Our guild has had Archimonde on farm for a couple months now, and last night instead of the usualy 2hr clear, we ended up wiping on Arch for 2 hours as it seemed some changes have been made to his hitbox and airburst range (speculation) that changed the fight for the melee classes a bit.
Soon as I picked up Arch and positioned him, the rogues noticed his hitbox was bigger than usual. On the usual Arch kill, I (MT) do not stand max range, I position myself right inside the range that Doomfires can spawn so that they do not spawn on top of me. Melee positions the same way, grouped up right behind him. I have NEVER gotten Airbursted with the melee using that positioning, and it helps melee and MT avoid Doomfires spawning on him.
Last night, we noticed that if the melee and MT weren't at max range, MT would get airbursted with the melee. Melee and MT had to stand max range behind Arch and with the larger hitbox this put everyone pretty far out. This lead to more melee deaths since Doomfires would spawn on top of them and more MT deaths for the same reason. Granted, healing MT through Doomfires is not the hardest thing to do, but it was unexpected damage.
We usually 1 shot Archimonde, but this was a combination of an unexpected change and "one of those nights". Did anyone else clear Arch after the patch went live and notice this? Is Airbursts range bigger?
We didn't really notice any increased range in airbursts. What we did find was that the Doomfires now spawn inside the hitbox which has caused us a few problems. It'll just be a matter of making sure our melee DPS gets off the short bus.
I can also confirm you cannot use the mountain due to the invisible wall. I also tried to intercept but I thought I was too far after I hit it, but it did use my cooldown. Also I can also confirm that Doomfires did spawn in the hitbox on us on 1 attempt. I can also say from experience that the air burst does not seem to have changed range wise.
It takes some more focus now, but it's still possible of course. We only had 3 attempts, we should get him tonight.
Regarding Archimonde's hit box. Last night I noticed that the red circle that normally denotes it was TINY. Like the size of a quarter. However his hitbox still seemed to be the normal size as usual.
Can anyone confirm that warriors cannot intercept out of airburst any more?
Confirmed. If you use the spell it will cost rage and go on cooldown but you will still fly away.
Also confirming the invisible wall.
Also, with the doomfires: The pathing logic has changed and this causes multiple curves/branches/figure 8's/circles, etc. There is no longer a safe spot within his hitbox where they will not spawn. On our kill last night we had 4 spawn ON me while tanking him. I tend to stand just inside where his front foot is placed, this of course makes MT healing that much harder. Airburst range has not been changed and I did not eat one on any of our attempts. Also, these fires would head out no more then 10 yards then circle right back to me and the rest of the melee. This often causes Archimonde to draw circles around the melee/tank and doesn't give them a way out or back in. At one point the melee had no place to run as another Doomfire picked them and intersected their safe zone. Needless to say healing becomes rough when your entire melee group is forced to eat doomfire. Make sure your rogues save their CloS for these moments.
The changes did cause a few wipes as we had to relearn how to handle the fires, and dropping one dps for another healer made the fight much easier (8 instead of our typical 7). The changes to tremor totems made most of the fears a joke to handle. For experienced guilds the changes won't be that much to adapt to, for newer guilds I can see this being weighed in as a buff to the fight. This is probably one of the most melee unfriendly fights in the game now.
As mentioned above, Archimonde is now drawn bigger, the targeting circle is now much smaller (think ROS), and the hitbox is either the same or slightly larger.
Also, not sure if it was a bug with Quartz or the encounter, but two or three of the fears he casted had .5 seconds shaved off them.
Also, with the doomfires: The pathing logic has changed and this causes multiple curves/branches/figure 8's/circles, etc. There is no longer a safe spot within his hitbox where they will not spawn. On our kill last night we had 4 spawn ON me while tanking him. I tend to stand just inside where his front foot is placed, this of course makes MT healing that much harder. Airburst range has not been changed and I did not eat one on any of our attempts. Also, these fires would head out no more then 10 yards then circle right back to me and the rest of the melee. This often causes Archimonde to draw circles around the melee/tank and doesn't give them a way out or back in. At one point the melee had no place to run as another Doomfire picked them and intersected their safe zone. Needless to say healing becomes rough when your entire melee group is forced to eat doomfire. Make sure your rogues save their CloS for these moments.
Terrible news for melee on this fight--previously melee was the 'safest' place you could be, as long as people didn't kite Fire inside. The main issue I suppose is that the increased risk to melee will kill raid dps (we would have the rog/rog/rog/war/shm melee group do 45%+ of the total damage in the past). Less raid dps leads to more chances to fuck up a now-more-unpredictable-doomfire.
Honestly this sounds like making an already profoundly unenjoyable fight even worse.
It was. There is now an invisible wall that blocks all the mountains around Archimonde as well as some of the "field". Basically, it blocks you from getting onto most of the grey(rock) terrain so you have to now buff from the field. We haven't run Hyjal yet this week so I am not sure what effect the wall will have on doomfires or on airbursted people who hit it.
We had 2 instances of someone getting airbursted 'behind' the wall, and unable to rejoin the fight, and one of someone 'bouncing' off the wall last night. The wall is bad.
We had 2 instances of someone getting airbursted 'behind' the wall, and unable to rejoin the fight, and one of someone 'bouncing' off the wall last night. The wall is bad.
This is how we discovered the wall as well. There appears to be no way back. Either take the wall out or place the top of the wall higher than max airburst height please!
Given that our guild is going to drop Hyjal/BT for a while to focus on Sunwell/BT - could someone please elaborate on where this wall is exactly and how much of the mountain it blocks off. Does it render the mountaineer strategy obsolete? Did they also change the stump.
The cynic in me is happy to see that people who implied the mountain strategy was 'clever' or 'not an exploit' will now have to learn the fight in the intended way - with doomfires harassing you nonstop throughout the majority of the fight. Well, people did say that if blizzard didnt intend the mountains to be used, 'theyd fix it' - I guess they did just that.
This is how we discovered the wall as well. There appears to be no way back. Either take the wall out or place the top of the wall higher than max airburst height please!
We also had someone feared behind the wall. Handling doomfire and airburst range seems very tricky for melee now.
Archi really has changed and he really didnt need to be, he was fine the way he was, tonight we went in and the fire was all over the place, the melee just died a hell of alot easier, was just hectic. We killed Archi 8 times now but tonight was crazy in terms of how the fire goes.... I hope this is a bug and not intended.
We were just in the process of learning the fight (49%), but the doomfires are noticeably more mobile compared to our earlier attempts. It spawned and raced in every other direction, melee had a very hard time staying out of it.
The airbursts appears to be more frequent, but this could just be random bad luck. Either way I did get knocked about quite a bit. The height of the knock might be different from usual, i clicked too late once (lag) and actually survived the fall.
The hitbox is unchanged, but the red circle is indeed smaller. This is probably just a bug relating tot he size issues that were reported on the PTR.
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We were just in the process of learning the fight (49%), but the doomfires are noticeably more mobile compared to our earlier attempts. It spawned and raced in every other direction, melee had a very hard time staying out of it.
The airbursts appears to be more frequent, but this could just be random bad luck. Either way I did get knocked about quite a bit. The height of the knock might be different from usual, i clicked too late once (lag) and actually survived the fall.
The hitbox is unchanged, but the red circle is indeed smaller. This is probably just a bug relating tot he size issues that were reported on the PTR.
I also survived a fall without dying. I respec holy to heal/raid-lead this fight and end up having about 9800 HP buffed. I don't know exactly how much damage I took from the fall but I know that I was very low in HP, just about dead. We had a priest survive the fall as well where he had almost no health.
Edit: Come to think about it, we were both in the same group, in the NorthEast corner. When we got airbursted, we ALWAYS got flung into the invisible wall. The wall definitely messed up our Tears timing and may be why we both lived instead of cratering because I don't think it happened to anybody else in our raid (At least they sure as heck didn't tell me that they should have wiped the raid O_o)
I was thinking at the time that my holy talent that reduces damage taken by 50% on 10% of attacks procced.
Also, the tears appear to be buggy. We had a resto shaman who cratered three times (Twice in one attempt) who SWORE that his tears just didn't work. He thought the first time he just lagged but the second and third times he swore it wasn't working. We had him destroy his tears and get a new set and he said that they were working fine. Since he got new tears, he never cratered again the rest of the night. By the way, the time that I almost cratered, I am 100% sure that I used the tears VERY early (As I always do) and there was no way that lag caused me to use them late. They just didn't activate and the CD never came up. I'm not sure if lag caused them never to get activated but I am thinking that they're just bugged.
Also, the tears appear to be buggy. We had a resto shaman who cratered three times (Twice in one attempt) who SWORE that his tears just didn't work. He thought the first time he just lagged but the second and third times he swore it wasn't working. We had him destroy his tears and get a new set and he said that they were working fine. Since he got new tears, he never cratered again the rest of the night. By the way, the time that I almost cratered, I am 100% sure that I used the tears VERY early (As I always do) and there was no way that lag caused me to use them late. They just didn't activate and the CD never came up. I'm not sure if lag caused them never to get activated but I am thinking that they're just bugged.
We've just started Archimonde, but a number of people have had issues with their tears looking like they're there but not being usable. There's some weird situation where if you're rezzed inside the instance the tears stop working or some such. In any case, we finally determined that you can tell if your tears are "broken" by inspecting them in your inventory - if they don't show any kind of time indication on them (i.e., "2 hours") then they're non-functional. Once we had people destroy those tears and get new ones, we never had any issues with them (and since we tried Archimonde 21 times on Monday night, we're QUITE familiar with how the tears work!).
We've just started Archimonde, but a number of people have had issues with their tears looking like they're there but not being usable. There's some weird situation where if you're rezzed inside the instance the tears stop working or some such. In any case, we finally determined that you can tell if your tears are "broken" by inspecting them in your inventory - if they don't show any kind of time indication on them (i.e., "2 hours") then they're non-functional. Once we had people destroy those tears and get new ones, we never had any issues with them (and since we tried Archimonde 21 times on Monday night, we're QUITE familiar with how the tears work!).
Tears not working, or simply flat out disappearing from your inventory has been a known issue since before 2.4, it tends to occur if you get resurrected by somebody. Not sure about ankhs or battlerez.
To avoid this we've always told everyone in 2.3.2 to simply release and run so as to preserve their tears.
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Archi really has changed and he really didnt need to be, he was fine the way he was, tonight we went in and the fire was all over the place, the melee just died a hell of alot easier, was just hectic. We killed Archi 8 times now but tonight was crazy in terms of how the fire goes.... I hope this is a bug and not intended.
I don't believe the fight is that much harder now. It will increase the learning curve for new guilds attempting him. He is now at about the difficulty level I expected for the end of Mount Hyjal. A final boss should not be cheesed into giving up his loot like what was happening with the cliffs and log. It's not really a hard fight, it's just like Illidan where one bad thing can domino into a quick wipe. There is a bit of randomness to your luck on this more so than ever before, most of that coming from DF on your melee (or lack of). As I said above, the best way to level this out is to add another healer to your raid. Just make sure your group healing is strong, ie chain heal and CoH. This is a survival fight, not a DPS race. If you can't handle the incoming damage on this fight, you will find other healing intensive fights in BT and Sunwell beyond your reach.
Tears not working, or simply flat out disappearing from your inventory has been a known issue since before 2.4, it tends to occur if you get resurrected by somebody. Not sure about ankhs or battlerez.
What we noticed was that only those that released had their tears despawn when ressed, so as you suggested we simply have everyone running back. If however someone wanted a res, he would just wait for it without releasing.
If you ankh or use a SS or w/e your tears are fine.
I don't believe the fight is that much harder now. It will increase the learning curve for new guilds attempting him. He is now at about the difficulty level I expected for the end of Mount Hyjal. A final boss should not be cheesed into giving up his loot like what was happening with the cliffs and log. It's not really a hard fight, it's just like Illidan where one bad thing can domino into a quick wipe. There is a bit of randomness to your luck on this more so than ever before, most of that coming from DF on your melee (or lack of). As I said above, the best way to level this out is to add another healer to your raid. Just make sure your group healing is strong, ie chain heal and CoH. This is a survival fight, not a DPS race. If you can't handle the incoming damage on this fight, you will find other healing intensive fights in BT and Sunwell beyond your reach.
While i agree the cliffs were an exploit (though one our guild did not exploit) - this post is pretty much full of ignorance in my oppinion.
Doomfired melee getting airbursted is healed how? You know the luxury of actually raiding with more than one resto shaman is maybe something only available to guilds on high pop servers that got illidan on farm since a few months.
While i agree the cliffs were an exploit (though one our guild did not exploit) - this post is pretty much full of ignorance in my opinion.
Doomfired melee getting airbursted is healed how? You know the luxury of actually raiding with more than one resto shaman is maybe something only available to guilds on high pop servers that got illidan on farm since a few months.
Calm down there kiddo. 2 resto shammy in our kill the other night, and we killed Illidan 3 weeks ago. As I said, there are still some bad luck aspects to this fight (ie getting grip then bursted which happened to our resto shammy 2x the other night). You can still fire off instant heals in the air, and you should save your healthstones/crystal focus/healthpots, etc for those "oh shit" moments.
A resto shaman still can't heal (except once every 3 minutes) in midair.
I would agree with the mountain strat being silly, and we never used it, but to characterize Archimonde as "just another healing-intensive encounter" is not, in my opinion, accurate. We've killed Illidan and regularly bring 10 healers (8 main spec, two hybrids in healing gear) to Archimonde and I would say that Archimonde is unequivocally the hardest BT/MH encounter for us. Fears, airbursts, and fires chasing your healers away means that you simply cannot brute force heal through too much doomfire damage if you get unlucky. The old solution was to not get doomfired - if this is no longer possible (i.e., if doomfires can spawn on the melee, or can spawn and immediately turn 180 degrees - neither of which they used to do) than the fight is far more difficult than previous.
I felt that Illidan was very very easy compared to Archimonde. I'm sure it's because individual people reacting to on the spot changing circumstances is a weakness for our guild (as it is for many). Illidan you basically bring a CoH priest, two good FR tanks, make everyone stand in the right places, and collect loot. Archimonde has many more random elements requiring much more individual decision-making, and has thus always been a far more uncertain prospect.
We had numerous people get stuck behind the "invisible" wall while running from Doomfire. They were unable to get back into the fight and died from Archi running over and meleeing them.
We also had melee air burst the tank twice, I definately noticed the much smaller targeting circle under him.
What I do in my group (Boomkin, SPriest, Hunter, Holy Priest, (me) Holy Pala) is have the Holy Priest Fearward me in the beginning, when fear hits immediately dispel it from the Holy Priest, who then dispels from rest of group as needed. As soon as GCD is up from cleanse I max rank HL the tank a couple of times until people are back on their feet from fire.
Also using eyes and having palas/priests dispel people that are feared running towards fire works wonders for preventing fire dmg.
Warriors intercepting back in still works on airburst. I could not do it every time, so a possibility is you can't do it if you're the primary airburst target, or the other way around.
03/26/08, 11:48 AM
