Molten Core

Well, my guild wanted to do a Molten Core materials run last night, just to grab some whatever that drops from the first couple of mobs. We wanted close to 40 in the raid group, and ended up with about 25. I believe there were about 20 of us actually in the core when we began.

This is a lesson. Learn it well.

THE MOVIE(right click, Save As for best viewing)

Don't make this mistake. Molten Core is no joke. I believe we lasted under 30 seconds, being utterly slaughtered by the FIRST TWO guards. Within three seconds of our attack, we started to see people die. I died in the second wave, and the healers at the back, who were quickly no longer at the back, were the last to go. They held out amazingly long, but not long enough.

If you're going to do MC, do it right. Be prepared, have a full team that is organized, and agree LONG beforehand the most important thing: WHO IS IN CHARGE. From the earliest days of raiding the Crossroads when I was a wee n00b player (along with everyone else there, because it was beta) to the Molten Cores of today, the thing I see destroy any group the quickest is leadership gone awry. The very moment that a second player starts to shout out orders is the very moment you better start watching your butt and perhaps rethinking the whole raid thing.

It's vitally important to have cross communication on these raids. Healers can't always tell who needs healing. Tanks may not know when they need to aggro a mob that is harassing a healer. This is the type of info that should be displayed boldy in your chat box, or shouted loudly in your Ventrilo ear. But when you see CHARGE! at the same time as FALL BACK! You're in trouble.

My advice: if you're going to lead a group (and LEAD a group, I mean), and you're using typing for your chat, you need to have everyone understand that you and only you will be giving orders (unless you've delegated team leaders or whatnot), and you should try to adjust the chat parameters so that your directives are more easily seen. Some do this by yelling (very annoying, and can interfere with other raids). Some by restricting raid talk to only leaders (possible, but you must have something established for folks that need to exchange information -- can be mitigated by balancing out the teams). I'm sure there are other ways, and mods that can help, and this is what's important. One of the things that created a problem last night was that we weren't sure who the leader was (don't be afraid to shout it out periodically -- if they can't handle your leadership, they are free to leave), and more than one person kept trying to tell us all what the "go" signal was. So, a "go" signal was given, half the team advanced, the other half stood there, puzzled, then ANOTHER "go" signal was given by a different player, then someone started spamming orders and "go" signals, and by that time, I think we all pretty much knew it was over before it even began.

Okay, tired of this rant.

Oh, another thing. The leader grouped us all in parties by class. So, there was a party of only shamans. A party of all warriors, etc. BAD idea (IMHO). One of the most well-known MC raid guilds out there did a very nice writeup of MC strategy, and one of the things they emphasized most was party setup. Now, I may have missed something, but I don't recall anyone ever advising filling each party exclusively with one class.

Bah!