nailbat.us

So there's been more interest in more than just 10 people doing ToGC each week, and I'm excited to get more people in on the hard modes... but I also have to warn people that ToGC is HARD HARD HARD and we will have to be much more strict about people in the raid. If you're dying too often, or you can't handle the sheer amount of movement + target switching + situational awareness, we will have to switch you out for another person and have you practice the fight mechanics more on normal mode.

What you need
Minimum sustained dps (no gimmick fights): 3.8k in a 25-man setting (any less than that and we start running into trouble with enrage timers and Twin's Pact)
Situational awareness: don't die in a fire. Don't stand in front of a mouth spew. Don't chain Toxin/Burning Bile to more than 2 people. Don't get hit by every Icehowl whirl (unless you're a tank, then you have no choice). Run into melee when you have a snobold, and always know when the snobold is out so you can kill it. Cast your off-school when you have Maiden's Kiss. Know exactly when and where the nether portal and infernal volcano are going to spawn. Don't die to {color} Vortex. Don't stand between Anub and the skull.

The situational awareness really is the big one - I don't care if you can do 5k dps standing still. You will not be standing still in ToGC. The only time we're standing still for an extended period of time is Anub'arak phase 3.

Fight-by-fight:
- Never get hit by Icehowl
- Don't die to Legion Flame or wipe the raid with Incinerate Flesh by running away from healers
- Switch colors promptly and stay near your portal on Twin Valkyr
- Don't get hit by spikes, especially someone else's

Do all of these things and we'll have no qualms about taking you to the very end of ToGC and wiping with us! But after Jaraxxus, we'll have to take a long, hard look at underperformers and think about replacing them if we want to get to Faction Champions and beyond.

What Dom said is very dps centric -- there are very hard constraints on the tanks and healers as well. The tanking part has been covered in some other places and I think most of the tanks know what would be expected of them -- it's more of the same from normal, but with a few extra mechanics.. especially in Jaraxxus (kill the portals!) and in Anub (adds keep coming).

I can't come up with any hard numbers for healing, but ToGC will be a harrowing experience compared to anything else you've ever healed. There will be constant raid damage and insane tank damage. Keeping everyone topped off is a pipe dream, it's constant triage and will put a significant strain on your mana. On top of this, you have to pay attention to all the same situational awareness factors that dps has to deal with, with the Maiden's Kiss in Jaraxxus being an especially deadly mistake to make if you miss it.

More than any other fights we've done, the healers are very dependent on the tanks to survive for stretches of time without heals, as we are going to be having to heal the raid or heal off an Incinerate Flesh or heal someone in frost breath or a fire or someone who's bleeding from scarabs or taking 6000 frost damage every three seconds, etc. I'd like to say that a great healer with good gear could overcome a gear deficiency with skill, but most of the fights turn into a pure numbers game and even the best of healers will get behind if their gear is sub par. ToGC10 is meant to be done after ToC10, which means you should be in mostly 232s... actual healing stats differ by class.

http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/1dpn ... 148&e=4353

This is the damage taken from our win at heroic twin valkyrs. If you hover over peoples names, the "unleashed (dark/light)" is the damage taken from ball explosions. It's more important than ever to be aware of your surroundings in this fight. And admittedly I did a pretty poor job of dancing on this one myself. It's so important to avoid the ball damage as it puts incredible stress on the healers who are already dealing with 2500 every 2 seconds to the entire raid.

This fight is a bit crazy, ~78% of the damage taken on this fight, is from periodic surge damage and ball explosions.