Warning for Blacksen: 4. Whining in any form is forbidden.

• Vykromond · 11/20/09, 3:10 PM

Post: Icecrown Citadel "Gating" system
User: Blacksen
Infraction: 4. Whining in any form is forbidden.
Points: 0

Administrative Note:

Message to User:

If I use bold text excessively it will make my whiny post less annoying and more forceful and convincing. I also like underlining for the same reason.

Original Post:

I really dislike the direction that Blizzard is going with these encounters...

For Ulduar (and Sartharion), the hard mode concept seemed to be really working. General Vezax, XT-002 Deconstructor, Flame Leviathan, Mimiron, Yogg-Sarion, Iron Council - the hardmodes were drastically different fights. Each one took a completely different approach to the fight than their corresponding normal modes, and that's what made them unique. The mechanics, mindset, and tactics all changed.

Then came Trial of the Crusader. Hard modes here were just stupid. The fights were almost identical save for maybe 1-2 changes. You approached the fight in the same way and the only thing that changed was the necessity for perfect execution. The standards, however, did not change. The standard for perfect execution in the normal modes are identical to the standard of perfect execution in the hard modes.

Algalon was also a pretty massive flop. Most guilds killed Algalon in 5-6 hours of raiding. When I was in Ulduar, my guild spent 7 hours on normal mode Mimiron. We spent 5 hours 51 minutes on Algalon. Isn't that a pretty f***ed up paradigm? A normal mode fight takes more hours to learn than a gated hard mode fight? While Algalon was hard, the fact that it was so easy to learn is just depressing.

Hard fights should take hours to learn. You should have raid weeks where over 60% of your week is spent wiping on the same encounter. That's proof enough that the fight was challenging.

By forcing guilds to use only 5 attemtps per week, they're also setting up an idea that the average "good" raiding guild will down the boss in 25 attempts. For many guilds, that's one night of raiding. Now, apply that same standard to the best "hardmode" fights designed in all of raiding - Yogg-Saronx0, Mimiron Hard, M'uru, Kil'Jaeden, even Archimonde. Imagine if these fights had been tuned to be done in 5 weeks with 5 attempts per week. Imagine how much they would need to be nerfed to get to that point.