Thanks a lot for asking, I don’t take your comment as rude at all.
We raid 8h a week over 2 nights. Currently 9 resets since release. First week was a half week for us because it came out Wednesday midnight.
Generally:
There is no expectation to be 100% prepared with tactics, do what you like, some research a lot, others nothing. I’ll remember some stuff from back in the day and maybe look some stuff up beforehand, but not go crazy. We’ll work it out when we are there. This is all in an attempt to actually have a little exploration in a game where nothing is new.
We had a roster of 50 at the start that slowly cut down to 28. I have let personnel rotation dictate raid composition and that meant having a harder time than we needed to or more experimentation with certain bosses.
Generally we won’t look for cheese strats just to clear stuff quicker. I mean, I’m in a thread asking for no nerfs, so to me it would be somewhat hypocritical to have the guild farming Thornling Seeds and Gordok Suits.
More Specifcally:
Al’ar: Kill on the first night, but maybe 15 wipes over the 9 resets so time lost there. Silly stuff like 2 paladins on the one night so it took a bit of fiddling to get the kill that evening. In the first weeks we could get quills maybe 5 times on an attempt, now there are many kills where we don’t see it at all.
Solarian: 2 weeks lost trying to find a solution that didn’t require arcane resistance. (15 wipes)
Morogrim: 3 mages/locks on early tries put a lot of pressure on the attempts. Terrible luck with our paladin tank repeatedly getting graved. Healers taking agro, solved by paladin healing life tapping lock. (35 Wipes)
Honestly all other bosses were very easy for us. Of course some wipes here and there for whatever reason, but nothing of note. We do 8/10 in 4 hours at the moment.
The DPS have parses between 40% and 95%, which I would call “solidly average with bursts of making me proud”.
Again, thanks for your insight, its very interesting to hear the ‘average 8/10 raider’ problems. At least for me
Back to topic:
So from a boss difficulty perspective everything is just fine for you guys? Some little problems here and there but nothing too crazy, right? So if bosses before endboss are not the problem, there is just one factor holding you back in getting tries on endboss:
Trash.
Wouldnt it then be a very good thing to make the trash take less time to get more time on endbosses?
Really hoping you guys get your well deserved, unnerfed vashj/kael kills! Good luck
I get the point but to complete my picture: this was never a 100m obstacle run. It always was a 100m dash but some referees got lazy and parked their cars on the course. Also the lawn sprinkler created a mud pit and made the ground very slippy in a wide area. Additionally a walkway crosses the course so people with dogs and their leashes will make you fall from time to time.
We’re talking about restricting access to the course to dog owners, turning off the lawn sprinkler and replacing the cars with standardized hurdles as the Ford F250 on lane 1 is a bit bigger than the Toyota Prius on lane 8.
Blizzard hotfixed some walls and stairs on the course during 2.0.
With Patch 2.1 they took a bulldozer, cleaned the area and then put asphalt on everything. So this will happen with phase 3 anyway.
Also a very fun mechanic we discovered yesterday on KT. You play the rp-event (aka phase 1), then defeat the weapons, loot them and use them. Then your main tank gets oneshot because he got conflagged/toyed. The Mental Protection Field buff is classified as having a duration and a range for applying the buff. However it also seems to work as an aura. If the person whose staff’s buff you got gets further away from you than 50 yards then your buff will be removed.
This mentality destroyed WoW. When you played football or hide’n’seek you minmaxed too? This is a freakin’ GAME, not a tool to enlarge your virtual pp. Geezus, people rather put all of their energy into completely irrelevant digits on 3rd party page rather than develop themselves outside of the game… How pathetic is that? Ok, achieving this ONCE is cool, but repeating this over and over AND OVER again each xpac, each patch on every boss is riddiculous…
This is also a reason why Blizzard has to make balance changes less often - I’m 100% sure people would reeee about their parses or progress -.-
Trash → Is fine, we talk, you get into a flow and get quicker. It fits WoW and does add some life to the environment, making it feel like a dungeon crawl. I do however hate long corridors of trash you just AOE down, this feels like meaningless grind, a little bit of it can be fun though.
Corpse runs → I think they are fine in a situation that is difficult but that has a high percentage chance of success. Imagine a game where you are exploring far from safety in difficult territory but as long as you are well prepared and play well you should survive. Mounting tension of knowing a single death could be very costly could then be a good mechanic; thrilling. However raiding is the opposite, failure is guaranteed, there is no mounting tension, it’s not thrilling.
Respawns → It’s far from perfect but actually I think this is slightly more thrilling than corpse runs. Over the course of 2h you’re slowly getting more concerned with the possibility of failing to clear before respawns. Often we haven’t taken a timer so maybe the last 2/3 attempts we are restarting as quickly as possible hoping to get attempts in.
Rebuffing/Cooldowns → I would prefer everything to just get reset after a wipe so you have the same kit at your disposal each try.
I still think there are poor mechanics in the bosses we have now, all of which can be summarised as make-or-break RNG, that should not be in the game.
Moro graves - make the graves something like mag cubes so you need to rotate who gets hit by it, but can make sure it’s not the murloc tank.
sporebat poison - maybe prince malch style where it’s random but will cover the ground rather than target players
vashj mc’s - mind control is generally pretty anti fun, but I don’t necessarily think the fight should be easier.
I’m definitely not in the #nochanges group, I think a lot could be done to make the game better without it ending up at Retail and I would much rather be playing NEW content instead of 15yo content. However once you’ve made a decision about releasing content don’t…
Undermine your older content by making it easier (or in the end obsolete)
Undermine your players’ ability and willingness to struggle through adversity
No, thats perfectly normal human mentality. Competition makes things interesting because you get to measure how good you are in compharison to your peers.
You are not a child anymore like 15 years ago when you first played the game. It’s not just to keep you entertained while your parents watch a movie in the livingroom anymore.
It is perfectly normal that when adults compete in a game, that it gets minmaxed. So yes, adults do minmax hide and seek and football.
removing the T5 end bosses from attunement to T6 at least after a few weeks could be a better solution than ever nerfing it.
the “achievement” in completing the raid remains and it doesn’t take away as much from it in the future whilst the content remains more engaging than a complete faceroll
Nah I can wait for a nerf if untill next phase without a problem I rather get a few good atempts in on the end bosses unnerfed than have them nerfed seeing as I see gear only as a means to a end I dont even care about the loot wich is the only reason someone would want to have them nerfed right now really.
PVE wise it’s literally only SSC and TK atm. You can enjoy all facettes of the game that are not competitive without any trouble. Farming gold, doing dungeons, collecting pets and other rarities like shirts - u know - the usual stuff. If you think raids are all there is to the game, no matter how you approach them, eventually the game will be shallow for you!
you have no argument. The competitive aspects of the game have to be designed in a way to make competition possible. If you change the tuning of the raids it makes comparing older raids with post-nerf raids impossible → you devalue the competition because you compete against less data. You suggested EVERYTHING in the game were to be designed around competititveness which I proved to be untrue. So whats your point?
We’re going to implement the previously-mentioned adjustments to Morogrim Tidewalker, Lady Vashj, and Kael’thas Sunstrider with weekly maintenance the week of December 14.
Thank you very much for your feedback and discussion. We really appreciate it.
Thanks for at least communicating your upcoming plans this time around instead of just going SURPRISE, WE ARE CHANGING STUFF like less than 24hrs before the changes go live.
Now all the keyboard turners that need their hand holding by blizzard have their wish, they cried hard enough. Dont see why the nerf couldnt wait til phase 3 honestly
I know it´s probably not your call, but can you let go of the crybabys hands? Quite honestly, you guys over there suck the big one. Why not wait until p3 or will p3 be right there?
