How are your impressions of Sunwell so far?
SK|Mekon: Well I think the quality of Sunwell is a somewhat debated issue at the moment. I think that the fights are really nice, I've really enjoyed the design of all 3 encounters so far and I think they are a definite improvement over a lot of these poor encounters in BT/Hyjal.

However the gate system really is not the best, while i doubt this is the time to debate it ... I think it's a lot better just having a straight race with no gates. Without the gates it would definitely be the best first 3 bosses in tbc of any instance, still is just ... annoying.

SK|mackzter: The boss encounters so far are nice, I really like Felmyst especially since I get to do something else then spamming heals! However the whole gate idea is shit, A gate each for the 3 last bosses is SO bad. And of course that US gets in 1 day before EU is just a joke. REMOVE GATES PLEASE, atleast Mu'ru and Kil'jaeden on the same gate.

How well do you think the fights on the live servers are tuned compared to the ones you fought on the PTR?
SK|Mekon: Well I think it's somewhat overstated exactly how much PTR testing we did. It really was a lot less than people think it was. The servers were hardly ever up but we did try the later versions of the early bosses. I think that the nurf to Brutalus was pretty annoying, he used to do the last burn tick for 6.4k which made it more challenging.

Felmyst is harder than he was on PTR, you could outrange the aura and stuff so it was really different so we had to completely change how we did that fight. Kalegos has always been the same and remains a pretty meaningless boss, though he is fun and well designed. Twins we didn't do that much testing on, I'm not entirely sure what to expect. The version we did on PTR for a couple of hours is probably going to be about right for live but I've heard it got some nurfs from other guilds that did it. Muru is going to need tuning down, it was too hard.

The gates have just opened on the US servers and will be opening in a few hours in Europe, how have you guys prepared for the new challenges?
SK|mackzter: We are very well prepared for the challenge and we will go very hard for it, the problem is that as you said the gates are already open in the US which gives them a one day head start. Its up to them if they are going to kill it today, if not EU will get the world first no doubt As Mek also said we didn't really get alot of Twins testing though so I'd say Vodka has a very solid shot at killing it tonight.

You guys pretty much steam rolled the first three bosses in one night, do you have any tips for guilds who wants to progress fast in Sunwell?
SK|Mekon: Yeah hmm I guess it's like any instance really, not much has changed in terms of approaching a new instance. I think that as a guild we were just in really good shape compared to say BT so that's why we steam rolled it. For Kalegos it's really just getting the strategy and timing right, once you have it there isn't really much of a gear check. Brutalus is just gear.

Felmyst is the boss I guess most guilds will find the hardest due to the coordination and the strength of having a lot of priests. But generally you just have to play a lot and not have retarded people in your guild, be well organised.

By watching your movies I noticed how you are using druid as tanks for both Brutallus and Felmyst, is there any specific reason and how do you feel about warrior/paladin tanks nowdays?
SK|Mekon: Well we've always been fans of druids, I'm not sure if that has just been that we have had really good druids or directly the strength of the class but even on BT progress we ran 2 feral.

In sunwell it really starts with Brutalus where armor is the king because of the stomp. While a druid may take more damage overall, it's much easier to heal a target that takes sustained damage than very spikey burst damage. So we literally just spam the tanks with 3 paladins on that fight and I've never seen a tank die since PTR. We did do it with a warrior this week however and it wasn't a problem at all so I wouldn't worry if you can only use a warrior.

On Felmyst, well the first version the debuff was -10k armor not 100% damage taken so our druid was more experienced so we continued to use him. Bears also have bear wall! Warriors are still great, it's just bad when their armor gets debuffed. Paladins are purely AoE tanks for us.

How do you feel about other hybrid classes, which ones do you find most viable right now?
SK|mackzter: Most viable are definatly Enhancement shamans and Shadow priests that we are currently using. I think Elemental Shamans is pretty solid also, Ret palas are really good on a fight like brutallus with alot of dpsers in the raid also since they bring a big dps boost to the whole raid. And also as we said feral druids! We haven't gotten around to try a boomkin yet though so but I heard it is pretty good!

Spell haste is probably the stat which has gotten most attention via the new sunwell items, how are your guys approach towards it nowdays with the new buffs?
SK|mackzter: Haha Phil can take that one, I bet he is sooo happy to talk about that.

SK|Mekon: Haste is now official the best stat in the game haha. As markus says im pretty much obssessed with haste at the moment. Without any sunwell loots im running about 14% haste at the moment with gems and battlemaster trinket, all our paladins and shamans are doing the same. It is EXTREMELY good for these 2 types of healers in terms of increasing your healing output (I'm a resto shaman).

While I know less about dps classes, I know our locks and mages are aiming for about 300 base spell haste on their ultimate gear set and they are going to use the spell haste / damage pyrestone a lot.

While on my shaman with ultimate gear i would have around 450 spell haste meaning a cast time of under 1.8 seconds on chain heal ... this is incredibly powerful.

The only downside is mana consumption because obviously you are burning through mana quicker. For me I dont care because I always have a battery priest, for paladins it's a bit more of a concern ... for a damage caster I dont see a downside. For melee I'm really unsure of the impact of haste but I seriously doubt it's bad. Yeah I guess I shouldn't write more lol.

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Follow SK's Sunwell journey live in #SK.WoW on QuakeNet.

Previous Interviews:
- The Sunwell Race: Death & Taxes
- The Sunwell Race: Vodka
- The Sunwell Race: Last Resort