Who trashed Ulduar?
April 28th, 2009 Posted in Dungeons, Wrath of the Lich KingAnother week, another few bosses down. Farewell to Ignis the Furnace Master, Kologarn and Auriaya (though on 10-man only). But wait. What’s going on with the trash?
The first time we took a look at the trash in the Antechambe of Ulduar, we wiped. More than a few times, in fact. There were runes to stay away from, Baron Geddon – style blowings up of people and, well, general carnage. Maybe not so much of the wipings with Ignis’s trash, but getting to him too was a challenge. Now? It’s a foolish raider that gets himself killed on trash. Somewhere between the first week and the second, something happened to Ulduar. The trash got easier. And the bosses got easier too. XT-001 had his enrage timer extended, as did the Assembly of Iron (massively, in fact).
The question I have to wonder is – why? At a time when hard modes are being buffed, why make normal modes easier? It’s not as if they were excessively difficult. The Hidden Circle are a country mile away from hardcore and yet we made some good progress in the first week.
In the second? The only trash to cause us major issues was Auriaya’s. I’m somewhat disappointed that things have been nerfed so swiftly and brutally. I’m aware I said this before, at the release of patch 3.0, talking about the Black Temple, but this time it’s only a week since the content’s release.
There’s still a challenge, but how many more stealth nerfs are going to sneak through?
4 Responses to “Who trashed Ulduar?”
By Jacob on Apr 28, 2009
At a time when hard modes are being buffed, why make normal modes easier? It’s not as if they were excessively difficult.
My thought is that Blizzard is watching statistics for various raids going through Ulduar, and the statistics show that some bosses are harder than Blizzard wants them to be. They probably have target goals like “guilds should spend N hours on Razorscale” or “guilds should spend M hours on XT-002″, and I bet that the nerfs happened in places where bosses had been harder than was intended.
You made good progress? Congratulations! Being able to make progress is the whole point of the tuning.
By Jacob on Apr 28, 2009
Oh, good grief, I just noticed that you have a Twilight Vanquisher title. Sorry to disappoint you, but your guild is in fact hardcore. Go do the hard modes.
The normal modes are tuned for people who are not as good as you. My guild, for example, has killed OS-10+1D. Pre-tuning, our DPS mightily struggled to cope with the speed that Razorscale spawned dwarves, and weren’t anywhere close to killing XT-002 before his enrage. Post-tuning, we managed to get Razorscale grounded once (but no kill), and we had a 10% wipe and a 0.5% wipe on XT-002 (but no kill). Normal people do still find the encounters challenging.
By Namthe on Apr 28, 2009
I have a Twilight Vanquisher title, true. But I don’t spend hours every night of the week playing. I don’t (contrary to popular belief) spend every waking hour reading tactics.
It’s really not my idea of fun to spend six hours a night staring at a screen, and I don’t plan to do so any time soon.
You’ve given me an idea for a discussion of hardcore though – watch this space, I fully understand your argument.
By Jacob on Apr 28, 2009
Well, OK, but I don’t think I said anything about how many hours you or I spend playing. I was trying to say “your guild is a lot better than most”, and I pointed to your victory over the hardest encounter in the game as evidence of your quality. If you can beat OS+3D, you should find Ulduar easier than most groups do. The hard modes are for you, you should go do them.
I’m trying not to equate “hardcore” with “plays a lot”, though I’m aware that this association is commonly made.