Do you really know?
When Dignitas started raiding Karazhan during the Fall of 2007, it was an incredibly painful and rewarding experience for those of us that were doing it… We spent I don’t know how many weeks getting 2 or 3 bosses down over a couple of nights. Spending well over 8 hours a week and hundreds of gold during these attempts on repairs, buffs and various other needed items. When we were able to consistently get Attumen, Moroes and Maiden down it was a divine moment for us. It took us weeks if not months of us trying to beat those bosses to actually pass them, but during that time, we geared up, we learned the fights and we learned about ourselves and our fellow raid members.
The original raiders in Dignitas worked like crazy to do heroics for gear when we started, not only that, but back then you needed higher reputation to even get into the Heroics, meaning you spent more time in instances learning how to play your class in a group environment. I hate using this as an example, but just recently we had a hunter in Karazhan who wasn’t even aware how to “Misdirect” yet not a few weeks earlier that same hunter posted on the forums how upset they were that we were thinking of putting certain requirements to even go into Karazhan and that they prided themselves on how well they played their class. This doesn’t mean that this hunter is a bad person or player… it means that they have not had and/or taken the opportunity to run instances. This is particularly true in guilds such as ours as most of our players are adults with kids, jobs and a mortgage, meaning that their available block of time to play can be limited and they can’t always commit a block of 2+ hours to run an instance but they might be able to set aside 60 or 90 minutes to grind.
The fact that people don’t need to get attuned anymore for Karazhan means that as soon as people hit 70, they want to go in, forgetting that by skipping that all important gearing up step, they are not helping the group overall. A bad thing about Karazhan is that people see it as “This is where I need to get my gear from!”… They couldn’t be more wrong, first they need to get some good blues which will get them geared to do “Heroics”, running the “Heroics” will get them better gear AND badges letting them purchase even better gear, which in turn will get them geared for Karazhan. And most importantly of all, it will teach them the very important roles they need to fill in those groups.
I’m in the process of leveling my third toon to level 70, she’s presently level 67. While I hate to admit it, I’m using a guide to level her up… Her whole grind from 1 to 60 was done almost entirely using the guide but when I hit Outlands at level 60, I made a point of hitting as many of the level appropriate dungeons as possible. Not for loot but to figure out how an Elemental Shaman works with the other classes in instances. I still use the guide, but whenever I can I make sure to try my best to get groups together to run instance.
Now, I could grind to 70 and dive into Karazhan as soon as I get there. I have the advantage of knowing all the boss and trash fights but that wouldn’t be fair to my guildmates as while my knowledge of the instances itself is advanced I want to make sure that I bring everything I can to my 9 friends. As such, you can be sure that my shaman will be keyed before she steps foot into Karazhan.
Kharpern
Posted in General | 
June 10th, 2008 at 11:21 am
I have to admit that I didn’t do a lot of instances while leveling. I had a hugely annoying experience pugging in Zul’Farrak, which made me spec prot and tank the place. I decided I didn’t much like tanking for pugs. After that, I just got run through things, because getting a dps spot as leveling Fury is just not gonna happen.
I did only two Outland instances before I hit 70 (Ramps, MT), and then dove in head first into Steamvaults. I had spent the better part of 60-70 farming honor for my S1 glad gear, which was so much better than the quest reward/crafted crap I was running around with.
I knew I wanted to raid, so I spent untold hours reading about my class/spec, raid encounters, group composition, etc. I wanted to get to Karazhan before the attunement was removed, and although my gear was ready for the first half (as I was assured by the BT/Hyjal raiders on the WoW Warrior forum), I didn’t quite finish the key quest until 2.4 hit. I had started to do a few heroics by then.
I think it was that very same night that I got a whisper from my GM, saying that Keirana and I had spots for Kara if we wanted to come. We made it all the way to Curator, one-shotting Attumen and Maiden (no one was that much more geared than us), getting Moroes in two tries, and one shotting Oz.
Most of the really good gear I have is crafted or badge gear. Soon I can add arena gear to that list. While Kara has some nice drops in there, and my tanking set is especially Kara-heavy, it’s less of a place to gear than a place to L2Raid.
There’s a definite progression in Karazhan, which I think is an amazing piece of game design on Blizzard’s part.
Attumen is basically a minor gear check but more importantly a rather easy fight which teaches how to act in a 10-man group and how to take direction in crucial situations like aggro drops and collapsing into an area.
Moroes is a panic check, and a lesson in the importance of off-tanking. If everyone can do their assigned job in the middle of seeming chaos, and the top two on Omen are the MT and OT, it’s a tank and spank.
Maiden teaches the importance of LOS and teaches dispelling and dealing with silences.
The various Opera encounters all contain these elements, with Romulo and Julianne being a very important lesson in interrupts and controlling DPS.
Curator is a pure gear check to make sure you grind the first half a few times until you’re geared, but more importantly, used to working as a 10-man. Because without the skills you learn in the first half, the second half will be a wipe-fest.
I think Netherspite should actually be non-optional. As much as I hate the fight, it teaches several important skills, not least of which is dealing with stacking debuffs and rotation of raid duties.
Kara is not about gear. Kara is about learning enough so that when you get to the insanity of Lady Vashj and Kael’thas, you and 24 friends aren’t completely ill prepared for dealing with it.
July 16th, 2008 at 2:14 pm
I Agree with both points, even though Kara is a good learning experiance, to go in no fully prepared (in a team working sense) would just be wrong, to get to 70, and know your class is wonderful, you might be the best solo quester in the world, do you know how other classes work? yes you could go kara keep doing attumen repeatedly until everything works out and you beat him.. but doing the lvl 70 instance and the heroics before Kara help alot more, in both experiance and gear.
i say it depends who you go with, if your group expects a certain level of play.. like hunter and misdirect.. (think about it when would you use misdirect while doing solo? i dout its as often as you would during instances) but if it is a group who are all new to the Kara thing, and dont expect to be downing Shade within the hour i dont see a problem with just jumping right in there…
two sides of the same sheet i guess