Finally got around to doing Black Morass and nabbing the vaunted key to Karazhan. We sort of waited around until we had a good-sized group of us in the guild who needed it, and today was one of the rare days lately where schedules didn’t clash and we had four of us who needed the key, so we grabbed a fifth person and off we went to what was overall a very smooth run of BM, free of any deaths or major problems. I was on “adds duty” and I got a lot of praise for my job as such, so I must’ve done better than I thought I would, which is always a plus!
Afterwards we all rushed off to Shattrath and then all the way back to Azeroth and Deadwind Pass to finally nab ourselves [The Master’s Key].
Now, you gotta understand something here. Of the five of us, three of us, myself included, had never once set foot inside Karazhan. The fourth had only been inside once and only for one boss, and the fifth had been inside multiple times but never before on this character or even character type (his two other characters are a warlock and a mage; this character is a holy pally.)
So what did we do?
We converted the group to a raid and went inside, of course.
(Insert screenshot here that I should have taken but completely forgot to! =P)
There were some level 71 elite horses that we decided to have some fun with because we were feeling a bit giddy. So that’s exactly what we did. Pulled some horses and disposed of them. I even chain-trapped one, which normally isn’t a big deal because I do that all the time but this is Kara, after all.
After a couple pulls we were sort of discussing it and came to the conclusion that the mobs so far seemed to be of a comparable difficulty level to the mobs in a Heroic. And as a guild, we’ve got a few Heroics under our collective belt.
So that’s when somebody said “Hey, let’s see if we can grab five other people and take the first boss.”
So there we were, with that carrot dangling in our faces, and it was as four of the five of us were drooling over the carrot when my boyfriend, who also happens to be the guild leader, spoke up. He said that he had made this guild and leveled up with this guild and become good friends with the people in this guild and he wanted his first Karazhan run to be a guild/good-friends-of-the-guild run. And at the time we certainly did not have enough people in the guild who would be ready to jump into Kara with us.
And we all sort of agreed and reluctantly pushed that tasty carrot aside and left Karazhan. For now.
See, lemme talk about my guild for a bit. I’m sure I’ve mentioned this before in the past, but I’m gonna say it again. We have a pretty large guild, 120-something characters and 70+ accounts, and we are largely comprised of people who are newer to the game or who are at least new to getting a character to 70. These are people I leveled with. People who learned the game with me. People who have never done this end-game stuff before… just like me. We’re all in this together.
I know of a lot of people who are in some big huge guild and they get ushered through Karazhan by the big boys the day after they hit 70 and come out of the other end all shiny and geared. I’m not trying to say that’s a bad way to do it, but that’s not how I would want to do it. I like the fact that my guild and I are doing it the old fashioned way. A year behind, yes. But that’s not the point. We worked our way through the 50s and 60s doing instances together. We learned how to work together as a very unified team. We started doing some heroics and we have done very well on them, if I might say so myself, largely because we have that unity and experience with each other.
Most of us have never been in Karazhan before (except for today’s little tour of the entryway). We haven’t done end-game before. We don’t know what we’re doing. This is a big first for us. And it’s going to be hard and we’re going to get dirty and there is a lot of work ahead of us. And we are going to learn so much. And I can’t wait.
We have a lot of people in the guild who are in their 50s or 60s or who are 70 and still need to get geared/keyed. And we agreed that we are going to start concentrating on helping those people get ready. It might take a few weeks. It might take more than that. But we will do it, and then we will have more than enough people for a ten-man raid and we’ll trust each other and be able to work as a team because that’s how we’ve been doing it all along.
It sometimes amazes me how much of a role WoW has had in teaching me how to be a team player. We’re allowed to say this in job interviews, right? You know, when they ask you the inevitable “Tell me a story of when you had to work as a group” question. I can talk about WoW, right? I might get some funny looks, but hey…
You might get some strange looks, but its quite a valid response, especially if you are a guild/raid leader, I’ve heard stories of companies having a company raiding team to help people work together!
Good luck getting people together to go to Kara, we’re trying to do the same in my guild, were slowly getting more people who are ready, but we still only have around 4-5 70’s on at any one time in the evening
Grats on the keyage, Pike!
Grats Pike, I’m looking forward to hearing of your adventures there.
Grats! Oddly enough we did this on our little guild yesterday too. Now to get our allied guild keyed…
That’s pretty much what we did. We decided our little guild (and our little sister guild) were going to do Kara, with all of one raider.
It’s easier than heroics, really- and it’s a BLAST.
Of course, I’m all excited because we killed Prince for the first time last night.
There ya go Pike! Whatever you do, don’t get disheartened. It’s going to be frustrating especially in the early weeks. But once you kill a boss, mmm, it’s such an awesome feeling.
Gratz on getting into kara. Surprised you were able to chain trap as I constantly have my traps get resisted or break early in there. It almost makes me want to respec survival but it normally does last enough time that we can get to it. Attumen the Huntsman has at least a few pieces of gear you’ll see as a pve upgrade. After that hunter wise its Opera and Maiden. Moroes doesn’t have any drops hunters would typically use but we do play a CC role in it typically. If your guild is already doing heroics and is geared from it downing curator shouldn’t be an issue once you have the strategy down which is a simple one at that. Once you get beyond that its even more fun! Prince is a mostly a luck fight though.
Get ready to a lot — A LOT — of chain-trapping throughout the first half of Karazhan. Your trap and Shackle Undead from whatever priests you happen to run with are going to be your only forms of working crowd control. Through your entire raid, if you can manage it, bring at least three forms of crowd control — meaning two hunters and one priest or two priests and one hunter — to each Kara run. It will make your lives SO. MUCH. EASIER. You can handle it with two CCs — especially if your tanks and healers are on the ball — but three makes it pretty simple as long as you establish a kill order and stick to it.
Oh, and have a backup plan if your traps break or get resisted. Because those mobs are level 71 and 72, they are not happy to see you, and they will tear you to pieces if they aren’t kept at range. This will happen even more often if you have no points in the Survival trap talents — which I know you don’t. That’s okay, though, there’s no need to spec SV just for Kara. Talk it out with your raid leaders about the nature of the hunter trap, tell them that it gets resisted sometimes and there’s not much you can do about it, and establish a backup plan if one of those big nasty smelly undead horses decides he doesn’t like being frozen and would rather dig his (surprisingly sharp) hooves into your face-bones.
Other than that, your job as a hunter will be pretty much the same as usual — trap when you’re needed and provide that same butt-kickin’ utility and (MQoSR)DPS that hunters bring to every party they attend. 😀 Good luck in Kara; I can’t wait to hear your impressions on the bosses, as it’s such an incredibly atmospheric and lore-rich place.
–Sadejester, 70 hunter of Proudmoore…
Who’s really in the same boat as Pike, just about 3 months earlier.
My guild is a step or two behind yours in progression.
Of course, there are only 12 people in it =)
Gratz on getting Keyed!
-Stupid Mage
Grats on the key, Pike!
It is awesome that you guys are getting ready to take this new step as a guild and is also great that you all are enjoying the process. After all, that is what it is all about, having a great time in-game with friends.Don’t worry about how ‘far’ your guild is behind. What is more important, as you said, are the people you are comfortable playing with! Good luck and keep us updated with your first attempts!
Gratz, Pike! I too went to Kara for my first time two nights ago. I joined with a former guildmate who needed a healer. It turned out it was a saved instance so I didn’t even get to see the beginning, only Nightbane and Prince Malchezar. I did get a nice healing ring out of it though. Now I’ve really got the Kara bug!
I am part of a small guild, that unfortunately I didn’t level with, but most of us are fairly “new”. I did come over with several, including the GM, of our previous guild recently. We aren’t quite all geared up, although several of us are itching to go anyway just for fun. I too feel a little restraint in that I want to go to Kara with certain other guildmates of mine and experience it for the first time with them.
Good luck in Kara!