Upcoming Weekend, and Standards

One of the things that caused me to leave Council of Armageddon, and come to Massacre, was the disorganization for the newer members and their failure to give folks any idea as to when they would be going to end game instances like Karazhan; they promised for over a month to bring folks in, and never did. Massacre was just starting out in Kara at the time, and I quickly became the tank along with Moonfala and Dom, in those very early days when we wiped on Attumen every week.

I promised if I got to make decisions over stuff like that, I wouldn't leave people hanging; and so every week I look to see what is going on the calendar, and I see who is attending Kara and who is not able to go. Weekends are now my times to be available to run instances, and my own interest isn't really in Kara anymore; but there are plenty who want to go, and we now have enough healers and tanks to run teams every week. I am not sure what happened with Gold, but I gave up my spot on Blue, and hope that Jumba is allowed to captain that team. My interest is in pushing new members into raids so the guild moves forward not back. Gold team is not scheduled this week, so I talked to The Elite and they have members ready to go to Kara, as do we; so on Sunday, the 'second team' for lack of a better word is forming up for the first time to jointly pursue a Kara clear; if you are a new member to Massacre, you should sign up for the chess event with Blue, first, to get into Kara and try for the pieces that drop out of that very easy event. You can sign up on Group Calendar as a standby, and put a note in your attendance line that you are available to sub in. If you are a member with blue raid gear or a dps member with extensive pvp gear, and have not been to Kara this week, please sign up on Sunday for the full clear.

Now, about standards; newer 70s are asking about going to Karazhan and raids, and I wanted to put down what I think the low average is for those players. Most of these minimums are reachable with blue equipment obtained from heroics or crafts.

For dps classes, your dps against ?? bosses should be over 380; a good average is over 400. Your average in pvp or in regular instances is not comparable since the ?? bosses are considered 72 for attack and defense calculations. Melee is not a major part of most kara fights, for reasons that pertain to boss fights; most bosses in kara inflict major damage on targets close to them, and while each fight is specific, for the most part no more than two rogues/fury warriors/ret pallys/feral cats are needed.

For hunters, partial survival spec is preferred, since on some trash mobs, we have cc problems that improved and clever traps can solve.
For healers, a rough estimate of all classes is in the neighborhood fo 1250 bonus heal; a main should be over 1400. Your HPS rate should be over 300, and preferably above 325, and you should know healbot like the back of your hand since it vastly improves the speed of your heals.
Sham healers obviously need extensive MP5 to last in any Kara fight, particularly the longer ones.
Tanks need to reach their defense cap; crits by bosses are lethal, so warriors need to be at 490, feral druids at 415. The other mitigation stats are not something I can speak to at this point.

If you have seen my past stats on fights, you can see that success comes with a combination of all the above, and no one stat carries the raid.

I am pursuing more runs with The Elite, and folks in other guilds, to keep our options more open; there should be no reason we can't run instances for being short 2 or 3 people at a time, or lacking preferred classes. Our successful run to ZA was a combination of three guilds; we could have cleared 3 bosses, but we did two successfuly, and everyone on that run now knows the clear to Halazzi. Those partnerships are vital to success in later instances, and we need help from other guilds to get there. Kara farming with guild only members is one thing; but the higher end instances will be easier with experienced members along, and our development in these instances seems to have hit a slow point.

I invite comments on this post; more people are reading this blog, and I am trying to keep it updated. This week was not fantastic for my scheduling anything until the weekend, so no sexy stats tables or anything. I look forward to our run on Sunday; and Saturday may be ZA and Blue team's Kara run, so stock up and be prepared.