Comments on: Who trashed Ulduar?

By: Jacob

Jacob — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 16:25:26 +0000

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.

By: Namthe

Namthe — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 13:20:31 +0000

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

Jacob — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 13:05:19 +0000

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: Jacob

Jacob — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 12:58:29 +0000

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.