Stone Guard needs nerfing

[DakonBlackblade]

I would rank it

Garaj'al
Spirit Kings
Feng
Stone Guard
Will
Elegon

I think your rank is probably acurate but the problem with garajal is he cant be the first cause hes kinda of a gear check, Id just have Feng as the first boss followed by Spirit Kings, leave Garajal where he is and them have Stone Guards. The 2 last ones can be in whatever order elegon is harder but whatever, Will is suposed ot be much ahrder on heroic.

[crakerjack]

I wasn't aware that being casual meant you were bad... Besides, WoW isn't hard... regardless of whether you're casual or hardcore, the skill levels should be relatively the same... there's no need for a nerf if other people are already doing it. Just sounds to me that you need to find better core raiders... Because the rest of the community isn't going to bend over and grab their ankles and allow you to change the game because you're struggling, find a way to beat it.

[Buxton McGraff]

More people complaining about raid difficulty.... I pugged 5/6 rather easily this week.
If you can't do it, GET MORE GEAR and gear up those undergeared guildies of yours.
I hate people who feel SO self centered that they think just because they don't care to improve themselves enough so they can kill a boss, that it should be nerfed to their level so they can be handed loot.

[Resentful]

More people complaining about raid difficulty.... I pugged 5/6 rather easily this week.
If you can't do it, GET MORE GEAR and gear up those undergeared guildies of yours.
I hate people who feel SO self centered that they think just because they don't care to improve themselves enough so they can kill a boss, that it should be nerfed to their level so they can be handed loot.

*Giggle* Gear doesn't help ''bad'' people who can't understand the most basic raid mechanics out there

[KCguy]

More people complaining about raid difficulty.... I pugged 5/6 rather easily this week.
If you can't do it, GET MORE GEAR and gear up those undergeared guildies of yours.
I hate people who feel SO self centered that they think just because they don't care to improve themselves enough so they can kill a boss, that it should be nerfed to their level so they can be handed loot.

Just because YOU pugged it last week doesn't mean it's easy. lol. You obviously had quite a few well geared people who have done the fights before. I'll wager most have done those fights with their own guilds as well.

[Deleted]

I actually found every combination with jasper the easiest, especially without jade. A little bit movement and if you understand the mechanic once and you got a raid leader who can announce things, its easy

[Deleted]

Pretty good troll, pulled 4 pages off already.

[hplaner]

To begin with, I'm a part of a "casual guild" - we don't raid every week (tho we try to), we sometimes need to pug a player, or pick an undergeared guildie. We are no pros, thats for sure. But we constatntly try to progress through MV.

Back to the topic. Stone Guard needs nerfing - and fast. I'm talking about one aspect of the fight - Jasper Chains. This skill is WAY harder to deal with than the rest of them, with Jade and Amethyst being trivial, and Cobalt only slightly harder. Jasper+Cobalt combo is a progress stopper. If this combo occurs, the very 1st boss you face in MV is harder than both Feng and Gara'jal, and most likely Spirit Kings - had only like 2 tries on those, don't really know.

Blizzard should do something about this, with Jasper damage lowered by a large amount or only 1 chain existing at the time. It's kinda sad when our guild, thinking about nest weeks raid, rather thinks how to get past Jasper/Cobalt/Amethyst combo then about last encounters.

And just for statistics - we had around 10 wipes on Feng and 10 wipes on Gara'jal before we downed them, and over 60 before we downed Stone Guard for the 1st time. And it was pure luck.

Like others have said, simply just have the two people chained stick together for the whole fight. There is no point in breaking the chain whatsoever (unless you guys have too many melee in group and that the melee are chained with range so that your whole raid is in melee). 2 range get chained? Perfect, let them stay for the rest of the fight.
And for heroic mode, simply go with 3 tanks. Have the 3rd tank only do tile runs. Since chains don't work on tanks, you now have the 3rd tank and 1 more player free of chains for the whole fight.

[DakonBlackblade]

Like others have said, simply just have the two people chained stick together for the whole fight. There is no point in breaking the chain whatsoever (unless you guys have too many melee in group and that the melee are chained with range so that your whole raid is in melee). 2 range get chained? Perfect, let them stay for the rest of the fight.

What my guild does is as follow, we have 2 melee + the 2 tanks the other 6 are ehalers or ranged dps. There can only be 3 chains out at any one time, if the boss chains 2 ranged we just let them remain chained the whoel fight cause they cna simply sit next to each other and ocasionaly adjust to avoide mines and whatnot, if a rnaged gets chained ot a melee he goes otmele range so the melee cna still dps until jasper petrification at wich point we break the chains (you get 90% less damage during jasper petri from the chains), we keep doing this until the boss has chained all 6 ranged to one another or 4 ranged and both melee (altought he doesnt seen to like to chain 2 melee ppl too much, might just be cause my raid only has 2 and the odds of getting a chian conecting these 2 exact players is low) by wich point we simply stop rbeaking chains regardless of jasper petri or not.

[Poppincaps]

I do think Stone Guards is a little overtuned for the first boss of the raid, and the first boss of the tier really. In my personal experience I'd rank them (in order of difficulty) 1. Elegon 2. Will of the Emperor 3. Stone Guards 4. Gara'jal 5. Feng 6. Spirit Kings. Granted this is normal only, as I've not done heroic. I also think that the first boss in HoF is a little overtuned. Granted, I personally haven't had much trouble with these bosses, but I do think that the first boss of a raid should be a little simpler.

[Deleted]

I'm inclined to agree with the OP, actually.
The fight isn't too complicated on 25m, seeing as the fight is balanced around all four of the dogs to be up, while you also have many more players to activate the tiles, but on 10m, a bad combo can easily be the end of you. The inclusion of RNG in the encounter kinda ruins the 10m version.
This is what happened to my guild:
- Started progress for 2 days on the boss.
- Jasper, Cobalt, and Jade were up
- Cobalt traps were everywhere, no one could move because of the chains, and raid-damage was massive
- Didn't get it down...

The following week we tried again:
- Cobalt, Amethyst, Jade were up
- 1 hour of progress
- Downed in no time...

[Deleted]

Oh come on, I thought we raided because we wanted a challange and actually have to do something to counter out the mindless grind that takes up the other 95% of the game, no? I guess there are those that can find hard times in doing dailies, LFR, dungeons or whatever but raids are there to give something to challange your character, not to be that slotmachine you pull the lever on and out pops gold and rainbows. If your guild is so casual perhaps you are the people the LFR is actually aimed towards.

I dont like that people are complaining stuff is hard, some stuff is hard, period. Did you call Nintendo and complained Mario was hard too whenever you got stuck? There's only one solution to beating hard stuff: Practice.
As much as you just want to have a casual time and wack-a-mole everything to death, some things require coordination and practice to beat in this game, instead of complaining things are hard, perhaps try and adapt and learn to play better, it's far more rewarding (which I think is the case in any game or sport or activity). And please don't compare anything to Dragon soul, what a god awful place. Every first boss of the raid instance doesn't have to fall over on its own, that's like having a vendor at the start and then 5 bosses instead of 6.


A bit more on topic:

Why do you break the chains in 10man? I can understand the need for it in 25man but in 10man there is extremely much space to move around and the only thing you have to pay attention to is purple pools on the floor or icebombs, which isn't all to complicated. If everyone is tagged in 10man nothing more happens and you just move around with your tagged partner, a bit like holding hands! YEY!
Then you just make sure you don't step in the rest and voíla you just beat the game.

[Durahal]

The problem with stone guards on 10 man is that depending on the set up for the week, it can be like 10 times easier 1 week than the next.

Like Jasper Jade and Cobalt is a nightmare compared to the walk in the park Jade Amethyst and Cobalt.

[Deleted]

Why do you break the chains in 10man? I can understand the need for it in 25man but in 10man there is extremely much space to move around and the only thing you have to pay attention to is purple pools on the floor or icebombs, which isn't all to complicated. If everyone is tagged in 10man nothing more happens and you just move around with your tagged partner, a bit like holding hands! YEY!
Then you just make sure you don't step in the rest and voíla you just beat the game.

Not that simple. If a melee is chained to a ranged, it'll very likely cause complications when both try to dps or maneuver between traps. Likewise, if a healer gets stuck to someone who needs to move, for whatever reason that may be(activating tiles, evading traps to enter melee range, etc...) it'll reduce overall raid-healing. Being tied to someone you shouldn't be tied to is just a massive pain in general, and will complicate the fight, dps- and healing-output, and in a fight where the boss is designed to be burned rather hard, losing dps or healing can turn out to be a vital problem.

---------- Post added 2012-11-05 at 08:24 AM ----------

The problem with stone guards on 10 man is that depending on the set up for the week, it can be like 10 times easier 1 week than the next.

Like Jasper Jade and Cobalt is a nightmare compared to the walk in the park Jade Amethyst and Cobalt.

Very much the case, yes...

EDIT: I AM SPECIFICALLY TALKING ABOUT HC! Not normal. If you can't beat the normal mode, this game probably isn't for you...

[Seranthor]

To begin with, I'm a part of a "casual guild" - we don't raid every week (tho we try to), we sometimes need to pug a player, or pick an undergeared guildie. We are no pros, thats for sure. But we constatntly try to progress through MV.

Back to the topic. Stone Guard needs nerfing - and fast. I'm talking about one aspect of the fight - Jasper Chains. This skill is WAY harder to deal with than the rest of them, with Jade and Amethyst being trivial, and Cobalt only slightly harder. Jasper+Cobalt combo is a progress stopper. If this combo occurs, the very 1st boss you face in MV is harder than both Feng and Gara'jal, and most likely Spirit Kings - had only like 2 tries on those, don't really know.

Blizzard should do something about this, with Jasper damage lowered by a large amount or only 1 chain existing at the time. It's kinda sad when our guild, thinking about nest weeks raid, rather thinks how to get past Jasper/Cobalt/Amethyst combo then about last encounters.

And just for statistics - we had around 10 wipes on Feng and 10 wipes on Gara'jal before we downed them, and over 60 before we downed Stone Guard for the 1st time. And it was pure luck.

At the risk of sounding mean I'm going to say, you dont need Stone Guard nerfed, you need to get better at whats going on. There is NO reason you cant beat Stone Guard.... practice and you'll get it right eventually... its a journey to the horizon, not a race... Enjoy your Warcraft.

[ildon]

Standing on top of the dude that the big red line connects you to is not very hard. You can even just inconvenience half your raid and never break the chains and have everyone do terrible DPS and the fight is equally easy with chains as with the other dudes up.

[Kivimetsan]

Yeah just nerf it into the ground imo, the pro's have Heroics, the noobs have normal and the noobs have LFR... Oh wait...

Deal with it dude. Find a better guild or tell everyone to be online. Sure that can be hard in a very casual guild, but all it takes is a days spamming of /2 to find a decent player willing to raid with you.

Either try normal or do LFR with your guildies, and wait till it gets nerfed or the next content release

[Seezer]

To begin with, I'm a part of a "casual guild" - we don't raid every week (tho we try to), we sometimes need to pug a player, or pick an undergeared guildie. We are no pros, thats for sure. But we constatntly try to progress through MV.

Back to the topic. Stone Guard needs nerfing - and fast. I'm talking about one aspect of the fight - Jasper Chains. This skill is WAY harder to deal with than the rest of them, with Jade and Amethyst being trivial, and Cobalt only slightly harder. Jasper+Cobalt combo is a progress stopper. If this combo occurs, the very 1st boss you face in MV is harder than both Feng and Gara'jal, and most likely Spirit Kings - had only like 2 tries on those, don't really know.

Blizzard should do something about this, with Jasper damage lowered by a large amount or only 1 chain existing at the time. It's kinda sad when our guild, thinking about nest weeks raid, rather thinks how to get past Jasper/Cobalt/Amethyst combo then about last encounters.

And just for statistics - we had around 10 wipes on Feng and 10 wipes on Gara'jal before we downed them, and over 60 before we downed Stone Guard for the 1st time. And it was pure luck.

Stay together until jasper petrifies. Profit. That's the nerf. If you can't figure that out, then you're going to have a rough time.

[Zaydin]

The Stone Guard isn't that hard. It's mostly a tank fight and some situational awareness for everyone else.

Stone Guard wrecked my raid group quite a bit; took us about 20-30 tries to get them down. It's all about the tanks learning to swap properly and everyone else keeping an eye on what Petrification is up and other parts of situational awareness. Don't step on Cobalt Mines until you have Cobalt Petrification on. Don't try and break Jasper Chains until Jasper Petrification, etc. Ranged, melee, and healers just have to watch one another for the chains and move to the person they are linked to if they get chains on them, and spread to break the chains if you have enough time to break your chains before a Jasper Overload removes Jasper Petrification; if you have less than 7-8 stacks on your chains and you get the DBM alert that the Overload is 7 seconds or so away, don't try and break your chain.

[Feviir]

I feel as if this is a mechanic issue for your guild. They could make the damage so much a non-issue that you ignore it... but really- that's what LFR is for. I feel the damage is appropriate to the mechanic as it gives you a lot of time to adjust and complete the mechanic.

The only nerf I would approve of is less chains, which I think I remember reading about. Although this fight being the opening fight of the instance can be quite a shock for new raiders.