Trial of the Crusader

[Lbelle]

Just wanted to input that I love the availability of t8 through conquest badges. This is because I just joined the best ally guild on my server and was in only 1pc of T8 that had dropped from Emalon. Now they're gearing me up, but because of Conq badges the process is easier. So when people say it helps raiders as well as casuals I agree.

[Quicklet]

I agree, it does make it a lot easier for good players to gear up alts which adds a lot of flexibility in raid comp. And I think even with the ease with which people can get gear now, bad players still won't be able to do some of the ulduar hard modes in ilvl245 gear and average players may still have a lot of difficulty as well. Gear won't stop people from going insane during Yogg because they don't know how to not stare at skulls.

[Toxictaru]

Fortunately gear is only a part of the equation. Any group/raid leader can tell pretty fast if someone is a bad player, even if they're in all 226+. I found the patch to be a welcome update, because I've spent a decent amount of time with a pally on the PTR, and got to be pretty good at it, but when I finished mine up on live, I didn't have the gear. I could play but had a huge limiting factor in gear. Over the course of a week doing a lot of heroics (in 2 days over a weekend, we did all heroics twice, Naxx 25, and an OS25, for a grand total of a ridiculous amount of badges) I've gone from being lol1600-2k dps in VoA25 to top 2-3 dps in ToC25.

Being able to spam heroics and the occasional raid really helped me out, instead of having to spend weeks of grinding through heroics, then Naxx, then Naxx 25, then hoping to tag along to Ulduar runs. Being able to gear a skilled player quickly helps the whole process, which ultimately benefits any raid.

I love that I'm now looking towards quickly grabbing a second triumph badge reward. With the release of the next boss in ToC, thats an extra 18 triumphs on top of the 2 that I do every day without question.

The biggest thing that bothers me, and I know for sure that it annoys the hell out of some of the more veteran palyers, is the now triviality behind getting good gear. One my old toons, I busted my ass off week after week trying to get the BiS stuff for my hunter. As I mentioned, my pally is well-geared... and has a higher be.imba rating than that hunter. It is a bit of a slap in the face to people who have spent months grinding through Naxx and Ulduar 25, I agree. But ToC and Triumph rewards aren't the easiest thing to come by. However, struggling guilds will have less trouble getting well-geared players in to the new content now, which ends up benefitting everyone, 219/226 geared toons will do absolutely fine in ToC10 and 25. Hard mode isn't out yet, and people are obviously still farming Ulduar anyway, simply because ToC is so short. So really, by the time people are really focusing on ToC hard, those new players/toons will likely be very well geared anyway. It just kind of sucks that they didn't have to work as hard as some others. Ramble ramble.

[Quicklet]

I'm not sure I care for the fact that I have to grind the daily heroic every single day to start gearing up while I wait for the rest of the bosses to come out. Case in point, since I just bought my 232 shoulders before getting a trophy, it'll take me two weeks of daily heroics + doing both 10 and 25man versions before I can even turn it in. Since they took out the ability to buy crusader orbs with emblems though, once the full normal versions are out it won't take a terribly long time to max out on emblems and then have to start downgrading them to buy anything useful with them.

[Lbelle]

I love that I'm now looking towards quickly grabbing a second triumph badge reward. With the release of the next boss in ToC, thats an extra 18 triumphs on top of the 2 that I do every day without question.

18?

[Galaika]

3 bosses x 3 badges each x 2 for 10 man and 25 man modes

[Boyiee]

just did faction champions on 25, what a joke. Now, THAT will be hell on heroic. So far 1shotted everything but that one was the longest and most hectic, free loots though.

[Guitarman]

any tips?

[Boyiee]

Kill the healers first, we did tree druid first. Don't stand in the warriors whirlwind.

Everything is interruptable, mass dispellable, disarmable, just spam those. Watch out for the rogue he will eat healers, we had like 2-3 deaths total in the fight mainly due to him. CC's don't last all that long or so it seemed so no need for pvp trinkets unless you're a healer maybe.

The fight waskinda hectic, looking for the healer to mark him. All the mobs are running around retarded and there is a lot of effects going on, once you get targeting and marks out its a breeze.

[Jodwahh]

So its just a big pvp battle basicly? Are the mobs tankable or random aggro?

[Boyiee]

Kinda like magisters terrace, I think taunt will affect them for a second but they run around and focus people. They have a lot of HP so you have to wear pve gear. It's really really easy, like a big trash pack.

[Ezek]

lolToC. At least the faction champions was a fun fight. We went in with 0 knowledge and one shot it without any problems. I pretty much just focus interrupted the Shaman while burning down the assist target and helped peel the other mobs off the healers with chains and DG.

Best part is people are already crying about this encounter on the Dungeons and Raids forum:

This fight is BS. This is a PVE raid Putting PVP in the middle of it is absolutely ridiculous. I mean make the mobs tankable, so that there is a semblance of PVE in it if you want WoW to be strictly arenas then just make it that way.

So many bads, so little time.

[Lbelle]

faction champs was SO fun/funny. I love TOC. First Icehowl just rams the door and falls over which makes me lol everytime, and now there is this awesome pvp battle. I did it on 10 man last night, we're doing 25 tonight. It was funny the first time we did it because we summoned them, the guy ran out like a bitch, and then they jumped on our heads! We learned next time to stand away from the guy so that we could mark, and it was very easy. Very very fun though, can't wait to do 25 man tonight.

[Gulkeeva]

Faction champions were hilarious... watching the rogue + warrior chase the warlocks around the room the entire time was funny.

The hunter wanted me dead for some reason spamming explosive shot on me haha.

The warlock wanted my pet dead so badly... had so many dots ;/

Dk kept randomly chaining me from across the room

Pretty annoying fight, and as someone mentioned.. this is going to be hell on heroic for sure.

p.s. the pets are ungodly hard to kill without some decently large focus fire from alot of people... don't even try to solo them unless all healers are dead (mend pet must heal like 100,000/3sec or something)

[Lbelle]

in 25 man how many faction champions are there? On 10 we didn't have a warrior, hunter or a death knight to deal with. IIRC we had...resto druid, enhance shaman, warlock, priest, rogue, mage.

[Gulkeeva]

Faction Champions - WoWWiki - Your guide to the World of Warcraft
all of them + cat+ felhound

Pretty much looked like a battle at the airship docks at isle of conquest zerg rush before the nerfs to the bombs inside the keeps with 20-30 people attacking everything at random.

randomly the druid lifebloom ticks are like 50,000's or something, rejuv is like 50,000's and flash of light spam from the ret pally for 30,000's.

Kind of sucks they use a pvp trinket also type deal, bop healer etc

I'm waiting for heroic mode before starting records. Almost want to record normal though its so crazy looking.

[Jodwahh]

What order are you guys focusing down the healers in faction champions?

[Rama]

in our 25 man we did... priest -> shaman -> (warlock, pet, warrior rogue) -> paladin -> dps cleanup

we didn't have a tree

[Jodwahh]

Think we just got unlucky then, druid > priest > pala fucking sucked ass. Dropped the fuckers eventually though

[Lbelle]

hahaha faction champions should be every boss that was so fun on 25 man.