So it looks like 3.1.2 is going to update the spell tooltips. Source: MMO-C
Of these, I find most interesting that they are actually making Algalon even stronger than before. XT-002's tooltip clarifies a lot, though they did increase the enrage timer.
Can someone give a *rough* idea what kind of a kill time we should be looking at for 10-man flame leviathan with 0 towers, given that every char is dressed in 75-100% naxx10 gear? (the balance being a roughly equal mix of pre-naxx gear and naxx25 gear, plus the handful of ulduar10 epics we've collected)
I ask because we're getting 0-tower kills nice and reproducibly, and this is enough for most of the raiders, but we're taking roughly ~5 Minutes to do so, by which time both bikes are destroyed, and the demolishers are broken or severely bashed around. This... is fine for progressing deeper into Ulduar, but pretty much means we needn't bother with the hard modes, which at least I would like to do, and I'm sure I'll be able to interest some of the others for it if I can convince them that we can do it.
Assuming, as I do, that we're failing at DPS (rather than at something entirely different - EG staying alive), it would be great if someone could also give a rough idea of how much damage should be coming from which source? EG: We've barely used the pyrite attack of the demolishers at all - after personally trying it a little yesterday, it seemed to be a very substantial damage source. Alternatively/additionally, one of our MTs believes we're not getting the oil patches lit consistently and this is a major problem.
Finally, we've been having trouble collecting the pyrite barrels... they seem to disappear almost immediately upon landing on the ground after we shoot them down. Could we be doing something stupid here? (maybe they can be grabbed out of the air? Or we're using the wrong attack to bring them down?)
I saw some posts responding to you, but I don't think they gave you exactly what you need. Our fastest FL kill on 10 man easy mode is 1:31.
The way to do this is to have pro demolishers stacking pyrite. Plain and simple. Think of stacking pyrite as stacking the debuff in Malygos phase 3. Stunning him on easy mode is a complete waste of time.
For further reference, our fastest 25 man kill is 1:46 and that is with some people still having greens!
PS. Forgot to add that our raiders are far from having full 213/226. More of a mesh, kind of like you have.
So I'm not actually actively raiding, but I have a question from what I've seen so far:
According to Wowprogress, 600+ guilds have killed YS-25. Yet it seems as though very very few have completed any of the hardmodes leading up to Algalon. Hard mode Thorim has been completed by 35 guilds, Freya by 4, Thorim by 3, Mimiron by 0... and it looks like several of these got buffed in 3.1.2.
Are guilds just not really working on these, or are they just incredibly hard? Kudos to Blizzard if that's the case, perhaps, although it seems like there's a huge gap between YS difficulty and the difficulty of any of the hard modes at the moment.
it seems like there's a huge gap between YS difficulty and the difficulty of any of the hard modes
This is a very accurate statement at the moment. We came close to getting Y-S down in the first week, and killed him early in the second week. So far our attempts at the XT, Thorim and Freya hard modes this week have demonstrated that we have a long way to go before we get them down, let alone Hodir or Mimiron's hard modes.
So I'm not actually actively raiding, but I have a question from what I've seen so far:
According to Wowprogress, 600+ guilds have killed YS-25. Yet it seems as though very very few have completed any of the hardmodes leading up to Algalon. Hard mode Thorim has been completed by 35 guilds, Freya by 4, Thorim by 3, Mimiron by 0... and it looks like several of these got buffed in 3.1.2.
Are guilds just not really working on these, or are they just incredibly hard? Kudos to Blizzard if that's the case, perhaps, although it seems like there's a huge gap between YS difficulty and the difficulty of any of the hard modes at the moment.
3.1.2 isn't buffing them, it is fixing the tooltips to be accurate. The hard modes were mostly buffed to compensate for the base stats being nerfed.
That said, it's understandable why they make the hard modes exceptionally difficult while tuning the normal Ulduar difficulty. Imagine you were Blizzard, and you're getting data like this each week:
"We had 154,663 Ulduar raid IDs in the North American servers this week, 53% 10-man and 47% 25-man. 122,848 in Europe. Of those, 49% could not defeat Ignis (average # of attempts: 7.6), 34% could not defeat Razorscale (average # of attempts: 8.4). 54.5% could not defeat XT-002. 78.4% could not defeat the Assembly of Iron (average # of attempts: 4.6)... etc.
And so on and so forth (all numbers purely imaginary). The actual tweaking of the hard modes will probably come once they get the relative difficulty for each normal encounter closer to their target, since that's what they have the most data for. In the meantime, they are more than likely saving that data from the hard mode attempts for analysis later. By placing the bar arbitrarily high to the point that it's nearly impossible now, it gives the really core players something to shoot for while they take their time to do their normal analysis. I imagine that once they get the normal Ulduar difficulty more in line with what they want (takes the average guild X attempts to learn encounter Y), then they'll start working on the hard modes.
In a bit of pure speculation, my thought is this: They want hard modes soul-crushingly difficult right now in order to keep Algalon in reserve. As long as Algalon is still alive, there's still a brass ring for people to shoot for, and thus Ulduar isn't "beaten" yet.
We got this one the other week - when we did it, we popped both arms to kill him, and he died the moment the second arm died. Assuming no other bugs interfere, I would guess that your surmise is correct - it should be worded as 'Defeat both of Kologarn's Arms within 12 seconds and then defeat Kologarn before the arms regrow', or 'Defeat both of Kologarn's Arms and Kologarn within 12 seconds'
It's not even that - you have to kill both arms then Kologarn within the same 12 seconds. If more than 12 seconds pass between killing the first arm and him dying then you don't get it (we found this out yesterday when we killed both arms within a couple of seconds and Kologarn about 20s later.
In a bit of pure speculation, my thought is this: They want hard modes soul-crushingly difficult right now in order to keep Algalon in reserve. As long as Algalon is still alive, there's still a brass ring for people to shoot for, and thus Ulduar isn't "beaten" yet.
I surely hope that you are right with the addition of the word "now" and the soulcrushing difficulty is one of a temporary nature. I can understand Blizzard being a bit annoyed by people reaching Algalon in the first reset, but if I look at the DPS requirements of the latest editions of the various hard modes I can safely say my guild will not complete those anywhere near soon, if ever.
That leaves us in an odd situation where we cleared Ulduar (minus Yogg), one-shot everything except Auriaya this week and will likely down Yogg as well, but have no real chance of beating the hardmode encounters by virtue of dps requirements. Basically I would need to replace half my roster to remove the people that should be doing more DPS than they are which is not something I'm willing (or able) to do.
There isn't really any in-between mode. Sure, we'll be doing Hodir with an extra chest, Freya with 1 add, FL with 1/2 towers and Yogg with 3 watchers, but none of these variants provide you with loot that allows gearing for the next step up, making it a hard to sell way of doing encounters. At best, you get the same item level gear quicker. I find it quite discouraging to see the gap is as big as it is.
Hodir doesn't have an extra chest - it's either the 2 minute hard mode chest, or the normal loot. The extra chest was something that never made it test from what I recall.
I do agree that fights like Leviathon / Freya / Yog-Saron in particular need item rewards for completing in the "partial" hard mode settings. Extra runed orbs isn't exactly a great reward for killing Freya with two trees up.
Extra runed orbs isn't exactly a great reward for killing Freya with two trees up.
Not to mention that there is ZERO extra reward (beyond badges, which count even less than runed orbs) for killing her in partial hard mode in 10 man. If they want to promote 10 man as a serious contender to 25 man, which I'm all for, they need to do a better job with the rewards. Right now 10 man raids get less rewards (no relics, no recipes, etc) and can't even buy their tier pieces with badges.
Not to mention that there is ZERO extra reward (beyond badges, which count even less than runed orbs) for killing her in partial hard mode in 10 man. If they want to promote 10 man as a serious contender to 25 man, which I'm all for, they need to do a better job with the rewards. Right now 10 man raids get less rewards (no relics, no recipes, etc) and can't even buy their tier pieces with badges.
I thought all 10-man hard modes awarded conquerer badges rather than vanquisher? If Freya doesn't then it's probably a mistake. Whether that's ample reward on its own is a somewhat different question.
edit: oops, I misread, it seems you already mentioned badges. I would say that getting access to 25-man badge gear as a 10-man guild is a decent reward, especially since doing 'partial hardmode' is more a way of gradually learning the "real" fight than a completely different encounter.
On the topic of Freya we put in a few tries on her last night. I am wondering how various guilds are handling the Three Elemental adds summon? They gave us the most trouble.
At the first mini-boss has anyone else had the boss charge the random player and then melee them as well (before it runs back to the tank), pretty much instant killing them? I would think this is a fluke, however, as I have been the healer in the hallway the last 2 nights, this has happened multiple times.
On the topic of Freya we put in a few tries on her last night. I am wondering how various guilds are handling the Three Elemental adds summon? They gave us the most trouble.
Have ranged dps the water elemental, melee dps the storm lasher, and leave the snap lasher alone with a tank. Once the other two are at about 20%, get everyone onto the snaplasher. Stun it before it one-shots your tank, nuke it down, then bring them together and make sure they all die at the same time.
On the topic of Freya we put in a few tries on her last night. I am wondering how various guilds are handling the Three Elemental adds summon? They gave us the most trouble.
I assume you mean the Snaplasher, Stormlasher and Ancient Water Spirit group?
We just split the DPSers equally on each add. Even with the small DPS variation between classes and maybe one of the three DPS groups being one more guy, they should still die within 12 seconds of eachother without having to think about it.
We have 1 tank pick up the snaplasher and another tank the other two. A third tank just sticks Freya in a lonely corner and gets solo-healed.
We use the melee on the snaplasher; when its damage stacks reach 35 a rogue will kidneyshot it giving the tank some time to run away from it. Since they can be slowed by all regular means some poison or a hamstring will make sure it never reaches your tank afterwards. Just make sure not to immobilize it :-)
The long-range people (mages, hunters) are on the Ancient Water Spirit and we just ignore the charge/surge thing; the damage is pretty trivial and it will run back to the tank anyway. Supposedly if you tank it facing away from the raid it won't do it, but we've seen him just turn around and surge anyway so don't bother with facing.
The stormlasher is pretty harmless and also the easiest to kill, so we put the "leftover" dps on that. This group also has the people that need to deal with the trees. Warriors are pretty good for this because they can intercept to the tree and nuk it, as are any classes with DoT's because they can focus the tree down without losing too much DPS on the stormlasher.
An alternate approach to the three elementals spawn on Freya is that you can have ranged DPS the Snaplasher down to 50% or lower, then burn the other two to 10%-20% while letting the stacks reset, then kill them all. As long as the ranged are doing slow casts, it'll take quite a while for the buff to stack up and you might even want to push for 30-40%.
That said, I think the other approach mentioned is probably the one we're going to emulate in the future, after seeing it play out in the Method video.
Not to mention that there is ZERO extra reward (beyond badges, which count even less than runed orbs) for killing her in partial hard mode in 10 man. If they want to promote 10 man as a serious contender to 25 man, which I'm all for, they need to do a better job with the rewards. Right now 10 man raids get less rewards (no relics, no recipes, etc) and can't even buy their tier pieces with badges.
I don't get the argument here. I'd say going from one Emblem of Valor to two Emblems of Conquest is a pretty significant jump. As are the Runed Orbs when ordinarily none drop from 10man. And if you're a 10-man only raider, that translates directly to t8.5 tokens and BiS crafted belt/boots, obviously.
Looks like Ensidia got hard mode Mimiron and now have access to Algalon. Just a news update.
If Blizzard tuned the hard mode watchers to basically be as hard as 4 M'urus, or something... I wonder how Algalon will be. I mean, it looks like these guilds must be putting in an amount of effort comparable at least to some of the Sunwell bosses.
After killing Flame Leviathan + 3 towers last night in 10 man, we got 3 x emblems of conquest and a runed orb. I'd say that's a pretty damn good incentive to kill him, even if no better loot is awarded.
After killing Flame Leviathan + 3 towers last night in 10 man, we got 3 x emblems of conquest and a runed orb. I'd say that's a pretty damn good incentive to kill him, even if no better loot is awarded.
The incentive for doing partial hardmodes in 10-man is perfect.
The incentive for doing partial hardmodes in 25-man is terrible.
I don't get the argument here. I'd say going from one Emblem of Valor to two Emblems of Conquest is a pretty significant jump. As are the Runed Orbs when ordinarily none drop from 10man. And if you're a 10-man only raider, that translates directly to t8.5 tokens and BiS crafted belt/boots, obviously.
Yes, it upgrades from valor to conqueror tokens, but at a rate so abysmal that it's not even worth mentioning. My 10-man-only guild has gotten a grand total of 4 conqueror badges so far. You need 58 badges to get either set piece from the conquest vendor; if you're only really able to do a couple partial hard modes a week, like us, then the conquest badges are barely worth mentioning as far as gear progression is concerned.
Also, the runed orbs (if they even drop in 10 man -- do they? we've not seen one, though we havn't gotten Freya's partial yet; we killed her normal after wiping on partial a lot the other night because we didn't want to reclear trash) are useless without the patterns, and while the pattern items are BOE, the patterns only drop in 25 man. And the relics are only available through 25 man raids, period.
Either way, the gear progression is MUCH slower than 25 man raids. In 25 man, you get something like 15 or 20 conquest badges from a full easy mode clear, plus at least a couple runed orbs, and a shot at all the relics. In 10 man, you get NONE of that. A far better way to handle all of this would have been to introduce TWO new badges, one for 10 man as well as the 25 man badges. That way they could have given the 10 man raids a viable guaranteed gear progression. Right now, there isn't one.
EDIT: To clarify, I guess my complaint is less about partial hard modes and more about slower pure-10-man gear progression.
Also, the runed orbs (if they even drop in 10 man -- do they?
We got a Runed Orb from Flame Leviathan-10 with two towers up.
As far as the slower progression goes, isn't it the same speed if you're actually wearing all 10-man gear? The only upgrades I tend to see are the ones from Ulduar-10 hard modes that are mostly better itemization compared to my current gear, or the ones from Ulduar-25 and Ulduar-25 hard modes. The only really big upgrades tend to be from hard modes that my guild's not going to be able to tackle for a long, long time, especially if the current trend of buffing them every time somebody manages to beat them continues.
As far as the slower progression goes, isn't it the same speed if you're actually wearing all 10-man gear? The only upgrades I tend to see are the ones from Ulduar-10 hard modes that are mostly better itemization compared to my current gear, or the ones from Ulduar-25 and Ulduar-25 hard modes. The only really big upgrades tend to be from hard modes that my guild's not going to be able to tackle for a long, long time, especially if the current trend of buffing them every time somebody manages to beat them continues.
I'm assuming (perhaps erroneously, but I'm not gonna take the vast amount of time to compare gear for every class and spec...) that there are an equal number of dropped upgrades in the "normal" slots for pure-10 and pure-25 raids. In other words, if you ignore badges, orbs, recipes, and relics, both types of raids will progress their gear at the same pace.
The difference is in the stuff I've mentioned. Valor badge gear is lower item level than ulduar-10 easy mode gear, so it's a subpar advancement, while conquest badge gear has the same item level as ulduar-25 easy mode gear. You can't guarantee yourself access to the 10 man set pieces, but you can guarantee you'll get at least two 25 man pieces (in a reasonable timeframe, that is). In 25 man, you get runed orbs from easy mode bosses as well as the recipes to use them, while in 10 man you only get runed orbs from partial/full hard modes, and cannot get the recipes to use them. Relics drop off most of the bosses in 25 man, but zero of the bosses in 10 man.
In short, the "extra stuff" advancement is notably faster in 25 man than it is in 10 man. That's a problem if Blizzard wants to promote parity between the two sets of raids, which seems to be so.
10 man gear went from ilvl 200(213) armor and weapons to ilvl 219 armor and ilvl 219 weapons while 25 man gear went from ilvl 213(226) armor and weapons to ilvl 226 armor and ilvl 232 weapons.
So 10 man armor is 6 ilvls higher than it should be. Meaning there should be better upgrades in 10 man for a 10 man geared guild...
10 man gear went from ilvl 200(213) armor and weapons to ilvl 219 armor and ilvl 219 weapons while 25 man gear went from ilvl 213(226) armor and weapons to ilvl 226 armor and ilvl 232 weapons.
So 10 man armor is 6 ilvls higher than it should be. Meaning there should be better upgrades in 10 man for a 10 man geared guild...
Should, but not necessarily. Higher ilvl doesn't mean it is necessarily an upgrade. The absolutely horrid itemization in both 10 and 25 man seem to prove this point.
In 25 man, you get runed orbs from easy mode bosses as well as the recipes to use them, while in 10 man you only get runed orbs from partial/full hard modes, and cannot get the recipes to use them. Relics drop off most of the bosses in 25 man, but zero of the bosses in 10 man.
Forgive me if I'm wrong, but we saw exactly the same thing during TBC after patch 2.4, if I remember correctly, when people who still hadn't made the move to 25 man content were capable of spending badges they'd been whoring on Nether Vortex's, which had almost zero use outside the 25 man drop patterns. Blizzard have added the same kind of patterns again, but moved us on a few patches in terms of acquiring the materials to get them made than when they were implemented in TBC.
I know for sure that our 25 man raids have, as of yet, seen zero patterns, but we still have a tank in the guild rocking the new tanking boots. Just because you don't know somebody in your guild with the pattern, doesn't make it impossible to get this stuff made.
04/30/09, 9:01 PM
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