Hunters: Soloing old instances for fun and profit - Page 72

Tydas · 07/13/12, 1:58 PM

Originally Posted by japp1egate

Odd query - I've seen a number of folks' videos on soloing Sunwell Plateau bosses, but I've never seen anyone working on the trash. Is the trash in Sunwell too big of a pain in the arse to work through, or do people just really prefer the bosses? Yeah, I understand that bosses are the meat-and-potatoes of any raid instance, but I'd like to know how best to deal with (i.e. eliminate) trash packs, too.

I guess you're being killed by the Sunblade Slayers which use Slaying Shot, dealing life% damages. So regardless of your level or HP, you'll get highly damaged.
You can still manage to kill theses packs of trash with an easy trick.
First, put your turtle far away (behind a wall is the best, to LoS), then place all your traps ( ice, explosive and snake ) on the path that the trash are gonna take when you'll MD on your turtle. Now MD on your pet with a multishot.
As they run at your pet ( which is on passive ), just burst the Sunblade Slayer with chimera shot and few arcane shot.
Now that the Slayer is dead that's prety much easy to beat.

Arcane36 · 07/25/12, 6:22 AM

The dark times are coming Old raid gold nerfs - Forums - World of Warcraft

according to blizzard:

In general, enemies in raids and dungeons drop significantly more gold than outdoor foes, specifically because we are assuming that the gold is going to be split 5, 10, or 25 ways. As player power rises over time, it obviously becomes possible to complete old content with significantly fewer players, such that the gold rewards become disproportionately high.

In the past, our only solution was to drastically reduce the gold dropped by legacy content across the board (e.g., Magtheridon, much of Karazhan, etc.). In Mists, we have a new system in place that normalizes gold yield based on the number of players involved in the kill. If a Black Temple enemy drops 100 gold today on live, and you kill it with a 25-player raid group in Mists, it'll also drop 100 gold and each player will get 4 gold. If you solo Black Temple, that enemy will also give you 4 gold. If you do it with 4 friends, it'll drop 20 gold and each of you will get 4.

In other words, the gold obtained from killing raid or dungeon creatures no longer depends upon how many people you bring, or do not bring, with you. This system does not apply to anything in the outdoor world.

If this is the case, will the original gold values of the bosses in Gruul's Lair, Magtheridon's Lair and Karazhan be restored so groups will once again get more gold from the boss than from a single trash mob?
Yes.

I personally hate this decision.

Steevnash · 07/25/12, 11:53 AM

yeah I don't really get it. For the time invested, going back and solo'ing all the old raids is lucrative, but only moderately so. You could easily make more money using professions and being crafty with the AH.

I guess what makes gold coming from raid bosses OP is that it's actually fun. Spending 3 hours solo'ing old content is far "easier" than spending 3 hours gathering and crafting items for the AH, even though professions will net you more income, since for the most part Proffs this late in an expansion are boring.

If something like BWL was repeatable I can MAYBE see this making sense, but since that's not the case... I just don't see the point.

Caribald · 07/26/12, 8:16 PM

Repeating what I said on MMO-champion forums - I think it does make sense to moderate gold drops from old bosses. In my opinion the best way to do so is to have thee previous expansion's bosses drop good amounts of gold before a bit less and so on, so that vanilla bosses would drop near nothing in mop.

A great example for MoP would, in my opinion, be:

← Click Here

For the next expansion, each expansion would move 1 slot down, and Vanilla would "create a new slot" in which the gold drops are even less than 25g. The new 'current' expansion would then still drop 500g in 10 man and 1250g in 25 man. Again, these are just examples, and the numbers could easily be tweaked, but I feel consistency would make it easier to understand and at the same time the gold drops reasonable.

← Click Here

Having each boss drop x gold per player instead of a set amount shared by however many players you are makes it so that there is no reason to kill a boss again after you kill it solo for the first time. Those who like to solo will still do it for the challenge, but after killing something for the first time, there is no reason to go back and do it again. Why would I do Ulduar if bosses drop 10 gold each for me and I've done everything there is to do? It's boring enough as it is now, but the gold drops at least kept me doing it for several resets after being able to do full clears. With this change, I would probably do it once and then never come back.

Natural20 · 07/27/12, 6:33 PM

I do wish I had a U.S. account so I could reply to the thread.

I only recently came back to WoW, but soloing old content has been some of the most fun that I've had. It's also just been, as Steve said, the most fun way I've found to earn money (That I almost always burn on repairs for progression)

In examining Blizzard's decision, you have to look at the alleged problem and figure out if the prospective solutiond deals with it and whether it's via the least restrictive means.

The problem is apparently that people go back to old instances and earn disproportionately high money by soloing them. That's understandable and is a problem, going back to BWL and farming up 1600g inside 15 minutes at level 90 will be ridiculous. To be clear, it's incredibly unlikely that soloers are having a large economic impact. I would be seriously surprised if we were causing inflation of anywhere near 1% on our own. Certainly not enough to be noticeable (or meaningful) to your average player. (I would give anything for significant economic data on WoW, I'd have a field day with that)

To be fair, the solution presented does resolve the problem, the issue is that it's in no way the least restrictive way of doing it, since it kills a really fun way to earn money in the game for a lot of us. I've been able to keep playing WoW primarily because when I earn money for raiding it doesn't burn me out, unlike grinding out professions, or playing the AH. (I've done both in my time, I was very good at the latter)

I don't see what's so painful about implementing a solution that keeps gold gain from soloing viable but below the maximum possible, and capped as it is right now, the only excuse I can see is that monitoring it and nerfing every expansion would take development resources. But the solution Caribald posts just annihilates that problem.

In short, while the problem exists, the solution is painfully inappropriate.

Caribald · 07/28/12, 4:43 AM

Originally Posted by Natural20

I do wish I had a U.S. account so I could reply to the thread.

[...]

But the solution Caribald posts just annihilates that problem.

Thanks

I don't have a US account either, but if someone wants to post that, they have my consent.

The announcement of the gold nerf got me thinking, and I'm going to do a speedrun where I clear almost everything that is possible for hunters to solo. Of course you have some bosses in ICC that are soloable but gunship would stop the soloing part, so ideally I will clear tier 1-9 + Marrowgar and Deathwhisper (ToC depends on Faction Champions). If I can get friends to help I could clear gunship, Blood wing and Valithria with them, and then solo everything else. I would calculate gold/hour for every instance, every boss etc., and perhaps make a timelapsed video of it. I think it would be a cool way for me to wrap up Cataclysm. Sadly, I don't have heroic Deathwing bow (my guild hasn't been raiding since D3 release (that doesn't mean we won't raid in MoP)). If I had it, I would attempt heroic Festergut, but then again, for the speedrun I would probably do everything on 10 man normal and only loot bosses.

Since I haven't been clearing the bosses every week, I will practice the run now. I will most likely wipe on Algalon and possibly other bosses, but as I want to do a speedrun, a perfect clear would be awesome, just to see how fast it can be done. If anyone wants to tune in I will begin streaming my practice clear on my stream channel in a little while.

Edit: I finished the solo run, VoDs can be found on the stream channel. I spent over 15 hours, but some of that was progress in Ruby Sanctum. I killed the third miniboss, General Zarithrian (video coming up soon), which I believe is a first. I killed the other two minibosses solo as well, but I did that a long time ago. The third one is definitely harder. Once you learn the strategy it's pretty straight forward, but it takes good execution. He puts a debuff that removes 20% armor, stacking 5 times. That makes his damage unhealable, so you must put pet on hold position while using Distracting Shot. He has Intimidating Roar though, which stuns for 3 or 4 seconds, so sometimes, if you're not careful, you will get hit by him in melee, or he will reach pet again before debuff is gone. He also spawns adds, which are CCable, but you'll want to kill them before the next add wave shows up. They cast Lava Gout which is a single target spell, and blast wave which does aoe to a large area (not sure if it reaches the entire room). Kill them asap to get rid of raid damage (about 200k hp each). I used a survival spec with Spirit Bond, but Marksmanship would work as well, and probably be a lot easier due to selfhealing.
I also made videos for best Halion heroic try (showing how phase 2 does too much damage and how to get through phase 1), soloing Shadron and killing Maulgar quickly:

General Zarithrian solo video
Getting through phase 1 on heroic Halion
Soloing Shadron on 10 man
High King Maulgar speed kill

Durendil · 08/06/12, 5:01 PM

Actually, I killed Zarithrian about two months ago to try Halion, however I resetted the adds, so it's definitely a hunter bugfree worldfirst.
Still angry about the money nerfs, seems blizard only takes interest in soloing when something needs to be nerfed.
By the way, have they finished programming pets on the beta, or do they still have 100k health and passives that don't work? for the moment, hunter changes on the beta seem to indicate a nice buff to soloing (espacially if you consider that you will be able to solo in any spec as long as spirit bond is enough to heal you), but if the new pet scaling reduces pet health by too much, it could be problematic.

Steevnash · 08/07/12, 4:13 PM

Live Stats:

Hunter: 162k health
Pet: 148k health
Stam: 8800

Pet Armor: 29,000 for 52% damage reduction
Pet Resistance: 85 for 13% damage reduction
Mend Pet Ticks: 18.4k

Beta Stats:

Hunter: 146k Health
Pet: 115k Health
Stam: 7400

Pet Armor: 17,000 for 39% damage reduction
Pet Resistance: 0 for 0% damage reduction
Mend Pet Ticks: 14.5k

Health drops a ton from losing 240 stam from the Bow and they removed Hunter vs Wild. Rest is just Blizzard telling us we can't have any more fun.

Caribald · 08/07/12, 10:04 PM

Originally Posted by Steevnash

Live Stats:

Hunter: 162k health
Pet: 148k health
Stam: 8800

Pet Armor: 29,000 for 52% damage reduction
Pet Resistance: 85 for 13% damage reduction
Mend Pet Ticks: 18.4k

Beta Stats:

Hunter: 146k Health
Pet: 115k Health
Stam: 7400

Pet Armor: 17,000 for 39% damage reduction
Pet Resistance: 0 for 0% damage reduction
Mend Pet Ticks: 14.5k

Health drops a ton from losing 240 stam from the Bow and they removed Hunter vs Wild. Rest is just Blizzard telling us we can't have any more fun.

Well to be fair, until we try soloing Cata raids at level 90, just looking at those numbers isn't telling us much. With resistance gone from the game, perhaps magic damaging abilities are properly adjusted to compensate. Maybe armor values will look more like they do now once we get level 90 gear with MoP armor values rather than cata ones. It would surprise me if the formulas didn't need any sort of tweaking for a new expansion.

In other, somewhat related news: Just started playing around a bit on the beta, and one thing I just noticed (don't know if this is common knowledge) is that Misdirection neither needs nor triggers a global cooldown - at least with MD glyphed and casting it on the pet. You can basically macro it into every ability without losing dps, and you'll never have to worry about threat again. Of course this might be changed before MoP goes live, but if it remains, it will have a tremendous impact on soloing. As an example, Lich King phase 1 would get SO much easier with this change, as you don't have to spend globals for misdirects, and on that part of the fight you are both tight on globals and need to never overaggro any adds, which spawn rather often.
Furthermore, this change makes Glyph of Misdirection an excellent glyph choice for levelling, as you lose absolutely nothing by casting MD, and it will prevent you from taking any damage whatsoever from mobs. I was going to say it's will keep mobs out of your melee range, but that obviously doesn't matter in MoP when we lose our minimum range.

Durendil · 08/08/12, 4:40 AM

Hmmm... That isn't a lot of pet health, but remember that even with 115k health, spirit bond should tick for 3220 every 2 seconds. So it won't be a gigantic loss.

However the low stats make me wonder if passives are really working (basically, have you checked if ferocity and tenacity pet had the same health and ar'mor?). If they are, better wait for level 90 before complaining, as Caribald explained.

However, I read pets would scale with dodge and parry from their master. It could be worth a try if you find a kind of recount that works in the beta to just let a boss melee him about 1000 times in each realm, then compare (Or I could do it myself once I'm back in Paris).
If misdirection change stays, I'd be glad.

Steevnash · 08/08/12, 11:46 AM

Yeah the 12% stam passive and 40% increased healing is working at the moment.

The nerfs obviously only effect the few weeks between the event patch and MoP live. Tactics will certainly need to be changed a bit for a boss like Onyxia. I can see Brutallus eating the beta pet alive, but again... only for a few weeks. After that it'll all be about as difficult as solo'ing RFC, and just as profitable too!

Durendil · 08/11/12, 6:10 AM

Forget about pets. I've just done some testing, and, for example, the armor increase passive isn't working. Also, ferocity pets have as much health as they did before, so they didn't change that. And last stand still doesn't work. So pets are still buggy

If anybody has a warlock on beta, it could be nice to check how pets evolve since they have the same troubles (also called beta - it's normal it's not finished) than we do.

Caribald · 08/13/12, 4:43 AM

Onyxia 25 down. I didn't use any add despawning, but I did use a trick that bunches all the whelps up on one spot when phase 2 started. Doing it after that is just messy due to the Onyxian Lair Guards, but it's very helpful on the first whelp spawn, which has many more whelps.

I entered Onyxia's Lair at 7:44:40 and she died at 10:34:47, so almost 3 hours from entering until I killed her. I wiped once because I ran out of bandages, and once because trash respawned and I got one of them into the fight.

I forgot to take a screenshot but I streamed it so I can link the vod. I'll make a video with music and post the link once it's done and uploaded to Youtube.

The kill took 20 minutes and 13 seconds, and I played 7/3/31 Survival with Spirit Bond. Survival is mandatory or your pet will die to whelps because you can't kill them fast enough. The other healing method is bandages, which can be used when you don't have aggro on anything in phase 2, and Onyxia either starts a deep breath or flies around the room (the next fireball will be on pet).

VoD: aRRoSC2 - World first hunter solo: CaribaLd vs Onyxia (25 man)
Youtube video: World first hunter solo: CaribaLd vs Onyxia (25 man) - YouTube (with more information about strategy, spec, gear etc.)

Edit: Didn't want to double post. The list of pre-cata bosses that are "impossible" for hunters to solo just shrunk from 6 to 5. I found a Death Knight who had soloed Blood-Queen Lana'thel, and what he did was Shadowmeld when she was about to bite, which made her bite the pet instead. Sure thing, the same thing works for us, also with Feign Death. However, the enrage is SUPER tight. I spent several attempts and went back and respecced to squeeze out a little more dps in order to be able to beat the enrage. Still, I heard her enrage emote go off the exact same time as she died. If I had the heroic MoD bow it would be a lot easier, but still, at 406.7 item level, Blood-Queen Lana'thel must be the most gear dependant encounter so far when it comes to hunter soloing. Since you never get bitten yourself, you never get double damage or lifesteal, so Marksmanship was necessary for the selfhealing. Even if I went survival and got 1 bandage tick off every minute (she has a damaging aura that ticks every 2 seconds), I would die before I could kill her, although one might be able to get her to 20% like that.

Give me some time to put on some music and I will upload it on my youtube channel, link will be edited into this post when it's up.

Youtube video: World first hunter solo: CaribaLd vs Blood-Queen Lana'thel - YouTube

Caribald · 08/16/12, 6:01 AM

Festergut 10 heroic down. Attempting Putricide and Sindragosa on heroic as well, streaming currently, video will be up later. aRRoSC2

Scrap Putricide, forgot about Plague... Sindragosa heroic is definitely possible though!

Maybe not, aura starts doing crazy damage in phase 2, but I got her on 10% so far... Gonna take some insane luck and maybe a heroic bow to get her down.

Sindragosa heroic down! Very hard but afterwards I've realized the way to survive. Description and video later.

Didn't mean to double post, it seems a post above mine was deleted!

Internet was down for 4 hours this morning, and now I can't highlight videos on twitch for some reason. Might take a while before I get to make the videos then. At least I could use the time to tidy up my room

Been slacking for a bit, will begin making the videos today but no stream before tomorrow!

Ugh, Heroic Festergut video finally up. Long video description explaining tactics and my problems making the video: World first solo (hunter): CaribaLd vs Festergut (10 man heroic) - YouTube

Aaand here we go, Heroic Sindragosa: World first hunter solo: CaribaLd vs Sindragosa (10 man heroic) - YouTube

Steevnash · 08/23/12, 11:57 AM

Originally Posted by Durendil

Forget about pets. I've just done some testing, and, for example, the armor increase passive isn't working. Also, ferocity pets have as much health as they did before, so they didn't change that. And last stand still doesn't work. So pets are still buggy

If anybody has a warlock on beta, it could be nice to check how pets evolve since they have the same troubles (also called beta - it's normal it's not finished) than we do.

Seems in one of the many recent new builds they've fixed both of those. The Armor Passive from Tenacity tree is pushing the armor all the way up to about 20.5k (44% damage reduction). As well as Last Stand is now functioning properly.