TBC Level 70 Instances

[Goliath]

So, I was under the impression that 5 mans were made for a group of 5 people. That a group of decently intelligent people, that made sure to find a healer, and a tank and some balance, could handle these instances. Maybe with a wipe or too if they didn't read up on the instance, but as long as they had the intelligence average of a 10th grader, that they'd be ok.

Here's the problem, while most of the WoW population is 10th graders, I don't group with them. I group with skilled people who know how to play their class and I have a good balance. And these instances are just absolutely retarded. I'm not pissed that we can't beat them, because we can, I've beaten them all, I'm pissed that we wipe so many times to needless bullshit that has nothing to do with our skill, that is just retarded shit we can't stop that if happens we are fucked. I'm tired of when my usual crew (rog, shm, priest, mag, war, the perfect group imo) isn't on, that I don't have the option to form a group of pugers that I know are intelligent and know how to play their class. Because nobody wants to go to these pieces of shit. Shadow Labyrinth is about the only well designed level 70 TBC instance out of all 7-8 of them. And if I can find th ese people, these people that I know well and have done fine with before TBC and I know are good, we still get fucked because I'm not with my usual crew which is near the best.

I also have a problem against stupidity and what I feel is wrong. I will always stick up for it 9 out of 10 times, even if it gets me in trouble. Like I said, I can run these instances, but what the fuck are normal pugs going to do? I'm not talking about the idiots that don't repair beforehand, don't buy reagants, and that are just plain anti group. But good people, good people that want to enjoy some 5 man content, they can't because these instances are just so out of wack. This is lame, and it's insane that this shit is still going on after all that beta. And no offense to all of you that did get to beta, but the only people they even gave TBC beta too was high end guilds, and now everyone else gets fucked in the 5 mans. My guild is #2 on the server, we fair fine, but like I said, pointless wipes to nothing we could have done in a perfectly balanced group (shm, mage, war, rog, priest) once again. And the fact that normal pugs are totally screwed is insane.

It's really late, and I've had a few beers in me from the superbowl, so sorry for grammar, punctuation, general bad writing. But I'm sure you still get the point. AND for fucksake you stupid pieces of shit Blizzard, your LFG tool is absolute shit, you are IDIOTS, you know IT'S SHIT, people keep telling you IT's SHIT, and why is it still here? Are you that full of pride? Seriously, fine keep the piece of shit in, but put the channel back. In fact, the LFG tool is not even a piece of shit, it is literally worthless, and by worthless I mean the literal definition of worthless.

Note: I do think these instances can be very fun, Arcatraz final boss fight is pretty cool. BUT IT NEEDS TO BE APPROPRIATELY TUNED. This is not a "gear up" thing, we ARE geared up as far as we can to that point. And then you have those void walkers that do +2500 damage that is immune to all forms of stun and with a very high end mage with super spell dmg, a good rog and a enhancement shaman beating on it, can't out dmg it's melee heal. And you just want to shoot yourself. That is NOT fun.

Anyways, discuss?

[whocaressd]

Are you talking about heroics or something? I've pugged shadowlabs and some of the tempest keep instances(not alcatraz though) to grind out faction and even though some of the people in the group sucked hardcore we were always able to beat the instance. Might have taken 5 times as long as with the regular crew, but its doable. Heroics on the other hand I'm not even going to try with a pug for a long time to come.

edit: I'll completly agree about the lfg tool, but it's not like that haven't been said a million times.

[Goliath]

Originally Posted by whocaressd

Are you talking about heroics or something? I've pugged shadowlabs and some of the tempest keep instances(not alcatraz though) to grind out faction and even though some of the people in the group sucked hardcore we were always able to beat the instance. Might have taken 5 times as long as with the regular crew, but its doable. Heroics on the other hand I'm not even going to try with a pug for a long time to come.

No I am not talking about heroic. And Shadow Lab is like I said, one of the only that is actually good. In fact shadow labs is very good, very fun, very well designed, and everything is appropriate. Every boss fight is skill, if you have the skill, a balanced group, you will do fine, and it will be a fine and intense fight, not too easy, and not stupid hard. I would say only the Ogre boss possesses some sort of randomness that could maybe, maybe be called bad. But not really, because even then, if you time his ae charm and have everyone healed before then, you will be fine. I will give credit where credit is do.

Arcatraz is the worst one, but botanica and mechanar can be almost as bad. Shattered Halls is also a piece of shit although is not super difficult, but is very badly designed. And I don't even want to go into how shitty of an instance steamvaults is, for so very many reasons.

[Tirinal]

Uhm. Well, you didn't give any specific examples, so I don't know how to respond to that. Everything you said applies to heroics. They are retarded, laughably itemized, overslanted towards class composition and manage to be difficult without managing to require skill. The regular lvl 70 instances seem fine(ish) to me, aside from bugs that should have died two weeks into beta (mechanaar elevator). I've beaten all of them, with bizarre group compositions, most with pugs, all not in the higher tier of guilds and in 100% tbc levelling gear.

The LFG tool however... holy hell. I don't even know what to say. I shouldn't have to say anything.

[Goliath]

Ok I'll give some examples.

1) Void Walkers in Arcatraz that within 10 seconds do +2500 damage that you can't stop, and melee heal themselves for more than a 900 spell damage mage, a 2000 atk power Rog and 1500 atk power enhancement shaman can't out damage unless every single one of them, including priest and warrior, blows all their damage cooldowns and trinkets.

2) Bugged shit in mech and botanica, too many bugs to list.

3) Black Morass, I don't even want to go into it, if you've done it you know what I'm talking about.

4) Shattered Halls, 6 mob elite pulls.

5) Rooms full of wandering mobs, not just a few roamers, but the whole room full in Arcatraz. Bugged agro ranges that make it so unless your whole group waits about 100 yards back EQ style while the warrior pulls, you will be fucked.

6) Arcane Guardian mobs in Tempest Keeps, nonstop 1.5k arcane dmg to random targets, then a random 5k explosion when they die. Not an explosion that if you are near them, because they don't cast it, you can't just be like oh, it's about to die it's casting it's death spell, run away. Nope, because it will follow you till it dies, then you take 5k. And the fact that they continue to do the 1.5k after they die. This little ability is not a problem in itself, it is a skill check thing, it was fine in Maraudon with the oozes. but much of arcatraz is narrow paths, and you can't simply run away from corpse.

7) Arcane Guardians coming in more than 1, LOL.

8) The "death" debuff that kills you that can 90% of the time not be removed. I'm sure it's supposed to do a set number of damage and be removable, but it randomly is not this way most of the time.

9) Final Boss of Arc (not the event to get him). I'm sorry Blizzard, but 2 mind controls on 1 encounter vs 5 people is too much.

10) Shattered Halls rogues that seem to sap the priest ever single time (ai or bad luck?) And then stunlock somebody else. You don't know when they are coming, and you basically have to jerk off and wait for it to come before you fight anything or else you will have (see above, random pointless wipe that has nothing to do with skill).


I can go on forever, anyone else who has done these instances who wants to add to the list?

[whocaressd]

The thing is, some of that shit even got fixed in beta and somehow made it live anyway. To me it looks like we got some old version of Tempest Keep, how that happened I got no clue. Hopefully the invurnable elves at Laj, the bugged elevator you mentioned and so forth won't be around much longer.

[Xequecal]

The biggest problem with these instances is the enormous "fuck off" to melee DPS in general. Every single instance is absurdly easy if your DPS consists of Mages, Warlocks, and/or Hunters only. (Ok, not Black Morass, but it's definetly easier.) Mages outdamage Rogues as it is, and as a Rogue if you wan't to be useful at all in these instances you need to gimp your DPS further by speccing for imp sap.

Tempest Keep (all three instances) is the absolute worst offender, over half the boss gimmicks can be completely avoided by ranged DPS.

I'm not sure how it's even possible to beat Heroic Arcatraz with a Rogue. It's simply not. They can't melee any of the bosses, hell they can't melee much of the trash in Heroic because everything has a melee-range AE of death. Nothing can be sapped, most of it is immune to stun and poison, too. Is there something I'm missing here? Don't you need to beat Arcatraz on Heroic to access some of the upper level content? Because right now when you run this with a Rogue you're basically 4-manning it. How are you supposed to key/flag your Rogues?

Mechanar is almost as bad. Trash with 500 DPS immolation aura. First boss? Drops exploding bombs that are trivially easy to dodge from range, almost impossible to do so in melee. Second boss? Slow elementals with random aggro that you must kite around to avoid dying if you're targeted. Ranged DPS can still damage boss. Melee, can't.

Botanica? Not as bad as the other two, but three out of the five bosses feature mass low-HP adds which, surprise, get easier and easier the more Mages you have.

Shadow Labs has Murmur, another boss that gets exponentially harder the more slots you're wasting on melee classes. Ranged can spread out pre-engage, then sit in one spot and DPS to their hearts content without fear. Melee classes have to worry about dodging sonic blast AND worry about not blowing each other up with his debuff. Blackheart the Inciter is also significantly more difficult with melee DPS, because he constantly knockbacks everyone in melee range.

Black Morass? Impossible without a Mage. Flat out impossible. Ok, maybe the top 1% of the WoW population in top guilds can do it without one, but I don't see ANY way to handle the vast amount of trash efficiently enough without powerful AE otherwise.

Steam Vaults is the only 70 instance where Rogues are actually valuable, and one might actually consider inviting one over a Mage. I play a Paladin only and I can see how bad this shit is, Ret Pallys, Fury Wars, Enhance Shaman, and the entire Rogue class is currently being told to fuck off and reroll Mage. It's BAD.

EDIT:

1) Void Walkers in Arcatraz that within 10 seconds do +2500 damage that you can't stop, and melee heal themselves for more than a 900 spell damage mage, a 2000 atk power Rog and 1500 atk power enhancement shaman can't out damage unless every single one of them, including priest and warrior, blows all their damage cooldowns and trinkets.

This is not a bug. They "gather void energy" and you see a column of black shit. If you move them off that spot they don't charge up/heal.

[Goliath]

Originally Posted by Xequecal

The biggest problem with these instances is the enormous "fuck off" to melee DPS in general. Every single instance is absurdly easy if your DPS consists of Mages, Warlocks, and/or Hunters only. Mages outdamage Rogues as it is, and as a Rogue if you wan't to be useful at all in these instances you need to gimp your DPS further by speccing for imp sap.

Tempest Keep (all three instances) is the absolute worst offender, over half the boss gimmicks can be completely avoided by ranged DPS.

I'm not sure how it's even possible to beat Heroic Arcatraz with a Rogue. It's simply not. They can't melee any of the bosses, hell they can't melee much of the trash in Heroic because everything has a melee-range AE of death. Nothing can be sapped, most of it is immune to stun and poison, too. Is there something I'm missing here? Don't you need to beat Arcatraz on Heroic to access some of the upper level content? Because right now when you run this with a Rogue you're basically 4-manning it. How are you supposed to key/flag your Rogues?

Mechanar is almost as bad. Trash with 500 DPS immolation aura. First boss? Drops exploding bombs that are trivially easy to dodge from range, almost impossible to do so in melee. Second boss? Slow elementals with random aggro that you must kite around to avoid dying if you're targeted. Ranged DPS can still damage boss. Melee, can't.

Botanica? Not as bad as the other two, but three out of the five bosses feature mass low-HP adds which, surprise, get easier and easier the more Mages you have.

Shadow Labs has Murmur, another boss that gets exponentially harder the more slots you're wasting on melee classes. Ranged can spread out pre-engage, then sit in one spot and DPS to their hearts content without fear. Melee classes have to worry about dodging sonic blast AND worry about not blowing each other up with his debuff. Blackheart the Inciter is also significantly more difficult with melee DPS, because he constantly knockbacks everyone in melee range.

Black Morass? Impossible without a Mage. Flat out impossible. Ok, maybe the top 1% of the WoW population in top guilds can do it without one, but I don't see ANY way to handle the vast amount of trash efficiently enough without powerful AE otherwise.

Steam Vaults is the only 70 instance where Rogues are actually valuable, and one might actually consider inviting one over a Mage. I play a Paladin only and I can see how bad this shit is, Ret Pallys, Fury Wars, Enhance Shaman, and the entire Rogue class is currently being told to fuck off and reroll Mage. It's BAD.

I feel your pain, out of the classes I listed for the crew I run with, I am the ROG. I hate having to back off non stop from every single boss, my throwing is maxed now though!

Best thing about these instances is that Blizzard thinks they need to add things in instances that favor certain classes so people will invite them to their group, but instead of making them a variety so every class is needed. Say maybe in alot of pulls have multiple types, beasts, humans, demons, they just completely favor one single class and fuck a few. Arcatraz basically says we love hunters and warlocks, and if you don't have a lock or hunter good luck, and if you have melee dps Lol.

Also, one thing that has been getting on my nerves for a long time and has really shined in TBC is blizzard's lack of creativity. It is my opinion that no NPC should be immune to anything, save for like mind control and a few others. Instead of being creative, and I don't know, making certain bosses you don't want abused by certain abilities mitigate these abilities, you just make them completely immune. It's the lamest thing I've ever heard and is the saddest excuse for developer skill there is. "Oh, let's make this boss hard! Make it immune to this this this this this, then all they'll be able to do is press attack and cast 1 heal!, Muahaha!"

[whocaressd]

Yes, that is a much more valid rant. Rogues and even more so fury/arms warriors are dead weight right now. When I'm solo healing for heroic instances they got no option but to work on their throwing/bow skills too many times because theres no way I can keep them up to the cleaves/aes etc that will close to one shot them if they engage in melee. Class composition requirements for heroics are as bad as they were for ikkiniz back in the days.

[Goliath]

Originally Posted by Xequecal

Black Morass? Impossible without a Mage. Flat out impossible. Ok, maybe the top 1% of the WoW population in top guilds can do it without one, but I don't see ANY way to handle the vast amount of trash efficiently enough without powerful AE otherwise.

If you move them off that spot they don't charge up/heal.

Like I was saying, they just totally fuck/favor certain classes. It's absolutely retarded and lacks complete creativity.

As far as the void walkers, I wasn;t saying it was a bug, I was saying they are stupid. And of course we move off of the hole, they just do another one right after, it's instant. It's not like the void boss where you can move off of his black hole and not take dmg, they recast them instantly. I don't know how you haven't had this problem. Maybe it is a bug then.

[Goliath]

Originally Posted by whocaressd

Yes, that is a much more valid rant. Rogues and even more so fury/arms warriors are dead weight right now. When I'm solo healing for heroic instances they got no option but to work on their throwing/bow skills too many times because theres no way I can keep them up to the cleaves/aes etc that will close to one shot them if they engage in melee. Class composition requirements for heroics are as bad as they were for ikkiniz back in the days.

Yeah no shit. I felt bad for hunters because it was hard for them to get groups, but making it so they are a must and rogues/enhancement shaman and warriors are fucked was just so stupid. I swear it's like Blizzard is ran by the stupidest 15 yo old cliche wow players some times. But I'm not ranting becuase I'm a rog and we are fucked in alot of instances right now. My crew and everyone else I know is ranting too. Nobody wants to do these level 70 instances, everyone is playing BE alts, farming gold, or doing Kharazan. Nobody wants to gear up in these pieces of shit because you don't have any fun.

There is one boss in Arcatraz, the bitch that does the whirlwind, that melee can avoid if they time it right. So I don't count that as one of the things that makes rogues/melee dps near worthless in these instances. If you time their whirlwind, you can back away before they start it, and then when they start that heal you can run back in time and kick/slam if you are fast enough. But others, others you have to stay at a ranged non stop, no priest, none, not one with the best gear that you can get right now, can keep 3 melee up, or even 2 really, if they are in melee range for any longer than 20% of the time. For that fight I basically attack for 5 seconds, back off and use my first aid, go back and attack another 5-8 seconds, then back off and throw darts till first aid is back up. Mind you I have over 10k hp on my rog with the commanding shout.

[Tirinal]

Originally Posted by Goliath

Ok I'll give some examples.

I really hate to play this card, because it seems like a copout. It makes it seem like I'm saying I'm just a better player than you, which isn't my intent. But all those things... it's just really not hard if you know what you're doing. Sometimes it takes gimmicky things like pvp trinkets and sometimes you need to spend three minutes before a fight actualy outlining the abilities of X mob, but I never felt that the margin for error was all that small. My motley groups didn't have issues burst dpsing the voids or the arcane guardians, we didn't have endurance problems in the black morass, and since absolutely everybody seems to have various cc now we were able to cobble our way through shattered halls pulls without mages/warlocks. There is still a clusterfuck of bad design, but you can overcome it since it's not taken to such retarded extremes as in heroics. I just don't know what to say.

Everything Xeq said about heroics is 100% true however. Seriously. Apply a couple filters to heroic wowhead item lists for your class, superimpose it on top of random blues, and compare the two mentally while taking into account that 90% of your group contribution hinges on class and not how you play your class. Its not worth it.

Edit: I refuse to believe that anyone at Blizzard ran heroic Mechanaar as a rogue/enh shammy/fury war. This isn't hyperbole, this isn't egoist bitching (I'm a rest druid), this isn't an op-ed piece. It's just simply not possible that someone ran it with one of those classes and signed off on it for release.

[penn]

Originally Posted by Xequecal

Black Morass? Impossible without a Mage. Flat out impossible. Ok, maybe the top 1% of the WoW population in top guilds can do it without one, but I don't see ANY way to handle the vast amount of trash efficiently enough without powerful AE otherwise.

Thats a huge exaggeration. You just have to DPS the rift keepers enough to only get 2-3 spawns from the portal and its simple. Its one of those fights that can seem impossible if your group doesn't have the dps needed, and extremely easy if you do.

Although I agree with your point somewhat on the rogue issue, it just seems like a 5 man design oversight. Rogues right now don't give you a boost over casters.

1) Void Walkers in Arcatraz that within 10 seconds do +2500 damage that you can't stop, and melee heal themselves for more than a 900 spell damage mage, a 2000 atk power Rog and 1500 atk power enhancement shaman can't out damage unless every single one of them, including priest and warrior, blows all their damage cooldowns and trinkets.

You have to constantly move them off of those pink columns or you cannot kill them.

[Goliath]

Originally Posted by Tirinal

I really hate to play this card, because it seems like a copout. It makes it seem like I'm saying I'm just a better player than you, which isn't my intent. But all those things... it's just really not hard if you know what you're doing. Sometimes it takes gimmicky things like pvp trinkets and sometimes you need to spend three minutes before a fight actualy outlining the abilities of X mob, but I never felt that the margin for error was all that small. My motley groups didn't have issues burst dpsing the voids or the arcane guardians, we didn't have endurance problems in the black morass, and since absolutely everybody seems to have various cc now we were able to cobble our way through shattered halls pulls without mages/warlocks. There is still a clusterfuck of bad design, but you can overcome it since it's not taken to such retarded extremes as in heroics. I just don't know what to say.

Everything Xeq said about heroics is 100% true however. Seriously. Apply a couple filters to heroic wowhead item lists for your class, superimpose it on top of random blues, and compare the two mentally while taking into account that 90% of your group contribution hinges on class and not how you play your class. Its not worth it.

Edit: I refuse to believe that anyone at Blizzard ran heroic Mechanaar as a rogue/enh shammy/fury war. This isn't hyperbole, this isn't egoist bitching (I'm a rest druid), this isn't an op-ed piece. It's just simply not possible that someone ran it with one of those classes and signed off on it for release.

I find that Murmur being super easy for us, When he is actually a pretty hard boss if you don't pay attention. And that any other boss that is "skill" based, like just about everything in TBC has been fun and "good" for us. Yet all of the sudden just about everything at level 70 is terrible, shows that it has nothing to do with you being better than me and find it hard to believe that we are just not that good. We have done every TBC instance together, usually under level, most before we could even get the quests for the places, and we did fine, it was a challenge, but a fair and good challenge. We know what we are doing, we are good players. And not to mention their gear is the top of the top, and mine is pretty good too now, since TBC came out. I'm at almost 9k hp unbuffed as rog and 1500 atk.

I honestly don't think you have been through all of botanica/mech/arcatraz, based on what you said earlier and the fact that you haven't mentioned a few of the things. And if you really think shattered halls is fair then.. well.. there's not much to say there. You will realize when you have done Arcatraz in particular, that it isn't a margin of error issue. It isn't messing up, and it isn't going into a fight un-prepared, and it isn't not having gear/skill. Things like the "Death" debuff are absolutely retarded and are just random things that bypass your skill and just fuck you up your ass.

It could be possible that all 5 of us, usually being very skilled and on top of our game, did not correctly move the void walkers off of their holes every time, but no matter how much we moved it it wasn't stopping. I hate to play the bug card, but I fail to see how even after moving and actually at one point having the mage kite as me, war and sham chased it, did not stop the heal, he'd turn around every few seconds and hit one of us, but mage usually hard agro.

[ex-genj]

wow I couldn't disagree more with almost all of your points. I've done all L70 instances with war (me) priest lock rogue and x for last class, usually not a mage. And all of them are very easy once you learn the mechanics of the trash and bosses. And the rogue is.. top dps every run, every boss, every trash mob with a few exceptions, just like he was pre tbc. I guess I just don't get what you're saying here, I especially don't get the love for shadow labs, the place we've done the most (and are basically forced to due to the lack of lower city rep turn ins), I dislike it much more than any other instance basically as the trash bores me or annoys me like the felguards.

Shattered halls is challenging and fun with chaotic pulls that require a good tank and good coordination. However of course I simply don't see an average pug ever doing well there.

Botanica has 5 boss mobs with few trash pulls leading to quick loots and lots of scryer drops. Also you can MC trash for a 30 minute +300 spell damage buff = whee.

Mechanar sucks admittedly but is a fast run and is obviously designed to be difficult due to the no-wipe last boss fight, if you can't deal with it don't go.

Steam vaults is another quick run if you are smart and skip half the trash mobs.

Arcatraz is clearly designed to be the "uber 5 man" and is reflected by the "difficulty" of the trash, none of which is particularly hard at all once you learn what they do, the only really hard pull is the 2 zap-bot guys at once, but you can you know stun them as they explode and get away without being hurt.

Black morass is very very easy, I don't understand the crying about this zone. I did it today with war rogue warlock holy pally resto shaman who just hit 70. Hardly the ideal group but it went very fast with no danger of being overwhelmed.

Maybe I'm being a dick but I just don't see the problems you're complaining about. I like almost all the instances and am looking forward to doing them on heroic with my regular group (and yes I am aware we will almost certainly need a mage).