Are you bored with Naxx? Too easy and basically a waste of time? Fun to blast through it, sure, but uninspiring, right? Well then. Blizzard feels your pain. They have an answer too: “Do the achievements, and then tell us it’s too easy.”
I’m one of the cynical crowd who took that as a copout. “We have no new content, so let’s convince them to do it standing on their heads. Yeah, that’s the ticket. That ought to keep them busy.”
Well folks, we did 8-man Naxx this week, and let me tell you: it was the best time I’ve ever had in there. Seriously.
Oddball makeup
We didn’t try to min-max our group. The guild had 18 people online on a night with no scheduled raid (we finished all our 25s). So we decided to split into two Naxx runs: a 10-man gearup team and an 8-man achievement team. The 8-man was filled with excellent players:
MT = prot war
OT = fury war (with prot gear)
Heals = disc priest, resto sham
DPS = 2x warlock, hunter, rogue
I’m sure if you wanted to do an 8-man run there are better comps and worse comps. This might be a C+ as far as raid comp goes. But we know each other, and trust each other to perform well. But any way you slice it, it felt like we were seriously short-handed. Go figure.
Can you say “challenge”?
We had no pally buffs, no battle rez, and omg no replenishment. I used more mana pots in one night than I have in six weeks. Someone drilled a hole in the bottom of my infinite mana pool. Remember struggling through long fights?
When we needed our fury warrior to offtank, she swapped gear, but did not respec. So she didn’t have the ability to hold aggro on multiple mobs with ease. Remember playing with inept tanks who couldn’t keep aggro? No walk in the park, that’s for sure. Having a smart hunter with fast frost traps is a lifesaver, but still no substitute for a real tank. With only eight people, we didn’t think we had the luxury of bringing a second dedicated tank.
Remember your first Sapph, when your group’s dps was scary low? How long did that fight take, like an hour? Could you keep your mana up? Have you done Gluth without mages or a zombie offtank?
All I can say is THANK YOU to Blizzard for not including 4H in the achievement. We filled our ranks to 10 just for that fight, which was a total breeze.
Just doo eet
This was the most fun I’ve ever had in there. We were stretched, forced to be creative, and couldn’t be sloppy. Being Naxx25-geared is great, but we didn’t feel overgeared at all. We wiped plenty of times, at least four times on Sapph. Yes, you heard that right – a Naxx25-geared group, Twilight Vanquishers all, and we wiped multiple times on Sapph. On Gluth. Heck, even on Faerlina when we thought we could just blast through her enrage without killing the adds.
Someone will laugh at us and tell us how easy 8-man is if you are just careful. Ok, fine. But I promise you this: whether you’re super-careful or not, overgeared or not, have an optimal group makeup or not, ate wheaties for breakfast lunch and dinner or not – you will be challenged by doing this achievement.
And if you love the game, not just the satisfaction of zerging through content that’s too easy, but you really love a challenge that’s just within reach if you give it everything, then you will absolutely love this fight.
I'm not sure it's 8-man that is so exciting per se. Once Wrath came, I decided to focus on 10-man raiding, precisely because it was easier to get a group that would challenge itself to harder and harder content - and now we do 8man Naxx as a matter of course, and I cannot see it as much harder than normal 10man (but we normally do keep replenishment in the group, simply because we have a ret paladin). I believe the excitement comes from shaking things up, doing things you didn't think you could: we have started to 10man Heroic Sarth (no drakes, of course), just because we can. So in conclusion grats on your achievement - which has nothing to do with the points, and all to do about the challenge and the adrenaline :-D
I believe you for sure. I've struggled even in 10-man Naxx at times if we didn't have an optimal group for it.
I've always found 10-mans to be a little more challenging than 25 simply because everyone has to be on top of things for it to work. You can't hide undergeared, inexperienced players in a 10-man.
Some in my guild did an 8-man recently but unfortunately I wasn't online that night. Maybe some day.
Sounds like a blast!
We're coming back, be looking for us, hopefully tonight. I'm installing WoW as we speak :)
sorry.....angie = anabelynn