andastra

It depends on how they tune the encounters. If this content is supposed to last until the next expansion, maybe they'll tune every single fight to have Vashj/Kael/Illidan complexity. Even guilds like mine that recently killed Illidan, we did take multiple weeks of learning on each of those.

I sure hope this isn't like Naxx, where the first third of the instance are basically throwaway encounters. There's too few encounters for them to design some as the spider wing.

 

Phlis

So, not relevant to the discussion of 2.4 and Sunwell, but after three, coming up on 4(3.5 because of no real set?) teirs of BC content, how has Blizzards itemization worked out? They've somewhat abolished the gear gap to a degree, but it still exists. Obviously purples will be better the blues and greens but with Badge gear how much better is T6 then what you can get from ZA and Badges? Not all that much. Is there even a reason to have a large gear reset come Wrath like we had in Burning Crusade? I don't think so, but we'll get it anyway.

If anything the real problem with the Gear Gap, PvP, was erased and then, subsequently, replaced with an entire new Gear Gap. How much better is Season 3 Arena Gear then Season 1? How does the difference compare to Teir 6 vs Teir 4? I just find it interesting I guess.

With the advent of Arena gear would it be better for the raid game if there was More of a gap between T4, T5, and T6?

 

Maczor

Good point. I guess I didn't consider him a "gear check" for those very reasons, since by the time we got to him we already had more then enough gear to get past the check.

Then I guess hoping for a bit steeper "gear/skill" check in Sunwell then. Something like a Naj'entus style gear check with something more involved then "Spread out and pull out spines" for a skill check.

 

Emeraude

It'll probably be Frost Resist. =/

Almost all of the Blue Dragons we've seen so far have used Frost as their primary attacks, and then arcane defenses as secondary spells.

Sapphiron(Sapphiron was using frost attacks before he became a Frost Wyrm), Azuregos, All of the Drakes/Dragonspawn on Azeroth.

Nightbane I think is the only exception to this rule, but then Medivh did kinda burn him alive from the inside >_>

We'll see though, I imagine that a nice solid Resistance cock-block would also be in the interest of stretching content out.

 

◊ Birdemani

Hopefully it isn't the same guy who thought making all those linen bandages was a good thing. For two months I remember spending over two hours a night doing nothing but making bandages during the AQ event.

On a side note, Kalecgos may be one way to jump start the blue dragon stroy line in Northrend. They did mention at Blizcon that Sunwell would finish up TBCs lore and give a lead in to WLK.

 

XI-

There were no throwaway encounters in Naxx. Even Anub required a decent bit of raid coordination, more than most of the TBC encounters. And the crying about Faerlina until the nerf was pretty solid, nevermind the fact that Maexxna was pretty much SHIELDWALLHOPESHEDIES.

Compare any Naxx fight to say, Archimonde. The penultimate boss of TBC raiding is essentially a glorified version of Magmadar.

 

◊ Praetorian

Grobbulus.

Pretty much a matter of opinion. Archimonde is probably one of my favorite fights, including pre-TBC content too.

 

XI-

Touche. I didn't say Archimonde wasn't an interesting fight, because in the scheme of TBC it definitely is, but in terms of encounter design it's rather ho-hum. It's basically rehashing old content, and doomfire is about as challenging at 70, as the flames Mag put on the ground were to green geared level 60s way back when.

 

Ghando

I'm with Xi on this. It's easy to look back at fights earlier in the game's evolution and say "those fights were SO EASY." They're easy because you've already done them, they've been nerfed, better gear has come out and all those other things that come along with the game's progression. Though I do think "SHIELDWALLHOPESHEDIES" is a gross oversimplification. That's how you get through an Enraged stun, but splitting your DPS to effectively get webbed people off the wall, ensuring your tank has max HOTs + PW:Shield + full health + abolish poison every single stun. It wasn't a really difficult fight--took a couple nights for most guilds to learn, but that's par for the course if a boss is appropriately tuned.

edit: Yeah, Grobbulus.

 

Krazen

I guess if you have primal mooncloth priests running around, you might have a problem. But between ZA/badges/pvp items, shouldn't most raiders be able to compensate for that?

Granted, I'm a warlock, but I first went into Najentus with only a single piece from SSC/TK, and that was Leo's sword.

 

• Playered

They cant really do a gear check, sans a SR check which requires atleast HoD so some guilds farming BT/MH to supply the server.
The new badge & ZA loot, combined with the ease of getting atleast some T5, the very small difference between these and T6. Throw in that any stamina based fight will be "equip a few PvP items" means that they really cant provide the check required from gear anymore.
Ofcourse they could throw in a Patchwerk (yay!) tank based encounter where the gear is more noticable than that of the raid, as most other things can easily be bypassed with stacked raid setups.

Having no attunement means that you do not need to kill (hard)Kael, you do not need to clear MH or BT, the only way they really have option to provide a gateway fight is to have it very focused on tactics and co-ordination, which blow away those that have not done Kael, Gurtogg, Illidan etc... and if they do that on the gateway boss then the others will most likely be complained about as another 'Akama' in comparison, instance progression and all.

Im curious if anyone knows some figures about T5 raiding numbers before/after ZA was released, because from my mind this should of lowered the amount attempting them somewhat.

So my hopes are on that of a Patchwerk, Mother, or 4HM'esk gateway encounter else I have little confidence that there was any major benefit for doing T6 content, or any major downsides to guilds who have not really entered it yet.


If as someone mentioned earlier, the quest-line to opening the latter 3 bosses would not actually just involve dailies, but perhaps a Nightbane style form of unlocking, where you must go back and kill X from TK, Y from MH, and Z from BT in order to get through, then that will atleast provide a purpose for being able to do that older content, and keeping those 'unworthy' players out from the real meat of the final end-game content.

 

JulianMaiev

Well, one other option for making it attractive to continue to run t6 content is to make the number of drops from Sunwell bosses very small (and the relatively low number of bosses helps with this.)

This is kind of the way they went on ZA: if you're not hitting the timed event, or only hitting the first chest on the timed event, an entire ZA clear only gets you 8 to 9 items and 4 of those are backloaded on the last two bosses. Compare that with Karazhan, where a full clear gets you what, 20-something pieces? If people still need the Kara pieces, it's quite clear which is the faster way to gear up your raid.

 

Switchblade

After clearing all Pre BC content as well as BC, hands down the most testing fight in my opinion was Gothik. This was not a gear check, it was pure execution. Aside from that I know this may sound silly but I would very much enjoy a mobility fight like Twin emps or Heigan. There are very few fights where you can just laugh at someones misfortune that doesn't result in an all out raid wipe.

http://ctprofiles.net/1031812

 

Phlis

Except of course for The7, and their other Chinese rivals, if you remember:
Primal News Transmute [30/10/2007](You must gather your party before venturing forth)

They didn't really spend a lot of time farming, 7 resets, and according to their kill order maximum 7 full clears of Kra/Gruul/Mag, 1 Partial SSC and TK, 4 Full SSCs, 3 Full TKs, 1 Full Hyjal and 1 Full BT assuming nothing got sharded and they continued to clear Kara, Gruul, Mag, all of SSC and TK on their way to Illidan, which I don't think they did. If you assume they stopped doing a Teir when they got to the next teir then those numbers are a lot less. What does that say about the "gear checks"?

 

Lumi

I guess you can claim Najentus as a gear check, but with how easy it is to get Arena gear (high stam gear, high dps weapons) it isn't a big concern. Our first few Najentus and Gorefiend kills, our priests and mages replaced some of their low stam tailored gear with arena gear till they caught up with tier 6.

It still doesn't require you to go back and clear TK/SSC to get the gear to beat the encounters though. The alternate means to get gear are roughly on par with tier 6 (arena/badge/za).

That said I have no problem if a guild wants to go from ZA to Sunwell. If they have that talent, and some how haven't already killed Illidan, grats to them.

 

HaklePrime

We don't have the numbers in our raids to be able to do that though. If we're looking for complex fights, with multiple responsibilities, requiring individual execution, that 26th man of your raid force, who's in the raid because the regular guy is on his honeymoon, WILL wipe you. They're getting more and more micromanagement involved in these encounters, where nearly every member of the 25-man raid force has some form of job, aside from 'stand here, push the button when you see a cast bar', or 'tank-and-spank'.

I will be sorely disappointed if every one of the 6 encounters isn't brutally ruthless to the 'casual' players. I know it sounds mean, but if your guild didn't have the required skill to defeat the original Gruul (on Live), or the first revised version of Kael'Thas, then I don't believe you 'deserve' to reap the rewards in Sunwell.

I'm fully anticipating the first encounter to be a semi-trashless, highly complex encounter, a la Razorgore. Accessible enough for any raid to come in, wipe once or twice with minimal frustration, and from there, decide whether or not your raid should actually be there at it's current gear/skill level.

 

Malan

MMO Champ points out that one of the bosses is already in the game files by the way.

[e] wow that scaled horribly, here's the link instead. http://azeroth.mmo-champion.com/media/brutalicus.jpg

Shitting up every single thread on EJ since '06

 

Switchblade

Its a tough order to fill, so long as gear can take the edge off the encounters over time I'm fine with Gruul 1.0 difficulty. To keep something on an extreme difficulty with a boss will make it one of the first bosses to be skipped given when the next raid zone comes into play. After killing every version of Kael (including the bugged super weapon) it saddens me that this will be the road of every encounter, but such is the way of progress. If this was not the case recruitment across the board would become bleak and spent.

http://ctprofiles.net/1031812

 

Enova

What I would really like to see is such an attunement quest being launched BEFORE the actual instance, to prevent guilds leaving unattuned people to focus on Sunwell exclusively. While so far, my guild and pretty much all of my realm has had a 'leave nobody behind' policy, before, I do know of more than one case where old members from more advanced guilds have asked people still in SSC to tag along for a vial kill, because their guilds no longer ran Vashj, focusing on Illidan/Mother/Council/Archi.
This way, at the very least you could have a month or so to swap members in an out of raids to ensure that your whole guild is eventually set to go when Sunvell goes live.

Guilty as charged ^

 

◊ Hanos

How many guilds do you know of that made significant progress in Naxx without killing the Twin Emps, Ouro and C'Thun. My experience was they were few are far between. All they have to do is make the fights skill checks, raid design checks, player intelligence and survivability checks. Sure the BWL level guilds eventually got Instructor (you get to use an NPC as your MT..), Anub, maybe Grand Widow and Maexxna, but they tended to hit a giant brick wall at Patchwerk, Gothik, and just the plague wing in general (idiot check wing).

Honestly the idea that a guild farming Void Reaver can zone into SP on say one doesn't bother me other then fear of it killing the server, and causing lag, crashes etc. They have said that the zone will contain sets, but not tier sets. My guess is something like AQ20 Cloak, Ring, Weapon, or Neck, Ring and Trinket or Bracer, Belt and Boots. Honestly farming a bunch of bracers, rings or cloaks off the first boss after they spend 3-4 weeks on him doesn't bother me at all, there will be fights in there that are beyond them, whether through skill or gear, if not then Sunwell can't be considered beyond T6 in difficulty. That being said, I fully expect Nihilium, D&T, etc. to come out after the first week on Test and either claim it is too easy, bugged or broken... gee your full raid has the best possibly item in 95% if their slots, you have been playing together for 2+ years... yeah it isn't that hard, it can't be, and still be doable for the other people out there.

 

Malan

A handful at least from my own experience. My guild on Ursin was the only one killing C'thun for a hell of a long time even after Naxx opened, and numerous guilds horde-side that were unable to kill Twin Emps went into Naxx and were able to kill 2-3 bosses, basically clearing Spider Wing or maybe 2 from Spider plus Instructor.

Yah nobody was clearing Patchwerk (and my guild was the only one to kill Loatheb before the xpack hit) but they still were able to clear 1/4 of the zone (without counting the final 2 encounters). Extrapolate that to 6 bosses and a guild that was unable to kill Kael/Vashj and even guilds that were only halfway through SSC/TK would be able to (statistically) kill the first boss in Sunwell and possibly the 2nd.

Shitting up every single thread on EJ since '06

 

◊ Hanos

The spider wing + Instructor was the wing that people who couldn't kill Twin Emps or beyond got to play with. You got some bracers, some belts and some gloves, not helms, chests, legs, etc. With a 15 boss zone there were some throw aways bosses and some nods to the less skilled (kind of a warm-up, get your feet wet area, which they have had in every zone since AQ40 (Razorgore was too much of a brickwall for many). I always viewed Grobbulus as "Well we can't put double loot on Patchwerk for no good reason... so here", either that or there was a different intended version (something about infected people transforming ala Chromaggus, but it got nerfed.

As I said in my previous post I see the Sunwell focusing on the existing itemization holes - Trinkets - 1 for each role in T6, Caster Weapons - Anyone else not get a caster sword off Archimonde yet?, Melee Weapons better then Warglaives - but not as flashy, Cloaks - 1 melee cloak for hunters, rogues, DPS Warriors, Enhancement Shaman and Feral Druids in all of T6, etc. The thought of people who can't get into BT gettint T6.5 bracers doesn't worry me any more then S3 Arena/Honor Gear... it didn't make those people better players, this won't either.

 

andastra

What Kenji said was what I was getting at. Plenty of guilds that couldn't kill twin emps could kill 5 bosses in Naxx then stop at Patchwerk. I think my guild, as an example, spent 4 weeks on Patchwerk alone and 2 weeks to clear Noth, Instructor and the entire spider wing. Those initial encounters are pretty forgiving for everybody except for maybe 10-15 people out of a 40-man raid. Archimonde is a very simple encounter but it's tuned to be quite unforgiving and some people just fail at it. The time spent learning Archimonde is probably one of the most variable out of all the T5 and T6 encounters.

What I'm hoping for is Vashj/Kael/Illidan type encounters. Not as complex for all of them but at least everything should be quite difficult.

 

PSGarak

I'm definitely thinking that the sunwell-rep idea is serving as a testbed for a new model of raid attunements in WLK. I do like the idea that the raid instances are getting more integrated into the world as a whole (the previous extent was zone-buffs), but I'm not sure the current plans are going to work out okay from the raiders' perspective. I wouldn't be surprised to see this go through radical changes in 0.4.0 (PTR) through 2.4.3-5, so they have a working model ready for WLK. I do think the best idea would be that the 5-man instances gets unlocked via dailies and the raid instance gets unlock via raiding, but that's the sort of barrier that the designers seem intent on breaking or at least weakening.

http://sig.gamerdna.com/quizzes/INFL...erks/Garak.png

 

Malan

Yah the original intent of Grobbulus was something totally different, as I recall it got dumbed down incredibly because it was too hard to debug or something, otherwise it would not have been a loot pinata for killing Patchwerk.

Shitting up every single thread on EJ since '06