Patch 5.4 patch notes
Virtual Realms feature revealed
The Proving Grounds are coming
The latest patch 5.4 newsThoughts on Icecrown Citadel and gating
by Allison Robert 
Jan 28th 2010 at 4:00PM
That's the part of the gating system -- "Raiders (having) the fear of God struck into them for wiping just once," as Lume puts it -- of which I'm not overly fond myself. A key raider lagging or disconnecting can result in a wipe on much of this content, and more particularly on the two bosses (Putricide and Lana'thel) for whom limited attempts currently exist. Both command very high DPS requirements, so even if you can easily afford the loss of a laggy DPS or two on something like Festergut (which is pretty baldly a DPS check in its own right), a single person going offline on Lana'thel-25 can wreck both the attempt and peoples' nerves. Losing 4 Blood-Queen Lana'thel attempts last week due to the bug with Kinetic Bombs aggroing her through the ceiling during the Council fight was equally frustrating.
To play devil's advocate, the gating system does have a few things going for it. As I've written previously, any honest player would admit that blowing through content isn't an ideal way to experience it. The gating mechanic also pressures people to fix their mistakes more quickly, and that's something raid leaders like a lot (let's be honest, we've all been in raids where at least 75% of the wipes were due to really dumb mistakes). And Blizzard isn't really restricting your ability to kill these bosses so much as it's punishing raids that attempt to brute-force a kill without fixing strategy flaws.
Unfortunately, this has the side effect of punishing raids for more innocent mistakes or technical problems. Ultimately, I'd guess that gated content has a different impact on each raid, and it's a bit irritating that some of this impact is out of the raid's collective control.
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Raiding
Reader Comments (Page 3 of 4)
Etreya Jan 28th 2010 4:23PM
I would have no problem on the gating of content if the content was lag and bug free.
As mentioned, The Kinetic orb bug cost many a raid team attempts at both Putricide and Lana'thel, whilst the lag we've been experiencing every week has meant wipes on the most mundane things like Gunship battle let alone getting past Saurfang to even get to the limited attempt content.
As it stands though, Progress has been a bit more frustrating and demanding on the raid, meaning shorter fuses and drained players
L Jan 28th 2010 4:36PM
This, I usually have 30-40 fps during raids, on PP I have 4 fps, possibly its my computer, but it seems odd that it would single out this fight only to slow up for. We also have 3 people routinely dc (not the same 3 people) weekly. We've killed him, and are working on Queen, but wasting an attempt or 3 because of technical difficulties is frustrating. Also on gunship we are so laggy, and it is the whole raid that is laggy, I have no clue how we will do hardmodes when regular modes takes 10 mins, and hots and other instant casts are taking 3-5 seconds to cast
Scott Jan 28th 2010 4:28PM
We've been struggling with limited attempt bosses for the past month because people just can't stay online. It's getting very tiresome because up until this "limited attempt crap", there wasn't anything we couldn't tackle with a liitle time and a big repair bill. So far this week, we've one-shotted our way to PP and BQL. Odds are we'll waste our 15 attempts to disconnects, real life issues and client crashes. None of those have anything to do with the quality of our raiders, but in the end will just equate to one thing: FAIL.
InvaderDem Jan 28th 2010 4:33PM
Blizzard should implement a system that can sense disconnects. This way if someone happens to disconnect, then you aren't penalized for it if they wipe. Sure, this can be abused ... but for those who have legitimate connection issues will soon be singled out and asked to leave the raid.
Eshin Jan 28th 2010 4:41PM
What Blizz could do to help everyone with disconnects would see if they could optimize their code to use the newer hardware that is out there. I drop to 20fps in Putricide even though my system can run ModernWarfare 2 with 25 other people at 80fps+. I think their drive to keep the game backwards compatible has started to catch up with them.
Manasseh Jan 28th 2010 4:44PM
"sensing disconnects" is begging for abuse.
"Oh, our PP attempt is going badly, someone unplug their modem QUICK."
Ghost Jan 28th 2010 4:33PM
As a member of a 2 night per week raiding group, this will be the first and only week where the limited number of attempts will be a gating issue. Next week it will go to 20 attempts -which when combined with 1-shotting everything leading up to the limited attempt bosses takes more time than we spend raiding in a week to use (we had 2 wipes on non-attempt limited bosses this week, and I suspect will have 0 next week).
This is not friendly to the hardcore 3-4 night per week groups who want to grind through hoping for a kill via many repeated attempts.
I much prefer this sort of gating to the BC style do an epic long quest chain to get unlocked.
I think the bigger issue is they are doing loot incorrectly for 10 vs 25. They should be having the same ilvl gear. If you go and analyze fight difficulties use worldoflogs you'll see that 10-man is on average as hard as 25-man. As an aside, some fights are much easier on one size or the other. If anything 10-man is probably harder than 25-man, and having the difficulty masked by people in 25-man gear effectively over-gearing the instance.
Pyromelter Jan 28th 2010 6:11PM
There is no way in hell that Deathwhisper and Saurfang are easier on 25man mode. There are mechanics in 25man that are not in 10man (mind control), and on saurfang, it's very hard for people to stay spread out enough to where he isn't gaining blood power, whereas in 10man mode he gains blood power at a very, very slow rate (due to the fact that you can spread out more easily). As far as making it easy from 264 gear, well up until Tuesday I had exactly zero 25man gear, and with 2piece tier10 along with other 5mans and toc25 gear, I was easily able to kill any blood beast (on 10man) before it gets to me (assuming frost trap is down).
Netheral Jan 28th 2010 7:55PM
The thing about DBSaurfang is, even though the marks stack up faster, it's usually easier to counter them in 25 man when you have 4-6 healers, more than one soulstone and even a few divine interventions. Of course, I suspect that when we get to hard modes some encounters will shift around and get easier in ten man and vise-versa.
All things considered, 10 vs 25 man still suffers a lot from the OS+3D effect even though blizzard has found interesting ways to fix them (stiffer enrages, different mechanics and the like).
Marzipan Jan 28th 2010 4:34PM
I really dislike the limited attempts idea, maybe for heroic, but not for normal mode. We lost three attempts for stupid reasons last night. A paly DI'd a player that was too close to the bosses spawning point, soon as they released the boss reappeared and promptly aggro'd. We then had someone run the wrong way after being rez'd, another lost...back to back. We then had a tank pull before people were ready, while we were able to take a try at the fight, having half the raid unbuffed makes it futile.
Pyromelter Jan 28th 2010 6:15PM
Fail people failed your attempts.
Working as intended.
Eshin Jan 28th 2010 4:37PM
I think the gating is a good thing. I would rather Blizz go back to the attunement system because of the fact that it allowed a good gear check at each raid but I'll stick with the limited attempts. My guild as a whole has improved immensely as raiders because of it and we have really begun to see who the weak links our in the chain with the gated fights. Sure it is painful to wipe over and over but it is also a good feeling to know that we are not simply breezing through content and then moving on to the hard modes just because we've beat our head against the wall enough times to break through. Remember as the time goes on Blizz will make these fights easier, they've said so in the notes. Take pride in the fact if you can down them before they go easy mode.
As for the connection issues, I understand everyone's pain but perhaps people need to turn down some addons, invest in a better network card, and turn down the graphics settings. After we pushed our raiders to do this the disconnects all but stopped, and the ones that were having the problem we soon discovered had left them on thinking they could handle it. They got swapped out and the next night it was no longer an issue.
jfofla Jan 28th 2010 4:40PM
Putricide is hard...our guild wiped 15 times last week on our 25 man. One wipe was less than 1% I think 200,000 health.
There was a lot of cursing, shouting, and lots and lots of blaming. All in all it was not much fun.
Eshin Jan 28th 2010 4:44PM
I feel your pain, my guild had him down to 300k before he popped a tank. At this point everyone needs to be on their 'A' game otherwise it's over and even the smallest mistake costs you the match. Going in again tonight.
Transit Jan 28th 2010 4:44PM
I don't know about you guys, but on our server I can think of maybe 5 guilds who have even seen those bosses yet. (Although the top 2 just about 1 or 2 shotted them.)
For me its a non issue, as we are still working on Rotface and princes on both 25 man and 10. (Strangely enough, festergut was not a problem for us.) The " limited attempts" thing does not really affect me and I would say the majority of our server. So to me its not a big deal.
The bosses in there are fairly difficult for most guilds, I would imagine. This gated process is meant purely for the top end guilds. (In my opinion of course.)
Kaz Jan 28th 2010 4:45PM
I kind of like the idea of the limited attempts. It allows Blizzard to make a fun and challenging encounter without making the encounter impossibly hard, or relying on split second timing. It also encourages raids to understand the fights and carefully examine strategic flaws. However as been pointed out in the article it can increase stress and hard feelings for small innocent mistakes, and for computer crashes or lag.
Our guild hasn't had to sit anyone yet, but I know a few good raiders that periodically get screwed over by their ISP and they may end up getting "sat" for the attempts on the endwing bosses.
Overall I think that the gating gives guild a good chance of practicing with the encounters so they'll be in a better position to fight the Lich King when he's released. On that day you're going to want to one-shot though as much stuff as possible just to get to the Lore-gasm and shiny purples of the fight at the Frozen Throne.
shawn Jan 28th 2010 4:47PM
WTF people bitch that the content is toooooo easy now they bitch cause the content has some requirements in order to try to make the content not so easy cause people are bitching about it being so easy and facerolled in a couple hours after releasing it. Blizz did the correct thing with gating this stuff.
WoWie Zowie Jan 28th 2010 4:53PM
i don't mind the limited tries. for someone that likes to, you know, actually go to bed at some point because he has to wake up for work the next day..
if we don't got it that night we don't got it, let it be and try again tomorrow. the limited attempts enforces that nicely.
Paul Jan 28th 2010 4:55PM
I'm reserving my judgement on the limited attempts until AFTER the ICC buff comes into play.
In my eyes, ICC isn't fully "casual-enabled" until this progressive buff hit's it's cap.
Does this mean I think it's right at the moment? No. Not the limited attempts anyway. Waiting for content to become available, Yes. It gives me that "oooh! Something new" feeling every two weeks instead of "I just farmed ICC and STILL haven't got that trinket I want".
trogdor7 Jan 28th 2010 4:58PM
One angle I haven't seen taken on this issue is the relatively new system of raid lockout extension. If limited attempts didn't exist, you'd see raids, casual and hardcore alike, extending their lockouts indefinitely to kill, say, Arthas. (as long as they felt their gear was there, of course). Blizzard doesn't want that, so, voila, you have limited attempts.