Stone Guard - Jasper/Amethyst/Cobalt combo should give Elite mode loot

[Swag Shell]

In my opinion Blizzard made a big mistake with this encounter. Instead of the combination of dogs you get being random each week, you should be able to choose which one you want to deactivate. If the Jade dog is not active (since Jade does basically nothing remotely threatening) then the encounter becomes much harder, and Blizzard should reward raid groups who are able to complete this harder encounter with loot that is half a tier (7 item levels) higher quality than what you would obtain from doing the encounter normally. More diversity in difficulty of raid encounters can only be a good thing, as Protectors of the Endless showed.

Sincerely,
A concerned citizen.

[Glurp]

So 10mans get elite gear and 25mans get nothing. You didn't think this out very well and it's not a very good idea, considering Jade is actually one of the tougher ones on heroic as the pulsing AoE damage is quite high and can lead to a few deaths. Without jade active you can run through cobalt bombs all day because they don't actually kill you completely.

[CDShaidar]

We've always found the combination you mentioned to be the easiest. There's almost no unavoidable damage and it becomes trivial once you have your chains out.

[Xothic]

*Looks at number of posts*

Hmm.

Yeah not so sure I agree with you there bud.

[Caribald]

Jade is the only one that does unavoidable damage (Jasper too but you can easily reduce it significantly) and you want better loot for doing Stone Guard without it? Please.

[Deleted]

Sure, as long as 25 gets elite loot every week then lol. You do realize 25 deals with all 4 every time, right?

[Ezekiah]

Sure, as long as 25 gets elite loot every week then lol. You do realize 25 deals with all 4 every time, right?

People do 25mans?

No but seriously, get 8 chains, never break, healers AFK, collect loot.

[Deleted]

It sounds like there is a problem of not moving out of purple/blue things that are on the ground!
Seriously, our paladin solo heals this on heroic when we don't have Jade up...

[Deleted]

It sounds like there is a problem of not moving out of purple/blue things that are on the ground!
Seriously, our paladin solo heals this on heroic when we don't have Jade up...

Your raid must be so amazing.

[darkminaz]

25 hardmode and boom you get all 4 all the time wee ^^
mogu is so mutch faceroll now with all the gear. halfus (bot) also never droped "ELITE" gear or whatever, since you don't realy decide.
same with the 4 doggies, blizzard decides boom you got that combo so i don't see the point in droping better gear if you can't choose.

if it was like "great pillar of banish, banishes one of the 4 dogs" <klick on red for hardmode> <blue for normal> <green for roflcoptermy group sucks hardcore> and it banishes them ok. but like this meh

[Deleted]

You srsly have a problem with Amethyst? Jade Jasper Cobalt is the only dangerous one, and still easy as piss.

That combo is actually the easiest one as jade is the hardest dog.

[Cairhiin]

In my opinion Blizzard made a big mistake with this encounter. Instead of the combination of dogs you get being random each week, you should be able to choose which one you want to deactivate. If the Jade dog is not active (since Jade does basically nothing remotely threatening) then the encounter becomes much harder, and Blizzard should reward raid groups who are able to complete this harder encounter with loot that is half a tier (7 item levels) higher quality than what you would obtain from doing the encounter normally. More diversity in difficulty of raid encounters can only be a good thing, as Protectors of the Endless showed.

Sincerely,
A concerned citizen.

Eh what, that is probably the easiest combination. Why should you get higher ilevel for the easiest combination? Your problem is that your raid group needs to play better as most of the damage is avoidable.

[Deleted]

OP, your raid is just awful.

[Deleted]

Instead of the combination of dogs you get being random each week, you should be able to choose which one you want to deactivate. If the Jade dog is not active (since Jade does basically nothing remotely threatening) then the encounter becomes much harder

Chromaggus says 'hi!'.

[Deleted]

Well I get what you mean but i certainly don't like the idea. As someone else said, on 25 man they are all active so that's a problem right there. Also (although I'm not sure about this) each region (US/EU/the rest) have different combos than the others, just like on Halfus.

[Lefrog]

While I don't agree with OPs reasoning (the combo actually being the easiest), I think it would have been a lot more fun for more fights to have a hard mode like protectors. They could have easily done it with Stone guards by making 25 man 3 dogs as well, and maybe making the hardest dog a little more deadly, since it's all super easy even on heroic mode right now. They could have worked it in with Windlord with which group you decide to kill or cc, but the fight would have to be reworked for it to make sense on normal mode at least.

The reason I like hard modes aside from Heroic mode? Well it lets lower end guilds progress and see all the bosses, but at the same time offers an alternative to medium level guilds that have little difficulty with the easy version. Just like protectors, they have basically rolled 4 difficulty levels into 1 boss fight. So that everyone from bad, medium, good, and the elite crowd has a challenge. With most bosses, there isn't an intuitive or easy way to make 4 difficulty levels, and would just make it a pain on the developers. But for fights like Stone Guard I feel that they could have easily incorporated this.

I am hoping that they were using protectors to feel out the numbers and opinions of the player base before pushing more bosses like this.