Random Cataclysm discussion

[Correction]

Did they only get double lockout for 4.3? Or they got it a while ago?

They got it way back in October.

[Kaylia]

They got it way back in October.

I looked up the date earlier, and it went live at the very end of october. That's approximatively 7 more fireland lockout.

I don't see how it's suposed to be game breaking (especially when serious guilds were already maxed out on heroic gears). The few elusives pieces were probably replaced with valor point already.

The only real difference are staves, but 7 weeks would is enough to complete 1 more at best, maybe 2 if you have many 4 alt raids.

[Correction]

It was also publicized as a test of a double lockout system and now we have pretty clear results of that test: Blood Legion is bad lolz gg no re.

[Boyiee]

I got a friend in blood legion and as soon as he got gunship down and was telling me about his spine wipes, I was saying too bad it's all in vein cause some Asians are going to come out of nowhere.

Sure enough.

[niwaar]

I looked up the date earlier, and it went live at the very end of october. That's approximatively 7 more fireland lockout.

I don't see how it's suposed to be game breaking (especially when serious guilds were already maxed out on heroic gears). The few elusives pieces were probably replaced with valor point already.

The only real difference are staves, but 7 weeks would is enough to complete 1 more at best, maybe 2 if you have many 4 alt raids.

The lockout system for sure did have an effect. It helped those Asian guilds catch up. Even 2 staves is enough to bring you up and over another. Yes most of the bleeding edge guilds had staves out the ass but this balanced the equation.

The real thing here is the makeup of the Korean group. It was because they completely stacked their Spine group with staves. I believe someone said there were 10-11 staves as they stacked their group with mages/shaman/locks/sps and sat everyone else. The Madness group had 7 Staves in it, which is not completely unheard of I guess, but it still seems like they stacked a tad.

[Correction]

The real thing here is the makeup of the Korean group. It was because they completely stacked their Spine group with staves. I believe someone said there were 10-11 staves as they stacked their group with mages/shaman/locks/sps and sat everyone else. The Madness group had 7 Staves in it, which is not completely unheard of I guess, but it still seems like they stacked a tad.

Yeah fuck those guys for stacking their raids, they should learn from Paragon..oh, um....Ensidia...oops, hmm, SK Gaming...? nope..er...

[BadKarma]

God damn Asians and their use of clever strategy!

[SamanosukeShiva]

blood legion downtime lawl

[Viq]

I believe someone said there were 10-11 staves as they stacked their group with mages/shaman/locks/sps and sat everyone else. The Madness group had 7 Staves in it, which is not completely unheard of I guess, but it still seems like they stacked a tad.

Whining about the number of staves is just retarded. Guilds like BL and Paragon have more characters with the staff than they can fit into a raid, assuming they like tanks and healers. Do they have them all on the right classes? Perhaps not, but that's their error in preparation. Also worth noting, 즐거운공격대 also brought 5 rogues to their Spine kill, for what it's worth. Pretty sure those guys weren't using a staff.

Second, the average quality of players is higher on Korean servers in general. It's very common, especially on the bigger servers like Kargath and Norgannon, for PUGs to clear at least up to an end boss on heroic. People without guilds have a staff here. It's absurd. Is it the top Korean guilds' fault that they play in an environment where their members can actively gain staves on alts via PUGs? I personally don't think so. It's absolutely an advantage, but it's not in any way, shape or form an exploit that would invalidate or even diminish their accomplishments. They won this race via better preparation and not taking the bait on the LFR bug.

[niwaar]

Yeah fuck those guys for stacking their raids, they should learn from Paragon..oh, um....Ensidia...oops, hmm, SK Gaming...? nope..er...

Whining about the number of staves is just retarded. Guilds like BL and Paragon have more characters with the staff than they can fit into a raid, assuming they like tanks and healers. Do they have them all on the right classes? Perhaps not, but that's their error in preparation. Also worth noting, 즐거운공격대 also brought 5 rogues to their Spine kill, for what it's worth. Pretty sure those guys weren't using a staff.

Second, the average quality of players is higher on Korean servers in general. It's very common, especially on the bigger servers like Kargath and Norgannon, for PUGs to clear at least up to an end boss on heroic. People without guilds have a staff here. It's absurd. Is it the top Korean guilds' fault that they play in an environment where their members can actively gain staves on alts via PUGs? I personally don't think so. It's absolutely an advantage, but it's not in any way, shape or form an exploit that would invalidate or even diminish their accomplishments. They won this race via better preparation and not taking the bait on the LFR bug.

I wasn't saying that they cheated because of it. I was referring to the fact that they were able to stack their raid in such a way to push themselves far more than what Blizzard had obviously intended. I do not look upon these world firsts as cheating or exploiting. Just like I did not look upon the Nefarian "Majority Druids" world first as exploiting. I merely believe that Blizzard needs to change encounter design to actively punish non melee/ranged balanced groups. Instead of trying to incentivize melee with a 10% higher attack power buff, they need to design encounters where raid teams are actively punished for doing these things. Having 12 caster ranged with staves in an encounter is utterly ridiculous. Yet, like you said they can do it, so why not? Blizzard needs to figure out a way to have the answer to that question.

Its interesting to note that Korean's have a much higher quality average level of player. I had the privilege to proof read my guildmate's graduation thesis on the history of Korean online gaming. It was quite a fascinating bit of information. I am sure we all wish we lived in Korea to be able to play in such an environment. I certainly wish my server had a PuG scene at all these days. Hell with the advent of LFR, we went from 10+ PuG groups forming a day, to 1, if we are lucky. Makes it considerably more difficult to try and raid on your alts. (And no LFR is not raiding. I am completely convinced some grad student somewhere convinced Blizzard into helping them do research on how long people will be willing to deal with stupidity and abuse for limited and less than worthwhile rewards.)

[Correction]

I don't think it's possible to tune an encounter as tightly as Blizzard seems to want to tune Heroic end-of-content bosses and discourage stacking a particular item/class/spec in your raid. There's no way around sheer mathematical advantage, and those who can take it will take it.

Expect all future spine/madness kills to brag about how many fewer dragonwraths they had in their groups. It's not like people are ashamed of world 35ths.

[niwaar]

I agree that its not currently possible with existing encounter design to discourage stacking. It really has never happened thus far. Hell we all remember stacking mages/rangers way back when in FFXI. I do however think its possible to punish extreme stacking such as this. You can not purely punish people for not being balanced but there is an in-between to be found somewhere in terms of ranged vs melee balance. I also truly believe there is a way to force a number of healers instead of fights being able to be "low healed" in order to produce more and more dps. How to do this I do not know, but there is always possibilities. Its unfortunate that they did away with many of the raid buffs/debuffs and are going further to remove even more. It would be the perfect way to ensure a certain level of balance by requiring at least a certain 'kind of" raid makeup. Unfortunately, the bring the player not the class bs has not only lessened some classes and removed the idea of support characters in WoW but also eliminated this way of forcing raid balance.

[Correction]

extreme stacking such as this

I think you overstate how 'extreme' this stacking is. They are using the maximum number of Dragonwraths they can and the class with currently the best melee weapons in the game. That's the extent to which they 'stacked' their raid. This isn't extreme when compared to what happened in the days of 40-man raiding. Blizzard has solved a lot of the old problems, consumables and world buffs being two of the largest offenders. Then when drums and shaman bloodlust rotations got out of control, that too was scaled back so that you weren't bringing 5 shaman and 10 leatherworkers to every WotLK raid. But this is pretty much as far as I'm comfortable seeing them go. 'punishing' certain class combinations would lead to some pretty lame encounter design (Illidan's Shear, the bad old days of 'every boss gets RSTS Mind Control and it's a threat wipe!') and a return to 'mandatory' class inclusion just because Blizzard doesn't want certain players feeling left out of high-end raiding.

[Kaylia]

@Niwaar

You're making it sound like a world first has any implications on balance everywhere else in the game. People aren't mindlessly stacking a class, it's usually the result of some theorycrafting and fine tuning for this specific encounter. Even if legendary gave certain classes an edge in DS, it's not really an issue with the game.

[Meresgi]

Went into Hagara's room, swapped to heroic mode and went to pull 1st set of trash..Hagara just jumps down and starts beating on us with her trash lol was pretty funny.

[Correction]

Went into Hagara's room, swapped to heroic mode and went to pull 1st set of trash..Hagara just jumps down and starts beating on us with her trash lol was pretty funny.

* We have substantially upgraded Hagara's A.I. in her encounter on Heroic Mode

Hotfixes!

[Boyiee]

Cross-realm raids are coming, through real ID. Maybe cross realm guilds will be next.

[Gulkeeva]

Cross-realm raids are coming, through real ID. Maybe cross realm guilds will be next.

next thing ya know, there will be cross realm auction houses

[Guitarman]

next thing ya know, there will be cross realm auction houses

I would love this so much. half a million gold and no tcg mounts to spend it on.

[seph32]

Yo dawg, I heard you like cross realms so we put a cross realm in a cross realm, so you can play on a cross-realm while playing on a cross-realm.
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_U7Ub7Jpfdt...ibit_AG036.jpg