Cataclysm

[Merusk]

What bug with DKs? Did the "equip 2h > get atk increase > unequip and it doesn't go away" bug happen again? I always loved that one.

[Nevermore]

No, this one was DK runes instantly recharging.

[Rendakor]

Got on at 10pm EST; aside from the standard addon bullshit I've had no problems. Went and did ZA with guildies; it's a decent place (never raided it in BC) but it's on the long side.

[Paelos]

I went on the dungeon forums to briefly troll the people in 362 gear declaring that people shouldn't complain about difficulty and that a group in 346 would be fine.

[Rokal]

ZG seems much harder than ZA, but overall it's the better remake. ZA feels exactly like it did before, which sort of sucks considering its the most recent one in everyone's mind. Overall I'm not sure the remake of ZG is better than the original ZG. Half of the fights have been removed, including some of the most interesting ones. Mandokir and Zanzil are probably the best fights, which are both better than their original ZG versions, but the rest of the bosses are a little underwhelming. It's not going to be pug friendly for a long time either, which is fine for my situation (since I prefer to play with my guild), but I wouldn't touch ZG with LFD for a while.

I'll say ZG is pretty fun and I'm looking forward to running it on alts, but I'm sort of bummed that some of the better fights were cut in the name of keeping it shorter or maybe just because they fit less naturally with a smaller group size. If you can't do justice to the old raid, don't remake it for a smaller group size. Make something new instead.

ZA feels a bit "too soon", even though I didn't run it a billion times like some did. I probably ran ZA maybe 3 times in TBC, but I ran ZG 20+ times, and I still felt more burnt out from ZA after finishing the heroic than I did ZG. They just didn't change the fights enough to make it feel new, and there was definitely a feeling of deja vu. My guild group wiped a few times in ZG because we were doing the fights wrong, but in ZA we killed everything on the first pull because the fights were almost identical to the old versions.

Overall my impression of 4.1 is that they probably should have made new stuff instead of re-doing ZA and ZG, as both of these as 5-man 'raids' have mixed results.

On the other hand I like the idea of Blizzard continuing to release 5-man content that scales in difficulty with whatever gear can currently be obtained from the regular heroics/JP. I hope they continue to release new heroic 5-mans, but next time I hope they don't rehash an old raid to do so.

[Rokal]

Duplicate post, whoops.

On topic: 100 yard range on Tricks of the Trade is nice.

[Rendakor]

Just pugged ZG; got in for last boss only. Wiped with the dipshit PUGs a few times and had to replace one with a guildie before they got the hang of the mechanics; even when we downed it the healer had died twice.

[Drubear]

I wonder if the re-do's of the dungeons/raids were internal PoC (proof of concept) or just experiments to see what the timeframe/resource requirements were for re-done content vs. full development. Either for justification of cost or simply planning purposes.

[Soulflame]

Or if someone at Activision is trying to drive costs as low as possible in order to generate higher profit margins.

[Paelos]

Here's how threads are going on ZG on the official forums:

Guy in 360 gear: Props to Blizzard for doing a great job on these Heroics. Do us a favor and don't tone it down like you have done other Heroics just to make certain people happy.
Guy in 350 gear: After spending about 5 hours on the last boss in ZG, I HIGHLY dissagree with you.
Other guy in 360 gear: 5 hours? not the bosses fault its your groups
Guy in 347 gear: Uh, we wiped over and over as well.
Guy in 353 gear: I did it in a pug and it was fine. Don't nerf it.
Guy in 367 gear: Remember casuals, this is your end game. Don't cry. Savor it.
Several people with gear in the 340s: Uh, you fuckers realize you're outgearing the shit out of this right? Why don't you step down and talk?

Basically the people in full epics are begging Blizzard not to nerf it already. God I hate the raiding population sometimes.

[Lantyssa]

Are these two instances going to hold people over until 4.2?

[Paelos]

Are these two instances going to hold people over until 4.2?

If 4.2 is in June, yes. Otherwise, no.

[Soulflame]

And by "certain people" he means 95%+ of the playerbase.   

[Rokal]

It's funny that people are complaining about the last boss of ZG, because that's exactly what happened with the last boss of old ZG (hakkar). I remember spending like 2 hours on Hakkar when ZG launched, because it wasn't obvious that you had to get everyone in the group poisoned by adds right before he did his blood drain. You could still damage him normally, it just slowly became obvious that it was too hard to do the fight that way.

In that sense, the new Jin'do fight that you end ZG on is a great remake of the original. The fight still has a big gimmick with the adds, and you will completely fail until you learn that gimmick. This time around, my guild spent probably an hour working on him until we figured out the best strategy to use (which is much more obvious this time), and then we downed him. I ran another ZG later last night, and we finished the dungeon in about an hour, without any problems on Jin'do.

People are complaining about the difficulty of the fight, but it's really going to come down to how well your group executes the strategy, not what ilvl gear you are wearing. It would have been the same as complaining about the old hakkar when you were using the wrong strategy, really.

[Paelos]

And yet, the majority of people saying that they hope it doesn't get nerfed and people need to shut up are wearing full 353+ gear. It's not a coincidence.

[Ingmar]

"Needing to use the right strategy" just creates a 2nd way for groups to fail. I am utterly certain you can also fail by being undergeared.

[Sjofn]

It's like when ZA originally came out, the people rolling around in their tier-whatever 25-man shit were telling the people rocking the Karazhan epics to lern2play.  

[Rendakor]

The problem Blizzard is running into here is "Who do we balance for?" Currently the new zones are ok in a raid-geared guild group, but provide that group minimal upgrades; they're (just like the 4.0 heroics at launch) pretty challenging for pure PUGs, who are the ones who need them most. If they had put in a normal version that gave 346 blues, it wouldn't be so bad since there would be an easy-mode for everyone to learn encounters on. As it stands the nerfs are almost inevitable.

Fake edit:

It's like when ZA originally came out, the people rolling around in their tier-whatever 25-man shit were telling the people rocking the Karazhan epics to lern2play. 

Pretty much this.

[Ingmar]

Yeah I think no normal version is just baffling, especially considering they already know (and have admitted) that there aren't enough normal mode 85s.

[Paelos]

The question of who do you balance for should be for a 346 geared group across that board should have no problem completing the instance in what you consider to be a timely manner. Epic geared groups should not be considered.

If the drops are going to be 353, your audience should be the tier below, not the tier above.

[Rokal]

And yet, the majority of people saying that they hope it doesn't get nerfed and people need to shut up are wearing full 353+ gear. It's not a coincidence.

We were failing in 350+ gear until we did the strategy right, just like I failed in the old ZG. There are some fights that your gear level is really going to impact in ZG/ZA, but Jin'do isn't one of them. If your group is wiping on him, they are doing something wrong, and it isn't "having gear that is too crappy". It's not as simple as "drag the trolls to the chains to remove their invulnerability shield", there is quite a bit more to the strategy than just being able to read the buff on each of the chains. If you get picked for body slam, but you are not near the chain, you are probably going to wipe your group. If you get picked for body slam and you are standing where a shadow crash is about to land, you will die unless you move. The adds do a ton of damage but they have almost no health. Whether your dps can deal with them or not isn't going to depend on how well geared they are, it's going to depend on whether they are actually attacking what they need to attack.

I find it disingenuous (but predictable) that you are again complaining about the difficulty of fights you haven't even seen yourself.

"Needing to use the right strategy" just creates a 2nd way for groups to fail. I am utterly certain you can also fail by being undergeared.

At some point this is true, but in theory everyone running these is at least 346+. If you try to do Jin'do in Wrath dungeon gear, you'll probably fail. If you are doing the fight in the intended gear range, and actually do the strategy right, you won't fail. It's 99% execution just like the old Hakkar fight.

For the record, in the second ZG run I did I was the only 'main' from my guild (still looking for dagger upgrades). Everyone else was in 346 average gear or so, basically heroic dungeon + rep gear. I'm going to be running ZG/ZA on my priest/druid who are both in the same situation for gear, and I know I'm not going to wipe on Jin'do because of my gear. That's just not how that fight is designed.

[Rokal]

Rendakor: I'm confident that if that same group of people did the fight again, you'd get Jin'do down no problem. As mentioned, there is also a lot of avoidable damage, so you can make the fight even easier the more you are familiar with it.

[Paelos]

I find it disingenuous (but predictable) that you are again complaining about the difficulty of fights you haven't even seen yourself.

I find it predictable that you confused posting other people's forum thoughts with a difficulty commentary. I have no opinion on the difficulty of the place. I am making a commentary on the people who are voicing opinions on the dungeon while completely outgearing it and then subsequently demanding that it not be nerfed. That's just ridiculous. Whether or not it is well-balanced shouldn't be dictated or influenced by people who are in heroic raiding gear and sharding the drops.

But if you can point to a place where I complained about the difficulty of ZG, feel free.

[Rokal]

But if you can point to a place where I complained about the difficulty of ZG, feel free.

Fair enough. You didn't directly imply that you felt the zone was over-balanced for 346 gear players.

Anyone complaining that Jin'do is too hard at 346 gear, of all the fights in ZG, really needs to question whether they are doing the strategy correctly.

Unrelated note: I wonder if Blizzard intended to update both Troll raids, or if ZA was added to the plan later. My enthusiasm to use the LFD tool to get the VP bonuses is minimized when I have a 50% chance of doing a dungeon that feels like it really hasn't been updated and is sort of boring. Launching the new 'tier' for LFD with only one dungeon would have been silly, but it's still pretty silly with only 2 dungeons as options.

I probably would have preferred seeing ZG redone as a lvl 85 10-man, so you could keep all of the fights in-tact but just update them so they felt fresh again. This could have been a new intro tier to ease people into Cata raiding, or it could have launched along side Firelands as an easier alternative or just more stuff to do.

[Lakov_Sanite]

ZA and ZG were both slapped on half-assed when they realized that players were eating up their content way too fast. I can't believe they weren't supposed to originally be part of the big raid patch along with firelands.

[Rokal]

I don't think the ZG remake feels half-assed. Some of the fights received major over-hauls (Zanzil is totally different now, with a fun cauldron buff mechanic), the trash has been re-done and large portions have been removed, and there are a bunch of changes to the layout of the zone and the environmental art. ZA is pretty much exactly the same as it was before, by contrast. As far as I can tell, the environmental art hasn't been changed at all. The fights all feel almost exactly like they did before, only now you are doing it with 5 people instead of 10. This is probably a good thing to some people: the zone was converted to a smaller group size, but feels pretty much exactly the same as it did as a 10-man. For me, it just feels disappointing because ZA was something I was already bored of and Blizzard just gave me a copy/paste of the dungeon. If they had made more significant changes to the bosses, or added a new one or two, it would have gone a long way towards making the zone feel fresh. As it is, when I finished ZA (after finishing ZG) my thoughts were "so....when is 4.2?" I'll probably run ZG a bunch more on alts, but I don't see many ZA runs in my future.

[Merusk]

Model spawn points and boss mechanics aren't the hard, laborioius part of instance design.  The background stuff everyone ignores, aka the dungeon environment itself IS.  ZA and ZG went through the "hey if I step here do I fall through the world.  Hey, does mob aggro act funky here.  Hey, is there a valid pathing route from behind this log to the players.  How's line of site and does something need to be tweaked to avoid exploits" vetting process years ago. 

You could take an existing place, toss in a few mobs and alter boss mechanics in a matter of weeks. In fact, we've watched that entire process happen when raids are placed on test. 

Also, you don't get to say "It doesn't feel half-assed" and then in the very next breath say "it feels disappinting." 

[SurfD]

I think part of the problem with ZA is that, compared to ZG, there is SOOOO much less new "bonus" stuff to do.  In ZA, its just a strait run down 6 bosses to the end of the dungeon.   In ZG, there are, what, 6 or so optional "miniboss" mobs you can kill that drop goodies (Bags of cooking ingredients, Bags of Ore, Maelstrom Crystals), plus the boss fights are a lot more dynamic and interesting then ZA, which are pretty much carbon copies of their old selves (just tuned for 5 people instead of 10).

[Rokal]

Model spawn points and boss mechanics aren't the hard, laborioius part of instance design.  The background stuff everyone ignores, aka the dungeon environment itself IS.  ZA and ZG went through the "hey if I step here do I fall through the world.  Hey, does mob aggro act funky here.  Hey, is there a valid pathing route from behind this log to the players.  How's line of site and does something need to be tweaked to avoid exploits" vetting process years ago. 

You could take an existing place, toss in a few mobs and alter boss mechanics in a matter of weeks. In fact, we've watched that entire process happen when raids are placed on test. 

Also, you don't get to say "It doesn't feel half-assed" and then in the very next breath say "it feels disappinting." 

ZG doesn't feel half-assed, ZA does and is disappointing because of it. That's all I said. ZG actually has new environmental art, the 'dungeon itself' has seen a very large number of changes. There would have been plenty of new LoS-exploits to check for, and there are a bunch of weird new mechanics too (cauldrons all around that give various buffs you need to deal with trash, a weird mario-style rock-fall you need to run up, walking through a path where you have to avoid fire spraying out of masks along the way, etc.)

I'm still recommending people actually run the dungeons before commenting on the dungeons 

[Sjofn]

I'd run it, but I'm not cool enough to (although I'll be able to on my rogue if I bother to PUG some more on him). 

No normal version annoys me the more I think about it. Three. There are THREE normal dungeons for level 85 people. They need more, dammit.

[Lakov_Sanite]

None of this invalidates my point that the troll dungeons were rushed out the door in a panic.  That ZG is MORE finished doesn't mean it was still planned to be released so soon.

[Rokal]

ZG feels finished imo. They cut out some bosses, but I really believe that this was done to keep the instance on the shorter side. If ZG had another 5 bosses, it would be substantially longer.

Even ZA feels finished: it works really well as a 5-man. I just don't like that so little changed with ZA.

Going back to "is this too hard?", if people are having problems on Jin'Do in 346 gear, they probably did a great job on the balance of the content for 346 characters. Dying to Jin'do means you probably succeeded on all of the other fights in the dungeon, which are the ones that would actually be impacted by how well-geared you are. If everyone was complaining about how hard the panther or bloodlord bosses were, we might have to wonder if the content was balanced for 346 gear. Since they are wiping on the last fight in the dungeon, one that doesn't really benefit from having great gear, then that probably means Blizzard did a good job on the balance overall.

[Simond]

Are these two instances going to hold people over until 4.2?

If 4.2 is in June...

Part the First) If they put the 4.2 PTR up tomorrow with a solid, comprehensive build, maybe they could get it out by the end of June. Maybe. My guess is late July/early August (if they ship it as is) or September (if they do what they did in 4.1 and just keep adding random stuff into the patch as they go along).

Part the Second) 4.2 is a raid instance plus a daily quest hub. No 5-mans announced (yet) - the "Zul'*" are the five-mans originally planned to ship with what is now 4.2. And, judging from 4.1, Firelands is going to be "you must have ilvl 370+ gear to play or wipe for hours" anyway.

[Ingmar]

You're almost certainly way off base on the 370+. They're not going to require hard mode gear for the next tier of regular raids. I guess it depends what you mean by 'wipe for hours'. Some people wiped for hours on Beasts of Northrend after all.

[Ashamanchill]

Sooooooo, is this Rokal guy actually Maledict on another account? Haven't we had these arguments before?