Mage solos Naxxramas Military Quarter
by Alex Ziebart 
Jan 4th 2009 at 9:00AM
WoW Insider's inbox has been absolutely flooded with tips about the video you see above. Yes, what you're seeing there is a Mage soloing the Military Quarter of Naxxramas. Not the 10-man Naxxramas, but Heroic Naxxramas.
This crazy stunt comes from the same crew that pulled off the two-man Loatheb kill, and uses another pretty funny gimmick. This one uses a combination of Spellsteal on specific mobs, a talent called Incanter's Absorption, and a talent called Burning Determination.
The Bone Armor that is cast by the Death Knight Cavaliers was able to be spellstolen, and it absorbs 1,200,000 damage. You could get up to hundreds of thousands of points of spell damage, in theory. In practice it probably comes out to much less than that most of the time. Still, as you can see from the video, 100,000 spell damage was completely possible. Burning Determination was necessary because those same mobs like to spam Strangulate.
I say 'was' because this has already been hotfixed. According to the comments on Wowhead, they really didn't waste any time fixing it. There were some people who had it crap out on them in the middle of soloing Razuvious, because they suddenly couldn't spellsteal the buff anymore.
This video just goes to show just how creative players can be. The developers and QA team probably didn't even think this combination of spells and talents could do anything remotely like this. Without Incanter's Absorption, spellstealing that Bone Armor would have never been a problem, and it's a talent most players wouldn't take in a PvE build. All it takes is one player saying, "What if..." to start a wildfire in the WoW community, and that's what this did. How many Mages do you think went and tried this after seeing the video? All of them.
I gotta give props to the crew that did this video and the Loatheb kill, they're a mighty creative bunch, in that vaguely exploitative way. They should change their guild tag to <Quality Assurance>.
This crazy stunt comes from the same crew that pulled off the two-man Loatheb kill, and uses another pretty funny gimmick. This one uses a combination of Spellsteal on specific mobs, a talent called Incanter's Absorption, and a talent called Burning Determination.
The Bone Armor that is cast by the Death Knight Cavaliers was able to be spellstolen, and it absorbs 1,200,000 damage. You could get up to hundreds of thousands of points of spell damage, in theory. In practice it probably comes out to much less than that most of the time. Still, as you can see from the video, 100,000 spell damage was completely possible. Burning Determination was necessary because those same mobs like to spam Strangulate.
I say 'was' because this has already been hotfixed. According to the comments on Wowhead, they really didn't waste any time fixing it. There were some people who had it crap out on them in the middle of soloing Razuvious, because they suddenly couldn't spellsteal the buff anymore.
This video just goes to show just how creative players can be. The developers and QA team probably didn't even think this combination of spells and talents could do anything remotely like this. Without Incanter's Absorption, spellstealing that Bone Armor would have never been a problem, and it's a talent most players wouldn't take in a PvE build. All it takes is one player saying, "What if..." to start a wildfire in the WoW community, and that's what this did. How many Mages do you think went and tried this after seeing the video? All of them.
I gotta give props to the crew that did this video and the Loatheb kill, they're a mighty creative bunch, in that vaguely exploitative way. They should change their guild tag to <Quality Assurance>.
Filed under: Mage, Analysis / Opinion, Bugs, Raiding
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
Amaxe Jan 4th 2009 9:07AM
Like the Pally Bomb of old here.
Yeah Blizz can't think of everything, and there are a lot of clever players out there who can make use of the rules of the game to their advantage.
At least they fixed it
Obvious Jan 4th 2009 9:20AM
I kind of hate how they handled this. Making the buff unstealable takes away a second viable method to handle this fight.
I agree that it did need to be nerfed in some way as a mage soloing current content 25 man raid bosses is a little crazy. Maybe instead of making the buff unstealable they could have changed Incanters to only give spell damage absorbed by the mage's own shields instead of any shield. Or perhaps have the damage boost cap at a certain percent above their normal unbuffed damage?
kozom Jan 4th 2009 10:02AM
@ obvious i completely agree. they should have found a way to make it still stealable, but not overpowered as it once was (like how you stated.)
also what is annoying now is that you have to rely off one class (really) to do this boss properly and safely. This allowed for the boss encounter to be more varied...but w/e.
Forbiding Jan 6th 2009 6:34PM
I seem to remember something blizzard said along the lines of "Bring the player, not the class." Being pigeonholed into bringing 2 shadow priests sucks...especially when you can't find any.
gundamxzero Jan 4th 2009 10:57AM
They could make it so the horse mobs just chain and reset if pulled past a certain point.
Charlie Jan 4th 2009 11:51PM
They could make it so if you had magic shield up you couldn't have bone armor up. Making it near impossible to DPS them down.
Making it impossible to spellsteal the buff is stupid.
Maybe they will un-hotfix it later when they come up with abetter solution.
Here's hoping.
jaxson_bateman Jan 5th 2009 12:38AM
There can be absolutely no denying how they intended this fight to be done (Raz), back at 60 and now at 80. Mind control. That's exactly why they put the orbs in the 10 man - because you won't always have a priest.
However, if you don't even have 1 priest in the 25 man version (and yes, it can be done with 1 priest) then your raid has issues that are beyond a simple strategic problem.
Furydeath Jan 4th 2009 9:10AM
Was wondering when this would be on here. I got to do some fun stuff the night before they hot fixed it. =)
Wayne Jan 4th 2009 9:15AM
Props to them indeed. Sure blizzard needed to fix this, but the people who are calling for bans to be given out for this need to get a life.
I bet blizzard love it when people manage to pull off things like this! As said above, it just goes to show how creative players can be and I for one, love it.
dotorion Jan 4th 2009 9:52AM
They probably go "damn that's cool"
followed by "damn, we better fix this" :p
Ah, player creativity :-)
blkmasta55555 Jan 4th 2009 9:28AM
Dammit, heard about this yesterday and was going to try it tonight >:(
Zayd Jan 4th 2009 10:02AM
Hats off to the creative thinkers out there once again.
MusedMoose Jan 4th 2009 9:54AM
Mages: first, we think outside the box. Then we blow up the box. Then we teleport away so you can't prove we were anywhere near the box when it blew up. *grin*
But seriously, this is awesome. I agree that it was a major exploit and I think it's good that Blizzard fixed it, but it's still damn cool to see someone pull this off.
Chris Jan 5th 2009 4:57PM
I am so stealing that to put in my sig on every forum I am on.
Dave Jan 4th 2009 11:16PM
Yeah, it's totally awesome!
Grogos Jan 4th 2009 10:52AM
o.O and they say they need to nerf hunters cause we are doing to much damage???????? WTF
Dman Jan 4th 2009 11:39AM
Do all hunters whine all the time?
The Elitist Jerk Jan 4th 2009 2:06PM
No. Most of us just adapt to the "changes", despite our personal opinions of the nerf.
This one is just stupid.
Jessierockeron Jan 5th 2009 12:23AM
If you were paying attention, by stealing bone shield and picking a talent that allows the mage's spellpower to go up every time damage was absorbed the mage's spellpower went through the roof and that made the player's dps output skyrocket.
Jessierockeron Jan 5th 2009 12:26AM
i mean spell damage not spell power