World of Warcraft

[Greywolf2375]

The trick with the whirlwind boss in Vortex Pinnacle is that the whirlwinds move in a very limited triangular pattern. After watching one for a few seconds, you can be pretty sure of safe areas around it and camp out.

The only part of that fight I don't like is that the vortex can spawn at the pull underneath someone so they never even have the chance to avoid it - that's a pain, but other than that keep the camera angle at 60 degrees or so and win.

[Fez]

Gotta say, I really do dislike Outland. Maybe the endgame there was fun, but I'll not be seeing it of course. Just trying to get through it so I can get to Northrend (its 68 to quest there right?). Outland obviously was not updated in Cata and as such it still has all the old problems that I didn't like, like quests all being random kill/gather quests without any sort of interesting story to tie it together or any really different quests to shake things up a bit. Quite simply Outland just doesn't do a good enough job of disguising the grind and making it fun. Just hit 65 though, so at least I am getting through it.

[Arakasi]

Yeah the trash in ToT is awful. And the hardest hitting mob I think in all of the heroics are the stupid single pulls in BRC. They hit annoyingly hard.

[Slurktan]

Anyone else getting a weird "Launcher unable to connect to patch server" error?

I assume it is because the patch server's are down for maintenance or something. still pretty odd though.

It seems to be due to the maintenance. I get that message but I can get to the login screen still by using wow.exe instead of the launcher. However it won't let me connect in there.

[Lyanna Stark]

Yeah the trash in ToT is awful. And the hardest hitting mob I think in all of the heroics are the stupid single pulls in BRC. They hit annoyingly hard.

Yeah, those are pretty brutal, but once you've done it once as a healer you can cycle CDs and smash out some burst. They don't last long, so it's normally ok.

The duo AoE cieling throwing bastard old god minions in TotT tho, ARRRRGGGH. I just cannot figure out a good way to heal that pull without dying and Angel form healing it. The single ones we can kite, but the double is terrible, even with CDs used. Also, the chemical elemental gauntlet is suck with stacking diseases. It's too bad, cos the rest of the instance is a breeze.

Commander Springvale in SFK hits like a truck, has adds and is in general about twice as annoying as any other HC fight, including the abomination that is Altarius.

Whomever mentioned cyclones spawning on you: this has happened to me. Not only did one spawn ON me, I then got chain punted 4 times and chucked off the platform. Cue wipe cos no healer at all. I carry a deep loathing for that dumb dragon.

[Inigima]

Inigma I can only guess that you never played during the TBC era. Heroics there were definitely hard. If you think Cata is hard compared to LK, just think of another step just as big up as LK was to Cata and do that again and that was TBC. Heroics were punishing as hell and if you weren't prepared you wiped.

This is a pretty good guess since I've already said I started during Wrath.

Basically the problem is that LK was a bad expansion. It taught players to be crappy players. And you're going to have to unlearn a bunch of skills/assumptions you learned from the content there. Just think of it like a job. If you have a job that teaches you to do crappy work and doesn't expect anything from you, your skills atrophy. And that is what happened here. I know you are sad since you did feel like hot shit before, but it was because all you needed in any LK fight was a decent tank and healer. The DPS for the most part could auto attack and you'd never have an issue. Not to mention that the ICC 5 mans, as much as I love the atmosphere of them, threw epics at you like candy for a baby.

Now you're being ridiculous. The DPS requirements for LK weren't stratospheric and you could easily carry a person or two but most of you have to know what you're doing. Hell, any single person fucking up Defile risked a wipe.

The ICC 5mans did give out epic gear pretty easily, but to me there were good reasons for it. One, those were much tougher than any of the previous dungeons, and it was very possible to encounter difficulties due to Overlord's Brand or Mirrored Soul. Two, they were added late, so fresh 80s could gear up quickly to do the current raid content so that people would actually get to run content people still care about. I geared my first character up slowly, the traditional way, because that and the devaluation of Triumph emblems hadn't been added yet, but I have several alts and it was really fucking nice not to have to go through that bullshit for every alt.

I am glad Blizzard is finally expecting players to be good again, that face rolling isn't enough anymore. I understand your complain on Halls being longer, but it is not that bad. Ever do BRD back in the old days? That's a 4 hour clear if you don't wipe much. And Halls is the one instance out of what, 7 (or 9 if you include DM/SFK) that is somewhat long. And it is not even that long. You should not be taking 2 hours in there. Maybe 80 minutes tops.

Did Blackrock Depths used to be longer? I've run it many times at-level and it doesn't take that long, provided you know where you're going. And none of it is that difficult.

[Greywolf2375]

Yeah, those are pretty brutal, but once you've done it once as a healer you can cycle CDs and smash out some burst. They don't last long, so it's normally ok.

The duo AoE cieling throwing bastard old god minions in TotT tho, ARRRRGGGH. I just cannot figure out a good way to heal that pull without dying and Angel form healing it. The single ones we can kite, but the double is terrible, even with CDs used. Also, the chemical elemental gauntlet is suck with stacking diseases. It's too bad, cos the rest of the instance is a breeze.

Commander Springvale in SFK hits like a truck, has adds and is in general about twice as annoying as any other HC fight, including the abomination that is Altarius.

Whomever mentioned cyclones spawning on you: this has happened to me. Not only did one spawn ON me, I then got chain punted 4 times and chucked off the platform. Cue wipe cos no healer at all. I carry a deep loathing for that dumb dragon.

Yep - if I get caught by a vortex in the fight, fine - my bad; but if I never even get the chance and get gibbed because I got chained off the platform in the first 5 seconds...that sucks.

What we've done for the two old god faceless thingamajigs is have the priest levitate everyone and I will tank them with my back to the boss in the next room. the levitate lets you "run" in the air when you're getting dropped so you outrange the ground pound effect.

We were kinda hoping for an achievement last night when we did that gauntlet without anyone dying.

For the elemental gauntlet, we've pulled at the bottom of the stairs, kited to just in front of the little pond. Run to the next large mob, spin around so the tank is facing back down the hall from where ya came and kite a little to get away from the pond. For the last two reverse it - tank is the only one in the hallway, everyone else is in the last bosses room/doorway.

[TerraPrime]

Did Blackrock Depths used to be longer? I've run it many times at-level and it doesn't take that long, provided you know where you're going. And none of it is that difficult.

BRD was re-structured in one of the pre-Cata patches. So depends on when you ran it, yes, it used to be a much bigger pain in the ass.

[Mack Kilimaro]

Did Blackrock Depths used to be longer? I've run it many times at-level and it doesn't take that long, provided you know where you're going. And none of it is that difficult.

Keep in mind that you've only experienced Blackrock Depths since the advent of heirloom gear, improved quest drops at low levels, and the Dungeon Finder. Most of the people you've played Blackrock Depths with have been playing WOW for quite a while, I would imagine. Back in the vanilla days, you were limited to what you could PUG on your own server, and way, way back in the day your only means of trying to assemble that group were either general/trade chat in cities or (at the times it existed) the LookingForGroup channel.

The people who were raiding were already beyond Blackrock Depths and you were probably thrown in there (if you even got a group going) with people who were leveling their first character to 60, who didn't really know how to play, and they certainly didn't know their way through the instance, because of course there were no maps back then either. Not to mention that once you did get the group together, you had to wait for two people to get to the summon stone to get everyone else there, then fight through all the guys outside the instance (who used to be elite) with retards who weren't paying attention, possibly had shitty agility/spirit cloth gear because that's what Blizzard had in the game at the time, and were likely to die.

Meanwhile, of the myriad quests you could have possibly gotten in BRD, your five-man party was guaranteed to have people on three different quests, none of which necessitated going to the same area of the instance, so you'd be spending time with people arguing over what to do first. Some douche might leave once he got his thing finished, and there was no quick dungeon tool to slap a pug from any other realm to fill out your group. Someone had to hearth back to the city to spam general/trade again, and then if you didn't have a warlock, everyone else had to run back out to the stone, and then eventually trash would start respawning...

[Arakasi]

Lyanna:

Springvale was the guy we cheesed. I could see how he could be hard, but the way to do that is to just pull him and fight him out in the courtyard. That way at most one mob will make it to you by the time the boss dies. And you can ignore that add pretty much by just CC'ing the first guy through the door. I didn't notice him being a particularly tough hitter though. If I had to make a short list of hard hitting bosses. The croc guy from TV hurts decently now, especially with all the croc damage added in. So does the third boss there. Not a lot of other really hard hitting bosses I can think of. TV isn't that bad but I'd say it has 3 bosses higher on the DPS output side. (heck the first guy is no wimp either)

Altarius I didn't mind that much other than the obligatory first wipe because the tornadoes don't really move, they just are kinda there. They certainly don't chase you. Now the first boss of ToT. I hate that girl.

Inigma:

I was talking about 5 mans. Not raiding since I never did any LK raiding. Although from all I've heard/read, after Ulduar it was stupidly easy, although Arthas was tough, especially on heroic. I did do a lot of raiding in TBC at topend, and there were a lot of tough fights there. General idea among raiders though is that LK's raid content was too inconsistent and in ways too trivial, especially after Ulduar which a lot of people liked a lot. ToC and most of IC were mediocre.

But on to 5 mans yes they were a joke, I remember the last guy in Pit of Saron, actually you mentioned it with Overlord's Brand. He has that mechanic to put a debuff on a target which transfers dmg to the tank if you keep dps'ing. When I first leveled in LK I was a rogue and my wife a tank druid. I never stopped dps'ing on that fight ever when trying to farm the stupid dps neck, and it never killed her. Now we have fights like the bitch in ToT that if you don't interrupt her shock spell your tank pretty much instantly dies. The third guy in SC has what two mechanics you have to dodge/avoid or it instantly kills you.

What they changed now is that those things from LK instances there were abilities or tactics you could use to avoid damage. If you did them it helped but they weren't necessary. Now if you don't do these things on heroic you die instantly. Stand in the fire in LK, oww you take some damage. Stand in the fire now, you're dead in under 2 seconds. The thing that mitigates this somewhat is in Cata the party spends a lot less of the time at full health. Even as a tank there are times when I'm at 50% for long periods. Mob damage output isn't that huge, but special ability damage is off the charts. And if you don't deal with it (and nearly every fight has 1-2 of it) you die. In LK you took a lot of damage but since healers had tons of mana and their output was ridiculous, you would drop to low and then pop right back up to full right after.

I'm glad they didn't go as far as TBC tuning (which Lyanna talked about) but I'm thankful the instances are actually difficult again. It was boring as hell that after my first day of heroics in LK I never had to use my brain again.

[Arakasi]

Oh and yeah like people said BRD was much longer. It was just of course one instance (not sure what it is like now tbh, I did do it a couple times leveling in LK though). There is something like 22 bosses there, as well as two different ways of progressing through it that really don't work well together. And there are some genuinely annoying parts (like not having good AOE for the Lyceum) And many different quests, especially if Alliance and working on the Ony key chain. The point is it is just long, very long. Even for a group that played together and such it was still a multiple hour affair. Not difficult if you were 60 and had any good gear, but always time consuming.

[Inigima]

Oh and yeah like people said BRD was much longer. It was just of course one instance (not sure what it is like now tbh, I did do it a couple times leveling in LK though). There is something like 22 bosses there, as well as two different ways of progressing through it that really don't work well together. And there are some genuinely annoying parts (like not having good AOE for the Lyceum) And many different quests, especially if Alliance and working on the Ony key chain. The point is it is just long, very long. Even for a group that played together and such it was still a multiple hour affair. Not difficult if you were 60 and had any good gear, but always time consuming.

It is still just one instance. The dungeon finder breaks it into two pieces, but one is like five minutes long and one is the rest of the dungeon. I've cleared the entire place with pubs in... Maybe an hour? At-level, so low- to mid-50s. You have to have at least one person who knows how things work though, or you'll wander for ages.

What I got out of your other post is that you shit-talked the difficulty of fights you've never done, which doesn't make me particularly inclined to listen to anything else you say. And yes, once some of your group outgears content, like the ICC 5-mans, it becomes trivial. That's not news to anyone and it will eventually happen to Cataclysm content too.

As for your comments on Cataclysm dungeons, you are wrong about H Altairus' tornadoes. I assure you they move. The first boss in H ToT is also trivial if you have one DPS capable of CCing one of the caster adds who isn't asleep at the wheel.

Mack, you make a good point about what dungeon grouping, especially for low-level dungeons, used to be like. Amazing how fast you forget the bad old days.

[Lyanna Stark]

Lyanna:

Springvale was the guy we cheesed. I could see how he could be hard, but the way to do that is to just pull him and fight him out in the courtyard. That way at most one mob will make it to you by the time the boss dies. And you can ignore that add pretty much by just CC'ing the first guy through the door. I didn't notice him being a particularly tough hitter though. If I had to make a short list of hard hitting bosses. The croc guy from TV hurts decently now, especially with all the croc damage added in. So does the third boss there. Not a lot of other really hard hitting bosses I can think of. TV isn't that bad but I'd say it has 3 bosses higher on the DPS output side. (heck the first guy is no wimp either)

Altarius I didn't mind that much other than the obligatory first wipe because the tornadoes don't really move, they just are kinda there. They certainly don't chase you. Now the first boss of ToT. I hate that girl.

Ah yeah, the tornadoes on Lady thingiemajig can be really annoying. I've learnt to avoid them, mostly, and DPS can heal themselves with LOLwell keeping the pressure off me there quite well.

Springvale is so far the hardest HC boss I have healed as we did it the non cheese way. Loads of adds and with adds + him I hard oomed like three times and we had to go on tank CDs and DPS self heals until I suicided. The Croc boss is annoying mostly because of the poison debuff and random DPS getting zerged by the crocs. A pala tank is really easy to heal here as they can cleanse themselves which saves a lot of mana and healing.

Inigma:

I was talking about 5 mans. Not raiding since I never did any LK raiding. Although from all I've heard/read, after Ulduar it was stupidly easy, although Arthas was tough, especially on heroic. I did do a lot of raiding in TBC at topend, and there were a lot of tough fights there. General idea among raiders though is that LK's raid content was too inconsistent and in ways too trivial, especially after Ulduar which a lot of people liked a lot. ToC and most of IC were mediocre.

But on to 5 mans yes they were a joke, I remember the last guy in Pit of Saron, actually you mentioned it with Overlord's Brand. He has that mechanic to put a debuff on a target which transfers dmg to the tank if you keep dps'ing. When I first leveled in LK I was a rogue and my wife a tank druid. I never stopped dps'ing on that fight ever when trying to farm the stupid dps neck, and it never killed her. Now we have fights like the bitch in ToT that if you don't interrupt her shock spell your tank pretty much instantly dies. The third guy in SC has what two mechanics you have to dodge/avoid or it instantly kills you.

What they changed now is that those things from LK instances there were abilities or tactics you could use to avoid damage. If you did them it helped but they weren't necessary. Now if you don't do these things on heroic you die instantly. Stand in the fire in LK, oww you take some damage. Stand in the fire now, you're dead in under 2 seconds. The thing that mitigates this somewhat is in Cata the party spends a lot less of the time at full health. Even as a tank there are times when I'm at 50% for long periods. Mob damage output isn't that huge, but special ability damage is off the charts. And if you don't deal with it (and nearly every fight has 1-2 of it) you die. In LK you took a lot of damage but since healers had tons of mana and their output was ridiculous, you would drop to low and then pop right back up to full right after.

I'm glad they didn't go as far as TBC tuning (which Lyanna talked about) but I'm thankful the instances are actually difficult again. It was boring as hell that after my first day of heroics in LK I never had to use my brain again.

Yeah I think they have reached a fairly good average. No HCs are so hard nobody wants to go there, and none are a complete cake walk (due to Altarius).

Only LK HC that was actually hard was Halls of Reflection were we actually wiped!! :P And when you did ach runs in T7. Ulduar was an excellent raid instance made of pure win, and Yogg Saron an epic fight. Actually, Vezax was also pretty epic. First time you tried Mimiron hard mode is also something I will never forget. :)

The rest of the expansion....Sindragosa was more annoying and painful than hard, only LK and HM PP were really hard in ICC. And stupid Saurfang cos we had completely the wrong raid setup for him. Took us literally years to get him down. We'd taken Putricide before him I think, which just shows how weird his tuning was for ten mans who didn't have a pala.

TBC raiding was....extremely hard, to start with. And I mean, far harder than Cata raiding. The DPS requirements for pre-nerf Gruul, Magtheridon and some fights in SSC and TK were bizarre. I never tried it myself, but apparently pre-nerf Solarian was near unkillable, for instance, even for the totally leet uber guilds.

At least now, the hard core guilds have killed all the hard modes. Altho it took them a little bit longer than the 3 hours or something they cleared Naxx in after Wrath was released. :P

[Arataniello]

The Croc boss is annoying mostly because of the poison debuff and random DPS getting zerged by the crocs. A pala tank is really easy to heal here as they can cleanse themselves which saves a lot of mana and healing.

Or the entire encounter can be cheesed by having the ranged and heals jump up onto one of the several crocodile statues that are around the area. The adds that spawn then cannot reach those party members, and if you tank Lockmaw right beside the statue, will be picked up by the tank as a matter of course. It makes this encounter much simpler on heroic.

[Arakasi]

Do I really need to experience every fight in the game to comment about it? I did most of the fights in vanilla and TBC, so wouldn't that make you not worth listening to by your logic? No what I did do was participate in both forums that discussed the game as well as talked to my friends who kept playing after I quit in TBC and followed up with them as they worked their way through LK. And every damn one of them thought it was worse. The fights weren't as fun, they were too easy even on heroic modes and ToC sucked completely in all ways. The one good thing they had to say was Ulduar was good and they were sad it got replaced too early by ToC.

I'm sorry that you get all defensive that TBC raid content was better than LK. But it is, and that is 100% fact. The fights were more interesting and that is mainly because they were more difficult and challenging. And that in the end is the name of this game to me. If I can sleepwalk my way through content then it is not much fun. When you talked about feeling like total hot before and total shit now, well that wasn't true. You're still the same player, it is just that the content is requiring more from you. I do agree that instance content will get trivial over time, but other than Halls of Reflection no LK heroics were ever difficult.

As for BRD, it's really hard to describe to someone who didn't do it in its original configuration, with the gear and toons that were available at the time. It was a totally different game then (this was pre TBC) and it was a long long dungeon that was very hard to get PUGs for due to the difficulties others have explained. Things like gear itemization, talent changes (at mid 50s now players had 41 point talents, back then they were much more nerfed) and tuning of the instance itself has made it easier and shorter.

[Inigima]

Do I really need to experience every fight in the game to comment about it? I did most of the fights in vanilla and TBC, so wouldn't that make you not worth listening to by your logic?

You do if you want to spout off about how easy they are. And no, it doesn't, because I didn't make any claims about vanilla or TBC content or contrast them with Wrath or Cata, do I really have to explain this?

I'm sorry that you get all defensive that TBC raid content was better than LK.

Didn't say that or make any comparative quality judgments whatsoever between them.

All that happened is that you said some things that weren't true and I told you they weren't true and you got your panties in a bunch and tried to defend yourself by putting words in my mouth. I wasn't even mean about it. I don't know what your problem is but it's getting old fast.

[RaceBannon42]

Heroic Anub on 25 was a bitch.

[The Winged Shadow]

Just get dual spec if you plan on grinding and doing dungeons :) It costs like 60G these days. Mutilate is the best for PvE with sub and strangely also combat waaay down. With a proper rotation and some stat allocation changes (reforge is FTW) I am sure you will shoot right up there :)

Rogues are really viable right now and quite in demand due to nice CC, stuns, interrupts, AoE avoidance, self heals and FoK. In addition to nice DPS as well!

Oh, I already have dual spec and it is Assassination. I just enjoy Subtlety more as it is more challenging, fun and forces me to work harder. It's just that in regular dungeons I was topping meters with Sub and didn't feel like I was bringing the group down. But in heroics that is no longer the case so it sucks that I might have to ditch it if the shitty dps continues. But I am going to optimise my gear and stats before I ditch it for Assassination.

According to the Blizzard, they weren't seeing enough Sub Rogues. So if their data set is really that small, maybe even my shitty parses will help with identifying issues with the spec :P.

Heroic Anub on 25 was a bitch.

That's an understatement if your old posts, when you were going for the kill, is anything to go by. :lol:

[Lyanna Stark]

Heroic Anub on 25 was a bitch.

Yeah, that was, from what I understand, one weird fight. Ten man wasn't as bad but 25 man seems harder than anything in ICC bar LK HM (and maybe Sindy and PP).

Our former (more leet) guild cleared ICC 25 before they killed Anub Heroic 25 btw. :P

[Arakasi]

I said three things basically:

1) Lich King Heroics were the easiest heroics we've had and are pretty trivial.

2) BRD used to be a multi hour clear back in classic.

3) Lich King raids were easier than TBC/Classic raids. (easily proven by the completion numbers on the content. More people completed the LK instances, one because normal/heroic modes and 2 because heroic mode was still easier than fights in TBC)

Since none of these statements is actually false I really don't see your point.