3.0 Raid Nerf?

[Xyriin]

From MMO Champion...

WotLK - All TBC Raid instances massively nerfed
It seems that the latest build brought an interesting change to TBC instances : all monsters in TBC raid instances had their health points reduced by 30%, bosses included. We don't know yet if this change is final, but below are a few exemples of changes for some of these instances, more values will be added as we go through the instances. Feel free to contribute with your own lists in comments.

Note : The change isn't confirmed by Blizzard yet. We don't know if this change will be pushed live, and we don't know when it will happen but we might see this change shipped with Patch 3.0 before the release of the expansion

Monster TBC Health WotLK Health
Kalecgos 3,700,000 2,180,000
Naj'entus 3,800,000 2,655,000
Supremus 4,500,000 3,186,000
Hydross 3,400,000 2,390,000

[Aurorawind]

Yeah, saw this. I'm thinking it's deliberate for anyone who wants to go back and get Achievements for them later on.

[Vand]

I'm more inclined to think that it is to make it easier for people to finish the BC content prior to Wrath coming out, making it all obsolete. No nerf would be needed to come back at lvl 80...look at how trivial all the Vanilla raid bosses are now at 70, even though they were never nerfed like this.

[benseac]

Part of me is happy to see this because this means we should be able to see more of SWP before the expansion. Part of me isn't because downing nerfed bosses isn't nearly as exhilarating as downing them pre-nerf.

I'd really love to see us down at least Felmyst and take a stab at the twins before the nerf bat swings away.

[eleison]

There was a good write-up on WoW Insider today that seems to explain some of the rationale behind the nerfing, though I'm sure y'all understand it better than me =)

http://www.wowinsider.com/2008/10/01/raids-rebalanced-for-patch-3-0-2/

[Jackal]

The nerf on Felmyst wouldn't do us any good if we can't survive this encounter. Food for thought.

[Vand]

The nerf on Felmyst wouldn't do us any good if we can't survive this encounter. Food for thought.
I had been thinking the same thing last night. However, my perception is that whatever the healers came up with around 8:30 made a pretty significant difference in helping people survive Phase 1, and I believe we had one attempt down to 30% (not exactly sure since I had 0 add-ons for that attempt, which means I did not have my percentage display on Felmyst's health).

Keeping tanks alive should also be much easier, since there was a blue post this morning confirming not only the reduced health change of every mob and boss from Kara to KJ, but also that they will all be hitting for less melee damage. Spells and abilities, however, remain unchanged.

Hopefully those changes will mean we never again wipe on either Kalecgos or Brutallus, giving us much more time to push our SWP progression.

[Mithwen]

Maybe. I think it's important to note that the changes might be there because they expect an across the board drop in dps with level 70 characters no longer carrying end game specs. That said, my tests on ptr indicate my dps should improve (and really, if it didn't I'd tell Blizzard to screw themselves and drop the shadow tree entirely because our dps is PATHETIC) so others will hopefully find the same. I am a little concerned about my mana post patch, though, since I won't be speccing into my mana regen talents, and regen will no longer scale with my damage (the return seems lower than what I do now). But aren't I lucky I get a talented evocation ... pffff.

Anyway, my point is that we can't assume this reduction in health to mean nerf. It probably means nerf, but I think some of us are also gonna see our dps and mana management also nerfed. It will be an adjustment. Of course, Illidan losing shear definitely smells like a nerf, but of course they want to make sure everyone possible kills the dude on the BC trailer. I know I hate thinking I have a game I didn't finish on my shelf.

Um ... spells being unchanged ... so there will be the same amount of raid wide healing on Felmyst. I think the only nerf there might be if we can afford to lose more dps and still kill her. Still seems like we're gonna need to play better.

P

[Vand]

I expect my DPS to increase as well, but am also concerned about my mana. That may be why they lowered bosses' health...mana users just are not going to be able to last as long as they did in 2.x.

As for removing sheer from Illidan, it was a necessity given the change they made to shield block. Without removing (or at least reducing the frequency of) sheer, Illidan would have been unkillable once the patch hit, even by guilds that had the place on farm for months.

[Nortibiry]

Yeah it is important to remember that a -lot- of things are changing, so while 30% is a huge drop in health I wouldn't call it a buff or a nerf until we're in there first hand and see.

For example Illidan had to lose shear because warriors are (effectively) losing shield block and would be unable to stop it reliably. Remember that everyone is losing repeated potion use (maybe?), it's possible we'll have to run more healer heavy to compensate, leading to more pressure on the dps. Maybe not but I think it's early to tell, unless someone is sitting on a report of a PTR raid I haven't seen :)

[Vand]

Remember that everyone is losing repeated potion use (maybe?)
This is indeed the case presently on the PTR. Once you consume any potion (no matter the type), every potion is put on CD and has its tooltip changed to read "cooldown begins upon leaving combat." Once you leave combat, there is a 60 second cooldown that starts on every single potion.

[Mithwen]

With no shield block, I see you need a new special move, Nort.

P

[Nortibiry]

With no shield block, I see you need a new special move, Nort.

P

That'll be a tough one. Although I do still have shield block, it's just heavily reworked...

[Kastus]

Mana users will adjust, 3 classes with replenish (Hunters, Spriests, and Rpaladins) will give everyone in raid mana regen, not to mention most classes I've peeped at have been given a mana regen mechanic.
In terms of longevity in a fight, rogues, warriors, and death knights can't really be allowed to just crush mana using DPS classes for long, something WILL be done about it if it becomes an issue, Blizz won't have mages standing around for 30% of a fight OOM.
Either fights will be retuned to be shorter, replenish will be a big enough buff to get by on one potion, or there will be a patch in the future with corrections.

[Vand]

You are right that Bliz will likely fix the issues. In fact, they have tacitly acknowledged that mana is a major current problem for mages with their announcement that they will be lowering the cost of every main mage nuke, which is good because reports from Naxx have shown mages being so OOM that they cannot even decurse when necessary. It is much worse in Naxx-10 than Naxx-25, since you cannot depend on having all the external mana sources in a 10-man raid.

I do think the current fix (lowering mana costs) is merely a bandaid. I would really like to see an active mana regen mechanic for mages such as warlocks (lifetap) and hunters (AotV) already have. And, no, evocation is not that mechanic. Even with Bliz lowering the CD to 5 minutes, if you get interrupted or have to move, you're totally SOL.

At least Lad may not mind passing on the best wands anymore...

[Wenge]

Evoc could be changed to be a HoT (MoT?), that would be a significant and worthwhile fix. Self-only unlike Innervate.

[Tierran]

At least Lad may not mind passing on the best wands anymore...



I don't think you really know Lad...

[Mithwen]

Replenish is a crappy ass buff compared to my current mana return.
Dispersion is 6 seconds of no real dps. Relying on that or evocation is suboptimal for anyone.
They've changed symbol of hope into unusability, not that it was a make or break mechanic.
At 80, I'll have meditation back. Reports are that people aren't going oom at 80. I'm guessing that like me, folks aren't gonna be speccing into their mana saving talents just yet.

[Etrigana]

Mana fixes are super easy. Mages need reverse (rdm spell, tier knows what im talking about). They can make it a stone and give it a two minute cooldown. Switches mages current mp with hp. Give it three charges and BAM! No more mage mana issues. Put its creation on a 10 min cooldown and break its cast once you are in combat so its not 'OP'.

-Etri

[Xyriin]

There was a blue post on mage mana usage. Overall plan was to lower mage spell cost across the board.
http://blue.mmo-champion.com/4/10863437336-upcoming-mage-changes.html

As for hunter mana regen...survival is currently the weakest spec with the least raid damage buffing. With the gutting of EW there isn't much that the survival tree offers at the moment other than regen that can be supplied raid-wide by other classes. Optimally one marks hunter for raid-wide TSA and one BM hunter for the classic FI buff and pet AP buffing for the group as well. Any hunter can pickup Call of the Wild but will have to sacrifice some pet survivability or other DPS talents where the BM hunter would not with the extra 4 points.

[Vand]

Blue post in hunters forum from Ghostcrawler: Aspect of the Viper
We like the design of Viper overall. It's cooler to have to shift your strategy to regen without actually interrupting your ability to deal damage. (Maybe it fits the mage class better to go hide in a corner and build up mana again.)

All I can say is...fuck GC.

or maybe I just need to learn to take a joke

[Aurorawind]

I'm honestly not sure where he's going with that. I know the context is the new AotV is great for PVE and leaves PVP hunters dead in the water with no mana regen unless you're landing shots on target, so NE hunters can't hide in a corner with shadow meld and regen (at least in other threads complaining about PVP mana)

[Vand]

What made the comment sting so much is that a mechanic like that is exactly what mages have been asking for...a way to turn down DPS in order to regen mana, after which DPS goes back up to full. Being told to go hide in a corner to regen mana (i.e., regen by turning DPS totally off) is so not helpful.

Besides, absolutely every class can regen by turning off DPS. All you need to do is get outside the 5SR. That is hardly unique to mages, and having something like shadowmeld makes it trivially easy....just not desirable.

[Wenge]

IMHO pvp mana does not exist, you're long dead or you have plenty of time to drink. There's no middle ground.

[Nortibiry]

What made the comment sting so much is that a mechanic like that is exactly what mages have been asking for...a way to turn down DPS in order to regen mana, after which DPS goes back up to full. Being told to go hide in a corner to regen mana (i.e., regen by turning DPS totally off) is so not helpful.

Besides, absolutely every class can regen by turning off DPS. All you need to do is get outside the 5SR. That is hardly unique to mages, and having something like shadowmeld makes it trivially easy....just not desirable.

In terms of damage done over a reasonably long time period (ie five minutes) the two may well be exactly equivalent, provided you can gain a long enough window to evocate or whatever. It sounds like the Blizzard guy is just talking about having different "feels" to the classes.

[Vand]

In terms of damage done over a reasonably long time period (ie five minutes) the two may well be exactly equivalent, provided you can gain a long enough window to evocate or whatever.
That's the rub. In thinking of the long fights we've had in BC, IC is probably the longest, and using evocate is a totally hit or miss proposition, since there is no way to predict whether you are about to be in a blizzard or flamestrike, forcing you to move and cancelling evocatation for the next 8 minutes. Many fights have had similar mechanics where you just cannot know whether you'll be able to be undamaged and not need to move for 10 seconds.

And I won't even mention the fact that lifetap returns more mana per second than evocation, has no CD, and is instant/uninterruptable/doable on the move.

[attic]

I'm sensing another DK reroll ;-)

[Vand]

Nah...just because I QQ about certain mechanics that Bliz stubbornly refuses to address doesn't mean that I don't enjoy playing a mage. I am just nervous about how the whole mana thing is going to work in Wrath with the elimination of chain potting and total nerfing of shadow priest mana return.

Besides, I'm pretty sure if I switched mains, it would be to my druid.

[Xyriin]

Well that 5sr is great but sucks for hunters. At a whopping 70mp5 my ooc regen takes about 8 minutes unbuffed to go from zero to full so we don't have spirit based mana regen to speak of. When that big spirit change hit a few patches ago our ooc mana regen actually went down. On Brut Tuesday with wisdom being judged I was constantly skirting oom even with continual chain potting and even went oom for a bit on one attempt and had to swap to AotV to buy time for the potion cooldown timer. Lump that in with starting out with a substantially smaller mana pool than other mana using dps classes and we're set up for failure. I just hope the raid-wide mana regen is all that it is played up to be in 3.0, otherwise due to the potion sickness I won't be able to chug mana pots like I do now and will have to spend more time in AotV which will clearly be a dps loss. Currently unbuffed on the PTR I can last 68 seconds before switching to AotV....then it takes about 26 seconds in AotV to hit 100% mana again if you account for the aspect GCDs on either side of the regen. So unbuffed I'm spending about 28% of my combat time in a reduced damage mode and that really sucks.

[Vand]

umm...stack spirit? It's about as useless for mages as for hunters, yet has been forced down our throats as long as I can remember.

The funny thing about spirit is that, despite Bliz's stated intention to make spirit a must-have stat in Wrath, it has actually become less useful for mages than it used to be. That is because every external source of mana regen Bliz is introducing in Wrath return a percentage of your total mana, which scales off intellect, not spirit. Even evocation scales off int now. The only time spirit becomes useful is when we're running with mage armor, which means giving up 5% crit for the entire fight (and Bliz has stated they do not want molten armor to be irrelevant in Wrath PvE). Even with mage armor, spirit is less beneficial than int.

[Mithwen]

I think Ghostcrawler's comment is funny. :) The guy says nebulous and useless stuff about my class all the time too. Anyway, I'd like to be able to go invisible, hide in a corner, and drop all my threat in a permanent fashion. hell ya. The grass is ALWAYS greener. Oh and as badly as your damage scaled in TBC, mine was WORSE.

We all know that warlocks seem to have it easy. Some of us just quit the class cause we like it harder. We all know that it's one class that the devs have to work at to make suck. Maybe cause it's the last one they designed, although warlocks sucked pretty hard when I leveled one before the first talent review.

Anyway, I thought dispersion was pretty dumb, but at least I can move while I'm a shadowy wisp as opposed to channeling the blue whirlwind so ... thanks for cheering me up on that one!

Also anyway, if you read the shadow priest forums, we're either going to be the only dps raids will want because VE is OP, or else no one is going to take us because our dps is so miserable. I imagine the mage forums have a similar amount of contrary QQ happening. I think we should all just play what we like because: things aren't settled, people still don't know how to play their specs, no one has the gear the talents might be designed around and they might not get how to itemize, things are fairly solidly in the realm of theorycrafting still, and it's not worth worrying about. Mages have been complaining for a long time. It's going to take them a while to get over that.

P

I'll take your spirit gear, Vand.

Also, as I've said, Replenishment returns less mana than I do now, but since you don't appear to have had a spriest on Tuesday, it'll still be a bonus for you! Yay!

[Vand]

Actually, I did have a shadow priest on Tuesday...Erinnedia. I still ran OOM by the end, even drinking two mana pots. That's what scares me...

[Mithwen]

I meant Xyriin.

I'm sure you read this, but:
We also want better gear to give you a larger mana pool, improve regeneration and otherwise make you feel more uber. Tha'ts why getting better gear is fun. At the same time, you're probably using that gear to go try harder and harder encounters, so you should never reach the "I ignore mana" plateau. (here (http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=10874178381&sid=2000&pageNo=2#28))

So there's no intention on the devs part to take mana management out of the game. If they did then I imagine maging would be incredibly boring since you really would just be pushing your fireball key every 2.5ish seconds.

[Wenge]

I'm sensing another DK reroll ;-)

DK is fun to a point, but now that I've put about 100 hours into the class I'm less enthusiastic. To do max output you have to have all your cooldowns ticking, so aside from the opener and some changes as you go, the class turns into whackamole. I alter my cooldown priorities based on how hard I'm getting hit or if I think I'm going to chain pull the next mob, and there's something to be said for that, but some talents and effects that convert to death runes make cooldown timing more complicated.

AoE is almost nonexistant as well; there are some pseudo-AoE effects you can deploy but it's not arcane explosion / blizzard / flamestrike / soc. Death and Decay is the big one, but it requires one rune from all three schools, which is shockingly hard to come by if you're playing the max cooldown way. It's handy when you know a priori that you have a large mob of low HP things to kill (think the end of SM Library) but it's far less useful when you're already in combat and more stuff comes your way. Pestilence is the saving throw where you're about to kill one mob and about to move to the other one who's hitting you.

[Aurorawind]

I'll second that Wenge. The thing that threw me off at first was I was so used to ability rotations that you stick with for every class and DK's have so many variables that you can't just stick with IT>PS>HS>HS>Oblit>DC>DC, or spam heart strikes if you get your death runes going, you have to change it up even mid-rotation.

That being said, it was fun for me. Especially after the monotony of pressing my 5 key for over a year straight. Some of what I don't like though is the involuntary AOE of desecration while grouping with CC going on, but that's only unholy spec and I've been really enjoying Blood spec.

[Vand]

Making classes more complex seems to be a general theme of Wrath. In BC, it was a matter of spamming fireball and making sure that scorch stayed up (which, with more than one fire mage, meant that I usually didn't even need to switch from fireball), and managing trinket/icy veins/combustion/potion cooldowns. In Wrath, assuming I stay fire (or frostfire...current most likely), not only will I be keeping an eye on scorch, but also keeping an eye on the living bomb DOT (refreshing it when needed), and hot streak procs to cast pyroblast, in addition to the other cooldowns. Granted, that is still not overly complicated, but much more so than it used to be.

The EJ feral druid forum is trying to determine the best rotation for cat DPS, and the one consensus is that it is too complicated...something like 8-10 separate things, all on separate cooldowns/timers, to keep track of and weave together in an optimal way.

It might actually be a good thing that Bliz seems to be moving away from clicky trinkets, despite losing the ability to maximize DPS by stacking cooldowns.

[Nortibiry]

I think the only way they can possibly meet their stated goal of eliminating raid stacking is to make the game complicated/difficult enough that player skill overshadows class differences... maybe they've figured that out too. Of course given an infinite supply of perfect players you can still min/max but that isn't going to be an issue for us.

It remains to be seen as to how they balance this against their other goal of being so casual friendly a goldfish can run heroics.

[Aurorawind]

They've even done it with hunters by making it beneficial to weave in stings for each spec as well as a finisher shot, plus lower cooldowns on high power abilities, to make us do something more than "ok 2 minutes have passed, trinket and beastial wrath again, rapid fire in another 60 seconds."

Nort, I'm leaning towards the goldfish. People on beta are pugging heroic Naxx 10 and 25 man (yes heroic raids) and cleaning house. I see more and more achievements flashing by in guild chat like mad for this.

[Mithwen]

There's no 'optimal' spriest rotation currently. You weave it all in, and the same player will end up with different dps numbers depending on how well they do at the cooldown vs. dot refreshing optimization. It's fun, and it's what I like about my spec. The only time I hit the same rotation is when I lay into a boss. After that it's gonna depend on moving, spell pushback, whether I feel it's safe to SWD, etc.

Interestingly, people post in the EJ forums that our rotation will be simpler come lvl 80 and we'll be one of those goldfish specs (love that). But we'll see ... I am so far not impressed with the level of class knowledge demonstrated by some of the posters. Our crappy damage scaling coupled with unbeatable buffage has undoubtedly allowed some mediocre players to get into raids they wouldn't otherwise be part of.

[Kartana]

Oh, all that spirit gear was fun as an arcane mage. Arcane blasting nonstop if I snagged a shadow priest. Mmm Mmm Mmm. If anyone mentions the changes made to arcane blast and that if I ever came back it would be fireball spam for raids again, I'll swat you.

[Wenge]

In BC, it was a matter of spamming fireball and making sure that scorch stayed up (which, with more than one fire mage, meant that I usually didn't even need to switch from fireball)

So much hate.

[Chasidy]

^^ Agreed

[Raptace]

In BC, it was a matter of spamming fireball and making sure that scorch stayed up (which, with more than one fire mage, meant that I usually didn't even need to switch from fireball)

ROFL @ flat out admitting that you are unbelievably lazy Vand. Its very comical that you would just flat out admit that, that is like me saying "with multiple locks I just decided to not throw up any curses" lol having to have other people do more work so that you can coast by is quite sad, and to brag about it is much, much more.

[Vand]

ok ok...I admit that I cast scorch less than Wenge (on bosses at least...I like it more on trash than he does). But the main reason is that he casts it sooner than I usually would if I were the only one keeping it up. I usually cast it when it's under 5 seconds, and he likes to cast it at more like 8 seconds. So it's just a matter of personal playstyle...trading risk/reward. When we're setting up scorch stacks at the start of a fight, I always cast 3 (or 2 if there's a third fire mage) to make sure we get up to 5 ASAP. I then keep a very close eye on the timer and step in whenever it dips below 5 seconds.

Come Wrath, this will be important to everyone, since scorch will be a raid buff that increases every caster's spell crit by 10%.

[Raptace]

hehe just givin ya shit buddy :P but that does make sense what your saying.

[Wenge]

Vand I know how and when you cast scorch, it's fine, I almost always let you do the opening three and I hit it just twice (but usually very early). If I wanted you to do something different I would have said so. I do tend to hit it a bit early because dropping scorch is a much bigger mess than trying to squeeze another fireball in, and a LOT of the bosses (perhaps more in classic than BC) have massive interruptions (typically movement) or pushback.

[Vand]

I think we'll both be thrilled this week to have the improved scorch glyph. For those that don't know, it applies three stacks of the debuff from each scorch. So we'll only need to scorch twice to have the full stack. That will make taking risks less of a big deal because one cast from each of two mages will get it back to full if it ever falls off. It will also make scorch much more usable on trash...a good thing, since every caster is going to be screaming at us to keep it up now that it's a raid-wide crit debuff.

[Nortibiry]

Just a quick reminder to everyone that as this is a major patch addons are likely to break, if possible I'd make an effort to update raid critical stuff at least an hour in advance of raiding so you can test it out. Backup your old addons.

In particular I just installed Omen3 which claims to use the Blizzard threat data, we'll see how it works in practice ;)

Oh yeah try and leave a couple of seconds to spec and buy new spells too!

[Aurorawind]

Here's some add-on data out there on what works.

http://www.wowinsider.com/2008/10/14/essentail-add-ons-for-patch-3-0-2/

http://www.wowwiki.com/WotLK_AddOn_status

Omen3 up on Wowace, Nort?

[Nortibiry]

Omen3 up on Wowace, Nort?

It looks like the wowace people decided to do a significant site overhaul the week of the 3.0 patch (/rage) and are now officially distributing content through curse.com instead of their own site, so I got it from there. You can still download from wowace but I'm not sure if those versions are stable or are intended for development.

[Aurorawind]

Got it, thank you.

http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/omen-threat-meter.aspx

[Mithwen]

In particular I just installed Omen3 which claims to use the Blizzard threat data, we'll see how it works in practice ;)

Oh yeah try and leave a couple of seconds to spec and buy new spells too!

And get your hair cut.

And this had better be the LAST FREAKING OMEN UPDATE TILL 3.1.

Also, Wenge, I hope you log on early enough to cut me some gems because I didn't pay attention and I have to switch my meta, which is gonna require 3 swaps. Although it's probably not mission critical to do TODAY if you can't make it early. :)

P

[Nortibiry]

And get your hair cut.

And this had better be the LAST FREAKING OMEN UPDATE TILL 3.1.

Also, Wenge, I hope you log on early enough to cut me some gems because I didn't pay attention and I have to switch my meta, which is gonna require 3 swaps. Although it's probably not mission critical to do TODAY if you can't make it early. :)

P

Hopefully now that all the threat data is provided by Blizzard the addons will be largely cosmetic, and we won't have to update frequently or rely on people having the same versions.

[Vand]

The build going live right now has a lot of class changes. But it doesn't have all of them. Some changes, particularly those that affect high level abilities and some of the changes we made more recently won't be in today's build. But you will get them all on or before Nov 13 when Lich King goes live.

hmm...

[Lockon]

mana fixes are super easy. Mages need reverse (rdm spell, tier knows what im talking about). They can make it a stone and give it a two minute cooldown. Switches mages current mp with hp. Give it three charges and bam! No more mage mana issues. Put its creation on a 10 min cooldown and break its cast once you are in combat so its not 'op'.

-etri

its CONVERT

[Etrigana]

its CONVERT

...I got pwnd in the face....

-Etri

[Xyriin]

So, according to the news splash all the realm issues are supposed to be resolved by 6pm server time.

[Vand]

Given that that's the fourth deadline posted today, I'll believe it when I see it.

[Xyriin]

Well, I was on for a bit but cannot get back on right now.