kaib

Danke. :P

 

funkydude

Hi, I'm the main developer on the BigWigs boss modules at the moment,
I receive transcripts from many players in several guilds and can usually whip something up the very night a guild is on a boss, I'm always more than happy to help, its usually just a transcript and a minor summary of boss abilities.

Players usually contact me via the wowace IRC channel on freenode 'Funkeh`' or pm details on the wowace forums as most people prefer to keep logs private. I'm not currently in any high progressing guild but it has not stopped me so far, I hope you are all enjoying the mod!

 

Skulli

We wiped for like 3 hrs tonight with only 2 shamans. After that we got a third one and killed him after few tries.
I hate that guy so much, realy looking forward to repeat that every week .

 

◊ Turik

Thanks for the update, and I'm sure your presence here will be appreciated

 

• Intermission

<3

Thanks! and everyone else involved. I remember trying to "beat the boss mods" in terms of raiding progression in vanilla WoW days. Now, though, it seems very few do :P

 

Elendril

Yeah, we had an in-guild guy who coded all our own mods for MC/BWL/AQ/Naxx, but now there's really no need for that, both because we're months behind and because people like you are doing such a good job, Funkeh

 

Melador

At the risk of embarassing myself...what's this then? AFAIK you can't shift forms mid-fear.

 

Arentios

You can shift out of forms, just not into them while feared (you can shift out during most/all CC). Doing so from a form that has a different run speed than your base caster form forces the game to redo some processing because of the change and has the side-effect of also redoing the random direction you're moving while feared. You may not even need a different run speed, but my experiences seem to point to it.

This is similar to how if a warlock Fears a mob, puts Curse of Recklessness on the mob, then removes the curse while the fear is still active, the mob will once again pick a random direction to move in.

 

◊ Quigon

Archimonde has a berserk timer, at 10 minutes you instawipe. Stupidest shit ever. We had him at 12% and ran into this "feature."

 

funkydude

I'll add a timer for that :P

I've been around a while I just don't post much since my spelling sucks =p

 

Noobiisa

If you actually get the fire dot or curse (which should not be on you too long though) you can get into the Well's water, it silences you yes, but also remove all debuffs on you, including the fire dot, so positioning some ppl closer to the well that is more suspectable to dying, you can minimize their deaths.

 

Obould

Killed him first time yesterday, imo one of the most idiotic (random) encounters out there at the moment, you need like 2-3 tries to work out your tactic on him and then its russian roulette if you down him within the next 2-3 tries or if you wipe for whole day long.

Here are my most valueable moments what killed ppl:

- Airburst followed by a Grip midair, landing so far away that not even Pizza Hut would deliver
- Airburst, slowly and without any other possibility landing in Doomfire and Achimonde so kind enough to give Grip/Fear
- Feared running into a Doomfire and a lovly Airburst

We had the encounter so many times just perfect stable, when suddenly one of the many killer combos killed one.

Worst then is that this SoulCharge Archimonde gets can wipe you in 3seconds.

 

Sebudai

The new Doomfire makes me wonder how we ever had any problems with the old Doomfire.

I think Archimonde needs a little more tuning to be considered fun in my book. I'm a firm believer that every single possible death on this encounter is preventable, but it is too random to be fun.

Tonight I caused a wipe because I was Air Bursted on top of a Doomfire and then immediately feared directly down its path. My trinket still had 60 seconds left on its cooldown. As far as I'm concerned I was lucky he didn't cast Grip on me aswell. Even this ridiculous death was preventable, but Archimonde creates some absurd situations that are simply going to wipe you because people make mistakes on raids, it's a fact and it will always be a fact.

What is essentially the most random encounter I can remember is also the encounter that punishes people for their mistakes more severely than any other encounter I can remember. That seems like a problem, but maybe I'm just forgetting some encounters?

 

okla

thats quite harsh Quigon, certainly in his current form, like skulli said, shamans worked pretty nice for us on this fight (altho i wouldnt mind a dwarf priest for our mt)

Doomfire is healable, and with the current length of fears etc you should calculate for things like that to happen.
The suggestion for purification potions is really nice aswell, alltho we didnt use it, i guess it would have saved us a whipe or 2.

A little tip from my side, if you are ranged and find yourself trapped by fire with his fear off cooldown, find a tree or a log, it will make sure you get feared within the same place.

funkydude : kudos to you. Your work is appreciated.

 

Edgewalker

Stupid fucking berserk timer.
The 1 minute timer to do 10% is a Death/DPS check.
Soul Charges and a RTS system on Grips/Air Burst are death/DPS checks.
Having a flawlessly executed kill where 5 melee had to stay out for 70% of the fight because of Doomfire spawns and wiping at 12% with a full raid to an insta kill Hand of Death is just poor fucking design.


Edit - And yea, sure it's controllable, but sometimes stupid shit just adds up too quickly to be dealt with reliably. Getting air bursted and floating into a doomfire while grip casts on you is awesome.

 

◊ Quigon

I agree with this - I was fairly unaccepting tonight when people gave me excuses. Near the end, on our low attempts, we had the worst luck you could imagine - but people weren't dying.

On our berserk attempt we survived doomfires like you couldn't imagine - triple air bursts on one individual with a grip each time on that same person. Grips always on the person furthest from a mage. All that shit was dealt with so that we could be instagibbed at some artificial timer... 2% out. Yet while it was dealt with, I consider us lucky - cause it just as easily may not have been dealt with. He might fear during that bad grip, etc.

I would guess that on at least 4-5 pulls we executed nearly flawlessly, and still wiped. On the attempt after that one, I got quintuple parries (I shit you not), and died in 1.6 seconds or something retarded (I had 22k HP and was in my "avoidance" gear with the scarab popped).

Even this happened to us a lot, which is horseshit really - but its dealable. The problem comes when 2-5 of these things happen in rapid succession. If everything was easily manageable folks would one shot this boss every time. But they don't.

This fight needs a lot of work - sad thing is it probably won't get it since its a high end fight.

This is how you fix Archimonde:
- Remove the fucking berserk timer, or remove soul charge (obviously you remove the timer).
- Make it so he cannot grip within 7 seconds of an air burst.
- Remove the parry mechanic from the game.
- Don't allow him to spawn new doomfires within 10 seconds of a fear (this one is also horseshit).
- Fix spirit of redemption causing double soul charges.
- Allow the boss to crush and fix his damage output to scale accordingly (I know this one isn't obvious, but just think it over and you'll get it).

Some ideas to improve the fight (not needed):
- Increase the air burst cast time by 1 second so a skillful player can juke it.
- Increase fear cast timer by 1.0 seconds.
- Decrease fear duration by 2.0 seconds. Or allow the fear to be resistable.
- Place a pond in the northwest that also dispels doomfire debuff.
- Make it so that doomfires don't grow too far behind the raid.

Edit:
PS: I forgot to mention I have the brutalizer, and gloves of enforcement, when I got quintuple parried. Pretty fun.

 

Sebudai

Since you mentioned it, I'll go a little offtopic and complain about it. The parry mechanic in this game is horrible. If you're going to make mobs that hit like trucks then don't give them the ability to parry.

No amount of skill on the MT's part can prevent being parried. It's a completely random and stupid 'feature'. Remove it and destroy all evidence of its existence.

I think a lot of people would be surprised at just how many MT deaths are caused by the parry mechanic. On fights like Azgalor and Archimonde, a non-MT getting parried is often catastrophic.

 

D4vE

Cooldowns on his abilities like suggested by Quigon would probably the best fix, it takes a lot of randomness out of the encounter. Alternatively remove grip completely from the encounter, it forces guilds to stack the raid with decursers and was responsible for approximately 50% of our random deaths, mostly by air burst - grip combinations.

Wait ... do player parries reset the swing timer of mobs as well? If yes I was extremely lucky yesterday tanking him, I think we only had 1 or 2 wipes because of sudden MT death.

And I just had to dig this out after perma-wiping for 5+ hours on Archimonde yesterday:

Eyonix about fear ward pre TBC release

This is the third dungeon end boss now, where fear plays a major role (Nightbane, Kael'Thas - Sangruinar with lower than 30 secs fear cooldown and finally Archimonde), and where fear ward trivializes the encounter or at least avoids randomness of the encounter a lot.
Bring one dwarf/draenei priest and heal your MT through every fear without problem, bring two to avoid a wipe due to lag or human error by MT missing the stance dance.

 

◊ Quigon

Yes it reduces the swing timer on bosses as well. On our first kill we went probably 3 hours of attempts with only 1 MT death - but that one, and the one I mentioned above were both on early kill attempts (low %, everyone up), where basically a series of parries kill you. We even were using GoA instead of windfury (thats how bad it gets), and it still instagibbed me both times. 1.6 seconds, 2.5 seconds for full hp (plus 2-8k over). No other players were in front of the boss.

A MT's parry should not kill him... other melee's parry is reasonable, but it adds some really dumb lotto to the mix - and frankly, just removing it is better altogether.

I would also not be so bold to say fear ward trivializes this encounter - but a fear warded feral druid sure as hell trivializes the tanking aspect of it.

 

Tpyo

Yes. We went from using our usual MT to using our feral druid OT(4pc T5, 1pc T6 etc). Mitigation change was so substantial that as long as one Paladin was free to spam FoL at any time could solo keep her up(assuming reasonable dodge occurances). Not to mention the additional TPS gain from using a tank that doesn't have to worry about stance dancing such a short cast.

We fear ward the MT(druid) and one shaman that tremors 2 paladins and 1 priest instantly after a fear. Definitely huge.

 

dukes

You can shift out of forms - cat form has +30% runspeed as long as you have the talent, and when you shift out of it it counts as a speed change, hence changing direction. Tree druids count the same (-20%->normal) when shifting out too, but I doubt many druids are using it on an encounter where curses are a big thing.

 

Dragooner

My guild spent last night trying to do archimonde for about 3-4 hours, was around something like 23 attempts. Christ, the number of random deaths is insane, but the most prevalent one I saw was air burst + curse. Whats that? Being out of the fight isn't enough? Take this curse of I'm going to cause you to wipe your raid and have your name added to the noob list.

I didn't notice spirit of redemption causing two soul charges, I died once around our 13th attempt and didn't see it happen, maybe we were already wiped and I didn't notice the soul suck from my body.

The penalty for any kind of death on that encounter is harsh. Here raid take this extreme instant raid damage while I continue to air burst, curse and fire you, hope you're in range of a healer!

I cry in the general direction of blizzards game design team after this fight, "Fear ward will never be a game breaking mechanic in TBC" along those lines, seriously, a tank that has to stance dance vs fear ward druid (uber hp and armor and dodge with no parry instantly gimping the mt?) Seriously?


These are the ones that I agree with, but I also think that the tears of the goddess should either:
a) remove curse (25% failure maybe)
b) extinguish fire on yourself
c) break fear

Although those all may trivialize the fight but seriously, air burst + curse gimping is fun!

Edit: too early in the morning.

 

Skulli

Shadowfiends love to go infront of the mob and they get a lot of parrys then. Might be the reason for that "luck"

 

Mirai

We killed him last night after roughly 40 attempts. Hell this fight is so random, while at the same time it could be so much fun.

Our way to prevent burst+grip deaths was to split the raid in 3 groups.

Basically every group had a healer and a decurser. The decurser was marked with a raidicon so you can find him rather easily. Now, the "trick" is to stick together at all times. Stand right in your decurser so the group of ~4 people will get thrown all ot once and the decurser can decurse cursed (fuck the word "curse 8[) people in midair and a healer can heal doomfire, if needed. It takes a lot randomness out of the fight, but at the same time the 3 groups have to be very aware of the fires going around and move accordingly.

We wiped a lot to fire and grip on melees, but had a resto druid standing next to the melee grp, so he could heal and decurse them at the same time, when get thrown.

If executed properly and no shitty doomfires, it's a sure kill because except for the fire there's nothing random in the fight anymore.

Just stay FAR away from fire when the last fear was 30 seconds ago

 

Dokos

We just learned and killed archimonde with the new doomfire mechanics... I've never seen a fight that asks for so much raid stacking in BC.

Stacking shamans and resto druids makes it 10x easier. Raid wide tremor. Decurse/Heal coverage for everyone + Hots for your MT while feared.

My suggestions for his current state:

- Make the fear window more consistant. 30-35 secs or make the cast time longer. Our MT couldn't do anything without running into. "Another action is in progress" or missing it by .3 secs.
- Add a 5-8 second delay for grip after an air burst is casted. (Some people might argue that you were supposed to be close to a mage so he would get tossed too and decurse mid-air but this brings me to the next point)
- CHANGE FEAR FOR THE LOVE OF GOD. The whole concept of using a PVP trinket to avoid the Doomfire + air burst combo is beyond stupid. Sorry had to get that out of my system.
- Change doomfire to work like a CoA. Increasing its damage overtime instead of the opposite way. That gives you the choice to either run to the well and be silenced or team up with a healer to keep you up.
Most deaths on a serious attempt once everything clicks is fear with everything down into a doomfire then getting air bursted. There's only so much you can do to stay alive when your survivability cooldowns are constantly drained by luck.

After writing this... I still think there's a lot of improvement to be done in our execution but I'm not looking forward to archimonde next week.