Hipnotyk

I completely agree with you 100% here. Without any messing around on the PTR, our guild made constant progress through the first four encounters, and so far M'uru has felt like running into a brick wall. Illidan's infamous "You are not prepared!" catchphrase is a little out of place, clearly it should be on a billboard visible from the walkway leading up to M'uru.

Right now we're just working to control Phase 1, and it's without a doubt a three-ring circus.

 

ninielin

my apologies for going offtopic a bit but....

Sunwell as a whole is in my opinion extremely badly tuned. You'r average guild can't really easily stack its raid the way it need to be for sunwell, only talking about first kill here but :

Kalec ( 8/10)
Brutallus (6/8)
felmyst ( 8/9)
Twins ( 10+)
Muru ( 5 +)


See the problem? not even considering things like shaman or priest stacking here....

So muru might be finely tuned but the fight before him requires 10 + heals....

 

PallePaladin

Take 4 healers from Twins, make two go shadow, 1 pally go prot, and a druid go feral and you've transitioned to a M'uru raid setup! Probably not while learning, but with a few respecs you can probably use the same 25 man setup for the entire instance. Of course that requires a large portion of the raid to have at least two complete T6 sets which comes back to the 12 months of farming BT/Hyjal issue.

 

Hipnotyk

Right you are, and no one enjoys being left out of a certain fight week in and week out, or having to rotate or respec just for one encounter to justify their spot in raid. Throughout T5 and Pre-SW T6 content, you could start with the same 25 people, and end with the same 25 people on a given night. The same really can't be said for SWP, unless you prefer to throw yourself at an encounter with a horribly unoptimized setup. From Kalec to Brut alone, it's a matter of "Healer A and B sit for DPS C and D, Tank E go respec or we'll sit you for DPS F."

 

PallePaladin

I remember switching out people in BT initially as well though. A few more healers for BB, a few more dps for RoS, and then inviting a mage back for Council. Sunwell will be the same thing in a few weeks/months. The entire instance should be possible with 7 healers.

 

Buiden

Which isn't much fun at all. The 10+ healers on twins is kind of meh though, we do it with 8 pretty easily. With sub 4 minute kills it is over so quickly it is difficult for anything to go wrong. Still, you can justify 10 healers (or first kill was 11) and M'uru we do with 5, it is a big swing. Unless your healers are experienced DPSers also, having them respec to do M'uru is a silly notion as it is a very demanding fight for DPS.

I think M'uru is a wonderful fight and I'll be sad if it gets nerfed, but the stacking is really getting to me. Our prot pally doesn't show up, I guess we can't do M'uru. No enhancement shaman... I guess we can't do M'uru tonight. Hmm only 2 shaman online, wipe constantly to low Entropius or take the night off. Only 3 tanks online and 2 hunters... fuck better take the night off. You can manage, it is just an uphill battle at that point and not much fun.

M'uru with a perfectly constructed raid group is beautiful. M'uru with a sub-optimal raid group makes me want to strangle someone.

 

Ramayana

Isn't that the way the hrdest encounters in the game should be though? If they were designed around sub-optimal raid groups, then people would trivialize the encounter by bringing stacked groups. It would be like if they balanced Brut around all physical DPS using flasks, when Blizzard knows damn well that they will all pound demonslaying elixirs and dominate the encounter. Blizzard balances encounters for the most part so that there is no way you can stack a group and just be like LOL I WIN. That's exactly how M'uru is balanced, and it's exactly how he should be balanced.

 

Teez

I couldn't agree more. We're still progressing on him, but the problem is the same: 25-50% of our progression nights on M'uru are either marginally useless or just straight up don't happen, due to RL-connected absences. Fortunately, attrition hasn't become a major issue yet (and that's a big, big 'yet', I fear.)

That being said, I can't really see a way of making the fight more forgiving to allow for slightly more slack raid setups without inherently nerfing it to the point where it just isn't fun anymore. The tuning is so tight, yet so on-point right now it's amazing - changing anything would mean you could cheese it by stacking DPS or by stacking healers, I'm afraid.

Warrior - Shaman - Priest

 

Buiden

No I don't think an encounter's difficulty should be rested upon having a perfect group. In the same note how can you justify balancing an encounter so that if you don't have the right group it is "LOL I LOSE" instead. It isn't fun it is annoying and frustrating.

 

Ramayana

There is no all around "perfect group", the "perfect group" is fully dependant on your guild. That has been shown by the many different ways he has been killed. There has been everything from 10 melee groups to 0 melee groups, 1 hunter groups to 4-5 hunter groups. You can use 3-4 tanks, 5-7 healers. Personally my guild uses 4 tanks (2 feral), 6 healers (2 druids), 9 melee, 1 hunter. Then you see Drow's kill, 0 melee, mass locks/mages, 3 Prot Pallies and a Warrior tank. SKs video uses at least 3 hunters and 0 druids. So no there is no set in stone group that is needed to kill him, those examples of totally different styles of play all resulting in a kill are my justification that he is tuned absolutely perfect.

 

Hipnotyk

I read this and it sounds like our guilds are in fairly identical scenarios. It would probably be safe to assume that hundreds of other guilds who have downed Twins but are facing this brick wall are having the same obstacles.

I've yet to see Phase 2, so my experience on the fight isn't extensive, but from a "balancing act" standpoint, if there was one way to tune the fight to not make it so taxing yet without altering the execution, it would probably be taking a small bit of health away from the Shadowsword adds. People who call Brutallus the "gear check fight" are making a huge overexaggeration, because M'uru requires a perfectly optimized raid with everyone sporting best-in-slot everything, no exceptions, and we've been able to pull Brutallus kills with undergeared alts/offspecs in the raid.

I do also agree with you Ramayana in that the encounter is balanced, but it is not balanced in comparison to the previous fights. For example, guilds who just got around to killing Illidan early this year probably don't have the option of bringing in a full sideboard of alts geared out like mains. On a gear standpoint alone, killing Brutallus means you can kill Twins, but you still have a snowball's chance in hell at taking down M'uru.

 

Ramayana

Refer to my earlier post, and you'll see what I said about that.

 

Buiden

Checklist:

Can you kill him without a prot paladin?
Can you kill him without 4 shaman easily? (less strict I know it can be done, but the Phase 2 difficulty is amplified greatly)
Can you kill him without 4 tanks, or 3 tanks and 3 hunters?


If your guild has trouble consistently with any of the above 3 items you will probably never kill M'uru. What I am saying is that for a fight to be "perfectly" balanced it should be no more doable with a perfectly composed group to one slightly less perfect. Key roles in the fight should be able to be fulfilled by several classes, etc.

If M'uru was to be a perfectly tuned fights it would need to have entropius balanced around not having heroism (make it unusable p2 or something), have another class able to tank the AoE adds so you aren't pigeonholed into a prot pally, and make another class able to transfer threat to a tank from accross the room so that you don't need 3 hunters if you only have 3 tanks.

Like I said above I'd be really dissapointed if they nerfed it, but the fight is far from perfectly tuned. It is extremely well tuned, but definitely not perfect.

 

Trouble

The prot pallies job is dead easy, it requires no skill. All that's left is gearing up a prot pally which can be done in 1-2 weeks of pushing gear from Tier 6 and Sunwell to them (assuming you haven't already done this during farm time). This counts towards one of your four tanks. You can gear up every single one of your paladins to be a prot paladin if you so choose since the job itself requires zero skill to execute. If you don't have some combo of ferals and prot warriors to get the three other tanks then I don't know what to tell you. If you've gotten this far without 4+ shamans then I don't know what to tell you.

I don't see how those restrictions are so crazy. You need a prot paladin to kill Felmyst. You need three tanks to kill Kalecgos (well maybe not, we did it with two a couple times but most don't). Most guild have had 4+ shaman in raids going back over a year now.

If you have trouble with the above three items then I don't know how you managed to get TO M'uru.

 

Hand

The gear requirement for the prot paladin slot is next to nothing. A paladin in full holy gear could probably spec prot and tank the voids just fine. So the first part of the checklist isn't really much of a requirement.

The 4 shamans part I can't really comment on, we have killed him comfortably with 3, but we also have 6 glaives, meaning we've never really had any difficulty with phase2.

Your guild really doesn't need 4 tanks, because one of them can be a holy paladin. So you really need 3 tanks, and is there really a guild out there that doesn't have three tanks? I thought this was pretty standard. How do you do kalecgos?

The only problem I have with this fight composition wise is that the _only_ class that can tank the adds is a paladin. Druids and warriors both need their aoe tanking abilities buffed significantly. Obviously paladins should be the kings of aoe tanking, but other classes aoe tanking abilities should not be non existant, like they are right now. (by aoe tank i mean easily be able to pick up and hold 6 mobs or more)

 

Kukulzaa

Have any guilds except for Drow used prot pallies to tank the add sides? It seems like it would be a perfect job for a paladin to tank a side, but it's hard to justify fully gearing a paladin tank. The gear requirements for paladins for felmyst skeletons and void spawns are relatively low (kara/badge gear), so are pieces like Kalecgos legs, a felmyst shield, and the sunwell t6 pieces necessary to even stand a chance?

 

Blacksen

Though we haven't done M'uru yet, I firmly agree with this. Blizzard really needs to get the consistency down. They had it right in Black Temple - we did every single fight with 8 healers. But forcing you to scoop down to 6 and then back to 8, then to 10, then to 6 again is just silly.

I hope they get this right with WotLK. Tanks have similar issues.

 

Ramayana

Like Trouble said above me, if you cannot fulfill those 3 requirements, I have no idea how you are on M'uru. Sounds like you are having recruitment problems, and sorry to break it to you, but that isn't M'uru or Blizzards fault, that is your own. (Actually I'll give it to you that recruitment is more difficult lately, due to more people quitting due to the long grind of farmmode, which was a mistake on Blizzard's part, but I digress) Our 2nd and 3rd kills were both with 3 shaman. The Prot Pally takes next to nothing for damage, some guilds have even killed him using a Holy Pally in holy gear grabbing and holding the adds. And if you can't scrap together 3 other tanks, between Ferals and Prot Warriors, then I don't know what to tell you. The requirements for the fight are no where near as outrageous as you are making them. It its tuned perfectly for the "perfect" raid group, which again changes alot based on your guild. If you cannot find that perfect raid for your guild, that is your own doing, not Blizzards.

How is doing every fight with the same makeup doing it right? That's just boring and uncreative, which is exactly what BT was. Requiring different raid make ups requires players to do different jobs rather then the same mindless tasks over and over. It requires people to maybe spec differently, change up there play style and adapt to the fight. Why is that a bad thing?

 

Aszhalinde

The only thing I absolutely hate is shamans. We've had such amazingly bad luck with shamans, I've come to loathe the general principle of Sunwell because of it. Maybe it's because we're alliance, I don't know, but through a series of hilariously coincidental real life issues and a steady train of shaman recruits that aren't raid-worthy (putting it politely...) we ended up killing twins with: 1 enhance shaman, 1 shaman in tier 4 equivalent gear, and 1 alt resto shaman (played by a warrior). I've never been so disappointed with a progression curve as twins over something we couldn't control, and having to repeat it with M'uru, where we've had to gear up alt shamans in BT, again, leaving characters in shiny Sunwell gear sitting outside, is leaving a bad taste in my mouth.

So, the restrictions aren't crazy, as I know from experience you can get things done with other raid setups, but they sure are irritating as shit and generally unenjoyable. It's a direct result of one class being too powerful.

As for paladins, could you have any of your players hop on a paladin and do the job without instruction? The concept is easy, but it still takes a competent person to do. Gear is kind of a non-factor, we use a holy spec paladin in holy gear for the Void Spawns, and at one point we just had him heal himself through phase 1 while tanking, until we decided we needed extra healing for phase 2 anyway. We're using two alt resto shamans again (along with 1 alt enhance and 1 real enhance).

 

ninielin

You're missing the point I believe. Killing the twins with 10 heal ( I know you once you mastered the fight AND have a raid fully equiped you can probably go down to 8 heal) then going on muru and telling half of those heal to basically wait outside is a problem for me as a raid lead. Same problem as having 10 heal on twins in the first place with most melee waiting outside the instance.

Thats bad tuning for me. Every single encounter is quite fun in itself but having to switch raid setup every single boss has proved to be annoying for your (mine) average guild. You can do every single mob in hyjal with 7 heal, every single mob in bt with 8 EVEN while learning the fights. I urge you to try and go on a first kill on the twins with 8 heals.

Anyway enough thread derailing for me

Ps: I believe 8 heal should be the base for every single boss. There is plenty of raid tuning and synergy to do but having a regular raid pattern ( something like 3 tanks/8heal/dps) would go a long way to help most guild I believe.

 

Blacksen

I'm just saying that Blizzard should make it a "basis" for everything to use 8 healers, +/- 1. Tanks have a similar basis, almost every fight is 2-3 tanks. Jumping to the extremes in Sunwell really ticks quite a few people off...

 

Buiden

PvE server. I fail to see how this is NOT blizzard's fault but I digress as well. I see you are on a PvE server too so I'd hope you can understand.

How did we get to M'uru without 4 shaman? Simple, we struggled. We recruited a third one after doing Kalecgos with 2. We also use 2 tanks on Kaly and it is the better method IMHO, but that is neither here nor there. Felmyst was fine without more than 3 shaman then we hit twins. Twins was fun with 3 let me tell you, but still doable. We have people play other characters now, retired shaman, alts, whatever, for the fight now because even with people not playing their mains it makes the fight easier. That is stupid.

Anyway my point wasn't that the 3 checks I listed were difficult to obtain. My argument is that M'uru is all but impossible if you don't meet those 3 requirements (or have 6 glaives like the above poster!)

So yeah, we can have a holy paly tank adds. We can have a rogue or healer play a hunter or resto shaman friend/alt. We can have a mage play an elemental shaman. We can do musical chairs all night long with characters.

But in the end it isn't fun and I can't believe everyone seems to condone it. Don't pretend like rampant account sharing (or playing an alt) isn't the norm for a lot of guilds in order to beat these kinds of fights. Whenver that happens, to me it is indicative of a fight that certainly isn't "perfectly" tuned. When 1 person missing completely throws off the fight, it isn't "perfectly" tuned.

 

• Falk

This is somewhat subjective, but I'd say that you're both right and wrong at the same time.

It's the game and the classes themselves which aren't perfectly balanced. For example, Shaman (Bloodlust and certain totems in particular). With that in mind, the fight -is- well tuned. The designer(s) did a great job in the uneven playfield that they had to work with. In this non-perfect scenario, they HAVE to decide where to set the bar to present 'enough' of a challenge (subjective) to 'enough' of the people who make it to the encounter.

It's just like world buffs and consumable stacking of old. You'd have to tune stuff to assume people would be stacked out their ass, or it becomes 'too easy' (again, subjective, etc etc) for people who are willing to world buff/pot out their ass.

It's not ideal, but hey, this kind of progression block is somewhat better than the unkillable/bugged shit in the past, isn't it?

The bottom line is, I don't condone musical chair characters either, but that's the breaks and possibly the only way to make content difficult when one class gives so much more synergy than others. WotLK gives Blizzard another shot to make things more balanced than they are at the moment, if that's any consolation.

 

Trouble

I do agree with the general "8 healers +- 1" philosophy though. I think Twins should have been tuned for less spike potential on damage and doable with 8 healers with a much, much, much tighter enrage timer. Right now twins is only a little bit off on the healing tuning because honestly it IS doable with 8 and we did it with 9 months ago. The tuning on M'uru is off in terms of healer ratio as well. If they slightly lowered the dps requirements on the side groups so you could do it with 3 people on each door and upped the damage done by Negative Energy so you needed two more dedicated raid healers then you'd be good to go. The fight wouldn't be any easier though and to be completely honest everyone who's struggling with the fight would most likely still be struggling with it.

I agree with what someone said before though. The tuning on KJ and M'uru is fine. The tuning on the entire expansion preceding these two fights is what's broken.