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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsIcecrown Citadel raid buff to 20%
by Basil Berntsen 
May 25th 2010 at 1:30PM
While this might cheapen raiding rewards for many hard core players, I'll take a slowly increasing, optional buff against a flat out 30% HP reduction any day. Also, I suspect we might see some new achievements or rewards for players choosing to not use the buff once it finishes hitting 30%.Adam Holisky: I'm doing 10k single target dps right now on my huntard in ICC. today I'll magically do 10.5k. that just doesn't seem right.
Basil Berntsen: It's better than suddenly reducing the health of the bosses by 30% like they did in BC
Filed under: News items, Wrath of the Lich King
Reader Comments (Page 2 of 4)
theRaptor May 25th 2010 2:17PM
You get the same effect with gear "oh we need to wait to gear more people up" even if the boss is easily beatable with the raids current level of gear.
crschmidt May 25th 2010 2:44PM
theRaptor: Absolutely, you do. That's always bugged me too. However, that excuse has actually gone mostly out the window at this point -- for normal 10-man ICC, there is relatively little significant upgrading left for any of my players before we down the Lich King and open up heroics to our group. This has been mostly true for at least a month already, and we didn't start actively raiding ICC until about 2 months ago. I doubt this is an unusual situation -- the length of time where 'more gearz!' is an excuse is a much shorter period of time than the period of time attached to this increasing buff.
Glaras May 25th 2010 4:29PM
Why? Why is it annoying? How does it affect your gameplay? Is it because you can't stand the idea that someone else that you've deemed unworthy will have the Kingslayer title? Do you feel that this somehow cheapens yours?
Or is just that people that either can't, or chose not to, play at quite the level you do will get to see content they wouldn't otherwise?
From where I sit, it kinda sounds petty. This buff isn't going to let the completely incompetent past Deathwhisper. That fight will stop them cold, because, 20% buff or not, a lack of coordinated effort in that encounter will get you killed. Even if they manage to get past that, and get through Saurfang, when they run into Festergut, the 20% improvement to their 3K DPS translates to 3.6K, which is still way, way below the required 5K average they're going to need to push him over.
Of course, the group that *will* make it will be the one with the 3K DPS who's trying his damnedest to help out the 7 perfectly competent players who belong to a guild that can't, for love or money, recruit enough decent people to take out Putricide. They've been trying to pug enough decent talent for weeks on end, and this 20% might be enough to let them down Plague. Those 7 maybe don't meet the exacting standards of a top-tier guild, or maybe they can't devote more than 2 days a week to the effort. *Those* are the guys this is helping.
What I find annoying is that people are bitching about a buff that helps someone else in the game, with no real cost to themselves. They're just bugged by the *idea*.
theRaptor May 25th 2010 4:41PM
What are you on about Glaras? This has nothing to do with picking on the "unwothy". It is bitching about people in YOUR OWN RAID who won't put in the effort because it will be slightly* easier in a few weeks**. If a not-so-good group gets a new boss down because of the buff yah for them, but that isn't what this thread was about.
* And it is freaking LK which isn't some tank and spank that comes down to the enrage timer. I really doubt the "lets wait" people are consistently coming to within a few percent of downing him and wiping.
** And as it is always slightly easier in a few weeks due to gear upgrades you can use this argument to avoid ever doing anything ever unless you completely outgear it.
crschmidt May 25th 2010 5:13PM
Glaras, I think you hit the wrong reply. None of the people in this thread are upset at the buff. (It's the only reason my casual guild is getting as far as we are, I'm sure.) We are upset by the attitude of "It's not worth improving, I'll just wait for the buff to go up." If that's your attitude, that's fine, but I'm here to try to improve my skills and the skills of the other people I run with, not here to sit and wait another 4 weeks until Blizzard buffs up some arbitrary numbers that have relatively little effect on the outcome of an encounter.
MaudDib May 26th 2010 6:14AM
With us it was the opposite (similiar to a posted earlier), we had a huge push to try and kill lichy before the increased buff.
As it happens he went down on the last try of the evening, after not getting much into phase three the whole evening.
busuan May 25th 2010 1:53PM
And still, people will refuse me tanking ICC10 because I have T9 only.
SaintStryfe May 25th 2010 1:57PM
Yeah, that is unfortunate - people assume previous tier is incapable of doing current work. Best thing I can suggest would be to be part of a guild and do a second run.
CaryEverett May 25th 2010 2:09PM
Easier raids won't change a basic fact...
Pugs are for raids on farm.
Guilds are for progression raids.
If you have T9 and want to do Icecrown, it's a progression raid for you, and you need to be in a guild. The only way reliable way to get around that, is if the T9 character is an alt, and your main has been in Icecrown. Then you can get into raid groups by getting accepted to raid on your main, then letting them know you'll log off and ask them to invite your alt. But if it's one of your first times into the raid dungeon? You'll get much better results for your time, if you spend it trying to get a guild instead of pug the raid.
No amount of Blizzard making raids more accessible will ever change that.
crschmidt May 25th 2010 2:18PM
For what it's worth, there is some reasonable motivation to not have a tank in T9 tanking ICC: Because tank threat needs to exceed DPS damage in order to stay on top, bringing an undergeared tank with overgeared DPS is asking for trouble. Under-geared DPS will cause a wipe far less often than under-geared tanks (or healers, but people seem to think about that less for some reason). Since tank threat doesn't scale linearly with DPS increases, the buff may actually exacerbate threat problems in some cases.
It's sucky, but I've definitely run into it on the tank alt that hit 80 about 5-6 weeks ago. I've been able to get past it now -- getting the character to a 5K GS made a big difference. (Technically, this should mean that I have some ICC gear/experience. In reality, it means that I got the crafted boots, 264 gloves, and got lucky on a tier 264 drop from VoA.) I'm a reasonably competent tank who knew the ICC fights well, and tanking even a 10-man with a 5k GS gave me a fair amount of trouble with DPS pulling off of me, because I just didn't have any buttons to generate more threat. (Deathwhisper is a primary problem -- gathering the adds up with overeager DPS is a real bitch.)
My first two runs I got in by explicitly saying "Lower Spire only, alts preferred." The runs sucked and took a long time, but I got my Lower Spire achievement, and that made a huge difference in future pugging.
Last night, I was able to take the spot of one of our unavailable guild tanks and took us through the Blood Wing without a single tank-death-based-wipe. (Well, except forgetting to put on my shirt on gunship.)
So yes, it sucks. It's also not entirely unreasonable from the perspective of a PUGing raid leader. The fix is probably to lead an ICC yourself, preferably with a friend of the same role who has done it before, so you can be off-tank. Once you have a 5k GS and a Lower Spire achievement, at least on my server, you're in much better shape than otherwise.
Elleyna May 25th 2010 2:48PM
CaryEverett, who decides what's on farm? We have pugs clearing the first wing left and right on my server, and quite a few pugs getting Rotface and Festergut too. My tank alt has tanked the first wing with no issues at all. I was in mostly emblem gear when I started it too. Pugs tend not to overgear the content that often since those people who would usually have guilds to run with.
SaintStryfe May 25th 2010 1:54PM
World firsts are all done, it doesn't really matter. Just enjoy the extra 10 minutes it shaves off of your runs.
Galestrom May 25th 2010 1:55PM
These buffs make perfect sense to me. The experts have treaded, killed, and shared their knowledge with the world -- making things easier for all who follow.
My only concern is that we'll have completely killed everything well before Cata ships, leaving us with plenty of time to... to... uhm... ...
Well, plenty of time to think of something else to do, at least. =)
devilsei May 25th 2010 1:59PM
Eh, personally I dont see how this is better than the 30% health nerf. Sure, they had lower health, but we remained relatively unaffected by it.
This buff however, increases damage by X%, health by X%, and healing by X%. So while the boss is doing the same amount of damage, his hits are less effective than before, offset by the increase in healing and health, and any "race" like bonespike or the like is getting less and less effective with the increase of damage.
Sure, the 10mill boss isn't getting nerfed to 7mill, but a tank whose normally 40k hitting 56k, dps pulling 10k now pulling 13k, and heals that normally hit for 20k now hitting for 26k (when the buff is maxed) adds up to makes that health nerf look weak.
devilsei May 25th 2010 2:00PM
whoops, 52k, not 56k.
lownwolf May 25th 2010 2:04PM
I'm actually inclined to agree with you.
This new 5% should have me break 70k hp. And honestly, all it does is mess with my head. I get used to having that much health and then i go somewhere else and now i don't have it! It's definitely strange to be affecting the players so much, especially when it's an effect that you only have in one raid, and other raids your character will be performing entirely different.
Wild Colors May 25th 2010 2:31PM
The biggest difference is that this buff is being added slowly. It would feel a lot more jarring if on Monday it was "dear god this is hard and only 5% of guilds have gotten through it" and on Tuesday there was a 30% buff all of the sudden and the number of lich king kills had tripled by Friday.
I think Blizzard has the right idea with a slowly increasing buff. The earlier you killed the lich king, the cooler it is because (1) you got there first and (2) you got there with a lesser handicap. But at the same time, a lot of people will eventually get there. Essentially, if you are part of a raiding guild, Blizz would like you to eventually reach the lich king.
And frankly, I think that's a good idea. Blizzard put a lot of time and effort into designing this content and would like more people to see it. A lot of players would like to see it, and otherwise wouldn't be able to.
Does it cheapen the experience of hardcore guilds? Maybe a little. You still get there first, but you don't get to stand there alone for very long. At the same time, WoW was never really a "hardcore" MMO. The true test for elite guilds in WotLK was Algalon, and I think that's appropriate. The world and the storyline was centered around Arthas, so everyone who wants to should get to see him. Algalon was an awesome, epic encounter (all the more so for the "attunement" of keeper hardmodes), but it is for the best that he was not an important character in the lore.
lownwolf May 25th 2010 2:01PM
I really do appreciate Blizz's sentiment about having more people see the endgame content, but i've noticed a couple of things as of late.
1) (this may piss some people off) but I think using the buff should reduce drops. Hardcore guilds should get a reward for doing hardcore stuff.. Putting on 'easy mode' and gathering all the drops reduces the line between hardcore and casual. There isn't a reward for being hardcore anymore, unless you're server/world first. Let everyone see the final boss of the xpac, but not everyone should have BiS for everything unless they really worked for it.
2) Some people just SHOULD NOT be raiding. The buffs have increased the amount of people that will "casually" drop into an ICC group. These people are the ninja's, and the people that log after 1 wipe (these are arguably more annoying). If Blizz is going to introduce this new "Puggable content" then some steps need to be taken in order to stop people from getting the drop they need, or hitting 1 hard spot, and then dropping group. Anyone in a serious progression guild will tell you that wiping is part of raiding, the casuals don't understand this and don't want to put effort to achieve anything. They hit the first wall and drop. And suddenly my guild gets punished because we had to pug a healer.
If you drop from a BG in the middle of the fight, there are repercussions. I don't see why there shouldn't be the same for PVE. ESPECIALLY if Blizz is serious about putting in a random raid finder.
thegatherer May 25th 2010 2:14PM
I agree with you, however, you are assuming one thing which I do not agree with.
As a casual raider I normally do pug raids, however, I never have ninja'd loot, nor have I ever dropped group before the RL called it. The people who do either are just asshats, and shouldn't raid, like you said.
If you think all casuals are out to screw over hardcore players, and thus should be "nerfed" I would ask this: why would they continue playing a game that punishes them for playing the only way they can? Should the hardcore raiders be punished because they are hardcore? Should they have their loot nerfed to reflect upon how hardcore they are? After all, nothing says hardcore like downing the LK with gear "worse" than T9.
No, the loot shouldn't be nerfed. Why? Because the hardcore raiders usually did not wait around to get all BiS gear, and made due with what they had. In return they downed more content faster.
It is a trade off, nothing more, nothing less. you still are able to do the "hardcore" stuff, but now the less hardcore are able to do something similar. If it is bragging rights you want, never turn on the buff.
Rhabella May 25th 2010 2:22PM
I would like to say I agree with your sentiment, but allow me to play the devil’s advocate.
To Point 1.
Who the hell cares? Are drops at this point in the game really what matters? Hasn’t the ushered in era of LOLCats asking to HAZ WLFARE EPIKS already “cheapened” the accomplishment, if you want to even call it that, of clearing a tier of content? How about this, I promise to beg Blizzard to give you more drops if you promise to put your achievements on your gravestone. It really is just a game, and the desire to reward people because they do it harder is about as ridiculous a request as I have ever heard, but only because we have crossed a line with WoW where we all put way to much value on a person’s gearscore and not enough value on the social aspect of the game. If you, or anyone, is that concerned about drops or achievements, I might suggest games with a much higher difficulty threshold because WoW is a game and not cancer research.
To Point 2
Again, you are right, but if you are having that much trouble with PuGs, then I might suggest you step up your recruiting. Everyday, while reviewing ads on lookingforguild.net, the forums, or podcasts, I see tons of people recruiting for better players with more dedication. Stop grabbing random people to fill your spots because those people are generally morons.
As an example, my dedicated guild of adults had other dedications come up early in Ulduar. Those dedications were a new baby for one couple and a cross country move for the other. As a result, our guild collapsed because we never really needed more than 10-13 people to raid because we all showed up and carried our weight. Every guild on my server, and even many others, all want to do 25 man content. I have inquired into many guilds, but so many of them, even fledgling guilds want to run 25 man content, and I have no clue why. I just haven’t been able to find a guild who says, “we wanna run 10 mans, and we only wanna raid a couple nights a week” because so many of them are aspiring to be players which just aren’t in their character matrix. Your guild should eithr recruit or consider what you want out of your play time and whether it is a reasonable expectation long before you decide to pug Joe “the Random” Plumber and wonder why he drops after the first wipe.
Being honest about your expectations of the game and the players you play with will help alleviate many of these pug problems you are talking about.