Having spent the past few days in the new Silithus, I've had to group with others several times in a variety of quests. The most common of these groups have been involved in the summoning, and subsequent pwnage of a variety of Abyssal Elementals. Here I present to you what I see as the most acceptable form of groups that are formed to summon.

What is summoning?
After several solo quests against the Twilight Hammer cult, it becomes clear that another group is behind the scenes, the Abyssal Council. This is the beginning of the main method of earning superior and epic items within Silithus. Summoning is performed in groups of between 3 and 15-20, depending on the type of Elemental being summoned.

How do I summon?
First of all you need to gather a set of Twilight Trappings.

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This BoE set, when equipped, gives you the aura of a Twilight Cultist, which allows you to use a lesser windstone without being smote from on high. Once beaten the Abyssal Templar that is summoned will drop a an Abyssal Crest, and likely a green or two. A lot of nice shaman armour tends to drop, at least for me.

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After getting to Friendly reputation you can turn in 3 Abyssal Crests and a Large Brilliant Shard to make this:

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The Medallion must be worn in addition to a Trappings set in order to access the regular windstones, and to summon a boss like Abyssal Duke, who have been beaten with groups of sizes between 5 and 10. The drops here are usually rares, and ofcourse an:

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To summon a member of the Abyssal Council you require a:

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This ring is dropped from a rare spawn, Twlight Lord Everun. In addition to this drop you can make a Lordship ring at revered reputation in a similar way to summoning dukes. 3 Abyssal Signets and 5 Large Brilliant Shards make the ring, which must be worn in addition to a Medallion and a Trappings set in order to summon a raid boss. Reports of numbers required range from 13 semi MC people to 25 pickups.

An important thing to note is that after a summoning has taken place you lose all the Twlight gear you used in the summon. It is therefore important not to underestimate these Abyssal Elementals, as if you get wiped then they will despawn, and you will have to gather all the items together again.

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Group Etiquette
Once a group is together they take it in turn to sperform their summons. Most group will be for lesser summons, and tend to be between 3 and 5 man groups. Each Twlight camp has 2 lesser windstones, and so a group can use one, go to the other and then kill some mobs until the next spawns. Though it might seem a good idea to head to another camp this poses two problems. First of all, the combat bug prevalent in Silithus prevents some people from mounting up, and the group could be split up and attacked by all sorts of nasties on the way. Second, you have to consider that other groups may be summoning, and that running all over the place hogging windstones isn't so fair for other groups.

It is generally agreed that whomever summons the Abyssal Templar, Duke or Councillor should reap the main reward, either an Abyssal crest, signet or stave. These three items, which are umcommon, superior and epic respectively are turned into the Cenarion Circle for rewards and reputation, as well as being used in the creation of items to perform larger summonings.

As I mentioned before other items will drop, either BoE or BoP in nature, mostly armour. The group should roll as normal for these things, need/greeding the BoE's and /roll ing on BoP items. In this way those who help the group out of kindness, or those with less potential summons to perform still get a reward. You would be hard pressed to gather 15-20 people for a Council summoning and expecting them not to get anything. This system encourages people to help out, and hopefully will deter them from ninjaing your main drop.

As you will be in Twlight camps the whole time, set pieces are likely to drop. With my groups I encourage need rolling on all of it, as despite the popular opinion you need Twlight gear for more than just the inital quest. If you want you can trade gear amongst yourselves to complete more sets, but thats up to you.

Conclusion
A lot of people on many servers are using a system similar to this at present, but I hope this topic encourages it's greater use across the realms. If we all agree on how to approach summoning then it will become easier to get groups, and less hassle for everyone involved. Thanks for reading this far, I think my brain just exploded writing it.

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