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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsUlduar "tuning tweaks"
by Eliah Hecht 
May 4th 2009 at 8:30PM
Ulduar nerfs continue, tonight being called "tuning tweaks" - but nerfs they are, at least the vast majority of them. Several hard modes have been made easier (XT-002, Assembly of Iron, and Hodir). I'm told that the change to Hodir-hard is particularly significant - the timer on the hard mode was increased from 2 minutes to 3 minutes, which means this encounter might actually be possible on 25-man now. The Hodir change will not go live until maintenance.
There were also normal-mode tweaks to Auriya, Thorim, and Freya, and some of the trash (Conservatory, Vezax, Sappers) was beat up a little bit. The Ulduar nerf parade may have slowed down over the weekend, but it's back in force for Monday. I'm starting to feel a little sorry for all the bosses, seeing their power slowly drained away.
Filed under: Raiding
Reader Comments (Page 2 of 2)
Knob May 5th 2009 3:00AM
Going by this author's previous articles, I'd have thought he would welcome the nerfs (he probably is inside and only puts on this face outside.) Oh well, I'm sure his normal service articles will resume soon enough.
And in any case, I like the Vezax trash nerf. Even with just 6 trash pulls in his room, it was so goddamn boring compared to the other trash in the instance.
mike May 5th 2009 3:23AM
First of all. I have seen so many claims of "hard modes are for the hardcore players".
Sheeez.
Current "hard modes" are nothing more than "artificial" ways to win an encounter.
I mean, "Defeat Thorim while having both hands at the back and using your nose to cast spells" is "Hard mode"?
Instances should be the same as in TBC. You don't have the gear, and the skill, you don't enter.
Want to see the content? Ok, go 10 man. Want to do the things propper and get propper loot, go 25 man.
10 man should scale with previous 10 mans
25 man should scale with previous 25 mans
Parts from next tier for the next instance should be available to buy with badges from previous in 10 man. (this is not happening now, since Ulduar 10 gives EoV (and naxx25) but no T8 items are available on EoVs)
And if all that is in place all is ok.
But 25 man should not be easy by any means. It should test DPS, healing, tanking, coordination, gear.
Hard mode, if propperly designed, will be nice for even more hardcore than usual players, but, again, normal mode on 25 _SHOULD_ be _HARD_.
As I quote one of my friends, why bother making a raid instance? Why not get all the bosses at the entry, acting like vendors and guides, and ppl will buy gear and tours.
Coldforge May 5th 2009 3:31AM
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!!
mike May 5th 2009 3:37AM
Please stop using the "omg I got work, I got life, oooo" excuse for lack of skill, lack of coordination, laziness, lack of little respect for the toon played.
Any guild that raids 2-3 days a week, 4h a day, can defeat the bosses in Ulduar or Naxx without those "tweaks" that are in fact nerfs. Aside from the ones correcting mistakes (like the Ignis bug, the Hodir timer) sorry, but those "tweaks" are nerfs.
Take a team of 24 skilled (aka players that know their class), well geared (players that did farmed a bit for gear) and to that a good Raid Leader (one player that can coordinate them) and you will see 6-7 bosses downed in max 4h, neither to say that as soon as players will gear the number will increase.
But if you have 25 players that will go ninja AFK after 2-3 wipes or will come at raid without foodbuffs, no flasks, why do you expect to do something? Or with players that don't know to play their toon?
As I said in my post below. Why not sell the gear on gold, and tours in the instance? Eventually events like "hand-wrestling with XT002"
After players will learn the fights it will take max 2 days to clear Ulduar. All the bosses till General in the first day, General and Yoggy in the second one. And I presume that a full T8.5 raid should be able to do it in 1 single day.
sephirah May 5th 2009 4:15AM
QQ moar pls...
Coldforge May 5th 2009 3:48AM
@Dave
And I'd prefer the nerfs to keep coming and take the margin of error fail out of the game.
It's one thing to be hard. It's another thing to wipe because one person makes a single mistake on any fight, which is generally how a lot of Ulduar is going right now. Not even on hard modes, if you're doing 10-man and your tank misses a taunt, wipe it up you're done. If your healer misses a dispel, you're done, wipe it up. Not cool.
When you're fighting the RNG and your own guild more than you're fighting the bosses in an instance, it's a big failure in my book. That's how it is with Ulduar in my 10-man guild right now. We're not going to just go back to clearing Naxx with alts. We expect to be able to play the new content with the appropriate gear level without having to be perfect and get everyone on sub 80ms connections with brand new computers. Naxx had failure tolerance, Ulduar has none. At all. Our first kill of XT-002 got us the Nerf Gravity Bombs achievement because I don't REALLY think you can finish the damn fight if any of your team dies on a 10-man run.
Do you want to lose friends and get shiny purples in the process (and maybe not even the purples?) Join a 10-man guild and raid away your friends when your tank goes nuts because a healer didn't get to a Fusion Punch in time and the RNG gave you a Rune of Power right under the boss at the exact same time!
Challenging is one thing. Ulduar is another. Is 25-man easier? I don't know, we're nowhere near getting 25 people for it because we didn't need 25 for Naxx and we had fun as a 10-man.
We're not having fun now. We're probably a doomed guild.
Thanks Blizzard. Ulduar is great.
This is the smartest reply ive seen this far.
mike May 5th 2009 4:06AM
Does the "get this boss less life" or "make him hit less" will protect you against tanks missing a taunt? Or against healers that don't know to heal?
Nope. Want more room for error, go 25. In 10 it will always be no room for that.
And I don't believe in 60 wipes "due to RNG". 1-2-3 wipe due to that are ok. And are bearable. And if the party is focused and has a fast wipe recovery, then it will all be ok.
Tim B May 5th 2009 5:24AM
'It's one thing to be hard. It's another thing to wipe because one person makes a single mistake on any fight, which is generally how a lot of Ulduar is going right now. Not even on hard modes, if you're doing 10-man and your tank misses a taunt, wipe it up you're done. If your healer misses a dispel, you're done, wipe it up. Not cool.'
That's how a lot of things in life are, aren't they? If Arsenal are 2-0 up tonight and then Ronaldo misses a penalty, then Man U are done*. Might be harsh but I guess it's also an incentive to improve your performance.
*American readers forgive the British football reference.
Wistin May 5th 2009 8:12AM
"That's how a lot of things in life are, aren't they? "
Actually, no.
Planning and living right helps. All of the challenges in this game and others are totally artificial. If we had to quit because of one mistake at work, we'd never get a plane off the ground. Humans make mistakes, its planned for and we deal with it. That's where the real challenge is anyway. Not artificially ramping up the drama because someone lost their place in a checklist and delayed our launch by a few minutes.
On the other hand, artificial challenges is what people seem to want in their games, so more power to you.
Holy Pally May 5th 2009 8:24AM
We've 9 manned Razorscale and 8 manned Kologarn so your comment about having 1 person die in a 10 man raid seems a little flawed...it can be done, it's just a lot harder
Justin May 5th 2009 7:11AM
Most of the Ulduar hard modes are a joke. No, I dont mean easy. I mean a joke.
Kill this boss in X amount of time - how is that any different to normal mode? It just means half your healers and off tanks miss out on raiding. This includes XT, Hodir, Mimiron, Vezax and Yogg-Saron. At least 2/3 of the Ulduar hard modes.
Sarth+Drakes was a good example of a hard mode, and Iron Council is as well, to a point. I really hope Blizzard actually put some creative thought into hard modes the next time around.
Justin May 5th 2009 7:11AM
I'm gonna keep going here actually.
There is basically 2 kinds of hard modes in Ulduar:
Kill the boss faster. (drop tanks/healers for DPS)
Make the boss do more damage. (Take the normal group and hope your healers can heal through it).
Sarth 3D was balanced in that it was part DPS race (getting the drakes down fast enough) and part Healing race (Tank CDs, healing through Twilight Torment). That's what made it good imo.
Also the Yogg-Saron normal encounter is stupidly designed. Having a whole instance require 6-8 healers, to then all of a sudden require 3-4 for the "last" boss is just a slap in the face to all those healers who will get sat until it is on farm.
mike May 5th 2009 7:43AM
About so called "hard modes". I really think all of them are artificial. Like: Kill Sarth while the drakes are up (why? you can kill them..)
Kill Freya while the trees are up (again, why? you can kill them..)
Kill X boss in 3 min not in 9 (oh, why?)
It would have been nice to have (taking Sarth as example):
Sarth normal - kill Sarth
Sarth hard - use a key/book/blah (insert your lore thingy here) to summon his dragons, kill them all, get improved loot
It would have been an entire diffrent fight.
The current Hard vs Normal is like little children fighting:
"I can eat a Banana"
"I can eat a Banana with my eyes closed while farting the national anthem"
Wistin May 5th 2009 8:06AM
So if something is changed from impossible to possible, is that change still a nerf?
Wistin May 5th 2009 8:31AM
Also....
Hyperbole much?