Cataclysm

[Merusk]

Nah, he's just trolling, which is ok with me because the fourm would be dead otherwise.

Mal at least takes part other places of the site.

[Paelos]

I've love to hear what people in the intended gear range feel about the place, but people in raiding gear keep shitting in the dungeon threads about it.

From what I've been able to glean, people running the thing in the right range seem to be 50/50 on it, which indicates that it's tuned correctly for a group of people who are working in a guild group. Everyone seems to believe that PuGs don't stand a chance in these things unless they win the "random raid healer" lottery.

[Rokal]

Everyone seems to believe that PuGs don't stand a chance in these things unless they win the "random raid healer" lottery.

Wasn't this exactly the case for the lvl 85 heroics at launch though? Once people know the fights, it'll be pug-friendly. I think overall there is just a lot 'more' to learn than the other heroics, so it will take more time.

[Paelos]

Everyone seems to believe that PuGs don't stand a chance in these things unless they win the "random raid healer" lottery.

Wasn't this exactly the case for the lvl 85 heroics at launch though? Once people know the fights, it'll be pug-friendly. I think overall there is just a lot 'more' to learn than the other heroics, so it will take more time.

Actually, the main complaint from the people failing in pugs was that they explained it to people a bunch of times, and they still managed to suck.

I think I went through 2 tanks and like 4 dps on that fight.  The only ones from the original group were me and the healer.
It's incredibly frustrating, especially since you can explain it and they still don't do it right.

[Selby]

Actually, the main complaint from the people failing in pugs was that they explained it to people a bunch of times, and they still managed to suck.

You can't gear for raid\dungeon awareness... ;-)

[Miasma]

Wow those troll dungeons are rough, as some people have said they really are more like five man raids.

[Rokal]

The have released a schedule of the release dates for their 4.2 reveals. Weird.

Maybe this means we will see 4.2 in June. That would be a pleasant surprise.

[SurfD]

Wow those troll dungeons are rough, as some people have said they really are more like five man raids.

Might depend alot on prior experience with them.  (At least for ZA.  ZG has changed signifigantly enough that most of the bosses are only vaguely similar)

As someone who raided ZA and ZG both as current content (I even have the ZA bear on my druid), having a basic "working knowledge" of the original ZA boss encounters made those fights in the new 5 man really easy to adapt to.  I can imagine people who have never done ZA may take a while to figure things out, but once everyone has killed all the bosses a few times, it will be back to the status quo.  The only major difference is that learning these new 5 man "raids" in dungon finder pugs could take some time, since you will have lots and lots of "wipe once or twice and someone ragequits" to hold you back from actually learning the mechanics of the fight.

The rest of it is largely easy.  Pretty much all of the mechanics from the fights are rather heavily telegraphed (complete with the ingame raid warnings / yells / etc), so after one runthrough of most bosses, it should be fairly obvious what to do / not to do on the next run through.

I did a run through of both ZA and ZG on my enhance shaman (ilevel 349 after getting 2 elemental pieces in ZA for my offset), and things didnt really seem that bad.    The ZA pug cleared the whole place, with a wipe on the Fire Hawk boss being our only death.  The ZG group cleared everything up to Zanzil and then had someone leave the group (which took 2 other players with him cause they all queued together), and other then a wipe on Snake boss, things went pretty smoothly.  Gear wise, I couldnt really find any dps checks or hard enrages or things that would wipe a properly balanced group who can queue for it.  (this is, of course, assuming that you are not getting the short end of the dungeonfinder stick and getting grouped with the DPS warrior in one third tank gear / one third PVP gear / one third pve gear just to pad his Ilevel so he can queue).

In the end, I really like ZG, sort of like ZA (I imagine ZA without CC would be an absolute nightmare), and will probably be bored of both in less then a week, since i can now burn myself out on them as quickly as i want to with the new mechanics for VP queing.

I think probably the biggest thing for most of ZA and ZG is that a lot of the fights make heavy use of "dont stand in bad stuff" mechanics, a lot of which either hurt ALOT, or a few which outright oneshot people.  From what i have seen, i can easily imagine that the healer will be the weakest link in most of the new Zandalari dungeons, as there is often a lot of group damage going on, and a healer who is not in top form will prob be struggling.

[Rendakor]

Regarding ZA, the only times we have used CC are the packs with two of the Fire casters; everything else we just pulled and AOE'd down. The first run was a full guild run, but our second was just me (geared tank) and one mediocre dps plus 3 pugs.

[Lightstalker]

Went through ZG really fast and recklessly until the instance broke.  Had several wipes due to not having any idea what was going to happen next (and the always fun ghosts in melee from back in the day).  Ended up locked in combat on Jin'do, and then we couldn't get back into the instance because an encounter was in progress; waited 30 minutes on the soft reset; and ran into the same issue.     There is a lot of obnoxiousness in that instance.

I saw plenty of ZG when it dropped overleveled blues, I don't think I need to go back - especially when the instance can't keep itself together.  I'd rather not think about how Firelands would have turned out had it come with the same patch.

[caladein]

Night-of new instances have always been pretty unstable because the instance servers sort of don't work when everyone rushes into the same place.  Since yesterday afternoon I haven't had any technical issues with the instances though, so there's that.

[SurfD]

Regarding ZA, the only times we have used CC are the packs with two of the Fire casters; everything else we just pulled and AOE'd down. The first run was a full guild run, but our second was just me (geared tank) and one mediocre dps plus 3 pugs.

Really? You did the 4 packs of Medicine man + bear riders + random add without ccing stuff?  I would think that would be pretty stressfull on an average 346-350ish group.  Then again, i guess as long as you focus down the right target while cleaving everything else, you could do 99% of the trash pulls in there with no cc with fairly little difficulty.

[Maledict]

The have released a schedule of the release dates for their 4.2 reveals. Weird.

Maybe this means we will see 4.2 in June. That would be a pleasant surprise.

Again, without wanting to point fingers, I think the reason we're now seeing a schedule for release is because RIFT is being very up front about when their patches will hit and why their patches are coming at that time. Their openness makes Blizzards overbearing secrecy look very outdated.

(At the same time - if Firelands is the only raid instance in 4.2, with a mere 5 bosses, Blizzard are really going to take a beating over the summer. They promised 2 smaller raid instances per tier in Cata rather than the huge 12 boss dungeons previously, and if they can't even deliver on that...)

[Simond]

The have released a schedule of the release dates for their 4.2 reveals. Weird.

Maybe this means we will see 4.2 in June. That would be a pleasant surprise.

From the very end of the post:

We have these and other previews planned, as well as the full PTR announcement and notes, in the coming weeks and months ahead. Stay tuned!

(Emphasis mine)
 

[Lakov_Sanite]

Yes, they released a schedule of their previews, not very informative.

[Paelos]

Again, without wanting to point fingers, It hink the reason we're now seeing a shcedule for release is because RIFT is being very up front about when their patches will hit and why their patches are coming att hat time. Their openness makes Blizzards overbearing secrecy look very outdated.

(At the same time - if Firelands is the only raid instance in 4.2, with a mere 5 bosses, Blizzard are really going to take a beating over the summer. They promised 2 smaller raid instances per tier in Cata rather than the huge 12 boss dungeons previously, and if they can't even deliver on that...)

Maybe it's due to RIFT, but whatever the reason it's something that needed to be done. The "Oh ho ho, when it's done  " stuff stops working when the natives get restless. I also agree with your point that if Firelands got delayed and is only one 5 boss raid, they are going to see a massive backlash. If that fails, we might get that public apology and contrition I've been looking for. The developer arrogance with this expansion has been unacceptable.

[Rendakor]

Regarding ZA, the only times we have used CC are the packs with two of the Fire casters; everything else we just pulled and AOE'd down. The first run was a full guild run, but our second was just me (geared tank) and one mediocre dps plus 3 pugs.

Really? You did the 4 packs of Medicine man + bear riders + random add without ccing stuff?  I would think that would be pretty stressfull on an average 346-350ish group.  Then again, i guess as long as you focus down the right target while cleaving everything else, you could do 99% of the trash pulls in there with no cc with fairly little difficulty.

Yea. I'm 359 ilvl geared tank though, and I know how to use my CDs (while also hating CC) so that helps. Those double fire casters were only necessary because none of the DPS would sit on the second one and kick, so the fireball volley kept killing them all.

[Rendakor]

Again, without wanting to point fingers, It hink the reason we're now seeing a shcedule for release is because RIFT is being very up front about when their patches will hit and why their patches are coming att hat time. Their openness makes Blizzards overbearing secrecy look very outdated.

(At the same time - if Firelands is the only raid instance in 4.2, with a mere 5 bosses, Blizzard are really going to take a beating over the summer. They promised 2 smaller raid instances per tier in Cata rather than the huge 12 boss dungeons previously, and if they can't even deliver on that...)

Where are you getting this 5 bosses thing? The latest bit on mmo-champion says there are 8.

[Lakov_Sanite]

# Ragnaros will be the final boss. It will NOT be an heroic-only encounter like Sinestra but the heroic version will be completely different from the normal one and developers wanted to make sure it feels really unique and pretty hardcore.

I realize now what's been bugging me for a while now with these hardmode only bosses. It's like in a single player game where you beat the game on normal which 'should' be fine but you get to the ending and it goes "thank you for playing on normal difficulty(pussy) if you want to see the REAL ending, play on hard"

I don't mind there being a hardmode in wow so much as I enjoy seeing content and only raided to see all the game had to offer. It was bad enough I had to suffer through 40 mans with idiots, or 25 or 15 or 10 but now if I want to see what REALLY happens storyline wise. I need to raid with 'teh hardcore' and it's just above and beyond the reasonable.

[Ingmar]

I don't get the impression the story around Rags will be different, just the mechanics of the fight.

[Paelos]

I don't get the impression the story around Rags will be different, just the mechanics of the fight.

[Ingmar]

Between normal and heroic, smartass. 

[Rokal]

Yes, they released a schedule of their previews, not very informative.

This is from the company that didn't even announce when 4.1 was coming out until people had already downloaded it. Being forth-coming and committing to specific dates is not something they are good at. I'm guessing it's just them trying to show they were serious about 4.2 coming out soon after 4.1, but after 4.1 lingered for so long and then magically appeared in our launchers without any announcement, it just strikes me as odd. Maybe they knew there were going to be stability problems for 4.1 and they wanted to wait a day or two before announcing that it was out so that players trickled into the new dungeons instead of rushing it? Just a guess.

Maybe it's due to RIFT, but whatever the reason it's something that needed to be done. The "Oh ho ho, when it's done  " stuff stops working when the natives get restless.

This is the WoW community. The natives are always restless.

If there are 8 bosses in Firelands, I'd wager there probably won't be another raid in 4.2. There were only, what, 9 bosses in the second tier of TBC raiding? 6 in the forth? It seems like a pretty average raid length for them. Then again tier 3 of TBC had a raid with 9 bosses in it (Black Temple) and launched alongside a smaller raid with 5 bosses in it (Hyjal). If 4.2 only includes Firelands, it will be a little disappointing after watching the 4.2 preview video, as fighting fire bosses that use fire attacks in a firey dungeon will probably start to wear on your eyes after two weeks, let alone 3-5 months. The spider boss was the only boss in that video where I could actually tell that it was in a different environment from the others.

[Paelos]

Preview is at 7 bosses in the Firelands, with 6 that they have pictures for. They are a Spider, Magma Giant, Firehawk, FireNaga, Staghelm, and Raggy. They are also referencing that there is a huge elemental dude guarding a bridge, but they have no pics.

My guess is that the bridge dude may or may not actually come to fruition, thus no pics. I'd say conservatively you're looking at 6 bosses, with a schedule for 7. If you are comparing it to Ulduar (the first major tier patch of WoTLK) that one had 14 bosses. If you are comparing to 2.1 (Black Temple in TBC) that would be 9 bosses. Patch 1.5 brought BWL which had 8 bosses.

So at BEST, you're looking repeating a content release that is on par with vanilla. They managed to get BWL out by July back then. Also, they put out the honor system, battlegrounds, Mauradon, and Dire Maul.

[Rokal]

Yes, Firelands is the raid in 4.2, and 7 is the total number of bosses.

Source

Disappointing.

That's only slightly larger than BWD, and is almost half the number of fights in the current raid cluster. This really doesn't strike me as enough raid content to keep my guild happy for another 5-6 months after 4.2 hits. I believe that Firelands is probably going to be a fun zone, if Cata tier 1 is any indication, but that's a small raid zone to compose an entire tier of content.

It's mostly going to depend on how long we're waiting for new stuff after Firelands (3-4 months? probably ok. 6+ months? not ok), and whether Firelands actually delivers on the fun.

[WindupAtheist]

Did they strip manpower off WoW to work on something else? WTF is going on?

Nah, he's just trolling, which is ok with me because the fourm would be dead otherwise.

Word. The entire previously-active f13 WoW community, by sheerest coincidence, all became "burnt out" simultaneously a few weeks after Cataclysm came out.

[Maledict]

Tier 2 of TC had 10 bosses, not 9. And, due to the sclaed difficulty curve & Kara, many guilds stayed in the tier below for al ong time before moving up.

The only tiers that have had this few bosses have been Sunwell Plateau, and Trial of the Crusader. SWP was deliberately designed to be ultra hard, and didn't need to be bigger - it kept the guilds occupied like it was suppossed to, and had a surprisingly effective difficulty curve throughout. ToC was an abortion of an instance that reminded me of EQ2, and Blizzard should be ashamed of it.

Either way, 7 bosses is remarkably small given the length of time that's passed and what was promised at the start of the expansion. They said 2 raid zones per tier, seems like that hasn't come off at all.

[Lakov_Sanite]

like i said, the troll dungeons were part of the patch originally, bank on it. shit maybe even a ZA raid? who knows.

WoW is like the first born child of blizzard. They are awfully proud of it, it still gets the biggest serving at dinner but they just don't dote on it like they used to, they spend more time doting on their other children and the big mmo bun in the oven.

[Rokal]

Not to mention 7 bosses for a tier probably means that the difficulty is going to be steep. If you are planning for 7 bosses to keep your subscribers active for months, it's likely that those bosses are going to be difficult so that players aren't out of new content to do after 3 weeks. This is almost the same number of fights as Sunwell, and I think that Sunwell would have been a much better instance if the difficulty increase was more gradual (with more bosses). Ramping up the difficultly slowly helps people feel like they are making progress as a guild, rather than a steep increase that makes people feel like they hit a brick wall that they're not capable of passing. With SWP, your guild probably got down 3 bosses before they started hitting what felt like a brick wall (unless you used a borderline exploit to position the twins, which it felt like every guild probably did), and you got to M'uru after your guild had spent upwards of two months to get a mere 4 bosses down.

I like difficult/challenging content, but having such a steep difficulty curve is the wrong way to do difficult content. I felt like the first raid cluster in Cata hit the sweet spot, and i'm not confident they'll be able to hit it again if they are trying to stretch 7 bosses into 5+ months of content. The difficulty will either be tuned well, so that guilds can gradually progress and feel like they are moving at a good speed, but with the side effect of players running out of content after 2-3 months unless they care about hard modes. Or, the difficulty will be fairly high, so that most guilds are killing Rag on normal mode maybe a month before the next raid cluster, which will keep guilds from running out of content quickly, but with the side effect of probably causing a lot of people to burn out on raiding.

[Paelos]

Tier 2 of TC had 10 bosses, not 9.

There are 9 bosses in Black Temple, which one are you counting extra?

[Rokal]

Tier 2 of TBC was not literally SSC and TK (since those were 'available' when TBC launched), but that's what I consider T2 since that's where a new Tier of armor dropped (and it took most people a long time to get through Kara, Gruul, Magtheridon, and the heroics).

Serpentshrine had 6 bosses, Tempest Keep had 4.

Tier 3 of TBC (BT and Hyjal) had 14 bosses

Tier 4 (Sunwell) had 6.

[Paelos]

I'm talking about patches. Really, that's the only thing comparable.

[Maledict]

Um, not really. Counting the patches doesn't really work for TBC due to the way the content was released. For example - SSC & TK were both *in* the game at the start, but were basically unplayable for all but a very, very few guilds. (Heck, Gruul was unbeatable for the vast majority, including us!). Whilst Hyjal was in the game before Black Temple, it didn't actually work untill the patch for BT was put in. Kills happened at the same time for both (May 25th & 26th) because the content simply did not work - so the BT patch actually added 14 bosses into the game, not 9.

Tiers are counted by ilevel and gear, not the patch release. so TBc looks like:

Tier 1 - Karazhan + Gruul + Magtheridon (?? bosses, due to raid size split)
Tier 2 - SSC + TK  (10 bosses)
Tier 3 - MH + BT (14 bosses)
Tier 4 - SWP (6 bosses)

You also have to remember that in TBC, content was also differentiated by attunements and difficulty. There was a noticeable rise in difficulty between Kara and Tier 2, and then another spike at SWP. Combined with attunements, and the way Blizzard got rid of the attunements over time, meant that content which wasn't new *was* new for a lot of guilds. I.e. when the attunement for Hyjal & Bt was removed, a ton of guilds that had never seen that content but were working through SSC / TK jumped up to BT / Hyjal.

Ultimately, 7 bosses isn't big enough. Firelands isn't going to be another SWP - we know that, they have been very clear on it. Even if you put the heroic difficulty at SWP level, what I have learnt over the last year of WoW is that repeating the same content on harder modes actually just sucks. In my long, long time playing computer games I can list the number of games I have successfully completed more than once on one hand - Dungeon Master, TIE fighter, Resident Evil 4 & Mass Effect 2. Blizzard now expect everyone to effectively do the same every week - there is no wonder that people are simply stopping playing. Heroics are a great idea on paper, and a sucky one in practice.

This is almost the same number of fights as Sunwell, and I think that Sunwell would have been a much better instance if the difficulty increase was more gradual (with more bosses). Ramping up the difficultly slowly helps people feel like they are making progress as a guild, rather than a steep increase that makes people feel like they hit a brick wall that they're not capable of passing. With SWP, your guild probably got down 3 bosses before they started hitting what felt like a brick wall (unless you used a borderline exploit to position the twins, which it felt like every guild probably did), and you got to M'uru after your guild had spent upwards of two months to get a mere 4 bosses down.

Re. the Twins - I dont think anyone ever actually figured out the intended method for that fight. *Every* kill used the scenery in some form or other to mitigate some of the effects because otherwise the fight simply didnt work - the combo of abilities would just kill you when they combined and nothing you can do about it. Even without the ledge strat, people were using the curved ramps down to position their ranged, and everytime you got an effect you jumped off. It was a fight that was a neat idea in theory, but one that never actually worked right. (Same with Twin Valkyrs in ToC - another fight that never really worked as intended with a similar theme to it).

Regarding the SWP cuirve - it was very well done for the first 3 bosses. Kalecgos was maybe slightly harder than Illidan, but was an execution check rather than a numbers check - could your raiders follow a strat and maintain it under pressure? Brutallus was a pure numbers check, where the strat was easy but making everyone play right tough, and then Felmyst combined the both into a very tricky mess. Had the Twins been working properly you would have seen a pretty perfect difficulty curve throughout the zone (peaking too high on M'uru, but they acknowledge that mistake).

Problem is, when you only have 6 or 7 bosses, you can't *afford* to have 3 of them be easy "Let's learn raiding again" bosses. It means even very casual guilds will be at the end of the content after 2 months tops. That's one of the big issues with the way Blizzard now does its raid content - every tier starts afresh on difficulty, so every tier wastes several boss fights on very easy "welcome to raiding, here's how to avoid fire" bosses. It's much harder to have a decent difficulty curve when you have to start at 0 everytime as they have been doing.

[caladein]

The number of encounters in a tier is only relevant in two cases.  First, when you have the instance on farm.  Second, in the case of multiple or winged instances, in offering multiple progression options to match your group.  That's it.  At all other times what matters is the next boss.

The vast majority of raiders aren't going to have heroic clears firmly in hand while it's still the latest content.  (And there's no indication that Firelands is heavily winged.)  With this first tier they've shown a willingness to nerf heroic fights if enough guilds are getting stuck so that, plus how heroic mode works, means that the upper half of the progression path will be actively managed.   If the fights are good and the normal-mode, and therefore fixed, progression path is relatively smooth, seven encounters with two modes each is plenty.

[Paelos]

Um, not really. Counting the patches doesn't really work for TBC due to the way the content was released.

See that's not true. Content in the game means content that was previously worked on and dubbed at least partially if not fully ready for the population. Did it work due to the attunements? No, but as far as development time goes, it was basically done. They didn't have to patch it in. It shipped with the game. It wasn't being "worked on" like Firelands or Black Temple.

That's all I care about when comparing apples to apples. "Tiers" are only important to raiders and how much content they use. I could care less about that metric. What I'm looking at is if Blizzard is slipping on their development cycles and when they are releasing content (which I believe they are) and how that plays into their future plans to release content.