T3 Gear Laughable in TBC.

[Sigurdur]

I'm going to point out that I'm a lazy fuck and don't particularly care enough to go find my sources. You're welcome to hunt them down for me though.

Originally Posted by Cad

The interview at E3 with the producer of the game said they didn't have any issue with scaling ZG down to 20 and it was originally a 40-man zone.

No, they said it was originally a 5-man, and they scaled it UP to 20 because people cried about not having a stepping stone between UBRS and MC.

I would also like to point out that there's a blue post or interview or something somewhere that said a Karazhan clear would take something on the order of 22 hours.

As to T3 Being obsolete, I finished my T2 one week before the graphics were upgraded--and I'm on the bleeding edge. I finished picking up my AQ set a few weeks after naxx went live. I fully expect to have 80% or so of the naxx 'uber-lewtz' right around the time of the expansion. If I replace it in the first couple months of the xpack, I'm right on schedule as far as I'm concerned.

If the expansion ships with nothing but 5/10-mans, and the top tier of them are tuned so hard that the casuals cry tears of blood, I'll giggle with joy as I clear them every lockout. If the endgame is mostly raiding, I'll be in exactly the same boat I'm in now, and still be enjoying the game thoroughly. If the endgame is 5/10 mans tuned to the level of live strath instead of lord valathak, I'll get bored and quit the game.

5/10 mans tuned to 'assrape' will be just as much fun as currently tuned 40mans.

As for naxx being obsolete, I am quite certain that it will be an extremely easy clear for level 70s, not so much because of gear, but because of a few factors relating to level:

Tanks will all be mitigation capped on all fights, and will no longer take crushing blows, as well as gaining a bonus to avoidance from their level. Spells will no longer resist. Melee will no longer glance. New ranks of spells will make the raid's base dps and hp/s increase a fair amount.

Stupid things like 10k raid dps on patchwerk probably won't be that hard to pull off with a much smaller group. Thaddius is in the same boat, though probably harder because as you lose people, you lose polarity buffs, so hitting 25k raid dps on him probably won't be easy, but will still definately be doable. Fights like anub and razuvious will be beyond trivial, as will gearcheck type fights like maexxna and huhuran. Fights like Heigan and C'thun will still be fun, because if you can't dance or dodge a huge red beam, you'll gib, no matter what level you are.

Cleaning a few bosses in bwl/aq/naxx occasionally with a midsize raid of 70s for atiesh shards and maybe a few of the items that scale infinitely for rerolls/alts/unlucky people (kiss of the spider, lifegiving gem, NAC, viscidus idol etc) doesn't sound unreasonable.

I know I'll probably be tanking quite a few naxx runs for some mage or warlock who wants a port stick.


Edit: figured I'd slip this in as well.

Originally Posted by karisa

Chances are, even with all of the time and motivation in the world you couldn't be a GM. Not only does becoming a GM require vast quantites of intelligence and experiance, it also requires raw talent.

That's what's required to be a good GM, anyone can be a shitty GM, look up on zul'jin, with the amazing GM who has revolutionized raiding by doing things like banning Feign Death on raids and giving Sulfuras' to druids. This guild is in BWL right now.

[Cad]

Originally Posted by Sigurdur

No, they said it was originally a 5-man, and they scaled it UP to 20 because people cried about not having a stepping stone between UBRS and MC.

Wrong. It was a 40 and they scaled it down to 20. Feel free to go read it again if you like. The quote is in one of the video interviews with Tigole.

[Sigurdur]

Originally Posted by Cad

Wrong. It was a 40 and they scaled it down to 20. Feel free to go read it again if you like. The quote is in one of the video interviews with Tigole.

How do you read a video interview?

You are the known idiot, not me. So you need to go find the source.

[Tuco]

WoW doesn't exactly have a fantastic track record for making its group content a decent challenge. Oh, they might start out that way, but when nearly ever fucking patch since release has made one instance or another easier it starts to become a joke. Stratholme with one group was a damn accomplishment in beta. It's been nerfed about 20 times since. And then of course was their sissy stance on limiting the # of players that can enter an instance, finally reduced to 5 after the long series of nerfs.

Yeah I wish they would stop doing that. I imagine it's good for the game in general but when we finally defeat a hard encounter, in the back of my mind I think that it will be nerfed to be made much easier. Of course, when I read the patch notes and see that they made it easier I just think, "Oh good, we can spend 10 minutes less in this instance on average now."

[Uman]

Originally Posted by Tuco

I've escaped that idea back in AQ. Since we started exposing dimwits in Sartura, we've replaced/reorganized and almost every raider in my guild is very, very capable. Good feeling actually =P

I'm in a guild that has been beating Sartura for only a few weeks. We still take an average of 4 attempts to win.

How do I go about exposing the dimwits? Do you mean: if you die, it's your fault? If you're a healer and don't follow your tank, it's your fault? If you're supposed to control a mob, but let it get away, it's your fault?

Where do you start when chaos is everywhere?

[Tuco]

How do I go about exposing the dimwits? Do you mean: if you die, it's your fault? If you're a healer and don't follow your tank, it's your fault? If you're supposed to control a mob, but let it get away, it's your fault?

Yes.

The more tight your group, the more you can expose people for not performing.

IE: If you're leading a PUG on their first Magmadar, you can't just point one or two fingers, because there's probably 15+ people that messed up. But if you're leading your guild on the cutting edge fighting Patchwerk, you can narrow down to who dropped the ball that caused the wipe on a few people.

[Jagels]

ZG was actually an outdoor grind zone like searing gorge, plaguelands, etc before they decided to turn it into a raid zone

I don't know if it was originally 40 or 20 man at that point.

[Moontayle]

Originally Posted by Jagels

ZG was actually an outdoor grind zone like searing gorge, plaguelands, etc before they decided to turn it into a raid zone

I don't know if it was originally 40 or 20 man at that point.

No, they're right, it was originally another 40 man raid zone.

[Saban]

ZG was actually supposed to be a 120 man raid zone, true story, i heard it on the intertron.

[Jagels]

Originally Posted by Moontayle

No, they're right, it was originally another 40 man raid zone.

uh

Originally Posted by Tigole

Back in the day, Zul'Gurub was supposed to be a level up zone like Winterspring, EP, Silithus etc... Then it became a 40 man raid zone. The players said they wanted a 20 man raid zone so we changed it.

That clears that up.

[Kirun]

Didn't bother to read the whole thread so this might have been mentioned, but I really hope they start giving casuals epics like candy come TBC. Maybe then we can finally get them to bitch enough about repair costs to get the shit changed.

[Moontayle]

Originally Posted by Jagels

uh

Back in the day, Zul'Gurub was supposed to be a level up zone like Winterspring, EP, Silithus etc... Then it became a 40 man raid zone. The players said they wanted a 20 man raid zone so we changed it.

That clears that up.

So at some point it was going to be a 40-man zone. Now we have the current iteration which for all intents and purposes is > MC in terms of actually requiring people to know what the fuck to do. Despite that, the itemization leaves something to be desired and I'd gleefully take a longer reset time for at least 1 guaranteed Epic per boss. As it is, some weeks we get a handful and other weeks it's 'my blue heaven'.

[Kodylan]

Yes, ZG was originally talked about as being a troll dungeon in beta much like ZF. Then they decided to make it a raid zone since the game was lacking raid content, and people bitched and moaned about wanting smaller raids so they made it a 20 man zone instead.

[Kodylan]

Originally Posted by Moontayle

So at some point it was going to be a 40-man zone. Now we have the current iteration which for all intents and purposes is > MC in terms of actually requiring people to know what the fuck to do. Despite that, the itemization leaves something to be desired and I'd gleefully take a longer reset time for at least 1 guaranteed Epic per boss. As it is, some weeks we get a handful and other weeks it's 'my blue heaven'.

ZG loot is way too good in some cases. That new melee dps ring and even the blue cloak is *very* good. Infact all of the new stuff they added in 1.11 is crazy good.

[Moontayle]

Originally Posted by Kodylan

ZG loot is way too good in some cases. That new melee dps ring and even the blue cloak is *very* good. Infact all of the new stuff they added in 1.11 is crazy good.

*That* loot table has been kind to us so far (2 of the melee rings, 1 of the caster rings), it's the old loot tables that are giving us a headache. We kill Bloodlord every time we go in, even if we only have enough time to down three of the Aspects (we're casual enough to make anything beyond 3 hours on a weekday a no-no), and he's only coughed up two weapons. I'm sure it's only a matter of time really but it's frustrating all the same.