Yogg-Saron and Flame Leviathan nerfed tonight
by Eliah Hecht 
Jun 11th 2009 at 9:30PM
It looks like some pretty big nerfs to the Yogg-Saron fight tonight. Ulduar's big bad (well, one of two) will have a much easier first phase, as the Guardians of Yogg-Saron have ceased mind-controlling players, as well as becoming "more forgiving" in their spawn rate. Additionally, flash-frozen players that touch a cloud will no longer bring forth a Guardian.
Flame Leviathan's hard mode was hit as well. The amount of extra health he gets per tower up was reduced and the snare effect of Hodir's tower removed. Additionally, vehicles caught in a flash freeze will be freed with a single shot from a Demolisher or Siege Engine cannon. Players will also not go quite so high when ejected from Flamey following a stun, which should make them a bit easier to pick up.
Oh, and XT-002 Deconstructor won't make people into bombs quite so often (and his heart's health was reduced a touch on 25-man). Overall, it seems Yoggy will be significantly easier. My guild isn't there yet, though (next up for us is Mimiron) - people who have done the fight, how big of a deal will these changes be?
Filed under: News items, Raiding
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
havitech Jun 11th 2009 9:34PM
Bah. Just killed Yoggy this week, the night before the last Tuesday reset. On the bright side, I can now brag about my guild doing it "pre-nerf." /feigns elistism
Heilig Jun 12th 2009 1:27AM
4 tower FL will be the "pre-nerf" people brag about. They have cut his health with 4 towers up by over 40%.
Zul Jun 11th 2009 9:43PM
It seems like it's just phase 1 getting affected. My guild has been clearing him since week one, and phase one is usually where we call wipes. More than less a few to many adds spawn, and phase two becomes a real problem. I think the changes will make it quite a bit easier, especially for less coordinated/precise groups.
Tradyk Jun 11th 2009 10:45PM
It's going to make yoggy alot easier. As it stands, my guild has yogg on farm in 25-man, and we're going for one light in the darkness on 10-man tonight. The biggest issue we have is people getting MC'd or ice blocked into the clouds, spawning more guardians in phase 1. This is going to make that almost trivial. It was also one of the big stopping points when we were learning the fight. The cloud's aren't too difficult to avoid, once you've gotten used to the pattern, but removing the element of randomness from the extra spawns will make a real difference in the learning curve.
The changes with FL hardmode are going to make a bigger difference, in my opinion. I'm a boomkin, and in my raid I'm one of the first people up on FL to shoot the turrets. As it stands, we've got about 30~ seconds from the time the last turret dies, to when we actually hit the ground. That's alot of time for five (in FL+4) or even three (FL+2) raiders to be out of the fight.
The real big change though is the increased distance at which you can see pyerite, because that's the real limiting factor in an FL+4 kill. You have to have each demolisher assigned to a corner, and shooting down pyerite for the opposite demo, and as it stands, you basically can only just see it when it get's in position, you have little to no warning time to track it before it needs to be shot, leading to alot of pyerite either being shot down too far from the demo's, or just not being shot down at all.
Heilig Jun 12th 2009 1:41AM
"The biggest issue we have is people getting MC'd or ice blocked into the clouds, spawning more guardians in phase 1."
No offense, but if this is happening, you're doing something wrong. The MC is purgable and that should be your shamans' primary duty in phase 1, and no one but the tanks should ever take a hit from the adds. If someone gets ice blocked in phase 1, someone screwed up big time.
Timding Jun 11th 2009 9:50PM
The changes to both FL and yogg will make the fights ALOT easier, the hardest part of normal mode yogg is definately phase 1, after you have mastered that the rest falls in to place relatively quickly as long as your melee arent stupid.
As for flame lev, less health and no 20% slowing debuff, yes its going to be a hell of a lot easier.
Although as stated on MMOchamp I dont see that its a precursor for the next patch as noone has killed Yogg 0 watchers yet on 25man so I really hope they dont rush out a content patch before the previous content has been completely cleared by at least afew guilds.
Timding Jun 11th 2009 9:52PM
"Ulduar is getting nerfed again. Even if players probably won't be happy with that I think it's a very good sign, Blizzard trying to get as many people as possible in Ulduar means they want to move to something new very soon ..."
Is what I was referring too.
theRaptor Jun 11th 2009 9:56PM
I honestly think Blizz doesn't have a solid idea of what they are doing with raiding. Originally it seemed their intention was for 10 man to be easier than 25, and that "everyone" would get to see the content in 10 man mode. But they keep nerfing 25 man bosses that weren't that hard to begin with. FL is a complete /faceroll, it isn't even Lurker below or Loot Reaver difficulty (if you can't do FL you should begin to suspect that your guild mates are actually super intelligent chimpanzees), so why the hell would they nerf it? At the rate they are going I expect to see people 10-manning the 25-man just so it is mildly challenging.
I thought it was a good move to make it so that "everyone" would get to see the raid content. But to make it so that doing hard modes (which are fairly despised in the "hardcore" world as being faux content) is the only way to get a challenging encounter? What the flux? Why not just hand out epics for zoning in and make the raids machinma? Seriously it won't be long before old world group quests are harder than 25 man raiding. They are increasingly making it just a charade because they let terrible players get away with thinking they could raid because they made Nax too easy.
I have a friend in one of the top guilds on our server, who has cleared everything except Algalon, and he reckons the 10 man is harder then 25 man because you can't have anyone basically AFKing the raid in 10 man. It seems to me that we are going full circle and ending up like classic raids were you could have 20-30 out of 40 actually contributing and the rest being useless and still down bosses.
Make 10 man easy, make 25 man "hard" (ie actually punish players for standing in the fire and generally not knowing the strategy and running around like headless chickens), make hardmodes for those top five or so guilds on a server (because mechanics like "lol the boss has twice as much HP!" are bugger all effort to implement). Simple.
Raiding is absolutely dead boring if it is just a time sink to generate epics. Raiding is only fun when it is a team challenge that requires people to pull together and become better players.
Zul Jun 11th 2009 10:05PM
Hardmodes, aren't exactly easy... How many H Ulduar GoTRs are there 10-20 worldwide? Sure some are much easier than others like Iron council and Kologarn vs Mimiron or Yogg or to a lesser extent Vezax and Auriaya.
I do agree however 10 man should be the puggable one, people want to see Yogg dead hit 10 man. You will get some nice loot after a few hours of learning. 25 however should take [days?] to learn but there will be a much more epic reward.
I think the real problem is noobs, who aren't willing to learn their class or watch a boss fight online, want the same exact loot as someone who spends 2-3 hours a night improving their game. Which isn't fair, this is why they QQ not because they want see a boss dead.
Magresda Jun 11th 2009 10:08PM
What I don't understand is why people can't accept Hard Modes. Almost every game has varying degrees of difficulty, why not in WoW?
They even reward significantly better gear than normal modes do, there's your incentive to do them.
Is it that people are angry because less skilled people can get epics too? And if that's it - which I am assuming it is, based on your post - then once again, the hard modes give better gear. An epic isn't good just because it is epic, if people are so intelligent and skilled they should realize that.
Go do fights like Mimiron hard mode and Freya Hard mode, and if you come back still claiming it doesn't require "people to pull together and become better players" then indeed, this game is not for you.
theRaptor Jun 11th 2009 10:27PM
@Zul
I absolutely agree with everything you have said. I didn't say hardmodes were easy, but they aren't "real" content. Many of them are like fighting a boss with part of the raid missing. Beating a hard mode doesn't have the same feeling as beating a hard boss did in BC or classic, and you get the hard mode vs progression drama in guilds.
All hard modes should involve new aspects of the fight, not just lame "morez boss HP!" like several of them do. You may as well make the "hard mode" involve the DPS unequipping their weapons, it would be as meaningful (its just a gear check, the lamest of boss fights).
@Magresda
I (and many "hardcore" raiders, I'm not "hardcore" anymore) don't like them because many of the hard modes are lame. It also has the problem that if you aren't in a "hardcore" guild you have an up hill battle to convince people to stop sucking and attempt them instead of going for the easy epics. Its the same reason many guilds see less people show up on progression raids instead of farm raids, far too many people are just in it for the numbers in a database. And thanks to easy mode Naxx2 these people think they have the skills to be raiders, and now they are coming up against the first slightly challenging content and failing.
And you are terrible at reading if you think I care about other people getting epics (as I said the tens should be easy). I only raid to fight at least moderately challenging bosses. The gear won't mean jack come the next expansion (I've been raiding since classic). I did the entirety of SSC without getting a single upgrade. I only care about loot in so much as it allows me to progress through raids.
Angelus Jun 11th 2009 11:50PM
I agree with theRaptor.
Has anyone heard of the 3-heart zelda challenge? How about beating Emerald Weapon in Final Fantasy VII with no summon or underwater materia?
IMO, those are equivalent to "Hard Modes". Hard modes are something we rely on to squeeze more playtime out of a game that has grown boring or stale, or is otherwise too easy.
Hard modes should not be built into a game as the main goal, it's simply trying to make up for the fact that the main challenge of the game is lacking.
I love this game and have been playing it for a while now, but I really hope Blizzard doesn't push the casual-focus to far.
Vanilla WoW was brutal compared to how things are now. However WoW still became the world's leading MMO and was WAY ahead of the competition(8million subscribers before BC). WoW had NO trouble growing.
Then things started getting easier, and many people try and say this is the reason for WoW's continued growth. This is the lamest reasoning I've ever read for that side of the discussion. WoW was not struggling before these changes, it was still growing just as fast(if not faster) as it is now.
Heilig Jun 12th 2009 1:36AM
I disagree. hard modes should be built into the game as an option. The problem is simply the implementation. Yogg hard mode is interesting. You get BUFFS that are taken away rather than adjustments to the boss. Yogg on easy mode is made intentionally easier than the "real" fight where it's just you against the boss. Vezax hard mode is interesting, it's about intelligent resource management and control.
Freya hard mode is stupid. It's just extra health and damage, essentially. Hodir hard mode is stupid. It's primarily a gear check and relies solely on making sure people get buffs from NPC's who fire them off RANDOMLY. Mimiron is stupid. He's the same fight, except with more health and, oh yeah, let's just throw a bunch of fire on the ground for kicks. XT is stupid. It's a gear check first, then just a big tank and spank with more health and damage and some annoying adds.
Flame Leviathan is in the middle. The fight is way more chaotic, with things to dodge that all have different effects. The nerfs to this encounter have pushed it more into the fun category because of the stupid high health he used to have which is significantly lowered now. Iron Council is kind of the same. The mechanics change significantly, which is fun, but Steelbreaker's aura feels like nothing so much as a punishing gear check.
TL;DR version: Hard Modes should be in the game, but only if they're fun and different. Increased health and damage are just boring.
Charneldeath Jun 12th 2009 1:42AM
Have you actually DONE any hard modes yet? Or even cleared the instance on 25 AND 10? Because I will tell you, 10 man is MUCH easier then 25 this time around 99% of the time. We killed Yogg in 10 man in less then an hour of learning him. General in about as long. Only Mimiron was actually hard for a quick minute. I'm 8/13 on the Meta for 10 man right now, so I've done some hard modes.
Doing those same hard modes in 25 is different story. One person out of position on Thorium hard mode? 5 people die and it's a wipe. 10 man, the chain lightning hits for less, and there is more space to spread out. Steelbreaker last is a tank and spank in 10 man. 25 man, it's an arms race. XT 10 man takes a good OT, in 25 man the hard mode isn't so easy. More bombs, more voids, more damage.
25 man hard modes for the most part, are no joke. Even the normal encounters are up in difficulty from 10 man. It's a lot easier to get 10 people to do the same dance, then it is 25. With most of the 25 man hard modes requiring crazy DPS, that means less healers. Less healers in a fight with more damage. DPS having to be so strong, that lossing one or two, and it's over.
25 mans are harder this time around (sans FL). To complain and say otherwise, shows you haven't done all the content on both, to compare.
theRaptor Jun 12th 2009 2:16AM
@Charneldeath
No I haven't done it all, I'm not in a "hardcore" guild anymore and don't really feel like raiding "hardcore" anymore. But I would like 25 man to be difficult by default and not require optional hard modes that you aren't going to get to regularly do in a "casual raiding" guild (because the risk vs reward isn't worth it to most of those players*). My guild has six main scheduled raid hours per week, they aren't even going to bother with hard modes until we are nearly done with the content.
My complaint isn't that hard modes are easy, it is that 25 man is too easy by default and many of the hard modes are just lame (and the hard parts of 25 man non-hard Ulduar seem to be RNG lameness, not barriers that player skill can overcome).
I am looking for something between "stuck on boss for months" and "down boss after two wipes despite a quarter of the raid watching TV/eating dinner/talking on the phone". If a lot of "raiders" hadn't been lulled into slackness by Naxx2 we would be burning through Ulduar.
* In one of the guilds i was in during BC we had people refusing to run stuff as easy as Gruul in favour of more Kara runs. In classic I spent a long time doing the same four bosses in ZG because half the raid disappeared when we scheduled progression runs.
Mandark Jun 12th 2009 2:43AM
@ Heilig
well that depends on your role in raid, as a dps the hard modes are basically the same indeed, you are just dpsing... try tanking or healing, not the same...
Deathgodryuk Jun 12th 2009 7:41AM
@theRaptor
Sounds like your problem isn't the content, its your guild.
Also... why would you do hard modes if you can't even clear the instance on normal yet? If you can't clear the content on normal mode you won't get it on hard either.
M Jun 12th 2009 9:15AM
The problem isn't "hard modes", or Blizzard, or anything of the sort. The problem is simply raider laziness and elitism.
The "hardcore" raiders do the easy fights to get the content down, so they can say they cleared the instance first. Then they go back and do the hard modes. That's why it' seems like a repeat.
The easy mode wasn't meant for the "hardcore" guilds, it was meant for "everyone else". If you want actual hard, challenging encounters, DON'T DO THE EASY MODES! Spend your weeks and weeks wiping on the hard modes like you claim to want, and NEVER do it the "easy" way.
If you don't like "casual" (er, 10-man) raiding, and don't think they should exist, then don't run 10-man groups. Don't spend that time learning the encounters, like you do now, in preparation for 25-mans. You're just enabling the casuals that way. Stick to 25-mans, and do only the hard modes. That's what was designed for you.
By caving in and doing it the easy way, you're just as fail as you claim the rest of us are. Welcome to the fail-crowd ;)
What these "hardcore" guilds want, in reality, is to flex their e-peen. You can see it time and time again. They want to have the best equipment, they want to get the world firsts, and, most importantly, they don't want anyone else to be able do it. They want content that only they can see because of their leet-ness. They want the rest of us "scrubs" to oooh and aaah over their achievements and their titles and their gear.
If they really wanted a challenge, they'd just do it the hard way and never look back.
Lorem Jun 12th 2009 9:26AM
@theRaptor
You sure had a lot to say about Uld raiding and I was kind of following along until this.
"No I haven't done it all, I'm not in a "hardcore" guild anymore and don't really feel like raiding "hardcore" anymore."
The fact about you referring to older games and specific game events. YOU aren't realizing those challenges you are so much in love with were user generated. Square at the time gave you the ability to make the weapon fights as easy as you wanted and as HARD as you wanted. IE the hardmodes in WoW. After all everyone who plays this game pays money month after month. They should have the chance to experience the content the developer pour hundreds of hours into.
WIth your mentality about the content should be harder for the sake of being hard devs should only be developing content for the truly hardcore? Hmm that would be like me developing a website that only worked in opera and said fuck off to everyone else who used a different browser.
crayzeigh Jun 12th 2009 10:12AM
I can see where theRaptor is coming from in some regards. I have to say, downing a Hardmode isn't quite the same feeling as dropping a boss for the first time. That is to say, I found it much more rewarding to kill, say, Vashj or Kael'thas the first time than the first kill of Hodir's Hardmode or XT or any of the others really.
Now I haven't done those hardmodes on 25 man yet, I can attest that the 10m of Ulduar this time around is much easier.
Although 25man has been rewarding on some of the more complex fights. Now I wouldn't call us a "hardcore" guild, although we are progression focused. Downed Yogg-Saron for the first time this week and that was very exciting. I still look forward to the Hardmodes, but it's still less of something to look forward to than, say, Killing Illidan, KT, KJ, Vashj, Prince, etc.