The Random WoW Thread

[cowfields]

I wholeheartedly agree. I understand that I had much better gear going into WotLK (actually I had just about the best gear one could get in TBC for feral, bar 1 or 2 items), which was less of a gear reset than TBC was. So I guess I had it easier in the heroics.

But then this doesn't make it okay, WotLK should have been more of a gear reset so that you couldn't just brute force all the content. I guess they're in a difficult position: Naxx should really be harder than heroics, as it's a raid and the next step for gearing. Except they wanted the entry level raid to be super easy.

I think they're well enough designed in terms of tactics it's just that too many tactics (and often achievements associated) can just be brute forced. It's fine to make dps/healing requirements low, but it shouldn't be such that you don't have to 'run out of the fire'. The HoL end boss is an example. I went and was all ready to run out of his shockwave thing, but the healer said I could stand and take it (as a tank, mind) and I did. It hit for about 7k on a tank with about 40k health. Ignoring tactics like that should end up with you dying, like even tanking Murmur in Sunwell gear, taking the damage could still kill me if the healer wasn't super fast with their heals.

Edit: They shouldn't make them all hard. The beauty of TBC heroics was some were a bit tough, some were easy badges, and some were absolute horror. Like Shattered Halls or Old Hillsbrad. Then again they got nerfed later down the line, but the problem is they seem to only nerf content, they never want to make it harder.

[cowfields]

Hmm, I did it fine, but yes I was wearing a mix of T6 and northrend heroic gear etc. And yes it was a bit hairy sometimes. Tbh I dont really like many the heroics in Northrend because they all seem to dish out insane damage and yet people dont really have the stamina compared to it. I know its been said already, but I really do think DPS went up but stamina only increased half as much

Only when fully raid buffed and gemmed for stamina at the end of TBC I had maybe 25k health in bearform, usually closer to 21-22k

In the first tier of content our Bear tank (mine isn't really gemmed and enchanted properly for tanking anymore) has about 50k

He wore all his stam gear and got fully raid buffed and popped survival instincts and he had over 70k health

Maybe it's just druids but even in catgear I seem to have quite a lot of health.

[George Clooney]

While I haven't done loads of heroics yet, the ones I have done have been easier than I thought. Utgarde Pinnacle, the only one so far that I've had problems with, was super easy till the 3rd boss too. And this was with a group that consisted of people in blues/crafted epics and hadn't been to them on heroic, and some cases normal, before. They need to be harder, or at least there should be ones that are significantly harder than the others. Maybe I've not done the really hard ones yet. But I've seen people in greens freshly dinged to 80 going in. Seems wrong to me.

[sprite]

I have a tale to tell

Last night I was playing my (latest) hunter when someone advertised in trade for AQ40. They claimed to be at the 4th boss. Being the completist that I am, and wanting to finish off my oldschool raiding achievement (AQ40 was the only one I was missing), I took the druid along for the ride. It looked promising; lots of people, a fair few 80s, a couple of people who actually had a clue and a couple who, sadly including the leader, did not.

Most comical about our leader was his insistence on telling people as a whole to WAIT and then FOLLOW ME and WAIT SOME MORE, DO NOT ATTACK the level 60 non-elites as they MAY EAT US ALIVE. DON'T PULL THE BOSS with 900k HP, etc. His idiocy reached its peak when we arrived at the twin emperors, and he charged in trying to tank the caster, both mobs ended up on top of one of another and half the raid left claiming "it's impossible, they don't take damage".

For the next attempt, I was the only healer, and it seemed to escape people's notice once it was worked out that they actually had to be kept separate, that I could not be in two places at once. After relentless begging of our leader to join the LFG channel, he made me leader, obviously not able to figure out how to do it himself. Within five minutes we had 36 people in the raid, and it was only a couple more attempts to get the twins down. Despite being level 80, it's still quite challenging it seems when people just plain don't understand the simplest things about.. well.. moving so you can actually do some damage. It's odd that AQ40 offers the most challenge I've seen in WotLK, or maybe it was just the group of complete morons.

So we went to C'thun and inevitably, someone pulled him too early. All run back for a proper try and something kills half the raid before you can blink (no pun intended!), but we get him into phase 2 nonetheless and eventually people figure out what to do inside the stomach... and he went down! Hoooray! I got my achievement!!

I can't believe I used to lead raids of 40 people. I must've been mental.

[Mr Ben]

I only need Heroic Oculus for my last Heroic dungeon and the Champion of the Frozen Wastes, but it seems hell will freeze over before I can actually kill the last boss

[cowfields]

Really people have always been doing raids of 25 people. It just used to be 25 + 15 morons who you carried through. Back when you had 40 people it was really the same amount of task management...probably less actually as the fights were often simpler.

It's just rather than being able to see individuals fucking up everyone had a basic role as a unit. As such it was so difficult to find out who was really accountable for a wipe and that's what really stressed me out back then. Especially when it was hard enough trying to get that diva of an MT to do what he was told...

There were a few difficult times through SSC when the people who just plain sucked were shown up for that, and slowly got benched because it was clear that things weren't working out for them. I felt so bad about Ramesies, probably the nicest guy ever to play this game on any server. But also the kind of guy that would put GoA totems down in caster groups, no amount of niceness could make up for doing only 10% total healing in Karazhan compared to your 50%.

I think fights like Twins that can still wipe a group of 80s and stand the test of time prove that they were well designed in the first place. Though I did Twins 'back in the day' it was just as I joined Exodus so didn't really get to learn the fight as they had already done it. I wish I had been there just before as it's a cool fight really. It is quite easy to do now it's just I haven't been back to do Twins when there wasn't Puggers who really hadn't the foggiest how the fight worked, so it was always a challenge trying to get round them.

I'm trying to get the guild to go back to Sunwell for the lulz. I miss the place. KJ = Best Boss Appearance since Raggy. Poor Raggy, at least he still had that going for him until Keith J. took it from him.

[Isaac]

Yeah, I raided back in 40, our guild started just before BWL was released, and we stuck at it until right before TBC came out (we were victim to the same thing a lot of 40 man guilds went through, we split due to drama when Blizzard announced it'd be 25 man in TBC).

I also worked my way up from a lowly DPS warrior to a 40 man raidleader and officer by the end of it, and it was a hell of a journey. It really was a case of carrying 15 people through content though, there were some really good players and some terrible ones, and loot drama reared its head on several occassions (we went through three different types of loot rules, from standard dkp, to zero sum dkp, to suicide dkp).

It was a really fun experience though, fights like Nefarion were great experiences, we cleared MC, all of BWL, ZG, AQ20, we got to C'thun, and then downed around seven bosses in Naxx.

C'thun was probably the first boss that required you to be carrying nobody, everyone in the raid of 40 people needed to know exactly what they were doing, which is why we never managed it. Twin Emperors were a hell of a lot of fun to learn, as were most of the AQ40 bosses.

The content was a lot harder back then, but it was also a hell of a lot more rewarding. I really don't want to sound like I'm being elitist or whatever, but I think that something has really been lost in WotLK. I mean, I haven't seen a polymorph in a raid or a heroic in about 5 weeks. Crowd Control is completely unneccessary now, which shows a total lack of tuning in my opinion.

[Jack]

I honestly have no idea how anyone managed to do Twin Emperors back when AQ came out. Especially with how shit the gear was at the time. Hunter gear with spirit and spell power on? Fucking hell.

[Isaac]

It was a challenge, yeah. I think we took about a week of attempts, and that was 3-4 hours of wiping, four nights a week. We had to flask and potion it too, although the no cap on potions meant that you could use mana pots and other things several times a fight.

The hardest part was the adds iirc, they were what kept killing us. That and gearing up a warlock enough to tank a twin emp.

The worst part of old WoW gear wise were the resistance checks. I don't know if you know about Huhuran, but it's a whole mess of nature damage. I remember running Mauradon for green plate shoulders, just because they had some nature res on them. It was a bit of a mess.

[cowfields]

I honestly have no idea how anyone managed to do Twin Emperors back when AQ came out. Especially with how shit the gear was at the time. Hunter gear with spirit and spell power on? Fucking hell.

It had spirit, sure, but I don't think it ever had spellpower on? Dragonstalkers seemed quite nicely itemised, except for the spirit of course. Then again they didn't have viper, so it probably did something.

[Space Renegade Ulala]

It had spirit, sure, but I don't think it ever had spellpower on? Dragonstalkers seemed quite nicely itemised, except for the spirit of course. Then again they didn't have viper, so it probably did something.

No, Jack's absolutely right - the Hunter set did have spellpower. Think of those Arcane shots benefitting from the whopping 50 odd spellpower on it! Remember the Genesis set, Cow, with its truly hybrid mixture of stats? Doomcaller came with spell penetration, for goodness' sake. The AQ sets were a bizarre mishmash of dudewhatthefuck-ness.

And yeah as far as pre-Northrend raids and dungeons go, I can well empathise with those finding the expansion a letdown so far. Accessibility comes at a price and that price is the lack of difficulty. The only challenge comes from the achievements and while some are quite fun, they don't really make up for the lack of difficulty or complexity in the ordinary version of the encounters in the main. No, I don't want resistance nightmares like Huhuran or Shahraz but the Naxxramas stuff is showing its age a bit compared to the things that followed, while Sartharion is just a 24 carat bucket of bobbins any way you look at it (Malygos is awesome but too short). I miss the fights like the Twin Emperors-C'Thun*, Magtheridon, Leotheras, Kael'thas, the Reliquary, the craziness of the Council (8 million ways to die!), Illidan and all the Sunwell stuff.

Yet despite that I not really going to complain, not when on the other hand I can look at my friends' guild finally getting to see the sort of stuff that was completely denied them before the changes 3.0 brought. It's not a walkover to them, not because they suck but because most of them didn't get the chance to see how the boss fights changed and developed over the years, how complexity increased beyond the simple tank & spanks that made up almost everything pre-Blackwing Lair, weren't put in the position to be able to outgear everything the way most of us with our Sunwell or T6/badge gear have. Seeing them gear up, work their way through the heroics and begin to make their way into Naxxramas, nagging them for updates, hearing about those first kills...I really love that shit (and when they take down Patch - who's kinda kicking their ass at the moment - I'll be as chuffed as winning the cup final). If all that means I have to deal with a few undemanding instances for a few months, I'm fine with that. In the meantime, I can just mess about with the silly achievements, take things easy and get ready for Ulduar, which hopefully will take things up a notch.

*Obviously came before Naxxramas but still awesome enough to warrant inclusion.

[NEG]

My guild managed Saptharion 3-D last thursday. (Sapth with 3 drakes up).

13th title get! (Twilight Vanquisher)

[cowfields]

Yes, it's all right and everything.

I didn't want all the heroics to be nails hard so only I could beat them. I just think they got it right with TBC heroics. Just because old-hillsbrad reduced you to a gibbering wreck in a padded cell saying "Thrall, make it stop! make it stop!" over and over, it wasn't like people couldn't still farm badges of justice from the other heroics that weren't so crazy.

But heroics aren't what it's all about. I'm fine with Naxx being easy, you can't judge the expansion on recycled content. We'll see when Ulduar comes out.

[sith]

Sarth with 3 drakes is a great fight Chanti!

Its not too hard, but it sure as hell as aint easy either and anyone who is slacking will constantly get killed so its a good retard check in preperation for Ulduar.

[Space Renegade Ulala]

I've done the 3 drakes fight, I still think it's bloody rubbish, and poorly designed rubbish which fails on multiple levels at that. You are correct about the retard check thing (a check far too many of ours are failing right now, unfortunately) but it lacks a crucial ingredient - fun.

Gonna Go When the Volcano Blows can piss off too.

[NEG]

Indeed, its only intense for the first 2-3mins, because thats how long it takes to kill the 3drakes. Then its just plain old Sapth.

DPS/Healing intensive, but will be farmed to bits I imagine when the next tier and beyond appears.

Planning to use my dkp to pick up the twilight drake next run. (nothing all that special to be honest, I'd love to get my hands on A'lar instead, but I assume this mount might be removed in future, amani bear style.)

Did you call me Chanti btw? Whats that?

Oh and I'll post raid pictures sometime.

[sprite]

So a question to those who have raided in absolutely any capacity - what's been your favourite bossfight to date, and why?

I think my fondest memories have to come from Blackwing Lair and, in particular, Nefarian. I remember it felt like this unsurmountable goal once upon a time and when we eventually stood at the entrance to his room, debating what we'd do if we got this colour or that colour, we'd be doooomed, DOOOMED! And if I remember correctly, didn't we get a DOOOOMED! combination on our first kill? Or maybe I made that up. From the endless draconids, to the borked addons that couldn't count, to people forgetting their cloaks and initially being horrible beings for dying to the shadowflame but later being subjects of many many jokes, to Wildearth's (D:) kitty video, the random polymorphs and OH MY GOD the infernals are all in my face and will someone PLEASE remove the curse you lazy mages whilst we're all stuck mewmewing about the place... it was just chaos... not least when we had ego bruised offtanks getting aggro from the MT of the day and promptly dying when the call to stop healing went out to teach him a lesson or two... good times! And a brilliant fight.

And even Chromaggus I think is much better than anything we see today. I mean, if you messed up and were in the wrong place at the time, your dying could mean the end of the raid. Compare it to say.. Thaddius where it doesn't really matter (on 10 man) now if you're in the wrong place or not with the stam people have these days, it's mostly recoverable. And you don't need the damage boost that 'doing the right thing' offers either. But Chromaggus... I still have this memory of a picture Donny (remember Donny? Donny was awesome) standing in front of this huge two headed dog which completely took up his entire screen and, as a tauren, that was an achievement!

Or Vaelastrasz... give me anything for a bit of story, a bit of drama and anguish and motivation in my boss fights, put that dragon out of his misery! Whilst you're doing it though make sure everyone is in exactly the right place, get the tanks in on time.....

Ah, memories.

[The-G]

OMG YOU BROKE MY BOW NEFARIAN. lol.

[cowfields]

I like different fights for different reasons.

Nefarian for all the reasons you gave.

Ragnaros for being the first proper obstacle, the first boss I would ever wipe to and get a taste for that OMG YES DIE DIE DIE feeling.

M'uru for being the hardest and most stressful fight I've ever had to tank in

Illidan Phase 2 for being the second hardest and stressful fight to tank in

Brutallus for not really being that stressful for me as such, but quite amusing going "HOLY SHIT, 20K DAMAGE IN 1 SECOND? YEAH BUT FUCK YOU I'M LIVING, WHO'S A DEAD MOTHERFUCKER NOW?" And I really enjoyed trying to squeeze every last bit of dps out in catform, pushing that theorycrafting to the max.

C'Thun for being quite a sight to behold and being a great example of turning tank-and-spank on its head.

Jin'do the Hexxer for favouring polymorph-immune druids over those silly diva warriors who never wanted to tank anyway just wanted to twat things with their silly orange hammers.

Azuregos for making me want to raid. I remember sitting on a hill with Chantinelle as we watched some alliance guild kill it. Seeing how long it took, how many people all workign together. Was amazing to behold.

I find it hard to really pick one out. But there's something that makes me want to say M'uru. I don't really know why. I guess because I don't think there's another boss that required quite so much focus from me. Saying Ragnaros or Nefarian is really more about the achievement than the boss. I know that such senses of achievement aren't really present anymore, but I do think raiding is so much better now than it was pre-tbc for many many reasons.

Edit: Forgot Prince Malchezzar. I don't give a shit that no-one of my hard-rock hard-dance whatever guildies got all the Shadow Nova = Purple Rain jokes. I never got tired of making Prince references!

[The-G]

Can't believe no one has mention Razorgore though. The system shock after getting cocky from beating Ragnaros.

[Mr Ben]

1st Neffie kill with Chimaera still beats anything I think, and I may still have the video of it somewhere.

[Mr.Jeff]

C'thun and 40-man thaddius must have been my favourites. C'thun just because it was so radically different and getting half the raid wiped just because I lagged in front of the doorway just showed just how strong a god really is.

Thaddius I loved because it had the insane dps race of patch but with the added challenge of getting 40 people to make a jump, a deal with polarity shifts without i)fucking up manually ii)dc-ing iii) lagging to buggery. I found it all the more fun because it was at that point when aggro meters weren't installed in the guild so you had this consant feeling of "oh god I've had 3 brilliant crits in a row and that's fantastic but surely he's going to twat me in the face in a sec"

I also like Heigan's dance. I don't know why.

[csuzw]

My favourite fights design wise are Ragnaros, C'Thun, Magtheridon, Vashj, Kael'thas, Teron Gorefiend and Illidan (I didn't do much in Naxx pre TBC and stopped raiding in TBC before Sunwell). Ragnaros is still my favourite kill as most of the others I got fed up of people being terrible whilst learning them.

[Sirloin]

C'Thun and Vael were my favourite two fights. Both were really hard for my raid group, but the feeling once you did it right was ace. From TBC, I only really liked Magtheridon and Archimonde, hated Teron, didn't think much of the Illidan fight, Vashj was alright, but just seemed to be an exercise in using Ventrilo.

[Isaac]

The problem with some of the more interesting fights is that they can be amazing fun to learn and do, but they can also be the most frustrating experiences ever if you have some terrible people in your raid.

Back in 40 man, before Wow Web Stats and proper meters, it was absolutely impossible to spot the terrible players as well, so getting to C'Thun it'd be a slap round the face when you finally realised that 15 players in the raid just couldn't follow instructions to save their lives.

Despite all that, Nefarion was amazing fun, so was Onyxia back before she was trivial (before BWL came out), and Ragnaros was awesome just for the epic scale of it all.

"TOO SOON EXECUTUS! YOU HAVE RELEASED ME TOO SOON!!!"

[cowfields]

Yes this is true. Sartharion - I do actually think fundamentally it's a well designed fight just with a few tweaks needed (recolouring void zones, fixing the spawn rate of lava spawns - sometimes we get 1 or 2 when the whelps spawn sometimes we have like 10) but learning last night got frustrating when you get to a point where you're acing your role every time and others are still failing to the same void zones or waves or whatever.

I made my fair share of missed waves and void zones (and I appreciate that I get away with it more - my silly HP pool means I generally survive my mistakes) but when you see the same people die every single try to it...

I really enjoyed the Teron fight except for the kind of public flogging you'd get if you screwed up ghosts. The best thing about Malygos is the Aces High daily. This gives people a chance to practice with their dragon so there's no excuse if they screw up. On the other hand with Teron, if you get 'lucky' and hardly ever got ghosted during learning you didn't have the time to practice it.

One thing I miss about Chrom and Neffy was the random aspect of what kinds of breaths / drakonoids you'd get. I think having different combos based on the week was a nice touch, also with Opera in Karazhan. I think they should do a little bit more of that. Not too much but some.

On an unrelated note: I put on some jeans this morning I thought were clean. Turns out they hadn't been washed in a while. so the downside is they're a bit fausty and I'm worried people will notice. The upside is that I found a tenner in the back pocket! woo!

[TomCGCG]

For favourite fights, it's all about Chromaggus. At 60 I was raiding with my hunter. Never doing stuff wrong, never excelling. Til Chromaggus that is. It's still a story I tell folks today when raiding about being blind drunk and part of a three man tranqing team, the really bare bones you required, and still getting him down. Good stuff. Really felt like I was making a difference stood there with my Tigule's Harpoon to make sure I was hit capped. Plus he dropped the blingiest of all the bling in my Dragonstalker's Shoulders. I won't go back in BWL as I don't want the memory of just how hard it was sullied by brute forcing through at 80. Heartstriker probably still wouldn't drop anyways.

70 I was MT and RL with my druid, I don't really remember being wowed by a boss, too busy looking at the state of the raid and concentrating on building threat *sighs*. Can I say the whole of Kara? Love that place, had a very complete, polished feel to it.

Now I'm back with my hunter and loving all these mobile fights in Naxx, Gluth's probably in the lead, again a tranq fight, and I'm helping out a DK with his kiting of the chow too. Keep me busy, keep me happy heh.

[Chauntea]

Can't believe no one has mention Razorgore though. The system shock after getting cocky from beating Ragnaros.

Aye that was ace! took us a age to take him down too, like months it felt like! such a different kind of fight than what we were use too

For me Shades of Aran is the best fight in the game I have done, just because of his voice over... sounds exactly like youd expect him to and so alive (yet dead? ) like a propper mad mage, love it

The rest of kara was all very fun but nothing compared to Aran, pre tbc as everyone said Raggy stands out the most, and neffy was a great fight even though I never got to see the final kill (quitting wow the week before we killed the damn dragon!) still ace fight

Naxx to me feels like well empty and void of anything... the boss fights have well some fun mechanics and things to learn, others are just a bit dull... The whole place feels empty, and a mass copy and past of undercity... its a huge castle in the sky which has a huge spider in who could never get out, horses who again could not get out... it just makes no sense...

i can accept big fire demon lords in pits of lava, and dragons in huge towers on big mountains, naxx just is a miss for me, makes no sense at all and just seems pointless

[Alask]

Plus Naxx is like the tardis. It's pretty damn small on the outside and massive on the inside! Is that ever explained away at all?

[cowfields]

No-one really explained to me how come I'm a cow that can change into a bear or a cat.

Or where all my mounts live until I summon them out of the pet tab. Sometimes you have to suspend your disbelief But I will concede that Dragonblight would have been much cooler if Naxx was Axxual size (DYSWIDT?) and half the questing zone was darkened by its shadow.

I agree that it's a bit limp now as an instance. When all you had was BWL QQ40 and MC it was really quite something, leaps and bounds ahead of the RFC-Redux that was MC. MC was such a rubbish instance all except for Raggy of course. But Noth. His "riiiise" emote just really makes my eyes heavy just hearing it. Gothik is the same fight only with less boss time to make it even more boring.

But I think it is really good as an entry level raid. Like each tactic is a singular gimmick, that could be used in combination wiht others to make a harder fight down the road. Like, I don't know, Heigan Dance + Noth Chow = Felmyst. You get the idea.