Naxx bosses and design - Page 5

Jedah · 10/24/06, 4:29 AM

Originally Posted by Lodekim

The issue with what you're saying Lanky is that almost every fight in any situation will become easier when buffed. You state C'thun, but for first kills guilds Titans'd everyone, got world buffs, every dps consumeable, and world buffs. No, none of that stuff is needed, but when every single person in the raid will live through getting a 1 chain beam, when getting double beamed is no where near a death sentence for any class, and where you can dps the tentacles down so fast that it doesn't matter if your strategy on controlling them is flawed. C'thun is a masterpiece of execution, so is the four horsemen fight, but I can say with 100% certainty that the fight is a lot easier when you overbuff just to kill it. That's what blizzard was seeing, that's why Naxx encounters for the most part are balanced around consumeable use, because they're just too easy without it.

There's easier at a cost, and doable at a cost. When consumables make a fight easier, at a cost, they're doing their job; when small scale consumable use is the price of admission for attempting a fight, thats fine as well; when weekly large scale consumable use becomes the price of admission for even attempting a fight (farm status included), thats where you have a problem, and its more associated with bad encounter design than with alchemy itself. Nobody wants to be dumping all this time and money on consumables, given the option, your average, or hell, probobly even above average end game raider would rather not, so I don't understand why theres a need to look at alchemy as though its necessary that fights are designed around it for them to be difficult. C'Thun is easier with flasks sure, but honestly, who really went out and flasked their whole raid on C'Thun, aside from possibly their first or second kills, because they consistantly, every week, decided they wanted the fight to be easier?

Chimp · 10/24/06, 5:53 AM

I still think that consumables should have a place in raiding, but when 1 wipe night can churn through your stock of consumables that took 5 hours to farm, something is definitely amiss.

I would like to see a special potion created specifically to counter this. A 'potion that is not used up when consumed, lasts for 2 hours, and persists through death. For balance reasons it would have to be expensive one off material requirements and more importantly trigger a 48 hour cooldown, so you can only get 2 hours usage every couple of days.

Your mega pot can be upgraded to have the affect of multiple pots. So for example, for current content it could possibly replicate the effects of a strength pot, mongoose pot and fortitude pot.

This would mean that normal pots can still be used, but when everyone KNOWS they are in for a big wipe night pushing for a kill, everyone can blow their 'mega-pot' cooldown and contribute 110% and push for the kill, without using hundreds of gold in consumables.

Zagzil · 10/24/06, 6:01 AM

Originally Posted by Quigon

I hardly consider 17 healers stacking the raid (especially when you just said 16 after) - and further, anyone on sapphiron is in a position to recruit more healers anyway.
You should probably only count that as 16 healers anyway as one was boxed and died very early... we didn't have time to swap out (we were doing practice attempts afterall). There are certainly many guilds before us that have done it with 17 healers. The fight by no means requires world buffs.

Killing him 2-5 minutes earlier cause of world buffs is not necessary when clearly the fight was intended to be controlled indefinitely - hence the 15 minute enrage. Listen, I'm not trying to insult your stance that DPS makes the fight easier (obviously it does) - but our guild has ALWAYS been about control... we used to push patchwerk for months to exactly 7 minutes, but we haven't lost a tank on that fight in 3 months due to our setup... we push 4H to the boundary - we setup sapphiron assuming 0 GFrPP usage on healing dynamics. We stress control more, as you clearly stress DPS. I just don't buy that DPS is king and solves everything... it sure does on some fights, but control is just as critical. For us, getting thaddius to the enrage was 90% of the work... solving the dps was 2 more attempts. 4H... 1 attempt after enrage. Patchwerk, same deal - solved healing, we won. Sapphiron, never even noticed, he just died. Its good our DPS executed but the plan was survivability first, sacrifice it for DPS later.

See I find it silly if we're killing patchwerk in 6 minutes and someone tells me that we should be using CoR when we're currently not. Until we wipe from lack of DPS I don't see the point in using CoR on patchwerk, world buffs on him, or say, world buffs on sapphiron. Although world buffs certainly help your HP on sapph - and burst p2 damage is pretty key :)

Now don't get me wrong - we were already talkinga bout rend buffs, hakkar hearts, and all that jazz for the next night... and its great to finish him off on a first attempt, but its superflous in necessity. My point is clear I hope - I'm not trying to be arrogant with the above comments, just to make the point: You don't need massive consumables for sapphiron... couple major manas per healer. One can argue about how consumables make him easier, but the same can be said for every boss in the zone.

I guess if you timed your week out you could loatheb then sapphiron or something - and then you'd be really well off.

Interesting - our first kill was basically lacking buffs, we said pot up and give this guy a real shot (nothing extensive, mongoose / firewater / etc) and we won with healer mana very near gone by the end of the kill. Since then we've used more buffs and the fight has felt almost trivial when we were buffed to that degree.

I think the central difference is probably guild mentality, we are certainly more of a DPS focused guild then most, and sometimes it almost surprising what you can achieve with a healer-light DPS heavy raid. I definitely agree about Patchwerk though - why shoot for a 5:30 kill when you can do a 5:50 kill without risking using CoR? The only real reason to use it is if you are lacking DPS, and when your better kills clock in under 6 minutes there is no reason to make it more difficult on healers (who already have the difficult job on that fight).

I really really do not feel as though 4 Horsemen is that much of a "DPS" fight though, all that really matters is how quickly you can get 1 horsemen to die, after that it's pretty much smooth sailing.

Feer · 10/24/06, 9:27 AM

Originally Posted by Dozer

Originally Posted by krucifix85

With the information Quigon provided on Saph, is Loatheb the only encounter in the zone where consumables are required for the kill?

Patchwerk definitely requires 2-4 flasks until you get to a gear level way beyond where the fight is in the zone.

I think that's it, though.

Well, you could add to that 2-3 major mana pots and some dark/demonic runes for each healer per Patchwerk attempt. Alternatively you can use Flasks of Distilled Wisdom instead of runes.

Quigon · 10/24/06, 9:44 AM

Originally Posted by Zagzil

I really really do not feel as though 4 Horsemen is that much of a "DPS" fight though, all that really matters is how quickly you can get 1 horsemen to die, after that it's pretty much smooth sailing.

Yeah don't get me wrong - I merely meant making the 20 minute limit... enraged blamo isn't pretty.

Malan · 10/24/06, 10:04 AM

Originally Posted by SquattingCow

Who flasks tanks on C'thun? Sure, if they're in might...

We flasked our whole raid for the first kill just to make sure we had enough alive for phase 2. We were tired of losing people to eye beams and dying in the stomach.

Kalince · 10/24/06, 11:43 AM

With a good heal to regen cycle I can go indefinitely on Sapphiron. My mana is only tested if my party members decide the pretty ice shards are fun to play in.

Edit - This is with major mana potions and Dark Runes, but without any other regen buffs (No mana oil, No mageblood) and No 3 piece trans as a significant portion of my time is out of the 5sr.

Malan · 10/24/06, 11:58 AM

Edit - oops. Wrong thread.

• Fogbug · 10/24/06, 12:13 PM

Originally Posted by Praetorian

Originally Posted by Malan

Originally Posted by Bury

I haven't seen Loatheb first hand, but would this item be useful?
http://picasaweb.google.com/ralphs/W...43588186144786

Oh sure, NOW they put crap like that in game. Jerks.

Who needs that when you have these?

who needs those when you have poison cleansing totem + judgement of light!

Fenrus · 10/24/06, 4:02 PM

Originally Posted by Lodekim

It basically goes like this, Blizzard put consumeables in the game, people whored consumeables to get world firsts because fights were far easier than they were supposed to be with them, Blizzard designs encounters where overbuffing and using world buffs and consumeables is just shy of required, so that people using extra consumeables aren't getting a huge advantage because so many are required anyway, players continue to overbuff, but are now complaining about the requirements. If the next step is the addition of more required consumeables to again, stop people from just throwing flasks on everyone to make the fight easier, I'm really not going to be happy, and i'm not going to be surprised either. And the base cause is still the fact that Alchemy is far too powerful in the raid game.

I don't think removing, devaluing, or limiting (limiting buff slots or types) alchemy is the solution to the vicious cycle you've described though. As I said before, I don't think the problem is the consumables themselves but rather the methods used to aquire them that's out of hand. They need to tone back on the farming requirements. There's several ways they could do this,

For example, lets take Loatheb:

What if they added special GSPPs that are only useable in Naxx that are purchasable from an AD vendor at Exalted rep at a reasonable price, like 80sp each? Similiar to the PvP combat potions, you can only carry a limited amount (say a stack of 5). Now, what would this accomplish? Well, for one thing it wouldn't break the mechanics of the Loatheb encounter itself, and for another it would cut back on the ridiculous farming but not remove it completely. There's still a time sink for grinding AD rep and you'd have to farm pots in the meantime, and you'd still want to 1 shot Loatheb because you wouldn't want to be running back and forth to LHC every attempt.

It's the farming that is ridiculous. I'm not advocating removing farming completely, just lessening it a bit.

Cluey · 10/25/06, 3:46 AM

Originally Posted by Praetorian

Originally Posted by Malan

Originally Posted by Bury

I haven't seen Loatheb first hand, but would this item be useful?
http://picasaweb.google.com/ralphs/W...43588186144786

Oh sure, NOW they put crap like that in game. Jerks.

Who needs that when you have these?

I thought these looked useful although the minimum absorbed is a little low.

samizal · 10/25/06, 6:13 AM

you can get loads of elemental water when you got 300 fishing ..... oh wait ... :P

(i've been stacking on gravemoss heavily so far, got 40-60 of those)

♦ Praetorian · 10/25/06, 12:05 PM

Originally Posted by samizal

you can get loads of elemental water when you got 300 fishing ..... oh wait ... :P

(i've been stacking on gravemoss heavily so far, got 40-60 of those)

Fill out your profile.

Savos · 10/25/06, 4:29 PM

Oh I hope they don't increase potion requirements while making them easier to make... I run out of bagspace quickly enough as it is :(

Evalara · 10/25/06, 6:01 PM

Originally Posted by Dozer

Originally Posted by krucifix85

With the information Quigon provided on Saph, is Loatheb the only encounter in the zone where consumables are required for the kill?

Patchwerk definitely requires 2-4 flasks until you get to a gear level way beyond where the fight is in the zone.

I think that's it, though.

Not having attempted Patchwerk yet, permit a possibly ignorant question. Is it not the case that all physical dps needs to stack Mongoose/Giants/Firewater/etc as appropriate, and casters Greater Arcane Elixir/Elixir of [School]Power/Brilliant Wizard Oil/Flask of Supreme Power? Particularly if you lack dps slots with full AQ40 armor sets and the best pre-Naxx weapons? The stuff that I've read and the videos I've watched have been along these lines.

Daboran · 10/25/06, 6:42 PM

Originally Posted by Evalara

Not having attempted Patchwerk yet, permit a possibly ignorant question. Is it not the case that all physical dps needs to stack Mongoose/Giants/Firewater/etc as appropriate, and casters Greater Arcane Elixir/Elixir of [School]Power/Brilliant Wizard Oil/Flask of Supreme Power? Particularly if you lack dps slots with full AQ40 armor sets and the best pre-Naxx weapons? The stuff that I've read and the videos I've watched have been along these lines.

We killed him recently for the first time and are probably in a similar position to you. We are a little way from having the raid fully kitted in top-line gear so we went overboard and buffed the raid to the max. Killed him with 20secs to spare and all healers oom, so yes I'm afraid many Dreamfoil plants will die for your cause on this one.

Kalman · 10/25/06, 7:25 PM

Originally Posted by Evalara

Originally Posted by Dozer

Originally Posted by krucifix85

With the information Quigon provided on Saph, is Loatheb the only encounter in the zone where consumables are required for the kill?

Patchwerk definitely requires 2-4 flasks until you get to a gear level way beyond where the fight is in the zone.

I think that's it, though.

Not having attempted Patchwerk yet, permit a possibly ignorant question. Is it not the case that all physical dps needs to stack Mongoose/Giants/Firewater/etc as appropriate, and casters Greater Arcane Elixir/Elixir of [School]Power/Brilliant Wizard Oil/Flask of Supreme Power? Particularly if you lack dps slots with full AQ40 armor sets and the best pre-Naxx weapons? The stuff that I've read and the videos I've watched have been along these lines.

At first? Yes.

But we're sitting at the point where without flasking casters, and with melee generally only using Mongoose/Giants, we're seeing 5 minute kills. We could probably skip the buffs beyond the flasks/stoneshield for our tanks at this point without worrying too much about hitting enrage.