Respect to Blizzard for Faction champions AI

[talrob]

After doing hard mode tonight, we realised that for an mmo, the AI in the champions is very good work, they react, work together to switch targets, cc you, remove cc's. They will die but you have to focus.

I hope for many more bosses with similar intelligence to these in icecrown, rather than 'don't stand in fire'.

[lilsaint]

Yeah, I totally agree. Things like that force you to be on your toes and allow you to use many of the spells in your arsonal that you normally wouldn't in most raids.

Although, the fact that having certain comps will make it alot easier/harder is not a favorite of mine. I do like the randomness but it can sometimes screw you over.

[Loerk]

haven't done the hardmode yet but i have to say that it's even noticeable in normal mode, even tho it's pisseas. more bosses like this please

[Keoren]

The thing with them is that they have a threat table, even if it resets constantly. This means they can be taunted and stay on the person for good 5 seconds and for example fade effects make them change target. Being otherwise quite an interesting encounter, I guess I can "forgive" this though.

[necro.]

Very nice AI indeed. After 1 shotting Lord Jaraxxus on 10 man HM we started wiping on Fact. champs and they destroyed us :S!

All i was hearing on vent was: immune!!! Immune!!!

Most fun fight in game.... by far!

[Dostus]

Agree with thread theme.

M2C: The best boss in the game atm. Imo, boss should be like that: Smart, many abilities, damage and less hp.

[tankz]

I was kind of disapointed with 10 man Heroic Faction champions, we one shot it with no deaths.. I was hoping for a bit more of a challange.

[ilialilov]

The encounter requires 3 things. First a nice strategy (what to cc and what to kill .... and why). After that you need some chain cc. And most importantly people have to switch from "oh something is hitting me, i hope i get healed" to "something is hitting me, screw the dps, i better run". What you see on that encounter (at least with us) our top 3 dps usually die... every fucking time. Turn of the recount for this fight and it might go a little better. But still if you are a vegetable dps that can only nuke and can't be bothered to change target to cc something or to dispel you are going to fail ...

[surma]

I'm fairly sure that fight could have been even farther if they tuned up the AI even more. =D

[arg]

Very nice AI indeed. After 1 shotting Lord Jaraxxus on 10 man HM we started wiping on Fact. champs and they destroyed us :S!

All i was hearing on vent was: immune!!! Immune!!!

Most fun fight in game.... by far!

Hehe,seems that some raiders are not usedto diminishing returns. Same thing happened in my guild when we first engaded the boss 2 (or was it 3?) weeks ago - we have a hefty ammount of players with raiding experince from early vanilla, with 300 HK and a private rank

[SBS]

Yeah, faction champions is a fun fight, but the difference in difficulty is huge with different comps. In our 10 HM-group yesterday we had:
Prot war x 2, Ret pala, Ele Shammy, Frost Mage, Feral druid, Holy Pala, Hunter, DK and me as Resto druid

We faced: Warrior, Ret Pala, Resto Shaman, Shadow Priest, Resto Druid, Warlock

We got absolutely crushed by FC, just obliterated. People got one-shotted left and right and we couldn't keep the melee locked down and had a lot of trouble with the resto druid. Not to make up excuses or anything, some people in the group isn't very skilled in pvp (me included), but it would've been so much easier with a priest and a lock.

Other than that little negative point, it's a great fight.

[Surfd]

Yeah, from my experience, while faction champs is a fun fight, it is also THE fight that will CRUSH your raid if you:

A: get a bad set of Opponents from the RNG gods
B: have a poorly balanced group makeup.

And god help you if you get both A and B working together against you.

For example, the group i was in this week got to Faction Champs very smoothly. We cut through the Beasts and Lord J like a hot knife through butter. Then we ran into Faction Champs. And got bent over the bench 6 times in a row before simply giving up in frustration.

We got put against the Shaman and the Druid as healers, with the Warlock, Paladin, DK and Shadowpriest as DPS.

Sounds like an easy combination, right? Not with our group.
Heals : Priest, Druid, Sham
Tanks: Pally Tank, Feral Tank
DPS: 1 warlock, 1 warrior, 2 boomkin, 1 DK

We had 2 reliable interupts on fast cooldowns (but one was a healer), and only 2 people capable of dispelling magic (both of which were healers).

We literally could not kill anything because nothing we tried allowed us to cut through their heals. Either we wouldn't have interupts ready, or we couldn't keep hots purged. Even when we did keep the Druid CC'd with Banish / Cyclone rotations, all it took was a split second for him to get free due to a fear or a silence and he would magically have 3 or 4 hots rolling on the target. And if one of our healers was forced to start using global cooldowns to dispell, people started dying.

We EASILY could have had that if we had maybe 1 or 2 dps classes who could focus on dispells, instead of our healers having to try, or if we had a rogue instead of a second boomkin for extra kicks / interupts / etc.

Basically, my beef comes down to the fact that, especially for a 10 man with REALLY good loot, it pisses me off to no end that the only fight in the entire raid that pretty much forces you to min-max your raid composition occurs right in the middle of the boss progression, and can be random enough that you potentially can not plan for it.

You essentially HAVE to form your raid SPECIFICALLY for Faction Champs, with an eye for covering for every possible potential opponent group makeup the RNG gods can throw at you. Which is silly, since, for every other fight, you can basically bring 2 tanks, 2-3 heals, and 5-6 dps of pretty much ANY class and waffle stomp them (as long as you have at least 1 person who can dispel magic).

[Gron]

Signed - agree 100% with thread!

[ralphie]

AI is fine. I just don't like things such as their popping two heroisms in one fight or not being locked out of certain schools even tho you interrupt (lock's hellfire spam anyone?).

[Granpa]

I like it when the priest runs from me.. just like in BG.. lol

[Eurytos]

I love this fight, its a good challenge on normal. I haven't done heroic yet, but im sure they'll fuck us up pretty good. We gotta get passed the other 2 first though.

[talrob]

The thing with them is that they have a threat table, even if it resets constantly. This means they can be taunted and stay on the person for good 5 seconds and for example fade effects make them change target. Being otherwise quite an interesting encounter, I guess I can "forgive" this though.

In heroic the adds are immune to taunt, adds even more fun when the ret hammers you and 3 dps switch near instantly.

[smeej]

The thing with them is that they have a threat table, even if it resets constantly. This means they can be taunted and stay on the person for good 5 seconds and for example fade effects make them change target. Being otherwise quite an interesting encounter, I guess I can "forgive" this though.

They don't do that stuff in Heroic, as we found out. D: Taunts do absolutely nothing.

[Eurytos]

In heroic the adds are immune to taunt, adds even more fun when the ret hammers you and 3 dps switch near instantly.

BALLS.

[Keoren]

In heroic the adds are immune to taunt, adds even more fun when the ret hammers you and 3 dps switch near instantly.

Noticed that tonight on 25-man. We only had few attempts though, going over what tactic we're using as our comp is really nasty, but seems like very fun.