ICC nerf/buffs have started

[pants]

With I understand no announcement, the first buff to running ICC has come in.  If you choose to, you can get a 5% increase to health, dps and healing, for a lockout of ICC.

Interestingly enough, it looks like there is no achievement or feat of strength for 'I killed Arthas uphill, in the snow, with my bare hands'.  So of course the forums are the usual casual vs. elitist arguments - personally I'm a bit torn.  I would have liked to have killed him pre-nerf, if for e-peen if nothing else.  Now there seems to be no reason to stick with the 'hard' way of doing it.

It also seems a touch premature - if I'm reading wowprogress correctly (thats a big IF) under 10% of all guilds have killed the Lich King on either 10 or 25 man.  How long has he even been killable?  A month or so?  Seems early to be rolling out the nerfs...

[Rendakor]

You say "under 10%" like that is an incredibly low number, but IIRC that's much higher than the amount of guilds that cleared Naxx pre-BC. And anyway, if you want to do it the hard way, go ahead. Those of us who just want to see the whole zone can now also do so. If you wanted to kill him without the buff, you should have done so by now.

[Lakov_Sanite]

I am in a guild that did anub hardmode before icc came out and is currently doing icc10man hardmodes but arthas 25 is a brick fucking wall, the jump in difficulty is such that if there was no buff, many guilds just beyond the bleeding edge would be destroyed. icc would turn into the dungeon where people just said "fuck it" and never finished a la sunwell.

[Paelos]

The tables have turned in this new WoW.

We casuals now polish our armor with the tears of the hardcore.

[Arinon]

Totally get why they have it so early for normal modes but why would they give this buff for the hardmode stuff?  Sorta defeats the purpose. 

Some of the hardmode bosses haven't even been killed yet right?  Dumb.

[caladein]

Totally get why they have it so early for normal modes but why would they give this buff for the hardmode stuff?  Sorta defeats the purpose. 

Some of the hardmode bosses haven't even been killed yet right?  Dumb.

It's not available on Heroic from what I've read.  Can't verify that though.

[Lakov_Sanite]

Totally get why they have it so early for normal modes but why would they give this buff for the hardmode stuff?  Sorta defeats the purpose. 

Some of the hardmode bosses haven't even been killed yet right?  Dumb.

%5 buff in hardmode ain't shit, trust me on that. even with a buff if you dont bring good people you'll wipe, a lot.

[K9]

According to the progress websites the number of raid guilds killing Arthas on 25 man is around 2%. Admittedly he hasn't been available for that long...

[Merusk]

There were only 5 guilds on my server who had killed BQL prior to this buff. That's ridiculously low for us, since we'd been in the top 10 servers for the last 5 years.  Only two have downed Sindragosa and only one has killed Arthas himself.   (Wow has my server fallen over the year, looking at wowprogress.  I blame the server x-fer to senjen, who I see has taken Alleria's place in the top ranks.)

Yeah, shit was tuned so that only Heroic-geared players could get through it. This is more reasonable.

[Selby]

My guild has been stuck on Putricide for a while now in 25-m and stuck on the Blood Princes or Valithria on my 10-m group for even longer (we 1-shot every boss up to that point).  Even with the buffs, our 25-m still managed to only get Putricide down to 48% before 4 people got blown up and wiped us.  Despite the buffs, it's still going to be a challenging set of encounters, and I don't foresee this suddenly opening the doors to those guilds who struggle with Marrowgar all night to finally get the Lich King down.

[Minvaren]

I blame the server x-fer to senjen, who I see has taken Alleria's place in the top ranks.

I remember the word going around when Premonition downed Arthas first on Sen'Jin.  Looks like 2 more guilds have gotten past him since then, one of them having a member shakeup in the process.  Surprised RWO isn't further along, they were THE uber-guild in BC days.

[kaid]

My guild has been stuck on Putricide for a while now in 25-m and stuck on the Blood Princes or Valithria on my 10-m group for even longer (we 1-shot every boss up to that point).  Even with the buffs, our 25-m still managed to only get Putricide down to 48% before 4 people got blown up and wiped us.  Despite the buffs, it's still going to be a challenging set of encounters, and I don't foresee this suddenly opening the doors to those guilds who struggle with Marrowgar all night to finally get the Lich King down.

Once this thing cranks up to 30% health/damage/healing it pretty much cuts out any gearing issue and the fights become pure execution. This does not mean they will be trivial the execution on the deeper fights is already the majority of the difficulty of the fights but at least the buff will give at least a little room for error for those who otherwise would have no chance at all.

[Merusk]

Yeah, if you're a cluster of people who can't execute a fight and don't want to research or do addons, no amount of damage and/or healing buffs will help you out.  Even old raid content like BWL still wipes groups made of people who think they can just go in and power through like it was a heroic.

However, it does turn it into a pure execution fight at some point, and the smaller buffs make up for some of the inequities of the RNG system.  For example, we keep getting plate dps gear in 25s.  All our other chars (Particularly healers) are way behind on trinks/ rings, belts, cloaks & weapons and the 5% buff let us down BQL last night and we finally hit P3 on Putricide as well, expecting we'll down him tonight or tomorrow.   I don't expect we'll be able to get past the dragon for a bit, since our best attempts have only gotten her to 75 or 80%.

[Wolf]

I'm in a 10m "casual" guild and the only guilds that have killed 10m Arthas so far on our server are 25m raiding guilds that outgear the encounter with totc25h and icc25 gear. We've been wiping for 3 resets and have seen phase 3 once. Looking at the heroic encounters that are to come (saurfang, putri, deathwhisper), I don't think there's a way to kill those in straight 10m gear.

[Paelos]

I'm in a 10m "casual" guild and the only guilds that have killed 10m Arthas so far on our server are 25m raiding guilds that outgear the encounter with totc25h and icc25 gear. We've been wiping for 3 resets and have seen phase 3 once. Looking at the heroic encounters that are to come (saurfang, putri, deathwhisper), I don't think there's a way to kill those in straight 10m gear.

DPS solves all problems. As much as I hate to admit it.

[Sjofn]

We're finally trying ICC this week. It will either go horribly and finally show our slackers than no, we can't give you a piggyback ride through this one or it will go fine and there will be piggyback rides after all. That seems to be how my guild rolls. :P

[Fordel]

It'll go fine the first week because we will get enough of the non-slackers to go all at the same time. Then we'll go "well this isn't so bad!". The next week will be horrible wipe fest as we won't have the 'good' raid anymore.

[sickrubik]

You say we like you'll signup. :(

[Wolf]

I'm in a 10m "casual" guild and the only guilds that have killed 10m Arthas so far on our server are 25m raiding guilds that outgear the encounter with totc25h and icc25 gear. We've been wiping for 3 resets and have seen phase 3 once. Looking at the heroic encounters that are to come (saurfang, putri, deathwhisper), I don't think there's a way to kill those in straight 10m gear.

DPS solves all problems. As much as I hate to admit it.

We have insane 10m dps, as we tend to roll with two rogues; Me (spriest) and the lock are the bottom feeders at around 7k (fester), but it still isn't enough to burn through Arthas. We're going to try with 2 healers this reset, hope that's enough.

[andrew]

It's not available on Heroic.
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[WindupAtheist]

You bumped a five month old thread to make a one-sentence post that wasn't even a direct reply to anything. Ban please.

[Wolf]

Which also happens to be not true :)

[WoopeeTuralyon]

LOL Wow what the hell. Let's necromance threads with false, one-sentence posts. Our first post, nonetheless. Brilliant.

[Paelos]

LOL Wow what the hell. Let's necromance threads with false, one-sentence posts. Our first post, nonetheless. Brilliant.

Careful about tossing stones there, buddy.

[WoopeeTuralyon]

LOL Wow what the hell. Let's necromance threads with false, one-sentence posts. Our first post, nonetheless. Brilliant.

Careful about tossing stones there, buddy.

Huh?

[Morat20]

I get to go to ICC for my first time Saturday. :) My new guild has a Saturday run there. They've very up front that going there, they mean "dying horribly but each time we go a little further before the crushing defeat". :)

[Paelos]

10 or 25 man? If it's 10 man, the place is pretty much a joke up to about Putricide. If 25, yeah that would be  for a while.

[Morat20]

10 or 25 man? If it's 10 man, the place is pretty much a joke up to about Putricide. If 25, yeah that would be  for a while.

I...don't know. I think it's 25-man. I've been considering looking for 10-man trips, but I don't consider my gear quite there yet. My DPS is solid for being new to heroics, but I've got some gear gaps (boots, both trinkets) that need to be filled, and my stamina could use a bit more of a boost. I keep going down on trash in heroic HoR, but admittedly only when the other idiots don't know what they're doing.

Had five fucking wipes there last night. Three on trash -- all from idiots who couldn't be arsed to let the tank grab aggro, or bother to crowd control -- and two from, back to fucking back, idiots who ran to far and got on the wrong side of the first ice-wall. I didn't even realize you could DO that. Admittedly, it was "idiots" on the first try, then "replacement idiot" on the second.

My DPS is running around 2700 or so, depending on the instance and buffs, in the heroics.  I'd prefer to upgrade my weapon, but that hPoS xbow refuses to drop.

But the guild needs warm bodies, and they need competent DPS, and from the looks of it I'm actually on the "better than average" side. Thank god it's not a serious raiding guild. They don't really care about wipes. :)

[Ingmar]

We may actually finish ICC-10 before Cataclysm hits, which would be a first for us in terms of progression - actually finishing the last raid (we'll leave out that we never did the last 3 bosses in Ulduar). Working on Sindragosa now and our problems there are pretty much just execution. Hooray for 30% buffs and easier raiding.

[Dren]

Our top 10 man group has been to LK, but no kill yet.  We got close a number of times then stopped.  That was weeks ago and I don't think we've even gone back.  I'm just not that interested in it anymore.  We got to him down well enough that I know we can do it.  We don't really NEED the gear and I've seen the final clip on the conclusion of the "story."  We'll probably do it at some point in the next few weeks.

[Paelos]

My group couldn't hack it on the LK in 10. Our people just couldn't stop killing themselves and others in the expanding ground shit. That and we were all so mind-fucked by the time we got to the LK, we had literally stopped caring. The dude didn't even drop anything we would have used if we happened to kill him, but it was still too much for us to really make a serious effect beyond 2 hours a week.

That's why I really don't like raids that have long long long sets of bosses. In the beginning you farm them, and by the time you get to a point where you want to complete it, you've most likely lost interest in that tier. Please, nothing more than 6 in a raid thanks.

[Ingmar]

Yeah I am looking forward to the shorter raids in Cataclysm for sure. The extending lockouts thing is fine, but it costs us frost badges to extend to work on the last 2 bosses, that we could spend on stuff to use against those bosses etc.

[Soulflame]

Last three in Uld?  Do you mean Vezax, Yogg Saron, and that other guy?  Algalon?  Are are you talking about one of the Keepers as well?

Vezax, Yogg Saron, and Algalon are all fights that require a lot of coordination and people who can avoid new and interesting kinds of fire.

[Paelos]

Yeah I think that a raid has about 3-4 months max of running before it gets completely stale. In that period of time if you are facing 5-6 bosses, you can work on them progressively without losing out.

[Ingmar]

Last three in Uld?  Do you mean Vezax, Yogg Saron, and that other guy?  Algalon?  Are are you talking about one of the Keepers as well?

Vezax, Yogg Saron, and Algalon are all fights that require a lot of coordination and people who can avoid new and interesting kinds of fire.

Wasn't even counting Algalon, we never did Mimiron.