The problem is that WoW isn't mechanically challenging. It's fundamentally a numbers game; fight strats are known, and a mildly ridiculous amount of thought has gone into how to best conquer them. So really the one way that Blizzard can increase difficulty in a meaningful way is to increase the numbers involved in whichever way. And as the mathmatical standard gets more demanding, it gets more demanding of specificity in role, in class, in whatever else. And that's not something people like, because it starts to become exclusionary for classes that the raid has an abundance of or that simply don't measure up.
You can say this is a balancing issue that blizzard should fix and maybe you're right, and you can see them sort of trying to account for it with class homogenization, but precedent and experience tells us that they'll probably never get it entirely correct. That means that they can either design content that's challenging given that environment (i.e. sunwell), or they can design content that's accessible.
Didn't do sunwell, but old naxx was sublime.
DisruptorX2 on
0
Dhalphirdon't you open that trapdooryou're a fool if you dareRegistered Userregular
edited December 2008
If you couldn't share strategies online, content would be much, much harder. That's basically all there is to it.
RE: KT and melee...it does seem to punish bringing melee to that fight beyond 2 on 10man, and 5-6 on 25man.
We had our offtank die to a void zone at about 95% on him so I had the feral druid pick up the adds in bear form and bring them to me, at which point I hit Challenging Shout, Last Stand, then at 10% hit Shield Wall. Was quite easy, actually, healers weren't having any trouble even without Shield Wall up.
They should really look into giving bosses some actual AI abilities, instead of just following a script.
The current standard is idiotic: top tier guilds raiding on the test server for months, then the sequence gets leaked and the only investment a guild has to make is training 25 people to follow the sequence.
If the mobs were smart enough to realize the tank is pulling him into a corner to neutralize his ae, and was all "fuck you, I'm gonna run over to the healer station and ae them", then you'd get people to stay on their toes, and fights wouldn't have to be simply a "math game".
They should really look into giving bosses some actual AI abilities, instead of just following a script.
The current standard is idiotic: top tier guilds raiding on the test server for months, then the sequence gets leaked and the only investment a guild has to make is training 25 people to follow the sequence.
If the mobs were smart enough to realize the tank is pulling him into a corner to neutralize his ae, and was all "fuck you, I'm gonna run over to the healer station and ae them", then you'd get people to stay on their toes, and fights wouldn't have to be simply a "math game".
Yes, I would quite like it if bosses just one-shot healers out the gate.
They should really look into giving bosses some actual AI abilities, instead of just following a script.
The current standard is idiotic: top tier guilds raiding on the test server for months, then the sequence gets leaked and the only investment a guild has to make is training 25 people to follow the sequence.
If the mobs were smart enough to realize the tank is pulling him into a corner to neutralize his ae, and was all "fuck you, I'm gonna run over to the healer station and ae them", then you'd get people to stay on their toes, and fights wouldn't have to be simply a "math game".
Yes, I would quite like it if bosses just one-shot healers out the gate.
Lord Victor Nefarius was right!
The only reason they one-shot anyone right now is because it's just a numbers game. If the fights were more dynamic they'd be able to tone down the damage and all those cloth wearers might actually be able to take a hit.
They should really look into giving bosses some actual AI abilities, instead of just following a script.
The current standard is idiotic: top tier guilds raiding on the test server for months, then the sequence gets leaked and the only investment a guild has to make is training 25 people to follow the sequence.
If the mobs were smart enough to realize the tank is pulling him into a corner to neutralize his ae, and was all "fuck you, I'm gonna run over to the healer station and ae them", then you'd get people to stay on their toes, and fights wouldn't have to be simply a "math game".
Yes, I would quite like it if bosses just one-shot healers out the gate.
Lord Victor Nefarius was right!
The only reason they one-shot anyone right now is because it's just a numbers game. If the fights were more dynamic they'd be able to tone down the damage and all those cloth wearers might actually be able to take a hit.
Ok we can down maly but our main problem comes in phase 2, some of our people just die in 1 shot from the overhead casters, so I'm guessing its during the run from 1 bubble to another, is there anything that can be done bout that?
Sometimes it's just bad luck, as someone mentioned, due to him placing the bubbles really far away from each other, or on top of your raid, making everyone bounce around and take extra damage. One thing is to remind people it's important in that phase to use healthstones if they have them, and also, you don't need to switch bubbles the second the new one appears. So if you're at 20% HP because the healers haven't gotten to you yet, it may be a good idea to not venture out of the happy bubble yet to the place where mobs can finish you off. Wait a second for a heal, or perhaps bandage, then run to the next bubble.
They should really look into giving bosses some actual AI abilities, instead of just following a script.
The current standard is idiotic: top tier guilds raiding on the test server for months, then the sequence gets leaked and the only investment a guild has to make is training 25 people to follow the sequence.
If the mobs were smart enough to realize the tank is pulling him into a corner to neutralize his ae, and was all "fuck you, I'm gonna run over to the healer station and ae them", then you'd get people to stay on their toes, and fights wouldn't have to be simply a "math game".
Yes, I would quite like it if bosses just one-shot healers out the gate.
Lord Victor Nefarius was right!
The only reason they one-shot anyone right now is because it's just a numbers game. If the fights were more dynamic they'd be able to tone down the damage and all those cloth wearers might actually be able to take a hit.
And the prot spec would be entirely useless?
Where did I say that was a good idea?
I just think more dynamic fights are better. Look at the final boss dude in Karazhan. The little flame circles are random, people gotta be ready to move and adapt to the situation. Now put elements like that into fights where it's the boss himself being unpredictable, and raiding in general gets more exciting.
They should really look into giving bosses some actual AI abilities, instead of just following a script.
The current standard is idiotic: top tier guilds raiding on the test server for months, then the sequence gets leaked and the only investment a guild has to make is training 25 people to follow the sequence.
If the mobs were smart enough to realize the tank is pulling him into a corner to neutralize his ae, and was all "fuck you, I'm gonna run over to the healer station and ae them", then you'd get people to stay on their toes, and fights wouldn't have to be simply a "math game".
Yes, I would quite like it if bosses just one-shot healers out the gate.
Lord Victor Nefarius was right!
The only reason they one-shot anyone right now is because it's just a numbers game. If the fights were more dynamic they'd be able to tone down the damage and all those cloth wearers might actually be able to take a hit.
And the prot spec would be entirely useless?
Where did I say that was a good idea?
I just think more dynamic fights are better. Look at the final boss dude in Karazhan. The little flame circles are random, people gotta be ready to move and adapt to the situation. Now put elements like that into fights where it's the boss himself being unpredictable, and raiding in general gets more exciting.
Could you explain what you want changed, because stuff like the elementals is obviously already in the game same with void zones mechanics that force people to pay attention and move. I don't really see how what your saying changes anything though as at the end of the day the boss has X abilities and you do Y to react to them. Even in your example this doesn't change as people just pay attention to when the boss AoEs and then they run away.
Um, Prince Malchezzar was ridiculously easy. It only took one ranged DPS and one tank doing any thinking at all to handle positioning. There was nothing dynamic about thatl.
Um, Prince Malchezzar was ridiculously easy. It only took one ranged DPS and one tank doing any thinking at all to handle positioning. There was nothing dynamic about thatl.
He hit like a truck.
They also nerfed the number of infernals later on.
I've been thinking about what xzzy has been saying and it'd be interesting if an mmo had the tank's job to intercept, stun, push away the mobs the whole fight away from healers and other squishy players who the mobs would try and rape. But maybe that kind of system would be too demanding and stressful compared to spam these abilities and stay the fuck out of the fire.
Could you explain what you want changed, because stuff like the elementals is obviously already in the game same with void zones mechanics that force people to pay attention and move. I don't really see how what your saying changes anything though as at the end of the day the boss has X abilities and you do Y to react to them. Even in your example this doesn't change as people just pay attention to when the boss AoEs and then they run away.
The end result would be a fight where you can't download the strat off wowwiki and spend a few nights getting everyone to learn the dance before killing the boss.. and every subsequent kill uses the exact same strat until the group stops farming it.
If said boss had a bank of abilities and when it detected certain statuses on players, and used those abilities as a reaction, that's just one example of how they could make a fight more dynamic. Say if the healers are all sitting on a full mana bar, the boss fires off an AE to increase the healing load.
Positioning always bugs me too. Guilds look for places to park the tank to trivialize an AE or use some kind of geometry feature. If a boss notices firing off an AE will only hit two people in the raid.. he'd not cast it and instead either position himself to hit more people, or wait until people bunch up.
I don't suggest that a boss becomes smart enough to ignore the tank and kill all the healers off, that would be retarded. Just explore ways to add some unpredictability to the event.
As much a fan as I am of the idea of more challenging and even "intelligent" encounters, there is also a fine line to walk here. Honestly, progression is fun with a tight group, but it can also already be weeks or months bashing your heads against the same bosses. Making them more random or having a varied number of abilities used at more random times and behaviours more on par with players than current "mobs" would make things a LOT more difficult to farm.
Honestly, they'd probably have to double, triple or more the amount of loot dropped by a boss, because I sure wouldn't want to effectively re-learn an encounter every week for 3 or 4 pieces of gear.
Having each boss utilize a reasonably predictable number of abilities at certain points in an encounter is also a method through which people do learn to fight a boss, and then perfect those techniques. Such randomness (without extensive care in balancing) would make just learning an encounter an absolute nightmare.
And then you have to try to balance across the "hardcores" (who will likely have people working out every last facet of your little tricks on the fly) and the "casuals" (who, without some measure of learning curve are going to give up on the content or the game out of frustration).
As awesome as random, smarter and nastier boss fights could be, Blizzard and we cannot expect every guild on Earth to be as good as the Elitist Jerks, or Vodka, or whoever else the hardcore Forum Raiders are postally jerking off to/about/for these days. Predictability, as dreary as it can be to farm for weeks or months or years on end, is also a cornerstone in getting 4 or 9 or 24 other people to grasp what's going on.
I can imagine fights where it would work. Bosses would telegraph their changes in strat or attack through emotes and graphics and it could be glorious... but if not done carefully, it could also be a clusterfuck.
Forar on
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKER!
Well, half my argument was that if the fights got smarter, the margin of error would grow bigger. You know, you don't know when Illidan's gonna throw his swords down, but when he does, they do a half the damage they used to.
I just think it would open up Blizzard's options, which is really all I'm after.. variety.
My guild tried to run naxx tonight for the first time, but slight guild drama and perhaps undergearing kept us from getting past the first boss in the spider wing. We had pretty good dps and our MT had the kiting strategy down pat, but we couldn't get him down below 45% because of the adds and the tossing spikes fucking up our tank.
Had one of the members drop out early too. I'd been trying to help people with strategy in vent for most of the attempts, refining and whatnots. After about the 6th wipe I got a tell from one of the members saying how i didn't know anything and she was sick of it. Then a prompt raid quit. We're going to try again sunday.
I talked a bit with the raid/guild leader and the moral of the story for me is that people don't need someone constantly going over strategy and that I need to shut up more often in vent. It's a good moral.
Our group was really coordinated as far as the tanking and kiting went. None of the melee seemed to have any problems keeping to the back of the boss.
The real problem for us was the adds. I'm not sure if we have the gear to take them down quickly enough. But as I was healer, it was hard to tell just what time it was taking us to get them down while concentrating on the MT.
Our group was really coordinated as far as the tanking and kiting went. None of the melee seemed to have any problems keeping to the back of the boss.
The real problem for us was the adds. I'm not sure if we have the gear to take them down quickly enough. But as I was healer, it was hard to tell just what time it was taking us to get them down while concentrating on the MT.
What kind of setup do you have?
a mage here is great to nova and then your OT can run back to grab them if the mage doesnt have the dps to bring them down solo.
MT: Paladin
OT: Warrior
MH: Holy Priest
OH: Disc Priest
OH: Resto Druid (Originally was a rogue but we were having health issues so he switched)
DPS: Hunter
DPS: Death Knight
DPS: Death Knight
DPS: Deep fire mage
aand i'm blanking on the last dps. One of the DKs and the other dps i'm blanking on were at about 1.7k dps. The mage was around 1.5k, while the other DK was at about 1k (but this counter was during a fight where he'd had to swap to frost pres and help tank adds 'cause our OT died earlier in a fluke) and the hunter was at 900 dps. Hunter had just hit 80, but we'd insisted she come so that we could start getting our set raid group's coordination down as much as possible.
Cilla Black on
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UnbrokenEvaHIGH ON THE WIREBUT I WON'T TRIP ITRegistered Userregular
MT: Paladin
OT: Warrior
MH: Holy Priest
OH: Disc Priest
OH: Resto Druid (Originally was a rogue but we were having health issues so he switched)
DPS: Hunter
DPS: Death Knight
DPS: Death Knight
DPS: Deep fire mage
aand i'm blanking on the last dps. One of the DKs and the other dps i'm blanking on were at about 1.7k dps. The mage was around 1.5k, while the other DK was at about 1k (but this counter was during a fight where he'd had to swap to frost pres and help tank adds 'cause our OT died earlier in a fluke) and the hunter was at 900 dps. Hunter had just hit 80, but we'd insisted she come so that we could start getting our set raid group's coordination down as much as possible.
I know you say they just hit 80, but 900dps is incredibly low for a lv80 hunter right now, even in quest greens. There's a reason they've got a nerf coming in the patch.
I dunno, maybe she wasn't specced right or didn't have the best rotation. I'd already pissed her off enough later, I'm not now about to go and critique the one class I've avoided learning anything about like the plague.
The low dps hunter will hurt quite a bit but not too much as you can do the fight with a few more transitions when controlled.
Getting your deathknights to time dropping their DnD on the crypt guards corpse would help you lots to burn down the scarabs. They only have 25k health so they die really quickly.
Don't worry about people gettign too pissy she probably got wound up as she was underperforming.
6 wipes is not many and if people want to raid they need to get used to hearing strats and suggestions on vent a lot. If people don't like your advice then they should perform better and not need it :P
I dunno, maybe she wasn't specced right or didn't have the best rotation. I'd already pissed her off enough later, I'm not now about to go and critique the one class I've avoided learning anything about like the plague.
Gear's been covered, but 900 dps I don't think is a matter of spec, either. I've run Archavon pugs with many DPS of just about every class who had bad specs or just quest geared, and most could still pull about 1400-1600.
Only thing I can suggest, rather than providing critique yourself, is to refer the hunter to their class forum. All the class forums have at sticky thread detailing talents and builds, and at least one sticky or long-running thread about raiding which will cover talents, rotations, and what to look for in gear/gems/enchants.
Hevach on
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Dhalphirdon't you open that trapdooryou're a fool if you dareRegistered Userregular
edited December 2008
Earlier in Wrath, I wouldn't have gotten worked up about someone doing 900 DPS, because I didn't know what the benchmarks were. However, having seen 20+ DPSers in my guild hit 80 and start raiding, the benchmark for entry level 80 DPS is around 1600 when fully raid buffed. Any significant amount less, and they're failing in some way.
I usually offtank them during the fight, and it gets annoying towards the end because they just come from everywhere, and some will get on the MT and it just gets crappy. Only being able to use swipe to gather them up sucks
I usually offtank them during the fight, and it gets annoying towards the end because they just come from everywhere, and some will get on the MT and it just gets crappy. Only being able to use swipe to gather them up sucks
Save challenging roar for that point of the fight and just offtank them while people dps down Sarth. If you happen to taunt the boss then the MT can grab him back easily.
1.5k dps is pretty bad for a 10-man environment. Tell your mage to respec 0/53/18, get the kirin tor rep sword + badge offhand. Maybe even get some crafted epics, the ebonweave set is pretty cheap since eternal shadow's very affordable now.
Also when the scarabs start popping he damn well ought to be standing by the corpse to frost nova them.
My mage is freshly 79 and I can manage 1500+dps on elites/group quests.
I should hit 80 tonight, not sure If I'm just gonna keep questing and do storm peaks & ice crown, or start running around doing instances to gear up for heroics.
Posts
Didn't do sunwell, but old naxx was sublime.
RE: KT and melee...it does seem to punish bringing melee to that fight beyond 2 on 10man, and 5-6 on 25man.
We had our offtank die to a void zone at about 95% on him
Santa gonna be pissed when he finds me playing wow.
I want to know more PA people on Twitter.
The current standard is idiotic: top tier guilds raiding on the test server for months, then the sequence gets leaked and the only investment a guild has to make is training 25 people to follow the sequence.
If the mobs were smart enough to realize the tank is pulling him into a corner to neutralize his ae, and was all "fuck you, I'm gonna run over to the healer station and ae them", then you'd get people to stay on their toes, and fights wouldn't have to be simply a "math game".
Yes, I would quite like it if bosses just one-shot healers out the gate.
Lord Victor Nefarius was right!
The only reason they one-shot anyone right now is because it's just a numbers game. If the fights were more dynamic they'd be able to tone down the damage and all those cloth wearers might actually be able to take a hit.
And the prot spec would be entirely useless?
Actually that could be kind of awesome, 25/10 AI opponents.
Sometimes it's just bad luck, as someone mentioned, due to him placing the bubbles really far away from each other, or on top of your raid, making everyone bounce around and take extra damage. One thing is to remind people it's important in that phase to use healthstones if they have them, and also, you don't need to switch bubbles the second the new one appears. So if you're at 20% HP because the healers haven't gotten to you yet, it may be a good idea to not venture out of the happy bubble yet to the place where mobs can finish you off. Wait a second for a heal, or perhaps bandage, then run to the next bubble.
Where did I say that was a good idea?
I just think more dynamic fights are better. Look at the final boss dude in Karazhan. The little flame circles are random, people gotta be ready to move and adapt to the situation. Now put elements like that into fights where it's the boss himself being unpredictable, and raiding in general gets more exciting.
Could you explain what you want changed, because stuff like the elementals is obviously already in the game same with void zones mechanics that force people to pay attention and move. I don't really see how what your saying changes anything though as at the end of the day the boss has X abilities and you do Y to react to them. Even in your example this doesn't change as people just pay attention to when the boss AoEs and then they run away.
He hit like a truck.
They also nerfed the number of infernals later on.
The end result would be a fight where you can't download the strat off wowwiki and spend a few nights getting everyone to learn the dance before killing the boss.. and every subsequent kill uses the exact same strat until the group stops farming it.
If said boss had a bank of abilities and when it detected certain statuses on players, and used those abilities as a reaction, that's just one example of how they could make a fight more dynamic. Say if the healers are all sitting on a full mana bar, the boss fires off an AE to increase the healing load.
Positioning always bugs me too. Guilds look for places to park the tank to trivialize an AE or use some kind of geometry feature. If a boss notices firing off an AE will only hit two people in the raid.. he'd not cast it and instead either position himself to hit more people, or wait until people bunch up.
I don't suggest that a boss becomes smart enough to ignore the tank and kill all the healers off, that would be retarded. Just explore ways to add some unpredictability to the event.
"If you're going to play tiddly winks, play it with man hole covers."
- John McCallum
Honestly, they'd probably have to double, triple or more the amount of loot dropped by a boss, because I sure wouldn't want to effectively re-learn an encounter every week for 3 or 4 pieces of gear.
Having each boss utilize a reasonably predictable number of abilities at certain points in an encounter is also a method through which people do learn to fight a boss, and then perfect those techniques. Such randomness (without extensive care in balancing) would make just learning an encounter an absolute nightmare.
And then you have to try to balance across the "hardcores" (who will likely have people working out every last facet of your little tricks on the fly) and the "casuals" (who, without some measure of learning curve are going to give up on the content or the game out of frustration).
As awesome as random, smarter and nastier boss fights could be, Blizzard and we cannot expect every guild on Earth to be as good as the Elitist Jerks, or Vodka, or whoever else the hardcore Forum Raiders are postally jerking off to/about/for these days. Predictability, as dreary as it can be to farm for weeks or months or years on end, is also a cornerstone in getting 4 or 9 or 24 other people to grasp what's going on.
I can imagine fights where it would work. Bosses would telegraph their changes in strat or attack through emotes and graphics and it could be glorious... but if not done carefully, it could also be a clusterfuck.
I just think it would open up Blizzard's options, which is really all I'm after.. variety.
Had one of the members drop out early too. I'd been trying to help people with strategy in vent for most of the attempts, refining and whatnots. After about the 6th wipe I got a tell from one of the members saying how i didn't know anything and she was sick of it. Then a prompt raid quit. We're going to try again sunday.
I talked a bit with the raid/guild leader and the moral of the story for me is that people don't need someone constantly going over strategy and that I need to shut up more often in vent. It's a good moral.
The adds need to be tanked (by a 2nd tank) and killed by the dps.
If that boss is giving you trouble, you simply may not be ready for Naxx.
edit: far as i know. i've never been targeted by it, though I've been hit by it a few times when melee got in front of him
We've had our tank tossed up while he was all alone kiting to avoid the swarm.
It just requires your healers to be on the ball, as I don't think you can dodge in the air. I could be wrong about that last bit.
The real problem for us was the adds. I'm not sure if we have the gear to take them down quickly enough. But as I was healer, it was hard to tell just what time it was taking us to get them down while concentrating on the MT.
What kind of setup do you have?
a mage here is great to nova and then your OT can run back to grab them if the mage doesnt have the dps to bring them down solo.
I want to know more PA people on Twitter.
MT: Paladin
OT: Warrior
MH: Holy Priest
OH: Disc Priest
OH: Resto Druid (Originally was a rogue but we were having health issues so he switched)
DPS: Hunter
DPS: Death Knight
DPS: Death Knight
DPS: Deep fire mage
aand i'm blanking on the last dps. One of the DKs and the other dps i'm blanking on were at about 1.7k dps. The mage was around 1.5k, while the other DK was at about 1k (but this counter was during a fight where he'd had to swap to frost pres and help tank adds 'cause our OT died earlier in a fluke) and the hunter was at 900 dps. Hunter had just hit 80, but we'd insisted she come so that we could start getting our set raid group's coordination down as much as possible.
I know you say they just hit 80, but 900dps is incredibly low for a lv80 hunter right now, even in quest greens. There's a reason they've got a nerf coming in the patch.
Getting your deathknights to time dropping their DnD on the crypt guards corpse would help you lots to burn down the scarabs. They only have 25k health so they die really quickly.
I want to know more PA people on Twitter.
6 wipes is not many and if people want to raid they need to get used to hearing strats and suggestions on vent a lot. If people don't like your advice then they should perform better and not need it :P
I want to know more PA people on Twitter.
Gear's been covered, but 900 dps I don't think is a matter of spec, either. I've run Archavon pugs with many DPS of just about every class who had bad specs or just quest geared, and most could still pull about 1400-1600.
Only thing I can suggest, rather than providing critique yourself, is to refer the hunter to their class forum. All the class forums have at sticky thread detailing talents and builds, and at least one sticky or long-running thread about raiding which will cover talents, rotations, and what to look for in gear/gems/enchants.
AKA [PA]Ilovepandas
Yeah they are set spawns and then a lot of them near the end. They arent too much trouble as long as you keep them away from the lava wave.
I want to know more PA people on Twitter.
AKA [PA]Ilovepandas
Save challenging roar for that point of the fight and just offtank them while people dps down Sarth. If you happen to taunt the boss then the MT can grab him back easily.
I want to know more PA people on Twitter.
Also when the scarabs start popping he damn well ought to be standing by the corpse to frost nova them.
I should hit 80 tonight, not sure If I'm just gonna keep questing and do storm peaks & ice crown, or start running around doing instances to gear up for heroics.