Mythic Helya Kill - Ðanish Terrace, Blue Tweets, Overwatch Reaper Statue

[chaud]

2.4.3 PTR Updated Patch Notes, Blizzard's Black Friday Sale

New Card Reveal: White Eyes

Mythic Helya Kill - Ðanish Terrace
Ðanish Terrace got a world third kill on Mythic Helya today, with an interesting strategy.

Another illustration of "it's hard to find limit between clever use and exploit"
She's breathing, damaging tanks with it, spawning adds. Similar to putting p3 Cho'gall on the throne in BoT. (WatcherDev)
Obviously not the strat the encounter's designer intended, but no part of that is a "bug." (WatcherDev)

Thanks for answering. If Helya kept breathing and we suicided 1 tank on each breath would we got banned ?
I'm pretty sure you wouldn't have been, it's about her bugging out, not the suicide itself (IMO).
Yeah. Target's death stopping one cast is consistent with many other abilities out there; it's how WoW works. (WatcherDev)
Target's death causing the boss to never cast again is a clear bug that removes a mechanic entirely. (WatcherDev)
It's the difference between Archimonde crystals and LK Saronite Bombs, basically. (WatcherDev)

Speaking of LK/Ensidia, basically you don't consider "intent" as a factor in deciding bans or is it case by case
Case by case; intent can be hard to gauge, but there are clues. It's hard to read intent into a fluke free kill (e.g. M-Odyn). (WatcherDev)
But when a group is repeatedly performing an action that causes the fight to bug out, and building a strat around that bug... (WatcherDev)

Blue Tweets

Demonology Warlock [Sin'dorei Spite] legendary bracers are bugged, buff not applying to Wild Imps. Any chance of a fix?
Slated for a fix in 7.1.5 I believe; I'll see if that can be moved up at all. (WatcherDev)

Ghostcrawler Tweets
Ghostcrawler still occasionally talks about WoW. Remember that he no longer works for or speaks for Blizzard.

What are the biggest factors that stop great ideas right in their tracks? Specifically in game design and conceptual creation.
In general, I advocate *not* trying to stop great ideas right in their tracks. Game designers in particular are so comfortable with analysis that they can immediately shift to pointing out why something won’t work instead of trying to figure out what to do so that it can work. In my work, I try to structure idea generation into two phases: a purely creative one where you don’t accept any constraints, and then a more pragmatic phase where you shift from asking “Is this cool?” to “Should we build it?”

I don’t think that was really the spirit of your question though, so I’ll try to go a little deeper. Let’s assume the idea has gotten through the pure brainstorming phase and now you’re critically evaluating it. What would kill it?

1) Technical realities. Programming time is expensive in terms of opportunity cost. In my experience, very few engineers will tell you no. Instead they’ll tell you how long something will take and what you may have to give up to get it. There are a limited number of programming hours in the day, so if you shift some of those hours to a new idea, you have to give up something else. Sometimes that’s the right call because the new idea is so awesome. But if every idea is awesome (in terms of shifting resources to pursue it) then nothing is. (This can happen with other resources as well. Art is probably the second most likely to bottle-neck an idea after programming.)

2) Doesn’t fit the game. This actually comes up a lot, and it can be a tough thin to arbitrate because different developers on a team might have different opinions of what fits or not. I tend to spend a lot of time thinking about setting precedents because the games I have worked on have long lifespans. The developers today may be opening up something cool (or a Pandora’s box) that future developers are going to have to contend with. Think of relatively simple but hugely impactful decisions like “Should WoW allow third party mods?” The definition of “fit” here can encompass a lot of things, like whether it’s a feature players actually need, whether it matches thematically, and so on.

3) Causes unintentional player behavior. You have to really think through this one because by definition it’s often hard to anticipate what the outcomes will be. Some outcomes are perfectly fine. I don’t mean to imply that every time players do something unexpected that it’s inherently bad. But you can also cause players do things that are really unfun. Imagine you give players a chance to get a reward once an hour. Are you encouraging them to set their alarms every hour while they try to sleep?

4) Confusing or janky. Some great ideas are inelegant enough that they will cause a lot of confusion. It depends a lot on your game about how much of this you’ll tolerate. Sometimes the idea is worth the extra price in complication. But complication can have a real price as well – confused players might open support tickets, which are a real hit on a game’s bottom line. (Publishers generally want to offer player support because it helps make the experience good for players, but they also want to build the game in such a way that players don’t need to hit up player support constantly.) You could also argue that if the idea is too inelegant that maybe it doesn’t qualify as great.

5) Collision with some upcoming feature. This is where project or team leads can really earn their salt, because they can provide a bigger picture that individual contributors may not have access to. “Hey I thought of a great idea to minimize our download time!” might be rendered less useful if you have the information to say “Great idea, but we’re working on continual streaming next milestone, so downloads are no longer a big player pain point.”

There are a bunch of others, but those are the ones that came to mind.

Overwatch Reaper Statue
Blizzard added a statue of Reaper to the Blizzard Gear store!

[Axelond]

So when Exorcis tried to do the same strat as Danish terrace did they got banned because the boss was bugged and made the strat impossible to do. They fix the bug and the strat becomes viable again and people can kill the boss OK.

[HarpuiaBlade]

So when Exorcis tried to do the same strat as Danish terrace did they got banned because the boss was bugged and made the strat impossible to do. They fix the bug and the strat becomes viable again and people can kill the boss OK.

the strat was fixed to not bug out the boss so it's viable to do now. Also the raid has to use battle rezzes for each cast they want to skip, not just do it once to negate all casts. The difficulty is higher for the not bugged version of the strat.

[Deleted]

This thread is going to get interesting.

[Shelly]

So when Exorcis tried to do the same strat as Danish terrace did they got banned because the boss was bugged and made the strat impossible to do. They fix the bug and the strat becomes viable again and people can kill the boss OK.

This strat didn't remove all the breaths from phase 3 for one thing.

[Deleted]

So many people are Dense.

IF you avoid a whole mechanic permanently for the rest of a fight, as in helya never breathes again. thats exploit.

If you avoid a mechanic, that tempoary doesn't breathe as in 1 time only. that is a counter cuz helya has nothing to breathe on, but she would breathe next time its off cd.


anyway, even if we do not count DT as 3rd, they would be 5th , so it is still an amazing job.

but since the 2 who downed it exploited, it will make DT 3rd. and Scrubbusters 4th.

[Deleted]

Very nice statue but that price...

[Deleted]

so they report on world 3rds now cos 1st and 2nd are always the same 2 guilds

[Devidose]

As the dev said, it's the same with Archi crystals from mythic HFC. P3 you'd sacc a tank to the crystal to spare the dps normally needed to kill it as well as the heals required to keep the tank up, however said strat needed CRs to work so any additional deaths could invalidate the tactic.

[Myzou]

so they report on world 3rds now cos 1st and 2nd are always the same 2 guilds

No, they report on world third because it's been over a week and only 3 guilds have legitimately downed it without exploits, which is rather significant.

And @ people saying these people exploited, as the devs explained, no, they did not. The deaths were done to ignore that -ONE- breath. That's countering the breath, no different than interrupting it, or a hunter feigning when targeted by a skill.

The exploits the other guilds did that got them banned is killing a tank and making Helya -completely- stop using her breath for the -ENTIRE- fight, not just that single breath.

[Isoz]

Very nice statue but that price...

yea its a nice statue, same price as the tracer one. would be a cool set to own lol

[Deleted]

Is it me or this random Ghost kid has posts on this page from time to time? He is not even working for Activison... please no more posts!

[Deleted]

Howmany wipes for DT to get it down?

[Donald Hellscream]

Was stacking the slimes in phase 1 the only "interesting" part of the strat?

I suppose it may help them beat the enrage timer since no one has to move to kill slimes, but as long as you have at least two hunters they're pretty easy to kill anyway.

I think the interesting part was the sacrificing of tanks to stop her from casting her breath ability in phase 3.

[Espe]

Is it me or this random Ghost kid has posts on this page from time to time? He is not even working for Activison... please no more posts!

I, and clearly many others, actually enjoy his insights into team management and game development. If no one has a gun to your head IRL forcing you to read it you can just skip it.

[Dnusha]

So when Exorcis tried to do the same strat as Danish terrace did they got banned because the boss was bugged and made the strat impossible to do. They fix the bug and the strat becomes viable again and people can kill the boss OK.

Classic blizzard logic right here

This strat didn't remove all the breaths from phase 3 for one thing.

So Exorsus should hire a programmer and fix the bug then?

[whywhatwhowhenhow]

Congrats on the kill, but that "music" is shocking! Had to mute.

[ZeroEdgeir]

So when Exorcis tried to do the same strat as Danish terrace did they got banned because the boss was bugged and made the strat impossible to do. They fix the bug and the strat becomes viable again and people can kill the boss OK.

Those who got banned, had one tank death to remove the whole breath mechanic from the fight's entire duration.

This guild here, eliminated one single breath, with a tank death. The next breath still came, unlike in the attempts/kills of those who were banned.

Banned Guilds: Used a mechanic that was not working as intended as an advantage, and have both had representatives openly admit they abused a known (if not documented) bug.

Bug has been fixed now, so if a guild wants to burn through all their combat rezzes negating these breath phases, then all the power to them. But they have to do it each time, not once for the whole encounter (the actual bug that was exploited).

Not a hard concept to understand

[Eggroll]

Grats to Danish Terrasse, I guess.

Well done!

[caervek]

Mythic Helya Kill - Ðanish Terrace
Ðanish Terrace got a world third kill on Mythic Helya today, with an interesting strategy.

You misspelled exploit :P

Seriously how is this less worse than what the banned guilds did, in both cases a guild exploited the mechanics to trivialise an encounter and cheese a kill on a boss they couldn't have beaten legitimately.