Razorscale used to start directly above the circle. She then moved to the far northeast. Your soaker could move appropriately.

As of the patch, she starts a bit east of the circle. I believe she still moved northeast after the first ground phase.

The easiest way to bring things back to normal would be to just shoot the first harpoon as soon as it's up, which forces Razorscale back over the center.

In 3.1 Razorscale would target flames at the target a little east of the center of the circle until harpooned, post harpoon would flame in NE corner (closest below where she was flying). Even pets would work as soaks.

In 3.2 she randomly targets regardless of location, both before and after harpoons. Our hunters (who reliably forget to pull off after harpoon phase) had their pets sitting under her with no flames and the rest of the raid was randomly taking splashes.

World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> The Brood Mother Returns

Well, sure why not, but I hear she deep breaths more.

I'm not sure, but i started to believe Blizzard is going to put some effort into experimenting via the live realms.

First of all, creating a 5man dungeon with completely epic loot in both its difficulties. I was thinking what made them do this at the beginning. Then i noticed, for example in my realm very few people were really doing Heroics and Naxx10/25 any more, some people even left the game. Considering newbie and alt characters requiring to obtain gear from the related instances in any realm, the lack of groups going into there was simply forcing to wait for hours for a Naxx10, and even heroics at some cases. But with the new 5man dungeon, players are able to get both Naxx10 and Naxx25 quality gear so they can catch the actual "gear and stat level" that is present on the regarding realm, without spending weeks to look for these raid dungeons in LFG.

Second was this new badge system. It brought back a spark of life into the heroics, which led to an availability to gear up and catch the "actual gear level" in an additional and alternative way.

And this, "The Return of Onyxia" is the third thing. I am pretty sure it contains a goal which is more than just a "5'th Year Anniversary". It looks like a long shot to me, but i am just expecting to see more of these returns after the expansion. Was really Grand Confessor Paletress a hint to something upcoming?

No. They did the same thing in the IQD patch (and to a lesser extent in the Zul'Aman patch). Magister's was epic loot all the way through, and NO ONE ran it on normal mode more than once.

Granted, the gear reset is coming a bit sooner in this expansion than the last one, but it's the same philosophy.

Onyxia being a five year anniversary boss completely makes sense. She was the first real raid.

No, Kael was the only boss who dropped epics on regular.

The most fundamental difference this time is probably not that ToC 5-mans drop Naxx-10 and Ulduar-10 level gear versus the Kara-level gear from Magister's (nevermind that the trinkets were not Kara level at all and some of the loot in Magisters was itemized well enough to compete with Tier 5 gear). Instead, the big difference this go is that you can use badges from heroics all day long -- to buy gear that is up to Ulduar-25 level. You cannot buy Coliseum-level badge gear while you could most certainly buy Illidari Council-level badge gear back in TBC.

In fact, you are limited in heroic badges by the selection of gear on the Conquest vendor. Sure, you can acquire a very limited amount of Triumph badges, but it'll take weeks to gear out in 232 gear that way and really that's fine. If you are patient your 232 set gear, your orb-based belt/boots, your Conquest neck, etc. give you an awfully nice set of gear. And one that no serious raider will be jealous of.

This is -- as noted -- a gear reset of sorts, designed to allow people to spend the next 4 months getting whatever character(s) they want ready to fight Arthas in icecrown Citadel. It is "earlier" than the Sunwell/Quel'Danas patch reset in some regards, but this expansion has a very different flow. The raids are being parceled out with a design to allow large numbers of people to "complete" them before moving on. There was zero back farming in Naxx and the only back farming in Ulduar is limited to a handful of really good items and -- more likely -- guilds actually bothering to complete achievements.

I agree totally that this is Blizzard's intention with 3.2, however, depending on your raid groups makeup and goals it can be a very slow process under the current badge/trophy/token system.

Even in the group we call "25man raiders" we'll see those who enter 3.3 in largely 232 gear and other that will enter wearing a good chunk of 258 gear. Assuming the normal progression for a 25man raid group is T9/226 -> T9/245 it's been shown that ToC 10man normal gear is dubious at best as an upgrade option. This leads a 25man raid group with several options to gear out their 25man raiders before 3.3:

1. Push into 25man heroic mode to simply fill out tier gear. Guilds should want to do this anyway but the option isn't available for several weeks and even then don't expect to see any large number of guild just bounce through all five in short order.
2. Split the raid and farm 10man heroic modes as well to complete tier gear; fill in with alts for any needed roles and to create (at least) 3 full groups.
3. Run the normal 25man multiple (2-3) times, having players play alts interspersed with mains and push trophies to mains only. This effectively doubles/triples the number of trophies available to raiders.

The first option is what Blizzard wants but I fear they're going to have many 25man raid groups entering 3.3 wearing 2 pieces of 245, and 2 pieces of 232 and many at lower gear levels than that. I'm talking about guilds that can beat 25man normal and will have beaten it shortly after it's completely open but still not have 25-30 people in T9/245 gear when 3.3 hits.

The second and third options are not what Blizzard wants (from my perspective) as they rely heavily on having already geared alts expressly for the purpose of gearing up mains. Having bosses drop two trophies/tokens (as was previously done for tokens) would eliminate the need for guilds to resort to options 2 and 3 and put more emphasis on option 1.

Timwhisker, I think the intent is to have a lot more people doing the hard modes than you're giving them credit for. The 232 gear is just if you're totally unlucky. The 245 gear is if you get a random token drop from a PUG. The 258 gear is for the raiders.

At least that's what I hope. Otherwise it leads to an incredibly frustrating situation.

A great number of people think we'll see 3.3 sometime before Christmas. If we assume Thanksgiving as a release date that gives a raid group a maximum number of ~60 level 258 tier tokens and that assumes you can beat all the heroic bosses from week one. That's enough to outfit a normal raid group with 2 T9/258 tokens each. Assuming the same group does the normal modes as well as a single group that's barely enough to put each raider in 4pc T9 (2x245 and 2x258).

That's assuming you beat every boss in both normal and heroic from week one. Meaning only the best raid groups in the world will be able to complete their 4pc sets without the use of T9/232 gear.

My point is that any 25man raid group cannot simply do normal + heroic and expect to gear their group adequately. You much either:

• use alts to farm the 25man normal
• farm the 10man heroic in addition to the 25man and it's heroic or
• settle for ilevel 232 which is not an upgrade to 226+harmode ulduar

to get everyone in your group geared before 3.3's expected release.

You simply have no idea what the loot layout is going to be like for 258; no one does. My gut feeling is that the tribute runs are going to give significantly higher amounts of gear, and the gear is going to be non-symmetrically distributed.

You're also conveniently ignoring the non-tier gear, of which there is plenty.

That's not true. Actually, the announcement pretty much declares that the new Onyxia instance will be available before Thanksgiving (possibly even before November, depending on how you interpret parts of it). The announcement starts with the new Onyxia stuff, and follows that with "Then, for a limited time, after the 5-year anniversary event begins in November, anybody who logs in will receive an Onyxia Brood Whelpling pet.". That implies that Onyxia will come before the event, and the only date we have for the event is November.

Also the event might have very little to do with Onyxia as a raid boss. It could be as silly as the 4 year anniversary. As long as you logon during that day you get a pet. Some would call that an event, because it was something that doesn't normally happen.

3.3 is obviously going to be paced off Cataclysm. I think it's a safe bet given the Burning Crusade and Wrath expansion release timelines that Cataclysm will be released a year and a couple months after it is unveiled at Blizzcon. Holiday season sales and whatnot.

As Icecrown will be the last content patch, it's therefore going to have to "last" until Cataclysm drops. I wouldn't expect to see it before Christmas for this reason. Even if they stagger accessability, it still has to last something like nine months if it's released then.

I think people are going to have plenty of time to gear up. And Blizzard's target gear level for Icecrown probably is not 258 at all. For normal, it's probably going to be a lot closer to 232. They're not going to build regular progression around Hard Mode loot.

They have a hard limit on how early they can release 3.3, being how fast they can tune and make it functional. They have no hard limit on how late. Once ready they can sit on it until they want it active.

Lately Blizzard has really been into crunching numbers. I would suspect that even if ready, 3.3 would be held until Blizzard gets the numbers they desire. X% of 25Heroic instances kill boss Y, or Z% of instances get a Tribute by killing Heroic Anub. They benchmark how much content the "average" player gets to see, since that appears to be one of their major goals of late. World First guilds either farm longer for further gear distribution or take breaks.

Seeing as 3.2.2 is currently on the PTR I have a hard time believing that it won't be released for another two to three months. 3.2 itself was only on the PTR for a month and a half, so it seems much more likely 3.2.2 will be released prior to the actual anniversary, possibly whenever Season 7 starts in the next couple weeks.

While I agree on the theory of Blizzard number crunching to pace content -- especially nerfs -- I think things in the future are more clear to them than to us.

If you use the 21 month "expansion gap" you'd find that Cataclysm is due next August. Maybe that's the planned release, maybe it isn't, but there's already a date at Blizzard and I think you'd be surprised to learn how close they are going to hit it. It's pretty clear that Ulduar as the lone raid zone was "end of lifed" a bit early. It was actually sitting there alone for less time than the trivial Naxx/Sarth/Maly tier.

Rather than stating "I know 3.3. with be December" because I don't, I'd say reasonable speculation is they have a date for Cataclysm -- pretend its August -- and a date for 3.3 -- pretend it's December. If Icecrown Citadel is big -- not 31 bosses which was always obvious sarcastic but big -- it should have about 5-7 months of solid playability for serious raiding guilds. I mean Ulduar is now 4 months old, very few guilds truly finished it, it's probably September/October before Heroic: Glory is done by the top 5% of guilds.

That said, Coliseum seems like a patch with no "legs". It's likely going to have less replayability than the Tier 7 patch in some ways. Doing the instance 4x a week instead of doing Naxx/Maly/Sarth -- which were at least different from one another if not super challenging -- seems likely to get old. But Blizzard knows this all already and may well have 3.3 planned for November and Cataclysm planned for June. We'll learn more as we go of course, but I think assume old rules apply is a mistake. There are countless more developers working on WoW than were during the run up to TBC and even versus the run up to Lich King.

While there are not many "safe assumptions" on release dates for future expansions it's clear that avoiding having content go too stale is a goal and I'd guess August is the latest Blizzard is planning for Cataclysm, not the earliest.

The patch date guessing game arcana can stop now.

The other Day we were doing Heroic Utgard Keep (a very "cut and dry" simple run) when my healer aggroed 3 different mobs (in the dragon and handler room) basically wiping us. when we were asking how it happened (as it never should) he simply stated "My heals aggroed them." The other guild members scoffed and told him what an idiot he was, I would rather have proof to this.

I have never seen an unengaged group aggro at a far distance to someone from healing. I was wondering if anyone can prove/disprove this theory? I personally have NEVER aggroed or seen a group aggro (and this is outside the distance limit) from a heal.

Interesting. I was healing in Heroic ToC today, and we were working Eadric's trash from left to right. On the middle pack, the right hand pack suddenly aggroed on me for no readily discernible reason. I was standing on the edge of the centre circle just to the left of Eadric as I was looking at it - way outside body pull range - and I certainly hadn't targeted any of them. All I had done was start healing the tank.

This is not proof for your healer's theory, but it's a second data point. You should ask your healer to try and reproduce the event.

Range aggro in various places has seemed a bit buggy since the patch. I haven't noticed it much in heroics because I'm constantly chain pulling everywhere anyway, but in our Ulduar Thursday night between XT trash and Hodir, we had a boss and 4 or 5 trash pulls aggro on us for no reason - no one wandering over to them, no one accidentally casting at them, no pets running around like idiots. We were never able to figure out what the issue was.

Well this does bring validity to the statement. If anyone else has come across this it would be good data to introduce this to blizzard. I may make a case and forward it to see what response I can get.