Patch 5.3 interview with Ghostcrawler
Mystery of the Unborn Val'kyr
The latest patch 5.3 news
All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsIn-game fixes for Monday May 4th
by Adam Holisky 
May 4th 2009 at 10:40PM
There's an additional list of in-game fixes released tonight by Bornakk. The fixes have been coming less and less over the past week, and that's reflected in the fact the game's stability has vastly improved since patch 3.1 dropped (at least for most).We covered some of the Ulduar changes, which were announced separately this evening. Apparently Blizzard felt them important enough to mix them in with these other changes as well.
Chief amongst the changes is that the Tier 8 4 piece set bonus for Druids now works. I don't honestly know anyone that has ran into this yet, but I'm sure there's a few folks out there with four pieces of Tier 8 already.
The entire list of changes after the break.
- The NPCs just inside the front entrance of Ulduar (like a repair ogre) should no longer despawn.
- The Druid Tier 8 Nightsong Battlegear 4 piece bonus should now properly extend the length of Savage Roar.
- The Auriaya encounter has received the following changes: The range of Savage Pounce has been slightly reduced, the impact and periodic damage has been reduced in Heroic difficulty, the Guardian Swarm ability now summons 10 Swarming Guardians instead of 25 but their individual damage has been increased.
- The reflected damage done by Elder Stonebark with his Petrified Bark ability has been significantly reduced.
- In the Hodir encounter, the time to complete the hard mode has been increased to 3 minutes. (This will be applied during maintenance beginning with North America on Tuesday May 5.)
- The health of the Heart of the Deconstructor in the XT-002 Deconstructor encounter has been reduced.
- In the Thorim encounter, the Iron Ring Guard's Whirling Trip ability will now only hit the tank.
- In the Assembly of Iron encounter, the duration of Overwhelming Power has been increased to 30 seconds in heroic mode and the amount of healing that Steelbreaker receives from Electrical Charge has been reduced to 20% of his max health.
- The first pack of trash mobs in the Conservatory of Life has been removed, one of the trash packs in the General Vezax room has been removed, all of the humanoids in General Vezax's room are no longer immune to stuns, the Faceless Horrors will only go immune and summon Void Beasts once instead of 3 times, and the damage done when a Clockwork Sapper explodes has been significantly reduced.
Filed under: Patches, News items
Reader Comments (Page 4 of 5)
wintersdark May 5th 2009 2:35AM
As Ive said before, and as others have said here, post your armory links showing you full clear of Ulduar. Including Alagorn (sp). Can't? Can you link ANYONE who has? How about several hard modes?
Or is it "Playing on easymode is too easy, but hard mode is too hard for me!"?
It's like a pro athlete bitching that their game is too easy, that there is no challenge, but refusing to play in pro leagues and instead just playing in the minors.
Pathetic.
Tim B May 5th 2009 8:00AM
What is 'easymode'? When does Blizzard ever use that term in the game? When my guild killed the bosses we killed in 25 man Ulduar, were we told, 'congratulations, you just killed this boss on easy mode'? On the contrary, I think we were doing something called 'heroic' mode. If you look up 'heroic' in the dictionary, it seems to denote some kind of special achievement, requiring hard work and skill.
wintersdark May 5th 2009 10:02AM
I didn't mean to put down the accomplishment of those working through the instance. Unless, of course, you're also claiming it was too easy.
As to "easymode" - whatever. Would you be happier with "not as difficult as hard mode"?
There are multiple difficulties for a reason. One shouldn't complain about it's being too easy when one is deliberately playing in the less challenging difficulty.
Hard modes, at least, are implemented in a more interesting manner than a difficulty slider or whathaveyou.
"Heroic", by the way, when used in reference to raids only means that it's the 25 man version, and supposedly somewhat more difficult(though in some cases only due to logistical issues or even easier regardless). The word is used simply because it's a cool sounding label.
Coldforge May 5th 2009 2:57AM
So we killed Hodir today on hard-mode. Up until this point and as stated in my blog we considered this boss completely impossible. It's not well tuned like Freya or Mimiron, luck is by far the biggest factor in this encounter and you need it in spades. We bashed about 15 hours into trying to do it when he was first changed to 2 minutes. We tried 8 Mages, we tried mass Death Knights, just about every possible comp you could think of.
http://www.ensidia.com/home/news/hodir-down-ensidia.html#scrolltop
Wow!!! 15 hours!!! Who in the hell raid for 15 teen hours! dam I'm lucky if I can stand 4 hours of raiding not along 15 hours! if you guys think Ulduar is not hard enough after reading from the only guild the has downed hard mode, your a tool!!
Huf May 5th 2009 9:05AM
It's not a repair Ogre, there's a goblin sitting on his shoulders who's the actual guy you talk to.
Verit May 5th 2009 3:40AM
I dunno - only started healing through ulduar last week, and a lot of these nerfs actually read like bug fixes.
Healing through the damage the cats do from Auriaya is particularly evil on 25 man. They each hit our t 7.5 geared offtank for 13k a swing - 4 cats. The only way we could do it is have all the healers just heal him - which makes it hard for all the effects the boss does. I like a challenge, but she's just annoying.
There is a lot of randomness in ulduar that is pretty annoying too - Kologarn for example - relatively easy boss, but I'm sure more than one of you has wiped because of a combination of several things happening all at the same time. I died and wiped the raid (because I was healing the tank rotation) because I got gripped, then thrown and then he immediately did a shockwave. I've also seen him smash the mt very quickly after swapping the last tank to the point where I just have to heal through the extra damage because we are out of tanks.
Tim B May 5th 2009 7:08AM
'Healing through the damage the cats do from Auriaya is particularly evil on 25 man. They each hit our t 7.5 geared offtank for 13k a swing - 4 cats.'
...
.......
Um ... you do know you should be splitting the cats up on the pull, right? They get a damage buff from being close to one another? Why are four cats all attacking one of your tanks?
Sparcrypt Jun 8th 2009 8:20PM
If you're having problems with Ulduar just wait it out.. it's getting easier each week.
I for one have no problem with this. Hard modes are hard, normal modes are for everyone, what's the big deal?
Oooooh thats right, people seem to think "But but we became epic raiders so only WE could see the cool new content!" is a reason to restrict new content to 5% of the player base!
Yes it's fun to be the only ones who see/do something.. but you really think it's a smart business model for blizzard? If everyone/anyone can have a hope at seeing the inside of all the new instances more people will continue to play.
And what is the alternative? Noone with a brain develops for 5% of their customers.. it's stupid and won't make you money. You develop your product for as wide a range as you can then try and throw a bone to the outside edges if you can. So, blizzards options are:
1. Make raids accessible for everyone.
2. Make raids only clearable by the best guilds, but put far far less effort into making them and spend their time on other content that is more casual friendly.
So what'll it be? Let everyone have fun in the raids, or make it so only you and the few like you can do it, but then only release a new raid every 2 years and don't make them anywhere near as interesting.
I've raided endgame (at 60, I left BC before I started raiding then came back for wrath) and I must say this is much more fun. Why do you think Naxx was brought back for Wrath? Almost NOONE saw it at 60 because it was so far up the progression path and so close to BC.
So in short: get off your highhorse and accept this game has a varried amount of players. You have the hard modes for a challenge, go fourth and try them out. Upset cause hard modes are 'just the same fight but harder'? Fine - don't DO the normal mode, start out with hard. That should give you enough of a challenge don't you think?
Ice May 5th 2009 4:32AM
I agree. Its good business and sort of we customers win for it.
Lets take sunwell for example. If the designers take months and maybe years to make it they would like it to be shown for lots of people.
They might've had plans for that raid before launch of BC. Plans, ideas, concept art, musical scores. Huge amount of work and sweat done for the instance to look good. Lots of playtesting, minmaxing, ideas of damage output. Math and all that. Lots of ideas about tactics etc. Voice-acting and all that.
And then what? 5% of players saw it and they were mostly from hardcore guilds that dont give flying sh*t about art, music, lore, work blizzard did apart from loot. They just want loot and do it fast. Not have fun, just compete against other guildies.
Tabby May 5th 2009 4:32AM
Thank you Spar, for being the voice of reason in this thread. Your free internets is in the mail.
Tim B May 5th 2009 7:10AM
'And what is the alternative? Noone with a brain develops for 5% of their customers.. it's stupid and won't make you money. You develop your product for as wide a range as you can then try and throw a bone to the outside edges if you can. So, blizzards options are:
1. Make raids accessible for everyone.'
Uhhh ... raids are accessible for everyone ... Ulduar 10 is. They could have left the 25 man version harder, and requiring people to figure out tactics like the cat thing I mentioned above, but seems they're nerfing it too.
Veknir May 5th 2009 5:17AM
No offense, but with half decent I-just-dinged-80-3-days-ago gear you should be able to go to Naxxramas, not Ulduar. Just like you could go Karazahn with half decent gear, but not Serpentshrine Cavern. Ulduar is the next tier of raiding after all and with all due respect, but if you can't get past Naxxramas (which about every guild that puts in the sligtest bit of effort can) you are just not ready for Ulduar.
Now while I personally don't agree with all of these nerfs that have been applied lately (though I agree with some) I can understand that not everybody has been farming Naxxramas for the past 4 or so months. However they should be careful to not make things too easy either.
mahmood May 5th 2009 5:26AM
tnx guy
i needed it a lot
www.afdownload.com
satria May 5th 2009 6:38AM
im not your guy, buddy!!
Chaffa May 5th 2009 7:45AM
I am a raider of a "casual" guild and honestly every week it gets harder and harder to justify Ulduar nerfs.
I've been raiding Ulduar since the launch and granted, it is not a "piece of cake", but it pushes everyone on your raid to play at the best level they can. True, there are different kinds of players, but if Blizzard keeps nerfing content so "more than 5%" of the players can see the content, what is the incentive to become a better player?
hootmcgoot May 5th 2009 8:27AM
hard mode?
Nightfreeze May 5th 2009 8:30AM
off topic.... but whats that qq noob picture on?
Tbah May 5th 2009 11:23AM
It's a packet of tissues, special from BlizzCon, with a suitable image.
Endless May 5th 2009 8:36AM
Ah, more fixes? Fix the broken FPS already! This is dunno which bugfix in a row, but FPS is still as lousy as it was on day one of 3.1.
Verakum May 5th 2009 9:01AM
Why not giving a http://www.wowdb.com/item.aspx?id=17(Martin Fury) to every player it would make things easier and would give every player even those that suck shit the chance to do nothing to get to ulduar and get the best items ever...!.. YAY!