The eventual nerfing of Karazhan
by Mike Schramm 
Aug 22nd 2007 at 3:46PM
When Lua from Doomhammer posts on the forums asking for a little Karazhan trash relief, Bornakk (who's new on the forums-- not sure whether he's a CM or a mod yet) says no-- Blizzard is happy with the pacing of Karazhan. So you're meant to be taking a long time clearing all those little mana guys before and after Curator.But this idea of making Karazhan faster brings up another point I've been mulling over for a while now. When we first heard about Kara, a "new 10man instance," back when we were all playing vanilla WoW, I got really excited about the fact that we were going to have a new UBRS-- an epic raid that 10 people could finish off in a few hours. Kind of a short but preview of the bigger raids to come. Fighting Rend while Nefarian was yelling at him was some of the best times I'd ever had in WoW, and I looked forward to leading the same kinds of groups through Karazhan.
But Karazhan didn't turn out like that, did it? It's still more complicated, and for many guilds, it's still the main event. There's a timer on it, most groups take at least two days to clean it out, and while the encounters in UBRS weren't necessarily easy if your group wasn't up to it, the encounters in Karazhan are pretty merciless-- Moroes takes coordination that even the Drakk fight never needed.
That's not necessarily a bad thing-- I like Karazhan a lot. But just as UBRS was diluted from its original form (as a harder 15 man instance with more trash than it has now), I wonder if Karazhan will eventually have the same fate. When more and more guilds have moved up the ladder, and we're all farming Zul'Aman and progressing on Mount Hyjal, will Blizzard eventually nerf Kara into the new UBRS, with streamlined trash and no timer?
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Guilds, Blizzard, Instances, Raiding
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Tinwhisker Aug 22nd 2007 3:56PM
Couple of points:
UBRS never dropped epic quality gear.
The Kara gear got buffed recently.
Epiny Aug 22nd 2007 4:01PM
It's a good idea drop the difficulty of these instances after they have been farmed by the "Higher" guilds. It enables everyone to see the entire game, while still letting the Raiding guilds stay ahead of the average player.
I understand some hard core raiders feel this is a waste of there time, but all these instance will be moot when WotLK comes out. Play the game because it's fun.
Keya Aug 22nd 2007 4:03PM
1) You didn't get Epic loot in UBRS.
2) One of the next patches will bring heroic badges in addition to the standard loot. That's ridiculous nerf in itself.
3) We do a complete Karazhan clear with a group of near-complete Karazhan equipment in roughly 4 hours. It think that is very fair compared to how much lot you get for how few people (I've never done MC in faster than 3.5 hours, and that didn't yield as much loot/person as karazhan).
It's a pitty that Blizz never reintroduced that style of: X man instance for quests, X man + 5 for loot only. Karazhan with 15 people could probably be done really fast.
Physical Original Aug 22nd 2007 4:03PM
Forget Kara. I'm hoping the 25 man difficulty gets dropped before the new xpac so that the more casual gamers have a chance in hell of seeing them (would it be so bad if they nerfed gruul and mags a bit?).
Arlan Aug 22nd 2007 4:04PM
A lot of the harder trash has already been nerfed, Karazhan doesn't need any more nerfing.
Kyrra Aug 22nd 2007 4:13PM
I'm 95% certain Bornakk is a CM. Between his welcome post, and looking at his post history, he does nothing a Mod normally does, but is doing all the work a CM normally does.
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=712011119&sid=1
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/search.html?forumId=10001&characterId=7125775617&sid=1
Queuetip Aug 23rd 2007 6:26AM
The difference between UBRS and Karazhan is the huge size difference. UBRS was a compact dungeon with 5 or 6 bosses. Karazhan is a massive instance with 10+ bosses spread out great distances. They didn't want to make the place seem empty, so they filled the gap with mobs. And these aren't the silly instance mobs you see in UBRS. Because of the huge scaling of tanking mitigation and hp, they had to make these new mobs pose at least somewhat of a threat, so they make them hit for thousands on plate. In UBRS, a small mistake would mean an extra heal here and there. Now these things hit so hard, that a small mistake means one or 2 people dead. This can leads to extra downtime in between the many pulls before bosses. As for the bosses, the days of tank and spank are over. It now requires some real skill and organization to down the bosses in Kara and beyond. While I think that is a good thing, this leads to lengthy runs if people aren't on there A game all of the time.
The gear in Karazhan is also much better quality relative to the gear from Ubrs. I think the added time and effort should be required.
All that being said, I think they make some change to perhaps lessen the annoyance of some of the areas. Like there is no need for 6 of those guys pre curator.
or the long span of trash before shade.
nimitivd Aug 22nd 2007 4:22PM
The trash is fine. They do need to fix the drops so that stuff drops that people can use. If we get one more boss to drop stuff noone needs (ie no shamen in the raid) or stuff that people already have Im gonna stab my eyes out. Maiden has dropped the exact same loot 2 weeks in a row, none of which is usable for the raid. It sucks to clear trash and down 4 bosses in a night and noone in the raid gets any loot. void crystals ftl
If all classes that can use the item have the item or noone in the raid can use it, then it should be taken out of the loot table.
and make it so you don't get the same opera 2 weeks in a row, or 5 weeks in a row of OZ like my guild..:)
nubular Aug 22nd 2007 4:22PM
They're adding heroic badges to Kara? That sounds pretty cool to me.
CVJ Aug 22nd 2007 4:28PM
There is no need to nerf Kara it is the end game content for casual smaller guilds or a way to gear up guild who want to progress into 25 mans.
The current five mans with heroic modes are the answer to the shorter non raid instances once you exhausted the standard mode 5 mans.
Andrew Aug 22nd 2007 4:28PM
@ all the folks with the "epic loot" comments.
When UBRS was implemented... was there really any major source of epic loot in the game?
Dal'Rends set was considered "epic" for a very long time. Same with the Doomsaw.
Just because the "color" is purple instead of blue, doesn't meant he level of available gear was all that different.
deviationer Aug 22nd 2007 4:43PM
if your guild/raid can't clear kara in 2x3-4hrs raids, then you need some serious help.
I can understand if you are all or mostly all raid n00bs and are trying to get the encounters down, but really, kara doesn't take that long to learn. There are plenty of strats and vids out now. Figure it out.
brett Aug 22nd 2007 5:47PM
It's already been nerfed into the dirt. Let's play a little game of "remember when".
Remember when you couldn't shackle the Skeletal Ushers?
Remember when you could only damage Nightbane's skeletons with holy damage and melee?
Remember when the trash was on a respawn timer so quick that you might get three pulls in on moroes before having to reclear?
Remember when having more than two melee in on the maiden meant certain death due to holy wrath? Speaking of the maiden remember when she would Holy Fire during repentance?
Remember when bubbling up during flame wreath meant triggering an explosion? Remember when pets could trigger flame wreath?
Not to mention all the HP reductions along the way.
In short Kara is already far easier than it has ever been. If you group stays focused it can easily be cleared in under 4 hours. For those who find it too hard, perhaps UBRS is more your speed.
Alan Aug 22nd 2007 5:00PM
I think that part of the problem with Karazhan is that there is SOOO much trash. For instance, the space between the Curator and Aran. Does it really need to be that long? Or the trash before, and after Attumen. Does there really need to be 6ish pulls before a boss that is really only a gear check? and then another pull or two after, just to get to a repair guy? I love the fact that alot more coordination is needed for the bosses, I think it adds a very clever angle on strategy. Except for the Prince. I cannot begin to describe how angry I feel after, say an hour and a half of bad infernal placement. There is way too much luck involved in that fight.
Pinwiz Aug 22nd 2007 5:04PM
You can speed through Kara. All you have to do is proceed directly to the Opera event and the back door. Cut half the time off of the instance run.
Shrimpkebab Aug 22nd 2007 5:11PM
I really miss UBRS also. I wish they would revamp all the old raids that i loved MC,BWL,AQ,ZG and remove the lock timer on them, remove some trash so that it takes about 2hours to clear, retune them for 10man and put some badges on the bosses that people can turn in for some half decent gear, not great gear but decent.
Karl Aug 22nd 2007 5:46PM
Meh...The only Kara issue I see that could use a tweak (Note: Not a nerf) is the Prince fight's Infernal Placement to use more strategy than luck. The place is easy enough given gearing requirements. The fights are fairly straight forward.
@11...Give it a rest. I'm sure you are in the greatest raid/guild ever and you can solo Black Temple, but remember that there are guilds that are either new or casual. Kara does require some gearing up before clearing in 2x3-4 runs. They don't have serious problems. Well, unless you consider wives/girlfriends, children, a life, etc. serious problems. I am going to guess that those problems don't affect you though.
Karl Aug 22nd 2007 5:46PM
Meh...The only Kara issue I see that could use a tweak (Note: Not a nerf) is the Prince fight's Infernal Placement to use more strategy than luck. The place is easy enough given gearing requirements. The fights are fairly straight forward.
@11...Give it a rest. I'm sure you are in the greatest raid/guild ever and you can solo Black Temple, but remember that there are guilds that are either new or casual. Kara does require some gearing up before clearing in 2x3-4 runs. They don't have serious problems. Well, unless you consider wives/girlfriends, children, a life, etc. serious problems. I am going to guess that those problems don't affect you though.
Dave Aug 22nd 2007 5:48PM
As long as kara drops Tier 4 purple loot, it'll have a timer and be a real raid.
If they change T4 to be a blue set and vastly lower the drop rate on the random purples in the instance, I can see them turning the timer off. Unless they do something drastic like that, it totally won't change.
Of course they haven't done that yet with any of the older instances, so there's no reason to assume they'll do it with kara either even once the next expansion comes out and Tier 7 is the logical upgrade after L80 dungeon blues.
klink-o Aug 22nd 2007 6:04PM
@ nimitivd:
I'll trade you four r&j's for four oz's.