Cataclysm

[Ashamanchill]

Ya I read that whole thing. They seem to be pretty stubborn about their new system, and damn the fallout it creates....like say, heroics being so frustrating no sane tank would ever queue up for them in LFD, leading to almost unplayable queue times for dps.

[Paelos]

I agree with his point about challenge. I would be fine if the bosses were the challenge in heroic raids. They are not. The long hours grinding through the same trash groups over and over are the problem, as they ALWAYS have been. He doesn't seem to get that point. That's what's causing tanks to just throw their hands up and say fuck it. They can't control whether they get a dps who's competant and will CC or someone who can barely outdps the tank.

Some trash is fine. In fact I would say the pacing in a lot of dungeons is perfectly ok. Halls of Origination is a good example where you have a couple thoughtful pulls and then a boss. I'd probably get rid of the respawning crap in the beams room just to even it out.

A bad example was Deadmines, but they removed some of the trash. Another bad example is the trash in Stonecore.

[Azuredream]

They are nerfing some of the harder heroic bosses (and buffing the easier ones) so it's not like they're completely ignoring people. Ozruk, Corborus, Ashbury, Beauty, Setesh, Lady Naz'jatar, among others all receiving nerfs.

[Lantyssa]

They'll relent and continue to make changes, but his whole screed is only useful for the people who don't need it.  An undergeared but competent group can manage the content fine, with a little gearing at worst.  However, the dungeon finder doesn't rate competency levels and the subset of players whom his blog would change the outlook on is miniscule even with a player base of millions.  Most aren't going to change their ways and trying to design your game as if they will is folly.  Not understanding it is part of why there is so much grousing.

But then my pointing it out is probably more pointless than Ghostcrawler writing a blog entry on how they want people to be something they're not.

[Paelos]

The content has been out now, what, a month? We're going to be stuck with these heroics until late 2012.

People need to just fucking relax. Get pissed if they up the difficulty in the next gearing iteration. They just need to adjust the trash a little.

[Ingmar]

I've had zero trouble with the trash, the problems have all been on bosses for us.

I don't mind them being hard, although it means that there are players I won't be taking to heroics for a while if I can help it. 

[apocrypha]

The success rate of heroic pugs has definitely improved markedly here over the last couple of weeks. Pretty much every single one I run now ends in a completed run, whereas at the start I was getting maybe a 50% completion run. Sure, a lot of groups swap a player or two out, either through ragequits or kicks, but that's about it. Normal runs are now trivial for most groups and I've started tanking them with my levelling pally (83 atm).

From my perspective the philosophy that GC outlined there seems to be working. People have had to learn to CC again, not aoe zergfest the dungeons and watch healer mana and learn the mechanics.

There's a trick to it though.... don't do random pugs just after schools finish. Kids flood into the servers here around 4pm at which point the fail rate of pugs doubles for a while. Come 10pm it's mostly OK again. Same with the holidays, soon as the Christmas hols ended and the rugrats fucked off back to child-prison things got much, much better.

[K9]

- Mind Sear can now be channeled on friendly targets in addition to enemy targets. In addition, Mind Sear's damage has been increased by roughly 15%.

 

[Sheepherder]

Awesome.

[SurfD]

From my perspective the philosophy that GC outlined there seems to be working. People have had to learn to CC again, not aoe zergfest the dungeons and watch healer mana and learn the mechanics.

This is it pretty much exactly.  Once people understand that the new paradigm is not "let the tank aggro the whole room and then unleash aoe" combined with "my gear does not matter for 5 man progression'" but instead has moved to "learn to play your fucking class moron" combined with "run a few more normals and gear up properly before queing for heroics you asshole", things will go a lot smoother.  And quite frankly, I am happy with the new paradigm, regardless of how many fail pugs I end up tanking for / dpsing in.

[K9]

On a 1:1 basis the Cata heroics are harder than most WoTLK heroics, but the biggest difference isn't the dungeon design, it's the fact that players went from overgearing the content by 51 ilvls of epic gear to undergearing the content by 20 ilvls of blue gear overnight. This is a huge and apparently invisible change that most of the people raging about heroic difficulty don't seem to get.

[Threash]

It's probably only a stone's throw from the thinking that only raiders deserve the best stuff, too.  Not quite there yet, but there are some strong overtones.

Hmm... when has wow ever not followed that thinking? raiders have always had the best stuff.

[koro]

It's probably only a stone's throw from the thinking that only raiders deserve the best stuff, too.  Not quite there yet, but there are some strong overtones.

Hmm... when has wow ever not followed that thinking? raiders have always had the best stuff.

Arena season 1. 

[kildorn]

Man, locks are getting smacked silly with the nerfbat. I do hope these notes aren't "finished" for class changes.

[Ironwood]

Fuck Ozruk.

 

[K9]

Yeah, the Stonecore is really the only heroic which has genuine rage-inducing potential.

[Lakov_Sanite]

On a 1:1 basis the Cata heroics are harder than most WoTLK heroics, but the biggest difference isn't the dungeon design, it's the fact that players went from overgearing the content by 51 ilvls of epic gear to undergearing the content by 20 ilvls of blue gear overnight. This is a huge and apparently invisible change that most of the people raging about heroic difficulty don't seem to get.

This can't be said enough, I cannot tell you how many heroics people are trying to do in near full greens. Sorry pal that ain't gonna cut it.  I blame wotlk more than I do blizzard for these new "hard" dungeons. WOTLK made people think of heroics as the baseline of content even though that was never the intent. I mean these things are hard?

Why didnt they say something, or give an indicator? Like naming them appropriately, or putting a little skull icon there so you knew for sure it was gonna be hard.  Clearly, they are bad game designers.

[Simond]

And, right after Ghostcrawler's post of how heroics are exactly where Blizzard wants them, the full PTR patch notes went up. Full of nerfs to Heroics.

 

[Merusk]

HAhaha. 

Huge nerf on the Baron in SFK.  It wasn't THAt hard to interrupt, was it?

I'll miss MCing the witches in ToT and laying waste to the rest of the mobs.. Those bitches could really throw-down, but if you didn't have MC or competent cc ( ) I'll agree they were over the top.   However, it's odd that they nerfed them but left the fucking goblins able to one-shot a tank on a pull.

Thank god for the nerf to Altairus. The amount of times I've been tossed over the side because I was chained one, two, three "dead" are the entire reason I just drop group if I get it in a PUG.  Plus the vortexes were fucking hard to see in location since the graphic doesn't go to the floor.

Ertan got buffed tho.. which is odd.  Why not just let us continue to stand there beating the fuck out of him if we can heal through the cyclone shield damage?

[K9]

Ertan is really only a healer check. The cyclone mechanic isn't threatening enough to warrant any movement, so might as well not be there. I guess they want to make it a slight check on DPS too.

[Azuredream]

Judging by the way the cyclones would move in and out, I'd say the original intent was to make players move out when they collapse on the boss. That's what we thought when we first went in there, but then we realized we weren't getting the debuff if we stood right on top of him so it turned into nothing but a tank and spank.

[Threash]

Huge nerf on the Baron in SFK.  It wasn't THAt hard to interrupt, was it?

The "problem" with the baron was that it required coordination between two interrupters.  I guess expecting people to interrupt an ability is one thing, expecting two of them to alternate was a bit much.  I just ran this on my rogue, took five attempts of me yelling I CANT STOP EVERYTHING WITH MY 10s KICK for the other three people who could interrupt to help out.

[Lantyssa]

And, right after Ghostcrawler's post of how heroics are exactly where Blizzard wants them, the full PTR patch notes went up. Full of nerfs to Heroics.

 

Hahahaha.  They caved faster than I expected.  Those had to be in the works before he even got his post up.

[ezrast]

Speaking of Ertan brings to mind another thing dps should take note of: healers (well, I on my shaman at least) really like it when you stand a) still and b) near the tank. Not within cleave range, just within 12m or so so we can AoE. The extra healing efficiency will even make up for some minor AoE damage.

Obviously still move out of ground effects. Except the neon blue/green/gold circles. Those are good.

[Maledict]

And, right after Ghostcrawler's post of how heroics are exactly where Blizzard wants them, the full PTR patch notes went up. Full of nerfs to Heroics.

 

Hahahaha.  They caved faster than I expected.  Those had to be in the works before he even got his post up.

He's the guy who leads on a lot of this stuff, I'm very sure he knew about these coming.

Regardless - these aren't huge sweeeping nerfs. If you found them difficult before, you will now. Heck, some of the easiest fights were buffed. These are quality of life adjustments more than anything so that groups without 2CC's or 2 interrupters will manage, and a lowering overall of a few bosses that were noticeably harder than the rest. If you cann't do heroics now, you won't be able too in the future. they havent' removed the need for CC or interrupts at all, for example. Trash is still going to maul groups badly, bosses abilities will still annihilate dps who are dumb, and healers still won't have the mana to heal everyone and not care. This is not a huge range of nerfs at all.

I'm not sure why people are convinced Blizzard's attitude towards content is so obviously suicidal and against the nature of their game in Cata. Blizzard *have* all the numbers on retention for their game, if they feel that the difficulty needs to be upped it's probably for a reason. In my experience, the last year of Wrath saw more people leave the game than at any other time, and I myself was contemplating it because the game was simply terrible. Face rolling heroics for emblems daily and raid content that was poorly designed and trivialised with a stupid stacking buff just wasn't entertaining. Maybe a lot of people thought that way and Blizzard decided to change things a bit?

[Rendakor]

They nerfed the Baron in SFK to the ground, but left Commander "I summon infinite adds that heal me and rape you" alone? 

[Ingmar]

And, right after Ghostcrawler's post of how heroics are exactly where Blizzard wants them, the full PTR patch notes went up. Full of nerfs to Heroics.

 

That's what happens when you don't actually read what he posted, which was much longer than the cherry-picked quote above, and included among other things that make it sound less unreasonable:

As always, we're keeping an eye on things. There are a few bosses that seem responsible for more wipes than the others: Commander Springvale, Beauty, Altairus, and Admiral Ripsnarl perhaps. By the time you read this, you might have seen us implement Restoration druid buffs intended to keep them competitive in raids. We also just tend to nerf content over time because the original players hitting that content have moved on, so we want to open it up to a wider audience.

[Azuredream]

I'm not sure why people are convinced Blizzard's attitude towards content is so obviously suicidal and against the nature of their game in Cata. Blizzard *have* all the numbers on retention for their game, if they feel that the difficulty needs to be upped it's probably for a reason. In my experience, the last year of Wrath saw more people leave the game than at any other time, and I myself was contemplating it because the game was simply terrible. Face rolling heroics for emblems daily and raid content that was poorly designed and trivialised with a stupid stacking buff just wasn't entertaining. Maybe a lot of people thought that way and Blizzard decided to change things a bit?

I certainly don't think that way. People always leave in droves at the end of an expansion. I loved almost every raid instance in Wrath and I loved RDF making it so easy to gear my alts in the latest badge gear.

[Soulflame]

I absolutely loathed ToC, but that was more because I was in a raid guild that was running it 3x a week, and often tried for 4x.  (Never could get past the first fight in 25H, almost managed Anub in 10H.)

[apocrypha]

Yeah, what I said earlier? Not so true tonight. Two failed groups, both due to healers who weren't really healers and had obviously gamed their iLvl to get into heroics. Waste of nearly 2 hours with nothing to show for it. Sucks monkey balls.

[Ingmar]

I really think they need to exclude gear with resilience from the calculation.

[kildorn]

I really think they need to exclude gear with resilience from the calculation.

They need to exclude:

Gear with resilience (I know, we talked about the like 2 classes that can dps fine with it, who cares)
Inappropriate gear (346 plate in my warlocks bag should NOT increase my average ilvl, and we shouldn't reward people for wearing cloth as a shaman so don't count down-typed gear either)

It should just be soulbound stuff that is class appropriate. And then just lower the ilvl to queue if you have a full group using LFD so a guild can choose to carry someone.

I had an H-Stonecore tank appear in a group that was blocked on Oz, and he asks why everyone started laughing, and he obviously had the gear if he got into the queue. I point out that battle.net shows ilvl equipped, and he was rolling in at average ilvl 312 equipped. He died pretty much instantly trying to tank one of the hardest, most punishing heroic fights with really really terrible gear.

[Soulflame]

I'm just hoping this all gets sorted when I hit 85.  Probably in a month or two.

Of course, I can't make up my mind if I want to play as resto or enhance at endgame.

Oh, who am I kidding.  I'll be resto.   

[kildorn]

I'm just hoping this all gets sorted when I hit 85.  Probably in a month or two.

Of course, I can't make up my mind if I want to play as resto or enhance at endgame.

Oh, who am I kidding.  I'll be resto.   

See, I trick myself by leveling and gearing alts that will never see many raids because I have a healing priest ;)

[Merusk]

Huge nerf on the Baron in SFK.  It wasn't THAt hard to interrupt, was it?

The "problem" with the baron was that it required coordination between two interrupters.  I guess expecting people to interrupt an ability is one thing, expecting two of them to alternate was a bit much.  I just ran this on my rogue, took five attempts of me yelling I CANT STOP EVERYTHING WITH MY 10s KICK for the other three people who could interrupt to help out.

Yes, but it could have been accomplished by putting a delay timer in there rather than removing the ability entirely. I also forget not everyone macros a "Hey I interrupted" /say like I and my regular group mates do.

It should just be soulbound stuff that is class appropriate. And then just lower the ilvl to queue if you have a full group using LFD so a guild can choose to carry someone.

Just make ilevel calculate only off of equipped stuff that applies to <your class armor skill under general abilities> and it's done.  Such a simple fix to counter obvious exploits I'm loathe to say "hee hee C-level designers" again.