Just out of curiousity, what does it really matter that the upper teir of guilds that have been running these bosses on the PTR are cutting through them with ease?? Even guilds who didn't bum-rush the PTR but who have the gear can easily just read up on the strats. This game isn't rocket science... it's a time sink.
I think that Blizzard is doing a good job of making sure they are going to retain the most customers and therefore make the most money... that is their business.
Bleeding edge people will always whine that events aren't "challenging" enough, yet they don't want something random, or gimmicky, or that costs too much in potions/consumables/buff's.. etc. The reality is that anything in PvE is going to be scripted... that's how a computer works. As a result, there will always be a winning strategy that merely takes time to learn. The only way to prevent this is some bizzare random event or series of events that may or may not prove impossible. This has happened in the past and people whined and complained about "it's not fair when the boss does move X and Y one after the other".
The flip side, casual people will complain that there is content they will never see despite only being willing to put in 10% of the time as a hardcore player. Blizzard is addressing this with a stream of nerfs to old content which is probably the best approach. Most people in this group will never see BT, let alone SW.
I quite enjoy the level of difficulty and Blizzards williness to accept that there are many different levels of players in their world. My only hope is that we will see fewer "cop-out" mechanics such as the Sunwell Blessing. It's one thing to buff one or two mobs in such a way... but through a whole instance it just plain lazy.
Just out of curiousity, what does it really matter that the upper teir of guilds that have been running these bosses on the PTR are cutting through them with ease?? Even guilds who didn't bum-rush the PTR but who have the gear can easily just read up on the strats. This game isn't rocket science... it's a time sink.
This is it. I can't imagine how anybody that put in the effort to seriously raid on the PTR could complain about the first bosses going down too fast. We were by no means especially hardcore about the PTR (only killed one boss), but we did some raiding and as a result we went into this week knowing the following things:
-Exactly how to kill Kalecgos
-All the mechanics, relative damage levels and positioning for Brutallus and Felmyst
As a result, there were almost no attempts on the live realms spent testing things out, or studying the limits of various mechanics or any of the things you'd typically do when you've never seen a boss before. We were able to immediately start polishing and refining our execution of strategies we already understood, rather than starting from scratch. How could it possibly come as a shock, then, that these bosses die in relatively short order? Half the reason anyone goes on the PTR to raid in the first place is a competitive advantage once the zone comes out.
That said, given the extremely supervised/limited testing on the Eredar Twins and M'uru, I'm very interested to see their final incarnations. PTR crashes meant we didn't really get our teeth into the Twins and I'd be hard-pressed to explain a single mechanic from that fight. We got more actual time on M'uru, but unless I'm mistaken nobody outside of the Blizzard dev team knows much of anything about his second phase and we certainly didn't have enough time to refine a strategy for his first phase. And of course, nobody's seen Kil'jaeden. The next gate-opening period should be very interesting and competitive.
On what IKT said, Sunwell is tuned well, that doesn't mean that it's not a bit of a joke in terms of developing strategies. We spent almost no time on the PTR, and while it's cost us some time, and leaves us working on Felmyst, a lot of it was the fact we didn't get some people practicing the execution, the strategies are all pretty simple. Kalecgos I liked, but even that was a lot simpler than I had initially thought looking at the fight.
If all of the bosses are as straight forward as Kalecgos/Brutallus/Felmyst, then Nihilum will be right, the zone will be kind of sad. I'm all for execution fights, but with a lack of a fight that takes real time to figure out a strategy, we're looking at the same stuff as all of TBC, which is something I could see complaining about. I personally say at least we've got fun tuned fights that are well designed, but for some people (myself included) the lack of a fight that really makes you go "wow, what do we have to do here" is very disappointing, and that could be where Nihilum is coming from.
However, Ghando's right, the later bosses haven't been tested that much, there's still a chance. Twins I know I saw the kill video on PTR, I saw posts from Premonition I think talking about how it still looks like it's giving brute force too much power, but if it's been tweaked, we could have something great, Mu'ru I don't think anyone really knows stage 2, and Kil'jaeden is unseen. If two of these bosses are a lot of strategy, and lets say Kil'jaeden is on a level that even the top guilds take some time to figure out what they're supposed to do, Blizzard's hit the mark. If not, at least they tuned it right.
One possible issue with this is that there may be guilds that have been farming Illidan for many months, yet will have gear issues due to filling the void of quitters. For those guilds, the Sunwell progression might be highly annoying. How much remains to be seen.
I've seen this stated anecdotally in many places, and have seen this in my guild as well (heck, I'm guilty, as I've now gone casual "for good"). Is there any proof/evidence that it's worse than it has been compared to other times?
Unrelated - Thanks to your guild for the MC speed clear video from way-back-when - it is one of my favorites.
To those complaining about profession/pot needs for this fight, are you serious? Many guilds, including my own had minimal haste drums (I forgot to use mine the last 4 mins, so 2 drums of the kill only going over enrage by seconds). As for the demonslaying, forgot to use that as well, we were still "learning" him, having not had time on the PTR so I hadnt started popping 2 demonslayings per kill like some may have.
That said, we are a t6 guild that has cleared BT/Hyjal for over 6 months, filling almost all slots with best-in items. We only had 1 OH glaive in the raid for the kill and I'm fairly certain no one went over the top with buffs/elixir/food/pots any more so than on attempting kalecgos or illidan for that matter.
It's not about min/maxing the extreme unless you just started farming illidan, and then, why shouldn't it be about min/maxing to the extreme, you JUST got to a point that many guilds had been at for months and yet you should be able to kill a boss just as easily?
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I really enjoyed this fight, it pushed me. Not in a long time have I been pushed to watch cd's, pots, timers, groups and burn (lol@cloak) and still only eek out the kill. We, as a guild, also noticed that BT shortly after was one of our best clears ever, probably mainly from the high of killing a new boss, but also from the need for perfection that Brutallus takes transferring onto BT.
As for how well it is tuned, I'd say maybe a nudge to the Over, but not enough to matter. They wanted this to be hard, even for full t6 guilds, and it was for most. I doubt a single guild that has killed him, in all honesty, would say he was an easy fight until after they killed him (but hey, who isnt an easy fight after killing the first time). I think a fight should be hard, it should require you to push yourself, otherwise, why have it in? If we want free loot, go farm karazhan on your over-geared mains, pick up badges and go to your local vendor to pick up free loots. A boss, especially in the last instance before the Xpac (aka the last time anyone will be 70 facing these as progression) should be difficult, he should test you, he should make ppl in less than amazing gear go "holy crap, we just can't kill him, no matter what", cause if not, why are we raiding?
To those complaining about profession/pot needs for this fight, are you serious? Many guilds, including my own had minimal haste drums (I forgot to use mine the last 4 mins, so 2 drums of the kill only going over enrage by seconds). As for the demonslaying, forgot to use that as well, we were still "learning" him, having not had time on the PTR so I hadnt started popping 2 demonslayings per kill like some may have.
That said, we are a t6 guild that has cleared BT/Hyjal for over 6 months, filling almost all slots with best-in items. We only had 1 OH glaive in the raid for the kill and I'm fairly certain no one went over the top with buffs/elixir/food/pots any more so than on attempting kalecgos or illidan for that matter.
It's not about min/maxing the extreme unless you just started farming illidan, and then, why shouldn't it be about min/maxing to the extreme, you JUST got to a point that many guilds had been at for months and yet you should be able to kill a boss just as easily?
Most guilds are killing him after the berserk by a few seconds. We killed Illidan in the first week of August, and it was a kill 15 seconds after the berserk with 7 healers. Obviously it's doable without drums, but their very existence makes the fight easier if you have them. The fact that when we were close we had a rogue go and drop herbalism for leatherworking specifically for drums speaks to what people are talking about. Not that Brutallus requires drums, but every time there's a new consumable added there's a risk of tilting towards requiring professions because as was seen, if you tune around having something, it's impossible/much harder without that thing, if you tune without it, it becomes too easy with them.
It's not necessarily an issue yet, but there's a chance for it to become an issue, and I think that's what people are saying. Right now I like how it's tuned, it was hard, but it's good to look at it from both perspectives I think.
My reply turned out longer then I expected but I just strongly disagree with many things you've said here.
Originally Posted by Zaroua
While I'm fairly certain we'll be able to kill him soon (in a reset or two, at worst), I do feel a great deal of pity for guilds having just killed Illidan. No matter what, they won't be able to kill Brutallus for months. Can't see those guilds having a blast farming BT while Brutallus taunts them every day during their bombing dailies. The brick wall will get very old, very fast for guilds who have the people and skill to down him, but not the gear to meet the check. And saying that the new badge loot will help bring those guilds up to bar is short-sighted because most of the new gear is inferior to actual drops from BT, or barely sidegrade material due to poor itemization that plagues the new gear. Same with 3 tokens per kill: the sought out pieces of loot are the non set pieces (Gorefiend cloak, I'm looking at you). With no way to get the required DPS for Brutallus until they can get the rarer drops out of BT and Hyjal, I'd have to say that the fight isn't tuned for anyone except the top guilds. If you're the best out there, then you can have access to the other bosses in the zone. Otherwise have fun losing members to the "unkillable" gear check and not being able to progress as a guild.
Is it really a bad thing for a guild to hit a gear check they are not ready for, then over the coming weeks and months watch as that gear check slowly becomes beatable, watching Brutallus go from 15%, 10%, 5% to a kill? That is one of the feelings that has been lacking in TBC raiding. It will be extremely nice to hit an encounter that our raid isn't already completely out gearing. There wasn't a fight in Hyjal or BT that our guild attempted for the first time that we didn’t already completely outgear. Even the top 50 guilds who were in BT the first couple weeks in Kara/T5 already met the DPS, Health, Tanking, and Healing requirements by a large margin for nearly ever single fight.
If a guild doesn't have enough DPS and/or can't drop to 7 healers then that tells me that Black Temple and to a lesser extent Mount Hyjal is not "old" and "boring" content for them and that is where their focus should remain. Our guild has 8 Illidan kills, 1 War Glaive, and we probably aren't there on the DPS requirements for Brutallus. But guess what, the 2nd half of Black Temple still has a ton of upgrades for our senior raiders and we still find it fun for the most part, and the first 5 bosses can be cleared by members with lower attendance and the rare drops can be picked up by the senior raiders while at the same time giving them at least a partial night off.
A guild just killing Illidan can not claim that BT is “old” and “boring” content and I’m sure Archimonde still drops several major upgrades. What is the rush to burn though Sunwell when these guilds haven’t even fully experienced Black Temple? Seriously why does the 2067th (number made up) worldwide guild to kill Illidan need to rush through Sunwell? Why should they expect to kill Brutallus immediately when they don’t even have Illidan on true farm status (aka several clean kills/1 shots)? Why is this guild even participating in serious raiding if they are tired of killing Illidan after the first few kills (AKA farm Kara in T6 if you want an easy clear)? Would all of their raiding team even have the BT neck by that point (meaning some people haven’t even seen all of BT yet making it far from “old” and “boring”)?
This raid content needs to last the majority of the T6 raiders close to the release of the expansion, which from most estimates is at least 6 months, and more likely 9 or even 12 months away. The last thing this game needs is for the top 2000 guilds (pre 2.4 illidan killing guilds) in US and EU to go 2/6 Sunwell within a month of sunwell being released, which is what could easily happen if the bar for Brutallus was set lower.
If ‘Jimmys’ 2067th world ranked Illidan killing guild needs to farm BT, Kalecgos, and Sunwell Trash for 6-12 weeks before having a legitimate shot at Brutallus then so be it. There will still be plenty of time left to clear Sunwell before the expansion, and if this guild truly did have the skill but not the gear to beat Brutallus in the first place then the rest of the instance (now that they are properly geared) should be no problem for them and would be cleared quickly in relation.
Guilds that push hard for the maximum levels of gear/strategy/organization/planning deserve to beat and farm content far in advance of those that don't or can't. Period.
If you're just starting to work on Illidan, you don't need to worry about progressing into Sunwell yet. If your guild doesn't bring at least a workable composition, or have players that are willing to put time into their specs/gear configs/professions (aka drums), the cost of that apathy or inability is having to wait until either content is nerfed or you have caught up in terms of the above.
In a weird way arguments like the ones in this thread really reflect some of the pitfalls of the immediacy of the world we live in now. Given the means, everything is at your fingertips and available nearly instantly and so the resolve to work for something has fallen away dramatically.
Having killed Brutallus last night, I can say that it's gloriously tuned, a perfect benchmark for gear. It'd be a shame for this fight to get nerfed as it is an almost "perfect" numbers fight. That being said, last night we had some people comment that the "Sunwell Radiance" buff is removed when the Third Gate is remove (the Third Gate or the Third Island Phase, not sure). Is there any conformation for this?
If ‘Jimmys’ 2067th world ranked Illidan killing guild needs to farm BT, Kalecgos, and Sunwell Trash for 6-12 weeks before having a legitimate shot at Brutallus then so be it. There will still be plenty of time left to clear Sunwell before the expansion, and if this guild truly did have the skill but not the gear to beat Brutallus in the first place then the rest of the instance (now that they are properly geared) should be no problem for them and would be cleared quickly in relation.
It's going to be a much higher ranking then 2000 that has trouble with the Brutallus gear check. Guilds that killed him in the fall/early winter may have trouble based on turnover, composition, and loot luck. But historically these types of brick wall bosses have been seen as something of a guild killer and a cause of burnout. Being told to go back and farm Illidan for 2-3 more months isn't going to inspire people to want to keep raiding, especially if they've already been doing that for two months. In a world where Sunwell came out closer to BT, the top couple hundred guilds would be pretty much done with the place by the time the next batch of guilds killed Illidan and nerfs could happen differently, but I don't see Blizzard telling people "sorry, you can't kill Brutallus for three more months" and retaining players that way.
One of the things I liked about BC raiding was the removal of enforced gear farming. I know my pre-BC guild didn't ever kill Patchwerk because we needed to farm the earlier bosses for tank gear, tokens for which rarely dropped, and by the time we had even a shot at it we got 2 nights, 2.0 came out, and interest just died. So we never killed him. I'm sorry to see Blizzard go back to that model for a boss. I know myself I have been farming Illidan for half of a year, and I don't see myself maintaining interest in the game if some various factors prevent a Brutallus kill. (where are you warglaives and amazing DPS loot...)
Not being a cutting edge raider, I have a question:
Other than Four Horseman, what other bosses were both considered well-tuned and took over a week to defeat (ie more than a week from the last boss death)?
If a guild doesn't have enough DPS and/or can't drop to 7 healers then that tells me that Black Temple and to a lesser extent Mount Hyjal is not "old" and "boring" content for them and that is where their focus should remain. ... A guild just killing Illidan can not claim that BT is “old” and “boring” content and I’m sure Archimonde still drops several major upgrades.
Well, personally, I would object to that. Hyjal and BT are fairly boring instances, and any guild that has been there for months already--even if it hasn't resulted in a gob of Illidan kills yet--is probably tired of it. Clearing out all of the T6 end bosses does take some time, and although the first 6-7 bosses are a joke it takes some work and a fair bit of resets to get the rest down. We're looking at having our first Illidan kill next week, but we've been killing Archimonde for 6-7 weeks now and have cleared the majority of Hyjal/BT bosses quite a few times. Additionally we disenchant a huge percentage of T6 loot drops, which makes it even more dull.
People are bored of Hyjal and BT because they are pretty boring instances. Most of the farming guilds didn't like farming BT for so long, which is why they called for new content.
What I find ironic is that many of the BT farming guilds complained that the content was boring them to tears and that Blizz made a huge mistake leaving them to have to farm it so long. The same guilds seem to find it OK to force the next wave of guilds to farm for nearly as long (although the token change helps, it still doesn't solve many of the rare off-set items or bad lootluck) to get to these tightly tuned fights.
So, while I'm not surprised at the tuning in the slightest, if forcing guilds to farm T6 for ages wasn't right the first time it's not right the 2nd time. We'll continue farming Hyjal/BT getting prepared, but it's not really fun and it's a bit on the disappointing side.
If I ever get to an encounter and say to myself, "I played nearly perfect in that fight, but lost because my gear is not perfect" I will be very frustrated. The guilds killing Brutallus now are the top-notch guilds that have to deal with minimal turnover and already have fantastic gear from previous success in BT. In a month or two, when the next tier of guilds begin pulling the boss, many of them could quickly figure him out and start executing well but fall short due to gear. Is this really fun encounter design? Personally I would prefer if gear was never a limiting factor on a boss assuming near perfect play from a raid. Gear should be a reward that can make content easier, not a factor that prevents you from doing a boss entirely. Now I haven't been in sunwell other than 1 trash clear to Kalecgos, so correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't gear be a significant problem for a guild that killed Illidan in the last month? Put your guild in their gear for a second, and imagine how frustrating it would be to not be able to kill him.
This is purely a hypothetical situation, as I know that my guild currently is not prepared for sunwell level content. It just seemed to me that the majority of opinions posted so far came from tip top tier raiders who have seen the content already, and I wanted to try to provide a bit of perspective from a less established guild. I think we can all agree that content farming is fairly dull, and for us slower paced guilds we'd really rather push new bosses as soon as possible rather than have to farm old stuff for half a year.
I'm fairly certain he will be nerfed before a guild killing Illidan today is required to farm for 6 more months. Whether he is changed before large-scale frustration, burnout, and begging Blizzard to reconsider on the official forums occurs remains to be seen.
Not being a cutting edge raider, I have a question:
Other than Four Horseman, what other bosses were both considered well-tuned and took over a week to defeat (ie more than a week from the last boss death)?
Nefarion and Ragnaros. The first one had a 30 minute respawn timer between wipes though and the second was only up for 2 hours a week, so it is not suprising really.
Disclaimer: I based this on my not so perfect memory and some 3 year old comments on thottbot, I could be wrong
If nothing else, I'd like to see them remove the -dodge/+hit buffs on the bosses before each gate when the gate opens. Will allow 'up and coming' guilds to see/beat the content without totally locking them with Naxx style ridiculousness. Hell, even Naxx at least allowed you to gear up in the instance. SWP isn't allowing any of those shenanigans.
It will be nerfed, eventually, regardless. As it should be. Tune it high to give the more dedicated guilds a challenge of some sorts, and then slowly nerf to allow the masses to enjoy it. Because if Johnny casual stops paying for the game, we all suffer anyways.
...The fact that when we were close we had a rogue go and drop herbalism for leatherworking specifically for drums speaks to what people are talking about. Not that Brutallus requires drums...
I wonder if the fact that Best-in-slot chestpiece is also LW only. Maybe just a little bit? : P
Originally Posted by Jayde
Well, personally, I would object to that. Hyjal and BT are fairly boring instances, and any guild that has been there for months already--even if it hasn't resulted in a gob of Illidan kills yet--is probably tired of it. Clearing out all of the T6 end bosses does take some time, and although the first 6-7 bosses are a joke it takes some work and a fair bit of resets to get the rest down. We're looking at having our first Illidan kill next week, but we've been killing Archimonde for 6-7 weeks now and have cleared the majority of Hyjal/BT bosses quite a few times. Additionally we disenchant a huge percentage of T6 loot drops, which makes it even more dull.
People are bored of Hyjal and BT because they are pretty boring instances. Most of the farming guilds didn't like farming BT for so long, which is why they called for new content.
What I find ironic is that many of the BT farming guilds complained that the content was boring them to tears and that Blizz made a huge mistake leaving them to have to farm it so long. The same guilds seem to find it OK to force the next wave of guilds to farm for nearly as long (although the token change helps, it still doesn't solve many of the rare off-set items or bad lootluck) to get to these tightly tuned fights.
So, while I'm not surprised at the tuning in the slightest, if forcing guilds to farm T6 for ages wasn't right the first time it's not right the 2nd time. We'll continue farming Hyjal/BT getting prepared, but it's not really fun and it's a bit on the disappointing side.
I'd have to disagree, I actually enjoy raiding BT and Hyjal, even now. Although we've been killing Illidan for 8 months, I still find myself enjoying clearing them.
I also disagree that you need to farm Illidan just to kill Brutallus, while additional gear helps quite a bit, it's doable with a bit "undergeared" members if you stack enough.
Shamans are a premium I guess. As are warglaives.
It's not nice to "force" people farm T6 to prep for Sunwell, but I don't think the last instance in TBC should be a cakewalk in the park either.
Still I really enjoyed Brutallus and I hope they keep him that way.
Fans glory to the Gladiators,
Gods glory to the Heroes.
I think the fights in Sunwell are nice, actually hearing people cheer on vent when everything comes together and the boss dies. I remember so well that in BT/Hyjal hardly any boss got a cheer, it was almost like farming them already (doing the first three bosses in one night is bad).
Someone said they wouldn't like it if a boss was impossible to beat just cause of gear, well imagine now that you farmed T6 for all these months and you would enter a new instance and just /giggle at a boss and they die cause blizzard tuned the boss for T5.. now that would be messed up, not you guys having to farm a bit longer to kill a boss in a new instance
Also seems some people here forgot what changed with this patch and what's still coming. The guilds that just killed Illidan will be farming hyjal/BT with more t6 tokens dropping than the 'old school' guilds had. At the same time blizzard increased the rep gain in hyjal for the ring (sure just a ring but it adds up). Now to complete it the bosses drop shiny badges, if I'm not mistaken the new badge vendor starts selling stuff in about a month on most servers so you can get loot that even some of these hardcore raiders will use.
Getting your guild in shape for Brut doesn't seem that bad.
I think the fights in Sunwell are nice, actually hearing people cheer on vent when everything comes together and the boss dies. I remember so well that in BT/Hyjal hardly any boss got a cheer, it was almost like farming them already (doing the first three bosses in one night is bad).
This was the case for us as well, even if we're not quite as far along now. Every boss in T6 save Illidan/Archimonde died within the first night, with the only difficult boss being Bloodboil. Most of the others were 1-3 attempts. T6 has never been exciting for most of the people in my guild and Archimonde was the only thing that has brought any major cheers. Given that Illidan is pretty straightforward all-around, I'm not even suspecting an overly big cheer there unless some legendaries drop. I honestly haven't heard the guild as close to excited about a kill since our pre-nerf Kael kill, which is a bit sad... but c'est la vie.
While some may find T6 fun, almost everyone I know dislikes it and finds it resonably boring and unchallenging. Many people in our guild really, really wanted something new with Sunwell and it pains me to have to tell them, "nope, maybe in a few months" even though we're a pretty solid guild that learns technical encounters pretty quickly and has good raid discipline. The problem with gear checks isn't execution, it's gear--which we don't have.
On one hand I applaude Blizzard for making such a tightly tuned fight to challenge the first wave, but I fear that the boredom or restlessness will have dire consequences--especially when, unlike the previous T6 farming boredom phase, people could possibly transfer away to guilds that are killing Sunwell bosses.
Other than Four Horseman, what other bosses were both considered well-tuned and took over a week to defeat (ie more than a week from the last boss death)?
After MC/Onyxia, Nefarion and 4HM are the only two bosses that have taken the top guilds any meaningful amount of time to learn. Everything pre-Nef in BWL died the week the patch came out (although the middle stuff was subsequently buffed significantly). Twin Emps died the week the gates opened on many servers, with C'Thun, Ouro and (to a lesser extent) Viscidus broken. Naxx took a while to clear, but only because of the ridiculously large number of bosses. Two days per boss and raiding 6 days/week would still leave you at close to a month before you even hit 4HM. Sapp generally died on the same reset as 4HM, and K'T didn't take much longer. Early TBC is a bit hard to qualify, as early raiding overlapped heavily with the gearing up period at 70 -- it took us a few weeks to kill Gruul, but our early attempts were with 25 people that had hit 70 1-2 weeks earlier (and some <70 shaman for the very first attempts). Everything other than Vashj in SSC fell down pretty quickly, and Vashj 1.0 was never killed "legitamitely" (the fight was so buggy that all of the kills involved it breaking in some way). TK went pretty similarly to SSC.
It's very difficult to make a fight that's actually hard for a raid full of skilled players. There simply isn't a big enough gap between what the top raids actually do execution-wise and the theoretical upper cap. The only way to make a fight take a long time to learn is to make it difficult to figure out what to do by doing something radically different (Nef) or by making the required strategy incredibly convoluted and complicated (4HM). Obviously, neither of these can be done on a consistant basis. If they just used the same rotation idea from 4HM, it'd take us a matter of days to beat rather than weeks, simply because now we know how to approach that sort of problem.
After MC/Onyxia, Nefarion and 4HM are the only two bosses that have taken the top guilds any meaningful amount of time to learn. Everything pre-Nef in BWL died the week the patch came out (although the middle stuff was subsequently buffed significantly). Twin Emps died the week the gates opened on many servers, with C'Thun, Ouro and (to a lesser extent) Viscidus broken. Naxx took a while to clear, but only because of the ridiculously large number of bosses. Two days per boss and raiding 6 days/week would still leave you at close to a month before you even hit 4HM. Sapp generally died on the same reset as 4HM, and K'T didn't take much longer. Early TBC is a bit hard to qualify, as early raiding overlapped heavily with the gearing up period at 70 -- it took us a few weeks to kill Gruul, but our early attempts were with 25 people that had hit 70 1-2 weeks earlier (and some <70 shaman for the very first attempts). Everything other than Vashj in SSC fell down pretty quickly, and Vashj 1.0 was never killed "legitamitely" (the fight was so buggy that all of the kills involved it breaking in some way). TK went pretty similarly to SSC.
It's very difficult to make a fight that's actually hard for a raid full of skilled players. There simply isn't a big enough gap between what the top raids actually do execution-wise and the theoretical upper cap. The only way to make a fight take a long time to learn is to make it difficult to figure out what to do by doing something radically different (Nef) or by making the required strategy incredibly convoluted and complicated (4HM). Obviously, neither of these can be done on a consistant basis. If they just used the same rotation idea from 4HM, it'd take us a matter of days to beat rather than weeks, simply because now we know how to approach that sort of problem.
Chess has currently what I say is an interesting bug, that if someone's piece dies or dismisses their piece they get teleported back to the Curator room. Unfortunately Chess is still a joke in that you can solo it. But I would like to a fight or two like Chess where gear doesn't matter and it can test your wits.
Chess has currently what I say is an interesting bug, that if someone's piece dies or dismisses their piece they get teleported back to the Curator room. Unfortunately Chess is still a joke in that you can solo it. But I would like to a fight or two like Chess where gear doesn't matter and it can test your wits.
There is a game like this allready, it's called chess.
Personally I find Brutallus to be very well tuned after one raiding night of wipes which ended up with two 3% tries. On one of the triest a person DC'd for over two minutes and on the other one of the heroisms were popped when boss was at 5% health.
So for a guild that hasnt farmed BT since ages ago this fight will be really tough as we allready have retri pala, ele shaman, ench shaman, survival hunter and arms war.
It's very difficult to make a fight that's actually hard for a raid full of skilled players. There simply isn't a big enough gap between what the top raids actually do execution-wise and the theoretical upper cap. The only way to make a fight take a long time to learn is to make it difficult to figure out what to do by doing something radically different (Nef) or by making the required strategy incredibly convoluted and complicated (4HM). Obviously, neither of these can be done on a consistant basis. If they just used the same rotation idea from 4HM, it'd take us a matter of days to beat rather than weeks, simply because now we know how to approach that sort of problem.
Actually, there's a gigantic gap between what top raids actually do execution-wise, and what a theoretical cap would be. The difference is that since complexity and fun aren't equivalent, you end up with needlessly complex encounters.
Here's a simple way to make things much more difficult, yet be nowhere near a theoretical cap in terms of difficulty: Force every raid member to solve a randomly-generated differential equation, and the solution to which would deal damage to the boss. Anyone who came up with the wrong answer would die.
Want to make it even more challenging? Now you have a time limit of 30 seconds. Want to make it more challenging? Make it two differential equations. Three. Four. Fifteen.
The theoretical cap on execution is so far above what is in game right now it's effectively an infinite gap. The thing is, the designers *want* people to beat these encounters, and they want the encounters to be reasonably simple once the strategy has been figured out. You could have one shaman do Chain Lightning, which allows five seconds for a rogue to gouge, which allows a paladin to judge Righteousness, which opens a 3 second window for a druid to moonfire, which allows a warrior to whirlwind, etc. etc. in a long string to get something done. However, complexity like that tends to be too much execution for a given raid, and not fun. For any sort of encounter to be consistently repeatable by a large group, it needs a fairly simple set of actions that are done over and over in a short amount of time. You can increase the set of actions, and you can change the time interval, but then things become less and less consistently repeatable.
03/31/08, 2:14 PM
