My name is Solomon, and today I would like to tell you about Tylosaurus.

Moroes

This is my first effort at a guide to Karazhan bosses; I see the same types of questions repeatedly asked during raids, and it just seems that current guides are not sufficiently detailed to guide raids through these fights. Two of my favorite guides for these instances are

The guide, with movie file, from Pillage

[url]http://karazhan_bosses_moroes.uber.com/[/url]

and Bosskillers various guides,

[url]http://www.bosskillers.com/cgi-bin/bbguild/index.cgi?sid=S4GqVCd2K6&action=bosspage&bossid=121 [/url]

These two provide a great background on the fight, and the movies are invaluable; the wowwiki is also a great resource for this fight, which takes some experience to complete due to the various adds that may be encountered with Moroes.

To begin with however, you have to clear this room; and there are both stationary and wandering pats. A cloaked party member can enter this room without detection and mark the wandering "waiters" which circle around the tables; there are always four, and at least two will make a circuit past the table at the entrance, which can lead to surprises; so just use all your raid marks to indicate those 4, and the table aoe groups which may or may not come with the wandering pats. This simplifies the job of the later pulls, since you can always find these mobs later through walls and you will be aware of their approach to avoid surprises.

Once the room is clear, you have the adds, or 'guests', on the raised area with Moroes. The simple approach is to double tank Moroes, and control the adds. The trick is in the crowd control, which depends highly on group composition.

There are two basic groups with Moroes; female casters, and male warriors/paladins. The basic rule is to control the males, and kill off the female casters first. Of the female casters, we typically designate kill order as Dorothea Miltstipe first; she is the shadow priestess, and can mana burn out a healer in a heartbeat, as well as doing tons of damage in a short time frame if not handled. Second in kill order is the other female caster, either the holy priest (Catriona Von’Linda) or holy pally (Keira Berrybuck). Their heals will mess with the kill order if they are not dealt with, although on their own neither do much damage, and die quickly since they are clothies.

The more specific approach that I want to explain is when you do not have 2 priests, and therefore two shackles for a caster and one warrior. That is an ideal situation, but more typical is a mixed group with at most one priest, or none at all.

Hunters can trap the two warriors; but the resist chance on these traps, and the shortened duration of traps, makes each trap attempt a liability to the group without a backup. By backup, I mean the following:

1. A good hunter can time out a trap sequence so the 2nd trap can be dropped at the same time the first one activates; they need a 30 second lead time, and a trap timer or the stopwatch function (/sw command) to time it accurately, but it can be done.

2. The second approach would be to safety trap with a second hunter, who would just stack another trap on the first activated trap.

3. Kiting; this is not as preferable to trapping, since kiting can lead to multiple raid deaths if for any reason the mob peels off to attack healers or other dps targets. A hunter can concussion shot one mob, then kite with pet and frost (not ice) traps, leading that mob around the room while the casters are killed off. This completely diverts a dps player off target, so skull (always dorothea milstipe) and triangle (second caster) die slower. and can potentially cause problems with traps or shackles.

4. Stuns/fears. This is least preferable, but can be done if you have a pally/rogue combination. A pally can fear undead, which is a real problem if the target leaves the room and resets your event. To avoid this, the loose mob can be pulled to the left side with Moroes and triangle; and then stunned by the pally or rogue, for enough time to cast fear. Spam fears can take over from there, repeatedly stunning and fearing that mob until the group is ready to tackle it. Two paladins for example can repeatedly stun and fear a mob like this; however they definitely have a resist factor that must be taken into account, just like the other mobs and trap or shackle resistance; nothing lasts as long as you want or expect, so everything requires safety trapping or constantly renewing shackles.

The warrior/pally mobs are high health/high armor targets, and not suitable for pet tanking. The damage they deal makes it unlikely any pet can withstand them for very long, even with heals from the master.

If things go to wrong, remember to run out of the room to reset the event. Moroes does have an enrage timer, and if too much of the group is down and dps drops below a point where he can reasonably be disposed of, it is time to run out and reset.

Our typical raid placement puts Moroes and triangle (second caster target) to left of his stage, near the wall. This avoids any complications from the tanks dealing with this target; and sticks triangle far enough to the side that a fear will not send her out of the room. Skull is typically tanked by an OT, like a ret pally or fury warrior, or by pets, or by a rogue repeatedly stunning while the group dps takes her down. Triangle can be feared during this process, and seems to return to the tank who pulled her originally.

Trap targets are placed to the right side of the room, to avoid aoe effects and conflicts with tank placement. Shackle targets are typically kept on th e stage where Moroes begins, so it is plain enough when a shackle breaks, and there is time to recast some control on that target.

Raider and Veteran Raider

Our officers met over this designation and decided on the following criteria.

For those who want to be considered as regular end game raiders, these two designations exist to help captains pick out substitute team members quickly and easily. To attain these rankings, however, you must at the very least have the mandatory addons, which at this point are Ventrilo, and Omen2. The recommended addons are Deadly Boss Mods, and Group Calendar. There are lots of other helpful addons, but this is now our official list; please contact an officer if you are having trouble with installs.

In terms of your rough gear scoring, we use the web page be.imba.hu ; this ranking software will quickly provide a score for those who wonder how their gear stacks up. Your Imba score appears near the graph of instances you are eligible to enter; and an Imba Score of 125 is mandatory for Raider membership.

You must run instances under a captain and that captain must then recommend your name to myself or to Aniscoria, the personnel officer; for final checking and promotion of your rank.

These three requirements; addons, gear score, and captain's recommendation, are all simple criteria we are going to use from now on for the Raider rank.

Veteran Raiders are those with the following additional statistics;

Gear Score must be at or above 200, in imba;

and you must have cleared both Kara, and Gruuls.

Any team captain may then make a recommendation that your rank be promoted to Veteran Raider.

Beginners Karazhan Team, 0727 and 0728

This team of Massacre members and random pugged chars was able to clear through Prince last night; and we could have done more if we hadn't run out of time. Along for their first real runs ever were

Thorthor, hunter
Loenwolf, rogue
Cathalii, priest
Veracity, shaman


and pugged from the crowd were newer members

Beotchsquach, priestess
Tagon, hunter
Tomatoned, Warrior

Newer members came out of it with at least one item, and in Thorthor's case, a slew of drops for his hunter. Throwing together these pugs on Sundays is going to be my consistent practice now, since it quickly gears these new members for participation in Kara runs and beyond; brand new 70s can run through Kara with an experienced team and gain entire sets of gear in one night. These runs accomplish more for me than the 'badge runs' and helps us attain our goals in Gruuls and Mags. Please feel free to use the pug folks identified above, as well as the chars from The Elite who ran with us, like Tagon, Warthelm(pally healer) (Dragonsdeaths alt) and Sithadan(warlock) (alt is holy priest, Alters). Expanding the useful group of our available healers and tanks can't but help our later efforts.

Karazhan, Blue Team July 24

With a brand new team composed of myself as a healer, we actually went through to chess event with only two healers total (Kokoro and myself) and managed to drop Netherspite, Illhoof, and Nightbane; Prince, we did with only Nistagmus and myself for most of the fight, healing the entire group! Kokoro died from enfeeble and Shadow Nova in the first few minutes, and Nist and I with a combined total of a bit over +1200 hps kept the entire group up; we lost Boramire at one point as the OT, due again to Shadow Nova and a really rough placement on an infernal that landed right between us, and Prince; but we succeeded, which was bloody amazing.

We also took through three new members; Apollock, Tryphosa, and Tamron. Each of them were able to experience Kara for the first time; Boramire was able to make it through to Prince as his own first. Apollock received three new epic pieces, due in part to the generosity of Blarlock who simply conceded the warlock loot due to the tremendous upgrades they represented to Apollock. This was, on Blarlock's part, a great gift and truly a team oriented decision, and is one of the best things about this guild.

Saturday at 6:00 p.m. this week, our next run with only Nightbane left; Stats for the run are at

Wowwebstats

As the MoA, my chars are able to cover these runs into Karazhan as backup chars; with a tank, hunter and healer I seem to be pretty flexible and able to help any Karazhan team out; if we don't keep scheduling runs the same time every night, hint, hint. I am trying to arrange to be available for the big nights, as backup, so that any run can form up roughly on time. My healer is now geared for end game instances, since I was able to badge loot my boots, and received a neck piece, and weapon, on this Kara run. My hunter is a moderate level dps, but survival specced for the cc in Karazhan; and since he is not my main, it is not a priority for me to run into Karazhan each week with a defined team.

Master of Arms, and down to business

I was recently appointed to the Master of Arms position; and to everyone in the guild I wanted to say I appreciate your trust in me, and it is an honor to receive this promotion. I hope that I meet your expectations.

Down to business; our Karazhan runs are becoming steadily more successful, as are the Gruul's efforts. Our membership took a recent climb in the past two weeks, so more are joining the ranks; and as a result, more are asking to enter end game instances. Each captain is traditionally responsible for choosing the membership of their teams, but it could be simplified somewhat by guild rankings. I was asked to propose a system of ranking raiders as either Raiders or Veteran Raiders; and I am forming my ideas about how such a system would work. I am asking, however, that anyone with ideas about this issue please comment.

Second, we now have what may be three full kara teams; Blue, Gold, and 'Dom'. Additionally, I was running a weekend Kara run of pickup members from both Massacre and The Elite; as well as other qualified members of other guilds who had not yet run Kara. I will probably continue to do this, and call that team Kara PUG; but our newer members may wonder why we have four different teams with differing names, no real convention, and no way to contact team captains without more information. I am asking the captains, or any interested Kara team member, to comment on this development. We most likely need a single naming convention that is uniform and easily explained; colors, captains names, veteran down to rookie, any of these might do.

This kara run was not as successful as you would expect; we were low on dps, and high on tanks, so curator was not very successful. The flares simply took us out, one by one. I think this run again proves that two tanks are the limit on melee dps for curator; you need ranged, because your main job is flares.

Healing this fight is rough; the damage is spread across the group, particularly when a flare hits any group of us too close together. The extra tanks in particular are targets, repeatedly.

Stats July 10 Karazhan