I hope they find a novel way to add offset items without "polluting" the loot table, especially in a 10-man. The token system is just so good to add multiple options of redemption, but you don't want to make every drop so generic that there is no fun in hoping for a rare drop.
AQ40 helped fill a huge itemization void that existed for feral druids by providing tons of great feral items. Only problem is ... it provided tons of feral items and lots of people complained. Something like an "offspec token" that was not class-specific, but instead had a number of offspec-only rewards for multiple classes would be very nice, and could ensure that your one off-spec guy in a 10-man raid could get some good drops without making every boss's two drops be moonkin + ret gear every week.
One way they did this was through the Qiraji Armaments and Regalia -- an incredibly rare drop that had both "main line" and "off spec" uses for everyone, in addition to having a higher drop rate (~5% each off every boss) per clear than specific pieces of Emps or C'thun loot while still requiring C'thun progression level via the turn-in quest. Debate will rage about whether that was a good system, but I wouldn't be surprised to see something along those lines.
'War' is too small a word for what I'm fighting. Like a candle in front of the whole burning Sun. Now, I am not going to die today. I have other projects, and other options.
What was the old function of Spirit, out of curiosity?
It had a much (*much*) higher impact on mana and health regen among other things. There was a time when a mage with 300 spi and 100 int was better than one with 100 spi and 300 int for example.
I realize that most people on this board are in raiding guilds that were in Naxx/AQ40 pre-BC and are now inn SSC/TK or higher now, and as such have all been raiding for a very long time and no longer need an instance to teach them to raid. What seems to have been lost by Blizzard is that there will always be new players who have never played an MMO that need to learn somewhere how to run in a large group.
Prior to BC people learned initial larger grouping in (before they reduced the size) Strat/Scholo/LBRS/UBRS and learned large raiding in ZG/MC. Kara as it stands now is harder than all of these, and the 25 mans are all harder still. I realize that having an easy 10 man and 25 man instance would bore the people here to tears, but that doesn't mean they can be left out if you ever want to have logical progression in learning for new players.
I was personally really hoping that ZA would be an instance that was easier than Kara with some option to make it harder like a heroic switch or the timed runs. The normal mode could help ease people into places like Kara while the heroic mode could help with gearing people up for the 25 mans. I am speaking from the position of being in a casual raiding guild on one server where we have killed Prince and are now looking to do the 25 man content, while on the other server I am in a very casual friends and family guild that is large enough to want something bigger than a 5 man, but are definitely not ready for Kara. These medium size, very casual guilds have been TOTALLY forgotten about in my opinion. I also think that these guilds are most likely a bigger portion of their customer base than the raiding guilds.
Anyways my 2 cents is that Blizz just screwed up again...
It isn't as if the first couple bosses in Kara are any harder than a 5 man. The only harder bit is getting 10 people attuned and all on the same page.
I am really looking forward to Zul'Aman. Karazhan was probably the most fun I have had in TBC (the first 15 times clearing it) but it got old pretty fast. I really hope there is incentive for everyone in any status of guild (progress wise) to go there.
It had a much (*much*) higher impact on mana and health regen among other things. There was a time when a mage with 300 spi and 100 int was better than one with 100 spi and 300 int for example.
Well, for deep fire, I would still argue that 300 spi and 100 int is better now. One point of spirit gives 16 mana on a full evocation while one point of intellect gives only 15. I believe Blizzard also added the 5-second rule late in beta. Intellect and spirit didn't add to dps for casters the way strength and agility did to the physical damage classes so they added more +damage to items, more spell crit to items and eventually added spell hit. DM in the original game started adding lots of spell crit items and a few items with +damage.
A similar thing happened with TBC release. They couldn't decide how powerful they wanted raid gear to be versus other items and dungeon gear versus other items so the itemization was a mess pre 2.1. That and they changed the ivalue of stamina too late to retroactively change even some expansion items.
Trust me, for a very casual guild Kara is a HUGE step up. To people who have been raiding forever it may not seem like it, but to those who are new to it, it is. They really do need a 10 man that doesn't require gear any better than the 5 mans so that people can learn.
Trust me, for a very casual guild Kara is a HUGE step up. To people who have been raiding forever it may not seem like it, but to those who are new to it, it is. They really do need a 10 man that doesn't require gear any better than the 5 mans so that people can learn.
The problem with this is that such an instance would either have to drop HORRIBLE gear or be too difficult. Raiding requires effort and, later on, skill. For guilds unable to progress deep into KZ, there are always Heroics which provide great, epic loot.
KZ doesn't "require gear any better than the 5 mans." All you really have to know to down the first couple of bosses is how to Tank, heal, DPS and CC on a very basic level. It is done on a weekly basis by our guild with a bunch of alts who often show up in very poor gear (as in, just enough blues to have completed the entrance quest). Playing skills are now taught in 5-mans and heroics (as opposed to being taught pre-TBC in UBRS). I think you're calling for something that already exists if you're willing to put the effort into it.
Trust me, for a very casual guild Kara is a HUGE step up. To people who have been raiding forever it may not seem like it, but to those who are new to it, it is. They really do need a 10 man that doesn't require gear any better than the 5 mans so that people can learn.
But you can make progress in Kara in 5-man gear. Certainly not everyone is going to burn through it the way seasoned AQ/Naxx raiders do, but there's really nothing stopping a small guild from making steady progress week to week starting from 5-man blues.
On my server there are tons of guilds that have killed bosses in Karazhan. It seems to me like every time I look at the realm progression list there are another 3-4 guilds I've never heard of that have killed Moroes. I think a post-Kara 10-man raid is going to appeal to a lot of people.
My comrades are my weapons, and I am their shield.
Trust me, for a very casual guild Kara is a HUGE step up. To people who have been raiding forever it may not seem like it, but to those who are new to it, it is. They really do need a 10 man that doesn't require gear any better than the 5 mans so that people can learn.
The first half of Karazhan does *not* require gear any better than what you can get in 5-man non-heroic instances and/or BOE crafting. My warrior started out tanking Attumen and Moroes in pretty much all 70 instance blues and some quest rewards. If you can't get Attumen down without epic gear from heroics or whatever, you've got an execution problem, not a gear problem.
(My warrior has all of *1* Kara armor drops, plus the honored ring, so it's not like I'm tanking Maiden and Opera and Curator in all epic gear. I was one of the MTs for a raid guild up through the Emps in AQ40 in the old days, but, I don't have the time for that level of raiding anymore.)
To go on topic, I'm eagerly awaiting a follow-on to Karazhan. 10-man is the perfect size for me and my friends to have fun together conquering the place. Simple as that. 25-man, you have to get a circle together that isn't as cohesive. It's not quite as much fun for me. YMMV.
"Nightbane difficulty" is a terrible misnomer, as our perception of that is very skewed by his many incarnations. It's my opinion (though it may not be shared) that his current iteration is incredibly easy; easier than Prince by far, easier than Illhoof even. He might even be easier to kill than Moroes; there's certainly less challenge in the execution.
The percentage of "Nightbane killing guilds" is much lower than his difficulty warrants, due to the summoning quest requirement and the perception of challenge that the boss built up due to being very hard indeed in 2.0.
"Nightbane difficulty" is a terrible misnomer, as our perception of that is very skewed by his many incarnations. It's my opinion (though it may not be shared) that his current iteration is incredibly easy; easier than Prince by far, easier than Illhoof even. He might even be easier to kill than Moroes; there's certainly less challenge in the execution.
The percentage of "Nightbane killing guilds" is much lower than his difficulty warrants, due to the summoning quest requirement and the perception of challenge that the boss built up due to being very hard indeed in 2.0.
100% agree. I'd peg his difficulty as below both Aran and Netherspite as well even in all of their current forms. There's just nothing really challenging about the fight anymore. I remember fighting him for the first time expecting something more difficult than Prince, and it was kind of a let down.
Ok so if you already know how to raid you can do Kara in 5 man blues (but don't you really have to unless you did Naxx?), what if you are trying to take in a group of people who have NEVER done anything bigger than a 5 man, most of whom are unlikely to grind for crafted gear or that special drop, but would like to do something bigger than 5 man since there are more than 5 players in the guild and they want to do something together (oh and they don't really want to PvP). These people will never be hardcore, but that doesn't mean they only have 5 friends. Prior to BC they could viably run UBRS together. Now there is NOTHING for them. Trust me an easy 10 man that could be easily pugged and has no raid ID would be very popular among this crowd. This crowd also happens to outnumber the raiders...
There's actually a couple of really kick-ass new recruits in my guild that had completely no previous raiding experience (in WoW or elsewhere) whom started their raiding in a different guild in Karazhan with others like them with no real issues. Yes, their progress won't be as fast as guilds with raiding experience, but they'll progress.
As others said, while it's not an actual raid, the 5-man design in TBC does hammer in a lot of the basic knowledge needed in a raid, in comparison to the 5-man design as it was in vanilla.
And yes, I do consider it a good thing you need to be able to get 10 people together in some form yourself to do a 10-man instance, it's better design. What does a 10-man instance that's only a 10-man because it has inflated health values on mobs add in the greater scheme of things except from allowing people to feel self-satisfied? Not much in my opinion.
All you really have to know to down the first couple of bosses is how to Tank, heal, DPS and CC on a very basic level.
Attumen, I agree. Moroes, no. You have to have two tanks on Moroes himself, because of gouges. Then there are four more mobs which have to be simultaneously tanked/cc'ed/DPSed. And you're up against quite a tough DPS race too: you need to get all 5 down before the Garottes get too much and run your healers dry.
In addition, the specific group of adds you get varies each week, and may randomly invalidate some of the CC you brought along. Got too many dispellers? Good luck keeping the shackles up.
No 5-man dungeon, Heroic or not, has anything like this complexity. It's also more complex than any fight in MC, ZG or AQ20. To suggest it's easily doable by a casual group is wrong. It's doable with some practice by a group with considerable prior experience of working in a group size >5. Plus the ability to pick and choose a raid within fairly tight composition limits. For example, doing it without any priests is... an interesting challenge, if you're undergeared. But that may well be all a casual group has to bring to the table. Bonus points if they also have no paladins.
That's not to say it's a bad fight - far from it! Personally, I love it. But I'm less certain that he should be the gatekeeper boss for the vast majority of the instance, and positive that there ought to be a slightly larger array of 10-man stuff at early-Kara difficulty.
Originally Posted by Aware
It is done on a weekly basis by our guild with a bunch of alts who often show up in very poor gear (as in, just enough blues to have completed the entrance quest). Playing skills are now taught in 5-mans and heroics (as opposed to being taught pre-TBC in UBRS).
Has it been done by people who never raided before TBC? By people for whom KZ is their first experience of a group size larger than 5? That is the only test of whether the 5-man dungeons really do teach the right skills well enough.
Ok so if you already know how to raid you can do Kara in 5 man blues (but don't you really have to unless you did Naxx?), what if you are trying to take in a group of people who have NEVER done anything bigger than a 5 man, most of whom are unlikely to grind for crafted gear or that special drop, but would like to do something bigger than 5 man since there are more than 5 players in the guild and they want to do something together (oh and they don't really want to PvP). These people will never be hardcore, but that doesn't mean they only have 5 friends. Prior to BC they could viably run UBRS together. Now there is NOTHING for them. Trust me an easy 10 man that could be easily pugged and has no raid ID would be very popular among this crowd. This crowd also happens to outnumber the raiders...
Ok, but why would they want to run UBRS forever once they've beaten it more than a handful of times? The loot stayed the same, there wasn't a heroic mode, you could only do the quests once. Essentially, you're saying it was just something to do as a group larger than 5 for nothing other than killing time. You brought zero challenge to players that knew the content and were satisfied with getting nothing out of their playtime aside from either a repair bill or some gold.
Ok so if you already know how to raid you can do Kara in 5 man blues (but don't you really have to unless you did Naxx?), what if you are trying to take in a group of people who have NEVER done anything bigger than a 5 man, most of whom are unlikely to grind for crafted gear or that special drop, but would like to do something bigger than 5 man since there are more than 5 players in the guild and they want to do something together (oh and they don't really want to PvP). These people will never be hardcore, but that doesn't mean they only have 5 friends. Prior to BC they could viably run UBRS together. Now there is NOTHING for them.
All I can say is that the number of guilds making Karazhan progress on my server (an RP server, mind you) says otherwise.
My comrades are my weapons, and I am their shield.
I think people are missing a key issue Karazhan organization. (With Raid ID's and lockouts)
If you're trying to field a 25-man raid, then ideally you run two Kara groups each week. The biggest problem you run into with two Kara groups is that now you have 20 people locked to different raid ID's and you can't intermingle them for a week. This is a major problem if you don't have immaculate attendance. If after your first day of a Kara reset, your first squad loses a tank and your second squad loses a healer neither can run on their own. Since the remaining people are locked to separate raid ID's, you can't salvage a working 10-man out of the remains and continue the zone. This is VERY frustrating.
If ZA is of comparable difficulty, and has comparable rewards, you can now run two 10-man squads but still have the ability to intermingle. Have Squad A run Kara and Squad B run ZA one week, then switch the next week. If you end up in the situation above, you CAN pull a working 10-man together and still get something done.
This is huge, frankly. I'm surprised no one has mentioned it yet.
Ok so if you already know how to raid you can do Kara in 5 man blues (but don't you really have to unless you did Naxx?), what if you are trying to take in a group of people who have NEVER done anything bigger than a 5 man, most of whom are unlikely to grind for crafted gear or that special drop, but would like to do something bigger than 5 man since there are more than 5 players in the guild and they want to do something together (oh and they don't really want to PvP). These people will never be hardcore, but that doesn't mean they only have 5 friends. Prior to BC they could viably run UBRS together. Now there is NOTHING for them. Trust me an easy 10 man that could be easily pugged and has no raid ID would be very popular among this crowd. This crowd also happens to outnumber the raiders...
I know of several guilds who had no raiding experience above UBRS before TBC and are killing prince now in karazhan.... the first half of Kara really isn't any harder then the lvl 70 5man instances non-heroic, as for numbers of players from just glancing @ a few server forums It seems the majority of the guilds in WoW have done Kara, so the 10man lockout grp of players is probably the largest grp of players in the game ATM.
No 5-man dungeon, Heroic or not, has anything like this complexity. It's also more complex than any fight in MC, ZG or AQ20.
Wait, what? CCing 3 adds is more complex than Sulfuron? Having someone be 2nd on the threat list is more complex than Vael?
All 5-mans, especially heroics, require CC. Multiple CC. Sometimes, up to three simultaneous forms of CC. A basic undertanding of threat is also not much to ask and is also taught in 5-mans. Having a tank stay 2nd on thread isn't too steep of a step up from this basic knowledge.
Sure, it requires that both of these ideas be executed simultaneously and in a 10-man environment, but... seriously. If people all the sudden can't function when shifting up from a 5-man to a 10-man setting, then raiding isn't for them.
I guess my previous, broad statements weren't the best approach to stating what I was trying to say: There is still a valid, forgiving learning curve in TBC. People just see something that they like (epics/25-man raids/epic encounters) and want to jump in before their skill/knowledge of the game has grown to suit that level of play.
Questing -> 5-mans -> Heroics -> KZ is a forgiving, gradual learning curve, given the difficulty of current 5-mans and heroics.
Ok so if you already know how to raid you can do Kara in 5 man blues (but don't you really have to unless you did Naxx?), what if you are trying to take in a group of people who have NEVER done anything bigger than a 5 man, most of whom are unlikely to grind for crafted gear or that special drop, but would like to do something bigger than 5 man since there are more than 5 players in the guild and they want to do something together (oh and they don't really want to PvP). These people will never be hardcore, but that doesn't mean they only have 5 friends. Prior to BC they could viably run UBRS together. Now there is NOTHING for them. Trust me an easy 10 man that could be easily pugged and has no raid ID would be very popular among this crowd. This crowd also happens to outnumber the raiders...
I guess even if they somehow managed to level up to 70 (unlikely), they can still run UBRS or any other old raid instance.
So far i like ZA preveiew, would like to hear something on quest lines, actual plot and how alliance will get there (and why they even need to fight with forest trolls).
I guess even if they somehow managed to level up to 70 (unlikely), they can still run UBRS or any other old raid instance.
A sufficiently geared level 70 could probably solo a good deal of UBRS. What would be the point?
Here's a thing: I'm not been in a guild since TBC, don't want to / can't be in one, and as such I've never seen any of the TBC raid content. It just isn't available if you don't do guild raids. At level 60, UBRS was. There just isn't anything comparable to that experience now. And yes, I would even do UBRS runs because they were fun. It's great to throw your alts through it to get some experience of tanking, healing, melee instead of caster, and so on. I learned a LOT about how to play my alts in there.
It was a very good gear and skill test and to be honest I'd have been terrible at tanking with my warrior in ZG guild "alt runs" at the time if I hadn't had that practice.
To answer the people that say UBRS had poor drops or no point doing it, there was this:
* Onyxia attunement
* BWL attunement
* Dungeon set 1
* Dungeon set 1 so you could convert to set 2 (when that was introduced)
* Warlock epic mount quest drops (dragonscale)
* Some of the best blue 1h melee weapons (rend)
* Fire resist gear (for MC)
* Some fantastic blue caster +dmg gear (also with fire resist)
* Good gold per run, especially when it went to 10 man instead of 15
* Many sub-quests which granted funny trinkets (whelps for example)
* One of the best caster trinkets in the game at the time (briarwood reed)
* Lots of random BoE pattern drops unique to BRS
* Pristine Hide of the Beast (I actually got that on my warrior, have Breastplate of the Chromatic Flight!)
So plenty for aspiring end-game raiders, and plenty for the more casual players.
My current situation is I'm not raiding in TBC (was Naxx pre-TBC) and basically none of the TBC raid content is accessible to me whatsoever. Seems it'll likely stay that way until I find a guild that accepts random and low attendance. I'm pretty sure at some point they'll realise this, so I'm not particularly bothered.
In any case, at some point I may sort out the above and I'll be looking forward to ZA
Edit: One more point - no raid ID meant UBRS was inherently casual-friendly because if you got a screwed up raid full of (ahem) noobs, you weren't stuffed for a few days being unable to run it. You didn't have to find those randoms the next day, or deal with them whispering you how it's unfair that you just filled up when they turn up 2 hours into your next day attempt. Yes, you could do runs back-to-back. Spam raiding, I guess. But it took a LONG time to do a full run, and it was fairly mentally taxing, and you would be mad to do more than 2 a day.
Wait, what? CCing 3 adds is more complex than Sulfuron? Having someone be 2nd on the threat list is more complex than Vael?
Actually, I think the Moroes/Sulfuron comparison is a good one.
For Sulfuron, you had a static group of boss mobs from week to week. You needed tanks who could reliably drag their adds to the kill zone when needed. You needed people who could get rid of all the magical debuffs.
For Moroes, you start off with a stable of 4/6 adds on any given night which can significantly change your strategy. You need two tanks who can manage threat on Moroes and possibly an additional add so your healers don't get beat on. You need to CC multiple adds, but the CC changes based on which adds they are and which classes you have. The adds can remove your crowd control abilities, buff each other, etc. You also have a soft berserk in the form of garrotte damage (and I believe a hard berserk as well.)
So yes, I think Moroes is more complex than Sulfuron. The scale is smaller, but that just means that you've got less leeway in being able to bring along slackers in your raid.
Yeah, Vael is more complex, but he's in BWL, which Schizzle left off his list. A decent analogy in complexity might be Razorgore, where multiple classes had important, possibly raid wiping jobs.
My biggest hope from this place is that they attempt what they did with AQ20: Non-bop Skillbooks that teach new ranks of class skills and a whole new set of enchants for slots (a caster cloak enchant please? I've got Subtlety to Cloak from AQ40, but that's the "best" PVE caster enchant to cloak to date).
Every other detail about the place is great in general - sounds like it'll be a really fun time, but I'm hopeful for that extra alternate progression - it works as a way to nerf the raids by not touching the raids at all - it tweaks the numbers on the players instead.
Actually, I think the Moroes/Sulfuron comparison is a good one.
Fair enough, I suppose. I still tend to disagree with the idea that KZ is too large of a step and that something inbetween Heroics --> KZ is needed. Moroes is a bit more of a step up from Attumen than I've previously assumed, but having been through an appropriate amount of heroics/done basic research on gameplay, it's not out-of-place.
07/12/07, 5:08 PM
Similar Threads
