i'm new to molten core, having only gone 3x and in those three times only gotten to magmadar, and so i have a question: is the entire instance that boring and unimaginative? It is challenging at times, but the environment and the mobs kind of suck. How does Onyxia compare? BWL?

MC is in my opinion the most boring but it's not all that boring. MC consists of fighting alot of trash mobs to get to each boss, Each boss is different and each fight is a new and exciting !?! adventure. The trash mobs are the time sink in MC none of the bosses take that long to kill, there aren't that many new skins in MC either so environmentally yes it's boring. To your left is a lava pit to your right is another flame pack.

None of the raid instances at this point are very environmentally spectacular, as both MC and BWL are part of the same theme, the two extremes of Blackrock Mountain with everything you'd expect to find based on your previous experiences in BRD, LBRS, and UBRS they are all connected and extensions of the central "theme".

BWL is put together differently in that there are very few trash mobs (at least that I've seen - we have not gotten very far). It appears to be a series of events that you must complete in order to advance to the next one. I believe the developers listened to the feedback from raiders that said Onyxia was more "fun" than MC because there's very little time between entrance and loot. However without the time sink of the trash mobs once a guild conquers BWL it will not take much time at all to farm it each week leaving raid guilds with even less time spent actually raiding.

the first encounters with bosses are awesome. Cause they are all diffrent(exept half of them are fishes) bosses and needs diffrents tactics. But when you've been there many times, it gets boring.

MC is tedious, but I wouldn't go so far as to call it boring yet. Then again, I've only been there about 15 times.

Trash isn't very challenging (except Lava packs - my guild isn't very well FR geared yet) at all. Every MC fight (from Luc to the corehound packs and the rest of the bosses) requires specific tactics. Once you have them down, the bosses are fairly easy.

That said, it's easy to wipe on just about any of them past Lucifron if you don't have decent FR gear, or plain have bad luck (spike damage on MT right as Mag's fear goes off, etc.).

My guild completed Major Domo for the first time last night (first serious attempt, we got him after 3 wipes). The thing that kills me is we STILL struggle with Gehennas. The second time we faced him, we downed him with like only 1-2 deaths. Since then, it's been an average of 2 wipes before we kill him. Honestly, it is not that hard a fight and I'm at a loss as to why we have so much trouble. We usually do Garr, Geddon, and Shaz without wiping, but still it's 1-2 wipes on Gehennas. The screwups seem to change each time - loss of agro on adds, MA switching add targets mid-fight, someone prox agroing nearby giant spawns, the list goes on. It's my source of greatest frustration.

Lava packs (trash pulls after Garr) are, imho, the most challenging thing before Ragnaros. The last 2 runs, we seem to be doing a lot better on them. Still, there are times when healers get stun/dotted back to back or double fire bloomed and things can get rough real quick. I've learned to stay way the heck back during those pulls. Managed to get through them all last night with only 1 death on my part.

Onyxia - not really that difficult a fight but is very unforgiving of mistakes. Example - people get feared during the 2 to 3 transition into whelp caves and then train the raid. Some of it can be luck too - needing to repoistion Ony in stage 1 or 3 and breath+tail cleave wipes out a group or 2. Greater fire prot potions pretty much a must have.

I hate MC with a passion. Although my guild recently started farming the "trash mobs" for BoE drops and core leather. I hate healing because I fall asleep doing it. I've recently rolled a warrior because it's so much more fun than healing. I only go now to get more purple drops and to support my guild.

My guild went on its 3rd MC raid the other night, we have Luci down pretty well, I got my Cenarion boots (yay!), but we are having real issues with Magmadar. Does anyone know where to find some decent strategies?

A thread I started a few weeks ago.

http://wow.forums.thedruidsgrove.org/showthread.php?t=9023

My guild went on its 3rd MC raid the other night, we have Luci down pretty well, I got my Cenarion boots (yay!), but we are having real issues with Magmadar. Does anyone know where to find some decent strategies?

From a healing perspective, we usually have 5 healing groups of 3 healers (usually a druid, priest and shaman in each group). HGs 1-3 heal the main tank on rotation. HG4 stays outside fear range and runs in to heal MT when fear goes off. HG5 heals dps.

Ironically, this is one of those fights that gets easier every time you beat him as Mag usually (always?) drops a Tome of Tranqilizing Shot. This enables your hunters to debuff Mag's enrage, reducing spike/crit damage on the MT.

Usual cause of wipe for us is spike damage on the MT just as Fear goes off. This is unlucky, and there's not a lot you can do about it imho.

One thing my guild needs to do better is to make clear who will take over if the MT dies. Usually, the several warrriors up (those that haven't afk'd with autoattack on) start fighting for agro. Healers need to know who is going to tank - though the Target's Target window in CTRA helps a lot.

Our tactic is simple, keep the healers at max range from the tank and maggie, keep the tank up. Keep hunters tranq shotting at their timers, lay on the dps after the main tank has aggro. Our main tanks are fairly skilled at switching to berserker and using their rage in time to block the fear, the dwarf priests fear ward helps too.

As far as the tome of tranq shot, those drop of Luci.

Ya it's a pretty boring instance. As a druid you are just a healing bot that can combat rezz tanks and main priests and innervate priests.

Prepare for hours of monotone clicking in pretty equal patterns.