5.2, Raid Rosters, and Expectations.

Patch 5.2 is most likely going to drop next week or if not next week, then extremely likely the week after that. I have fielded a few questions or answered side queries that are rather similar and to better address the topics, they are summarized here.

5.2 and ilevel requirements
You have almost certainly noticed the scaling requirement of ilevel for entry or success in LFR or normal mode raid instances, respectively:

LFR: MSV (460), HoF & Terrace (470), Patch 5.2 ToT (480)
10m: MSV (470), HoF & Terrace (480), Patch 5.2 ToT (490)

What is less intuitive is the encounter difficulty tuning which has scaled up since Cata. (You can find a link about that at: link.) Which has an impact on you depending on your raidcraft. If you tend to over-perform your raidcraft (raid awareness and performance throughput - hps or dps or tanking), you can get by with lower ilevel in normal mode and if you tend to under-perform your raidcraft, you need more ilevel and gear to compensate. Which is to simply say that some people may need 490-495 ilevel to effectively contribute to downing a boss in 5.2 raid and some may need 500-505 ilevel to effectively contribute to downing the same boss. Plan accordingly.


Raid Rosters
As we said several weeks ago, in order to be effective and efficient as a guild in downing content in the new 5.0-5.1-5.2 tier 14+tier 15 available content, we are forming rosters not only based on committed availability but now also on performance - raidcraft.

You can expect Wabbyt's Ronin Dragons to pretty much stay in tact as a roster. Same for Bear's Ronin Bears (we are going to need to add another hunter or rogue to the roster).

Gray has secured enough critical mass of interest in having a Wed/Fri group that starts earlier and ends earlier that that roster will add a few more people and likely recruit remaining positions where we do not have enough raiders with committed availability for those times and the required raidcraft. This is essentially the same Ronin Tigers with a schedule change and minor roster changes. Gray will lead the Ronin Tigers.

Doomwombat will pick up the full role of raid leading the Fri/Sat group and will consolidate the members of the Ronin Tigers that cannot transition to the new schedule under a new group's name (TBD). At this time, depending on how many people we have on hand and how many we are able to recruit, there is a very high likelihood that this will not flesh out into a full ronin raid group until a few weeks into the new patch content and will be initially mostly a pug/social group.

Expectations
We are committed, of course, to supporting all raiders or people interested in raiding to being able to raid; however, the 'new normal' encounter difficulty tuning means people have to step up their raid craft, or expect to be pugging / LFRing until their raidcraft is at a suitable level where they can be an effective contributor to downing a boss.

On progression fights, by very definition, there is no room to carry anyone. Everyone has to be a contributor.

Manage your expectations - if you have been dying frequently and forcing the raid to burn its only battle rez, or dying after the brez has been burned and preventing a kill due to insufficient dps, or you have been forcing mana pools to empty out due to taking far too much unnecessary damage, or your healing has forced the group to 3-heal 2-healer encounters, or your tanking is not where it needs to be, expect to be pugging / LFRing until your raid craft improves. This is not done to be mean nor to exclude you - it is done so that the group can have a chance of progression.

Simply put, if you are performing reasonably within range with others in your role, expect to raid in the guild groups. If you are performing below the reasonable grouping of others in your role and they are doing an encounter that is challenging the group, expect to sit it out and make other plans.

Blizzard has said they fully expect many guilds to still be clearing tier 14 in order to stack enough gear on their raid members to have a shot at downing bosses in ToT (patch 5.2) - they have purposefully tuned 5.2 harder than 5.1. If you are having difficulties clearing Terrace or HoF content, PLEASE manage your expectations so that your group is not assuming you are going to skip tier 14 and just start clearing content in tier 15 (which is basically what most guilds did in Cata - skipped BWD, BoT, Tot4W and went straight into FL and DS instead).

As a benchmark, my group - Ronin Bears - will still be doing tier 14 in the first weeks of Tier 15 release. Yes, we will also go 'see' Tier 15 content each week as appropriate to gauge how close we are to clearing it, however, we have a present estimate of dps needing to be about 75-80k a piece in order to get to 110-120k a piece with the +50% buff.

You have probably noticed the trend:

• for MSV full clears, you want to be doing over 50k dps
• for HoF full clears, you want to be doing over 60k dps
• for Terrace full clears, you want to be doing over 70k dps
• and from the PTR, for ToT, you want to be doing over 80k dps

Manage your expectations. Either you are performing reasonably at par for your class in your role or you are not. If your group has an opening that night and they have challenging content to do, they will almost certainly bring a pug that can effectively contribute instead of someone in guild that is significantly under performing right now.

For those of you that have been raiding for years, this is nothing new. However, over the past 3 months we have seen a fair bit of expectation that people are raiding regardless of how they performed the previous week because of the guild tag. Please discard that thinking. To be clear, going forward raid seats are filled with performance and availability, guildies first, then non-guildies - but always with performance and availability first.

To join any of the raid groups, contact their raid leader.

Preparing for Patch 5.2

Bashiok covered the details that you should be considering as you prepare in these last weeks before Patch 5.2 arrives. From a raid scheduling perspective, the key highlights relevant to you are that:

• the new 12-boss raid instance will be available on normal mode in the first week of patch 5.2
• the LFR version of the new raid instance will be available in 4-boss wings being released one per week starting the second week of patch 5.2 -- you need 480 level to get into the LFR version
• the heroic version of the new raid instance will be available starting the second week of patch 5.2

MSV - MSV has been dropped off our raiding schedule other than on an off night / alt night. Fri & Sat are for HoF.

HoF - The remaining raid nights before patch 5.2 drops, focus on HoF and spending hours polishing your raiding skills on whichever is your progression boss fight for your raid group. It is literally about studying the mechanics and strategy you are going to execute and paying particular attention to executing that strategy with craftsmanship. e.g. One night on Wind Lord, we dedicated the night to getting our phase one executed perfectly - to which we succeeded and our healers were in solid position going into phase two. It wasn't about whether we downed the boss or not, it was about the craftsmanship with which we executed. It was about practicing our raiding craft in anticipation of entirely new content in 5.2 which would not need our knowledge on Wind Lord but would need our highly polished raiding skills - granted, it was ALSO about getting phase one down well so that we could get Wind Lord down in subsequent attempts. With the remaining time, focus on getting what loot you can out of HoF, sure, but more so, focus on practicing and honing and polishing so that you are at your best to make a sizable dent into 5.2 in the first week.

Patch 5.2 Raid Rosters - This is the time when we are setting up the rosters for at least the first several weeks of patch 5.2 - all factors permitting, we will attempt to keep the rosters fixed. That is, the raid rosters will be set BEFORE patch 5.2 drops so that the raid groups can immediately begin working through the new raid instance the first week of the new content. Now is the time to get in and perform so that we can group people up and let the raid groups gel into performing together.

Remember, there is a new normal and Blizzard has expressed that they feel this is 'working as intended'. In the past, encounter difficulty tuning was set such that

Easy ----------- Hard

LFR-----N-----Heroic

However now, it is generally accepted that the new paradigm of encounter difficulty tuning is

Easy ----------- Hard

LFR----------N---Heroic

Everyone needs to step up their game. There is already plenty of information about each boss encounter  on the PTR version of wowhead.com (link on their page in the top left). People are already posting strat videos and write ups. To be in normal mode raid groups in our guild, you should be zoning in without requiring any explanation of any of the fight mechanics nor boss abilities - neither as they affect you nor as they affect others - and you should have a firm grasp on how your class and raid role specifically can and should support downing the boss and providing the most benefit to the raid group - encounter by encounter. If you are not doing that level of preparation, if you are taking a more casual and social approach to raiding - nothing wrong with that at all - then your raid seat is in the casual / social raid roster, not in the core progression rosters.

We expect to enter patch 5.2 with two (if not three) core progression raid rosters and one social / casual roster. This will support addressing the two different approaches to raiding (more casual and more serious) and the two different paces at which those approaches successfully clear through the content.

As always, if you have any questions, do not hesitate to ask an officer - especially a raid lead. We're not here to exclude you from raiding, we're here to help you succeed in our raiding!

Edit - To give you an idea of where the damage done / dps stands for fights in the new raid instance, the below is a snapshot from icy-veins.com. Granted, it is PTR. The sheer numbers if carried through to live from PTR suggest that the core progression raids may need to stack some gear first before they can take on the mechanical soft enrage with the first boss Jin'rokh at 6 mins (floor covered completely). So plan to be in your raid roster and plan to be working hard to either gear pre launch of 5.2 or continue in 5.2 until ready to beat the soft enrage - either way, both rosters will go into the new raid instance in the first week to immediately start experiencing the new fights.

5.2 - March 6

A reminder that 5.2 is coming -- ostensibly as soon as March 6th -- at which point the raiding focus will change just like it did once Firelands was released. You can begin preparing now by stockpiling VP (they are no longer resetting VP) and wrapping up whatever might distract you in the initial weeks. There will be a new faction (similar to how there was in Firelands) however you earn rep with them in the raid instance rather than through dailies - allegedly. You will need i480 to enter the 5.2 LFR and 5.2 LFR drops 502 gear. Plan accordingly. Gear upgrading through VP is still going away upon arrival of 5.2 so upgrade any gear you are intending to upgrade before 5.2, VP permitting.

Tier 14 will become old tier, however Blizz is not intending for it to be bypassed as in Cata and Wrath -  as you gear up, you will still need 460 to get into MSV LFR, and 470 for HoF and ToES LFRs before you can get into 480 TotTK LFR. To make that a shorter trip for your alts/new toons, pay attention for announced gearing runs in Tier 14 once T15 is out.

Good Raiding!

Fun weekend! We teamed up 7 Ronin raiders with 3 iRaiders (also Ronin) and those Ronin raiders got their first MSV clear! Awesome! +more raiders that now know how we do the fights by having experienced it first hand. Taking personal responsibility for driving performance and constantly improving to avoid repeating problem areas cleared the bosses and drove up raid performance! /grats

We started in on Terrace and took the first bosses down to 40% with more than half the dps team away with replacements standing in for them this weekend. It's great that we have started in on attacking Terrace!