Tomb of Sargeras Progression Thread

[ls-]

I honestly would love to know how they do testing in general.

I've only encountered UI QA, can't say much positive T_T

[Deleted]

The tuning on the lazer (30 million damage really? If 10 people soak it perfectly, which is super hard/impossible to do, that's already 3million per player... And it's not like you deal with the lazer alone with no other mechanics happening..) or on the Darkness of thousand souls dot (950k per person every 2 sec, that's 9.5 M HPS required to keep the raid alive,with 4 healers you need more than 2.3 M HPS PER HEALER on an entire phase for the dot alone...) were completely retarded.
I mean i can understand Blizzard messing up a bit with the adds HP tuning, it's tough to tune right (depends of gear,comp etc..), but missing the tuning on the lazer and darkness dot by this much?
Even my grandma can tell that those values are retarded just by looking at them.

[KaPe]

Based on the latest ptrs they don't really test anything.
Because a lot of what was reported to be wrong with classes/tunning on bosses was still there in nh and so was in ToS.

This is why we have things like desolate host and things like Avatar/kj in their current state well not anymore but yeah you get my point.

It's more like once the encounters are on PTR, they only fix the most crippling bugs, like boss randomly despawning or abilities being completely broken. Other feedback is largely ignored - and that's not really limited to raids themselves, but also class balance.

In case of lower difficulties, it seems like varying raid sizes are barely tested and we almost always get "fixed ability X so it isn't crazy in very small/big raids." For Mythic, inflated gear levels, which let them pull slightly better dps, but - more importantly - survive stuff that's mostly lethal in realistic scenario. I wouldn't be surprised if the "testing group" had over 7 (maybe more) million hp on everyone, which would trivialize raw damage from various mechanics.

It's understandable that they cannot internally test things to same degree the top guilds do, but ignoring most feedback doesn't do them any favours. On the other hand, why would they put hundreds of hours into testing, when it only affects few dozen people, at most? Might as well have a dev watch things develop live and then adjust as needed.

'Course, they also adapt this attitude to class/item balancing and some bugs are live for months. I'm not sure if some stuff from beta got fixed, even though it's pretty obvious it doesn't work fine.

From the looks of it they just use pen and paper to calculate everything.

More likely it's testing stuff in hugely inflated gear and then merely crunching some numbers, without fully understanding how it affect things. 10 million hp would make you laugh at most mechanics, so "calculating" that people would have roughly 50% less could still lead to some awkward results.

[Deleted]

Seing what Exorsus is saying on twitter, they might be done with super hardcore raiding.

[Lahis]

Seing what Exorsus is saying on twitter, they might be done with super hardcore raiding.

Weren't they already raiding casual this tier? :P

[mmocfd1b0ab5a3]

Weren't they already raiding casual this tier? :P

Yeah they tweeted about it after NH progress. They beat both Method and Serenity in NH and now suddenly kills KJ 7 days after Method.

[Deleted]

Yeah they tweeted about it after NH progress. They beat both Method and Serenity in NH and now suddenly kills KJ 7 days after Method.

They thought about going casual but they didn't in the end. They did 7 split raids (same as Method) and raided during the day for 2 week and a half (same As Method. Even more actually because sometimes they extended like crazy).
Method was just WAY stronger this tier. Trying to find excuses for Exorsus, saying "but they went casual" is desilusionnal. Just look at their wipes count for ToS. They killed KJ 7 days after Method because they were just not on Method skill level, it's that simple.

[jijuiji]

Nobody going to mention how they killed off 10 man raiding to make a more balanced raid scene that is easier to tune and should allow more balance between class selection? Yeah that worked out well....

[XDurionX]

u guys know the real reason that EU > NA is because blizzard poaches all the top US raiders to test these bosses right

As if those two people would make a difference.

[Dangg]

Nobody going to mention how they killed off 10 man raiding to make a more balanced raid scene that is easier to tune and should allow more balance between class selection? Yeah that worked out well....

Can't believe anyone fell for that bs reasoning when it was announced.

[Ebalina]

Nobody going to mention how they killed off 10 man raiding to make a more balanced raid scene that is easier to tune and should allow more balance between class selection? Yeah that worked out well....

Like 10man can be balanced at all.
Please 20man allows more classes to be used.
It is blizzards fault that isn't the case not any one else.

When you still have classes like rogue who excel at everything you will never get to see Enh shamans or feral druids dominating and so on.
Blizzard have forgotten half of the classes in this game and the other half they rework more often then not and then you get situations like this always.

10man was a mistake in the 1st place to be introduced in the same difficulty as 25man raiding back then never worked never will work it allows even less room for trying stuff out especially in high end progression and if you think otherwise you haven't raided 10man during 1st week of progression in mythic/heroic ever.

[jijuiji]

Like 10man can be balanced at all.
Please 20man allows more classes to be used.
It is blizzards fault that isn't the case not any one else.

When you still have classes like rogue who excel at everything you will never get to see Enh shamans or feral druids dominating and so on.
Blizzard have forgotten half of the classes in this game and the other half they rework more often then not and then you get situations like this always.

10man was a mistake in the 1st place to be introduced in the same difficulty as 25man raiding back then never worked never will work it allows even less room for trying stuff out especially in high end progression and if you think otherwise you haven't raided 10man during 1st week of progression in mythic/heroic ever.

Disagree - 10 man allowed a different form or raiding and was very popular for a reason. Perhaps for cutting edge guilds the balance issues were problematic (Paragon solo healing) but that doesn't apply to 99% of 10 man teams. By the time most guilds reach particular bosses class & balance issues play less of a role due to the natural power creep from gearing upgrades...

If they were to bring back 10 man raiding they'd definitely see a rise in subs again, that's for sure

[Netherblood]

I mean honestly it mostly seem like they created a comp full of aerial mobility to allow themselves to fuck up really and they occasionally abused rezz totem and b-rezz to skip some of the adds. They did the middle singularity with the tank add still at 50% and just all hit disengage/charge/shadowstep/etc.

That is not how you deal with that, not everyone has aerial mobility, you can just click warlock gateway same time knockback happens and it saves you.

Also the boss is actually extremely unforgiving except for p3 Orbs. Any missed soaks of Armmagedon and you wipe, mess up Obelisk save spot p3 and you wipe, Orbs on the other hand seem not too threatening.

[Ebalina]

Disagree - 10 man allowed a different form or raiding and was very popular for a reason. Perhaps for cutting edge guilds the balance issues were problematic (Paragon solo healing) but that doesn't apply to 99% of 10 man teams. By the time most guilds reach particular bosses class & balance issues play less of a role due to the natural power creep from gearing upgrades...

If they were to bring back 10 man raiding they'd definitely see a rise in subs again, that's for sure

They will see a raise in subs but not for any of the reasons you mention.
It will be because its the path of least resistance and least work to be done maintaining a guild.

It will have nothing to do with tuning or playing correct classes or the joy of friendship.
No one cares about what time guilds reach a boss all the standart stuff is set by the top guilds.
If they use 5rogues you can bet your ass 200 to a 1000 guilds down the line already will be planning of recruiting multiple rogues just based on that 1 guild who got world 1st.
And if you think otherwise god help you because you've just proven how clueless you are about human behavior.

[Adlian]

At this point it looks like Blizzard have a basic QA team that only test the fight on normal. After that they let the top guilds test the fight and ask for monthly fee in the process.

[jijuiji]

They will see a raise in subs but not for any of the reasons you mention.
It will be because its the path of least resistance and least work to be done maintaining a guild.

It will have nothing to do with tuning or playing correct classes or the joy of friendship.
No one cares about what time guilds reach a boss all the standart stuff is set by the top guilds.
If they use 5rogues you can bet your ass 200 to a 1000 guilds down the line already will be planning of recruiting multiple rogues just based on that 1 guild who got world 1st.
And if you think otherwise god help you because you've just proven how clueless you are about human behavior.

You vastly overestimate the recruiting pool outside of the top 100-150 guilds

[Lahis]

Yeah, Blizzard's internal team isn't the world's best raiders. Dunno what their ranking would be as a regular guild, but I doubt it would be near Method or Exorsus.

Still, they face a dilemma: they need to test the fights through to make sure there is no fatal bugs there. To be able to test everything in the encounter, they need to be mathematically overpowered for it, which means waaaayyyy higher testing gear than what players have access to, which leaves final numbers tuning into the mercy of estimates and spreadsheets.

[Instrument]

I dont say this stuff is not happening, but not so often as you think. If someone offers a sellrun for X money does not mean that anyone is purchasing it.

I literally bought sell runs for these prices and know a couple of people who also have - my provider has 2 runs going every week with 3 or more buyers and he is just one of hundreds of sellers - what are you even on about ?

[Deleted]

I literally bought sell runs for these prices and know a couple of people who also have - my provider has 2 runs going every week with 3 or more buyers and he is just one of hundreds of sellers - what are you even on about ?

It's big money for someone who is poor so they have hard time believing stuff like that

[Adlian]

I like how Blizzard nerfed KJ but there are no changes to Mistress, leaving 700 guilds stuck on that fight.



Thats some nice balance curve. 836 guilds managed to kill Desolate Host and 182 guild killed Mistress which is the next boss. Not to mention that Maiden feels a lot easier than Mistress...