Crusaders Coliseum aka Purple Rain

[RUiN 427]

I'm definitely not the only one to notice, but they are clearly showering us with purples to push everyone through content before the citadel. My meager 5 man buddy guild ran normal Trial of the Champion last night twice real quick. It was like exploding a pinata of purples. We had a fresh 80 DK with us and he got 4 plate dps purps and a that ridiculous ArP trinket... screw heroics. We're just going to farm that place dry and head for naxx.

Oh and it was fun too. We didn't spoil the fights (as easy as they were to figure out) by reading up on them. Just went in and sloppily cleared the instance twice before logging out surrounded with treats, like exhausted children on christmas afternoon.

[Ingmar]

Its a nice way to gear up new alts or latecomers, certainly.

[kildorn]

Yep. It means less required naxx farming nights for alts and newer 80s.

Naxx will still be better gear over time, just due to badger rain and more complete slot coverage, but this place wins for "I hit 80 and need gear that doesn't suck"

[K9]

Looking at it, some of the new gear is itemised better than Naxx gear.

[Tannhauser]

Shit, my 80 Mage needs to get in there then! 

/hates raiding

[Sjofn]

Shit, my 80 Mage needs to get in there then! 

/hates raiding

Between that and heroics you'd be lookin' good, really, since the heroics are dropping higher badges now.

[Hindenburg]

Hrm, if you're gonna do gear runs, I'd be more than willing to bring the parked DK around. She's still frozen in DH. MAKE IT HAPPEN.

[Draegan]

I wish I could sub for a week to try out some of the stuff since I havn't played since before Ulduar.

[K9]

I like Ulduar, and this patch won't really kill it off tbh. It's fun and challenging, but in a fair way, not a cockstabby way.

[Merusk]

Except for XT.  Oh the whines and cries in general from guilds who have been exploiting the 2 corners method are delicious.  Not only did they not get used to doing it right but now they have to deal with extra bombs.

[kildorn]

Except for XT.  Oh the whines and cries in general from guilds who have been exploiting the 2 corners method are delicious.  Not only did they not get used to doing it right but now they have to deal with extra bombs.

XT is cockstabby? What?

[Merusk]

Right now XT is spawning a lot more adds than he should, and you can't pull him between 2 trash piles to stop those piles from spawning adds anymore.  (It wasn't considered an exploit, but it wasn't an intended mechanic.)   

On one phase Tuesday we counted about 20 bombs and who knows how many clockworks. I know we got that "kill clockworks with bombs" achievement just by killing one one side.   So yeah, doing 'normal' mode XT is cockstabby.  If you can do hard mode and get the adds to stop spawning, it's actually easier than normal mode right now.  At least until they did the hotfix patch.   

[K9]

Tanking him to the side isn't an exploit.

[K9]

Just did the 5-man on heroic for the first time, most of us in naxx/Uld-10 gear, nothing special certainly. We one shot-everything, and aside from a couple of deaths on the memory of Herod (that fight was surprisingly healing intensive) the instance wasn't too bad. The Dark Knight seemed to fall over very fast for us (DPS on the fight was 1.8K-2K typically) and we got the achivement for having no-one hit by ghoul explosions.

I'm guessing we lucked out and did everything right, because aside from the healing on Herod, the instance didn't feel too intense. Nice and short, thou sadly one of the least memorable instances. I'll probably end up running this a fair amount to gear up my Shaman, but really this is lazy and unimaginative design.

[apocrypha]

Bit confused about this... there's 2 version of this yeah, 5-man and raid? Both in Crusaders' Colloseum, 5-man is Trial of the Champion and raid (10-man?) is Trial of the Crusader? Is that right?

What's the difficulty level of the 5-man? My 80's aren't geared up enough for heroics yet, they're kinda halfway between brand-new-80 and minimum-heroics-capable, would they cope with this?

[Ashamanchill]

My 78 pally has three pieces of fucking awesome tanking gear he got from the normal run that are better in every way than shit from my tanking druid's naxx runs.    Damn you blizzard!! You have my sub for another month.  Also, what are the heroic drops like?

[K9]

I feel your pain, the naming conventions are all rather confusing.

Trial of the Champion = 5 man, which has normal and heroic modes.
Trial of the Crusader = Raid, which has 10-man, 10-man hard, 25-man and 25-man hard modes.

For a healer, the 5-man on heroic is challenging. I consider myself a pretty skilled priest, and I'm mostly in Ulduar gear now, and I lost a couple of people to the second boss. Other less skilled and geared people have complained about the last fight, but I found this fairly straightforward myself. For a DPS I'd say it's pretty easy; the fight mechanics are pretty simple (don't stand in/near stuff). As a tank I'd say the hardest thing is going to be gathering three mobs from all over the map in the first fight.

Normal mode drops a shower of Naxx-10 level epics, so if you're unsure I'd run that until you know the fight mechanics, and to gain yourself some better gear (for 5-mans the gear is generally well itemised). The bosses don't seem very complicated, so the difficulty is mostly a check on your healer's gear and skill than anything else really.

[Merusk]

Tanking him to the side isn't an exploit.

I didn't say it was, did I?  I said it wasn't considered one but also wasn't an intended mechanic.   The fact that you can't do it anymore also supports this.  The previous post said that and certain guilds were exploiting that tactic.  You can Exploit a game mechanic without it being an exploit.  Language is funny.

[K9]

Semantics aside, in the context of MMOs the phrase exploit has a well defined meaning, you know that.

The fact that you can't do it now doesn't imply that the patch is fixing an unintended mechanic, since XT is also bombing during tantrums, which was removed several patches ago. This has bug written all over it, and would make no sense as a "fix" since adding cockblocks to lapsed content isn't Blizzard's style anymore.

[kildorn]

My 78 pally has three pieces of fucking awesome tanking gear he got from the normal run that are better in every way than shit from my tanking druid's naxx runs.    Damn you blizzard!! You have my sub for another month.  Also, what are the heroic drops like?

Heroic drops weapons, and ~Uld10 gear.

Loosely, you can fully gear off both the normal and heroic, though it will take a while and you may have leftover slots (I can't fill both trinkets ideally, for example)

But yeah, it's built to equip alts/undergeared players and baseline the population again.

As for XT: Bombing during tantrums? I assume you mean new bombs, since they let him still have bombs running during tantrums ages ago (when tantrum was redesigned to not outright kill anyone). The only complaint I've heard is that his add phase is bugged and spawning 2-3x the usual number of adds. But beyond that, he's never been a cockstab. He's one of the bosses that keeps getting nerfed that even my horribly casual guild goes "what? XT nerfs? REALLY?", only rivaled by the number of times Kologarn gets the shit nerfed out of him. But Ignis? Nooooo.

[Nevermore]

Apparently XT has already been hotfixed to reduce the number of adds that spawn.

[K9]

As for XT: Bombing during tantrums? I assume you mean new bombs, since they let him still have bombs running during tantrums ages ago (when tantrum was redesigned to not outright kill anyone). The only complaint I've heard is that his add phase is bugged and spawning 2-3x the usual number of adds. But beyond that, he's never been a cockstab. He's one of the bosses that keeps getting nerfed that even my horribly casual guild goes "what? XT nerfs? REALLY?", only rivaled by the number of times Kologarn gets the shit nerfed out of him. But Ignis? Nooooo.

I mean he's casting light bomb and gravity bomb during tantrums, which was patched out a while ago. You're right, he's never been a cockstab, and as the easiest gatekeeper boss he really shouldn't be. Hence, for this to be an intentional change makes zero fucking sense. For the record my guild killed him prior to the nerfs to tantrum damage and bombs, and we will probably get through him even with the retarded changes. However, for a boss that is almost entirely farm content and offers next to no loot to anyone in my raid, making him take longer and be more frustrating at this point is just an unnecessary annoyance. I'm not asking for any more nerfs, but I'd be quite happy if he was left alone as is, I'm not really interested in any buffs either 

Ignis has been fixed in this patch and molten adds don't drop aggro when they turn molten. This should make him a LOT easier, as loose adds were really the only problem you could have that was hard to control.

[Sheepherder]

What's the difficulty level of the 5-man? My 80's aren't geared up enough for heroics yet, they're kinda halfway between brand-new-80 and minimum-heroics-capable, would they cope with this?

Normal requires no though and drops nothing but Naxx-10 epics.

[kildorn]

Ignis has been fixed in this patch and molten adds don't drop aggro when they turn molten. This should make him a LOT easier, as loose adds were really the only problem you could have that was hard to control.

Dear god that's nice. He's been on our list of "hey guys, let's do ignis!" "fuck yooooou" for a while.

[kildorn]

What's the difficulty level of the 5-man? My 80's aren't geared up enough for heroics yet, they're kinda halfway between brand-new-80 and minimum-heroics-capable, would they cope with this?

Normal requires no though and drops nothing but Naxx-10 epics.

It's also trivial for a few geared people to carry you through a heroic run of it.

After the black knight dropped on one run, someone went "hey, since when does normal drop champ seals?" on my last heroic run. It's really a trivial instance.

[Sheepherder]

This brings whole new meaning to welfare epics.  The sheer amount of purple is frightening.

[Nebu]

This brings whole new meaning to welfare epics.  The sheer amount of purple is frightening.

It's funny the way you guys toss around the welfare term like you do.  I've played this game off and on since release and still have yet to see more than two 5-man instances while they were still yellow.  It's tough, as an adult, to find people to play with when you don't have an established group.  Granted, I'm pretty unwilling to pug so I accept a lot of the blame for my own choices. 

[WindupAtheist]

omg i remember when epics used to be epic bring back 40 mans beeyotch qq

[kildorn]

This brings whole new meaning to welfare epics.  The sheer amount of purple is frightening.

Damn that need to baseline the playerbase in order to release new content! DAMN IT TO HELL.

[Soulflame]

It's pretty nice of Blizzard to give the playerbase an easier way to gear up alts, rerolls, or just plain new players in a 5 man instance.  You cannot buy a Naxx XX run in my guild anymore, you'd have to PUG it instead, with typically comical results.  You can beg a run through a 5 man instance though.

[Lakov_Sanite]

I just don't like the de-valuing of purples.  That is to say I enjoy the color system but it's gone way over the deep end in pandering to peoples needs to feel like they're achieving when they aren't.  Because you don't just have greens, blues and purples anymore. You have greens which are relegated to enchanting fodder and quest rewards, nothing more.  Then you have blues which are nice but quickly start being phased out once you hit 80.  Then you have purples, the great equalizer right? Except they aren't. 

This is where we start getting into item levels "oh those are only 'heroic' purples? what shit gear" suddenly purple doesn't even mean anything anymore and ilvl is all people look at.  The whole color system really made you feel like you were accomplishing something at one point but as the game progresses it's becoming more of an afterthought.  Everyone being in purple gear doesn't de-value either my achievements or that of others but what it does de-value is the items themselves.

[Lantyssa]

Mudflation.  The bane of level-based games since forever.  (Or at least the '80s...)

[Ingmar]

That makes no sense.

In order to do content X, you need gear of Y quality. Blizzard wants lots of people to be able to do content X, so they give people gear of Y quality.

I mean I guess they could re-jigger the system so that the gear from normal raids is 'blue' and the gear from heroic/hardmode raids is 'purple' but that seems like a lot of work just to make the hardmode people feel more secure in their epeen.

[kildorn]

And you lack any progression in loot.

The reason for baseline loot giveaway passes is to make sure the upcoming content is still accessible. If Icecrown is balanced around Naxx10 gear, you'll have raiders thinking OHGODTHISISTOOEASY. If it's balanced around ToGC25 gear, anyone who hasn't cleared that won't be able to see the new content.

Is purple devalued? Yes, and rightly. It should have no intrinsic value to start with as far as colors go. Ilvl is a much better method of declaring quality.

ToC has served it's purpose amazingly well. My lock is at 2k spellpower self buffed now. I hit 80 on.. monday.

[Paelos]

We're taking time off of our 25 man run to focus on 10 mans, heroics, and badge upgrading. Why? Because that makes more sense right now than running Ulduar ever did. I've said it a zillion times already, but linear dungeons that have more than 6 bosses in them are not well-designed. You should want to do the bosses in order due to the ease and the reward gains, but you should also be able to face off against the last boss in the place if your group is well-geared and tuned enough to do it. Forced blocks and making people rekill the same old shit over and over again is the single-worst design flaw of most Blizzard instances.

Now, if there are less than 6 bosses in one place, this isn't much of a deal. It's slightly annoying, but it doesn't usually take more than a day to finish it off once you have things on farm. This tournament is an interesting move in the right direction. Five bosses, no trash, with a linear design. The only thing that would improve the model in my view would be to have a kind of instance where the players can choose which of the five fights they want to face rather than just doing them in order. That kind of power would make the game so very much better and simpler.

There really isn't any reason for the Blizzard developers to force players to kill everything in the damn place anymore. You don't need to try to make us spend more time in the game. We're already hopelessly hooked by now in most cases. Make clearing out the dungeon part of epeen achievements and whatnot, but get rid of the kill order mentality. It's completely outdated and unnecessary in the current raiding situation.