Wintrow

I wanted to give everyone a feel for what is in store for Resurgent over the next few months. Gaviin, Talara and I are incredibly pleased with the progress we've made in recent weeks and want to see that continue. In the month of April, we have seen and defeated three separate bosses, a vast improvement from spending several weeks wiping on the same boss repeatedly. This is the level of play we should all expect of one another going forward and each should do his/her part.

As you'd expect, we will focus on clearing Mount Hyjal. We are in very good position to do this before April is out based on our current progression and preparedness. However, we should definitely be shooting for having Mount Hyjal fully cleared by May 15, with our stretch goal being a clear during the first week of May.

I also announced in a separate thread that we will be moving into Black Temple starting the raid week of April 29. Over the next several months, we will work towards the same success that we are currently seeing in Mount Hyjal. This will require everyone to step up their level of preparation as I anticipate Black Temple to be a more challenging test for us. Not having seen anything in Black Temple just yet, I hesitate to formulate specific goals at this point. I feel it is safe to expect that we will be at 5/9 in Black Temple by the end of June.

We also want to go back and finish up our business with Vashj and Kael'thas, from the standpoints of content-experience, silencing any critics saying we don't deserve to be in Hyjal/BT, and allowing everyone to get their sweet Scale of the Sands rep rings. Anticipating that these will be frustrating encounters as we learn them, I'd like to wait until we are sufficiently geared in MH/BT stuff; any advantage we can get, I will take. Depending on how things are going with our Black Temple efforts, we will likely take a night or two a week starting roughly in mid-June to revisit Vashj and Kael. I anticipate we'll have a learning curve to overcome, but would like to see Vashj and Kael dead before mid-July. Don't expect us to be farming either of these bosses; though not for certain, it's most likely that we'll kill them just enough to get everyone their Vials of Eternity.

The challenge we will have very soon is fitting all of this into our existing raid schedule. We will absolutely need to get a complete Resurgent raid going a third night of the week. If Friday won't work, another night will. For at least the next couple of months, we will need to keep running Hyjal to get folks the gear they need. Once we get that instance on farm, it can easily be done in a single night so that will help. At some point, though, we will stop running Hyjal and focus entirely on Black Temple. Switching out a night for SSC/TK will hurt a bit, but we will have to do it. A fourth raid night would be great, but we'll cross that bridge when we get to it; we need to get a consistent third night first.

Oh, and expect a run or two in the near future to get everyone to Karathress and Al'ar for the Black Temple attunement questline.

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70 Priest

shirokuma

While I totally agree with you that we need to focus on mh and bt we can not forget the two zones that we have yet to do. Those being Tempus and SSC. We pretty much have SSC on farm status but Tempus keep we aren't even close to having that on farm status. I believe there is a reason that bliz made it so that we have to do tempus and ssc. In the old days this would be like jumping to BWL after running a couple of MC runs. There is a learning curve and I do hope we will do tempus and ssc a bit more and not totally forget them. Remember the teir set pieces are still wanted and needed. I know I would like some more teir sets.

Shiro

BigSlick

I feel proud and privileged to be a part of this platoon and the rapid success we've made over the past months (come a long ways from taking a month just to kill Hydross!). I'm really looking forward to the challenges ahead, and don't see any barriers that will prove insurmountable.

I do agree with Shiro, though, regarding the benefit additional T-5 would provide. While we're soon to be looking at our first T-6, the 2nd comes from Archimonde, who - from what I've heard - is tougher than Vashj or Kael.

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BigSlick

(Cont'd- length limit from mobile?)

I don't think it will be critical to clear those 2 before Archi, but selectively farming a couple of bosses in SSC that drop T5 tokens we haven't seen many of. Unlike T4, the 2-pc T5 set bonuses are huge, and getting even the 2- to a few more people would go a long ways.

That we're continuing to drive further without more substantial T5 is a testament to our leadership and team skill, but at some point encounters (Archi?) tuned for raids in full T5 may catch up to us.

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BigSlick

(Cont'd)

Lastly, if we're aiming to gear up before going back for Vashj/Kael, the first few bosses in BT are supposed to be similarly manageable to the first few in MH, and easier to master than any of the SSC/TK/MH end-bosses. In addition to providing more "gear-ups" towards going back to finish them off, taking them down would give us a headstart on the Ashtongue Deathsworn rep that wil be required to craft our SR sets.

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Wintrow

I won't discount there being some validity in the idea of running SSC/TK to upgrade our collective gear a bit further. And I wouldn't rule out this happening sometime in the near future. However, Resurgent is about "progression", not "farming for gear". I realize that you aren't necessarily advocating that we keep running T5 instances until everyone gets every piece of gear that they wanted out of there, but it's very easy to fall into this routine if we aren't careful (see TG's experience with MC). To the extent that we are unable to continue progressing in our current state, then a return to gather some more T5 gear becomes important.

Consider this:

• Skilled play will always trump good gear, as evidenced by our past few weeks. We have a very strong core of talented players in Resurgent, all of whom have made it a priority to come prepared to raid. That is why we have seen the success we have in Hyjal even though not everyone has their T5 bonuses.
• The vast majority of us have plenty of Badge gear. While the stats might not always be ideal or as attractive as T5 quality gear, that gear IS on par with the gear that we would get out of SSC/TK. The 2.4 Badge gear is on par with the gear we will be finding in MH/BT; gemmed properly, the [Adorned Supernal Legwraps] are better for a priest than T6. We are more geared up that you might initially think...
• Archimonde may be tough, but we are absolutely capable of downing him in our current state. The reason Vashj and Kael are tough is due to the extreme complexity of the encounters; Vashj Phase 2 is complete chaos until we learn how to control all of those adds and Kael has 5 phases that require vastly different strategies each phase. The Archimonde encounter is not nearly as complex, just less forgiving of mistakes. Keep in mind that the top raiding guilds, the ones that compete for World-First kills, don't spend a whole lot of time gearing up in "lesser instances". As soon as they downed Kael/Vashj, they were on to Hyjal to down more bosses. Factoring in Badge gear, I'd speculate that we are more geared than they were. Finally, I put very little stock in what "other people say" about these bosses. Remember when we were told that the Hyjal trash would "eat us up" because we weren't in full T5? How did that work out......?

We will keep progressing until we look to be approaching a wall; trust your raid leaders to anticipate that wall approaching and diverting us before we hit it. The first 3 BT bosses are fairly straight-forward and we should have no problem achieving the same success we've seen in Hyjal. We'll be starting on that soon, as I said. At some point, we will have chances to get some more T5 gear and get people the set bonuses that they crave; be patient. As much as I'd LOVE to get the 2-piece T5 priest set bonus (with the 2.4 spirit regen changes, I don't think I'd ever run out of mana), I'm doing just fine without it right now...

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70 Priest

Gaze

I PUT IT DOWN PROPER!!!

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"Do me a favor and slap my Water Elemental around for me!!!! So Icy!!!"