Well, last night on Twilights Hammer, my brother (Artful, but plays a UD priest called Nightware on TH) and I (playing Athum, my shaman on TH) did our first Molten Core raid with the guild we belong to on TH (called Fleetwood). The Guild does the first 6 bosses on Friday (Lucifron, Magmadar, Gehennas, Garr, Baron Geddon and Shazzrah), and the rest (Golemag, Sulfuron, Majordommo, Ragnoros) on a Sunday night.
To start with, I was totally overwhelmed by the 40 man raid thing. It felt like a Tarren Mill PvP zergfest pre-battlegrounds, except versus mobs. However, as I gradually 'got my eye in', things started to make more sense.
Molten Core, to be defeated, is not an instance you can just wander into and explore. Sheesh, even the starter trash mobs spam hit anyone who gets too close for over 1k (at least, thats what I as a mail user was getting hit for!). The bosses are of course much worse! (Shazzrah aoe's for 1k, and does an aoe debuff that takes it up to 2k if mages/druids don't remove curse fast enough, and magmadar chucks our a curse that hits you for 2k in 10 sec, and throws fireballs that do 400 damage a sec for 8 secs! One of the bosses, I forget which, randomly picks a player every 30 sec and turns them into a bomb that does 2k aoe damage after 8 sec.
However, the rewards are very very nice for killing these bosses, and I imagine the satisfaction of figuring out the strategy for beating them, and then executing it flawlessly (or else wiping) is very satisfying (I was on my first run, and I am told this guild is exceptionally good at running MC, but was still very happy doing my part). The great thing about this instance is that every single class has a job to do, and multiples of every class are needed to take down the various bosses. Co-ordintaion, a good main and backup tank, and a brilliant leader made this a very fun instance.
Required by most guilds to run MC now is at least a full bluetext set, or at least 5 class-set items, and I can see why! Equipment is the difference between life and death in there. Our main tank had 12 epic (purple) items, was prot spec'd, and was taking damage so fast he had 3 dedicated healers of his own!
Attached are some images I took of the experience - they are fairly random, but that shows more my mental state than the quality of the instance. Definitely a well designed, very fun instance with lots of really evil twists and suprises, and awesome loot!
Dale
(Elunae/Athum)
Inside the Core
First boss I remembered to click!
Bah! An earth elemental? I solo'd those in badlands!
Back to Southshore, Naga lord! Bother the Alliance rather...
On second thoughts, if this is what's in your hoard, feel free to stay a while :)
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