Sartharion sings the blues
by Alex Ziebart 
Feb 7th 2009 at 5:00PM
I quite literally leapt for joy when Daelo, lead encounter designer, mentioned that they'll be turning blue in a future patch. It's a minor tweak to the encounter, but it will seriously help those moments when you have a void zone beneath a Death and Decay and you have a tank who is tanking loads of whelps and elementals which are already obscuring their vision. The hardest part of the fight isn't the movements, the hardest part is being able to see.
This does make me wonder what they'll do with future, similar things. The terrain alone makes the void zones hard to see during Sartharion, but the largest issue (I think) is Death and Decay. It's big, fluffy, and extremely red. Will they simply not be able to use red ground effects anymore? My raid doesn't do it, but there are raids out there that forbid Death Knights from using Death and Decay for the specific reason that it hides AOEs beneath it, so I have to wonder if there's a better solution to the problem than changing colors without removing the 'cool factor' of the DnD particle effect.
Filed under: Patches, Analysis / Opinion, Raiding, Death Knight
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Yavannie Feb 7th 2009 5:13PM
Nice change, but until then turning down your spell detail level to the minimum will allow you to see the fissures but not D&D.
Viper007Bond Feb 7th 2009 5:35PM
Bingo.
Turning your spell detail to the lowest setting is a requirement in our guild for that fight as it hides D&D and Pally's Conc.
Although to be honest I have an easier time seeing it with it maxxed out. Dunno why.
jurandr Feb 7th 2009 5:14PM
Better hope your mages don't start casting blizzard. It makes a huge rune-like circle on the ground that glows blue.
tanknspank Feb 7th 2009 5:16PM
Shadow Fissures aren't that hard to avoid are they? Even in their current color, it's not that difficult to watch your feet during the encounter. This change won't help those who aren't paying attention anyways tbh, they really stand out.
realmreaver Feb 7th 2009 5:17PM
HUGE fan of Death Knights. Huge DnD hater. Worse design for that class ever. It needs to be sinple dark and deadly looking not flashy and ..er.. bubbly.
AyaJulia Feb 7th 2009 5:19PM
"My raid doesn't do it, but there are raids out there that forbid Death Knights from using Death and Decay for the specific reason that it hides AOEs beneath it."
What encounter could possibly require such a harsh restriction as to strip a dps ability away from a class? Seriously? I'm running through them in my head and can't think of any where there's a ground-based AoE that's even remotely close in color to DnD. Someone in our guild commented on DnD with Grobbulus's plague cloud once, but it's very very green, that can't be it. Rain of Fire projects a red circle on the ground similar to DnD, but the, you know, rain of fire sets it apart. Archavon's clouds are grey and appear above DnD, Blizzards are blue and again rain from the sky, Lady Blaumeux's void circles are very distinctive, void zones in Sarth and KT are easy to see spinning around the player, Magic bubbles in Malygos couldn't be more visually different from DnD... I'm out of ideas.
Any clarification?
On topic, I've never had a problem seeing the portals either... and they always spawn in the same place, so once you're used to the encounters it's much easier to find them.
tanknspank Feb 7th 2009 5:24PM
The only reason you would do this is if your guild sucked. I've never had issues mixing up various spell effects ever. Just requires you to actually pay attention and not hit keystrokes.
aksarben Feb 7th 2009 5:33PM
If you can't spot the fissures now, in their current form, then get out of the raid. Learn to play, IMO.
megalomaniac Feb 7th 2009 5:45PM
Turn your spell detail most of the way down if you're really having issues. At its lowest level, the fissures are visible while most other ground effects (e.g., DnD, consecrate) are not.
This post in general reeks of fail, though, and I suspect even after making these adjustments the weak links in your raid are still suffering from pew-pew tunnel vision and will die regardless.
Forbidding the use of DnD is laughable -- your raid has more serious issues at hand if this option is even considered.
Matchu Feb 7th 2009 5:50PM
Also hope they do the same colour change for KT.
helples Feb 7th 2009 5:54PM
in my guild we get everyone to turn spell detail to the lowest setting as this will no longer show the DnD ground effect :) making shadow fissures easy to spot now all we need it competent players lol
Leon Feb 7th 2009 5:55PM
Death to Death and Decay!
Heh, without getting into "ur bad" discussions, I think if this change helps some players and raids then it's a good change =)
And @realmreaver, I agree, when I was in Beta and I first saw that spell (I didn't have a Death Knight so I was kinda n00bie on that part) I thought the animation belonged to the spell "Blood Boil" and the effct of Desecration belonged to "Death and Decay".
When I did my first Death Knight I was like "@-@".
vexis58 Feb 8th 2009 3:38AM
Yeah, I don't get why it uses this bright neon red glow instead of the Death and Decay animation (or at least something resembling it) that mobs and bosses have already been using for years now, like Rage Winterchill in Hyjal and those trash mobs in Botanica.
Dez Feb 7th 2009 5:57PM
Lawl tired of the L2P comments, I dunno what kind of super vision you have but red doesn't stand out when everything else is red. Red lava waves, red ground, red drake, red DnD, red elementals, red fissures, add in tons of whelps and people that obviously capture you vision as well, thus distracting you even if just a bit (depends on player).
Everything that can be seen will add to distraction from what you're actually trying to focus on, like if there's a black dot on white background, but lots of colored dots on the sides, you will see those dots no matter how hard you focus on the black dot, unless you're blind. My point is as long as you see it that's an extra thing for you vision to share its focus on.
As for the Shadow Fissure, what some "pros" who yell L2P don't seem to understand is; It's not that it is hard to see, but unless you look at your character constantly you might miss it and if you spot it at all it might be too late. Especially so with the Sarth Encounter seeing that everything else is the same color, AND that there's a lot else going on in the fight that demands your attention. Now add in the fact that you also need to DPS or whatever to be at all useful. Just because this can be a hazzle doesn't mean you're a bad player or that you don't pay attention or spam buttons. You can pay attention 100% of the time, the fact is that there's many things to pay attention to.
lol@lol Feb 9th 2009 1:15PM
ya, l2p
Caine Feb 7th 2009 8:08PM
DBM Raid Warning: OMGVOIDFISSURE
Quick glance at your feat. Nothing. Back to DPS.
Not that hard to see.
If you don't use DBM, on the other hand...
Kanuris Feb 7th 2009 10:13PM
Your raid leader will hate you. Twice now i've ran into places where someone has not had DBM or Bigwigs and it's caused wipes.
It's the same as turning up on time with your consumables, and having Pallypower if your a Paladin. Anything that reduces your raid leader's stress is a good thing, because then you get one of my old Raid leaders, who was the most mellow guy ever and made raiding an absolute pleasure.
Driphter Feb 7th 2009 8:16PM
This doesn't help when you're melee in a melee-heavy horde raid and you have a bunch of fat tauren hugging a drakes terrible hitbox...
~Driphter
SkwidSpawn Feb 7th 2009 9:08PM
Great, they're going blue... So now the darn blizzard circles from mages will cover it up. Awesome.
Zhiva Feb 8th 2009 6:19AM
I wonder if those raids will forbid mages from using Blizzard.
@My raid doesn't do it, but there are raids out there that forbid Death Knights from using Death and Decay for the specific reason that it hides AOEs beneath it,