I'm playing on an EU realm, too. Maybe you ate the Fireball Barrage instead of the Smoking Blast? We had the same issue with a druid who thought the smoking blasts were hitting him for ~4k in spite of the fact that he was eating the Fireball Barrage.

No, it was definatly this:
20% damage reduction from armor (4000~), another 20% from barkskin reduced it too (3000~)

Was all pumped up after Gruul to get everyone else attuned with an 'easy' Nightbane and... t.t

We summed him before the hotfix was applied several times, and am unsure if that effected the hotfix being applied once we were in a saved instance, and he had been initialized before.

I would stop using abstract subjective descriptions when describing the gear quality of an MT. What exactly is "decently geared" or "over geared in my opinion" mean? Believe it or not, not every EJ poster is part of a guild that was farming KT at the end of WoW classic, and their opinion of what is and is not appropriate gear for a new encounter can vary widely.

That's most likely directed at me, and that's why I posted a link to his gear instead of just blindly stating an "abstract description". KT gear has nothing to do with TBC save maybe a few choice items. I'm gonna go on a limb and say you don't know the real value of said Naxx gear VS current options. There's so few items from Naxx that should be kept on a player at this point, even if you're not clearing Karazhan. Furthermore, if you're reading/posting in this thread, there's a good chance you have cleared it or are going to. I even described his gear in my post, but I guess thinking that 1Opera, 1Trash, 1Aran and 1Chess loot must be out of reach for those killing / attempting Nightbane, right? Please. For those saying Nightbane isn't really an end boss of Karazhan? There is a rep requirement to summoning him. Most guilds nowadays will probably have cleared the zone once before having the rep, whereas guilds that did it on beta / on release had many trash clears before "clearing" the zone. I dunno, I always felt Nightbane was epic and the hardest boss in the zone. The changes were pretty necessary, but the fight is underwhelming from the perspective it once was, especially considering it's necessity to attunement to SSC. That's just my opinion on where the fight stood/stands, it doesn't mean it's right or that Blizz feels the same way, obviously.

I mentioned KT because I think a lot of people on these boards assume every poster is a member of that top 2% guild that is on the bleeding edge of raid progression. For example, in wow classic the guilds that had KT on farm before expansion. Further, my comment was not directed solely at you, which is why I did not quote your post.

We went today to check Nightbane. We did not kill him before this fix, due to losing people at landing or smoking blast. It was late so we just wanted to see what is different in P2.

From what I saw. Smoking blast hit me for only 2.5 k, seemed toned down alot. The patch notes say that the skellies are now immune to magic, however I tried arcane fire and frost, and all worked. Are patch notes incorrect or was some random bug?


Edit:
3/9/07:
Nightbane - Removed magical immunity from skeletons and reduced damage from breath attack in flight.

My bad, only read the EU Forums, and had no idea.

Or this thread...

Since I referenced easy healing on the new NB, our tank has excellent gear. 4 t4, Chest off Nightbane, Heroic Shield, TF, he has 'perfect' gear available pre SSC apart from no Gruul or NB shield so his damage reduction would be a lot higher than a guild freshly at Nightbane.

Myself and the Shaman would have had Insp/Anc Fort up about 40% of the time, as well as prior stated Curse of Weakness + TF debuff.

The fight now feels pretty balanced although perhaps still a little too difficult given the ilvl of his loot. The only thing that still feels out of tune is the randomness of his initial fear in each phase. More than once we had him fear litterally *as* he was landing after an air phase which is problematic to say the least (I could almost swear that in one instance he was still in the air). Given the way Nightbane turns on turbo mode and dashes 40 yards to eat a ranged if the MT is feared for even a second, its rather annoying. Perhaps a minimum time period after he lands before he can fear.

Interesting perspective all around from these forums. Most surprised when Praet mentioned the healing on Nightbane was so difficult. We always run 4 healers on him with a shadow priest, so its been pretty easy going for us with little to no consumables. Prince phase 2 is about the same level of scary. I guess this just varies per guild, or perhaps tank gear style or healer composition more. Definitely varied perspectives being voiced here, quite interesting.

Yea I believe he is on the ground in the same way when you're swimming and you go to mine something, and the animation for the mine swing has you standing on an invisible platform. So he is on the "ground" but is about 2 feet over my head roughly. Needless to say, if he didnt fear right then the fight would just be tough on the MT, since when I decided to pre-emptively zerker he feared 25 seconds later or 5 seconds left on the CD. He managed to never fear when I pre emptively zerker'd, and feared twice when I didnt.

Well it works with ease on everything else in the zone, without any concerns about longevity or tank survival in the slightest. That's why I say Nightbane is still clearly a step or two above all other Kara bosses.

Just killed him, he's definitely still hitting hard and our tank quaffed a flask during one of the attempts due to that.

3 healers + shadowpriest can still be iffy, the healers will have plenty of mana, but the transition back to phase 1 can be dicey sometimes. I actually just dropped out of SF and ended up healing from 75% onward, although I had to pot out the ass to do it.

2 of 3 of the aspects that made Nightbane difficult are a joke now, smoking blast was hitting our Shaman (no paladin) for 1k-1.5k, priest for 2k but the Cearing Cinders debuff is still deadly if not dispelled, and skellies without immolation meant that total damage taken in phase 2 is at least halved AND they were easily killed before landing. Also, I think they changed the point at which his aggro resets on landing, as I was hit with a 4k heal no more than 3 seconds before he touched ground yes was able to grab him with only one heroic and shield slam. However he still dishes out the same amount of damage to the tank so the healer requirement imo is still 4.

But hey, I'm not complaining.

Edit: Damnit Snowy beat me.

How does a DPS warrior get feared? That's pretty weak on his part.

He went down on our first attempt yesterday, even tough we had 3 new people in our raid.
The skeletons are a joke and the reduced smoking blast damage can be healed from just one paladin.

I'm glad we managed to kill him pre-patch, now it's just free epics.

The fight only seems like a cakewalk because you had already done it in the overtuned form. Its current incarnation is still harder than anytihng else in the zone, and I think perfectly balanced for where it fits into the raid scheme as a gateway/attunement requirement. His loot is still bleh for his difficulty, but no longer absurdly so.

Speaking from the point of view of a guild that just reached Nightbane for the first time tonight (with two raids), this is exactly right. He's definitely a step above Malchezaar in difficulty. Shame about the loot table, but oh well.

We did him today and P2 is a hell of a lot easier now. As a pally tanking the smoking blast I was just chaining holy light on myself and it was more than enough healing to keep me up. Just make sure to have someone dispelling magic or the dot can stack up and it hurts. Having the five skeletons spawn every time wasn’t an issue now that both magic and melee are equally effective on them. Just make sure to assist and burn them.

Asside from P2 being easier the rest of the fight seems to be the same. Nightbane still does a lot of damage on your tank, we had our tank flasked and potted just to be sure. I feel that He's still the hardest boss in that zone by quite a margin, it's the only fight we have to pot up for.

I don’t recommend doing this fight without four healers.

Has anyone experienced issues with fear on landing since 3/9/07?

We got our first Nightbane kill tonight since taking the weekend off. He is definatly alot easier than before. We almost 1 shotted him. Killed him on our 3rd attempt tonight. We lost our paladin to a "landing" fear. (he landed, immidiatly feared the bear..blazed over clobbered the pally and blazed back over to the bear..all in under a second it seemed.)

All in all it seems like a pretty balanced encounter now. If you one of the few lucky raiding parties to have a dwarf or draenei priest (fucking fear ward) there is really no reason why you should have any problems on him. Since now fear is the only real -oh shit- factor to the fight. The skeletons are pretty easily dealt with, smoking breath was a non-issue now that its dmg is about half.

I was actually a little aggrivated i popped pots tonight for the kill. But i definatly agree with Strifen, its still the hardest fight in the zone.

We tried Nightbane for the first time last night on EU servers, he is now faking his fear (interupting it in the last second) making your tank waste berserker rage and running after someone who resisted fear instead when he casts it a bit later. Smoking Blast hits me in plate for 2.5k each second we had no chance at all to heal through this with 3 healers + a shadow priest. Getting less than 5 skeletons seems to be impossible too.

If this is how blizzard want's Nightbane to be they really need to tune the other encounters as they were a walk in the park compared to him.