Conclave of Winds

[Kevin]

I was thinking that for the Tuesday raid, we may want to consider skipping throne of the Four Winds.

the Conclave of Winds drops near exclusively belts, which can be purchased via crafting or on the AH pre-crafted for a relatively small quantity of gold.  I know that with shanni now an enchanter, the Tuesday raid should, more often than not, have a DE availiable, which means maelstrom crystals.

But i was thinking, is the half an hour that we spend killing conclave worth 1/6 of a weapon enchant.  Given the scarcity of epic weapons pre raiding, and the recent progress that we have made in Blackwing Descent, it is quite likely that we will be upgrading to epic weapons, relatively soon (Maloriak for instance drops the tanking weapon) 

Also, Zul'Aman and Zul'Gurub will soon be rereleased, both of which will be doable by 5 people once a day, and they will drop epics! (353 i level but still produce maelstrom crystals!!!) so is it worth going to conclave to stock up on crystals, when there will be a MUCH more plentiful supply in the near future?

[p03t]

Some of us could still use the Valor points.

[Shanni]

I think its something that we should definatly consider.

[Areydan]

The Valor Points are a good point Po, but I also agree with Kevin. It is a huge time-sink for minimal reward.

[Shanni]

Plus.. the fight just pisses me off sometimes. its too buggy and temperamental.

[Tigs]

Hmm we cannot have that Shanni, that's Poets job description!  Lemme phone Blizzard and get that bag of wind in conclave fixed right up!


<hides>

[Shanni]

Hmm we cannot have that Shanni, that's Poets job description!

Its poets job to be buggy and temperamental? Yeah... i figured that out a long time ago.

[Killraven]

We need the shards, for one thing.  And if we prove our ability to execute mechanics well, we should be able to one shot this every single time.  So are two of the shards worth 15 minutes?  Assuming we get our act together on the mechanics.

[Arkana]

Raven said:

We need the shards, for one thing.  And if we prove our ability to execute mechanics well, we should be able to one shot this every single time.  So are two of the shards worth 15 minutes?  Assuming we get our act together on the mechanics.

Two thoughts:

• First, the time not spent in CoW is time spent on other bosses.  We are not losing any opportunity for shards.  We are trading one locale for another.  And since CoW is a one boss fight, we are potentially also cutting down travel time.
• Projecting better performance (one shot every time) is an investment in training.  I would suggest we place our investment in getting mechanics fully locked down on a different boss.

What is the best pay back for our time?  Shards or fewer shards and some gear?  I favor the latter.

[Kevin]

I also think that it is unlikely that we will get to the point that we will oneshot the conclave with every attempt.  The fight is just too fickle and unforgiving with time at the end. If it only took fifteen minutes i would agree, however we seem to have at least one person new each week, thats 10+minutes of explanation, and 10 minutes to prep and make our first attempt, plus 5+ minutes of travel time.

Also, the Tuesday raid is the progression raid, i see no reason why the progression raid should be spending any time on an instance where the first boss drops nothing of value, and the second boss is out of reach.  If we are supposed to be progressing, i think it would be more reasonable to go after bosses that drop new loot, to help gear ourselves.

[p03t]

Thanks to all who posted on this subject.
But, I would like to hear opinions from the other's who raid with us...ass-u-me-ing they read the forums...

[Arrian]

Well, I see merit in both sides of this question.

Maelstrom crystals will be helpful, certainly, but that's the sort of thing that people can acquire by individual effort.

Nothing drops from Conclave for me, that's certain.

Speaking selfishly, I probably will have a hard time finding Saturdays after this week, so I would prefer some work on newer bosses on the Tuesday night run.

$.02

Snowblossom

[Gilius]

While I'm not presently part of the Tuesday group, I'd like to include the Thursday group in the discussion for consideration of skipping Conclave as well.
Here are my thoughts on why both groups would benefit from moving on from Conclave and focusing on BWD.

Training :
In Group A, I have seen no objections to skipping Conclave due to needing more training, so it stands to reason that Group A is comfortable enough with Conclave mechanics to consider that a non-issue.

Group B is comprised at least partly of members of Group A who already have the ability to experience and ability to 1-shot Conclave.

In Group B, there have been dramatically improved results with each week of visiting Conclave, leading up to yesterday's completion on the 2nd attempt.
Group B also then went on to Blackwing Descent and downed Omnitron on the first night after only a few tries.

This, to me, shows that everyone in both groups is a competent raider capable of learning and adjusting to the fights quickly.
In other words, continuing to raid Conclave for the reason of "additional training" doesn't seem to apply.

Gear:
As others have noted, there is little here worth spending time on that can't be crafted with comparable (if not exact) stats.

Shards:
While I don't have an estimate on how long the new Zuls will take, I'm guessing its a safe bet that 2 sets of 5-man teams can generate more shards in the same
amount of active raiding time that one 10-man group can.

[Suzuno]

Speaking of the maelstrom crystals, what exactly is the guild doing with these crystals? 

Previous guilds I have been in would "sell" these items to guild members for DKP; the more time a raider would spend in the raids the more DKP they would have.  This would allow these guild members to be able to get the higher level enchants for their higher ilevel gear that they just upgraded during a raid.  It is a good idea to start doing this for guildies so that they can get the better enchants for better performance for our progression raids.  In addition, we have a few enchanters in the guild that need at least 5 maelstrom crystals per enchant to be purchased for the better weapon enchants off of the enchanting vendor.  I think it would be a great thing to give out the crystals to people if they want a better enchant granted that they got an upgrade during a raid, whereas if they were to purchase an enchanting pattern for a non-raiding enchanter the guild could raise money that way.  However, the cost for each maelstrom crystal for these non-raiding individuals would be discounted compared to AH serverwide pricing.  Each crystal could be, say, 1,000 or even 1,500 gold each since the server seems to want to sell them for 2,500 to 3,000 gold each.

Speaking of progression raiding, why doesn't the guild want to dedicate a little more time towards it?

Asmo and I do not care one way or another whether we do Conclave of Winds or not - however, the maelstrom crystals and the extra valor points are great.  The more bosses we can successfully kill each week means more valor points to be able to purchase set pieces and accessories faster.  Even if, say an officer, has purchased all that they wanted off of the valor point vendor - the guild could raise money if we earned the valor points to purchase the bind on equip boots to sell serverwide on the AH. 

If we start skipping bosses, who is to say we would not have to skip other bosses (i.e., Halfus) to further progress.  The big thing is that there is too much to do with so little time that we dedicate to raiding.  Another option to look at is possibly push raiding nights to 3 hour raids.  Or even dedicate a third night to progression raiding per week.  Once we learn the fights and understand the mechanics on a weekly basis, the raiding time will eventually decrease as we will have those bosses on "farm status."  Our previous raiding guild would raid 4 hours each raid night and once a zone was on "farm status" our raids per week would decrease by whole raiding nights or even decrease the hours spent raiding per week.  One time we wiped out Black Temple in 2 hours in one night versus the 4 hours per raid we would spend in the beginning learning the zone on three or four raiding nights.  The issue of time for progression raiding will only get worse once those new zones come out (i.e., Zul'Gurub).

I just wanted to throw out there for further discussion - perhaps if we pushed it to 3 hour raiding nights, some raid nights may only be 2½ hours or so if people were tired or if it did not seem more progression was going to occur on certain nights - it would just have to be felt out based on how everyone felt that night.

[Killraven]

Suz mentioned the idea of allowing guild members to "buy" Maelstrom Crystals with DKP.  Something along those lines has been discussed, but perhaps with one or two variations in the details.

One thing I would be most in favor of is to have points towards "purchase" of crystals be based ONLY on being in a raid when a crystal is produced.  So those who are willing to go to CoW and farm for shards get points toward obtaining the shards resulting from that effort.  I don't think it would be fair to have the progression group gain DKP for killing 4 bosses in a raid from which zero (0) crystals are added to inventory.  Then with those DKP they purchase crystals generated by the efforts of those willing to farm the "boring" content.

Perhaps the simplest thing is to award crystals coming from CoW to members of the raid which generate them.  Seems like the only available motivation in doing CoW is personal gain: Valor Points plus a 1 in 5 chance of getting a crystal.