OS 3 drakes.

[Eaglestrike]

How many people have done this and how much effort was put into it, how hardcore is your guild, etc. My guild has been "stuck" on it a few weeks, some nights were just lost causes (attempting with only 24, attempting to 5-heal it, etc.) but we've spent I'd say at least 3 nights with a decent composition and we've been unable to do it so far. I alt-f4'd out last night because we have a few just bad players keeping us from finishing it off and I'm just sick of all this wiping because of it.

But I read here and on maintankadin and other forums about all these guilds cleared OS3 drakes and I just have to wonder how common it is for others. Do most guilds have it down by now? Are there any other guilds that consider themselves good unable to do it thus far?

[Correction]

If the guild is serious about Sarth3D and you have bad players keeping it from happening, why are those bad players still in the guild?

[Eaglestrike]

If the guild is serious about Sarth3D and you have bad players keeping it from happening, why are those bad players still in the guild?

Nazgrel is pretty much the worst realm. It's essentially have bad players in that slot or no one at all. I'd say we're hoping and praying for a few more server transfers just to be able to round out our roster...lol

Hopefully we will kick the really bad players that were hurting us last night, there's one hunter we have that has his DPS go down as things go on, he was only managing 2.2k DPS overall for last night and he's been raiding with us for a month and a half. His redeeming quality though is that he's a nice guy and farms a ton, we always have fish feasts and consumables because of this. But he's just not that good when it comes to raiding...

[Palin]

It sounds more like your problem is more of a guild ethic/player skill one, which you've identified. Unfortunately with a group of players who don't know their class or have no situational awareness, any fight that is a semblance of a challenge will be a nightmare because you'll wipe when you shouldn't be.

I'm not sure if you have a position of authority in your guild, but you have to work on your roster's lowest common denominator and improve it. Recruitment is the first solution, make sure your guild is really pushing its recruitment resources. You guys should have a professional and detailed post regarding your needs, systems, and guild culture on the WoW Recruitment forums, as well as MMOChamp, Wowhead, LFguild.net, basically any resource that has a semblance of traffic. Make sure you have Officers/Members who continually bump your guild's recruitment posts in order to keep them on the front page for people to see.

Additionally, your officers should be scoping the guild recruitment forums, looking for prospective player of the classes you need who have a decent thread. Try to avoid one line threads, but look for players looking for guilds who are serious about raiding, their theorycraft, and give a lot of upfront information. If your Officers think they may be a good pickup, they should be finding these people on their servers and talking to them regarding applying to your guys guild.

The application process is very important too. Make sure you're not just asking one-line Yes/No questions, you want them to be putting time and effort into their application, as it shows the type of person they are. Little things like sentence structures and grammar are huge clues to how intelligent or professional a person is going to be in your guild. Also make a huge deal for them to talk about their theorycraft, and make sure they are avid EJ readers and provide a WWS. Have the good players in your guild of the same class critique their theorycraft and point out any flaws they have in it. If you want an example, here's the sample application I use to give our applicants and example of what we want to see in an application.

If you don't have the position of power to change your recruitment standards, work on what you have. People who are constantly dying to Waves/Fissures need to be let known that they're underperforming, not neccesarily by yelling, but through vocalizing expectations and dissapointment. DPS who are only pushing 2k DPS need to know that's unacceptable, and they need to improve it. Guide them to ElitistJerk threads specifically for their class, and have members who are performing well of the same class help them out. Give them the resources they can use, and let them know they need to improve. If they still do not, then they probably are just a bad player, and inform them that you've tried but if they don't pick it up, you're going to have to replace them. If despite all this they don't improve, then there's really nothing you can do.

If there's one thing I've noticed over my 3 years of GMing, it's that players don't change. Bad players will always most likely be bad players, flaky players will most likely always be flaky players. You can improve their TC, threaten them, beg them, anything, but at the end of the day their defining traits will still come out. The challenge is to build your guild with non-flaky and non-bad players, and the guild's application process is the cornerstone to that.

Let me know if you have any additional questions I can help with.

[Eaglestrike]

The only thing we can really use from your nice and long post is the message to get out there. The GM already requires an application with decent questions and also brings people onto Ventrilo to talk to them about the application/guild first. The majority of our players are good, fun players, but we're also stuck with some players, like a healer that's subpar but is the GM's wifes sisters husband.

I'm not in a position of "authority" but I've been with the guild my entire (almost) year of raiding and I'm the MT, so I have a bit of sway. I think we're mostly sick of dealing with the baddies from BC so we're trying to be more strict about things in WotLK but we have a small roster and a bad pool of applications, just because of the realm.

However I'd say we have 10-15 "very good" players, mostly in important roles, 3 good tanks and 3 good healers and just picked up a few more from another guild. Hopefully we take our slightly inflated time and get rid of the bad players, as the GM claims he will do as of last night. We brought in a few people from a 10-man only guild and he said if they outperformed anyone "threaten in some manner" and the 3 DPS were 3-5-7 overall...heh.

But I was mostly wondering specifically about OS3 drakes, I want to know just how far my guild, despite whatever issues it has, is behind most other good guilds.

[Palin]

But I was mostly wondering specifically about OS3 drakes, I want to know just how far my guild, despite whatever issues it has, is behind most other good guilds.

If you're looking at your "ranking," that's going to depend on your perspective. Wowprogress shows about 1800 guilds cleared Sarth3D. On my realm, Ner'zhul, there's a whopping 25 guilds with 3D clear, and the Twilight Vanquisher and Twilight Drake have become so commonplace is sickening. But Ner'zhul is #3 on Wowprogress on overall progression, so its relative.

A quick look on Wowprogress Nazgrel shows only one guild on your server with Sarth 3D down, so in that scheme you guys aren't too far behind at all. Your server is probably the most important statistic since its the genesis of the majority of your player base.

[Correction]

A quick look on Wowprogress Nazgrel shows only one guild on your server with Sarth 3D down, so in that scheme you guys aren't too far behind at all. Your server is probably the most important statistic since its the genesis of the majority of your player base.

Oh damn that site's hilarious...

I see a druid get 6 pieces of gear inc. 2pc 7.25 and watch two rogues and a DK leave on the same day. That must have been fun.

[Ishido]

My guild is definitely not very hardcore. We have probably 10-15 people who are very good at their class, with the rest being anywhere from sort of good to sort of bad. The most important things in my opinion are to have a few quality healers, and at least 2 tanks who are good (one MTing with enough stam, one drake/add tanking). We got our actual first kill using 5 tanks and 5 healers (2 feral, 1 MT one on adds, 3 warriors, 2 on drakes/adds and one on adds alone, 3 pally healers, 1 shaman, 1 holy priest).

It's important that you have someone leading the raid well and that everyone knows what to do in upcoming parts of the fight, and knows it very clearly. People being confused and not immediately switching DPS targets can be very bad in a situation where time is very tight. People need to know it's unacceptable to be hit by a fissure or lava wave, but despite that to do their best to live through it in case it happens in an important moment. Bad players CAN be helped through 3D Sarth, but they absolutely cannot be dying quickly.

My guild ended up spending about 7 hours on 3D before downing it, having downed 2D the first time 3 weeks prior to the kill. After our 2D kill we would spend time on 3D until trash respawned, and at that point reclear trash and kill one drake. One day we gave it 3 hours and downed him. This is a fight we saw very large differences as time went on. In the beginning we would have 5+ people die before Tenebron did, or times where we did not even kill Tenebron before we wiped. Later, the point of death came around when Vesperon lands and Shardon was usually at 30-50% health and the Twilight Torment debuff came up, we had a lot of people killing themselves or being taken to low HP and having something else 1 shot them. Letting people know this will happen and to plan accordingly (saving healthstones, pots etc) helped us tremendously. I think that if you can get to the point where you have Shadron down without many or any deaths, you have pretty much won the fight.

We were the 8th on our server to clear it.

[Eaglestrike]

If you're looking at your "ranking," that's going to depend on your perspective. Wowprogress shows about 1800 guilds cleared Sarth3D. On my realm, Ner'zhul, there's a whopping 25 guilds with 3D clear, and the Twilight Vanquisher and Twilight Drake have become so commonplace is sickening. But Ner'zhul is #3 on Wowprogress on overall progression, so its relative.

A quick look on Wowprogress Nazgrel shows only one guild on your server with Sarth 3D down, so in that scheme you guys aren't too far behind at all. Your server is probably the most important statistic since its the genesis of the majority of your player base.

My realm is terrible however. The guild that "beat" us to it raids 5 times a week(mine only 3x a week), however we clear Naxx faster than them. In fact before they got OS3 we cleared Naxx, EoE and WG and ended our night 45min before they cleared only Naxx. We move much more efficiently than them, but we've had problems on 3 drakes.

What class tank does everyone use for Sarth/adds? We only have 3 good tanks, they're all good at what they do, but it's myself as a paladin, another paladin and a druid. So we put the druid on Sarth in a high HP kit, I take the drakes and the other paladin on adds. We have someone with a DK alt...but he's not that amazing at tanking and he's an excellent mage (one of our top dps, often leads Tenebron meters) so not sure if we want to use him.

I guess I should check out wowprogress a bit. I imagine a stat I'm looking for is how many guilds have cleared all content but still lack 3 drakes...

[Palin]

If you're looking for strategy advice I can help you out, just feel free to ask. EJ's Sarth thread also has a ton of good information.

Druid or DK is your best bet on Sarth for the souped up Breaths after Shadron and Vesperon's Disciples are up. You need to have a cooldown rotation of some sort. DK's can solo 2-3 of the uber-breaths on their own, while Druids can do 2 (one with Barkskin + trinket, another with Survival Instincts) assuming they have a Priest doing PW:S and a FR totem. After that you have to have a Guardian Spirit/Blessing of Sacrifice rotation. Our Sarth healers are always a Holy Priest and either a Resto Druid or another Holy Priest. For safety/redundancy, and because we kill Shadron/Vesp quickly enough, we have our Druid use both Barkskin and Survival Instincts on the first breath, then call for cooldowns on the ones after until Shadron's Disciple is dead. Our order goes Priest -> Priest -> Pally (who's healing the Drake tank) -> Pally (either another healer Pally or the Ret/Prots, this one usually isn't needed though). Once Shadron is dead, and then his Disciple, the Druid can take the breaths on his own again.

Drake tank we've found best to be a Warrior or Pally. If DPS is a problem, a Warrior provides Sunders, which is a marginal DPS increase. A Pally however provides a bit more snap aggro, which helps when your DPS is really pushing it. Add tank can be anyone, we've used both Pally DK and Warrior. In 10 man Sarth 3D, I prefer to use a DK for the add tank in order to provide Ebon Plauge and Pestilence onto the main Drakes.

Hope this helps.