Icecrown Citadel "Gating" system - Page 12

Elerion · 01/07/10, 4:01 AM

Putricide makes for a pretty interesting group psychology experiment. Limited attempts and rumours of his bugginess probably kept hundreds of guilds from making 10 attempts the last 1-2 nights, while many of those would probably have killed him if they had just tried.

I guess it just goes to show how little most people care about normal mode first kills, these days.

Tanoh · 01/07/10, 4:33 AM

Originally Posted by Lanthon

I'm curious to see if Blizzard intended this steep ramp up in difficulty, because the encounters I saw yesterday will thwart PUGs and alt runs.

I was also surprised of how steep the difference is. Especially Festergut (didn't have time to try Putrice) is very hard, I wonder if they won't increase the enrage timer on him a bit. Which would make him fairly easy. Maybe the plagueworks is just a harder wing than the others, just because it opens first doesn't mean it has to be the easiest of the rest.

The difference between the first four bosses and these two is really quite big. I wonder if both of these wont get a bit nrefed the upcoming weeks. Maybe it's a thoughtout strategy from blizzard, they "accidentally" make the encounters a bit too hard the first weeks to allow decent raid guilds without any new content to not go in and kill everything and go back to sleep. Then in a few weeks they realise they made them too hard and lower the bar a bit so PUGs/alts can do them more easily. The raid guilds will by then have moved on to other encounters or hard modes.

If it's true, it's really quite clever by Blizzard. Before yesterday (I'm in the EU) there were a bit of crying in my guild of how easy all content is and that we're just given items for free. I didn't hear that after yesterday's raid.

Duilliath · 01/07/10, 4:50 AM

The difficulty of Putricide at the very least was intended, according to a blue post. Each of the wing 'end bosses' will be quite a step up. I have to say I didn't think Festergut was too hard to grasp as fight. We spent the evening there (hurray for instance lag and graphics lag from the gasclouds), but every single wipe could easily be attributed to someone screwing up.

Elerion · 01/07/10, 5:43 AM

Festergut-25 will likely have his hp lowered or enrage timer extended in a couple of weeks. The DPS requirement is probably too steep for most pugs at the moment, so Blizzard will want to adjust that.

It seems like a glaring mistake in contrast to Festergut-10, which has a very forgiving enrage timer.

25-man version has ~40.4m hp according to logs, implying required raid dps of 134.7k. Assuming 6 healers and 2 tanks, with tanks pulling ~3k dps each, that leaves (133.3k - 6k) / 17 = 7.6k dps per raid member.

10-man version has ~9.4m hp according to logs, implying required raid dps of 31.3k. Assuming 3 healers and 2 tanks (which is very forgiving for the healers), with tanks pulling ~3k dps each, that leaves (31.3k - 6k) / 5 = 5.1k dps per raid member.

Mideci · 01/07/10, 6:31 AM

The 10 man instance is optimally tuned for people in a mix of 232 and 245 gear.

The 25 man instance is tuned for people in a mix of 245 and 258 gear.

25 man raid buffs also make a gigantic DPS difference; and virtually all 10 man content has been tuned easier than its 25 man equivalent -- on top of the above -- since the Sarth 3d/10 business.

I'm not sure the numbers you put out there are so "glaringly" off from intended.

Ranghar · 01/07/10, 9:06 AM

Festergut 25 is tuned just right. If you position inteligently, what means only a few people in range, the rest in melee, you will be surprised how much dps you can make. My guild was averaging 110k on Saurfang, but on Festergut we managed to reach 137k with one dpser dead almost from the beginning. That was with 5 healers. People make it more scary than it is.

amethyst · 01/07/10, 9:08 AM

Originally Posted by Elerion

Festergut-25 will likely have his hp lowered or enrage timer extended in a couple of weeks. The DPS requirement is probably too steep for most pugs at the moment, so Blizzard will want to adjust that.

Didn't Blizz say that the gating mechanism would also provide some sort of automatic system for buffing the raid / nerfing the existing bosses?

Rhaegal · 01/07/10, 9:25 AM

Originally Posted by amethyst

Didn't Blizz say that the gating mechanism would also provide some sort of automatic system for buffing the raid / nerfing the existing bosses?

Yes, but not until well after the final content push and Arthas has been available long enough for the top guilds to get through all the content. It remains to be seen whether or not they'll start implementing the increasing buff before all the hard modes have been cleared, but they're certainly not going to put it in before the whole instance is unlocked, which would be very different from the idea of nerfing that specific encounter with an increased enrage timer on a much sooner timescale, in order to allow more casual guilds and PuGs to get past it.

Calgar · 01/07/10, 9:25 AM

Originally Posted by amethyst

Didn't Blizz say that the gating mechanism would also provide some sort of automatic system for buffing the raid / nerfing the existing bosses?

Correct, I took that to mean that after X number of weeks there would be some manner of raid wide buff that increased DPS/healing/HP, or that the bosses' health would be reduced X% per "power boost". I wouldn't expect it to kick in until post Arthas + 1 month or even more then that.

I believe they also said you would be able to toggle the "power boost" on and off, so you could get "pre-nerf" levels of boss difficulty.

Our experience on festergut wasn't too bad, got it third try with the first 2 failures being our off-tank getting smashed at 3 stacks, but once we lined up CDs for 3 stacks we got it the next try. The DPS requirements were incredibly tight for us, finishing with just 1-2 seconds to spare. That said, i think our melee were missing windfury/20% haste the whole time. I imagine we will have a 20+ second window next week when we have more confidence in our ability to kill him and a WF totem down.

I'm eager to hear some people's Putricide experiences, as we haven't attempted that yet.

Redcape · 01/07/10, 10:30 AM

Originally Posted by Elerion

Festergut-25 will likely have his hp lowered or enrage timer extended in a couple of weeks. The DPS requirement is probably too steep for most pugs at the moment, so Blizzard will want to adjust that.

It seems like a glaring mistake in contrast to Festergut-10, which has a very forgiving enrage timer.

I think this math is not taking all the factors into account. While it is true that the 25 man version requires 7.6k and the 10 man 5.1k (assuming your math is right, which it seems to be) 10 mans do suffer some fairly substantial penalties that lower damage dealt.

For most 10 mans you end up missing several important raid buffs on any given night, which you very rarely have to do in 25s. My guild is a fairly good 10 man Strict guild (13th achievements and 69th progress worldwide last I checked) and we still consistently have to deal with many missing buffs. For example, this week we were missing 4% physical damage, Commanding Shout, fully talented WF, fully talented Str/Agil, 5% melee crit, Demonic Pact, Mangle, one Judgement, 3% spellhit, Insect Swarm. We do have the majority of the buffs covered and had a good mix of classes (no rogue, 2 shamans) but losing those buffs is a brutal hit to raid effectiveness. This is in addition to us having 13 less ilvls on gear as well as drastically worse gear selection. For example, many of us are still rocking ilvl 219/226 cloaks because we have only gotten an Insanity chest 3 times and most people still have ilvl 200 trinkets equipped due to not having access to amazing trinkets from Coliseum 25.

None of this is some kind of pity play as I like 10 man Strict and I recognize that we are just going to be missing some raid buffs and have lower ilvl gear, that is part of the bit. However, the dps penalty that we deal with from those factors combined is really substantial. For example, I take a 9% dps drop when missing the buffs I listed above ignoring the effects of JoW, and another 12% or so penalty for a tier of gear. This is ignoring the effects of having really poor itemization choices (particularly cloaks and trinkets) at the moment.

The drop from 7.6k to 5.1k is certainly larger than the numbers above directly account for so it would seem to me that Festergut 10 is less of a dps check than 25. It is important to look at all the factors involved though before making that off the cuff assessment.

Harwin · 01/07/10, 10:38 AM

Since Festergut is a tauntable boss and doesn't seem to have a lot of ranged attacks(unlike Brutallus and his meteor slash) - he should be kitable for a bit after enrage, easing the requirements somewhat.

I can't say for sure - we killed him with 2s to spare in 25 and our wipes weren't due to enrage - but I wouldn't be surprised if you could swing another 30s of DPS with some ranged taunts from the tanks / hunter / ret pally.

Valerian · 01/07/10, 10:47 AM

Originally Posted by Harwin

Since Festergut is a tauntable boss and doesn't seem to have a lot of ranged attacks(unlike Brutallus and his meteor slash) - he should be kitable for a bit after enrage, easing the requirements somewhat.

I can't say for sure - we killed him with 2s to spare in 25 and our wipes weren't due to enrage - but I wouldn't be surprised if you could swing another 30s of DPS with some ranged taunts from the tanks / hunter / ret pally.

We hit enrage in a pug 10 man and the blight in the room almost instantly killed everyone. Its actually one the least forgiving berserks that I've seen.

Wibble · 01/07/10, 12:27 PM

Originally Posted by Elerion

Putricide makes for a pretty interesting group psychology experiment. Limited attempts and rumours of his bugginess probably kept hundreds of guilds from making 10 attempts the last 1-2 nights, while many of those would probably have killed him if they had just tried.

I agree with that. My guild killed him last night armed with basic knowledge of his abilities and the mechanics of the room--and the crucial bit of information that said he wasn't bugged. We used our 10 attempts, but we had a very good grasp of the fight after about 4. To my knowledge, no one had yet run their 10mans, and we hadn't run our alt25, so we went in fresh. The small number of kills at this point is due to guilds hoarding attempts.

Which is a shame, because it's a pretty fun fight!

brolynn · 01/07/10, 12:27 PM

Confirming that the above happens on 25 as well. Enrage occurs with new gas on the ground, which wrecks you hilariously quickly.

Douglas · 01/07/10, 2:11 PM

Originally Posted by Calgar

Correct, I took that to mean that after X number of weeks there would be some manner of raid wide buff that increased DPS/healing/HP, or that the bosses' health would be reduced X% per "power boost". I wouldn't expect it to kick in until post Arthas + 1 month or even more then that.

I believe they also said you would be able to toggle the "power boost" on and off, so you could get "pre-nerf" levels of boss difficulty.

Their discussion of it has been in terms of a player buff, and the per-player ability to opt out of that buff.

MMO-Champion BlueTracker - Icecrown Citadel Raid Access Progression

Originally Posted by Daelo

To further help raids, Varian Wrynn and Garrosh Hellscream will begin to provide assistance by inspiring the armies attacking Icecrown Citadel. This is represented as an additional zone wide spell effect applied to all players that will increase their hit points, damage dealt, and healing done. This effect will also increase in effectiveness over time. Players may opt out of the spell's effect if they so wish.

Since it's a buff to players, and each player decides whether to opt out, only groups with sufficient discipline are going to be able to hit the pre-nerf difficulty level.

For groups that do wish to do this, a mod that lets the raid leader signal all the players to disable it would probably come in handy. (I don't just mean a /rw, I mean a mod each player installs that "auto-clicks-off" the buff when the raid leader hits the killswitch.)