The new "impossible" 2.1 raids

[JohnnieRat]

As of last Tuesday Blizz opened up 2 more "large" raids. CoT Battle for Mount Hyjal and The Black Temple.

It's been only a week since their introduction and ALLREADY guilds are working on Illidan (Black Temple) http://www.realmhistory.net/guild-ranking/black-temple.html

and they are allready working on Archimonde (Hyjal) http://www.realmhistory.net/guild-ranking/hyjal.html


Anyone remember hearing the horror stories of when Naxx came out and it taking months for people just to get to the last 2 bosses and another month or so to down them? This was even after they were farming BWL and AQ40 for months (not weeks or not farming them at all even since the first clear of The Eye was only 2 weeks ago) and were as prepared as physically possible. It seems like getting attuned for these places is the actual difficult part. I checked Nihilum (a bunch of Europeans paid by Blizz to be the first in the world to kill things after it goes live and in test realms) and they got 4 bosses down within 36 hours of opening. What a job they have... wut r means sunlight?

on another note, I saw a video of Illidan hitting a raid geared main tank for over 11k right off the get-go of the encounter. He doesn't sound very fun.

(I troll forums way to much)

[Air]

I don't remember hearing horror stories about Naxx.  Naxx is considered the pinnacle of raiding content.  The only real cockblocks were loatheb, patchwerk, and four horseman.  Thaddius was a problem only because it killed peoples connections.  With 4H being the only real problem for guilds, since there was alot of theorycrafting going on.  It was matter of getting enough tanking warriors with a 4pc Dreadnaught, and the need for like 6 warriors for that fight.

I do believe everyone should experience Naxx since it's such a well designed instance, with lots of lore behind it and well designed encounters.  Which push the players to play at their best.

The only horror stories I remember were with aq40 and C'thun.  If C'Thun had been properly tuned from the beginning.  Fury from Medivh would of have had him killed within 1 month of opening the gates.  Instead it was 3-4 months before he was killed.

I've only read 2 guilds who are at Illidan, Nihilum and Curse, and I doubt blizzard would pay them to do their content.  That's not what drives the hardcore raiders.

The main problem is when all the stats for the epics were increased, blizzard never retuned the encounters to account for this.  raids should be in mostly tier 6, not pieces of tier 4 and 5.  And attempting Illidan.  Thats how it was in Naxx, everyone in the needed to be 5 or 6 pieces of tier 3 to attempt the later encounters.

[Shadowwolf]

Nihilum is a mass of people who strive for being "Worlds first killers of xxx" which in all honestly, yea its nice and dandy, but seriously, is that something your family could honestly be proud of you for as a life accomplishment? Hehe
They do buy gold, there was a huge thread on the WoW forums on that and people basically accusing Blizz of not enforcing the TOS on them of that because it makes them look good when that guild walks into a raid instance and starts smacking down bosses and posting loot for people to see. It kind of drives the rest of the WoW populace thats into heavy raiding to push harder so I honestly wouldnt doubt they turn a blind eye to some things Nihilum does in order to be "Worlds first".

Some of these instances are far off, and yet, some arent so far off. I think it wasnt too long ago most of us probably thought getting through Karazhan would be quite a while and take us some considerable time, but low and behold last week we got up to the Curator. The key to doing that was figuring out what group composition and roles were needed to pass these bosses as Blizz was unkind to the smaller raid lite guilds like us by making some very VERY heavy class dependencies in all the new raid instances more so then what existed previously. We are finding the flexibility in those like usual Twilight style, but its taking some time is all.

All in all, these new raid instances are still quite reachable by us and many others, just not in the ridiculous timetable that these guilds in the media lately are, and I just dont see the point to rushing to get into the new raiding areas. Yea new bosses, new challenges, but rushing through things like some of these guys are trying for "World First" or "Realm First" is just dumb. What happens when you finally get to Illidan and you do it so quickly. Youll more than likely get bored and not find any challenge or enjoyment from WoW at that point because you beat it, end of story, game over, time to do something else.

I honestly dont believe Blizz designed any of these raiding instances to be reached so quickly and cleared so quickly, but to each his own. They design things in progression style, which coincidentally is a word I just dont like using to describe the game, but its the best term to. Every instance preps you for the one prior. Look at ZG, the gear drops in ZG trumped stuff you got in MC and to a smaller extent BWL. The bosses were a little more challenging too I think because its a smaller raid and they required different things to take place during the fight and everyone to perform to peak to be successful. We are seeing quite a lot of that as we have first hand in Kara where that same story is played out but in a 10 person raid making all the more challenging.

Looking at the progress we've made as a guild as of late, Id honestly think we might be ready to make a try at Gruul's lair in a few more weeks of Kara's and heroics. If you want to think about it in terms of a time line which you really shouldnt, but for those of you who do, the farthest along raid guilds on our server are just now making their way in Serpentshrine and no one as far as I know has attempted The Eye, so we arent that far "behind" everyone in that respect. Its best not to look at it as a race or time line type of deal because there is no clock we have to work against, we dont get extra points for doing things first, Blizz doesnt hand out special loot, and about all we get is hate and malcontent if we did from other guilds. Personally I prefer to earn the respect of others by doing things in our usual unconventional style like what we did in MC pre-Burning Crusade with killing Lucifron with half the total raid requirement and no one in better than ZG epic items. Thats nothing short of amazing to say the least and I expect us to have more of those types of "firsts" along the way to visit Illidan =)

[Arcdelad]

I agree about Gruul's lair shadow....its 25 man, no attunement needed, and similar to Onyxia's lair in its speed and breadth....I dont think were ready quite yet though....but soon...

[JohnnieRat]

It also came out that one of those guys pays people's REAL LIFE bills in exchange for stuff in game... sooooo Shadow, this car payment of mine, if you could take care of that, that'd be great.
I didn't mean this as any sort of giddy-up or nothin. I prefer not having to farm consumables for 10 hours before a raid and and then raid for another 10 hours, sleep for 4 and repeat ... 6 times a week!

As far as Gruul's lair. Being ready for that won't be too hard for us. If we can get a second Kara group going, PvP gear (especially for our mage tank since PvP stuff has lots of Stam) and getting 25 people on at the same time.

But seriously... I have a shiny Stoppable Force waiting for whoever picks up my car payment.

[Air]

Gruul himself may not be possible yet, but Maulgar maybe possible.  Atleast to try.  The  fight itself is fairly unconventional.

[Buzan]

Maulgar I heard it's much easier than Gruul, but still tough. I'd say go for it as soon as Khara gets done from first to last boss, or at least try him when we are very close to the last boss in Khara. Just my 2c.

[JohnnieRat]

Still no volunteers to pay my bills?

Maulgar should definitely be doable once we have a couple raids doing Kara for a week or two. Only thing holding most people who aren't doing Kara is the attunement. Running heroics will also help out tons.

[Darkling]

rumor has that nihilum killed illidan last night.

[Muridin]

Still no volunteers to pay my bills?

sure, i will

send me the cash and ill pay them for ya =p

[Shadowwolf]

Those guilds we get to thank for this junk =P

[blizzard author=Daelo link=http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=108206191&sid=1] Based upon further feedback from guilds in Black Temple and Hyjal, we've decided to make some difficulty adjustments to many of the later bosses. As a general rule, the changes increase the damage dealt by the encounter to the raid. Note that due to the timing and nature of the changes made, some of the tooltips for the retuned abilities will be incorrect.

The encounters changed include:

Gurtogg Bloodboil
Teron Gorefiend
Mother Shahraz
The Illidari Council
Illidan Stormrage
Archimonde

Our intent is not to make the encounters impossible. Even with the increased difficulty, I do expect some of them to be quickly beaten again after guilds experience the changes and adapt.

As a side note, the 2.1.1 patch did include the change to the Archimonde encounter that increases his leash distance and made the Well of Eternity a bad place for casters to be near.[/blizzard]

[JohnnieRat]

Although I knew these folks were in the PTR prior to patch release... I was not aware of the fact that they had a Blizz GM there with them the entire time. He was kept out of combat to quickly rez the raid and also place NPCs to repair gear and sold them any and all consumables imaginable. In order to progress faster, the also /deathed mobs so they didn't have to deal with them all the time... and now blizz is making encounters more difficult. I redact the statement saying it's too easy and change it too, Blizz makes it too easy for a select few and makes it damn near impossible for most. Since now that people that far have the upgraded gear where maybe there tank will last 1 more hit just in time for a big heal to get off or something while no one else can reflect that.
I sort of hope that Blizz makes maybe a 15 person raid in the near future and make naturally "progression wise" to come after Kara. It's tough to move from a 10 person raid with a long reset to a 25 person for smaller guilds.