Paragon Sneak Peek: Ragnaros, the Firelord

[Boubouille]

Paragon Sneak Peek: Ragnaros, the Firelord
Paragon just released a Sneak Peek of the Patch 4.2 Ragnaros Raid Encounter! It looks like today will be a very eventful day in the world of WoW!

• Patch 4.2 Fireland / Ragnaros on Paragon's Website

Message from Paragon
As many of you have been suspecting, we have been playing on Blizzard’s private Test Realm (pTR) for quite some time now doing specialized raid encounter testing. We have had the chance to test all of the 7 encounters in the Firelands raid instance coming in patch 4.2, and wanted to give a small sneak peek of the upcoming content.

Since most of the abilities from the Ragnaros 2.0 encounter seem to have been datamined already, we thought we’d start from that, and release a complete strategy guide for the 25-man heroic mode of the encounter based on our pTR experience.

Between the intensive testing sessions we asked Lazei to write down a few words about the boss:

Lazeil:
"First I have to thank Blizzard for this amazing opportunity; we were given an unique chance to directly make an impact on WoW raid development. We love the game and we of course want to help Blizzard to make the game as good as possible. The first raid tier of Cataclysm wasn't exactly as polished and perfect as we have come to expect from Blizzard, and I guess the developers themselves probably weren't quite happy with how some of the bosses ended up dying. They contacted us, as we had already established ourselves as experts on raid stacking, clever use of game mechanics, and non-stop raiding for days on end, which made us the perfect quality assurance team for fine-tuning heroic mode encounters.

The pTR provided us with almost unlimited raid setup potential. We tried out pretty much everything, as is the Paragon raid mentality. Let's just say that the encounter initially wasn't balanced around having 20 paladins in the raid… Many changes were made, and we're happy to say that the encounter in its current state has near perfect class/spec balance. Even shamans are somewhat useful, despite the pretty much complete revamp they did with the class

As for the fight itself, what an amazing encounter. It's requires a brutal combination of LK25H-like teamplay and pre-change Al'Akir 25H P1 individual player skill. All the other Cataclysm bosses, which were all pretty damn hard to begin with, are easily blown away by Ragnaros 2.0. On top of that, we were told that in the live version there will be a surpise they didn't want to show us yet.

Unfortunately our NDA disallows making available unreleased in-game art, so we cannot share videos or screenshots from our testing. The strategy itself is fair game though, and we wanted to release it beforehand so we wouldn’t have an unfair advantage in the upcoming race. I hope you have as much fun theorycrafting the fight as we did!"

[Trispec]

First!

Jk, this is a nice april fools though. Really well thought out fight if you read through it.

[Deleted]

too obvious

[DrakeWurrum]

Too obvious.

Also: It's March 31st still.

[Vinhz]

Paragon implying they're good enough to enter the PTR.
LOL

[Deleted]

Way tooo obvious ^^

But fun non the less :P

Oh and inb4 the usual whiny American's complaining about it not being April Fools where they are :P

[Deleted]

too soon... errr... i mean obvious xD

[Evolixe]

You didn't get me this time boub you nasty! #1 try tho!

[Rixis]

too soon... errr... i mean obvious xD

it was april 1st in finland when this went live (and is now april 1st in the uk/on european realms (which runs uk+1 / paris time)

[schippie]

Way to obvious.... lol

Didnt they do something similar last year?

[Thorzon]

I really don't get Paragon's April Fools jokes. They aren't funny or interesting at all. Only an idiot would fall for things like that, especially on April Fools Day.

[zorg]

Just look at the classes on the diagram to realise its a april fools...come on anyone that actually doesnt dismiss this 20000% on sight needs their heads checking.

Far too obvious shame really for the effot and time put into making it....

Hoping Blizz can do alot better =(

[Auralan]

Can't we get something more subtle? I almost actually fell for the same faction rated BG stuff on the PTR.

Nice read, though. Haha. ^^

Also, fail on spelling Lazeil's name. In before edit!

[Holyhands]

I have to admit....someone put some great work into it...

[Farora]

I fell for it actually, nice one

[4KhazModan]

Just look at the classes on the diagram to realise its a april fools...come on anyone that actually doesnt dismiss this 20000% on sight needs their heads checking.

Far too obvious shame really for the effot and time put into making it....

Hoping Blizz can do alot better =(

The icons are not for the clas....

You know what? I give up. GG Paragon.

[blahssat]

Premature April fools. I call BS on this.

[methwow]

id lawl if the april fools was making us think its an april fools.

[Uvania]

obvious troll is obvious

[Cytex]

Ahhh come on!!! So NOT subtle