What you can do now is just spawn 8 guardians from the get-go, pile them up in the middle and AoE them and keep your tank up with a shieldwall or some outside cooldown (or both). Voila, phase 1 complete in 30 seconds.
This won't really be doable now, due to the shadow volley (unless you have a separate ranged interrupter on each guardian; and that just sounds like more effort than it's worth).
Though I agree these changes already trivialize the easiest (once learned) phase of the encounter.
This won't really be doable now, due to the shadow volley (unless you have a separate ranged interrupter on each guardian; and that just sounds like more effort than it's worth).
Though I agree these changes already trivialize the easiest (once learned) phase of the encounter.
Also not really doable considering that there aren't actually 8 clouds. :P
Easiest thing to do now is probably just to spawn an extra in a center cloud constantly to double them up. Two interrupts isn't hard, and 4 spawn cycles won't take long either.
It was already easy just to kill them in the center with melee (that's what we have always done) and two at a time was already quite possible even with the risk of MC--simply due to the fact that they die so quickly if you use a center tactic.
(I actually think one of the main reasons many guilds struggle learning Yogg is that early videos all used a shuttle tactic and almost every guild I speak to initially tries that first. Despite the fact that a center tactic is far, far easier, quicker, and less risk prone. P1 is really quite trivial if you do it in the center because the adds almost never even have enough time to use Mind Control anyway.)
Some of the early hardmodes really did need to be tweaked, though, as very few guilds had the logistical abilities to work on XT or FL for any great period of time without potentially screwing up their entire week clear.
My only other specific wishlist tweak for hardmodes would be if they implemented some way to make it possible to force a Hodir wipe if you reached the 3 minute timer via a hard mode "toggle" like all the others. We had a 3:01 kill last night on an attempt that looked like we'd be able to push him down, but due to a death near the end didn't quite make it. It was a bit frustrating since a few more tries probably would have gotten him for us, but it was looking quite doable until some bad timing at the end. It's really the only hardmode you can "accidentally" kill in normal mode and end your attempts for the week, which isn't great design compared to the others.
Blizzard knows as well as we do that literally everyone was doing Naxx 25, be it in a pug or in a combined guild effort.
Literally everyone is NOT doing Naxx 25. I'm in guild that does strictly 10 mans. I have never set foot in a WotLK 25-man raid with the exception of OS25, which I did once in a 10-man group. The larger 25-man raid size simply does not appeal to me. PUGs appeal even less.
There ARE guilds out there that stick to 10-mans, and don't PUG 25s. The intended audience for 10-man hardmodes is people like me. There is no reason to complain that they're too easy for people like you - they're supposed to be.
Last night we had the brilliant idea of doing Brun --> Molgeim --> Steelbreaker. The other raid leader and I figured this would be the solution to our dps short comings. As we could time the dropping of a rune of power as we killed Molgeim and proceed to bloodlust and melt Steelbreaker in a hurry. We estimated we could kill him before the third tank death with this setup. 2 hours of attempts later and we didn't even make it to P3, which i don't really understand. Static disruption is exactly the same and doesn't affect damage from rune of death. The only thing that is even REMOTELY harder is that steel breaker could occasionally get a rune of power in P2 and clobber the tank, but healers should have to deal with far FAR worse in P3.
We spent an hour or so working molgeim second and had success only when we scattered the raid so hard that deathrune would only hit 1 to 2 ppl max. The p2 dps requirement is so lax you can afford to have a lot of your raid out of range and not stack melee, etc. We scrapped this because it took to long and had a little more risk, but ultimately I believe it could lead to a superior p3 if executed well... we had a lot of pushback over "let's just do like the videos", but it does seem doable if your raid is extremely careful. Rune of death gets cast fairly predictably after all... Not getting rocked by it isn't that hard, just means a slow, careful molgeim. The damage is healable vast majority of the time if its played around to minimize it.
Death runes are extremely disruptive to the raid's ability to spread out for static disruption while remaining in range of healers, as we quickly learned when attempting this. There is also not much to be gained from having a rune of power up in P3, for the same reason: static disruption would annihilate the clump standing in the rune, so you'd only be able to send a couple people there safely anyway.
Braggia: It is certainly true that some guilds strictly do 10-mans, but you'd have a hard time convincing me that they are the majority audience. Guildox may not be entirely accurate, but if they are to be believed, no strict 10-man guild has completed Firefighter and having 3 hard modes down is good enough for top 20 in the world. That tells me not that the hard modes are really hard, but that almost everyone does some 25-man raiding.
This won't really be doable now, due to the shadow volley (unless you have a separate ranged interrupter on each guardian; and that just sounds like more effort than it's worth).
Though I agree these changes already trivialize the easiest (once learned) phase of the encounter.
Rogue with Throwing Specialization and Cloak of Shadows / Guardian spirit at the right instant could, in fact, interrupt essentially every cast or awfully close to all of them.
Death runes are extremely disruptive to the raid's ability to spread out for static disruption while remaining in range of healers, as we quickly learned when attempting this. There is also not much to be gained from having a rune of power up in P3, for the same reason: static disruption would annihilate the clump standing in the rune, so you'd only be able to send a couple people there safely anyway.
Actually, you can park Steelbreaker next to a rune of power and everyone except the soakers can use it to the fullest.
Braggia: It is certainly true that some guilds strictly do 10-mans, but you'd have a hard time convincing me that they are the majority audience. Guildox may not be entirely accurate, but if they are to be believed, no strict 10-man guild has completed Firefighter and having 3 hard modes down is good enough for top 20 in the world. That tells me not that the hard modes are really hard, but that almost everyone does some 25-man raiding.
Majority audience and intended audience are two different things. While it's certainly true that the majority of the people actually doing the 10 man hard modes are people who do 25 mans, that doesn't mean the target audience doesn't also exist, just that people who are pushing 25 man content are using the more forgivingly-tuned 10 man hard modes as additional loot to supplement the drops from normal mode 25. That's fine.
Just because the target population is smaller doesn't mean it doesn't merit the development time. The actual development cost of implementing the 10-man versions of fights they were already going to put in for 25-man is in most cases simply adjusting some constants: boss health, spawn time/number of adds, boss ability damage, etc. So long as they're keeping some percentage of the population interested by putting in minimal extra development time, they'll keep doing so. I certainly hope they do!
You do have a good point in that it appears no strict 10-man guild has completed the more difficult hard modes. My response would just be that by and large, the people who are in such strict 10-man guilds tend to also be less "hardcore" (with admittedly varying definitions). I'd wager that the guilds who are in serious competition for world firsts raid 5+ nights a week, and that most of them are also farming 10 man hard modes for supplemental loot, increasing their average gear level beyond what you can get from the instance they're working on. We're only 3 resets since the guild with the best combination of time, resources, and skill completed all non-Algalon hard mode achievements on 25 (i.e., Heroic: Glory of the Ulduar Raider). I think it's a little early to use that to say there's no audience for challenging, strictly 10-man content. We may be slower, but we're here.
Literally everyone is NOT doing Naxx 25. I'm in guild that does strictly 10 mans. I have never set foot in a WotLK 25-man raid with the exception of OS25, which I did once in a 10-man group. The larger 25-man raid size simply does not appeal to me. PUGs appeal even less.
There ARE guilds out there that stick to 10-mans, and don't PUG 25s. The intended audience for 10-man hardmodes is people like me. There is no reason to complain that they're too easy for people like you - they're supposed to be.
That doesn't change the fact that you are part of a very small minority. The VAST majority of people running 10-men Ulduar *do have* item level 213 gear from Naxx, deadly PvP gear and valor bracers. That means the content is extremely undertuned for their target audience. You're also ignoring the fact that 10-men hardmodes are supposedly to be done with Ulduar 10 gear which is a mix between ilvl 213 and ilvl 219. Ergo, you're /supposed/ to have Naxx 25-quality gear (even better) when doing hardmodes.
Also, as I'm typing this, we're looting XT-002 hardmode in the 10-men which we did in our hateful PvP sets with a few ilvl 213 bits and bobs to get hitcapped. The tank was an alt that is in mostly badge purples, has several pieces of blue dungeon gear and a few naxx 25 items.
The timer was at 1:06 when it died. Granted, if the hearth health had not been nerfed, we would have failed to kill the heart, but well, it did get nerfed. How exactly is that not undertuned?
The timer was at 1:06 when it died. Granted, if the hearth health had not been nerfed, we would have failed to kill the heart, but well, it did get nerfed. How exactly is that not undertuned?
They only nerfed the heart health on heroic difficulty.
Originally Posted by Crowl
If you have to control a robot dinosaur that fires lazers and there's a time when you shouldn't be shooting those lazers then the encounter is clearly flawed beyond hope of fixing.
That doesn't change the fact that you are part of a very small minority. The VAST majority of people running 10-men Ulduar *do have* item level 213 gear from Naxx, deadly PvP gear and valor bracers. That means the content is extremely undertuned for their target audience. You're also ignoring the fact that 10-men hardmodes are supposedly to be done with Ulduar 10 gear which is a mix between ilvl 213 and ilvl 219. Ergo, you're /supposed/ to have Naxx 25-quality gear (even better) when doing hardmodes.
Also, as I'm typing this, we're looting XT-002 hardmode in the 10-men which we did in our hateful PvP sets with a few ilvl 213 bits and bobs to get hitcapped. The tank was an alt that is in mostly badge purples, has several pieces of blue dungeon gear and a few naxx 25 items.
The timer was at 1:06 when it died. Granted, if the hearth health had not been nerfed, we would have failed to kill the heart, but well, it did get nerfed. How exactly is that not undertuned?
Quite simply, it isn't undertuned if that is the intended difficulty level.
You might argue (and many do) that Blizzard set the bar too low, but it's nowhere near the level the bar was set for Naxx. Then again, I haven't done any of the encounters since they were nerfed, and I'm in a 25man guild, so perhaps my take on these things is skewed.
What I do know is that the dedicated 10man group within my guild (and they run no 25s at all this entire expansion) has struggled with the hard modes and progressed at what I believe is an appropriate rate. I think Blizzard might see it that way, too.
In the end, it's their measuring stick that matters. If they say an encounter is perfectly tuned, then it is in our best interest not to agree or disagree but to examine why they are saying so.
Agreeing with Zaniel but putting perhaps a slight twist on it: If you consider this stuff too easy, why are you doing it at all? Indications in various threads on EJ are that there certainly are still encounters which are giving people something interestingly difficult to work on.
If you're doing this "too easy" 10-man stuff because there is nothing harder available to you (which I can only see being the case if you're in a "10 man only" raid who is clearing everything on 10 man hard mode), then sure, that's a problem. But those who've raised the issue all seem to be from primarily 25 man raiding groups. Ulduar seems to have sufficiently litte trash, and enough optional bosses, that reaching any given remaining challenging encounter shouldn't take an excessive amount of time clearing relatively easy stuff.
If you're doing the "too easy" 10 mans because the loot there is better than what you can get in 25 man, or the relative reward vs effort of 10 man vs 25 man is heavily skewed in 10 mans favour, then that's a fair complaint too - and from what some have said, apparently an applicable one - but it's at least as much a loot problem as it is an encounter difficulty problem.
I'm very happy with 10 man Ulduar so far, even on normal mode. It's kept our 10-man, 4-7 Ulduar hours a week raids entertained for ~6 weeks (5 "farm" bosses, 6th well on the way), and will presumably continue to do so for at least another month, more likely 2-3, before I expect our first Yogg Saron kill. Yes, by the standards of pretty much everyone here, we are at best mediocre, and our time commitment very low. By the standards of our server - even considering only those guilds who do raid - we're far from bad though. Compare this to Naxx10, which even we cleared (with, if anything, a lighter schedule due to fewer 80s being around, and holidays) within about 2 months of first setting foot there. And all that is considering only the 10-man normal mode. 10 man hard mode is apparently still a significant step up from normal mode, and (as evidenced by a few responses in this thread) giving some 10 man raids with more time and/or more competence than ours, something challenging to do... so an audience for them is there. Maybe that audience is comparatively small, but it exists.
I'm sure some would argue that the guild I am in - and there are many like us on our server alone - haven't "earned" the "right" to see the ultimate encounters and get the loot from them. I can sympathise with this sentiment to an extent. However, Blizzard have clearly stated multiple times that they want the content more accessible. They've apparently achieved this. Some evidently feel that they've gone too far in doing so, but quite frankly, as long as there is challenging, interesting, and rewarding stuff there to entertain you, why is it a problem that there's a lot of stuff you consider too easy?
Last edited by Maranora : 06/13/09 at 2:55 AM.
Reason: Some indication of our level of progress, for what it's worth, + clarification of view on hard vs normal modes.
Actually, you can park Steelbreaker next to a rune of power and everyone except the soakers can use it to the fullest.
I suppose that's true, and we've done exactly that in 10-man. It seems quite precarious for 25-man positioning though. I am curious if any guilds have been doing this and find it reliable.
Apologies, you are quite right. However I think the point stands, as they have Firefighter but are missing a few other, arguably easier ones.
Initially i was a bit stumped as to why they'd missed some of those hard modes, but considering the name of the guild and the hard modes they have completed it seems they're more focused on getting Algalon than anything else. This is pure speculation however.
To give an example of a 10 man only guild doing hardmodes, take mine. We have XT, Hodir, Thorim, Council and Vezax dead in hard, Freya + 2, FL + 2, Yogg with 3 keepers down also. We raid 9-10 hours a week, and although I would suggest that our skill level is quite high, we don't keep nearly as hardcore a schedule as most guilds, even most 10 man guilds.
Some of our raiders pug 25 Ulduar here and there and we did Naxx 25 pugging as well as Sarth25 (+0, 10 manned).
I love the tuning of the hardmodes. With our mixed 219/213 loot we can beat anything in there with proper play and practice, and given our relatively small schedule I would say we are making great progress. They would be too easy with full 25 man Ulduar gear for sure, but they work great for us.
I would suggest that my guild is in fact the target audience for these encounters. We do primarily 10 man content, we have a small group of friends and no interest in the recruiting and babysitting that comes with 25 man raid sizes. We also are a set of quite good players that could easily fit into good, progressive 25 man guilds if we wanted to, but we aren't looking for that environment.
Admittedly my guild isn't the majority, not by any stretch. Most 10 man guilds are either pretty weak skillwise or simply casual in time committment or both and just aren't into 10 man hards. That said, I still see this niche as a good one to maintain. It allows a wider variety of people to play the game and gives 25 man raiders something else to do when their main raids are done.
So from the perspective of someone who is the target audience of 10 man hards, (As far as I understand Blizzard's thinking, anyway) I approve. They challenge us and make us work and the requirements are quite reasonable to hit with the gear we have. If we were absolutely strict about our 10 man only and no one had any gear from naxx25 we would might have had to farm normal mode for another 2 weeks or so, but at that point we would be good to go.
For the Plasma Blast, what strategies are you guys using? Cooldown rotations for healers? Our tank was getting gibbed quite often, even with all healers in the raid just blasting them with heals. Using CD rotations worked, but it still seemed finicky - it was our first night so perhaps healers were still learning to anticipate the damage.
For phase 2, I keep hearing about people stacking two groups - is this to make healing heat wave easier? If so, how do you balance out the rocket blasts - I know the easy answer is just move but some of our guys aren't as good at the "get out of the blue or red stuff" as others, and spreading out makes it easier to see it on the ground. What are some good healing strats for phase 2?
For the Plasma Blast, what strategies are you guys using? Cooldown rotations for healers? Our tank was getting gibbed quite often, even with all healers in the raid just blasting them with heals. Using CD rotations worked, but it still seemed finicky - it was our first night so perhaps healers were still learning to anticipate the damage.
For phase 2, I keep hearing about people stacking two groups - is this to make healing heat wave easier? If so, how do you balance out the rocket blasts - I know the easy answer is just move but some of our guys aren't as good at the "get out of the blue or red stuff" as others, and spreading out makes it easier to see it on the ground. What are some good healing strats for phase 2?
I use icebound fortitude on the first one, and vampiric blood / outside cooldown for the 2nd. We usually don't see a third one, but if we do icebound fortitude is usually back up.
Phase 2 everyone should circle up around him to make AoE heals more effective. We use heroism here to get out of this phase as quickly as possible.
Assign priests and druids to "stable" group healing, and let shamans and paladins focus on people who dip low. We assign groups for priests to PoH, and then give the druid 3 groups that will have rejuv going on all 15 in that group and WG on cooldown. Between WG, CoH, CH all smart-healing people who dip low, and then our shaman and paladin prioritizing them, it makes p2 healing trivial on normal mode.
It may have been that it hadn't been updated when you were looking, but they're there pretty early on with a kill in may.
"LFM Algalon" consists of members of a former 25man raid guild (that got server-first on Yogg Saron and on all T7 raids). With their 25man background and the gear they got from it until they stopped doing 25mans not too long ago, they hardly qualify as a purely 10man guild.
For Mimiron p2, tell your melee not to run around unless it's necessary(rockets, barrage). If you're running with a lot of melee like us, 10 people trying to run behind the boss when there's already 3-4 ranged people there means half your raid will take 10k damage each in the next few seconds. Staying stationary should also net you a dps increase.
Other people would better be as close to the boss as possible, ours stand around the bright white circle. That will ensure no chain heals are wasted; everyone is in range of every healer; and you will have time to run to the opposite of laser barrage, losing minimal time when the boss isn't casting anything else.
We just have the raid circled 'loosely' around the cannon with everyone inside the "elevator" edges. The regular shooting is not avoidable anyway and the closer you are, the smaller the cone. If you spread out "loosely" no more than 5-7 people should get hit at the same time.
Healers just spam their AoE heals while paladins mostly spam FoL on people low on health. It's not really a problem to be mana inefficient, because you get a good 25 seconds of regen after phase 2 and phase 3 is extremely light on healing. There should be ample time to regen mana for phase 4.
You do have a good point in that it appears no strict 10-man guild has completed the more difficult hard modes. My response would just be that by and large, the people who are in such strict 10-man guilds tend to also be less "hardcore" (with admittedly varying definitions). I'd wager that the guilds who are in serious competition for world firsts raid 5+ nights a week, and that most of them are also farming 10 man hard modes for supplemental loot, increasing their average gear level beyond what you can get from the instance they're working on. We're only 3 resets since the guild with the best combination of time, resources, and skill completed all non-Algalon hard mode achievements on 25 (i.e., Heroic: Glory of the Ulduar Raider). I think it's a little early to use that to say there's no audience for challenging, strictly 10-man content. We may be slower, but we're here.
Exactly. Speaking for my own guild, we raid at most 6 hours per week, and lately 3-5 hours has been more typical. We have some really excellent players in our small guild, and I have no doubt that we'll clear the 10-man hard modes. Raiding on such a limited schedule just means that it is going to take us quite a bit longer than the guilds that are spending 15-20+ hours a week in there (most with a significant gear advantage from running 25s). We haven't even tried a hardmode yet - we agreed that we'd clear the place on easy mode first, which we're still a couple of resets away from.
With MS/Wound Poison up Touch of Eonar will heal for 84,000 hp/s. Judging by our most recent WWS Freya appears to have about 7.6M hp with 3 elders up. This means a 2 minute kill would require 147k raid dps and a 3 minute kill would require 126k dps. Assuming 5 healers and 2 tanks (whose damage I'll ignore for simplicity) that's 8.2k dps / 7k dps average for 18 dpsers. Considering the tanking and healing requirements and the need to dps Strengthened Iron Roots and Eonar's Gifts in addition to Freya herself I doubt such a tactic is possible in the 25 man version, though as soon as I say that someone's going to do it.
06/12/09, 11:18 AM
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