Carrying a stack of Purification potions to decurse yourself in a pinch is always a good idea.

That is totally avoidable, assuming I understand what you are describing, because you should not be moving based on seeing the void zone spawn below you. Rather, you should be preemptively moving when her timer is done and she is about to cast one.

The only "invisible" void zones that should cause trouble are for people running back in reseting their mark, but even then most of the time you had enough time to run out of it.

Indeed. But it took us more than one night to figure out that strategy and get whole group to use it. Standing in one spot and move away when she's casting it, that is. Also classic "hmm, dead corpse in that spot, I wonder if there's void zone" helps in case you run to her later.

I'm not quite sure why Gurtogg is being mentioned as such a "random" fight. The (de)buff you gain when you have to tank an enrage makes everyone roughly equal to start with and tanks (apart from paladins) can't be the target of fel enrage, so there is no possible choice for fel enrage where avoidance from gear would make a major difference. The only really superior pick above others is a rogue. Mostly the enrage is just a matter of pushing in enough HPS, it's not like the tank doesn't have enough health to survive even bad damage spikes... Having 8+ healers pushing full HPS into a tank with 20+k armor and 50+k health while nuking like mad. Sounds a lot like some fights I've seen before..

If you are seriously going to tell us that Naxx wasn't "random" and bring up Gurtogg as some sort of icon of randomness, then how about pondering a bit on Patchwerk and those days when the tanks all rolled low on their avoidance checks for a long while? :P

I guess the major new concept introduced with TBC is that on some fights, you can no longer pick the optimal person, at leasure, to perform critical tasks. Compare Razorgore or Razuvious with Teron, for instance.

Calling some of his damage spikes bad would be an understatement.

This also applies well (raid-wide) to the Archimonde fight. Anybody could get air bust, doomfires will come near everyone eventually and fear affects the whole raid - so everyone has the critical job to stay alive. I really like the level of intra-raid responsibility on some fights in TBC, with Archimonde being the best example.

On many fights, im 'just a mage' and that mentality applies to lots of classes. As long as the MT is alive.. and some healers are alive, you can last a long time and maybe even kill the boss with only things like hitting a enrage timer that will eventually wipe you - however your early death alone usually means little at the time. This was one of the nice things Blizz did more with TBC - hightlighted in fights like Teron, Bloodboil, Shade of Aran, Fel Reaver Arcane Orbs, Vashj Phase 2 cores: you might get given a crucial job (fel rage tank, shadow of death) and need to react fast for the benefit of the raid. Archimonde took that to a innovative new level where it applied to the entire raid and had brutal punishments if you failed.

Id love to see some more fights that make me feel like im playing an important part in the raids success. It might be something small like having to eat that bloodboil, or dodge that ROF, use those Tears of the Goddess, interrupting that Circle of Healing, killing those parasites etc - thats what makes encounters interactive and fun.

I also think this is more fun, but I also think this design has contributed a lot to raiding tension and frustration. I was discussing what had changed with my wife the other night (yes we both raid)...Our observation was that the level of stress for some people didn't change. But for the raid overall it had. In the past the number of people with really critical jobs was small and generally pretty predictable. Usually you needed a couple of really good tanks and a couple of solid healers. They did most of the hard jobs. Things like Twim Emps occasionally forced someone else, say a warlock tank or two, to step up. Most of the healers and DPS really didn't have to focus on the big picture, they just did DPS or spam healed a designated tank.

In TBC all those people now to really be on the ball and ready to react all the time. This means fights take longer to explain, at least partly because you have to explain more and make sure more people really understand it. There are more fights were you have to say "OK you need to understand the fight and do the most important thing at each point in time, I can't tell you in advance what that will be and it might be different for different people so YOU have to figure it out." Pre-TBC it was "DPS the boss and if you get debuff X run away." Consider the kiting needed on so Buru in AQ20 vs. Thala in P3 superficially they are the same but the number of variables to juggle with Thala is vastly different...

Again, not that I think the changes are bad, but they have changed things and the level of effort/expectation/play is one that I am not sure has really sunk in to the core of the raiding community yet. This has led to the phenomenon that we observe of a bigger "culture of blame" in our raiding which we try to counter-act and more frustration in the raid geame. People aren't fully bought into the "even if you are DPS you have to pay attention all the time for the full boss fight" which wasn't really true before...

NO ANNOUNCEMENTS?! X-mas and new year! WTH!?

In case anyone missed it.

2.4 info from a source other than a Swedish magazine this week, perhaps?

Hunters can also deterance during a felrage, i've gone the entire duration with only getting hit twice as a survival.

And it isn't all of your healers focusing on the fel rage, if you do that someones going to fall over from a bloodboil they took just prior or worse yet a tank may die due to the acidic debuff. If you have 8 healers, you'll have 6 at best on the fel rage tank immediately.

Deaths generally do not occur in the middle of felrage, but at the start when your healers also have other tasks and end, if he choses to breath as you come out of fel rage and instagib you (I hate that bug).

This is coming from the point of view of a mage. I'll admit we haven't had trouble in a while, but we also bring 1 mage and tobe honest I haven't had it in a while. It's usually something barkskinned or some other easy class. In my case I'm ready to hit healthstone/healthpotion/frost armor so I don't die before a flash heal hits me. You could sleep through the fight if 2 rogues got enrage is a row. It is just an example of a fight being on two entirely different sides of difficulty depending on something you can't control. Whereas something like Archimonde can't go wrong like that. You could airburst a healer group every single time and you would still have a backup. The difference between good random and poorly thought out bad random.

That is why I mention Zuljin. I'm only 90% sure on how the mechanic works, but it seems to make it AS difficult for any class that gets fixated on. It let's Blizzard fine tune the balance of it, based on simple "heal 20,000 (or whatever) hp in 8 seconds" math.

Gurtogg isn't truly random... you have the ability to sub out mages and not play russian roulette.

There are many encounters that rewards raid stacking of some kind. In moderation, I don't see these as a problem, but rather a bonus for guilds that are flexible. Regardless of your opinion on it, this is different from inherent randomness in encounters.

I'm going to have to disagree with this viewpoint on the principle that, while it's okay for the guild, it sucks for the mages. I also don't think that an inflated roster is necessarily something that should be rewarded or encouraged, and especially not held as The Leet Stratz for a fight. I would agree with the statement that in moderation it's fine, but bringing zero to one of a class, especially one you would normally have three or four of, is nowhere near moderate or acceptable in my opinion.

Just wondering ... is someone in this thread really still talking about 2.4 and Sunwell?
The last few pages to me look like a "back to topic" is urgently needed.

I think there's 2 kinds of 'randomness' that are being discussed:

1. A combination of abilities + swing timer essentially 1 shots your tank Uppercut + UBS + melee on twin emps, the shahraz punt + lash, etc. Some of these you need to be prepared to deal with. Some of them are unfair.

2. An RSTS ability that some classes are able to deal with better than others. Fel rage, burning adrenaline, even Garrote on Moroes.

I guess they are different in the sense you can prepare for the latter beforehand, but I don't think its good encounter design. There are a lot of melee friendly fights in t6 content, and only a few ranged.

I must say I can't get a clear picture of what people mean when they say something is "random" anymore. The previous post is perhaps a step in the direction of clearing that up.

We use up to 4 mages on Gurtogg, and are able to heal them through the experience (-25% attack speed is actually useful :P). The enrage is meant to be scary to heal through, you'r supposed to worry about if the tank survives it or not. However, if you by random want to indicate that you actually wipe when he selects a certain class... Umm, naah, I don't buy that. I mean, it's also clearly harder to heal a warrior tank on MS, compared to a feral, and that's all down to pure armor mitigation, but people do that every week without crying "luck based encounter!".

As for the little lecture on armor... *giggles* I've soon been a tank for 3 years, I think I've picked up the basics by now

Perhaps because you can choose whether a feral or a warrior tanks that? I'm not sure how that's relevant.

Well theres two types of random in the game:

The intended, coded pseudo-random effect which is controllable. - Abilities with a cooldown, that happen on the timer.

The unintended, coded pseudo-random effect, which is uncontrollable, generally leading to an insta-gib. - Abilities that occur whenever possible, that when paired with the intended abilities make the fight harder than normal. Strategies are generally built around these to prevent/overcome them. ex; Punt+Lash on Mother Shahraz, Arcing Smash+Melee hits+the KB effect on a mage for Gurtogg can spike up to 40k damage in 1 second, Veras landing a melee hit on Envenom. There are far more of these possible, but only some of them are insta-gib effects. Can look back to Chromaggus and the Ignite Flesh stacking paired with the 15 seconds between breaths, eventually leading to un-healable levels on the tank.

Obviously that once enough people complain about the unintended effects, it will get fixed/changed, and sometimes make the encounter much easier.

Well, I wrote my initial reply in response to the general claim "TBC raid encounters are random, Naxxramas encounters weren't, back then you could plan/affect the outcome so you could reliably single shot all encounters". But by the sound of things, this whole "TBC is really random" claim boils down to spike damage on the tank, and in particular during the Fel Rage phase of Gurtogg.

Now, first of all, wipes due to spike damage on the tank is probably one of the oldest reasons for wiping I can think of. That has happend to me starting from the early MC encounters up to this day. And damage spikes are, by their very nature, random. But they are also part of the game. Bosses randomly crush / crit / pile up abilities and until you outgear the encounter by a large margin, you wipe to that. The Twin Emperors comes to mind, just to mention one example.

Perhaps Gurtogg picking a mage (I'd still take that over a priest, but there you go :P) might "feel" like a really bad thing happening. But as far as general tanking stats goes, ~50,000 health and 17,500+ armor, that is quite enough for the tank to be able to survive the Fel Rage. And like I said before, most often when a tank dies in this phase for us, the cause can be traced back to some healing error. Imo, you -can- play Gurtogg so he is a safe, repeatable single shot every week, just like those Naxxramas encounters, so what exactly is this huge difference?

And it's not like Naxxramas lacked some rather painful "you rolled badly, now you die" moments either imho. How about Maexxna cocooning 3 of your AoErs clearing spiders under her belly? Or Gluth doing his "funny" enrage => splatter the tank in half a second (before the hunters have time to tranq) routine? Or perhaps, the OTs on Patchwerk not avoiding a single HS for a while? Not to forget the encounter that made us all familiar with how you wipe due to 0.99^N, Razuvious?

The only truly random encounter in T6 really is Archimonde - if your melee constantly get KB + surrounded/engulfed by fire, the fight is significantly harder. Everything else is an easily repeatable 1 shot every week.

Even if a Mage Fel Rage tank dies on Gurtogg - it is hardly a wipe, just have your MT Shield Wall to tank him until Rage is done.

EDIT: Back on track -

Podcast coming next week with 2.4 information?

I couldn't find the WOTLK thread - so I'll post it here: New Worldofraids.com post

PC zone had an interview with Jeff "Tigole" Kalpan, that should be available later tonight, however PC zone released some tidbits of info from that interview.

Jeff Kalpan told to PC zone that a "cool part of Northrend is new big PvP zone. It's about the size of Westfall, and will be all-PvP - in no way, shape or form will we support PvE players in it".

Then he said, "It'll be optional, but it'll be completely non-instanced, have multiple objectives, siege weapons and destructible buildings".

Jeff Kalpan also promised that players will get an epic feeling upon entering Northrend.

"We absolutely need to make the entry to Northrend epic", he said. "...we originally had the entry to Burning Crusade's Dark Portal as a bunch of cohorts waling around, and people reacted badly. This really hammered home the fact that we needed to raise expectations on entering the expansions".

--------------------

The size of Westfall? That's pretty big for a PvP zone. And if they say np PvE in it, so I take it there will be NO attackable NPC's. That is weird sounding. Maybe like a full fledged city that gets beaten and builds into your own city?

This is a mistake imo. You know where the most worl pvp combat takes place currently? It's not halaa and the spirit towers. It's raid portals and daily quest hubs. I really think you need a reason for people to go there, even if there's no one there to fight. Otherwise, there will be no one there to fight.

I think this logic is flawed. There is PvP in Halaa on my server (not great, but then again, neither are the rewards). Plenty of people in Terrokar scramble to get the towers when they're up. It's not consistent PvP due to the nature of the 6 hour timer, but I've had a few good scuffles there.

Battlegrounds have PvP. Why? Because people go there to fight, and there are rewards for winning. People who really want to PvP will go where the best PvP is, and the people who want the best rewards will go to where it is easiest to obtain (AFKV for most). I believe the key for Blizzard is to make the rewards from the PvP zone be worth the effort. This will bring anyone interested in PvP there.

I think they'll do a good job with it. They already have implemented a token system (Halaa, HFP) that can be used for turnins, there's already the Honor system with it's own rewards, and a simple objective system (Destroy X building, Capture Y Checkpoint, Kill Z target) tied into rewards would be enough to get people to come. Bonus points if completing those objectives results in a world buff or event (such as the Onyxia/Magtheridon/Kael turn-in quests), even if it's temporary.

It's a terribly vague comment likely taken out of context and really not worth speculating about or discussing until we know more.