Are you pleased with this content tier?

[Gobbeldygook]

The big idea behind hard and soft enrage timers is to force the DPS to push themselves too.  Before blizzard got liberal with enrage timers, you could just bring more healers to compensate for however shitty your DPS were.  Realistic enrage timers mean good DPSers are valued just as much as tanks or healers.

[Hindenburg]

Or, how EJ put it, you shouldn't be able to bore a boss to death.

[Ironwood]

You can on that fucking slime dance one.

[Paelos]

I don't mind the occasional DPS race. That's perfectly fine and adds some flavor to some instances. Vael was a great example of a good DPS race fight. However, they seem to be putting more and more enrage timers on bosses, and I think that's simply a crutch. The fights should be demanding in that bosses might actually kill you with abilities. Not that the boss just decides he's done with you after 5 minutes and detonates a nuclear bomb.

[Hindenburg]

Then the boss would punish healers, not dps.

Sure, a fancier idea would be gradually picking dps and saying "k, one of you'll die every 30 sec", but that'd grow old just as quickly. Also, Vael murdered several guilds.

[Paelos]

Then the boss would punish healers, not dps.

Sure, a fancier idea would be gradually picking dps and saying "k, one of you'll die every 30 sec", but that'd grow old just as quickly. Also, Vael murdered several guilds.

I agree it would probably punish healers more, but I think fights need to have more variables beyond the boss having 2 skills and an enrage timer. Some bosses of Naxx do this well, like Kel'Thuzad. He's a fun fight with a lot of different elements that provide a relatively challenging encounter in 25 man.

What I'm worried about is Blizzard's design tactic. Instead of focusing on more engaging encounters to challenge the healers, they seem content to nerf the healers mana regen into the ground in the hopes that makes things more difficult. Instead of adding more interesting abilities that would force the dps to pay attention to things beyond their rotations, they seem content to let enrage timers rule the day.

[Merusk]

That's because it *is* lazy design.  The current crew is the B or C team, the A-team moved on to new projects about 2 years ago or earlier this year if they were only going to be trusted with MMOs, I figure.

[Ratman_tf]

We need a checkers boss, like the chess event in Kara. 

[Ingmar]

Then the boss would punish healers, not dps.

Sure, a fancier idea would be gradually picking dps and saying "k, one of you'll die every 30 sec", but that'd grow old just as quickly. Also, Vael murdered several guilds.

I agree it would probably punish healers more, but I think fights need to have more variables beyond the boss having 2 skills and an enrage timer. Some bosses of Naxx do this well, like Kel'Thuzad. He's a fun fight with a lot of different elements that provide a relatively challenging encounter in 25 man.

What I'm worried about is Blizzard's design tactic. Instead of focusing on more engaging encounters to challenge the healers, they seem content to nerf the healers mana regen into the ground in the hopes that makes things more difficult. Instead of adding more interesting abilities that would force the dps to pay attention to things beyond their rotations, they seem content to let enrage timers rule the day.

What you are seeing is, IMO, a natural consequence of adding the full 10 person progression using the same encounters as 25 (and thus I don't have a big problem with it.) In the 10 person versions of encounters, they can't design specifically to target healers very much because the healing styles/tools are so vastly different from class to class, and they don't know which 2-3 you'll show up with. If they were designing for 25s alone they could be more specific in that area because you can fairly safely assume that the raid will have all types of healers available.

I think they already see the Malygos vortex, for example, as a mistake, and that is definitely a mechanic that was put in specifically to challenge healers. Instead of challenging all healers, though, they just ended up with something that was trivial if you stacked priests and druids (and directly led to the CoH/Wild Growth nerfs) and punishing if you only had paladins and shamans (at least until you could just stack stamina on everyone to the point that they just live through the vortex anyway). On the other hand, it is safe for them to do stuff like the ice blocks on Kel'Thuzad or the hateful strikes on Patchwerk, because all healers have the basic tools you need for those things. I would expect most of the 'healing' challenges to be a lot simpler than the tanking ones, because they're making an effort to homogenize tanks to a large extent but are specifically avoiding doing so with healers.

[Lakov_Sanite]

That's because it *is* lazy design.  The current crew is the B or C team, the A-team moved on to new projects about 2 years ago or earlier this year if they were only going to be trusted with MMOs, I figure.

Naxx bosses were designed 2 years ago.

The kil'jaeden/m'uru fights were very complex and they were designed quite recently actually.  People seem to forget how old naxx actually is now, take a look at three drake sarth or malygos? of course they can only have so many tricks but neither fight I would consider simplistic.  Really I look at multi-boss dungeons like any offline game, you really can't have every minor boss in there be some multi-formed demi-god. Some things need to be patchwerk so designers can pace the game experience.

[Vash]

Not to mention nearly all dps classes like to have at least one strait up tank and spank boss per raid zone that they can go all out on and use as a benchmark, both for tracking their progress as they get new gear and for seeing how they stack up with the other dps in the raid group.

[Ingmar]

Not to mention nearly all dps classes like to have at least one strait up tank and spank boss per raid zone that they can go all out on and use as a benchmark, both for tracking their progress as they get new gear and for seeing how they stack up with the other dps in the raid group.

I kind of like those as a tank too.

[Rasix]

Not to mention nearly all dps classes like to have at least one strait up tank and spank boss per raid zone that they can go all out on and use as a benchmark, both for tracking their progress as they get new gear and for seeing how they stack up with the other dps in the raid group.

I like Patchwerk.  It helps me practice my rotations, and I find that for the rest of the night they're really solid.

[gryeyes]

Complex challenging encounters assures less people are able to access the content. How many people that had access to naxx-40 progressed beyond maybe a single wing?

[Lakov_Sanite]

Complex challenging encounters assures less people are able to access the content. How many people that had access to naxx-40 progressed beyond maybe a single wing?

40man naxx mechanics were not vastly different than they are today. They were simply a gear/manpower check as the fights were much more unforgiving when it came to dmg output/consumables needed/etc

I'm not sure if you're being pro/con barring people from content but I think naxx is just about right on some things. Make most of the bosses easy with a couple tricks, put in a couple gear check(pw/thad) then make the last two bosses complex in comparison so that guilds will have to take some time to learn.

Then for the hardcore you make all those easy bosses have a hard mode so they can ride on their flying epeen for all to see. works for me.

[Koyasha]

I consider enrage timers a stupid, lazy pain in the ass mechanic that should be removed entirely, and is only needed because Blizzard allowed healer mana regen to get out of control.  The way to put pressure on DPS is to make the boss do enough damage that total healer mana goes down throughout the fight, therefore requiring enough damage that the boss dies before the raid's resources hit 0.  Adding more healers and thus killing things more slowly, but having more total resources shouldn't be an invalid tactic.  There should be a breakpoint at which that doesn't really work anymore, and there's a very simple mechanic to do that, too.  A conservative, in-combat regen rate for bosses.  It should be a low regen rate, essentially just enough that you can't lay siege to the boss, as it were.

This is a problem that also happened way back in EQ, and WoW repeated it.  Thott commented on it during one of his Luclin-Age essays in which he mentioned that it used to be that boss HP goes down, and raid resources (HP and mana and characters still alive) go down, and winning was a matter of which one hit 0 first, but by the Luclin age, raid resources could be seen to fluctuate from 100% to about 98%, never really dropping below that, at which point the only way to lose was through making mistakes of the instant-wipe variety.  The same sort of thing could be seen on WoW fights into the Burning Crusade era, where raid resources didn't seem to go down much, it was just enrage timers and wipe mechanics that caused losses.

[Paelos]

Glad to see I'm not the only person who thinks they are completely asinine.

[Sjofn]

I like it. I can be casual and play one day a week, and be competitive. Love being near the top of DPS charts against people in my guild who put in a lot more time than I do.

I basically have given up on the PvP aspect of the game, and play it for PvE. I've cleared everything except 3-drake 25 man Sarth, and 3-drake 10 man Sarth. I'll be getting my 3-drake 10 man out of the way this next coming week.

Come be a dwarf lady on doomhammer. 

[Hindenburg]

Dorf ladies rePRESENT *gangsta sign*

[Chimpy]

Complex challenging encounters assures less people are able to access the content. How many people that had access to naxx-40 progressed beyond maybe a single wing?

40man naxx mechanics were not vastly different than they are today. They were simply a gear/manpower check as the fights were much more unforgiving when it came to dmg output/consumables needed/etc

The entire DK wing and Plague Wing are vastly different than they were originally. Razuvious does not have to be LoS'd by your mana users, you don't have to offtank the adds while the "cannot be Mind Controlled" buff wears off, the undead mobs on Gothik not only are no longer immune to magical damage, but they also have the same HP they had at 60 (or less), 4 horsemen is a shadow of it's former self. In Plague Wing, Heigan is missing what made that fight difficult, the random teleport to the fucking eye-tunnel, and the floor blasts are slower and do not insta-gib anyone not a tank (they do more damage than they did, but when everyone has 15k Health, even a 9k blast will not 1 shot you, it used to be about 6k when your tanks were just pushing over 10k), and Loatheb is not anywhere near the DPS, consumable, and coordination fight it was. Spider wing is mechanically about the same, stuff just doesn't hit as hard relatively as it used to at 60.

I am not saying this to be elitist, but the people complaining about fights that require people to be on the ball not being in Naxx beacuse it is almost 3 years old are being somewhat disengenuous. The zone was put back in to be filler for WOTLK launch, and was retuned to be considerably easier than the bleeding edge level of tuning that all previous large raid dungeons in WoW had been. Every raid instance that was released after Molten Core had it's share of over-tuned stuff at some relatively early phase in the zone. BWL had Razorgore and then the 1 hour to try Vael before he despawned for the rest of the week stuff if your guild could kill Razorgore, AQ had Huhuran requiring everyone to farm Mauradon for level 50 green cloth items with Nature resistance, and THEN there was the trash that was harder than any of the 5 previous bosses in the zone, Naxx had 3 bosses that were relatively easy that were then followed by something that was like running your balls over a cheese grater learning. TBC had all of its 25 man zones turned up above 11 when they were launched.

I don't disagree with the idea to "under"tune Naxx, but to say that Naxx is failing to challenge some part of the holy-triangle of Tank-DPS-Healer because it is 3 years old and the devs were not creative enough then is silly.

EDIT-Yes, there are way too many commas in this post but I like run on sentences today!

[Ingmar]

We killed Maly-10 last night, which represents the first time my guild has ever been "content complete" before the first content patch. So, I continue you to be very happy with the way things are. 

[Nevermore]

You'll just have to do it all again soon anyway, once some of the rest of us get to 80. 

[Sjofn]

We killed Maly-10 last night, which represents the first time my guild has ever been "content complete" before the first content patch. So, I continue you to be very happy with the way things are. 

No, no, you're doing it wrong.

JESUS WE DID EVERYTHING WTB NEW CONTENT STOP CATERING TO SCRUBS

[Nonentity]

Super happy there are so few resist fights so far.

From the way my guild is talking, that may change on fights like Hodir - at least for tanks.

[Ingmar]

Super happy there are so few resist fights so far.

From the way my guild is talking, that may change on fights like Hodir - at least for tanks.

Reports I heard on Hodir are that you need one tank with frost resist gear, nobody else should get hit with much cold damage if they do it "right". HA HA HA.

[proudft]

We stand in the fire, right?

[Soulflame]

You stand in the fire so healers have something to do.



 


The healers still hate you for standing in fire.   

[Ingmar]

Ironically, on Hodir, you actually DO stand in fire. I think.

[Paelos]

Ironically, on Hodir, you actually DO stand in fire. I think.

Comedy ensues.

[Triforcer]

As a side note, is anyone else mildly displeased that a more accurate name for this expansion seems to be "Wrath of the vikings and giants and such, and maybe eventually in a year the Lich King"?  Not that I'd ever see him, but it seems strange that he won't even make an appearance for...what?  Months?  A year? 

[Paelos]

The first four months have been "Wrath of crap we did before"

Funny thing is most of us never saw it.

[Fordel]

The Lich King has already mocked my efforts to foil him in a dozen quest chains!

[Selby]

Funny thing is most of us never saw it.

Exactly.  No guild on our server ever took down Naxx when it was still available from the original release of it.  Maybe a handful of guilds ever even saw the inside of it.

The Lich King has already mocked my efforts to foil him in a dozen quest chains!

I have to agree as well.  I've seen him a ton of times telling me that he's sparing me for later as I might be interesting.  And as an example of how he doesn't tolerate failure of his own.  It's quite amusing actually.

[Ratman_tf]

I know that MMOG villains are hardly the epitome of clever and effective antagonists, but damn, the Lich King seems content to dance in blackface for the amusement of the player audience.

I mean, his most notable evil act in Wrath so far is to create an army of Death Knights who promptly rebel and join his enemies. GENIUS PLAN THERE, BRANIAC! 

[Phred]

The Lich King has already mocked my efforts to foil him in a dozen quest chains!

Ya, my first thought to this was, WTF? You can't finish a quest without banging into the Lich King ranting at you about something. He's been around more than any other boss I can think of.

Anyone ever try to go up the steps to Utguard Keep when you have that shadowworld buff on you?