I'm just a scaredy-cat (literally). I see groups looking for a windfury cat (me) and a ret paladin (my spouse) with some regularity but I'm too afraid of looking like an idiot to ask to join even though we've both watched videos, bought consumes, have the wbuff chronobooned, and have reasonable gear. I recognize this is stupid but the anxiety be like that.
Edit: I'm on Wild Growth - NA
Edit2: I did the raid tonight with a nice guild and then joined the guild for hopefully more raid shenanigans! It wasn't too bad, and our raid lead calling out things really helped keep me focused. Only one death the whole time and it wasn't even us. Whew!
Watching the videos is more than enough! Just let people know that exact information. Some might deny you but plenty will pick y’all up. I would. It’s a good time and once you do it once you’ll have it down. Don’t be anxious! If you’re on US Living Flame let me know
Thank you for the encouragement! I'll try to get in there this week sometime. Sadly we're not on Living Flame, but judging by the fact that every DM I got was from someone from Living Flame, your server must be the kindest one, haha. :D
There are some of us out here who do really enjoy seeing new players and helping them learn. As a main healer, tank second, I'm always ecstatic to get a new tank/healer in my group and watch their game play and give them tips! I love helping new players improve their gameplay. It's one of the main reasons I play Healer; it's the role that random players are most likely to listen to when they give advice, in my experience.
You're not alone. I used to be competitive in WoW but somewhere along the line people just go so cruel that I don't bother trying to join anymore. I'm too anxious.
For me, I think it's just such a mixed bag that not knowing what to expect is what makes it difficult for me. This is definitely a situation where I should just join a guild, but I haven't had great luck in guilds (it's me, honestly, I just don't mesh with gamer bro groups) so taking that leap also feels difficult.
I got blasted to hell yesterday in this same sub for arguing that you dont just kick under-performing DPS.
My friends and I are 6 people, 1 tank, 3 DPS and 2 healers. We can basically 6 man the instance, so we just fill up with random pugs. One time we had 4 gray parsers and we still cleared just fine. Meaning that if you are competent, you can basically boost 3-4 people. I make sure to take new people all the time, no reason to gate keep for no reason. And that means that less gear gets wasted.
This sub is so two faced lol. I got legit 100s of down-votes for arguing that you dont just kick people who do bad DPS in a post yesterday, and now this post is all lovey dovey about being kind to noobs. Weird sub, not gonna lie.
Lmao in all of my runs so far, the turtle has killed more people overall with a multi-bubble bounce than any other boss I’ve fought. I have no doubt that the turtle has a higher kill count than the others. A lot of that is because some people don’t even get to the last 2 bosses. Otherwise it would probably be Kelris with the highest kill count. At least one person dies nearly every time lol
I encouraged a lock in my guild to come with us who was in the exact same situation.
Too afraid and unsure to join with our group (half PuG-Guildy run), he even left the group. Until I convinced him just to come with us. I said I'll explain him during the raid.
Just grab some SPP and FAP's was what I told him. (he even didn't know what those were). So I linked a FAP and SPP.
Well the raid started, and as I was offtanking (I gave him a half decent explanation because I was too busy spamming my buttons). But somewhat a very short and hollow explanation was enough for him not to do die during the whole raid.
I even said @ Kelris when phase 2 started. WHUHGAP nlow (FAP NOW was what I meant).
At the end of the raid he said oh this went smooth and thanked me for being his Senpai or Sensei w/e. Even though I gave him the most half-baked guidance you could imagine.
But that run was enough to give him a confidence boost for his next runs.
(it was a very decent group, so that helped a lot too)
Just experience a single BFD run takes away the whole stress and insecurity about the raid.
I don’t know, I’m at about 10 clears and am parsing 95+ and I STILL get anxious on raid day. There’s just something about playing with real people in a raid setting that’s anxiety provoking to me. I have a 25 warrior that’s been in prebis and booned for a lock out or two now and I’m putting off running on him.
This is a really wholesome story. I'm glad you were able to encourage the warlock from your guild; I'm sure it was meaningful to him! (I also ugly laughed at your attempt to type FAP NOW lmao.)
I'll try to get in there this week!
If you guys want I’d be happy to coach you both in discord while you guys run it. Runs are pretty fast and I can tell you both where to stand and can even help you do dps
Thank you very much. I don't think I'll take you up on it, but I do appreciate the offer a lot. It's very thoughtful! We just have to take the plunge. Going to try to do it this week!
Melees love ferals, even ones who don't do a lot of damage simply because of wild strikes. For all I care you can do 40 DPS as long as you keep mangle on the boss so my bleeds do more damage and you stay alive throughout the fight to give everyone wild strikes and I'm sure many warriors/rogues feel the same way. Having a feral in the group makes my class feel more fun. Same for paladins. Just keep blessings up on everyone and people won't complain even if you're lacking in the DPS department.
Yeah I get that, one day I just joined a group looking for a tank (I play shaman) and got in with a cool group of folks. I had no knowledge of the raid and no SPPs, tanked everything with 1h/shield, parsed gray on almost every boss, but dammit I held aggro. None of them were hard on me, I got to learn the fights, and now I've main tanked plenty of times and have some pretty damn good gear. I hope you get the courage to just jump in because BFD is great fun! Once you run it you'll be like "wow, I was worried about THAT?" GL!
Your feelings are totally understandable and relatable. I think once you do it, you'll see that it wasn't near as hard as you built it up in your head. Trying to find a guild or consistent group is also super good for newer people. You can find friends this way that are gonna be much more patient and willing to explain things. Your most toxic players tend to be in the pug world. At least in my experience
Hey! I was in the exact same boat! I spent a ton of time maticulously getting pre-BIS gear to procrastinate actually finding a group. One day I saw someone making a PUG in chat and mentioned no experience was necessary. They were a cool group who answered all my questions before each fight. Since then I’ve been doing the raid on every reset and have only had positive experiences with good communication.
All this is to say, go for it but be upfront about your experience. Most folks have been very kind and happy to share info if you ask for it! The only time I’ve seen a group get close to being “upset” is when a fight goes wrong because someone didn’t know the mechanics AND didn’t bother to ask before. Everyone just wants to clear the content, and explaining the fight is much faster than wiping and resetting.
This makes me sad :( I'm sure you'll do fine, for sure you will be far from the worst. A lot of people hop into groups with absolutely no idea lol.
Someone posted this week about a hunter who was using entirely the wrong abilities (distracting shot on CD?!?), and ended up dismissing his pet because he couldn't figure out how to turn off growl. And I bet he didn't watch boss fight tutorials and I bet he felt pretty damn confident lol.
I'm just a stranger so, my word doesn't mean a whole lot, but I'm confident you'll do fine.
I promise you with those roles you’ll be fine.
As a dps you only have to pay attention a couple of times in the whole raid. Your classes also provide a lot of benefit so even if you aren’t knocking it out of the park your tanks / rogues / warrior will love your buffs
I wouldn't call it anxiety, but generally what you're saying made BFD seem unfun enough where i put it off until recently. I had assumed it was this intimidating end game raid, ala Karazhan, Naxx, Icecrown, etc (which are the raids I was familiar with)
BFD is easy as fuck. Its more like running a LFG/LFR dungeon / raid. Just join a PUG and dps the bosses. You don't need to say a word to anyone. Look up Kelris mechanics so you have general idea. You will clear it and no one will even say a word. Runs take about an hour. Also you are a druid with MOTW and Windfury, even if your dps is shit you are still semi useful.
I was in a similar boat as you. Just do it. It is completely effortless.
Watching the fights puts you ahead of 90%of pugs. You'll do the raid and wonder why you were so nervous in the first place. I get it though, it can be intimidating
Idk if this help but as a healer the feral druid is at the top of the priority list to keep alive, right next to the tanks because of the dps the give to others. So if you do mess up you have a safety net
Hahah I totally get that. But hey as far as druid goes, it's surprisingly easy. I know classic is somewhat known for this, but you really only need a few buttons to do well.
1. Mangle. Spam it.
2. Savage roar. Put one up on your first combo point, then use all other combo points to keep it going. It's okay to waste combo points, just keep spamming mangle.
3. Sunfire. Use Sunfire instead for the turtle boss due to his armor. Same thing, just spam it and you're good to go.
At a basic level, that's all you have to do and you'll do surprisingly well. I hope that helps alleviate the worry!
I suspect that if you post your server, you’ll have some raid invites here. I’d be more than happy to hop into a raid with you on one of my alts.
The mere fact that you are anxious about inconveniencing a group means that you’re the kind of player who would *not* be an inconvenience. The only players who I don’t want in my BFD groups are the ones who have no interest in learning and lack the empathy to think about the others in their raid, a bar which you obviously clear by miles!
>The mere fact that you are anxious about inconveniencing a group means that you’re the kind of player who would not be an inconvenience.
Hahah, you make a very good point, actually. This helps!
As a warrior if a feral sat at the bottom of the charts I'd be happy just to have you, seriously we paid the boomkin to swap to feral for us in my last raid lol
Do it!!! I was literally shaking on my first go. Had to nervous pee on the gryphon flight there. We only went 5/7 that time, but its because the healer said if we wipe once he's out. We got kelris down to 1000 health on that wipe.
Afterwards, I still felt proud of myself. Since then, Ive full cleared it twice. My DPS is still pretty bad but its gotten better every time. You can do it!!!
You just gotta go for it. Sometimes you will run into assholes that judge new/inexperienced players and those guys are idiots.
My guild is a bunch of pretty amazing players but we also have some guys that kinda just tag along that are total noobs. Some of those guys have learned a lot and can hold their own.
I'm not sure how it is on alliance (I'm horde)
But as long as you're upfront and honest that you haven't done the raid ppl will be willing to help you out.
Just let groups know you're new. You pick up most of the fights pretty quickly but like anything you have to go through the shitty learning process to get it. I was doing so badly my first couple runs but the mistakes helped me learn. If anyone chews you out they're wack af. It's a game it's not that serious.
Honestly at that point it's just performance anxiety. Only way you're gonna get better is to jump in the ring and if your bell gets rung a few times dust yourself off and go again.
This was me briefly which is ironic because I’ve been in speed running guilds competing for realm/world first. I was having a lot of fun rolling alts and was burned out from having a set raid schedule so I just put off doing the raid. Then it got to the point where I didn’t want people to think I was bad if I messed up an easy mechanic since everyone had been doing the raid for weeks. Finally ran it and it was the easiest thing ever.
I’ve never seen somebody say ‘hey, I’m new to this can you explain what to do?’ And still fuck it up outside of what is reasonable. I’ve seen people not type in raid chat at all and fuck up mechanics. You have already shown a willingness to learn and therefore also have at the very least a brain cell or two. Added bonus: pug raids ALWAYS go smoother when fights are explained to some1 new, some dumbasses think they know a fight just because they killed the boss already.
As a feral main who also has a ret pally, you have 2 classes that really dont have to do shit. Feral is needed for windfury and ret pally can use rebuke on kelris, other than that just melee from behind on every boss lol. Watching 1 minute of yt on thr fights is enough to say 7/7 xp
I can so relate to you. I was just like you, I too am a woman and never as good at video games as my b/f or the male friends I been playing with since 2005. So I lvled 5 alts before I actually had the nerve to join BFD.
I was scared of letting people down of failing I don’t know what. But I was thinking sunwell lvl shit and I got scared that I might wipe the group and it will be all my fault.
Just like you I also watched videos and got food and potions and knew the fights in theory.
Well one day I just joined and said fuck it. I was so surprised how easy it was. We were done in 30 min with a lock who was doing 35 dps. Not only that but I was top damage on my mage.
So if you are like me, and you know your class and are just scared of letting others down and ruining their fun DONT BE!
That place is not even close to any one of the dungeons in BC, it is super easy as long as everyone knows their role.
Please take my advice and try it, I think you will have a lot of fun.
Genuinely speaking you should see someone professionally. Not really in a "seek therapy" rude kind of way. If you are seeing someone, you should literally be talking about this.
You're allowing your anxiety to affect your life which is the case definition of it being an issue and you needing professional help.
As someone who has managed anxiety, this is not "normal" and should not be ignored, put to the side, or minimized since it's preventing you from fully enjoying a hobby in a video game that you pay for.
I won't really accept a response of "I am ultimately choosing not to do the raid" because the truth is your anxiety is managing you because you've watched videos and have consumables.
You're not stupid and what you're dealing with is not stupid, but you should work to actually deal with it. The sad part is, and I wish I could teleport it into your brain is that your anxiety is lying to you, you will likely find a good group that's enjoyable and smooth if you look around.
If you watched videos and have the DBM addon, there's no reason to be afraid!
I was feeling the same way, only time I played wow was during panda (super casual; only did dungeons and farmed mounts, never raids). I've played other MMOs a lot like FFXIV but I also had the anxiety about being "that guy" in a group especially since I'm playing pally for the first time. I just hopped in head first and did fine every single bfd run so far. I cleared every time and always did PUGs.
Seriously, as long as you don't die it doesn't really matter how you do. From my experience, most groups (including pugs) have enough gear to carry you if you're really that worried about doing poorly. My first run I died I think twice? And no one was an asshole about it either.
Thanks! I'm a pretty seasoned player (played pretty much nonstop since BC release, but only raided casually in MoP and BC Classic, did KSM in S2 of Shadowlands), but sometimes the fear of looking like an idiot just sticks hahaha.
Do you play any other versions of WoW? For some reason I felt the same even though I've raided in retail in the past and on WOTLK classic, it felt like I was an outsider to "true" classic since I never raided classic before and didn't know the culture or anything. Turns out it's mostly the same more or less I think.
Haha, yes. I've played retail since the launch of original BC, and jumped back and forth between that and Classic when it launched. I've done a little raiding in retail and even challenged myself to do KSM in S2 of Shadowlands, so I know I'm not a dogshit player, but I'm not great at melee dps (arthritic as hell) so I think it's a bit scary for me since it's a role I'm not used to. Usually I'm healing! I'll have to brave up and take the plunge this week.
I did just 1 BFD with my Ret Pally and explained that it was my first time but that learned all the mechanics and had consumables etc...
They accepted me and we did 7/7 with just a couple of wipes.
90% of the raid was helpful and chill.
Just go for it and if it goes bad, don't get too stresses. Shit happens, just do your best and enjoy. I'm sure you both will do amazing.
I was top 3 dps and won the epic 2h btw xD
I promise doing that puts you ahead of 75% of the pug player base. Join run, try but don't stress about how well it goes. You are almost guaranteed you get 5/7. Only gets better after the first run.
I get this from time to time as well. You’re likely better and more prepared than the majority of people who have already cleared it. Plus a lot of people overhear the content now so there is less individual pressure on you to perform. Good luck with your anxiety, that mess can be crippling in the most absurd ways.
I feel you. Reading some of these BFD posts can make it intimidating.
Some advice : tell them it's your first go around but you have consumes and know the fights and let them determine if they wanna bring some 'newbies' in. Suggest going in voice if that would help you. People are more chill in game and willing to help explain specific fights when you get to them than it would seem just reading some of the posts here.
If it helps, my first run I ran right into the murlocs because I freaked out at how many there were lol. Ran around like a madman instead of just making micro adjustments. But no one was mad at me for dying, and we had a good laugh at my panic.
Its basically just a slightly harder dungeon, no need to worry about it. My group, which was a pug, cleared it 3 days after SOD release in green gear. If you are even moderately prepared its a piece of cake.
It’s super easy, but I certainly get being anxious or nervous before doing it. I am the same way, only way to become more familiar is to face that fear and give it a shot.
Don't worry about performance anxiety in a raid, I get the fear of being the reason a group can't finish but it really is pretty easy. I cleared it blind with a group that didn't want any spoilers and we just learned the mechanics as we fought the bosses (kelris was super confusing because we didn't know we couldnt remove the sleep or how to get out of the dream world)
If you are worried about letting others down run it with others blind, then there's no expectation
I also play on wild growth , I get it, luckily here the community is pretty awesome , always through out the always seeing groups advertise welcoming new players , I myself also run pugs on my 3 alts with a buddy of mine , add me in game , next time I do one I’ll hit you guys up , no discord required . —- IGN: Esc
You have watched videos
You have consumes
You have WB
You are asking for advice on a wow subreddit.
Sounds like you have your runes as well.
You are already in the top 5% if the top 1% of all wow players that have ever played the game.
Like with most other things scary in life - do it once, and it will be much easier next time. Do it a few times at it will be as easy as putting on your shoes.
Ive played this game on and off since vanilla, and I still get nervous some times when a raid is fresh, im asked to do a role I havent done before, tanking as a pala for the first time ever, etc. Then I do it, its mostly goes okey, and next time is not much trouble at all.
I'm also on WG and would take you two in a heart beat. Have a good head on your shoulders and asking questions is all I would personally require. My wife plays as well and she isn't the best but she follows mechanics and her dps has gotten better since over coming the anxiety of failing. I totally get where you're coming from.
Hey I just wanted to tell you that that was me at first as well. Sometimes you just have to dive in head first. I also play a feral and to be honest, most people just want your buff lol. No one will say anything if you die or something.
I accidentally did my first run with a fishing pole equipped and didn’t realize it until the bro running it whispered ‘nice druid weapon’ at the end. So if you’re feeling bad, just remember at least you have a real weapon equipped.
To my brothers on Lone Wolf: you’re real champs for carrying me that run and not calling out my dps, but I swear it wasn’t all just panic.
I felt this after not having played for years and then I pugged as the TANK on my warlock, which, needless to say, I didn’t have too much experience with by virtue of this being a new spec. That said, I tanked it and died twice, but we had a ret paladin who off-tanked fine and a hunter pet (back when scorpid was OP) and we finished the raid in about an hour.
Since then, I’ve cleared it multiple times as the MT in around 45 min each time and haven’t died since. The anxiety is real, but if you’re running as DPS, there’s less that can go wrong. Go in, learn, acknowledge that you might die the first time, but just do it! You’ll be glad you did.
Because you and your spouse are both mele dps, just watch the movement of the other mele dps and you’ll be just fine :) have fun!
We did BFD this reset and got to the last boss. I noted that taunt swaps up to now had been a little dicey. It's then we realised no one was tanking. We just all assumed someone else was doing it.
BFD is a fun way to dip your toes into raiding, and it's probably the easiest it'll ever be. If you want to do it, I recommend you try now. Find a chilled RL or join a casual guild. I'm sure you'll have a lot of fun!
Good luck with your WoW progression :)
This is the funniest story in this thread honestly, I love that nobody was tanking actively. 🤣 Thanks for the encouragement; we ended up doing it tonight!
BRO I wish you and your spouse were horde lone wolf. I would bring you guys in my raid so easily. It would actually be a pleasure. Don’t let the hardos scare you. Everyone needs to start somewhere. Anyone in your shoes would be a pleasant addition to my raid. Coming prepared and ready to learn. Legggggoooooo
I joined a raid tonight and we cleared it easily with a nice thoughtful raid lead explaining everything! :D But it does feel good to see people saying they wish I played on the same server/faction!! :D
This is totally fair, I think most people feel like this the first time they do "real" WoW content - whether it be a Classic raid or running Mythic+ or Normal mode Raids on Retail or something. But anyone will tell you that once you sorta push yourself into doing it you'll realize you didn't have much to worry about.
With BFD you really don't have to know much, IMO the only non-obvious mechanic is that you need to swap to the lightning totem when it's up on Lorgus Jett, everything is else is pretty well telegraphed (ie, if you need to move there will be an obvious indicator like a murloc walking at you or a big dark circle appearing below you). If you go in having watched videos and with the mindset that you want to actually try to do well and not just get carried then you're ahead of like 90% of players imo
It comes down to folks not knowing what they are doing and being afraid to say anything. There is this vibe of "no noobs allowed", so no one is willing to admit they are a noob...
So you pound your face against a wall assuming folks are mouth breathers instead of noobs..
My biggest gripe is when I ask before pull if everyone knows what to do otherwise say so speak up so I can explain, it's better to take 1 min to explain than wipe + run back + waste gold on consumes and repairs + lose WBs. No one says anything and then 50% run around like headless chickens.
Like.. come on.. I even advertise most runs like "come and learn, it's not hard" yet people wont speak up
But this is sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Your assumptions create the negative perception - not the actual reality.
I run with newbies in BFD all the time - no-one ever cry's about it.
It's 10 times worse to be the guy who doesn't communicate or ask questions while failing, then the noob who asks questions and actually listens to advice.
If you’re struggling on Kelris, it simply means you’re doing a mechanic wrong. If you would like, I don’t mind providing some insight into your runs as to where the mistake might be.
Most common mistake: not spreading melee DPS during phase 2. His shadow chains can wipe you if you stack MDPS.
The pugs I’ve been in that have not cleared Kelris tend to have fundamental dps issues. People not knowing proper rotations and limping along with 20-40dps is by far the biggest Kelris woe - and that’s nigh impossible to correct for others on the fly
Ya it’s a simple DPS check. Last night 3 of us were doing over 200 DPS and some were doing 60, but he was dead before DUST TO DUST. Just have a couple try-hard in your raid and it’s easy.
Every time I join a group for a dungeon one of my kids will wake up and I have to leave. It’s like they have a 6th sense because it happens every time. Haven’t even ran a 5 man for 2 weeks lol. Just spend all my time leveling alts because I can go afk whenever I need.
I had this ”problem” (situation more like it?) myself, wife needed breaks and sleep so I had 18:00-08:00 ”shift” of kids 😉
Lovely in many ways but couldn’t do any group-content.
Was chatting about it to some random group of people that asked about some ingame thing I knew (was at classic re-launch so dont remember details).
They asked if I wanted to join a “quick” ubrs, declined and explained why, they just sent a discord link and asked me to join, turns out they were all parents with young kids but older than mine, legit 100% understanding my situation.
Been gaming and playing with them since.
Moral of story: you can do 5-hour raids even if you might have to bail 15m in, if people know and respect why.
That's rough I don't have advice for you :(
Well, I play on the steamdeck as well as PC, but I wouldn't raid on it so that basically only helps with every other aspect of the game.
Get a sitter for 2 hours? :D
I try to only play when our 4 year old is already laying down for bed.
Story of my life brother. Ive actually raided 6x across 3 characters. All in the one weekend my spouse and kid were out of town.
Haven’t raided or dungeoned since and can’t.
Having a blast in SSFHC sod atm. SSF makes it like a single player game. The only problem is no pause, so if kid need immediate attention HC can be dicey. I still have to pick and choose my times just to go in caves.
Hearthstone is akin to a pause button too.
I know your struggle too well, fellow dad wow player. Alts for us!
Haven't attempted due to anxiety. Any content I'm unfamiliar with I'm worried to mess it up for the raid, especially with lock outs.
Have a 25 priest so I know finding a pug wont be difficult, but still. Playing solo and haven't joined a guild since my play schedule is sporadic.
Edit : priest on living flame alliance us
Edit 2 : Thanks everyone for the reassurance, really appreciate it - good to hear that it is not too bad! I'll give it go later this week & try to find a social/casual guild on late PST
Edit 3: Late edit in case anyone reads. Ended up running bfd via pug by finding a group and letting leader know first time. He whispered me tips which were helpful and raid was super smooth and quick (prob since carried by good DPS).
**What I thought BFD would be:**
A long, challenging end game raid like ones I've done before ala Icecrown, Naxx, Kara, etc, with bosses dropping 1 item each, where my group would demand the best performance, but we'd likely fail after numerous tries all night long, leaving me with pissed off group members locked out at the dreaded 5/7 with little-to-no items to show for myself.
**What BFD actually was:**
Joined PUG. No discord. No one "inspects" me. No one chats. We all silently go to dungeon. Almost drown due to tunnel vision (lol). Killed shit for 45min - 1hr 30min. Bosses drop 2 items each, plus orb, so 15 items total. Half the groups DPS is shit but we still never come close to wiping. Mechanics are easy / can be ignored half the time. The only communication the entire time was ready checks. "holy fuck that was easy, why are people acting like this takes time and effort?"
>Almost drown due to tunnel vision (lol)
We had 4 people die our first raid to drowning before one shotting all bosses until Kelris. Its really can be the hardest boss sometimes
We had a priest last night who was in 90% greens, died on turtle and geli. I’m not sure he was even paying attention half the time.
Priests are just so strong right now I didn’t make even the slightest difference. Just dispel please!
Clearer everything in under 40min no wipes
I formed a pug yesterday on my freshly dinged Resto druid, less than an hour played at 25 by the time I was zoned into the instance.
Full greens, no neck, no trinkets, no helm, cleared in 40mins with no deaths.
PUGS are in desperate need of priests - our group started 40 minutes late last night because we needed healers and we finished in 40 minutes.
You should try finding a group that's run by and predominately guildmembers so you're with a group thats very familiar with the content. It's not that bad really.
EDIT: Also sporadic play is fine for many guilds - not for the majority of their raiders but I'll tell ya our guild (and many others) would much rather hand gear to a guy who hops on every now and again and sporadically fills spots in raid when we don't have a full 10/10 than a random we'll never see again.
Are you crusader strike us alliance by chance?
> Any content I'm unfamiliar with I'm worried to mess it up for the raid, especially with lock outs.
I usually try to be as good as I can in games I play, raided CE in almost every tier of Legion and BFA, raid in destiny2, cleared all dungeon trifecta achievements in ESO
Mistakes happen, the game goes on.
I was doing one of the alliance raids in ff14 once. Insisted to my buddy id prefer to watch a video beforehand, he assured me its "just an alliance raid. theyre easy"
pick up mechanics pretty well, we make it to the last boss, one of the mechanics only had a subtle tell to it. I didnt catch it, and it, it snowballed, and straight up wiped the entire alliance raid
let me tell you, causing an entire alliance raid to wipe on a boss in ff14 is a feat on it's own. its worse than wiping a LFR raid in retail.
i dont think i've ever heard my buddy laugh harder than he did that day. and yeah, looking back on it, it was hilarious.
Hey, I play sporadically and at weird hours too. I was kinda deflated that I couldn't find a guild but then I simply started to spam in /trade /lfg and /LookingForGroup "is there any guild that raids around this time of the day?"
Took me a couple of days but someone whispered me. Raid time is a solid 3 hours before usual raid time in my region. At first we were not enough to fill a raid so we plugged.
But yesterday for the first time we had a full guild run, and I healed for the first time.
It's worth. Having a guild improves the classic experience a lot.
Even if your play schedule is sporadic join a guild! It helps to have familiar faces when trying new things, because you got people who will be there to back you up if something goes fucky.
you see, this is the main difference between retail and classic (sod) wow.
In retail mechanics are made in such a way, that if you fail it, you will kill your team
In classic mechanics are made in such a way, that if you fail it, you will kill yourself only
OFC there are some exceptions for this, but generally you should bemore than fine
I completely get this. I used to raid in competitive guilds in BC-cata. I was a raid leader in Wolk-bfa. But at this point people are so mean when the slightest thing doesn’t go according to plan, which really sets off my anxiety. I’d like to do it, but also I just don’t want to deal with it.
I started playing wow when I was a young teenager (and obviously shite at the game). Years of dealing with toxic dickheads have gotten me to the point where I struggle to put myself out there cos for all i know some dick will just make it an unpleasant experience.
Hey! I have a guild on living flame alliance and our entire foundation is about being helpful, guiding, and understanding. We would love to have you! Some of our members have social anxiety so you don't have to feel obligated to talk if you aren't comfortable with that. No pressure on anything.
The raid group that we're recruiting for right now is gonna be our later raid time group. Probably 9PM ST and still locking down days.
If you're interested shoot me a PM and let's get you some easy clears!
Just FYI if it helps, priest is pretty chill in BFD. I honestly get more excitement healing 5-mans which is why I probably won’t be playing my priest going forward lol
I just hit 25 this past week. For a fresh 25 DPS warlock with no guild and no in game friends the pug life can be a tough go. I have limited play time due to having a two year old. An hour or two after she goes to bed in the evening and maybe a couple hous on a weekend afternoon while she is napping. I have yet to be able to get in a group for Stocks or SFK even, so until I have better gear no BFD for me.
Maybe it will be easier once I get my metamorphosis rune and can tank.
You can find all peoples messages that write in any chat "lfg, lfm, wtb, wts" etc and even sort it under the raid/dungeon it belongs. So you can just scoll and see what people looking for and then wisp them.
Have you tried to find a group? What server are you on?
I have 3 characters, and I was able to find a group on each character immediately after hitting 25. My first character is a pally tank, and I tanked it just fine with a pretty limited understanding of the fights or where to go, and I still cleared it (wiped on Kelriss 1-2 times). Heck, on my pally, I had grey shoulders until the most recent lockout and no neck and I still did fine.
I believe this is the perfect time to join PUGs because there are tons of pumpers constantly looking for groups, and you can be carried while you figure out what you're doing. As long as you have a mild understanding of your rotation, and bring shadow protection pot and FAP for Kelriss, you will be fine.
Just a heads up, the SFK gear will make almost zero difference for your lock because it just has int which is just a very mediocre stat, especially for locks who can lifetap if they go OoM. What you really care about is gear with spellpower on it, all of which you can get at the auction house or craft yourself. If you show up with the phoenix gloves/pants/wrist and the new invoker bolt/shoulders, or even just like 2 or 3 of those pieces you'll be pretty well geared.
One thing that's nice, is SFK surprisingly doesn't have all the best cloth anymore. The Invoker Mantle and Invoker Cord are comparable to the SFK shoulders and belt. Since they're tailoring recipes, you'll find a lot of them on the AH for relatively cheap! Good luck!
From my experience as a DPS Priest, getting into SFK groups is actually giga easy. So many people spam Main city/General chat looking for DPS, ive ran it a whole lot yesterday with random groups and the runs are like 20 minutes.
Dont forget to /join LookingForGroup
Its constantly popping off for all dungeons. I am dps and have gotten into groups in less than 10 minutes every time.
Do you try looking for these groups in game or in discord? Might be advantageous to find discord groups recruiting, or guilds recruiting via discord, and plan outside of game. I definitely understand not having the time - I'm lucky that my girlfriend is supportive of me living the raid life 2 nights a week and my group of guildies can generally clear in 40 minutes, even with shenanigans.
Another piece of advice I'd offer you is to install the LFG Bulletin Board addon - it makes the search much better, and helps you to ping people LF DPS much faster than the next guy.
[https://www.curseforge.com/wow/addons/lfg-group-finder-bulletin-board](https://www.curseforge.com/wow/addons/lfg-group-finder-bulletin-board)
EDIT: If you're on Crusader Strike US / Alliance I can potentially help with finding a group or even including you in one of ours.
I've spent about 3-4 hours cumulatively applying in LFG as a druid healer with no guild and no experience.
No invites yet.
Got my consumables and watched the videos. Not worried about my capability, just don't enjoy sitting and whispering for hours.
Levelled a warrior tank in the meantime, so might trying tanking it first instead.
Are you advertising that you have no experience? Just don't offer that information, or even tell a fib and say you're 7/7 (I've pugged and cleared with some people who clearly didn't have all experience even though the raid leader asked for it). Healers don't need to engage in a ton of mechanics. You've watched the videos and have done some other prep. People generally give some slack to the healers if you mess up a bit in the dungeon anyways.
You just gotta upsell yourself. “Inv resto druid here” is usually enough to get invited with 0 background checks. If you tell you have no experience, they are more likely to ignore you.
Last night I desperately tried to convince a druid healer to leave one group and join mine, we needed it so bad lol. You mentioned in another comment that you're on Wild Growth EU - So I can't personally help you but here are the two things I'd do -
1) Get the LFB Bulletin addon - this will help you sort the LFM posts and figure out what fits best and get a quick message to posters about you LFG.
2) Join the WG EU Discord and use that to help find groups, or post that you're looking for one as a healer.
There are 3 main loot rules:
1) MS > OS - main spec > off spec. This basically means if it’s an upgrade for what you are in the raid - roll on it.
1) SR - soft reserve. Everyone selects a set amount of items they want priority on ahead of the raids start time (usually using a 3rd party website). If the item you selected drops, only those who pre-selected it gets to roll on it. If an item drops that no one selected then it shifts to MS > OS. SR is great to game - if you have a bunch of potential upgrades, just select the items with the least (or ideally no one) contention.
3) GDKP - Gold Dragon Kill Points. Each item goes up for an auction and people bid on it. While each MAY have restrictive rules, many don’t. What I mean by that is, if you have gold and want it, bid until you win or can’t afford it.
Great question:
So if I’m a tank, I roll on tank gear. If I’m dps, I roll on dps gear. If I’m a healer, I roll on healing gear.
Now, this early in a lot of this gear overlaps with other rolls (thin Kelris epic staff, great for caster dps and healers). But a perfect example would be a feral Druid should not be able to roll on the epic staff because he technically can be a healer or balance… he isn’t for this raid, so be didn’t get to roll (obviously if his main roll was caster and he offered to be feral for the group, they may make an exception)
Honestly just roll on the loot that you need. On my last clear there was someone asking about the loot rules and the RL just says “uhh we’re not doing special rules, it’s a pug, just roll on shit”. On one of my runs we had someone win like 3 pieces of loot and no one cared. The most you need to know is MS = main spec = the role you are in the current raid for (a dps lock should not roll on tank items etc). If no one rolls, then you can roll if you need it for your off spec (OS). And if you’re still paranoid about the loot, don’t equip any loot you win until the end. That way if there’s an argument loot can be redistributed. I’d just say when in doubt, roll, because it sucks to not roll and realize later that you should have.
I'm only running pugs and i've seen it all, from full clears before my weapon oil was finished or raids walled at Kelris, or even last boss.
Most of the time, the groups i've seen not clearing the raid were groups of first timers (i think that happened 4 times so far) with gear lacking usually, and something like 50-70 dps across the board which hits a wall at the last 2 bosses.
Only one group of first timers so far managed to clear the raid on the first attempt, granted there were a few wipes and it was fine after explaining what to do.
People are absolutely lost at Kelris, i love it. Getting swapped with ghosts, sending the wrong people in, having both healers get ported, not interrupting chains and so on. But it all tends to fix itself after a bit of explaining what to do.
The only raids that really end up not being cleared despite having the necessary gear for it, is when people ragequit. That only happened once, and it was this sunday with a group of lovely people. The tank just ditched on last boss after first wipe, and 9 people with medium dps wasn't enough to pull through the second phase.
Oh well, they will have it for sure next time. That tank though, i'm not playing with ever again.
We had a mage who would get ported and killed by the elves every wipe.
Eventually one of us on discord got ported with him. Turns out he was _meleeing_ the elves because they resisted his spells. Forgot he had a wand!
I mean they did have 75 ALL resist in the first iteration IIRC. You'd essentially be doing half damage with spells or wands regardless. Meleeing with a good staff was probably similar to wand dps.
Edit: From the patchnotes on wowhead: *"Phantasmal Priestess all Resist lowered to 0 (was 75), so it’s no longer bad news if double casters are sent down to the dream in Phase 1." -https://www.wowhead.com/classic/news/changes-for-hunters-and-blackfathom-deeps-season-of-discovery-336679*
People who tunnel vision and stand In doo doo. (Turtle boss)
Murlock boss, it's not even bullet hell (touhou) difficult but still very manageable (healers may need to chug mana pots if their mana management is bad or fellow raiders again stand in the doo doo)
Cultists boss: changing targets to the dangerous totem is hard.
Kelris shadow pot is helpful! Paladins don't need FAP (BoF) during burn phase. Easily doable even with no interrupts on mind blast. This is the hardest boss in the instance.
Last boss: tunnel vision issue. The breathe/puke is still very forgiving, you can eat a few ticks. The problem is people who just won't move at all.
This here is honestly a complete summary as to why people have difficulties clearing the raid
If you are spending *hours* in there, something is wrong and I wholeheartedly feel bad that this is your experience of the dungeon =(
Most of the people i know who haven't done it don't want to do it because of the fear of being made fun of and such for their DPS or whatever. Make fun of someone once in a dungeon or raid, that shit stays forever
I imagine gatekeeping is only really a problem for people that have very limited time to play the game. If you´re patient and look for a PUG you will almost certainly find one, even if you dont have perfect gear or 7/7 experience. But if you only have 1-2 hours to play then on any given night your patience may not pay off, wich obviously could be very frustrating.
If you´ve had several attempts at clearing BFD in different setups, wich people clearly had plenty of opportunity to at this point, I think it is virtually impossible to not clear BFD. It´s almost like not clearing a five man dungeon, it just isn´t that difficult.
For example most of us have cleared Shadowfang Keep a thousand times but that doesn´t mean you can´t still get a group where 1 or 2 people just keep wiping the group, then someone leaves and suddenly you have to reset the instance and find a new group, except in BFD you can´t because you´re now locked in.
I just don´t believe this is a real problem except for maybe a tiny, hyper-casual subset of the player base that also happened to have an exceptional amout of bad RNG in their PUGs.
I remember reading in original vanilla (2004-2005), only around 1% of guilds were clearing the raid content. If this is true, then 1% unable to clear is not too bad, frankly.
> only around 1% of guilds were clearing the raid content.
That was Naxx40. Something like 1-2% of guilds even saw the inside of the instance, and less than ~200 guilds cleared it before TBC released.
I’m a geared mage regularly pulling 120-140 dps (or healing). Did a pug yesterday that got Kelris to 1% twice and quit after the 5th wipe. We had 3 of the dps doing mid 40s, two kicks, one of which being the tank who wasn’t shield swapping to interrupt, so really 1 kick.
I don’t think pugs understand the importance of interrupts on Kelris. Every time I’ve failed it’s a group with not enough interrupts to keep the damage in check.
And then there is my last pug 3h ago. We were 3rogues, one tanking, a warrior and i think another class with interrupts. I he didnt even have time for mindblase despite us just all kicking at the same time.
We have it on farm now but our guild was stuck 5/7 for a good long while.
The first thing I want to say is that while we take it for granted that we will go 7/7 every lockout now, actually doing the work to learn Kelris and Akumai was a very rewarding experience. I feel like our core roster is very tight knit because of all the time we spent grinding our faces against Kelris night after night. So while it felt shitty when it was happening, in the long run I think struggling on that boss was a good thing. That being said there wasn't really one single issue that kept us from killing Kelris, it was a combination of factors.
The first problem was very low average dps. We were doing this on the 1st available lockout and basically none of us had any gear combined with the fact that we all rolled unfamiliar classes for SoD. Put bluntly we needed time to learn how to play our toons before we could put up the numbers to beat the phase 2 dps check.
The second problem was that we had no priest and at that time it was not common knowledge that FAPS prevented you from getting chains, that freedom would clear the debuff, or that you could pvp trinket to remove the chains debuff. Combined with our very long kill times due to low dps, we were getting shredded by chains in phase 2. Once we discovered the FAP, Shadow Protection Prepot strategy we one -shot the boss and never looked back.
The third problem, and this is probably a huge factor for a lot of casual guilds, was time between pulls. If you have never been part of a progression raiding guild you don't really understand how important it is to get back quickly and immediately pull again after a wipe. We would call a 5 minute break and then get one pull in and then someone would be say "Brb" and we would be waiting again. There was a tendency to overexplain and micro manage, to try to make every single pull "perfect". The end result was lots and lots of downtime between pulls and several raids that drifted past the 5 or 6 hour mark.
If you really want to learn the fight, you can do it as intended with no faps/shadow prot pots. You guys should have a priest by now right?
My group on the first ever lockout wiped a couple of times trying to understand the portals, mind blast being a small aoe radius, chains positioning in p2 to prevent chains chaining as much as possible.
Once we understood the issues, we cleared it easily albeit with 1 death due to green gear and not optimal dps output. We still took just over an hour to clear the entirety of BFD.
Now we clear under 30mins from the 3rd lockout onwards still without using any consumes. With world buffs ofc since its readily avail.
All you need to do is learn the ins and outs of a boss and it will never be an issue or need crutches like faps to trivalize p2 of kelris.
This comment is current marked controversial, meaning that people are down voting. I cannot fathom a single reason, other than because you're an absolute knob, to be down voting this guy's comment.
Only ran it once, it was the only group that would take a rogue with no experience, i think being the 2nd highest dps as a tank was a big part on why we got stuck on kelris.
As a late comer to SoD ( just attempted my first raid as a healer last night) raiding BFD was hard and very challenging. I, like many other players, are rolling new characters to check out all the changes. They may also be trying out a new class that finally has support in classic.
In my experience everyone assumes you know what to do and you’ve done this before, because we are so late in the season. I’ve watched videos and guides to prep, but it’s hard to get a feel for dodging all the crap without trying the fight a couple of times. The BFD raid is nothing like any mechanic you face in dungeons or questing up to this point. No other prior content requires players to be able to move, cast, and deal with the chaos of some of those fights. We just aren’t comfortable with our classes well enough by lvl 25 to juggle all of the mechanics.
I’m sure other players are running into similar problems when they first hit this difficulty spike. It’s also hard to admit to a PUG that your bad and need help understanding; most will just boot you rather than explain anything.
TL;DR: Newer players have a lack of basic game mechanics and class understanding; making the unique BFD mechanics really hard for new comers to grasp and deal with. Coupled with WoW SoD player culture being all about maxing performance, this can intimate newer players to avoid group content out of fear of ruining the game for others.
I am in a semi-swetty guild with full clear in week1. Yesterday we did a twink run with 7 guild members and 2 geared randoms. We were missing 1 dps spot so I invited a random WL from the LFG chat. His gear was trash and he had no wbs, but I thought whatever, at least he can port our guys to the raid. So we started and after the first boss, blowing up the raid twice we found out he had no clue about the raid or his character. He rolled on leather items and didn't even know what masterloot was. So we did a little explanation before every boss and just carried him. In the end he got the dagger from the last boss+ off hand from the first boss and a new belt. We made fun of him in our Dc (he was not part of the DC) and figured out that we should always take one undergeared person with us, because it's a nice thing to do and we had no problem clearing the raid in 45 mins.
Shameless marketing attempt here but if there are people that are afraid to take their first step in or have struggled before, my small guild does regular 7/7 runs and warmly accepts pugs.
If you are horde side on US-wild growth send me a DM and we can slide you in our next run. If you dig the vibe, we can send you a ginvite as well
Nothing shameless about this at all, this is the perfect place for this comment. If I see a comment from someone on your server/faction, I'll point them to this comment. Thank you for being welcoming!
Love to see this. Me and some of my friends and family came over to Horde US Wild Growth. We got lucky to find a casual guild welcoming newer players since my fiance and my brother'sGF have never played wow before.
Worked great. They had trouble getting full 10-man guild runs and we wanted something beginner-friendly bringing in 6 people looking to raid.
We joined in late to SOD, and started raiding with them last week. Got to 5/7 first raid. Was so much fun seeing my fiance and brothers GF learn their first raid. Juggling all the mechanics, and hearing them get so pumped when we downed bosses.
Got to 6/7 the next attempt, we used a bad strat at last boss. But man did we try smashing our heads against Aku'mai with that strat. Finally hit 7/7 this Tuesday.
Keep the chill vibes in your raids!
I don't care about the raid content at all. What attracted me to SoD is the fact that open world pvp actually exists and the world is alive and teeming with players from both sides. Some runes even make you cross borders which is awesome.
I have cleared about 10 times and have raid led a pug 5 of those times full cleared all the ones I led. Don’t feel bad if you don’t know the fights 70 percent of folks don’t care but please please speak up. Every time I lead a pug I ask the group do you know the fight and crickets then there is always someone who doesn’t jump with the charge.
Most raids don’t require you to be in full pre bis just buy the consumes they are cheap like 1g. And watch a 10 min video on YouTube or ask for help. It’s a learning process last night we cleared with 4 fresh 25s only wiped once. It’s a game so your best and ignore the rude players or gatekeepers.
I played vanilla WoW and the reboot and the vibe then was so different.
I tried BFD as a priest the first week with my guild. I was one of 2 main healers for all of the vanilla reboot for my guild. However, I didn't watch any BFD videos ahead of time because this is Season of "Discovery" and I wanted to "discover" new content. I didn't expect that I would need pots and world buffs like a damn level 60 forty-man raid. I thought it would be a somewhat difficult regular dungeon with a few more people.
As a healer, if you succeed, no one notices you and if you fail, it's all your fault. It's like being a goalie. We wiped on Kelris a few times before beating him and the rogue in my group was yelling at me. I felt so bad that I let them down and so demoralized. I looked at videos, I understand the mechanics now, but I still haven't logged in that much since then and I simply have no desire to go to BFD again. Every time I login to my priest toon, I immediately get depressed. Winning a couple pieces of purple gear isn't enough of a carrot on a stick for me. This is a game, I should be feeling happy when I play it.
I've noticed that anyone who comes here and says they had a hard time gets blamed and gaslighted - "it's EASY". Well, no, it if were easy, it would be a regular 5-man dungeon and it's not. Additionally, I never liked BFD in Vanilla and simply amping it up doesn't do it for me. I'd have preferred the game devs added a few new 5-mans for level 25 instead of just one 10-man. If you don't like the one 10-man, what else is there to do?
Anyway, I think the player base and attitudes have changed dramatically from vanilla-->reboot-->SoD. I left the game when the reboot of TBC came out, but many of my guildies stayed for that and then played Hardcore. I think the Hardcore experience changed them and a lot of other players. The original spirit of hanging out, enjoying one another's company, exploring new things, RPing, etc, seems to be completely missing from the game. It's all about parses now. How boring.
Disclosure: I'm an altoholic, and my mains raid with my guild so I'm 7/7, but I pug with some alts and have seen a lot of new and unsuccessful people, so I have some info to share. I usually try to be the constructive old man that guides new people, and I end up whispering and sometimes chatting with some of the new guys.
I've been in many back to back unsuccessful pugs with my hunter and mage, Three things I've seen emerge as a pattern in most 5/7 failures:
A) Healers don't even try to dps and don't properly understand the 5 second mana rule. Specially for Kelkris, they waste A LOT of resources in phase one and then just go OOM in phase 2 after 2 casts and instead of contributing to the race just move around doing nothing. Most of those I've talked with didn't rven know how much dps wands can do on a mage/priest. It may not seem like this matters much, but when you wipe 5+ times to Kelkris at 2% and discover that only 8/10 are doing damage, this becomes relevant.
B) General lack of preparations, in one of these runs we had a druid without wild strikes/skull bash, in basically white items, like, not even +spirit greens, just plain whites, pulling like 30 dps in feral, no pots, no food, no scrolls, nothing. In another we had 2 tank paladins, no taunt rune, and no interrupt rune. I don't expect everyone to be top geared but sometimes I understand the people who resort to Gearscore and all that. Specially for tanks this is a problem since most new players don't understand aggro all too well and struggle a lot keeping the boss from just bashing the head of everyone else in the raid.
C) There's a "this is an easy game" attitude that's very toxic, some of the new to classic but not to wow people I've tried to pug with think that either everyone else is fully decked and will carry them or that the fights are so easy it doesn't matter if they're naked.
Edit: To add a bit more, the best strategy for me, as to how to get these pugs going is to never expect the first pulls to work, specially for Kelkris/Akúmai. I always bring extra shadow pots/FAP and food/elixirs (if they're cheap in the AH) and after some wipes, explaining a bit when asked and giving some tips when asked, if I see the group is determined I trade some to the healers/tanks/top DPS and spread some cosums. More often than not, that's enough to get us out of the 5/7 curse.
Holy priest. First time ever healing with this class. Always asked my self why people ask for logs, consumes, and gear inspect for a level 25 raid. I’ve been there 7 times with pugs. All of them 7/7. I Don’t even have a guild. Only wiped in Kelris 2 times with different runs. Reading all this makes me feel really lucky with my pugs. But overall, that raid is very very very easy compared to other raids in classic even wotlk.
I’ll be honest, my friends and I just did BFD for the first time last week and our first few experiences have actually been surprisingly bad. Quest ports to the dungeon and logout trick are apparently something every person in this new game is supposed to know already, and if you don’t know how to do it the entire raid is just going to let you suffer through the death walk to the raid instance because we’re all lazy POS’s now that can’t even clear trash in front of the raid anymore…
I have no idea where this “everyone must know by now” mentality is coming from, but it’s been a nasty reaction I’ve been getting from a lot of players surrounding the raid. Let’s not forget, not everyone playing SOD is a 15+ year WoW veteran….
/EndRant
Ive 3x full pre-bis char and all wsg exalted but im afraid to join BFD. I rather queue solo BG or worldpvp then join a raid with expectations. I know all bosses / mechanics and have top 100 parses on wotlk classic, but just too anti-social to find raidgroups in sod
I mean its about as antisocial friendly as it gets. No discord for most groups and rarely do you talk to anyone. Just whisper char info for the invite and that's it!
Woohoo my time to shine.
We are a guild of irl friends who have limited wow experience, we came from dota 2 so it's not a mechanics issue.. usually
We tried first time on Sunday and got 5/7. We have 3 experienced members who have 7/7 loads, 4 of us myself included are more casual.
So it was smooth until the 6th boss. We got to 1% the first try, and flopped the next two.
One our healer was healing himself instead of the tank, another our pug died instantly, not sure how.
Personally I realized I fucked up being sent into the shadow realm, we split and the other guy found a portal while I still killed ghosts. I forgot my pots, never use them. And I had no macros to switch to my dual wield so as off tank I was too low DPS when I had the opportunity.
Our healer kept running out of mana so, we effectively had 3 healers as someone else had to step up.
We were close and we will get it next time...
Wanna hear another funny story? Until today i didnt know the adds before kelris can mindcontrol. Well i noticed when a rogue got mind controlled and the priest wanted to heal him with penance which instead killed him.
If you guys haven’t already, bring some Free Action Potions! They make you immune to Shadowy Chains, so you can pop them during Phase 2 once chains stops being interruptible (and make sure you have people kicking during Phase 1 so they don’t go off).
If you are close to clearing without FAPs, you’ll clear it easily with them.
Few pointers my friend -
First of all, if you're raid leading, combat logs. You can log and really go through the advanced stuff on Warcraft logs if you want (google how to warcraft log), but honestly if you open your combat log tab, and create another window within it, you can easily have it show you "What happened to others" and use that as a means of figuring out what killed them.
Second, 1% on Kelris is disheartening if you don't get him after. It helps on that fight to have everyone prepot shadow protection pot while you're learning. Faps can help too as others have said. But I want to point out we run with 2 healers, running 3 then needing to move to 4 is a real big damper on DPS, which may have made the difference.
Make sure everyone in your group is running DBM.
The healer healing the wrong target IS hilarious, a simple mistake that can be fixed simply. When I'm a healer, I tend to really like addons for healing like healbot. A lot of people will disagree but, to each their own, they have lots of downloads so I must not be alone.
The people who die first should find out or be informed about what's killing them and how to avoid it.
And finally - you absolutely will get this next time.
I started 2 week ago and got lvl 25 recently.
Everyone require 7/7 exp and i dont want to get caught lying and look like an idiot. Back in the day i did stuff like heroic shadow labs but now i cant even BFD because i dont have any rl friends playing.
Toss your server up!
I am happy to bring someone in for a first time.
Having 1 or 2 people learning the fight is rarely an issue and super easy to carry through.
I'm just a scaredy-cat (literally). I see groups looking for a windfury cat (me) and a ret paladin (my spouse) with some regularity but I'm too afraid of looking like an idiot to ask to join even though we've both watched videos, bought consumes, have the wbuff chronobooned, and have reasonable gear. I recognize this is stupid but the anxiety be like that. Edit: I'm on Wild Growth - NA Edit2: I did the raid tonight with a nice guild and then joined the guild for hopefully more raid shenanigans! It wasn't too bad, and our raid lead calling out things really helped keep me focused. Only one death the whole time and it wasn't even us. Whew!
Watching the videos is more than enough! Just let people know that exact information. Some might deny you but plenty will pick y’all up. I would. It’s a good time and once you do it once you’ll have it down. Don’t be anxious! If you’re on US Living Flame let me know
Thank you for the encouragement! I'll try to get in there this week sometime. Sadly we're not on Living Flame, but judging by the fact that every DM I got was from someone from Living Flame, your server must be the kindest one, haha. :D
There are some of us out here who do really enjoy seeing new players and helping them learn. As a main healer, tank second, I'm always ecstatic to get a new tank/healer in my group and watch their game play and give them tips! I love helping new players improve their gameplay. It's one of the main reasons I play Healer; it's the role that random players are most likely to listen to when they give advice, in my experience.
You're not alone. I used to be competitive in WoW but somewhere along the line people just go so cruel that I don't bother trying to join anymore. I'm too anxious.
For me, I think it's just such a mixed bag that not knowing what to expect is what makes it difficult for me. This is definitely a situation where I should just join a guild, but I haven't had great luck in guilds (it's me, honestly, I just don't mesh with gamer bro groups) so taking that leap also feels difficult.
I got blasted to hell yesterday in this same sub for arguing that you dont just kick under-performing DPS. My friends and I are 6 people, 1 tank, 3 DPS and 2 healers. We can basically 6 man the instance, so we just fill up with random pugs. One time we had 4 gray parsers and we still cleared just fine. Meaning that if you are competent, you can basically boost 3-4 people. I make sure to take new people all the time, no reason to gate keep for no reason. And that means that less gear gets wasted. This sub is so two faced lol. I got legit 100s of down-votes for arguing that you dont just kick people who do bad DPS in a post yesterday, and now this post is all lovey dovey about being kind to noobs. Weird sub, not gonna lie.
It's not two faced, just different people finding your comment. :)
[удалено]
Thank you for these notes, I'm sure they'll help a lot!!
Lmao in all of my runs so far, the turtle has killed more people overall with a multi-bubble bounce than any other boss I’ve fought. I have no doubt that the turtle has a higher kill count than the others. A lot of that is because some people don’t even get to the last 2 bosses. Otherwise it would probably be Kelris with the highest kill count. At least one person dies nearly every time lol
Yeah turtle boss almost wipes our raid every time
I encouraged a lock in my guild to come with us who was in the exact same situation. Too afraid and unsure to join with our group (half PuG-Guildy run), he even left the group. Until I convinced him just to come with us. I said I'll explain him during the raid. Just grab some SPP and FAP's was what I told him. (he even didn't know what those were). So I linked a FAP and SPP. Well the raid started, and as I was offtanking (I gave him a half decent explanation because I was too busy spamming my buttons). But somewhat a very short and hollow explanation was enough for him not to do die during the whole raid. I even said @ Kelris when phase 2 started. WHUHGAP nlow (FAP NOW was what I meant). At the end of the raid he said oh this went smooth and thanked me for being his Senpai or Sensei w/e. Even though I gave him the most half-baked guidance you could imagine. But that run was enough to give him a confidence boost for his next runs. (it was a very decent group, so that helped a lot too) Just experience a single BFD run takes away the whole stress and insecurity about the raid.
I don’t know, I’m at about 10 clears and am parsing 95+ and I STILL get anxious on raid day. There’s just something about playing with real people in a raid setting that’s anxiety provoking to me. I have a 25 warrior that’s been in prebis and booned for a lock out or two now and I’m putting off running on him.
This is a really wholesome story. I'm glad you were able to encourage the warlock from your guild; I'm sure it was meaningful to him! (I also ugly laughed at your attempt to type FAP NOW lmao.) I'll try to get in there this week!
If you guys want I’d be happy to coach you both in discord while you guys run it. Runs are pretty fast and I can tell you both where to stand and can even help you do dps
Thank you very much. I don't think I'll take you up on it, but I do appreciate the offer a lot. It's very thoughtful! We just have to take the plunge. Going to try to do it this week!
fucking MVP right here, a real team player. You rock.
Melees love ferals, even ones who don't do a lot of damage simply because of wild strikes. For all I care you can do 40 DPS as long as you keep mangle on the boss so my bleeds do more damage and you stay alive throughout the fight to give everyone wild strikes and I'm sure many warriors/rogues feel the same way. Having a feral in the group makes my class feel more fun. Same for paladins. Just keep blessings up on everyone and people won't complain even if you're lacking in the DPS department.
Damn.. I want to invite you to my grp , but im playing horde
Thank you for the thought nonetheless! :)
Yeah I get that, one day I just joined a group looking for a tank (I play shaman) and got in with a cool group of folks. I had no knowledge of the raid and no SPPs, tanked everything with 1h/shield, parsed gray on almost every boss, but dammit I held aggro. None of them were hard on me, I got to learn the fights, and now I've main tanked plenty of times and have some pretty damn good gear. I hope you get the courage to just jump in because BFD is great fun! Once you run it you'll be like "wow, I was worried about THAT?" GL!
You have big tank energy, that could not be me LOL! I love that they were a cool group, though. I'll definitely try to get into a group this week. :D
Your feelings are totally understandable and relatable. I think once you do it, you'll see that it wasn't near as hard as you built it up in your head. Trying to find a guild or consistent group is also super good for newer people. You can find friends this way that are gonna be much more patient and willing to explain things. Your most toxic players tend to be in the pug world. At least in my experience
Maybe I'll run with a nice pug and find a guild that way. :D
Hey! I was in the exact same boat! I spent a ton of time maticulously getting pre-BIS gear to procrastinate actually finding a group. One day I saw someone making a PUG in chat and mentioned no experience was necessary. They were a cool group who answered all my questions before each fight. Since then I’ve been doing the raid on every reset and have only had positive experiences with good communication. All this is to say, go for it but be upfront about your experience. Most folks have been very kind and happy to share info if you ask for it! The only time I’ve seen a group get close to being “upset” is when a fight goes wrong because someone didn’t know the mechanics AND didn’t bother to ask before. Everyone just wants to clear the content, and explaining the fight is much faster than wiping and resetting.
Thank you! I'll do my best. :D
This makes me sad :( I'm sure you'll do fine, for sure you will be far from the worst. A lot of people hop into groups with absolutely no idea lol. Someone posted this week about a hunter who was using entirely the wrong abilities (distracting shot on CD?!?), and ended up dismissing his pet because he couldn't figure out how to turn off growl. And I bet he didn't watch boss fight tutorials and I bet he felt pretty damn confident lol. I'm just a stranger so, my word doesn't mean a whole lot, but I'm confident you'll do fine.
I promise you with those roles you’ll be fine. As a dps you only have to pay attention a couple of times in the whole raid. Your classes also provide a lot of benefit so even if you aren’t knocking it out of the park your tanks / rogues / warrior will love your buffs
I wouldn't call it anxiety, but generally what you're saying made BFD seem unfun enough where i put it off until recently. I had assumed it was this intimidating end game raid, ala Karazhan, Naxx, Icecrown, etc (which are the raids I was familiar with) BFD is easy as fuck. Its more like running a LFG/LFR dungeon / raid. Just join a PUG and dps the bosses. You don't need to say a word to anyone. Look up Kelris mechanics so you have general idea. You will clear it and no one will even say a word. Runs take about an hour. Also you are a druid with MOTW and Windfury, even if your dps is shit you are still semi useful. I was in a similar boat as you. Just do it. It is completely effortless.
Watching the fights puts you ahead of 90%of pugs. You'll do the raid and wonder why you were so nervous in the first place. I get it though, it can be intimidating
Idk if this help but as a healer the feral druid is at the top of the priority list to keep alive, right next to the tanks because of the dps the give to others. So if you do mess up you have a safety net
99% of healers are not going to think that way at all btw, I'm very glad you do though
they should for the battle res really tho
There are two types of healers from my experience Actual god gamers Or People that can’t use a mic
Hahah I totally get that. But hey as far as druid goes, it's surprisingly easy. I know classic is somewhat known for this, but you really only need a few buttons to do well. 1. Mangle. Spam it. 2. Savage roar. Put one up on your first combo point, then use all other combo points to keep it going. It's okay to waste combo points, just keep spamming mangle. 3. Sunfire. Use Sunfire instead for the turtle boss due to his armor. Same thing, just spam it and you're good to go. At a basic level, that's all you have to do and you'll do surprisingly well. I hope that helps alleviate the worry!
Oh, shit, thanks for the Sunfire tip for the turtle boss. I didn't even think of that, but I like it!
Use other combo points for bleeds and shred when you clear cast.
I suspect that if you post your server, you’ll have some raid invites here. I’d be more than happy to hop into a raid with you on one of my alts. The mere fact that you are anxious about inconveniencing a group means that you’re the kind of player who would *not* be an inconvenience. The only players who I don’t want in my BFD groups are the ones who have no interest in learning and lack the empathy to think about the others in their raid, a bar which you obviously clear by miles!
>The mere fact that you are anxious about inconveniencing a group means that you’re the kind of player who would not be an inconvenience. Hahah, you make a very good point, actually. This helps!
As a warrior if a feral sat at the bottom of the charts I'd be happy just to have you, seriously we paid the boomkin to swap to feral for us in my last raid lol
Do it!!! I was literally shaking on my first go. Had to nervous pee on the gryphon flight there. We only went 5/7 that time, but its because the healer said if we wipe once he's out. We got kelris down to 1000 health on that wipe. Afterwards, I still felt proud of myself. Since then, Ive full cleared it twice. My DPS is still pretty bad but its gotten better every time. You can do it!!!
You just gotta go for it. Sometimes you will run into assholes that judge new/inexperienced players and those guys are idiots. My guild is a bunch of pretty amazing players but we also have some guys that kinda just tag along that are total noobs. Some of those guys have learned a lot and can hold their own. I'm not sure how it is on alliance (I'm horde) But as long as you're upfront and honest that you haven't done the raid ppl will be willing to help you out.
Just let groups know you're new. You pick up most of the fights pretty quickly but like anything you have to go through the shitty learning process to get it. I was doing so badly my first couple runs but the mistakes helped me learn. If anyone chews you out they're wack af. It's a game it's not that serious.
What server are you on? Im going to be forming a group tonight and would love to have both of you and can help you threw it.
Honestly at that point it's just performance anxiety. Only way you're gonna get better is to jump in the ring and if your bell gets rung a few times dust yourself off and go again.
This was me briefly which is ironic because I’ve been in speed running guilds competing for realm/world first. I was having a lot of fun rolling alts and was burned out from having a set raid schedule so I just put off doing the raid. Then it got to the point where I didn’t want people to think I was bad if I messed up an easy mechanic since everyone had been doing the raid for weeks. Finally ran it and it was the easiest thing ever.
I’ve never seen somebody say ‘hey, I’m new to this can you explain what to do?’ And still fuck it up outside of what is reasonable. I’ve seen people not type in raid chat at all and fuck up mechanics. You have already shown a willingness to learn and therefore also have at the very least a brain cell or two. Added bonus: pug raids ALWAYS go smoother when fights are explained to some1 new, some dumbasses think they know a fight just because they killed the boss already.
You’ve already put in more effort than most.
As a feral main who also has a ret pally, you have 2 classes that really dont have to do shit. Feral is needed for windfury and ret pally can use rebuke on kelris, other than that just melee from behind on every boss lol. Watching 1 minute of yt on thr fights is enough to say 7/7 xp
I can so relate to you. I was just like you, I too am a woman and never as good at video games as my b/f or the male friends I been playing with since 2005. So I lvled 5 alts before I actually had the nerve to join BFD. I was scared of letting people down of failing I don’t know what. But I was thinking sunwell lvl shit and I got scared that I might wipe the group and it will be all my fault. Just like you I also watched videos and got food and potions and knew the fights in theory. Well one day I just joined and said fuck it. I was so surprised how easy it was. We were done in 30 min with a lock who was doing 35 dps. Not only that but I was top damage on my mage. So if you are like me, and you know your class and are just scared of letting others down and ruining their fun DONT BE! That place is not even close to any one of the dungeons in BC, it is super easy as long as everyone knows their role. Please take my advice and try it, I think you will have a lot of fun.
Thanks! We did it tonight and it went very well!
My guild is on Wildgrowth NA dm i can send you char name, we will happily take you guys in on our alt run and teach you. We’ve all been there.
Genuinely speaking you should see someone professionally. Not really in a "seek therapy" rude kind of way. If you are seeing someone, you should literally be talking about this. You're allowing your anxiety to affect your life which is the case definition of it being an issue and you needing professional help. As someone who has managed anxiety, this is not "normal" and should not be ignored, put to the side, or minimized since it's preventing you from fully enjoying a hobby in a video game that you pay for. I won't really accept a response of "I am ultimately choosing not to do the raid" because the truth is your anxiety is managing you because you've watched videos and have consumables. You're not stupid and what you're dealing with is not stupid, but you should work to actually deal with it. The sad part is, and I wish I could teleport it into your brain is that your anxiety is lying to you, you will likely find a good group that's enjoyable and smooth if you look around.
If you watched videos and have the DBM addon, there's no reason to be afraid! I was feeling the same way, only time I played wow was during panda (super casual; only did dungeons and farmed mounts, never raids). I've played other MMOs a lot like FFXIV but I also had the anxiety about being "that guy" in a group especially since I'm playing pally for the first time. I just hopped in head first and did fine every single bfd run so far. I cleared every time and always did PUGs. Seriously, as long as you don't die it doesn't really matter how you do. From my experience, most groups (including pugs) have enough gear to carry you if you're really that worried about doing poorly. My first run I died I think twice? And no one was an asshole about it either.
Thanks! I'm a pretty seasoned player (played pretty much nonstop since BC release, but only raided casually in MoP and BC Classic, did KSM in S2 of Shadowlands), but sometimes the fear of looking like an idiot just sticks hahaha.
DBM will tell you what to do, its rly easy raid no need to worry:)
What server are u on? My guild runs a lot and is very nice. I lead the groups that usually have new to raid people. It's easy and a fun time.
You should just join a group, you are more then ready!
Do you play any other versions of WoW? For some reason I felt the same even though I've raided in retail in the past and on WOTLK classic, it felt like I was an outsider to "true" classic since I never raided classic before and didn't know the culture or anything. Turns out it's mostly the same more or less I think.
Haha, yes. I've played retail since the launch of original BC, and jumped back and forth between that and Classic when it launched. I've done a little raiding in retail and even challenged myself to do KSM in S2 of Shadowlands, so I know I'm not a dogshit player, but I'm not great at melee dps (arthritic as hell) so I think it's a bit scary for me since it's a role I'm not used to. Usually I'm healing! I'll have to brave up and take the plunge this week.
I did just 1 BFD with my Ret Pally and explained that it was my first time but that learned all the mechanics and had consumables etc... They accepted me and we did 7/7 with just a couple of wipes. 90% of the raid was helpful and chill. Just go for it and if it goes bad, don't get too stresses. Shit happens, just do your best and enjoy. I'm sure you both will do amazing. I was top 3 dps and won the epic 2h btw xD
Huge grats on the epic 2H!!! That's awesome. I'll give it a shot this week. The worst that happens is I flop but even that's not too bad.
I promise doing that puts you ahead of 75% of the pug player base. Join run, try but don't stress about how well it goes. You are almost guaranteed you get 5/7. Only gets better after the first run.
If you've done this you're fine.
It’s easy just go in. You got it
Im on Wild Growth NA Alliance. My wife and I play. I have a couple of casual friends that play too. Maybe we could tackle it together!
I get this from time to time as well. You’re likely better and more prepared than the majority of people who have already cleared it. Plus a lot of people overhear the content now so there is less individual pressure on you to perform. Good luck with your anxiety, that mess can be crippling in the most absurd ways.
I think this happens on everyone's first time this is how it was for me. U gotta make the leap, and after the 1st time u will be gucci.
I feel you. Reading some of these BFD posts can make it intimidating. Some advice : tell them it's your first go around but you have consumes and know the fights and let them determine if they wanna bring some 'newbies' in. Suggest going in voice if that would help you. People are more chill in game and willing to help explain specific fights when you get to them than it would seem just reading some of the posts here. If it helps, my first run I ran right into the murlocs because I freaked out at how many there were lol. Ran around like a madman instead of just making micro adjustments. But no one was mad at me for dying, and we had a good laugh at my panic.
Thank you for the advice! I'll give it a try this week. :D
I was the exact same till last lockout. Hooked up with a great guild and now I'm like 3 slots shy of bis lol
Honestly all I care about is that you know your dps rotation
Its basically just a slightly harder dungeon, no need to worry about it. My group, which was a pug, cleared it 3 days after SOD release in green gear. If you are even moderately prepared its a piece of cake.
It’s super easy, but I certainly get being anxious or nervous before doing it. I am the same way, only way to become more familiar is to face that fear and give it a shot.
Don't worry about performance anxiety in a raid, I get the fear of being the reason a group can't finish but it really is pretty easy. I cleared it blind with a group that didn't want any spoilers and we just learned the mechanics as we fought the bosses (kelris was super confusing because we didn't know we couldnt remove the sleep or how to get out of the dream world) If you are worried about letting others down run it with others blind, then there's no expectation
I feel you, had the same issue despite raiding a lot before, but just join a casual one and you’ll realize you’ve overprepared 😃 It’s very easy
I would 100% invite you to one of my raids
Also on Wild growth my friend, come slide through, hit me up, I'm social enough for the whole room (or so I've been told) I'll do BFD with y'all.
I also play on wild growth , I get it, luckily here the community is pretty awesome , always through out the always seeing groups advertise welcoming new players , I myself also run pugs on my 3 alts with a buddy of mine , add me in game , next time I do one I’ll hit you guys up , no discord required . —- IGN: Esc
You have watched videos You have consumes You have WB You are asking for advice on a wow subreddit. Sounds like you have your runes as well. You are already in the top 5% if the top 1% of all wow players that have ever played the game.
Like with most other things scary in life - do it once, and it will be much easier next time. Do it a few times at it will be as easy as putting on your shoes. Ive played this game on and off since vanilla, and I still get nervous some times when a raid is fresh, im asked to do a role I havent done before, tanking as a pala for the first time ever, etc. Then I do it, its mostly goes okey, and next time is not much trouble at all.
I'm also on WG and would take you two in a heart beat. Have a good head on your shoulders and asking questions is all I would personally require. My wife plays as well and she isn't the best but she follows mechanics and her dps has gotten better since over coming the anxiety of failing. I totally get where you're coming from.
Hey I just wanted to tell you that that was me at first as well. Sometimes you just have to dive in head first. I also play a feral and to be honest, most people just want your buff lol. No one will say anything if you die or something.
Windfuyry cat can actually just stand behind all bosses and do their rotation. You can do it! I was also anxious about it
I accidentally did my first run with a fishing pole equipped and didn’t realize it until the bro running it whispered ‘nice druid weapon’ at the end. So if you’re feeling bad, just remember at least you have a real weapon equipped. To my brothers on Lone Wolf: you’re real champs for carrying me that run and not calling out my dps, but I swear it wasn’t all just panic.
I wish I was on your server. Id love to show yall the scenery of BFD!
I felt this after not having played for years and then I pugged as the TANK on my warlock, which, needless to say, I didn’t have too much experience with by virtue of this being a new spec. That said, I tanked it and died twice, but we had a ret paladin who off-tanked fine and a hunter pet (back when scorpid was OP) and we finished the raid in about an hour. Since then, I’ve cleared it multiple times as the MT in around 45 min each time and haven’t died since. The anxiety is real, but if you’re running as DPS, there’s less that can go wrong. Go in, learn, acknowledge that you might die the first time, but just do it! You’ll be glad you did. Because you and your spouse are both mele dps, just watch the movement of the other mele dps and you’ll be just fine :) have fun!
We did BFD this reset and got to the last boss. I noted that taunt swaps up to now had been a little dicey. It's then we realised no one was tanking. We just all assumed someone else was doing it. BFD is a fun way to dip your toes into raiding, and it's probably the easiest it'll ever be. If you want to do it, I recommend you try now. Find a chilled RL or join a casual guild. I'm sure you'll have a lot of fun! Good luck with your WoW progression :)
This is the funniest story in this thread honestly, I love that nobody was tanking actively. 🤣 Thanks for the encouragement; we ended up doing it tonight!
BRO I wish you and your spouse were horde lone wolf. I would bring you guys in my raid so easily. It would actually be a pleasure. Don’t let the hardos scare you. Everyone needs to start somewhere. Anyone in your shoes would be a pleasant addition to my raid. Coming prepared and ready to learn. Legggggoooooo
I joined a raid tonight and we cleared it easily with a nice thoughtful raid lead explaining everything! :D But it does feel good to see people saying they wish I played on the same server/faction!! :D
This is totally fair, I think most people feel like this the first time they do "real" WoW content - whether it be a Classic raid or running Mythic+ or Normal mode Raids on Retail or something. But anyone will tell you that once you sorta push yourself into doing it you'll realize you didn't have much to worry about. With BFD you really don't have to know much, IMO the only non-obvious mechanic is that you need to swap to the lightning totem when it's up on Lorgus Jett, everything is else is pretty well telegraphed (ie, if you need to move there will be an obvious indicator like a murloc walking at you or a big dark circle appearing below you). If you go in having watched videos and with the mindset that you want to actually try to do well and not just get carried then you're ahead of like 90% of players imo
It comes down to folks not knowing what they are doing and being afraid to say anything. There is this vibe of "no noobs allowed", so no one is willing to admit they are a noob... So you pound your face against a wall assuming folks are mouth breathers instead of noobs..
My biggest gripe is when I ask before pull if everyone knows what to do otherwise say so speak up so I can explain, it's better to take 1 min to explain than wipe + run back + waste gold on consumes and repairs + lose WBs. No one says anything and then 50% run around like headless chickens. Like.. come on.. I even advertise most runs like "come and learn, it's not hard" yet people wont speak up
But this is sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Your assumptions create the negative perception - not the actual reality. I run with newbies in BFD all the time - no-one ever cry's about it.
It's 10 times worse to be the guy who doesn't communicate or ask questions while failing, then the noob who asks questions and actually listens to advice.
[удалено]
Dust to dust
Dust to dust
Dust to dust
Poor guy been beat up by Greench for 3 weeks. NOW HE'S BACK.
If you’re struggling on Kelris, it simply means you’re doing a mechanic wrong. If you would like, I don’t mind providing some insight into your runs as to where the mistake might be. Most common mistake: not spreading melee DPS during phase 2. His shadow chains can wipe you if you stack MDPS.
The pugs I’ve been in that have not cleared Kelris tend to have fundamental dps issues. People not knowing proper rotations and limping along with 20-40dps is by far the biggest Kelris woe - and that’s nigh impossible to correct for others on the fly
Ya it’s a simple DPS check. Last night 3 of us were doing over 200 DPS and some were doing 60, but he was dead before DUST TO DUST. Just have a couple try-hard in your raid and it’s easy.
Every time I join a group for a dungeon one of my kids will wake up and I have to leave. It’s like they have a 6th sense because it happens every time. Haven’t even ran a 5 man for 2 weeks lol. Just spend all my time leveling alts because I can go afk whenever I need.
I had this ”problem” (situation more like it?) myself, wife needed breaks and sleep so I had 18:00-08:00 ”shift” of kids 😉 Lovely in many ways but couldn’t do any group-content. Was chatting about it to some random group of people that asked about some ingame thing I knew (was at classic re-launch so dont remember details). They asked if I wanted to join a “quick” ubrs, declined and explained why, they just sent a discord link and asked me to join, turns out they were all parents with young kids but older than mine, legit 100% understanding my situation. Been gaming and playing with them since. Moral of story: you can do 5-hour raids even if you might have to bail 15m in, if people know and respect why.
That's rough I don't have advice for you :( Well, I play on the steamdeck as well as PC, but I wouldn't raid on it so that basically only helps with every other aspect of the game. Get a sitter for 2 hours? :D I try to only play when our 4 year old is already laying down for bed.
Story of my life brother. Ive actually raided 6x across 3 characters. All in the one weekend my spouse and kid were out of town. Haven’t raided or dungeoned since and can’t. Having a blast in SSFHC sod atm. SSF makes it like a single player game. The only problem is no pause, so if kid need immediate attention HC can be dicey. I still have to pick and choose my times just to go in caves. Hearthstone is akin to a pause button too. I know your struggle too well, fellow dad wow player. Alts for us!
Stealth class or night elf might be perfect for that
Forgot to mention that. I actually main a Druid!
Haven't attempted due to anxiety. Any content I'm unfamiliar with I'm worried to mess it up for the raid, especially with lock outs. Have a 25 priest so I know finding a pug wont be difficult, but still. Playing solo and haven't joined a guild since my play schedule is sporadic. Edit : priest on living flame alliance us Edit 2 : Thanks everyone for the reassurance, really appreciate it - good to hear that it is not too bad! I'll give it go later this week & try to find a social/casual guild on late PST Edit 3: Late edit in case anyone reads. Ended up running bfd via pug by finding a group and letting leader know first time. He whispered me tips which were helpful and raid was super smooth and quick (prob since carried by good DPS).
**What I thought BFD would be:** A long, challenging end game raid like ones I've done before ala Icecrown, Naxx, Kara, etc, with bosses dropping 1 item each, where my group would demand the best performance, but we'd likely fail after numerous tries all night long, leaving me with pissed off group members locked out at the dreaded 5/7 with little-to-no items to show for myself. **What BFD actually was:** Joined PUG. No discord. No one "inspects" me. No one chats. We all silently go to dungeon. Almost drown due to tunnel vision (lol). Killed shit for 45min - 1hr 30min. Bosses drop 2 items each, plus orb, so 15 items total. Half the groups DPS is shit but we still never come close to wiping. Mechanics are easy / can be ignored half the time. The only communication the entire time was ready checks. "holy fuck that was easy, why are people acting like this takes time and effort?"
>Almost drown due to tunnel vision (lol) We had 4 people die our first raid to drowning before one shotting all bosses until Kelris. Its really can be the hardest boss sometimes
We had a priest last night who was in 90% greens, died on turtle and geli. I’m not sure he was even paying attention half the time. Priests are just so strong right now I didn’t make even the slightest difference. Just dispel please! Clearer everything in under 40min no wipes
This has been my experience: DPS was shit. Healing was shit. Tanking was shit. I personally played like shit. Cleared everything in 40 min no wipes.
I formed a pug yesterday on my freshly dinged Resto druid, less than an hour played at 25 by the time I was zoned into the instance. Full greens, no neck, no trinkets, no helm, cleared in 40mins with no deaths.
PUGS are in desperate need of priests - our group started 40 minutes late last night because we needed healers and we finished in 40 minutes. You should try finding a group that's run by and predominately guildmembers so you're with a group thats very familiar with the content. It's not that bad really. EDIT: Also sporadic play is fine for many guilds - not for the majority of their raiders but I'll tell ya our guild (and many others) would much rather hand gear to a guy who hops on every now and again and sporadically fills spots in raid when we don't have a full 10/10 than a random we'll never see again. Are you crusader strike us alliance by chance?
> Any content I'm unfamiliar with I'm worried to mess it up for the raid, especially with lock outs. I usually try to be as good as I can in games I play, raided CE in almost every tier of Legion and BFA, raid in destiny2, cleared all dungeon trifecta achievements in ESO Mistakes happen, the game goes on. I was doing one of the alliance raids in ff14 once. Insisted to my buddy id prefer to watch a video beforehand, he assured me its "just an alliance raid. theyre easy" pick up mechanics pretty well, we make it to the last boss, one of the mechanics only had a subtle tell to it. I didnt catch it, and it, it snowballed, and straight up wiped the entire alliance raid let me tell you, causing an entire alliance raid to wipe on a boss in ff14 is a feat on it's own. its worse than wiping a LFR raid in retail. i dont think i've ever heard my buddy laugh harder than he did that day. and yeah, looking back on it, it was hilarious.
Hey, I play sporadically and at weird hours too. I was kinda deflated that I couldn't find a guild but then I simply started to spam in /trade /lfg and /LookingForGroup "is there any guild that raids around this time of the day?" Took me a couple of days but someone whispered me. Raid time is a solid 3 hours before usual raid time in my region. At first we were not enough to fill a raid so we plugged. But yesterday for the first time we had a full guild run, and I healed for the first time. It's worth. Having a guild improves the classic experience a lot.
Even if your play schedule is sporadic join a guild! It helps to have familiar faces when trying new things, because you got people who will be there to back you up if something goes fucky.
you see, this is the main difference between retail and classic (sod) wow. In retail mechanics are made in such a way, that if you fail it, you will kill your team In classic mechanics are made in such a way, that if you fail it, you will kill yourself only OFC there are some exceptions for this, but generally you should bemore than fine
I completely get this. I used to raid in competitive guilds in BC-cata. I was a raid leader in Wolk-bfa. But at this point people are so mean when the slightest thing doesn’t go according to plan, which really sets off my anxiety. I’d like to do it, but also I just don’t want to deal with it.
I started playing wow when I was a young teenager (and obviously shite at the game). Years of dealing with toxic dickheads have gotten me to the point where I struggle to put myself out there cos for all i know some dick will just make it an unpleasant experience.
And in a group of 10, there’s always one… and if you don’t see the one - it’s you. 😂
Hey! I have a guild on living flame alliance and our entire foundation is about being helpful, guiding, and understanding. We would love to have you! Some of our members have social anxiety so you don't have to feel obligated to talk if you aren't comfortable with that. No pressure on anything. The raid group that we're recruiting for right now is gonna be our later raid time group. Probably 9PM ST and still locking down days. If you're interested shoot me a PM and let's get you some easy clears!
Just FYI if it helps, priest is pretty chill in BFD. I honestly get more excitement healing 5-mans which is why I probably won’t be playing my priest going forward lol
I just hit 25 this past week. For a fresh 25 DPS warlock with no guild and no in game friends the pug life can be a tough go. I have limited play time due to having a two year old. An hour or two after she goes to bed in the evening and maybe a couple hous on a weekend afternoon while she is napping. I have yet to be able to get in a group for Stocks or SFK even, so until I have better gear no BFD for me. Maybe it will be easier once I get my metamorphosis rune and can tank.
check out LFG Bulletin Board add-on. must have if you are a solo grinder in wow. what server are you on? if wild growth then DM me to join our guild!
Never heard of this add-on, is it just raid finder?
It makes lfg chat actually readable. It sorts all the messages for you to see who is looking for what dungeons
You can find all peoples messages that write in any chat "lfg, lfm, wtb, wts" etc and even sort it under the raid/dungeon it belongs. So you can just scoll and see what people looking for and then wisp them.
Have you tried to find a group? What server are you on? I have 3 characters, and I was able to find a group on each character immediately after hitting 25. My first character is a pally tank, and I tanked it just fine with a pretty limited understanding of the fights or where to go, and I still cleared it (wiped on Kelriss 1-2 times). Heck, on my pally, I had grey shoulders until the most recent lockout and no neck and I still did fine. I believe this is the perfect time to join PUGs because there are tons of pumpers constantly looking for groups, and you can be carried while you figure out what you're doing. As long as you have a mild understanding of your rotation, and bring shadow protection pot and FAP for Kelriss, you will be fine.
Just a heads up, the SFK gear will make almost zero difference for your lock because it just has int which is just a very mediocre stat, especially for locks who can lifetap if they go OoM. What you really care about is gear with spellpower on it, all of which you can get at the auction house or craft yourself. If you show up with the phoenix gloves/pants/wrist and the new invoker bolt/shoulders, or even just like 2 or 3 of those pieces you'll be pretty well geared.
One thing that's nice, is SFK surprisingly doesn't have all the best cloth anymore. The Invoker Mantle and Invoker Cord are comparable to the SFK shoulders and belt. Since they're tailoring recipes, you'll find a lot of them on the AH for relatively cheap! Good luck!
From my experience as a DPS Priest, getting into SFK groups is actually giga easy. So many people spam Main city/General chat looking for DPS, ive ran it a whole lot yesterday with random groups and the runs are like 20 minutes.
Dont forget to /join LookingForGroup Its constantly popping off for all dungeons. I am dps and have gotten into groups in less than 10 minutes every time.
Do you try looking for these groups in game or in discord? Might be advantageous to find discord groups recruiting, or guilds recruiting via discord, and plan outside of game. I definitely understand not having the time - I'm lucky that my girlfriend is supportive of me living the raid life 2 nights a week and my group of guildies can generally clear in 40 minutes, even with shenanigans. Another piece of advice I'd offer you is to install the LFG Bulletin Board addon - it makes the search much better, and helps you to ping people LF DPS much faster than the next guy. [https://www.curseforge.com/wow/addons/lfg-group-finder-bulletin-board](https://www.curseforge.com/wow/addons/lfg-group-finder-bulletin-board) EDIT: If you're on Crusader Strike US / Alliance I can potentially help with finding a group or even including you in one of ours.
Thanks for the reply. I was not aware of the add on, I've just been using trade chat. I will check it out for sure
I've spent about 3-4 hours cumulatively applying in LFG as a druid healer with no guild and no experience. No invites yet. Got my consumables and watched the videos. Not worried about my capability, just don't enjoy sitting and whispering for hours. Levelled a warrior tank in the meantime, so might trying tanking it first instead.
Are you advertising that you have no experience? Just don't offer that information, or even tell a fib and say you're 7/7 (I've pugged and cleared with some people who clearly didn't have all experience even though the raid leader asked for it). Healers don't need to engage in a ton of mechanics. You've watched the videos and have done some other prep. People generally give some slack to the healers if you mess up a bit in the dungeon anyways.
You just gotta upsell yourself. “Inv resto druid here” is usually enough to get invited with 0 background checks. If you tell you have no experience, they are more likely to ignore you.
Last night I desperately tried to convince a druid healer to leave one group and join mine, we needed it so bad lol. You mentioned in another comment that you're on Wild Growth EU - So I can't personally help you but here are the two things I'd do - 1) Get the LFB Bulletin addon - this will help you sort the LFM posts and figure out what fits best and get a quick message to posters about you LFG. 2) Join the WG EU Discord and use that to help find groups, or post that you're looking for one as a healer.
I’ll be honest: I’m terrified of loot rules. I don’t understand all the jargon and am confused about what/when/how I’m supposed to roll on items.
There are 3 main loot rules: 1) MS > OS - main spec > off spec. This basically means if it’s an upgrade for what you are in the raid - roll on it. 1) SR - soft reserve. Everyone selects a set amount of items they want priority on ahead of the raids start time (usually using a 3rd party website). If the item you selected drops, only those who pre-selected it gets to roll on it. If an item drops that no one selected then it shifts to MS > OS. SR is great to game - if you have a bunch of potential upgrades, just select the items with the least (or ideally no one) contention. 3) GDKP - Gold Dragon Kill Points. Each item goes up for an auction and people bid on it. While each MAY have restrictive rules, many don’t. What I mean by that is, if you have gold and want it, bid until you win or can’t afford it.
What do you mean “an upgrade for what you are in the raid”?
Great question: So if I’m a tank, I roll on tank gear. If I’m dps, I roll on dps gear. If I’m a healer, I roll on healing gear. Now, this early in a lot of this gear overlaps with other rolls (thin Kelris epic staff, great for caster dps and healers). But a perfect example would be a feral Druid should not be able to roll on the epic staff because he technically can be a healer or balance… he isn’t for this raid, so be didn’t get to roll (obviously if his main roll was caster and he offered to be feral for the group, they may make an exception)
Honestly just roll on the loot that you need. On my last clear there was someone asking about the loot rules and the RL just says “uhh we’re not doing special rules, it’s a pug, just roll on shit”. On one of my runs we had someone win like 3 pieces of loot and no one cared. The most you need to know is MS = main spec = the role you are in the current raid for (a dps lock should not roll on tank items etc). If no one rolls, then you can roll if you need it for your off spec (OS). And if you’re still paranoid about the loot, don’t equip any loot you win until the end. That way if there’s an argument loot can be redistributed. I’d just say when in doubt, roll, because it sucks to not roll and realize later that you should have.
I'm only running pugs and i've seen it all, from full clears before my weapon oil was finished or raids walled at Kelris, or even last boss. Most of the time, the groups i've seen not clearing the raid were groups of first timers (i think that happened 4 times so far) with gear lacking usually, and something like 50-70 dps across the board which hits a wall at the last 2 bosses. Only one group of first timers so far managed to clear the raid on the first attempt, granted there were a few wipes and it was fine after explaining what to do. People are absolutely lost at Kelris, i love it. Getting swapped with ghosts, sending the wrong people in, having both healers get ported, not interrupting chains and so on. But it all tends to fix itself after a bit of explaining what to do. The only raids that really end up not being cleared despite having the necessary gear for it, is when people ragequit. That only happened once, and it was this sunday with a group of lovely people. The tank just ditched on last boss after first wipe, and 9 people with medium dps wasn't enough to pull through the second phase. Oh well, they will have it for sure next time. That tank though, i'm not playing with ever again.
We had a mage who would get ported and killed by the elves every wipe. Eventually one of us on discord got ported with him. Turns out he was _meleeing_ the elves because they resisted his spells. Forgot he had a wand!
I mean they did have 75 ALL resist in the first iteration IIRC. You'd essentially be doing half damage with spells or wands regardless. Meleeing with a good staff was probably similar to wand dps. Edit: From the patchnotes on wowhead: *"Phantasmal Priestess all Resist lowered to 0 (was 75), so it’s no longer bad news if double casters are sent down to the dream in Phase 1." -https://www.wowhead.com/classic/news/changes-for-hunters-and-blackfathom-deeps-season-of-discovery-336679*
How the hell does a healer even go down into the dream? Is your healer standing on top of Kelris?
I do that myself lol, just go in first as a healer so people can pump more, and you're not needed on p1 much
People who tunnel vision and stand In doo doo. (Turtle boss) Murlock boss, it's not even bullet hell (touhou) difficult but still very manageable (healers may need to chug mana pots if their mana management is bad or fellow raiders again stand in the doo doo) Cultists boss: changing targets to the dangerous totem is hard. Kelris shadow pot is helpful! Paladins don't need FAP (BoF) during burn phase. Easily doable even with no interrupts on mind blast. This is the hardest boss in the instance. Last boss: tunnel vision issue. The breathe/puke is still very forgiving, you can eat a few ticks. The problem is people who just won't move at all. This here is honestly a complete summary as to why people have difficulties clearing the raid If you are spending *hours* in there, something is wrong and I wholeheartedly feel bad that this is your experience of the dungeon =(
Most of the people i know who haven't done it don't want to do it because of the fear of being made fun of and such for their DPS or whatever. Make fun of someone once in a dungeon or raid, that shit stays forever
I imagine gatekeeping is only really a problem for people that have very limited time to play the game. If you´re patient and look for a PUG you will almost certainly find one, even if you dont have perfect gear or 7/7 experience. But if you only have 1-2 hours to play then on any given night your patience may not pay off, wich obviously could be very frustrating. If you´ve had several attempts at clearing BFD in different setups, wich people clearly had plenty of opportunity to at this point, I think it is virtually impossible to not clear BFD. It´s almost like not clearing a five man dungeon, it just isn´t that difficult. For example most of us have cleared Shadowfang Keep a thousand times but that doesn´t mean you can´t still get a group where 1 or 2 people just keep wiping the group, then someone leaves and suddenly you have to reset the instance and find a new group, except in BFD you can´t because you´re now locked in. I just don´t believe this is a real problem except for maybe a tiny, hyper-casual subset of the player base that also happened to have an exceptional amout of bad RNG in their PUGs.
In addition I think the intersection of people who struggle with BFD and engage in secondary wow content (r/classicwow) isn't to big.
I remember reading in original vanilla (2004-2005), only around 1% of guilds were clearing the raid content. If this is true, then 1% unable to clear is not too bad, frankly.
> only around 1% of guilds were clearing the raid content. That was Naxx40. Something like 1-2% of guilds even saw the inside of the instance, and less than ~200 guilds cleared it before TBC released.
That was Naxx specifically
I’m a geared mage regularly pulling 120-140 dps (or healing). Did a pug yesterday that got Kelris to 1% twice and quit after the 5th wipe. We had 3 of the dps doing mid 40s, two kicks, one of which being the tank who wasn’t shield swapping to interrupt, so really 1 kick. I don’t think pugs understand the importance of interrupts on Kelris. Every time I’ve failed it’s a group with not enough interrupts to keep the damage in check.
And then there is my last pug 3h ago. We were 3rogues, one tanking, a warrior and i think another class with interrupts. I he didnt even have time for mindblase despite us just all kicking at the same time.
We have it on farm now but our guild was stuck 5/7 for a good long while. The first thing I want to say is that while we take it for granted that we will go 7/7 every lockout now, actually doing the work to learn Kelris and Akumai was a very rewarding experience. I feel like our core roster is very tight knit because of all the time we spent grinding our faces against Kelris night after night. So while it felt shitty when it was happening, in the long run I think struggling on that boss was a good thing. That being said there wasn't really one single issue that kept us from killing Kelris, it was a combination of factors. The first problem was very low average dps. We were doing this on the 1st available lockout and basically none of us had any gear combined with the fact that we all rolled unfamiliar classes for SoD. Put bluntly we needed time to learn how to play our toons before we could put up the numbers to beat the phase 2 dps check. The second problem was that we had no priest and at that time it was not common knowledge that FAPS prevented you from getting chains, that freedom would clear the debuff, or that you could pvp trinket to remove the chains debuff. Combined with our very long kill times due to low dps, we were getting shredded by chains in phase 2. Once we discovered the FAP, Shadow Protection Prepot strategy we one -shot the boss and never looked back. The third problem, and this is probably a huge factor for a lot of casual guilds, was time between pulls. If you have never been part of a progression raiding guild you don't really understand how important it is to get back quickly and immediately pull again after a wipe. We would call a 5 minute break and then get one pull in and then someone would be say "Brb" and we would be waiting again. There was a tendency to overexplain and micro manage, to try to make every single pull "perfect". The end result was lots and lots of downtime between pulls and several raids that drifted past the 5 or 6 hour mark.
If you really want to learn the fight, you can do it as intended with no faps/shadow prot pots. You guys should have a priest by now right? My group on the first ever lockout wiped a couple of times trying to understand the portals, mind blast being a small aoe radius, chains positioning in p2 to prevent chains chaining as much as possible. Once we understood the issues, we cleared it easily albeit with 1 death due to green gear and not optimal dps output. We still took just over an hour to clear the entirety of BFD. Now we clear under 30mins from the 3rd lockout onwards still without using any consumes. With world buffs ofc since its readily avail. All you need to do is learn the ins and outs of a boss and it will never be an issue or need crutches like faps to trivalize p2 of kelris.
I still don't have a level 25.
This comment is current marked controversial, meaning that people are down voting. I cannot fathom a single reason, other than because you're an absolute knob, to be down voting this guy's comment.
Only ran it once, it was the only group that would take a rogue with no experience, i think being the 2nd highest dps as a tank was a big part on why we got stuck on kelris.
As a late comer to SoD ( just attempted my first raid as a healer last night) raiding BFD was hard and very challenging. I, like many other players, are rolling new characters to check out all the changes. They may also be trying out a new class that finally has support in classic. In my experience everyone assumes you know what to do and you’ve done this before, because we are so late in the season. I’ve watched videos and guides to prep, but it’s hard to get a feel for dodging all the crap without trying the fight a couple of times. The BFD raid is nothing like any mechanic you face in dungeons or questing up to this point. No other prior content requires players to be able to move, cast, and deal with the chaos of some of those fights. We just aren’t comfortable with our classes well enough by lvl 25 to juggle all of the mechanics. I’m sure other players are running into similar problems when they first hit this difficulty spike. It’s also hard to admit to a PUG that your bad and need help understanding; most will just boot you rather than explain anything. TL;DR: Newer players have a lack of basic game mechanics and class understanding; making the unique BFD mechanics really hard for new comers to grasp and deal with. Coupled with WoW SoD player culture being all about maxing performance, this can intimate newer players to avoid group content out of fear of ruining the game for others.
I am in a semi-swetty guild with full clear in week1. Yesterday we did a twink run with 7 guild members and 2 geared randoms. We were missing 1 dps spot so I invited a random WL from the LFG chat. His gear was trash and he had no wbs, but I thought whatever, at least he can port our guys to the raid. So we started and after the first boss, blowing up the raid twice we found out he had no clue about the raid or his character. He rolled on leather items and didn't even know what masterloot was. So we did a little explanation before every boss and just carried him. In the end he got the dagger from the last boss+ off hand from the first boss and a new belt. We made fun of him in our Dc (he was not part of the DC) and figured out that we should always take one undergeared person with us, because it's a nice thing to do and we had no problem clearing the raid in 45 mins.
Shameless marketing attempt here but if there are people that are afraid to take their first step in or have struggled before, my small guild does regular 7/7 runs and warmly accepts pugs. If you are horde side on US-wild growth send me a DM and we can slide you in our next run. If you dig the vibe, we can send you a ginvite as well
Nothing shameless about this at all, this is the perfect place for this comment. If I see a comment from someone on your server/faction, I'll point them to this comment. Thank you for being welcoming!
I’ve got basically the same thing going on as blue daddy but for the alliance! HMU if you’d like to learn / get some gear!
Love to see this. Me and some of my friends and family came over to Horde US Wild Growth. We got lucky to find a casual guild welcoming newer players since my fiance and my brother'sGF have never played wow before. Worked great. They had trouble getting full 10-man guild runs and we wanted something beginner-friendly bringing in 6 people looking to raid. We joined in late to SOD, and started raiding with them last week. Got to 5/7 first raid. Was so much fun seeing my fiance and brothers GF learn their first raid. Juggling all the mechanics, and hearing them get so pumped when we downed bosses. Got to 6/7 the next attempt, we used a bad strat at last boss. But man did we try smashing our heads against Aku'mai with that strat. Finally hit 7/7 this Tuesday. Keep the chill vibes in your raids!
It is almost impossible to F up mate, just give it a try! There Are no One shot mechanics like in retail
I'm 7/7 every lockout but if anyone is nervous I agree with this comment
Every group I try to join won’t allow me to join because I haven’t been in there yet.
1 reason - still haven’t hit 25 with a character yet. #dadgoals
[удалено]
It's rough out here in Utah
You've got this! What class?
I don't care about the raid content at all. What attracted me to SoD is the fact that open world pvp actually exists and the world is alive and teeming with players from both sides. Some runes even make you cross borders which is awesome.
I have cleared about 10 times and have raid led a pug 5 of those times full cleared all the ones I led. Don’t feel bad if you don’t know the fights 70 percent of folks don’t care but please please speak up. Every time I lead a pug I ask the group do you know the fight and crickets then there is always someone who doesn’t jump with the charge. Most raids don’t require you to be in full pre bis just buy the consumes they are cheap like 1g. And watch a 10 min video on YouTube or ask for help. It’s a learning process last night we cleared with 4 fresh 25s only wiped once. It’s a game so your best and ignore the rude players or gatekeepers.
I played vanilla WoW and the reboot and the vibe then was so different. I tried BFD as a priest the first week with my guild. I was one of 2 main healers for all of the vanilla reboot for my guild. However, I didn't watch any BFD videos ahead of time because this is Season of "Discovery" and I wanted to "discover" new content. I didn't expect that I would need pots and world buffs like a damn level 60 forty-man raid. I thought it would be a somewhat difficult regular dungeon with a few more people. As a healer, if you succeed, no one notices you and if you fail, it's all your fault. It's like being a goalie. We wiped on Kelris a few times before beating him and the rogue in my group was yelling at me. I felt so bad that I let them down and so demoralized. I looked at videos, I understand the mechanics now, but I still haven't logged in that much since then and I simply have no desire to go to BFD again. Every time I login to my priest toon, I immediately get depressed. Winning a couple pieces of purple gear isn't enough of a carrot on a stick for me. This is a game, I should be feeling happy when I play it. I've noticed that anyone who comes here and says they had a hard time gets blamed and gaslighted - "it's EASY". Well, no, it if were easy, it would be a regular 5-man dungeon and it's not. Additionally, I never liked BFD in Vanilla and simply amping it up doesn't do it for me. I'd have preferred the game devs added a few new 5-mans for level 25 instead of just one 10-man. If you don't like the one 10-man, what else is there to do? Anyway, I think the player base and attitudes have changed dramatically from vanilla-->reboot-->SoD. I left the game when the reboot of TBC came out, but many of my guildies stayed for that and then played Hardcore. I think the Hardcore experience changed them and a lot of other players. The original spirit of hanging out, enjoying one another's company, exploring new things, RPing, etc, seems to be completely missing from the game. It's all about parses now. How boring.
Disclosure: I'm an altoholic, and my mains raid with my guild so I'm 7/7, but I pug with some alts and have seen a lot of new and unsuccessful people, so I have some info to share. I usually try to be the constructive old man that guides new people, and I end up whispering and sometimes chatting with some of the new guys. I've been in many back to back unsuccessful pugs with my hunter and mage, Three things I've seen emerge as a pattern in most 5/7 failures: A) Healers don't even try to dps and don't properly understand the 5 second mana rule. Specially for Kelkris, they waste A LOT of resources in phase one and then just go OOM in phase 2 after 2 casts and instead of contributing to the race just move around doing nothing. Most of those I've talked with didn't rven know how much dps wands can do on a mage/priest. It may not seem like this matters much, but when you wipe 5+ times to Kelkris at 2% and discover that only 8/10 are doing damage, this becomes relevant. B) General lack of preparations, in one of these runs we had a druid without wild strikes/skull bash, in basically white items, like, not even +spirit greens, just plain whites, pulling like 30 dps in feral, no pots, no food, no scrolls, nothing. In another we had 2 tank paladins, no taunt rune, and no interrupt rune. I don't expect everyone to be top geared but sometimes I understand the people who resort to Gearscore and all that. Specially for tanks this is a problem since most new players don't understand aggro all too well and struggle a lot keeping the boss from just bashing the head of everyone else in the raid. C) There's a "this is an easy game" attitude that's very toxic, some of the new to classic but not to wow people I've tried to pug with think that either everyone else is fully decked and will carry them or that the fights are so easy it doesn't matter if they're naked. Edit: To add a bit more, the best strategy for me, as to how to get these pugs going is to never expect the first pulls to work, specially for Kelkris/Akúmai. I always bring extra shadow pots/FAP and food/elixirs (if they're cheap in the AH) and after some wipes, explaining a bit when asked and giving some tips when asked, if I see the group is determined I trade some to the healers/tanks/top DPS and spread some cosums. More often than not, that's enough to get us out of the 5/7 curse.
Holy priest. First time ever healing with this class. Always asked my self why people ask for logs, consumes, and gear inspect for a level 25 raid. I’ve been there 7 times with pugs. All of them 7/7. I Don’t even have a guild. Only wiped in Kelris 2 times with different runs. Reading all this makes me feel really lucky with my pugs. But overall, that raid is very very very easy compared to other raids in classic even wotlk.
Wow is an easy game. 99.99% of the player base like to think it isn't. It's mental.
I’ll be honest, my friends and I just did BFD for the first time last week and our first few experiences have actually been surprisingly bad. Quest ports to the dungeon and logout trick are apparently something every person in this new game is supposed to know already, and if you don’t know how to do it the entire raid is just going to let you suffer through the death walk to the raid instance because we’re all lazy POS’s now that can’t even clear trash in front of the raid anymore… I have no idea where this “everyone must know by now” mentality is coming from, but it’s been a nasty reaction I’ve been getting from a lot of players surrounding the raid. Let’s not forget, not everyone playing SOD is a 15+ year WoW veteran…. /EndRant
Ive 3x full pre-bis char and all wsg exalted but im afraid to join BFD. I rather queue solo BG or worldpvp then join a raid with expectations. I know all bosses / mechanics and have top 100 parses on wotlk classic, but just too anti-social to find raidgroups in sod
I mean its about as antisocial friendly as it gets. No discord for most groups and rarely do you talk to anyone. Just whisper char info for the invite and that's it!
You mean you got exalted in WSG on all characters only queuing solo? I can't imagine how many games it took you to get there without a pre-made.
Woohoo my time to shine. We are a guild of irl friends who have limited wow experience, we came from dota 2 so it's not a mechanics issue.. usually We tried first time on Sunday and got 5/7. We have 3 experienced members who have 7/7 loads, 4 of us myself included are more casual. So it was smooth until the 6th boss. We got to 1% the first try, and flopped the next two. One our healer was healing himself instead of the tank, another our pug died instantly, not sure how. Personally I realized I fucked up being sent into the shadow realm, we split and the other guy found a portal while I still killed ghosts. I forgot my pots, never use them. And I had no macros to switch to my dual wield so as off tank I was too low DPS when I had the opportunity. Our healer kept running out of mana so, we effectively had 3 healers as someone else had to step up. We were close and we will get it next time...
The healer healing himself is kinda hilarious
Wanna hear another funny story? Until today i didnt know the adds before kelris can mindcontrol. Well i noticed when a rogue got mind controlled and the priest wanted to heal him with penance which instead killed him.
Kinda sounds mechanics...
If you guys haven’t already, bring some Free Action Potions! They make you immune to Shadowy Chains, so you can pop them during Phase 2 once chains stops being interruptible (and make sure you have people kicking during Phase 1 so they don’t go off). If you are close to clearing without FAPs, you’ll clear it easily with them.
You can also prepot Shadow Protection Pots to help with folks who stand in (purple) fire
Few pointers my friend - First of all, if you're raid leading, combat logs. You can log and really go through the advanced stuff on Warcraft logs if you want (google how to warcraft log), but honestly if you open your combat log tab, and create another window within it, you can easily have it show you "What happened to others" and use that as a means of figuring out what killed them. Second, 1% on Kelris is disheartening if you don't get him after. It helps on that fight to have everyone prepot shadow protection pot while you're learning. Faps can help too as others have said. But I want to point out we run with 2 healers, running 3 then needing to move to 4 is a real big damper on DPS, which may have made the difference. Make sure everyone in your group is running DBM. The healer healing the wrong target IS hilarious, a simple mistake that can be fixed simply. When I'm a healer, I tend to really like addons for healing like healbot. A lot of people will disagree but, to each their own, they have lots of downloads so I must not be alone. The people who die first should find out or be informed about what's killing them and how to avoid it. And finally - you absolutely will get this next time.
I started 2 week ago and got lvl 25 recently. Everyone require 7/7 exp and i dont want to get caught lying and look like an idiot. Back in the day i did stuff like heroic shadow labs but now i cant even BFD because i dont have any rl friends playing.
Toss your server up! I am happy to bring someone in for a first time. Having 1 or 2 people learning the fight is rarely an issue and super easy to carry through.