Week 16 (ends 10-9-17): M-KJ 168, M-Gul'dan 600

[Deleted]

We had multiple dps shamans.... and no hunter at all.

So I don't get your point...

Having the right comp for the fights is part of raid leading... of course we had people play their alt for a while because we knew having 4 mages would help us. If people have a static roster they will never get Cutting Edge.

You dont need to stack anything to get CE, unless you want it in 2-3 months after the raid opens.
All you need is to play a decent number of hours (the usual 4 days/week), have a decent mythic roster (like 25-28 players) covering most classes, and no morons of course.

But I wouldnt say you need class stacking (4 mages?) or loggin alts if you want to get CE.

Also TOS isnt really a good example, TOS is the hardest tier we've had in the last 2 expansions (maybe longer, i was retired before that). We managed to get a top 400 and we had no more than 2 of each classes, and we're not exceptional players at all. Would've been different if we had to deal pre nerf ava and KJ tho (i mean the nerfs almost 2 months ago, but again, you could still get CE 3 months after these nerfs...).

[Marrilaife]

But I wouldnt say you need class stacking (4 mages?) or loggin alts if you want to get CE.

Split runs / class stacking / fotm rerolling should never be required outside of world top 50, and definitely not below world top 100. You can't forbid people who "tryhard" and do these kind of things even in low progressed guilds, but for people who don't want to do it - they shouldn't be required to, just to finish the raid in time (in time meaning while CE is still available, could be after 5 nerfs though).

Most guilds are not having "worst setup ever", they usually try to have decent roster spread between melee / ranged, different tier tokens and armor types for loot distribution, and so forth. No one deliberately stacks the worst classes just to prove "it can be done with these", unless it's some funky community project (like all druid raid etc.).

It just happens naturally that the lower progressed guilds will be short on the extreme fotm classes (like rogues, hunters, warriors, bear druids etc. in TOS) because these players often jump at the opportunity to join higher guilds just because they hit the jackpot in the class lottery. Tons of mediocre hunters and rogues joined guilds way above their skill level just to play the soakbot and enjoy the rewards of being in a better guild. So obviously some guilds ranked 500-1000 might have problems getting enough of the "fotm" classes and fill the roster with whoever they found, assuming that player looks promising skill wise (logs, experience etc.), there are skilled dps shamans, monks, shadow priests, ferals and whoever wasn't exactly the bees knees in TOS. If these players know how to play their classes, they shouldn't be in a situation "bring your mage alt because we desperately need +1 immunity", it just sucks.

If the raid is designed in a way that this extra immunity cuts the coordination check a lot, then of course guilds will be extremely eager to push players into switching. For example, you can multi soak circles on Avatar, but if you can solo soak, it's easier, less chance you'll run into situation some circle was left unsoaked or a person soaking it died due to no partner and so forth.

If you have a situation like KJ, that tank setup 2x bear + blood is just so much easier than lack of any of these, tanks will be pushed into rolling one of these or sit out so someone's offspec can fill the gap. The amount of class > skill in TOS was way out of line. I really don't enjoy the "class fantasy" of being brought into the raid for 1 or 2 special buttons no other class has. The only worse gameplay was vehicle raids - then you were pressing 2 buttons that didn't even belong to your class...

[MrExcelion]

This is obviously just speculation, but I do think Blizzard overestimated how many players were willing to grind to 75 pre-Antorus, which played into a couple other things, and part of how we arrived at this situation

Above 500 kills now though and with the raid releasing on the 28th it should break 600. Still a harder boss than Guldan, but a lot of time to work on him, and there's over 1000 with access to the boss. Wonder how many of the guilds killing it just now have decided to not rekill it?

[KaPe]

This is obviously just speculation, but I do think Blizzard overestimated how many players were willing to grind to 75 pre-Antorus, which played into a couple other things, and part of how we arrived at this situation

I think they overestimated just how much of nerf Netherlight Crucible would be. Yeah, sure, the dps boost makes certain things easier and you might kill Avatar from 35% P2, but a single failed soak (meteors, touch, armageddon, Maiden's orbs) is still an instant wipe. Doesn't matter if you have 60 traits or 75, higher output doesn't change a thing. Extra traits were much bigger nerf to Nighthold than the Crucible, but this goes back to boss design being less obnoxious.

It would also explain why they waited so long for actually meaningful nerfs - and still didn't quite deliver them with KJ. "Just wait for that next tier of traits, the kill rates will surely skyrocket."

[Dracodraco]

I think they overestimated just how much of nerf Netherlight Crucible would be. Yeah, sure, the dps boost makes certain things easier and you might kill Avatar from 35% P2,

but a single failed soak (meteors, touch, armageddon, Maiden's orbs) is still an instant wipe

. Doesn't matter if you have 60 traits or 75, higher output doesn't change a thing. Extra traits were much bigger nerf to Nighthold than the Crucible, but this goes back to boss design being less obnoxious.

It would also explain why they waited so long for actually meaningful nerfs - and still didn't quite deliver them with KJ. "Just wait for that next tier of traits, the kill rates will surely skyrocket."

We've actually lived meteors going through on avatar multiple times without wiping at this stage <.<. Same with maiden, not difficult to live 3-4 orbs going through (although obviously, if you're referring to unstable soul - yea, that'll kill ya).

Agree fully though; NH traits had a much bigger (and much more *immediate*) effect than crucible did. You got your golden the first week it was available, second if slacking, and by then the growth in power was already equal to what we had now. Then came all the extra traits and concordance levels.

[Deleted]

We had multiple dps shamans.... and no hunter at all.

So I don't get your point...

Having the right comp for the fights is part of raid leading... of course we had people play their alt for a while because we knew having 4 mages would help us. If people have a static roster they will never get Cutting Edge.

*yawn* "I destroy meters as a BM hunter so you guys must be doing something wrong". Take a look at spec representation of KJ kills and tell me there isn't a bias.

My point is that people in a range of top 500 optimize their roster to an extent and that going from 2 big soaks to 1 isn't a huge relief for guilds when it comes to roster makeup. That roster most likely already had a majority of desirable specs already. I doubt any top 500 or better guild starts progressing on KJ with a "oh shit, we have a really bad roster for this with our 10 Enhancement Shaman".

[Marrilaife]

This is obviously just speculation, but I do think Blizzard overestimated how many players were willing to grind to 75 pre-Antorus,

??? The changes to AP since 7.2 were all to disincentivize "grinding" and make "it come organically" and now you're telling me that Blizzard somewhat hoped that after all the anti-nolife changes people will still nolife the shit out of it if they want the kills?

After the NH failure where mediocre guilds needed 54 (old) traits to beat Krosus but no one in these guilds could be bothered to farm 54 so early and guilds started folding left and right I think no one really expects "AP farming will fix it". 7.2 gave 10% free boost to basically everyone, so it helped weaker guilds much more than crucible now.

[Deleted]

This is obviously just speculation, but I do think Blizzard overestimated how many players were willing to grind to 75 pre-Antorus

You dont have to do anything besides logging in 30 minutes a day to get 75 on one specc (probably even less than that.)

[KaPe]

You dont have to do anything besides logging in 30 minutes a day to get 75 on one specc (probably even less than that.)

I assume you're using this "30 minutes or even less" in a way which means "ignore travel time, loading screens, mission preparation, sending missions, looking for people" or even just using the tokens. Otherwise, not really, no.

[Deleted]

I assume you're using this "30 minutes or even less" in a way which means "ignore travel time, loading screens, mission preparation, sending missions, looking for people" or even just using the tokens. Otherwise, not really, no.

30minutes is enough for a quick clear of Ap wq's on argus and sending missions you can do via phone so i dont really count missions as active time spent
With that you'll be done with one specc by the time mythic opens or atleast insanely close to it (worst case you have to do a few days of more ap wq's in heroic week,i wouldnt call that grind.)´

Literally did the same thing for Nighthold on my priest and i had 54 traits by mythic release without touching a single m+ besides weekly.

[MrExcelion]

Definitely not wrong that its not very time consuming, but the majority of the population either is misinformed about how OP Argus WQS/invasions are, along with the mission table using mission reduction on elite strikes. Or if they're not misinformed, they just don't care enough to login until higher AK. I'd say a little bit of column A and B

Note that Wowprogress can be a couple days behind or more on character profile updates, but taking the 5 most recent EU kills. Members at 75 or more:

Invalid Target - 3
Somewhat Normal - 1
Harbingers - 4
Feint - 1
Detox - 3

All I'm speculating is that Blizzard thought more would be done with the crucible by now. Either math error or a general overestimation on their part. and that played into the the structure and timing of the nerfs.

This isn't the place to discuss BFA's AK system, but it is looking a bit better right now, but they might put a ceiling cap of some sort on it. Hope not. Same AP amount, costs get cheaper instead, and you passively go up each week because the cheaper costs are retroactive

[Deleted]

Definitely not wrong that its not very time consuming, but the majority of the population either is misinformed about how OP Argus WQS/invasions are, along with the mission table using mission reduction on elite strikes. Or if they're not misinformed, they just don't care enough to login until higher AK. I'd say a little bit of column A and B

Note that Wowprogress can be a couple days behind or more on character profile updates, but taking the 5 most recent EU kills. Members at 75 or more:

Invalid Target - 3
Somewhat Normal - 1
Harbingers - 4
Feint - 1
Detox - 3

All I'm speculating is that Blizzard thought more would be done with the crucible by now. Either math error or a general overestimation on their part. and that played into the the structure and timing of the nerfs.

This isn't the place to discuss BFA's AK system, but it is looking a bit better right now, but they might put a ceiling cap of some sort on it. Hope not. Same AP amount, costs get cheaper instead, and you passively go up each week because the cheaper costs are retroactive

Seriously guys, stop this nosense. It's not the number of traits the reason why progression in TOS is slower compared to NH, I really wonder what some of you have been smoking.

The difference betweem 75 and 72 or even 70 is really small when it comes to dps/hps loss, and that's not the reason AT ALL (and i mean it) why guilds wipe hundreds of times on FA/KJ. Problem with those bosses is that they have a lot of things , small mistakes from anyone, that can lead to an instant wipe pretty much, and NONE of those things can be avoided with a bit more dps. NH had a MUCH MORE forgiving bosses, traits mean nothing at all.

The only extra dps in traits could be useful on FA in p2 but truth is it's in p1 you wipe 100+ times, once you learn p1 well and end up in p2 almost every time then it's just a matter of tries to get the kill, the extra dps could save you from a 1-2% wipe but thats really nothing in the grand scheme of things.

Blizz didnt mess up with traits, they messed up because they didnt realize they made the raid just too hard compared to everything in the past 4 years, and traits play no role at all in that.

[Spotnick]

Every AP trait is 15K dps.

Not such a big deal when you do 1.5M

It's barely 1% increase every trait.

I don't know how much 3rd relic trait is worth, but it's not as big as some seems to believe.

[Marrilaife]

I don't know how much 3rd relic trait is worth, but it's not as big as some seems to believe.

Depends what RNG blessed you with, for some specs the shadow / light powers are worth "more ilvl" than any relic trait, so you pick whichever shadow / light power is really good, if it connects to 2 defensive traits after... well then little benefit from getting to 75.

[KaPe]

Don't forget that 7.2 traits also gave you a decent amount of hitpoints. We still got a small boost from artifact ilvl, but back then it was like extra 500k. That's quite a bit and it actually helped when you got clipped by something nasty or stood too close to a fire.

'Course, in Tomb, this would merely mean that Armageddon kills you in two ticks instead of one. Wooo. The traits themselves might be fine, but they don't really fit with this type of content. Turning these mechanics from "instant wipe" to "burn healing cooldowns and you might survive" would require far more severe nerfs than what we got through minor % changes. It's a question of "was such low kill rate intentional or did they overestimate the crucible"?

[garicasha]

Man, with only 11 days to go, US Top 200 is still up for grabs.

[asil]

Man, with only 11 days to go, US Top 200 is still up for grabs.

I don't know man, we started KJ progression last week and I really can't understand why the fight is hard. We're struggling horribly but the mechanics don't seem hard, some people just seem to have a really hard time with them for some reason. I've like never seen a fight where seemingly easy mechanics like this are so hard for people to handle and I've been raiding since vanilla.

Just a weird fight.

The fight just punishes some classes way more than others. I could see them increasing the impact time of singularity soonish.

[garicasha]

Stay with it. I'm not that great of a raider but once I got the reps in it's amazing how easy it got. And he was the first mythic raid end boss of any real difficulty I ever defeated.

In the end though it's absolutely a test of guild unity / attendance more than individual skill. By pull 400 people will get in to armageddons so fast you'll have three seconds to wait for each one to land. And even by pull 150 deaths due to pinball started dropping dramatically. But there are definitely parts of the fight that have to be muscle memory; everyone has to know when they have to start running or they're gonna fall off.

But I highly doubt they're going to change his mechanics any more. KJ has been nerfed something like six times and the only thing I could see happening is another HP nerf in the last week.

[Shazdk]

You can push before second dps adds now if you 3 heal 2 tank it, heals can be a bit tight in p3 but it's totally doable with some heavy single target in p2, we usually push with like ~5s to spare if we pot and lust as the boss hits the deck

[KaPe]

I don't know man, we started KJ progression last week and I really can't understand why the fight is hard. We're struggling horribly but the mechanics don't seem hard, some people just seem to have a really hard time with them for some reason. I've like never seen a fight where seemingly easy mechanics like this are so hard for people to handle and I've been raiding since vanilla.

Just a weird fight.

The fight just punishes some classes way more than others. I could see them increasing the impact time of singularity soonish.

It doesn't seem that bad at first, but then you realize that "the real fight" doesn't even start until 4 minutes in, the hard part doesn't come until ~7 minutes and even phase 3 isn't a cakewalk, because your mind starts to wander after 10 minutes. It's entirely possible to be within couple % from a kill and still keep wiping to random Armageddons. Or your Obelisk marking person will get tired of all these wipes and make a mistake of their own. The fight is too damn long with too many instant wipe mechanics, especially after so many nerfs and the Crucible.

Besides, it's really easy to underestimate this boss. There's ~10-11 Armageddons to soak. Every time, one third of your raid needs to handle it. Some of those are together with nasty knockbacks, so only select classes can do them safely. Sometimes you get all spawns in "bad" place and it's even riskier. If you have bad mobility, you can't try to be a hero, since you'll simply be knocked off the platform.

Then there's the adds. Tank are ok, just a dps check. Healing ones are trivial, as long as people stay in range to not get killed by their explosion. But then there's Eruptions. Stand one yard too close and it's a wipe. Chain that one final orb at the wrong moment and it's a wipe. Be a bit slow with dps and you'll get multiple deaths. The difference in difficulty is just silly, so you get the hardest part of phase 2 almost as its' over.

None of KJs mechanics are amazingly challenging on their own. It's how punishing they are, how many there are, how often they occur and the fact that they're "easy" only makes it more annoying to wipe from. You can get some bad blood between people, especially those who forget about mobility differences between the specs.

It's too late to nerf anything meaningful, especially more complex than number tuning. Maybe they'll lower his hitpoints as a final boost to kill rates, which would make skipping second eruptions a lot easier. Personally, I'd prefer if they removes phase 1 and 1.5 - it's four minutes of pointless "warmup", that can still wipe you because it's so damn mind numbing. But I guess that would mean that people don't experience the pinball and what a damn shame it would be. So exciting... after hundreds of pulls.