2.2 Illidan Enrage

Searix · 09/26/07, 10:39 PM

Discuss, apparently it's 15 minutes and guilds are having a REALLY hard time at it
http://img341.imageshack.us/img341/6069/wow1shotyv2.jpg

Edit: WoW forum post: WoW Forums -> Illidan Stormrage gains berserk...

UPDATE

Daelo (Blizzard Designer WoW Forums -> Illidan Stormrage gains berserk... post 357):

Ok, we're in the process of deploying a hotfix that will change Illidan's berserk timer to 25 minutes. I'll make a post when our server people tell me it's been deployed to the realms. We're also looking into what went wrong in our processes that led us to the 15 minute timer suddenly appearing.

And now, I want to discuss berserk timers for a little while...

It was certainly not our intent to add a strong DPS check to this encounter with a new 15 minute berserk timer. Pretty much all of our encounters have berserk timers, but the vast majority of them are set at values that you'll probably not see during normal play. They exist mainly as safety check to make sure that the fight isn't being beaten with some really odd strategy or some kind of undiscovered exploit.

Now, some of them do have very aggressive berserk timers as part of the overall challenge. Encounters like Hydross the Unstable, Patchwerk, and Leotheras the Blind come to mind. The timers for those encounters enforce a minimum DPS requirement on the raid, which means you can't stack the raid with healing classes, have your DPS be very timid, and expect to win. If we set these kinds of timers TOO aggressively, then you have to stack in the opposite way with fewer healers and more damage dealing classes. Our challenge is finding the sweet spot.

Other encounters have more "organic" limits to the overall fight length. Gruul the Dragonkiller eventually grows to the point of destroying tanks in one hit, Lady Vashj's ever growing Spore Bat army wears the raid down, etc. Those mechanics are all pretty cool, but every encounter is different. Some fights work well with these kinds of soft organic time limits, but sometimes the simple brick wall of a berserk timer promotes a bit more tension and sense of urgency.

So back to Illidan... the 25 minute Berserk timer is not designed to be an aggressive timer. Raids fighting Illidan should have plenty of time to beat him.

Guess that's a wrap folks, feel free to continue discussions though

Teez · 09/26/07, 10:54 PM

Already being discussed in 2.2 Undocumented 'Features'

Searix · 09/26/07, 10:57 PM

Mf'in vast, this needs its own thread, getting buried in the 2.2 undoc changes thread isn't where it should be.

Question is can you stack your raid enough to kill him?

Maldi · 09/26/07, 11:05 PM

Nightmaers asylum just killed it a few minutes ago by the sounds of things.

7 healers 3 tanks or something was their set up, so yeah.

any guild that only has a week or two of illidan down like mine, probably wont be able to repeat it by the looks of things for a while D:

pray for hotfix to 20 mins

theemus · 09/26/07, 11:05 PM

Yup just did. The biggest increase in dps we had was in phase 2, also having casters do minimal dps when he goes demon helps as well.

Thecrowbar · 09/26/07, 11:05 PM

Nightmares Asylum just killed him, so I assume it's possible, yes.

EDIT: I'm slow

Searix · 09/26/07, 11:06 PM

Originally Posted by theemus

Yup just did. The biggest increase in dps we had was in phase 2, also having casters do minimal dps when he goes demon helps as well.

Out of curiousity what specced mages and how many

Tanoshii · 09/26/07, 11:10 PM

Originally Posted by Maldi

Nightmaers asylum just killed it a few minutes ago by the sounds of things.

7 healers 3 tanks or something was their set up, so yeah.

any guild that only has a week or two of illidan down like mine, probably wont be able to repeat it by the looks of things for a while D:

pray for hotfix to 20 mins

yeah, we killed him 1 time (last week), WWS screwed up so I don't have a time but we had 9 healers (taking less would make our PH2 pretty messy I think) and I'm pretty sure it was waaaay over 15 mins for the kill.

hope they fix it or remove the timer altogether

Trouble · 09/26/07, 11:10 PM

The people killing him in like 18 minutes, do you guys not use traps? And how many healers do you use? Do you guys go slower on phase 1 and 2? As I said in the other thread, we do nothing special and most of our kills are sub 16 minutes including our first kill. We use 8 healers, we utilize all the traps, and we push dps in every phase as much as we can. We never thought it was anything special but apparently it's 2 and a half minutes faster than most are doing it. Because of this it was surprising to me that this is a big deal.

theemus · 09/26/07, 11:13 PM

We only had 2 mages, I beleive they were both arcane specced. I'm trying to get someone to post a WWS but the person who usually does it didn't have his combat log recording so I'm not sure if we have one.

Maldi · 09/26/07, 11:19 PM

Originally Posted by Trouble

The people killing him in like 18 minutes, do you guys not use traps? And how many healers do you use? Do you guys go slower on phase 1 and 2? As I said in the other thread, we do nothing special and most of our kills are sub 16 minutes including our first kill. We use 8 healers, we utilize all the traps, and we push dps in every phase as much as we can. We never thought it was anything special but apparently it's 2 and a half minutes faster than most are doing it. Because of this it was surprising to me that this is a big deal.

we only have one kill under our belt so ignore this if your looking for a more detailed set of info but; our kill was 19 minutes 25seconds or so, 9 healers. I wouldent say we pushed dps hard, more focused on keeping every one alive and steady then anything, had a few deaths as well at various points (1-2 down in phase 2, and 1-2 around the 35% mark).

We only used one trap as well due to a misshap with a flamecrash on the first trap and the tank not having done it before.

I can see how a 15 min kill is possible, but its madness to think any new-to-illidan guild will be able to do this without much practice and alot of gear farming / raid stacking id say.

Shame to ruin such a fun fight that for once isnt a huge dps race :/

Nie · 09/26/07, 11:31 PM

Originally Posted by Maldi

Shame to ruin such a fun fight that for once isnt a huge dps race :/

That was exactly why I liked the fight before, it wasn't another silly DPS race it was a "keep yourself alive and work together" fight. If they made the cap 18 minutes, I could see it being fair.. 15 is just plain rude to guilds reaching Illidan. We had him at 36% on Sunday, then tonight we repeated it with a 34%--except this time he enraged and killed us all.

Balkoth · 09/27/07, 12:10 AM

My guild just finished clearing Hyjal without killing a single boss in BT due to keying issues. We heard that for many fights you need 8-9 healers, and we've adjusted our raid roster accordingly to 8 healers (used to run with 6).

Fights like Bloodboil and Mother seemed to encourage stacking healers. Now I see this change.

Nightmare's Asylum apparently killed him with 10 seconds left to enrage, with 7 healers. In light of this change, will it be necessary to drop a healer for a DPS for most guilds? After all, they haven't been farming Illidan and don't have as much DPS due to lower gear.

Granted, it's possible to adjust the roster for each fight but we've avoided doing that so far.

And of course, this timer may be raised making the DPS issue a moot point, and simply insuring you don't limp through the fight with 4-5 people dead.

Juli · 09/27/07, 12:11 AM

A little background: our guild has killed Illidan 3 times, first kill on September 10, no completed azzinoth set. Our kills according to WWS were usually in the 21-25min ballpark. We got 3 attempts on him tonight; first attempt had 3 minutes remaining on enrage when we hit 30%, wiped to various non-enrage issues (I pulled aggro at 2% on the first flame in p2 once and killed myself but not the raid, oops). He is absolutely 100% doable, and not just by guilds that have been farming him for months.

You can squeeze a lot more damage out when you're actually pushing for it rather than playing it safe. Popping heroisms and going balls out in p1 helps a lot, and there are other little things you can improve on an individual level to get more damage. For example on a shadow priest, previously in p2 I would run a 2-target dot cycle on the flames and only MB/flay between dots to be safe, but tonight I was also using SW:D when Illidan was up for eye blast/barrage because I'd heal the damage back up through VE before he started fireballing again. I also put up dots immediately after entering demon form when our warlock had aggro (but didn't refresh SW:P after that due to aggro on transition).

The knee-jerk reaction seems a bit blown out of proportion to me, although at first glance it seemed impossible when I heard the numbers and looked at our previous kill times.

Melador · 09/27/07, 12:17 AM

We're pretty well-geared at this point, but it's definitely doable with no raid stacking. We brought 8 healers and even had an ugly 4%->17% drain soul coming out of a trap and got him before the enrage. I'll post the WWS for anyone interested as soon as I get it parsed.

EDIT: Here's the WWS: Wow Web Stats

Xav · 09/27/07, 12:22 AM

Just killed him with a fairly un-ideal raid, 9 healers, 2 prot warriors, 1 feral (the tanks). 4 mages, 2 rogues, etc, that sort of thing. Was our first attempt getting past phase 2, since our first pull of the night we had a glorious failure and wiped to phase 2 promptly. The following pull we killed him and it was similarly sloppy - lost a rogue and had to combat rez once P3 started, lost two mages to some pretty bad stuff also. The remaining death was a healer.

I think with a typical raid that is moderately geared and comfortable with the fight, that incorporates a bit of DPS into the demon phase (raid farther up, ranged up there, some DPS on Illidan), he'll regularly be dying again.

Now, there's pressure in the fight to perform well once you beat phase 2, and it's no longer the casual fight it was at that point, so perhaps a change for the better when you consider he IS Illidan and all!

csi · 09/27/07, 12:33 AM

I really dont think 15 minute seems like that huge of a stretch.

I think our fastest kill is 17 minutes roughly. And even with that, there are a lot of places to improve in. For example, we can probably go with a less healers, and probably burn faster through phase one as well. Also do a bit of dps during Metamorphasis phase. Also physical dps can switch to elixir of demonslaying + some guardian elixir. Casters can upgrade to the new flask of pure death. All in all, that should shave off quite a few minutes and it'll be under 15 minutes.

Being that Illidan is the last encounter in TBC, I think he does need to have some sort of difficulty, and the enrage timer simply makes it so your entire raid has to play very well and no one can die. Illidan was far too easy wihtout an enrage timer imho (being that our first kill we 15 manned his last 30%).

For people who view this enrage timer as impossible, maybe you should search for every small aspect of the fight to increase dps.

♦ Praetorian · 09/27/07, 12:38 AM

The berserk timer clearly is not impossible and no one is saying it is. It's a huge hurdle for guilds just approaching the fight though. If something is nontrivial for guilds that have been farming him for months, it's going to be a brick wall for guilds that just reached him.

It's also the least creative way of making the fight harder if Blizzard felt it was too easy.

soadapop · 09/27/07, 12:39 AM

It's looking fairly reasonable so far, but I feel for a guild just getting to him as they will have one hell of a time trying to dish out this amount of damage, even with stacking their raid to the maximum efficiency.

csi · 09/27/07, 12:45 AM

i'm not saying its not a huge hurdle, just saying its not a far stretch either. For being the last encounter in the game at the time being, he should be extremelly difficult in my eyes.

His learning curve for p1, 3, 4 is very small imo. It's just p2, new guilds can definitely perfect p2 before having to worry about the enrage timer. Then p3 shouldn't take long to learn, as well as p4. From that point out, its just fine tuning the raid makeup and doing small stuff to improve each person's dps. As long as the execution is there, new guilds approaching Illidan can still definitely down him. It will be very tough yes, but that's why he's the end boss of Black Temple. Before I wouldn't even have considered Illidan as being one of the top 3 hardest bosses in TBC.

Lodekim · 09/27/07, 12:46 AM

I fully see the fight as possible, it just seems like an annoying place to put the timer. Is it doable? Sure. Will new guilds kill him with this timer? Yeah I'm sure they will if it stays in this way, flasked up on everyone choking every last point of damage out.

It's a huge change to the fight, and in my opinion fairly unnecessary. Yeah people are pushing out the kills, yeah I fully expect we'll do it tomorrow, with little problem too since we know about it, but it still doesn't seem like something that needed to be done, reminds me of the 2.0 Leotheras enrage where you lost someone early and if you didn't have a crez up just knew it was already a wipe. And what can I say, I'm a fan of bosses that are hard for their own right, not because they put in a pretty tight enrage timer. And no, I wouldn't have said he was top 3 hardest, but he was definitely the most fun, and I don't see sitting there going "Fuck a rogue died, wipe guys" as being fun. Maybe I'm just bitter over the low % leo wipes from one mage dieing.

And Gurgthock is exactly right, this is going to be pure hell for guilds just getting to Illidan now.

Gauss · 09/27/07, 1:25 AM

I'm not surprised at all by hearing guilds are killing this new incarnation of Illidan. As I argued on the R&D forums, there was no need to try to dps that hard before the patch which reflects in the lengthy kills. When the bar is raised, people rise to the challenge, however, and that is exactly what we are seeing.

Vhex · 09/27/07, 1:36 AM

Originally Posted by Praetorian

The berserk timer clearly is not impossible and no one is saying it is. It's a huge hurdle for guilds just approaching the fight though. If something is nontrivial for guilds that have been farming him for months, it's going to be a brick wall for guilds that just reached him.

It's also the least creative way of making the fight harder if Blizzard felt it was too easy.

Second least. They could have just thrown in an AE fear every 32 seconds.

Edit: I never saw the need to make this fight any more difficult then it already is. After taking on mother slot machine and the DPS fest that is Reliquery it's nice to have a slow paced relaxing encounter that relies more on your guilds ability to organize and communicate as opposed to popping haste potions on cooldown.

All enrage timers do is dick healers out of raid slots anyways. 8(

Buiden · 09/27/07, 1:37 AM

It just irritates me that before Illidan was all about control and execution. Now they want us to throw caution into the wind, add more dps, and brute force through the fight rather than controlling it. That doesn't make it any harder, it just makes it stupid.

This is like telling all the guilds who killed Ragnaros in 2 sons waves, sorry you can't do that shit, kill him before the second one or ELSE! It doesn't make it any easier to live LONGER, in fact it is probably harder since you have to execute the same damn thing over and over and have more of a chance to fuck it up.

I feel like Blizzard is really pigeonholing people into their idea of a strategy rather than letting us do it however we feel best accomplishes the job.

Here's to hoping they bump it to 18-20 minutes.

Iquark · 09/27/07, 1:39 AM

So quick questions to the guilds who got to/through him tonight, are totems and pets still causing charges in P2?

I think this could make up a lot of the 3 minutes we need for this new enrage, as well as if we just actually try in P1/demon form.