Victory in Lake Wintergrasp yields a raid boss
by Alex Ziebart 
Sep 14th 2008 at 8:00PM
Currently, the encounter is trivial according to just about everyone that has tested it. The 10-man version is a breeze, and the 25-man version can be done with 10 people. I think it's safe to say this encounter isn't complete yet, or at least it needs some major retuning. I'm not sure how I feel about what loot this encounter drops. If it's intended, it seems like a rather trivial way to award those things. Season 5 armor from a raid boss? I know around Patch 2.4 they put in the ability to trade armor tokens from dungeons for old season gear, but this boss is essentially awarding the cutting edge arena gear for a 10 minute jaunt into a dungeon. Granted, your faction needs to have control of Wintergrasp, but the point remains. It's really, really easy to get gear that should take a little effort to get. There's still the RNG to deal with, but I still think this boss should have a wholly different loot table.
Of course, that brings up the fact that this boss is supposed to be motivation to take part in the battle for Wintergrasp. If this boss didn't award hella good loot, nobody would care. It's incentive to not just farm HKs in Wintergrasp, but to win and rally your faction into winning. There's also the issue of difficulty. Should it be tuned for PvE players? PvP players? You can't tune a boss the same way for both. What a PvE geared tank can handle isn't the same as what a tank in Honor/Arena gear can handle, unless they're packing multiple sets of gear. The boss also needs to be easily done in a PUG, since you can't schedule a raid for this with the expectation that you'll have Wintergrasp on a Friday night. Or if you can, that's an issue in itself. It means your faction is clearly dominating the zone so much that you can set your calendar (and clock) according to it.
All in all, I'm interested in seeing what they do with this. It feels like it's going to be something that'll be really hard to tune and balance. It's about a step away from being so good it trivializes the arena, or so bad nobody cares that it even exists.
Filed under: PvP, Expansions, Raiding, Wrath of the Lich King
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
hakael Sep 14th 2008 8:16PM
I like this idea, I'd prefer if it had its own armor set available, maybe make it on par with season 5 but give it a different look so people can see how you got it. It would keep the season gear up on a pillar and allow for awesome rewards for participating at the same time.
Kaeb Sep 16th 2008 12:23PM
you mean the 10 achievement points aren't enough to tempt you?
http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?achievement=1722
romprstompr Sep 14th 2008 8:18PM
Is there going to be a cooldown for each single player?
excrucio Sep 14th 2008 8:27PM
Great idea, i hate arena..and its now the only way to get good pvp gear in wow..arena ruined pvp, sure u can old pvp gear in bg..but u wont stand a chance to someone in newer season gear..this will change that..hopefully..but dropping the gear does seem a bit easy, blizz could add another token, just for this boss, to buy the arena gear
rick gregory Sep 14th 2008 8:27PM
Hold it... do you have to be on the winning team when control shifts (i.e. participate in winning LW for your faction)? Or is he up for anyone in your faction even if they did nothing to gain control?
Trig Sep 14th 2008 8:33PM
They should make the raid IDs reset only when control shifts to the opposite faction and back.
Domandred Sep 14th 2008 8:35PM
Hope they fix wintergrasp because if it's four hours between matches that is going to be game breaking in current form.
Between matches is where most of the crippling bugs are atm.
shumanfu Sep 17th 2008 2:49AM
4 hours is ok..... put some effort into it, instead of those people just hanging out for free goodies every 2 minutes.
wade Sep 15th 2008 1:58AM
oh no, bugs on a beta?
brittwilson Sep 15th 2008 3:38AM
If I read it correctly, its not that Wintergrasp now has a four hour wait time in between games, but that people who were involved in a win have a four hour window to take down the boss.
Ill get on beta later tonight and check it out.
Richwarf Sep 14th 2008 8:36PM
What i think they shold do is the tokens (again) but ONLY for PvP items, 10 pugable and 25 hardly pugable :P
but who knows what there going to do.
1/2 the time i think the script righters for the soaps are the bizz core team :P
You never know who or what there going to do next :P
Aldheim Sep 14th 2008 8:46PM
It's a giant zone dedicated to massive PvP. It HAS to be PuGable, otherwise nobody will ever be able to do this boss- as others pointed out, you just can't schedule a raid when you have no clue whether or not your faction can gain control of Wintergrasp.
I like this idea- might even get me to venture into Wintergrasp (which I fully admit I was probably not going to do otherwise.)
-E
Monache Sep 14th 2008 8:40PM
It wouldn't trivialize arena if everyone had equivalent gear, it would just the level the competitive playing field.
sephirah Sep 14th 2008 8:44PM
Do the pvp rewards require a decent/high arena rating to use?
I like to have a good pvp set, but hate arena...
RogueJedi86 Sep 14th 2008 8:45PM
One thing you neglected to mention is where this raid is located. You tagged it with Vault of Archavon, but that's it.
skynes Sep 14th 2008 8:47PM
Sounds like a good idea to me.
Why do world PVP today? There are few rewards... The Vendor PVP gear is 'better' than what you buy in Halaa, so why bother?
Promise of a piece of Arena gear... Now THAT'S incentive.
kpurdy_ Sep 14th 2008 8:53PM
this is really similar to an idea i had about making an instance appear when you cap hallaa so that PvE and PVP players would fight for it.
i hope this guy isn't too easy though.. it would take away the coolness factor if you just ran in there with 10 randoms and 1 shoted him your first try.
i hope he drops some good gear maybe stuff equivalent to that of the current season's 1600~ bracket gear. its only when you start getting helmets/wep/shoulders you start noticing big boosts in dmg.
Zagim Sep 14th 2008 8:55PM
Although the boss may indeed need retuning, this idea is really, REALLY cool. Like another poster above, I hate arenas, though I really enjoy other forms of PvP, and this would give players like me a way to obtain "endgame" PvP rewards without the pain that is arenas. I quit WoW for a while at 70; this kind of change is certainly what it would take to not have me quit at 80.
Eisengel Sep 14th 2008 9:20PM
It surprises me that a PvP boss that drops PvP pieces is a... tank n spank? Blizz has injected the arena/PvP flavor into some boss fights in BC notably Moroes and Delrissa. While Moroes is less so, the Delrissa fight always feels like a brawl in an AV tower. I don't see why Blizz couldn't do something like Delrissa.
I'd love for the 10-man version to be a grudge match with classic bosses. Grab 10 bosses from vanllia WoW, randomize their aggro tables (like Delrissa), make the vulnerable to CC/fear and put them up against high level players sporting heavy PvP gear. The bosses may need to be goosed up or down a bit, but how much fun would it be to have your arms Warrior square off against Van Cleef, or your Warlock duel with Amnennar? Having 10 old world bosses running around randomly pounding the players would be pretty confusing, hectic, and based on which bosses you draw would definitely require some quick thinking and class mastery... which to me is the basis of PvP.
As for 25-man... what would be the ultimate 25-man PvP test? I'm not sure... maybe a tournament kind of like the Ring of Blood, where the 25 players are locked in cages and at a set interval a player is randomly released into the ring, and another NPC combatant spawns. So it starts 1v1, then goes to 2v2... etc. You win if you can take down each spawn faster than they can take down your players.
onetrueping Sep 14th 2008 9:26PM
I really don't see the problem here, since the Brutal gear is set for level 70 players, and the people likely to run the boss are going to be quite a bit higher than that (probably level 80).