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- March 30, 2023
difficulty of WoW Classic's raid instances, phrases like "frustrating" or "crisply difficult" certainly don't come to
mind.On the contrary, the bosses in Molten Core, Pitchwing Lair, and even Temple of Ahn'Qiraj drop so quickly that the community has sought out a different kind of challenge. Instead of chasing "world first kills," so-called speedrun records are driving the most ambitious guilds to ever new heights.
On October 12, the European guild SALAD BAKERS managed to defeat C'Thun and all other bosses in AQ40 in just 29 minutes and 37 seconds. By comparison, raid groups without speedrun ambitions can easily spend an hour and a half to three hours in Beetle Paradise. But how can this stark difference be explained? What tricks do the pros use to save so much time? And which of these tricks can you also use in your raid? That's exactly what the next few pages will be about.
While it was still possible to save a lot of time in Molten Core as well as in the Pitchwing Lair by simply leaving selected trash groups, the speedrun guilds in the Temple of Ahn'Qiraj have to come up with something different. The times achieved in AQ40 only count as valid for the Warcraftlogs website if all nine bosses and all trash groups have been defeated. While there is a category for "runs with trash groups left out," it doesn't play a role in the current raid meta.
WoW: The tricks of the classic speedrunners - Speedruns in AQ40 only count if you also knock down all trash.
Source: Blizzard
As many great features as Classic has, class balancing isn't one of them. There are just a few specializations that do significantly more damage than all the others. And the king of damage in most raid challenges is clearly the Warrior. He doesn't need any mana breaks, can step in as a tank at any time, deals enormous damage even to several targets standing together, and thanks to Execution, even increases the damage as soon as the victim is badly hit. In successful speedrun raids, it is therefore quite normal to pack 20 or more warriors.
Add a few rogues and a hunter to take care of the pulls, and there's hardly any room left for offensive spellcasters. The only thing some of the raids rely on is three to four fire mages, as they contribute a noticeable amount of damage thanks to the stackable ignite effect. Warlocks, on the other hand, serve mainly as a supplier of Curse of Folly. Further support for the melee fighters is provided primarily by healing paladins and shamans and druids, respectively.
Current Classic records
How fast are the pros in the WoW Classic raids currently? We have the speedrun records for you.
Temple of Ahn'Qiraj
- Speedrun record: EU guild SALAD BAKERS with 29 minutes and 37 seconds.
Pitchwing Lair
- Speedrun record: CN guild Noobs with 18 minutes and 34 seconds.
Molten Core
- Speedrun record: CN guild Noobs with 16 minutes and 08 seconds.
As of November 05, 2020Howhigh the damage of all the melee fighters is also depends, among other things, on how efficiently your raid can lower the enemy's armor. Standard bosses have 3,731 armor points in Classic. Using the usual suspects of Fairy Fire, Curse of Folly, and Tear Armor, you can reduce this to 336 counters. If you replace Tear Armor with a rogue's Improved Weaken Armor, you can lower your victim's armor by an additional 300 points. Doesn't sound like much, does it?
But this small change results in a damage increase for all melee fighters of about five percent each. This easily makes up for the damage that the rogue responsible for the debuff loses due to his special task. Note that your tanks will have to adjust in this case, as they lose an opportunity to turn rage into threat with Tear Armor. Battlecry, however, works wonderfully as a replacement thanks to the new spell rank from the Ruins of Ahn'Qiraj. Your tanks shouldn't notice any aggro problems.
If you want to pack 20 or more Warriors, you'll have to give up spellcasting classes - you can only fit 40 players in a Classic raid. In fact, even with the Twin Emperors in the Temple of Ahn'Qiraj, the pros go so far as to use only one Warlock instead of two for the tanking task. In that case, the lone demon master runs to the other side of the room after each teleport to grab the spellcasting twin there. In the meantime, of course, the Warrior tank positioned there has to withstand the boss's attacks and build up enough aggro with Demoralization Call and Battlecry. It's a risk that pays off in terms of time saved.
In speedruns, you can often save valuable seconds by bombing as many enemies out of existence as possible at once. A good example of this is the groups of bugs in the Temple of Ahn'Qiraj before the Sartura battle guard. While most guilds will pick them off one by one (which is safer but takes time), the pros use a faster strategy: a player with an active Vial of Petrification (you're protected against physical attacks and spells for a minute) pulls the groups together. Once the bugs are gathered in one place, the use of area spells starts.
In addition, players detonate the powerful Goblin Pioneer charges and place Master Target Dummies on the ground, which will always get the attention of elite enemies. Without these two tools of engineering, such big pulls would not be possible. However, the explosive charges are also used repeatedly in boss fights, for example when Viscidus' little slimes meet or when Sartura and her three servants have been stunned by rogues and paladins in one spot.
WoW: The Tricks of the Classic Speedrunners - Many of the best speedrun raids belong to the Alliance side.
Source: Warcraftlogs
Of course, bosses only go down defeated in record time if all damage experts are wearing their best possible DpS gear. In the course of a raid, many small-scale adjustments are possible. For example, as soon as a trinket with a utility effect isn't available in the next few minutes, the pros will swap it out for an alternative at the first opportunity. When it comes to boosting their own survival power, pros rely mostly on consumable items like resistance potions, titan vials, or Great Stone Shield potions so they can keep wearing their damage gear.
This is especially evident with bosses like Huhuran or Viscidus. True to the motto "attack is the best defense," speedrunners there almost completely forgo items that grant natural resistance. The thought behind it: The shorter the fight, the less damage pelts the raid, the less important nature resistance is. Large nature potions lighten the load on healers, and items that remove poisons are also used when necessary.
Sometimes we encounter boss challenges in the Classic Raids, which simply take some time due to their mechanics. However, even here there is occasionally the possibility to noticeably shorten the duration of the fight. A good example of this is Viscidus, who you must first freeze with freeze effects and then shatter with melee blows. Then box as many slimes as possible and start all over again. What many players don't know: With various gimmicks, these phases can be shortened enormously.
In the pro raids, for example, selected players put on the gem Cold Basilisk Eye to use the usable effect to build up as many frost stacks as possible right at the pull. The second phase is then shortened with the use of the Barov Worker's Shuffler Trinket, which summons servants that immediately attack the boss. In the Progress guild record run, seven players used the Trinket; the boss shattered into pieces almost immediately. Then blast away the slimes with dozens of explosive charges (see trick #4) and Ramstein's Lightning Bolt, and the record time beckons. By the way: Speedrun groups smear frost oil on their frost weapons before the first pull. The change in battle is best done with a macro like the following:
#showtooltip/equipslot
16 glacial blade/equipslot
16 chromatic hardened sword/equipslot
17 cold fury dagger/equipslot
17 maladath
Among the biggest time wasters in the Temple of Ahn'Qiraj are the trash groups after the twin emperors. Especially the brain washers cost way too much time with their mind controls and fear effects. Various raids have therefore switched to having a priest with mind vision "fish" an ID with as few brainwashers as possible before a run. The swarm guards are much more pleasant to play in comparison. Especially if you have more than 20 warriors in the raid, who can withstand a lot with armor elixirs and large stone shield potions even in DpS clothes, can put on a shield if necessary and beat the guards out of existence in seconds.
WoW: The tricks of the Classic Speedrunners - When half the server gets the World Buffs in the evening ...
Source: buffed
no secret that ambitious Classic Guilds use flasks when they want to get the best possible performance. Speedrun raids, however, use the expensive flasks with a very special devotion. When it comes to record times, for example, it's hugely important that the raid doesn't take any mana breaks. Only mana potions and other mana regeneration boosting options like dark runes can hardly do that. For this reason, spellcasters in these raids occasionally throw in vials of distilled wisdom as soon as their blue juice is depleted. This way, they get 2,000 mana points back in one fell swoop.
The Vial of Petrification, meanwhile, finds a use not only in big pulls, but also in the trash groups to Huhuran. If a melee fighter there gets the plague, he can use the Flask to cleanse the poison, then click away the protective effect and continue to pummel the Anubisath defender without a care in the world. This saves time and healer mana.
Speaking of which, in speedruns it's essential that you get through each fight and movement phase as efficiently as possible. To do this, it's extremely important that your hunter is on his toes and delivers each new trash group to the raid with pinpoint accuracy - without false pulls, unnecessary pauses, or pulls that are too early. If the hunter messes up, the record time is quickly out of reach. If everything goes smoothly, you can save an enormous amount of time. Many speedrun raids, for example, pull the last Obsidian Destroyer directly to Skeram or the nearby Scorpion group into the fight to Fankriss. For phases when there is no fighting, the pros switch to boots with mithril spurs as well as the gem Carrot on a Stick, which noticeably increases their riding speed.
The engineers' rocket boots or the elixir Zanza's speed, which increases your running speed by 20 percent for two hours, also promise higher mobility. The latter buff is exciting for the fight against the twin imperators, for example, because damage experts have to run through the room again and again. The shorter the run times, the longer the damage phases to the twins, the shorter the fight, the better for overall time.
Classic's World Buffs are extremely powerful. So powerful, in fact, that you can use them to undermine entire boss mechanics. For example, a raid facing Ouro with a full buff palette is unlikely to ever see the intermediate phase where the bug burrows into the ground due to the high overall damage. This immediately makes the fight much easier, plus the shortened duration has a positive effect on the spellcasters' mana. And then there's another important interaction: the shorter battles increase your achieved damage even more, because damage-increasing effects through abilities or trinkets are active for a larger percentage of the battle and thus have a greater effect.
WoW: The tricks of the Classic Speedrunners - During the Darkmoon Faire, there are the most records. For reasons.
Source: Blizzard
In terms of speedrun raids, even the 60-minute buffs are easily enough for the entire run, so players still benefit from all the buffs during the final boss. Of course, the latter is only the case if you don't die beforehand. A clean play style (in terms of pulls, aggro, positioning and so on) is enormously important for this, of course. But it's also helpful to ensure your own survival with consumables such as Vials of Titans, the aforementioned Great Stone Shield Potion , or resistance potions. For emergency situations, you should always have a Limited Invulnerability Potion or a Vial of Petrification at hand.
On the one hand, all these consumables cost a lot of gold or farm time. On the other hand, you'll save gold and time if you clean the temple of Ahn'Qiraj in half an hour and don't have to throw elixirs and the like at it. The Darkmoon Faire also shows how important the World Buffs are for the Speedrun meta. Once a month, it provides Azeroth heroes with exclusive buffs that last for two hours. Especially powerful is the effect you get when you select the first answer option twice from NPC Sayge: Your damage is increased by a whopping ten percent. No wonder that speedrun records are usually celebrated in this time.
If you look at the top 5 fastest guilds in the Temple of Ahn'Qiraj on Warcraftlogs, you'll see four Alliance communities there. The reason: the fighters under the blue lion banner have access to some faction advantages that are very helpful in speedruns. Let's just start with the Paladin's arsenal. Thanks to the Blessing of Salvation, the threat level on the Alliance side is almost non-existent. In addition, the shimmering golden tin cans are extremely mana-efficient and increase the mana efficiency of all other spellcasters with Boon of Wisdom.
Add to that emergency spells like God's Shield, Laying on of Hands, or Hammer of Justice (a big plus in the fight against Sartura's Slaughter Guard) and every shaman suddenly looks pretty old in comparison - at least when it comes to speedruns. Another advantage of the Alliance: the Dwarven Priests' Fear spell protection works much more reliably than the Shamans' Totem of Earth Strike.
WoW: The Tricks of the Classic Speedrunners - In the Weakness Phase, C'Thun's back faces the entrance of the room.
Source: buffed
Last but not least, we have two tricks for the fight against the temple end boss C'Thun for you. The first trick you should take to heart even if you don't do a speed run: Position yourself in the second phase with the entire raid at the entrance and not at the throne. This way, in the Weak Phase, you'll be right by the Old God's backside, so your melee fighters can deal maximum damage immediately without the risk of parries.
Alliance raids that want to reach Weakness as quickly as possible have also taken to sacrificing their paladins in the first ray. The advantage of this strategy is that it increases the chance that warriors will end up in the stomach that can deal maximum damage on the two tentacles. Since the adds quickly die in phase 2, the pros can easily do without the healing of the slab paladins.
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