Patch 3.3

[Merusk]

BUT SHE CANNA TAKE MUCH MORE O' THIS!

Just invert the tachyon stream and route it through the deflector dish!  If shit starts to get real, purge the hydrogen from the bussard collectors and be prepared to ignite it.  If that fails, we'll have to dump the warp core and vent the shuttle bay to space.

[Paelos]

So from reading up on the 3.3 fights in Icecrown, it appears that they are updating a lot of older mechanics, and then mixing it in with some newer mechanics that I can only hope don't come off as gimmicky.

[Musashi]

How dare you come in here with a blatant re-rail.

[Paelos]

The real question for me is how obnoxious they are going to be with the encounters in Icecrown. On one hand, this is the effectively the end-all-be-all fight that everyone has been waiting for since they first leaked that Blizzard was doing an MMO. I would think they want as many people to be involved with it as possible. OTOH they don't want to get razzed by the ubers about how much of a loot pinata Arthas is, so they will probably overtune the shit out of everything.

I'm betting if I wait a month after release to start my raid, I might actually catch the back end of them tuning it correctly.

[Selby]

The real question for me is how obnoxious they are going to be with the encounters in Icecrown.

While difficult is fine with me, I just don't want the obnoxious encounters ala The Twins and C'thun in AQ40 where it was mostly about how to most creatively wipe groups all night and break up guilds due to anger and frustration.  On the other hand I definitely do not want it as easy as TotC has been so far.

[Fabricated]

The real question for me is how obnoxious they are going to be with the encounters in Icecrown. On one hand, this is the effectively the end-all-be-all fight that everyone has been waiting for since they first leaked that Blizzard was doing an MMO. I would think they want as many people to be involved with it as possible. OTOH they don't want to get razzed by the ubers about how much of a loot pinata Arthas is, so they will probably overtune the shit out of everything.

I'm betting if I wait a month after release to start my raid, I might actually catch the back end of them tuning it correctly.

Arthas will likely be as tough or tougher than 4 keeper Yogg on normal, and probably mathematically impossible on heroic for a good month. The good thing about the addition of much more explicit heroic modes (by switching rather than triggers) means the two encounters can be balanced really well to their respective audiences.

Normal mode kills mean shit in terms of progression now outside of the "rah rah" value. The real race for the uberguilds is heroic mode now.

[Paelos]

Normal mode kills mean shit in terms of progression now outside of the "rah rah" value. The real race for the uberguilds is heroic mode now.

This is a good point, and hopefully their overall focus. The emphasis should be on overloading the ubers in the heroic modes, rather than fucking my people over who can focus when drunk.

[K9]

I'm hoping for another Ulduar-difficulty raid at the start, which gives social guilds like mine an interesting but not insurmountable challenge, while not being a joke like ToTC

[AutomaticZen]

For people who say ToC is a joke... have you cleared Heroic?

[Selby]

For people who say ToC is a joke... have you cleared Heroic?

Different story though.  If my guild (composed of mostly casual people) can clear an entire raid the 2nd week it's out when we finally got a chance to do it, it was just a bit too easy.  As far as heroic mode... my character is geared up enough for it, but finding a group of people willing to actually do it is quite difficult (tried this weekend, me and a friend were #1 and #2 on DPS and the other better geared characters were almost 1k behind us, leading to problems).  Everyone says "I'm saved because of my guild" or "my guild is going to try this this week" on Monday nights...  I don't consider heroic mode to be *that* much of a challenge, but at least it definitely exists and we have the option.

[AutomaticZen]

This is pretty much what I'm getting at.  When people say ToC is a joke, they mean, 'the ToC I'm willing to try for is a joke'.  Heroic 10 is a bitch, and Heroic 25 is worse.  I really don't have much a problem with 10 and 25 normal being quick and easy.  Ulduar would be quick and easy if not for trash, Vezax, and people getting mind-controlled on Yogg.  The real difference is the complete lack of trash to clear in ToC.

[Dren]

Yeah, we gave up on Ulduar because of trash.  Any new instance that comes out with trash levels like Ulduar will have a hard time with popularity anymore I'm thinking.  Basically anything that can drop the equivalent of 5 emblems/ea along with 5 purples/raid in 45 minutes to 1:15 hour is the norm anymore.

We farm ToC and Onyxia now.  Our casual guild took maybe 4 weeks before having successive clears on Regular ToC25 (with PuGs.)  We do regular ToC10 very easily, but we haven't even attempted heroic as far as I know (other than 5-man of course.) 

The regular runs of ToC may be easy when compared to raids of the past, but they aren't nearly as boring/painful and they were really meant to get people into decent gear for other things.  If you are truly a "raid" guild and aren't doing the heroic modes, not sure why not.  That's certainly our next step eventually.

[Ingmar]

This is pretty much what I'm getting at.  When people say ToC is a joke, they mean, 'the ToC I'm willing to try for is a joke'.  Heroic 10 is a bitch, and Heroic 25 is worse.  I really don't have much a problem with 10 and 25 normal being quick and easy.  Ulduar would be quick and easy if not for trash, Vezax, and people getting mind-controlled on Yogg.  The real difference is the complete lack of trash to clear in ToC.

Yeah but the guild type K9 is talking about will generally not be able to even make a credible attempt at *any* heroic difficulty stuff. His point is entirely about the difference in difficulty between Ulduar normal and TotC normal, I suspect. For guilds like mine (and to a lesser extent his, I think they've actually cleared it, our raiding has kind of fallen apart lately with the usual fall out of game busy-ness, computers dying, and the flood of good game releases starting, etc.) Ulduar normal *is* hard. Very hard.

[AutomaticZen]

Yeah but the guild type K9 is talking about will generally not be able to even make a credible attempt at *any* heroic difficulty stuff. His point is entirely about the difference in difficulty between Ulduar normal and TotC normal, I suspect. For guilds like mine (and to a lesser extent his, I think they've actually cleared it, our raiding has kind of fallen apart lately with the usual fall out of game busy-ness, computers dying, and the flood of good game releases starting, etc.) Ulduar normal *is* hard. Very hard.

I understand his basic point, but I was getting at a) there is still another challenger! (hard modes) and b) Ulduar isn't *really* harder than ToC, just significantly more annoying.  For instance, Freya trash clearing adds extra annoyance time onto a fight that's really not all that hard.  Or the huge stone giants, which take more attention than burning Kologarn down for the 20th time.

If there was trash inbetween the bosses in ToC, I doubt the easy mode calls would be as prevalent.  If you could teleport directly to each boss in Uldaur, it'd be the same.  ToC is quicker, I'll agree, but easier, not necessarily.  In the time you've done 5 attempts on Ignis, you've gotten 10+ on Beasts.  The wipe/learning curve is merely shorter.

[Dren]

Yeah really it is the quick turn around on wipe-retry that is the biggest difference.  You can sit and churn on a boss in ToC for one night and you basically have it by that point.  You may not be able to get past due to gear requirements, but the strategy will be ready.

Ulduar type learning curve is vastly vastly different.  By the time you get to a tough boss people only have a few wipes in them before they all start dropping off.  In our case, that's going to be it for the week and then you start all over again the next time.  As you get deeper and deeper, this gets even worse!  We had already been through Karazhan in the same way and really weren't ready to do it all over again.  We stopped caring about Ulduar really quickly.

This is a difference of learning a boss in one night compared to 4 weeks.  Thus ToC was learned and understood by all within a week or two.  With easy drops, etc. from other sources (heroics, regular and heroic 5 - man runs, emblem purchases, etc.) we had the gear to actually get through the instance by the 4th week.  We are still challenged on 25 regular just because we require PuG's to fill out the raid and heroic mode is still in our future.

[Fordel]

Ulduar type learning curve is vastly vastly different.  By the time you get to a tough boss people only have a few wipes in them before they all start dropping off.  In our case, that's going to be it for the week and then you start all over again the next time.  As you get deeper and deeper, this gets even worse!  We had already been through Karazhan in the same way and really weren't ready to do it all over again.  We stopped caring about Ulduar really quickly.

That sounds like our guild, so much time is spent getting to the deep bosses, its rare we get more then a few tries before bedtime and etc.

[Ingmar]

We have had that problem, yes, although we were able to get ourselves to the point where we just don't wipe on bosses 95% of the time in Karazhan, or Naxx; Ulduar has never gotten to that point for us. So either we've gotten dumber, or the execution really is just that much harder in there. But yeah, schedule-wise Kara was always a 2 night clear for us. Its rare for a raid to go as long as 3 hours for us, and we only raid 2 nights a week.

[K9]

For people who say ToC is a joke... have you cleared Heroic?

we're 4/5 at the moment with our absolute A-group. The rest is stuck in limbo between the two. We're a casual guild and we can 1-shot normal 10 in 30mins with a group of alts. Heroic rapes face unless we have a balanced group of our top players. For us we'd happily forego heroic for a more entertaining normal mode. The fact that you can have trade PuGs that clear ToTC and Onyxia, yet who will wipe on Ignis or XT should be a clue to the wonky balance.

Ulduar had a higher bottom end difficulty, and a lower high-end. It also had the advantage of non-linearity. In ToC, the second hardest boss is the first. If you can do heroic beasts, heroic Jaraxxus and Valkyr is a pushover. The difficulty in ToC is schizophrenic, whereas in Ulduar you had a series of Easy bosses (FL, Razor, XT, Kolo, Auriaya) with the hard bosses hanging off the side. It was very hard to get stuck for ages, as the gatekeeper bosses were the easiest, as it should be. In ToC, if you can't do beasts, you can't do shit.

Regarding the length of raids; this is a problem to an extent, but I personally enjoy the grander raids. Furthermore, now that you can extend lockouts, there is less of a rush to cram all the bosses into the first week. Also, as with places like Kara and Ulduar, the difficulty curve is fairly even, so by the time you are making attempts on bosses halfway in, you should be 1-shotting all the prior bosses. The tiresome thing comes when you are working on the end bosses and the front lot becomes exaggerated trash. Ideally they could fix this by adding a Kara-style/Algalon-style door somewhere that would allow you to jump into the instance 1/3rd or 1/2 way through. I guess that's a pipe dream.

Yeah, we gave up on Ulduar because of trash.

uh?

One of the best things about Ulduar was the low amount of trash. With the exception of Freya, most of the trash wasn't particularly tiresome.

[Sjofn]

We have had that problem, yes, although we were able to get ourselves to the point where we just don't wipe on bosses 95% of the time in Karazhan, or Naxx; Ulduar has never gotten to that point for us. So either we've gotten dumber, or the execution really is just that much harder in there. But yeah, schedule-wise Kara was always a 2 night clear for us. Its rare for a raid to go as long as 3 hours for us, and we only raid 2 nights a week.

Last time I raided Ulduar (which feels like a million years ago, fuckin' dead compjuter! ><) we one-shot MOST of the bosses. Our problem seems to be that we'll be rolling along and then there's one boss we have trouble on for some weird ass reason and we wind up banging our heads against it for too long. Like we'll kick everything's ass and then suddenly Iron Council will smoosh us 6 times. And it seems totally random, we've had multiple wipes on Kologarn long after the point where we should wipe on him at all. It's weird.

[Ingmar]

One of the best things about Ulduar was the low amount of trash. With the exception of Freya, most of the trash wasn't particularly tiresome.

There's a little too much trash on the way to Hodir too, and those snowpiles bug out and get you stuck in combat sometimes, so I'd put those in the 'tiresome' bag too.

[Fordel]

We have had that problem, yes, although we were able to get ourselves to the point where we just don't wipe on bosses 95% of the time in Karazhan, or Naxx; Ulduar has never gotten to that point for us. So either we've gotten dumber, or the execution really is just that much harder in there. But yeah, schedule-wise Kara was always a 2 night clear for us. Its rare for a raid to go as long as 3 hours for us, and we only raid 2 nights a week.

Last time I raided Ulduar (which feels like a million years ago, fuckin' dead compjuter! ><) we one-shot MOST of the bosses. Our problem seems to be that we'll be rolling along and then there's one boss we have trouble on for some weird ass reason and we wind up banging our heads against it for too long. Like we'll kick everything's ass and then suddenly Iron Council will smoosh us 6 times. And it seems totally random, we've had multiple wipes on Kologarn long after the point where we should wipe on him at all. It's weird.

Our Raid comp is completely random is why. 

[Sjofn]

It's weird because even with the randomness of our compositions (which actually aren't that random usually), we'll tear through most of it and then suddenly Cat Lady kicks our ass for a half hour.

[K9]

One of the best things about Ulduar was the low amount of trash. With the exception of Freya, most of the trash wasn't particularly tiresome.

There's a little too much trash on the way to Hodir too, and those snowpiles bug out and get you stuck in combat sometimes, so I'd put those in the 'tiresome' bag too.

Yeah, I'll give you that.

[Lakov_Sanite]

Really? Hodir is what, two giants, two ice packs and a few jormungars...

People have gotten really, really spoiled when it comes to trash. Technically freya has the most but there's three mini-bosses along the way and she's pretty easy.  I think hodir just seems the worst because people routinely die on it, even if you've cleared it a dozen times.

[Sjofn]

It's not a few jormungars, it's a zillion of the buggy motherfuckers. Cut those out and Hodir's hall would be pretty nice, but I am sick to death of being stuck in combat because the 12th worm in a snowbank decided to stay under the world.

[Ratman_tf]

You fucks need a few corpse runs to put you back in line. 

[Paelos]

In the old days, a long set of bosses in a row that meant nothing to your raid would have bothered me. Now, we have raid extensions so making a longer raid has no effect when we have choices on the early stuff. The Black Temple days of killing every dumbass boss for the first 2 hours used to drive me nuts.

[Musashi]

You fucks need a few corpse runs to put you back in line. 

Maybe they'll re-do Ahn-Qiraj.  Then karma will be restored.

[Lakov_Sanite]

You fucks need a few corpse runs to put you back in line. 

Maybe they'll re-do Ahn-Qiraj.  Then karma will be restored.

You shut your whore mouth.

[Mattemeo]

Shaman T10 Preview is finally up on MMO-Champ.


Christ, the detail on that. Even if it's not to some people's tastes, the sheer workmanship and artistry that has gone into that set pretty much completely eclipses the work on all the cloth caster T10 sets put together. It's like graphics from a different game. It seriously feels like there's 2 or 3 years difference in the textural quality.

And here's me trying not to think about levelling my Shaman till after Cataclysm.

*sigh*

[Dren]

People have gotten really, really spoiled when it comes to trash. Technically freya has the most but there's three mini-bosses along the way and she's pretty easy.  I think hodir just seems the worst because people routinely die on it, even if you've cleared it a dozen times.

This.  We ARE spoiled.  Any trash at this point is too much if we have another instance with short corpse runs, no trash, better items, and faster overall jackpot on emblems, etc.  That's just the way it is.  These shorter and less trash instances are allowing casual guilds to experience the content at their own pace and successfully.  For the most part, we are having more fun in the game than ever (3 years experience.)  Some might say it gets boring and quit for that reason, but it is just as boring to be blocked from content and the only way to get by it is to spend more time in game, which in most cases is not possible.

The risk Blizzard runs with this style is that now they really have to start piling on the content.  However, it seems like they have been keeping pace pretty well lately.

[AutomaticZen]

Really? Hodir is what, two giants, two ice packs and a few jormungars...

People have gotten really, really spoiled when it comes to trash. Technically freya has the most but there's three mini-bosses along the way and she's pretty easy.  I think hodir just seems the worst because people routinely die on it, even if you've cleared it a dozen times.

The only problem I have with trash, is there's a spot in the average raider's mindspace after you've crested the progression curve and have content on farm.  This is the 'it just XXXXX' mindset.  Wherein you end up dying for no reason on trash and bosses you know because someone brought holy hell down because they were busy watching CSI Miami.  There's just a point where people stop paying attention, and the longer the instance, the more of that you'll get.  More random wipes, more afks, etc.  ToC?  That shit is done in 30 minutes tops.  Even on Heroic, we do maybe 5 attempts for the night on a single boss and we're done.  Without skipping, in 30 minutes on Ulduar you've gotten to XT if you're very good, and I think that's a stretch.

Raid dungeons should allow you to build a raid teleporter from fragments found in the raid (like Valnyr).  50 runs later, you can just teleport to the boss of your choosing.  It'll never happen, because it increases the gap between the have and have nots, but it'd be nice.

[Delmania]

You know, I understand it's the Lich King and all, but I really really wish Blizzard would let those of us who don't have a decent guild and can't raid heavily an opportunity to experience the defeat of the Lich King.  Lorewise, it's pretty much the end of the current world and cataclysm is the start of the beginning.  It's frustrating to think that someone like myself, who played WC3 to completion and tried TFT, can't experience the end of that.

[AutomaticZen]

Just video stream it.  That's what I did with Kil'Jaeden as I was never going to see him.

[Delmania]

I plan on doing that.  The difference for me is that Kil'jaedan wasn't a big deal.  Once he's defeated someone else w ill step up to take control of the Burning Legion.  With Arthas, it's more personal in that those of us who played WC3 in that we led Arthas to his damnation and ascension.   Furthermore, I've been trying to get the Crusader title (BoA gear), and given that Crusaders are supposed to be the elite of the elite against Arthas, I think they should give something more than the BoA gear for those of us who grinded the damn thing.  Of course, the BoA gear is why I am grinding it out in the first place...