a late addition to the game when it first started. they were not even gonna be in the game but blizzard saw fit to have it so. i want to see a none hunter pull the groups before akama's room. hunters, i rephrase, a good hunter knows how to use his skills to avoid bad pulls and if a bad pull happens a good hunter is equiped to reset it provided the main group isnt hugging the hunters ass. everyone who says playing a hunter is easy mode needs to take a second look at what a hunter can and should be doing. our hunters fullfill the class to its fullest. we raid 3 hunters so pulls should be going constantly unless for whatever reason healers have no mana or some random junk happens. unfortunatly, one hunter must not have trained MD. as the player never does. not mentioning names. kriket. joking. now if there is one mob or two or even three mobs by all means let a warrior pull as there shouldnt be any other mobs near them. (i.e. the first pat we come accross after porting into the main chamber before we kill akama, the stealthed mobs there, the pating dreadlord, the machine's on the promanade after mother.) but more then that it should be looked at seriously and have a hunter pull cause it may take more then one MD.

Yeah thats what I meant though, I said the hunters should do the tricky pulls. Shit around corners, patting stuff. The rest of the trash we shouldnt need a hunter to merely activate the pull though, we should all be moving in on that like a pack of hobos to the soup line.

If you want to be on top of the game and setup an MD rotation for every trash pull go right on ahead Im behind it all the way, just make the trash waves come like that, in waves. Somehow I see a pull rotation being slow and mroe work than reward.

I used to play the class as the raids main puller for 3 years across some of the most insane hellscape ever devised, and its most definitly the hardest to play DPS class at the moment except for maybe a mutilation rogue (we have none) and sometimes the warrior class can throw a few challenges here and there.

Its just that if you only have 1 hunter on top of things pulling groups with numbers larger than 5 or 6, your depending on a lot of reliable CC to go off before you get munched on and with a number like 6 FD isnt very reliable.

Just remember one thing. PND = hobos, trash packs = soup line.

i agree. we dont have a MD rotation for trash. what we do is basically i pull. if my CD is up by the time trash is dead i pull again and continue untill trash is dead and my MD is not up. then i tell tricky and he MD. then i go untill MD is on CD. and repeat. its not the most efficient way. but it gets us through and for the most part my MD is off CD when before most trash dies. its when we come accross the one - three mob pulls that MD is still on CD. ill speak with tricky about it and see if we cant work something out more effective.

If its faster to just cut out the teamwork and just have one person doing it to speed things up, it would be trival to just ask for a BOP while you make the dangerous pull with no MD.

i find that i often have to pull without a MD up. which is another reason hunters were put in the game as pullers. we have the skills to do that. if all MD's are down. i run up tag the mob or mobs we need kite them back to the MT and fiegn. its not the best way to do it but if it comes to moving or sitting still it gets the job done. also i am survival and spec'd in readiness. which removes all previously used hunter CD's. so i can have 2 MD's up at any given time. and readiness is usually off CD after a second group of trash. i dont have a problem pulling mobs alone. as long as i can do it without holding the group up. like i said though i will talk with tricky and see if we can work out something more effective.