Patch 5.2 interview with Dave Kosak
Inside an old alt's vault
The latest patch 5.2 news
All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsUpcoming Adjustments announced for Old Kingdom, Nexus, Culling of Stratholme
by Daniel Whitcomb 
Jan 12th 2010 at 1:30AM
Old Kingdom will receive the most changes. Elder Nadox will spawn only one Ahn'Kahar Guardian and Jedoga Shadowseeker will ascend only once in their respective encounters. In addition, some static trash groups will be removed, while some roaming groups will have their paths altered. He stressed that these changes are not meant to make the dungeon easier, but rather to make it a slightly quicker run, more in line with other heroics. He also acknowledged that the dungeon finder made the daily quest associated with the dungeon somewhat complicated to obtain and turn in, and while the dev team would like to fix it, they still haven't found a satisfactory solution.
Later in the thread, he announced a similar change to Nexus, namely that Anomalus will use his Create Rift ability much less often. Finally, he revealed that a "quick start" option for the Culling of Stratholme is in the works, but will likely not be ready for the next minor patch due to the complicated scripting required.
All of these changes, I am sure, will cause great joy among the badge running crowd. I admit I never disliked the lore of the Culling of Stratholme instance, but after the first 10 times, you know, it loses some of the lustre. This also makes me wonder which dungeon is next. It seems like Halls of Stone is really the only dungeon left that still has a problem with people dropping group. I'm guessing we might see a reduction of the time to victory on the Tribunal of Ages event, and possibly a pruning of the trash before Krystallus and Maiden of Grief to give more incentive to grab them.
Regardless, there's no word on when these changes will be implemented, but all the same, they should be welcome. Stay tuned for any more news on this stealthily announced "minor patch" as we hear it.
Filed under: Patches, Analysis / Opinion, Blizzard, News items, Instances, Bosses
Reader Comments (Page 3 of 9)
IIthryn Jan 12th 2010 2:10PM
Dana, unless you're running just one heroic a day, it comes across as futile to "need" 200 ilevel items from heroics, given the rate at which Triumph badges that can be earned. Items that may be further down your list to replace - trinkets, rings, shields, and the like - drop off enough unskippable bosses to not be a problem.
Any items you need - even as a fresh level 80 - will be upgraded that much sooner should you elect move through the instance faster instead to get the extra badges at the end, and requeue sooner to begin again. At the average gear level/output I've encountered in random groups, you can be carried through instances doing next to nothing.
It's possible to do ~1k dps at level 70 now without epics. Pickup the quest reward gear as you level to 80, and you can be doing the recommended 1.5-2k dps for heroics easily quite soon, should you encounter an entirely fresh-80 party. Fact is, though, many random parties have at least one dps in 226/232/245 gear pulling enough damage to essentially three-man the original Northrend heroics, and the tank will be doing the damage of a fresh 80 damage class or better.
Cor Jan 12th 2010 3:57PM
Skipping bosses only benifits the tank and healer. The DPS will be facing another 15-20 minute wait so I have no problem spending another 10 minutes to get the extra two badges eventhough my off-spec set is almost full T9 at this point.
It comes down to this: Do you care about the other random people you play with? I do, but then I'm one of those wierd people that will say Hi to strangers I walk by if we make eye contact =)
Quasimofo Jan 12th 2010 2:04AM
The problem with these instances is simply efficiency. The amount of time spent clearing the excessive amount of trash before Krystallus isn't worth the effort when you could spend that same time elsewhere for much greater gain. It takes ten minutes to wait for the scripted story in CoS before you ever lay a finger on a mob. It takes that long to clear the entirety of UK with a good group. If you drop group immediately upon seeing CoS pop up, you can wait out the 15 minute debuff, get into another instance, and still have a badge before you'll get one by staying in CoS.
Time is money, or in this case, time is badges.
Faar Jan 12th 2010 4:01AM
You are too concerned with efficiency. Where's the fun in your world? What you're doing sounds more like work to me.
Bailing out just because CoS:ST is picked for you and then stand around twiddling your thumbs for 15 minutes sounds very boring, not to mention selfish. At least if you'd stayed in CoS, you'd be playing the game - besides, you're not screwing things up for your teammates who now have to wait for a replacement for you.
Psiwave Jan 12th 2010 4:16AM
@faar
the problem here is that once you know the dialogue off by heart you aren't having fun, you aren't actually doing any playing and if you do bail your team mates have plenty of time to get a relacement before the run starts.
Raze Jan 12th 2010 8:22AM
Somewhere along the long the concept of every thing having to be efficienct got so horribly lodged into the front lobe of every Serious bizniz WoW player that the concept of fun got lost along the way.
Marcosius Jan 12th 2010 9:24AM
"Excessive amount of trash"
Ahahaha, ahahahahahahaha. Ahaaahahhahhahaha oh wow.
Someone didn't play Pre-TBC content at all?
curtisrutland Jan 12th 2010 2:06AM
Does anyone remember when these heroics were real prerequisites to raids? Not (just) for their badges, but for the loot that they dropped? I remember running several of these heroics daily, hoping for a specific piece of loot, even after I joined a raiding guild and started raiding Naxx and OS.
Remember how we cleared them just fine? Back when 2k dps was overkill for heroics? Back when it was ok if your tank only had 23k HP? Back when iLevel 226 was the very best available, only obtainable from Maly and Kel'Thuzzad? Before there was 5 pieces of tier 9 loot available just from running these heroics, not counting trinkets, rings, and sigils/librams/thrown?
I'm not complaining about the badge gear, not at all. I have lots of alts that are benefiting greatly from this. What I am complaining about is that we managed just fine, before nerfs, in much lower gear. We did just fine. And yet, somehow, with the abundance of practically free high level TIER gear, these instances are now too hard and must be nerfed?
I guess it doesn't hurt me, other than making them more boring than before, but it saddens me that the community as a whole seems to need these nerfs. Northrend heroics were never overly challenging compared to BC. But it seems like we're going backwards rather than forwards. Like I said, all it does is give me my frost badges quicker, but I just can't understand how these dungeons were ok when they were the second best thing around, and now that they're bottom of the barrel, they're too hard.
neminem Jan 12th 2010 2:16AM
But they're *not* making them easier. They're not nerfing the hard parts, they're nerfing the *annoying* parts. You said it yourself - you're just in it for the badges now, the dungeons have become kind of trivial, as long as you don't stand in the various fires. Which means... they get boring. So, now that Blizzard is making you run them once a day for each alt you want gear for, the least they could do it bore you less. Thus: making the boring stuff take less time.
That said, last time I was healing Occ, our tank did the entire instance in dps gear. That definitely made it more interesting, too, so there are other ways of doing it. But only because he didn't tell anyone but me, and he was a friend of mine; I'm sure other people would've gotten mad, even if it *did* mean we cleared it faster cause we basically had an extra dps. :D
MightyMuffin Jan 12th 2010 2:27AM
From article:
"He (Zarhym) stressed that these changes are not meant to make the dungeon easier, but rather to make it a slightly quicker run, more in line with other heroics."
From from it looks like, they aren't "nerfs." We live in a different era of WoW. Pre-3.3, we had to summon to instances, fly all the way to UK/UP and Nex/OC (both of which were the complete eyesore for anyone to fly to), did not have a chance to repeat said instance and finding a pug was dependent on your servers pug community. Now, the pug communities we live in are larger, and they move quicker. We now have a 15 min debuff that disallows us to go into another random. Beforehand, the gear and emblems were what mattered. Now, only emblems matter, with ToC and ICC 5-mans being the gear hotspots. Blizzard just doesn't want people dropping groups all the time, because they know DPS wait in God-forbidden queues while healers and tanks go in all the time. Because of this, if tanks and healers just leave to increase their emblem count, then the dps suffer. Its an attempt to try and make people do the random, get done with it, so that everyone doesn't get affected.
The mechanics of the fight just made them so they didn't last as long. Everyone is still killing them, everyone is doing enough dps, healing is still good, tanking is still good, but the gimics that made the fights interesting in early wrath are now just time constraints, when everyone knows the boss is dying.
These aren't "nerfs," but updating old instances to new standards of play. They would be nerfs if it said "Bosses now deal no damage and hand out frost emblems and ilvl 9000 gear, then shower the group with bunnies to make everyone feel happy." That isn't ever going to happen. The no dmg, frost emblems, ilvl gear, or the bunnies...*tear* no bunnies...
And yes, some what I said and you said are "QQ look what we did in the past, things weren't hard then, why are ppl QQing?" But, again, new era of WoW. Their adjusting old heroics for new era.
sikon Jan 12th 2010 2:58AM
Back in the days of 3.0.x (and even 3.2.x), the nerfs weren't needed because the random dungeon finder didn't exist. Nobody forced you to run, say, Oculus in a PUG - if it appeared as the daily heroic, you could just skip it and all you lost was the two extra emblems.
Now it will no longer cut it. Annoying dungeons *will* pop up and many people would rather grudgingly do them than just leave and wait out the debuff. So now Blizzard gets a lot more complaints about the annoying parts and, and they have to get off their butts and fix them.
And the fact that heroic runners now have better gear on average does make some bosses more annoying than they were at launch (*coughionarcough*), while making others utterly harmless because you can just heal through their previously deadly attacks (*coughlokencough*). Since bosses go down more quickly, the mandatory attack interruptions throughout the fight become more annoying because they last longer than the fight itself.
On my list of bosses who should get the Ionar/Tharon'ja treatment (one use of the special ability per encounter) are Svala, Ymiron and Volasj. Anub'arak should be reduced to two burrows, tops.
chevykidferlife Jan 12th 2010 11:58AM
Since the newer iLvl bloat has hit, i can get careless with pulls when tanking heroics and not worry about turning ghost...kinda takes the thrill out of it all. I spent a whole day chaining heroics and got my entire gearset for my off-spec from fast and hard chain pulls. I do enjoy CoS and Nexus, especially since they drop 5 emblems but OK is one that i would normally skip at least one boss. I really dont think they should change anything in there, if they do make these changes then i probably can just tank everything with my eyes closed and run around being a n00b which does not make me better as a tank. Where's the skill/tactics?
Warcloud Jan 12th 2010 1:06PM
It was a big mistake to make the badge items better than the actual drops in the heroics. That's just backwards game design. We're now seeing the result.
Sargenus Jan 12th 2010 2:12AM
"a "quick start" option for the Culling of Stratholme is in the works,"
/queue XT-002 Deconstructor.
NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO!
Why Blizzard! I've done CoS so many times, but I LOVE the intro how it can't be skipped. For me, it never gets old. Same with HoR intro. Skipping Arthas' speach, wil lnot only make me and everyone I know unhappy. It'll screw PREVIOUS LORE OVER! Arthas is SUPPOSE to find out the plague has reached Stratholme! What's the skip-dialogue gonna be?
Me- "My Prince, let's just go. Who cares if the citizens aren't plagued? I need free emblems!"
Arthas- "You're right. I'll just use my PSSSSYYCHIIIIC POWERRRS to find out if they are infected... OKAY! They are let's go purge us some citiez!"
Uther- "WHAT!? Are you NUTS Arthas?"
Arthas- "No, I'm psychic."
Uther- "Okay. Bye then!"
Seriously? How does it kill people to sit there? That's why I'm getting sick of this population. They stay quiet in heroics, and just go and speed through the dungeon ASAP. After the final boss is dead, they immediately leave, as to not waste valuable farming time.
Okay. I've had too much hot chocolate. But, still. This depresses me. I hope Blizz ends up just scraping it.
-prepares for the downrates-
Omegan01 Jan 12th 2010 2:33AM
A quick-start would probably skip over the conversation between Uther and Arthas entirely, with Chromie saying something along the lines of "Ack! We're later than I thought! Hurry!" and Arthas already being inside Stratholme waiting for you to check in.
Ryan Jan 12th 2010 2:35AM
Ah, but this problem can easily be solved with a little humor.
After you have done the dungeon once, simply talk to Chromie for the following exchange.
You: This is facinating and all, but isn't our business here a little urgent?
Chromie: You are correct . Fear not, I have the solution.
Emote: Chromie effects the flow of time.
And bam, everything speeds up yakkity sacks style. Arthas, Uther and Jania have their little conversation in super speed mode. The whole thing takes place in about 45 seconds. For added humor, the ingame voice acting is sped up to match the new pace.
MightyMuffin Jan 12th 2010 2:39AM
With the CoS thing, I personally enjoy the lore and hearing the speaking. But there are days where Arthas' voice sounds like nails grating against the chalkboard in no rhythmic pattern, causing no sensation of even an attempt at music. It just hurts.
People with the random dungeon finder want the emblems. The gear from 3.0 dungeons is not going to help them get into TotC raids and ICC raids. Progression is jumping past Naxx, Maly, VoA, Sarth, and Uld. We're already jumping content readily, but with simple things like the raid weekly, people still go to the older raids.
Plus, people are about efficiency. Beforehand, you did that one instance one chance that day. Time wasn't a factor since it already took 5-55 minutes to form pugs to go to heroics. You had to make sure you had the quest, or be screwed. Back then, our dps wasn't so fast that bosses went into their next gimic that prevented dmg to them. But think of Svala now. DPS on her keeps going where she doesn't ever get to attack players really ever, but just teleports them up to her. It just gets annoying when ever time you start stacking your dps, you have to move and kill the add preventing damage on boss.
I understand that you don't want people just skipping through content. Blizzard has made it clear they don't want players missing content by making T9 available and hoping casuals could get into raids. But I think they vision isn't to see content, but end-game content. They want nearly everybody to see Arthas drop dead, instead of the elite few getting to see him die. They don't want 5% to have the Arthas kill, but rather 95% (exaggeration, i know).
So in some ways i agree, people should be able to see the content. Which is why there's random dungeon finder option where you can group with a group of players you know. If they all love listening to the lore, then ya'll can do it together. Otherwise, Pug players will rush through content. Its the way of pugs, wanting to get things done before we break down. There probably is some mathematical equation that represents how long before a PuG heroic or raid breaks down due to complete strangers forming together.
Aeltyra Jan 12th 2010 3:48AM
Sorry, but I disagree.
The dialogue is a nice reference (e.g. replay with WoW models) of the same dialogue in Warcraft 3. It's a nice dialogue, and a turning point in Arthas' story.
But unlike you, I DO get tired of it. I've heard it a few times in Warcraft 3. I've heard it hundreds of times farming through the normal and heroic version of CoT on different characters.
And like Omegan01 said, it's being "replayed " by bronze dragons that can manipulate time, they can literally skip the whole dialogue and change nothing about what happened. So relax.
Aeltyra Jan 12th 2010 3:50AM
This was in reference to the OP btw, not to MightyMuffin.
lemur Jan 12th 2010 3:51AM
But abusing Arthas with /slap /smack etc. during his speech is such great guild bonding. ( My favorite moment was when our bear druid sat on Arthas during his speech. He looked oddly proud of himself)