Lady Sinestra, Paragon, and the cutting edge
by Matthew Rossi 
Jan 21st 2011 at 8:00PM
Yesterday, <Paragon> got the world first kill of Lady Sinestra, the hardmode-only encounter in Bastion of Twilight. As you might have expected for a boss that only two guilds in the world have even reached, the encounter was not as well tested as it might otherwise have been, according to <Paragon> themselves. Today, in response to a forum thread about that, Zarhym chimed in with a response discussing the issue.
Zarhym - Did Paragon enjoy their journey?I do think you have to take the tone of that post in the context in which it was written. Because Sinestra is a super-hardcore boss, they were pretty much the first ones to really push her mechanics to the limits. It's easy to see from their post that they were understandably frustrated. Not only were they trying to learn the mechanics and develop strategies, but we were watching closely, hotfixing several different issues as they stumbled across them. This meant they had to adapt to the changes we were making on the spot in addition to figuring out how to kill her -- and she's definitely no pushover.
We do wish it would have been a cleaner fight for them, but we really appreciate them pushing the limits of hardcore raiding, and testing us to design new and compelling challenges. :)
We do wish it would have been a cleaner fight for them, but we really appreciate them pushing the limits of hardcore raiding, and testing us to design new and compelling challenges. :)
Basically, what this means is very interesting for guilds and players who want to push content as hard and fast as possible. It means when you step into these fights that require unlocking and are intended for the best of the best, you're effectively going to have to accept that with great selectivity comes great unknowns.
A fight like Lady Sinestra is of course intended to be very hard at the current gear level. It's a punishing, unforgiving fight designed to make player choices and strategies more important than gear. Hard-mode fights are always designed around the idea of giving the players what they say they want -- that is, a real challenge that they have to overcome with skill and proper play.
The upside of this is the emotional satisfaction you feel when you overcome such a challenge. The downside is that this is institutionalized elitism, deliberately so, and that means that the pool of people getting in to see the encounters and test them is limited. The more players running content, the more quickly bugs and exploits can be discovered and addressed. Of course there's internal testing, but no two raid groups think alike, and Blizzard's internal testing isn't always going to reveal what a group of experienced, skilled raiders will discover, much less when you have hundreds of raids going on at any given time. We all remember people using trinkets to push C'thun's stomach acid debuffs off of themselves.
With an encounter like Sinestra, there simply isn't that body of raiders running the encounter. There can't be. At the time this encounter was defeated, only one other guild could even get in to see her. This is to a degree the price we're going to pay to have these kinds of selective, elite encounters intended to provide a maximum of challenge. While it had to be maddening for <Paragon> to be using a strategy on one attempt and have it not work for the next because of a hotfix, there's probably not much else Blizzard could have done.
What's even more interesting is the fact that Blizzard was, in fact, watching <Paragon>'s attempts and making hotfixes like this. <Paragon> and other world-first guilds are therefore basically becomes a kind of extra stage in the beta testing process. If you can't allow a lot of people in to test your selectively elite hardmode-only fights for fear of details leaking out, this becomes how those encounters get their full shakedown. In essence, <Paragon> is the Hal Jordan of Lady Sinestra encounters. It also means that future encounters will be designed deliberately to be challenging, based on the experience of designing and then observing world-first guilds beating these encounters. It becomes interactively iterative. That's the closest I've ever seen to WoW having user-designed content, in a way: It's user-defined content, content evolved to the standards set by this group's work to beat the previous content.
So if you're a hard-content-focused guild, take heart. The next hard mode you face? Blizzard may well design it after having watched how you beat the last one.
World of Warcraft: Cataclysm has destroyed Azeroth as we know it; nothing is the same! In WoW Insider's Guide to Cataclysm, you can find out everything you need to know about WoW's third expansion, from leveling up a new goblin or worgen to breaking news and strategies on endgame play.Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, News items, Raiding, Cataclysm
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 5)
Avan Jan 21st 2011 8:05PM
"What's even more interesting is the fact that Blizzard was, in fact, watching Paragon's attempts and making hotfixes like this."
Isn't that how Paragon was denied the world first LK kill? Because GMs were monitoring the attempts?
Cthulu Jan 21st 2011 8:14PM
That is also why the ensidia ban was really not so controversial..blizzard was watching the attempts, the chats, the logs, and the kill. It was pretty straightforward and easy to see what they were doing. They didn't report it like Paragon did the dark sim near 1 shot.
This should end that crap about they didnt' deserve their ban.
Wolfbait Jan 21st 2011 8:15PM
It was Ensidia that got the World First LK kill taken away due to them using exploits.
Jimson Jan 21st 2011 8:15PM
I think you're thinking of Ensidia... they were the ones using Saronite bombs to rebuild the platform in phase 2.
Pyromelter Jan 21st 2011 8:29PM
Log reports of some of these encounters have also been known to have some names of people who were not in the raid. Supposedly they are GM's and devs and whatnot that are using characters with permanent invisibility and flight to observe the fights.
Pretty spooky, but kind of cool at the same time. A part of me really would like to be a part of this type of raid atmosphere, but I'm afraid the time commitment of this type of wow playing is too much for me.
Revynn Jan 21st 2011 8:45PM
@ Pyromelter - Agreed. As much as I would love to be in a raid environment like this and be on the bleeding edge of content (I like to think that I'm capable), the simple fact is that as long as I have a full time job and kids to feed, it won't happen. Guilds like Ensidia, For the Horde and Paragon are very up-front about the fact that the guild takes precident over everything else in your life during progression. These guys have been raiding non-stop since Cataclysm launched. O.o
Congrats to them on the kill, I suspect I won't even see the fight until we're sporting T13.
Pumabackup Jan 21st 2011 8:47PM
i dont know why, but that kinda makes me think of the end of "the truman show"...like a crowd of devs and gm's were crowding in to watch the encounter. im guessing there was a bit of cheering for paragon going on at the blizz headquarters that night lol... ;-)
Mr. Tastix Jan 21st 2011 11:24PM
@Revynn: Do note they basically get paid to do their raids anyway. Paragon for example, get sponsored by SteelSeries.
Aaron Jan 21st 2011 11:30PM
They should sell tickets because I would love to have watched that fight.
Pyromelter Jan 22nd 2011 12:38AM
aaron, paragon and most top guilds post their fight videos on youtube, and paragon makes some really epic videos. You also have Big Crits which is a documentary style series on raiding.
There are some people who stream live their raid nights on justin.tv and other websites. I'd be willing to guess at some point Paragon or another top guild will start streaming their fights, and I'd bet you anything they will find a way to make money off that viewership. (And if they do, I say good for them, it would make for compelling TV imo).
Aaron Jan 22nd 2011 2:03AM
@Pyro, I'm aware of their vids and of certain groups streaming. What I was thinking when I typed that was that it would be awesome to be a cloaked character or be able to "fly around the room" IN GAME while that fight (any of the top guilds first kills for that matter) was going on.
The thing is no one really knows when the kill will take place. I was reading they sometimes theorycraft for an hour or more between pulls and that some raiding stretches easily hit the 11 hour mark. o.O
Manadar Jan 22nd 2011 3:31AM
Exploit or no exploit, no player should ever be banned for finding and using an bug in Blizzards game. I can't think of any other product where the company blame it's costumer for a broken product. Revoke the achievement and remove the loot, but no, you can't ban a player for testing a boss because you don't do it yourself.
That's really what it really boils down to. While Blizzard never can get 25 internal testers as skilled as Paragon, they should still hard test every encounters using all classes and all spells. And test bosses on both 25 and 10-man. Valionas adds having the same HP on both sizes is something that's beyond me how they could have missed. Give your testers an ICC buff if they're too bad for hardmodes.
If you got 12 million people that pay you money each month that's not too much to ask.
/rant off
Literaltruth Jan 22nd 2011 4:49AM
Paragon would never let people watch their attempts prior to getting the world firsts. It would open them up to members of For the Horde et al spying on them and copying tactics from them to slip in and steal the world first.
Generally these raiding guilds won't even release any videos of any of the progression fights until they, or someone else, have achieved the world first full clear of an instance or tier of raiding. You don't want to give another team a leg up by showing them how you did up to the current point only to have them pip you at the post by killing everything you have with your tactics and then killing the last boss a day / few hours / few minutes before you do (and some of the specific boss world firsts really do come down to hours or minutes in terms of who gets it).
It would be nice to be a fly on the wall - but there's no way it's happening while the race is still on.
Pyromelter Jan 22nd 2011 6:56PM
Literal, if someone payed each raider 10,000 dollars for 2-3 days of views on their boss attempts, you think they would turn it down? Not a chance. I know some of these guys get paid to play, unless they are getting paid a lot more than I think they would jump at that in a heartbeat.
The only issue I can see with that is the legality of it coming from blizzard's end.
We already have huge money making sponsorships and viewerships where players get paid to have their pvp matches, in wow, starcraft, and other games. I don't think it would be that crazy to see guilds getting paid to televise live attempts on it.
Think about the amount of eyeballs would have been watching if we could all watch in on paragon. 100,000? 1,000,000? More? Can you imagine the buzz it would cause? Someone in /2 saying "Hey, over on j.tv paragon is broadcasting their heroic sinestra attempts!"
I know guilds are all secretive about their strategies, but I just don't believe other guilds could get such an advantage that it would push them above the ones that are truly at the top.
Alexandr Jan 21st 2011 8:15PM
You may be also interested in the thread, pulled on MMO:
http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/835648-Resto-Shamans-useless-as-of-Cata/
It is now locked by admins, but another is started:
http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/835849-Read-what-Paragon-said-carefully-and-some-basic-resto-tips
Paragon had not used any shamans in the raid, and after they were asked on their forum about that, replied that shamans are useless.
CallMeIrd Jan 21st 2011 8:28PM
How is that relevant to the OP? o.O
riley Jan 21st 2011 8:51PM
Do you have a link to where they said shaman are useless?
Centar Jan 21st 2011 9:05PM
@Riley
Quote:
So in short, shaman is pretty damn bad class atm. Some ppl may think otherwise but if you play at top and wanna min max to the max. Fewer shamans = better raid comp
Link: http://www.paragon.fi/forum/viewtopic.php?f=32&t=1575
cyanea85 Jan 21st 2011 9:08PM
I would take what they say with a grain of salt, really. If you're a bleeding-edge guild aiming for world firsts, you're gonna take the best classes, even if Class Y is a one percent increase over Class X in whatever, you're gonna stack Y. So I don't believe "Shamans are useless QQ" should be any reason why a well-played Shaman in an average guild should consider rerolling.
That being said, I play a Resto Shaman and Holy Paladin and I do feel the Shaman is the slightly weaker of the two. Not enough to make me want to think about benching the former in favor of the latter, but somewhat.
Camo Jan 21st 2011 9:09PM
"Resto is only brought for mana tide totem at the moment, the healing shamans do isn't good enough compared to paladins and priests. Also the fact that shamans have pretty much non utility or useful cooldowns for raid or tanks makes the class really useless. On some fights double tide was good, especial at lower gear levels but as for Sinestra the fight just isn't made such that tide was needed so thats why no resto shamans.
I've played as elemental on couple of fights. Mainly to interrupt, obviously you can do that with resto spec also with some hit talents but in those fights dps was needed more then having 2 tides for healers. As for Sinestra there was no need for shaman interrupts. Also it's pretty much known that elemental shaman doesn't work too well on fights which have movement or lots of aoe needed. For those fights demo lock is better option to give 10% spell power buff. So as 95% of cataclysm fights need either aoe or movement demo lock was once again better choice.
And as you already said your self Rihmz is playing hunter now days since enha shaman just didn't bring any unique buff and other melees were doing better dps so that pretty much answers why no enha either.
So in short, shaman is pretty damn bad class atm. Some ppl may think otherwise but if you play at top and wanna min max to the max. Fewer shamans = better raid comp"
Don't forget that paragon is min/maxing for every encounter and that they will stack classes that give even the slightest advantage.