While I don't agree that Stonecore is as easy as you're making it out to be, it certainly isn't as impossible as the article is claiming. It's tricky, and you still might wipe a couple times even though you've done it before, but that's what a Heroic is supposed to be. Our guild got it as a random the other night and despite wiping twice on Ozruk, it was a pretty fun run overall.

"You seriously think it's poor encounter design to not be able to go into a fight and have the potential to defeat it the very first time you see it?"

Why yes, yes I do.

Wanna fight about it?

I voted you down, because I had a lot of trouble getting to your fairly decent advice through all the dickishness.

We all know that you one-shot heroic SC in mostly quest greens while the healer and one dps was d/ced in a full pug having only run it once on normal all while you were half asleep. That doesn't mean Mr. Ziebart doesn't have a lot of very good points about the outrageous difficulty, bordering-on-broken mechanics, and extremely small room for error of this particular dungeon.

Yep, he's drunk. Clearly. Apparently a lot of the WoW community is too. Moron.

Gotta love the know-it-all "if you were only as great as me" posts.

I agree with the original column writer... Heroic Stonecore is much more akin to a raid boss environment then a heroic boss environment. Wiping on 1st attempts, and having to do multiple attempts to get everyone on the same page is more raid-learning-curve then heroic-learning-curve, and in this aspect, Blizz has failed. Stonecore is supposed to be a heroic, not a raid... it is avoided like the plague by many for a reason... Heroic Stonecore has earned "the Occulus effect" , and when that happens, Blizzard has failed, despite the know-it-alls who think otherwise.

It's really too bad when people who would otherwise have quite meaningful contributions to make can only write them in Assholese.

Ignoring the douche canoe salesman, I don't see what's wrong with wiping once or twice on your first visit to a Heroic boss. That isn't comparable to a raid environment *at all* as raids often require full nights of wipes versus just one current-tier boss.

Wiping once when going into a boss fight blind* isn't even too crazy for Normals, from what I've experienced of Cata dungeons so far (which is Normal mode of everything but Grim Batol).

*This isn't accounting for reading up on strategies or abilities before-hand; just the initial experience.

The problem is wiping several times in REGULAR mode because the final boss is too hard to figure out. And before anyone can really learn what it is they're supposed to do the tank drops group, then the healer, and you have to try it all over again and wipe again because neither has done the fight before.

And remember, I'm complaining about REGULAR mode. I've never even attempted heroic mode, and don't think I ever will until it's seriously nerfed.

- "Oculus effect"
- "Assholese"
- "douche canoe salesman"


This thread is awesome. That is all.