Ectoplasmic Distiller abuse is gamebreaking and needs to be fixed

I have yet to see a fprot tank with threat issues, to be honest. Even as deep prot, it’s not that hard. Sure, deep prot has issues on vael, but if I look at fights like firemaw, ebonroc, flamegor, chromaggus or nef, then deep prot will be enough. Unless you’re buffed up all the way, then you should go with fury prot, and you won’t have issues.

That is why I think that the distiller does not trivialize threat, it just allows you to play deep prot and use a shield.

That’s not the problem. The problem is the impossibility to fail.

I wouldn’t want to play a sad emulation of retail’s LFR. And, BTW, I don’t care about “metas”, world buffs, min/maxing nor anything of the like. We have two main tanks in our guild who are deep protection, and the rest of us are fury/prot to help DPS when we don’t have to assume a tanking task and equip a shield when we have to. You see, some of us enjoy playing the game more like it was played when it first launched. And yes, our DPS are threat capped sometimes, as it used to be, and they work around it using their abilities and knowledge of their class. If you remove the threat mechanic the game becomes boring, shallow and meaningless in many cases because you can’t fail.

I would argue that it is currently impossible to not clear a raid, unless you are attempting to construct a perverse counterexample. Nobody actually fails at clearing raids anymore, unless you’re in a pug at 2 in the morning and half the raid is asleep while the other half is drunk.

Classic raids are about the same as lfr, but require more preparation. In terms of mechanics, every mythic+ boss has more mechanics than the most complex bwl boss. The question is, for the most part, whether or not you brought your resistance gear.
In lfr, there are many things to do, but you can tank most things and not die. In Classic, there is very little to do, but some mistakes can wipe you, if you play a tank or a healer. However, wipes in Classic are extremely rare.

Also, there’s always LFR N’Zoth, which is probably harder than doing 4 horsemen and thaddius at the same time.

Threat as a mechanic barely exists in Classic, if you are willing to go furyprot. I hate furyprot, because I want to tank as a tank, but that does not mean that threat can’t be eliminated as an issue. I don’t go around claiming that mages do no damage just because I prefer to use my mageblade to stab bosses instead of using spells.

I would argue that it is currently impossible to not clear a raid

This is of course a nuts thing to say

Nobody actually fails at clearing raids anymore, unless you’re in a pug at 2 in the morning and half the raid is asleep while the other half is drunk.

Ludicrously easy != impossible to fail

I’ve never actually done LFR N’zoth, although if it matches other BFA raid-bosses I find it exceedingly hard to believe that it’s going to be harder than horseman. Thaddius no doubt, but horsemen… idk

However I couldn’t agree more than furyprot is disgusting and it would be nice if it wasn’t the meta. Distiller however might be the most disgusting way to achieve that :stuck_out_tongue:

As I said in my first reply, I would not use the thing even if it was not hotfixed so it does not affect me anyway. What I am curious to know is: if you are playing a tank, do you really feel the game is more enjoyable knowing that nobody will be able to pull aggro from you regardless of what you do, even if you do absolutely nothing but stay there? I mean, really? For me it is like paying the subscription to the game and then using something that allows you to actually not play the game and win anyway. It makes no sense to me but, hey, that’s only my opinion. I understand other people might prefer other things.

This is of course a nuts thing to say

I was in a guild where people didn’t even get world buffs when bwl released. On the first ID we killed everything up to nef, and past that we killed nef every week. Claiming that it is impossible to not clear is not nuts. Everyone and their grandma clears bwl, unless you are losing so many members that you’re down to 25-30 people. However, in that case, your problem is the number of people, and not raid difficulty.

You can’t realistically fail at a Classic raid, until you actively try to fail.

LFR N’Zoth is pretty much impossible, unless they nerfed itby now. The problem is that it requires you to play mechanics, which LFR people aren’t used to, so you just fail horribly. It is harder than doing 4 horsemen and thaddius simultaneously.

I think distiller would open up new strategies, and I would actually enjoy minmaxing distiller. I also think that it does not trivialize anything, apart from removing the possibility of tank death. Tank death isn’t much of an issue as it is, though. I just don’t see it as that much of a problem, and would prefer it over fury prot garbage.

If I had infinite threat as a tank, then I would try to minize risk. This could mean going for defcap, it could mean stacking EHP, or I could actually get avoidance. It would open up a lot of new itemization.
It’s not like playing tank in wotlk was semi-afk non-playing. You definitely had to actively play the game as a tank in wotlk, even though threat was never an issue.
Reducing tanks to tps machines is wrong, imo.

And with p5 it get’s even more disgusting, as Battle Shout is your #1 filler ability.
I’d rather drop that distiller than spam shout all day long.

Also, no one forces you to use it. Dad guilds can still play deep prot if they want.

In the current meta, where spamming flasks for infinite mana, using flasks of petrification to skip trash or spamming shout to generate threat is the only way, we might as well use distiller as it was back then.

RIP Ectoplasmic memes, 29.07.2020-31.07.2020.

I think it’s pretty clear that this was in the original game - the reddit post makes it clear that this was in vanilla (the alternative would have to be somehow someone posted 3 years ago that this used to be in the game [a full 15 months before Classic WoW was even announced], even though it wasn’t and it miraculously made it’s way into the game 2 days ago when the data was copied in from the original game… this is beyond a reasonable possibility)

The debate then has to become; if it was in Vanilla why should it not be in Classic? If (and only if) we then agree that it shouldn’t be in Classic; why just this?

Either every item is up for debate, or nothing is: if you want something removed that should be in-game, why not do the same with World Buffs in raids (that are significantly more game-breaking than this) & AOE speills that have no diminishing returns (again, completely game-breaking) & Diamond Flask (not as game-breaking, but clearly broken)

If we allow World Buffs, no Diminishing returns & 50 other things that break the game on the basis that it’s a “warts and all” re-creation… why is this item excluded?

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We also have the GCD/Proc bug, which is obviously just broken, but Blizzard flat out said that the would not fix it.
Either fix broken things or don’t, but cherry picking that is just stupid. I’m all for sticking to the reference client, but if you use that as an argument all the time, then keep using it as an argument…

Distiller didn’t break anything at all, it just made it funny. Nobody fails at clearing raids, and threat is barely an issue. If anything, it made tanking more like in vanilla (you can use a shield without getting flamed), and beyond that, it made Paladin tanks at least playable. Nobody lost anything from distiller being in the game. Just amke it not despawn when handing in the quest, if your concern is that completing the quest makes your character have to go fprot.

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A hotfix was applied late last night that made it so the Ectoplasmic Distiller quest item would no longer generate threat. We made this change because in patch 1.12, dropping this item applied a buff to everybody in range of the item, and since buffs generate threat by default, it could be used to trivialize the threat mechanics in many encounters. We don’t believe this was an intended effect and this was a case where the impact was extreme enough to warrant the change.

Another notable reason for the change is that this item is not a quest reward, but item used as part of the mechanics to complete a quest, which is then removed when the quest is complete. We want quest completion to be a rewarding experience, and not feel like a mistake.

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Bye byeeeeeee man!

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@Bornakk; Does this mean there’ll be more changes incoming?

Or should I take it to mean that all of the other things that we think are not achieving their intended effect, actually are, and you guys are happy with all these things are working out: such as world buffs in raids, or diamond flask 1k+ heal ticks, or mages pulling 180 mobs in dungeons? Are they working so well, that we might see a version of these mechanics make their way into retail?

… or is it just as long as it lines up with what the private server meta was (and not the actual Vanilla meta was), you’re cool with it? Because this was clearly actually used in Vanilla WoW by a small niche of the playerbase, just like all of the above.

This is AGAINST the reference client. Any other bugs or “exploits” were always checked on the reference client to make sure the game is EXACTLY the same as vanilla was.
You changed the game, although guilds used this behavious back then to progress (proofs have been posted)

I’m getting really pissed right now. First the 30 instance lock, which basically means I can no longer boost with my mage for a whole day and now this nonsense.
What’s next?
Might as well unsubscribe already. f* that.

I’m a #NoChange but the hotfix is nice here.

Who want a trivialize (more than it is already) the content for a feature probably never used/known by the players during Vanilla ?

It’s like it never existed.

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So quit. This was not intended when the quest was made. It was a learning curve for the developers and if the game had better support for fixing bugs and exploits back in the day this is something that will get removed 100%. So don’t act like it’s a normal or a good thing to be an exploiter. I am for no changes but exploits like this have GOT TO GO and if you think it’s ok to be an exploiter and to abuse the game so do you.

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Does it mean Diamond Flask exploit is gonna be fixed too?

nah, they just randomly fix some bugs how they like it.

yea I unsubbed. feels way to random how they (probably 1 junior developer working minimum wage) decide to fix things or not.
They vowed that classic will work 1:1 like the 1.12 reference client.

Now they start to fix stuff that has been used/exploited by progress guilds back then.
And on the other hand they can’t freaking QA Bosses like C’Thun??!! The eye beam on pull was broken and basically made this freeloot for the first guilds to get there.
Very disapointed.

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