Ulduar nerfed, more nerfs on the way
by Eliah Hecht 
Apr 29th 2009 at 9:00AM
Blizzard posted a list of hotfixes to Ulduar last night in their ongoing hotfix thread, almost all nerfs, and a notice that they were "making further difficult adjustments via hotfix" to Ignis, Razorscale, XT-002 Deconstructor, The Assembly of Iron, Kologarn, and Auriya, with changes to other encounters "highly likely" to occur once they're done with these. In this case I read "making adjustments via hotfix" as "giving them a good whack with the nerf stick."
The specific changes that they just announced for Ulduar:
- The Ignis the Furnace Master encounter has received the following changes: The interrupt effect and duration of the damage from Flame Jets has been reduced, the damage from the Slag pot has been reduced, the number of Heat stacks needed to transform an Iron Construct into a Molten state has been reduced, the base melee damage done by Ignis has been reduced, and the damage bonus Ignis receives from Strength of the Creator has been slightly increased.
- The Assault Bots on the Mimiron encounter will now attack faster; in turn, they will do less damage per hit.
- The XT-002 Deconstructor encounter has received the following changes: The duration of Tympanic Trantrum has been reduced, the timer for XT-002 to hit berserk has been increased, the damage of Light Bomb has been reduced, the effect radius of Light Bomb has been reduced, and the health of XM-024 Pummeler has been reduced.
- Pure Saronite mining nodes have temporarily been disable in Ulduar and will return in the future.
Do you guys think these nerfs are merited? I've seen a lot of worry tonight about Ulduar becoming another Naxx, but in my opinion, it's got a long ways to go before that happens.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 10)
bugmaster Apr 29th 2009 9:17AM
naxx not easy :S where have you been and what have you been doing in there then :S did naxx 25 with 25 alts who were just done questing and we cleared everything easily :S
and for ulduar 10 man is easy as hell and 25 an just takes 25 players with decent gear who know what they are doing nuf said
jam Apr 29th 2009 9:04AM
"Do you guys think these nerfs are merited? "
No, absolutely not. I guess there are more bad players than I previously thought. And I'm not being an elitist, the nerfed bosses were all easily killable already.
outlier Apr 29th 2009 9:09AM
Seems like less "Bring the Player, not the class", and more "Bring a player, any player, really any player at all and not the class".
Angry Joe Apr 29th 2009 9:13AM
Want it hard? Play hard modes. Kill Algalon.
Elmo Apr 29th 2009 9:17AM
Agreed here, if people can't do those bosses they need to get back to Naxx.
I don't like facerolling content personally.
I remember we were stuck for weeks on Brutallus we killed him eventually but not to long after they nerfed all the bosses in T6 content and we absolutely laughed at how easy Brutallus had become, it was ridiculous.
I hoped such mass nerfing would never happen again.
Karilyn Apr 29th 2009 9:18AM
Yes and no.
Easy mode in Ulduar, is intended to be eventually puggable. And you know what? So will easy mode in Icecrown... And if Blizzard stands by it's current stance, every raid from now until the end of the game.
Blizzard figures, that they busts their ass developing new raid content, they want every single person who wants to see the raid content, ultimately to be capable of seeing it, even if it is only on a very trivial easy mode version after 3-4 months of the content being out.
For those who want a challenge, you have your hard modes, and your Algalon.
You have no right to talk about Ulduar being easy, until you've cleared it on Hard Mode, and defeated Algalon.
Bylak Apr 29th 2009 9:53AM
/agree with Angry Joe
Hard Modes for the bosses are there for a reason. If those start to become trivial then there's a problem. I have no problem with the "normal" Ulduar content being accessible.
rosencratz Apr 29th 2009 9:25AM
@ Bugmaster - Do you honestly think anyone will believe you managed to form a group of 25 people who were all alts and all ONLY had questing gear?
You werent even tempted to bring one of those people's main characters to tank or heal considering no one in the group was either hit capped or defense capped?
Yeah! I totally believe that happened!
You sure you didn't forget to mention that they had all been doing heroics? Or did they all start levelling alts on the same day and happen to finish leveling more or less in synch?
*sigh!* Why express an opinion when prefacing it with horribly unlikely exagerrations?
Brian Apr 29th 2009 9:50AM
My regular pug made it to Mimiron last week. Most guilds on my server haven't made it that far. We're hoping to get to Soggy Yoggy this week.
Netherscourge Apr 29th 2009 9:51AM
IMO, make the Hard Modes HARDER.
Uldar is not hard - nor should it be.
However, the Hard Modes are NOT that hard and I think they should be made harder.
Grak Apr 29th 2009 9:55AM
@bugmaster
So you'll be replying to this with an armory link to your character with achievements for clearing all of Ulduar because its so easy and you have it on farm now? We're waiting..
Anuine Apr 29th 2009 10:04AM
I agree. My guild / raid alliance is still having fun on deconstructor (not yet down, so kind of suck), but I don't want to see it nerfed.
We raid one night of 3 hours a week atm, because of irl issues, both in 10 and in 25.
I would appreciate a few more weeks to give it a try, without having to consider normal ulduar-10/25 as free-loot-for-everyone.
Wolftech Apr 29th 2009 10:06AM
@bugmaster
Screenshots and armory links for all of the toons involved or it didn't happen
Hansbo Apr 29th 2009 10:13AM
The only merited change was maybe the assault bot nerf on mimiron. As long as the dps is the same, making the burst damage smaller will remove the risk of unneccessary and unlucky wipes.
On the other bosses, well, if you were a group with decent coordination and naxx-gear (which should be required imo), they weren't very hard.
rosencratz Apr 29th 2009 10:19AM
What i don't understand is this.
if the rules are changed in a sport, say, tennis or footbal or so.
Do we shout "nerf" or start clambering over each other to scream accusations that the people in charge are pandering to one side of a pointless argument or another?
Or do we investigate the new rules, try and work out whether it's more or less "fun"(remember that word?) than it was before?
Why do you all have to be so petty and backstab each other because you have different playstyles/schedules?
I'm sure blizzard would prefer it if you posted constructively that a change was actually more(or less) fun/entertaining/enjoyable/practical than before.
I suspect that's what they're truelly aiming for and if it's not they should be provoked into aiming for it by the constructive criticisms.
clevins Apr 29th 2009 1:38PM
I've only done this on 10 and just once (work.... grrr) but XT and Razor felt duable but barely if the group was in Naxx 10 gear (emblems, heroics incl). I wonder how many people wandered into Uld-10 with Naxx 25, Maly 25 and other 25 man gear and found it easy. Of course it is, at that point you're outgearing the place.
If Blizzard's intention is to have 10s be a valid path then the 10 man encounters need to be doable in 10 man gear from the previous tier and not rely on people having 25 man gear. Ulduar 10 felt about like ZA did in all Kara gear - a bit overtuned, but not insanely so.
Zephyr102 Apr 30th 2009 4:31PM
I miss the raids where it took at least a week of preparing and wipes to down the first boss, maybe te second if you were lucky. Ok maybe that's an exageration, but killing KT in TK in BC (yay for abrevs) was a large accomplishment at the time (pre 3.0). I wish they would bring real raiding back and have stuff like the argent tournament for the casuals.....gg blizz your ruining raiding with the nerf stick...who woulda thought.
Molly Apr 29th 2009 3:20PM
I agree, these nerfs are really ridiculous. The first week of 3.1, my guild downed FL and fought Razorscale for two days without downing her. Then the next week they nerfed her and we took her down after a night of wipes, then spent a night wiping on XT and downed her the day after.
This week, we went in and did FL with two towers up, one-shotted Razorscale and XT, captured WG and downed Emalon all within our 3 hour raid time. There's just no challenge anymore. Downing those bosses after a full night of wipes was such an awesome feeling.. but going in there and one-shotting them all because of mega-nerfs just leaves a bad feeling.
Yaikage Apr 29th 2009 5:13PM
@Brian
If it's your "regular PuG" then it's not really much of a pug now is it? PuG's are supposed to be random and spontaneous, hence the Pick-up part of it. Sounds more like you're running with your friends or maybe even an interguild alliance than a "PuG".
Croe Apr 29th 2009 5:29PM
@ rosencratz
Fun? What do you think this is? A game?