Nefarian Paragon Video, Cataclysm Hall of Fame, MMO Report, Comics

If you all still wants to go on with this "exploit" or "not explot" war, thers one significiant thing to mention.

On Sinestra encounter Paragon stated that they noticed that Dark Simulacrum(DK's new toy) could almost one-shoot the boss, and they clearry identified that it was not intended, which is intuitive.

On another fight, they noticed that one class could do enormous amount off damage, 3 times more than every other class(as you can see on damage meter), and yet some fanboys states that they thought it was by design.

Hypocrism? Why didnt they use DS in Sinestra, hell its all about world first, no matter how, right? They just thought that with DS they wouldn't pass unnoticed, on Nef they just took the risk and EXPLOITED it and it paid off. Period.

Hahaha look at all the druids. Ridiculous.

Originally Posted by Mithsploit

Double standard is double standard.

It works on boss abilities sometimes, and it worked on this one. Normal ability used in a normal way doing what it is supposed to do. Changed for one encounter. Same as Rip.

Uh, except every single ability in the game works with Stolen Power, not just Rip.

Fire Mages can still use Combustion on heroic Nefarian right now for multi-million damage Combustions. It's only very slightly less damage than Rip.

Originally Posted by Rastlin

If you all still wants to go on with this "exploit" or "not explot" war, thers one significiant thing to mention.

On Sinestra encounter Paragon stated that they noticed that Dark Simulacrum(DK's new toy) could almost one-shoot the boss, and they clearry identified that it was not intended, which is intuitive.

On another fight, they noticed that one class could do enormous amount off damage, 3 times more than every other class(as you can see on damage meter), and yet some fanboys states that they thought it was by design.

Hypocrism? Why didnt they use DS in Sinestra, hell its all about world first, no matter how, right? They just thought that with DS they wouldn't pass unnoticed, on Nef they just took the risk and EXPLOITED it and it paid off. Period.

No, not 3 times more than every class. There were like maybe 4-5 non-feral-druid-DPS.

They said themselves they could have just as easily stacked Fire Mages and DKs and spent a few more hours and got a kill.

Here:

Originally Posted by xaar

Here is the essence of the problem.

If you have an encounter where the dps potential of classes are like this (numbers not accurate, but probably in the ballpark):

Druid - 50k
DK - 45k
Mage - 43k
...
Rogue - 26k
Warrior - 22k

Are druids balanced overall in that totem pole? Of course not. Everyone can immediately see that. They're dealing almost 2.5x the damage of the bottom classes. What about DKs or Mages then?

This is roughly what the damage potential looks like on Nefarian. It is very hard to justify bringing a Warrior instead of a DK or a Druid. If you take that replacement one step further - what if you had the option of bringing 10 Mages? Or 10 DKs? What about 10 feral Druids? At which point is it not okay to bench a lesser dps for a better one?

Some would argue that that it's at zero. Others would say it's somewhere below 10, but not at 10. That's entirely up to you.

The fact of the matter is that raid setup optimizations like this play a big role in the top raiding game. You find what yields the best results and go with it. On every single encounter. That is why you see such two-colored healing comps for example. That's why we benched melee on Ascendant Council.

There is no clear way of evaluating what is ok and what is not. I'm sure the developers intend for the game and encounters to be balanced, but that doesn't happen in reality. Every single world first kill (and I really do mean every single one) uses something that is not in line with design intent, from class stacking to straight out exploiting - usually it's just bringing 3-5 of the highest dps classes. You could say that half of the whole top raiding game is about finding imbalances and using them. Perhaps we get some communication errors from being too numb to that.

Bottom line: we thought Rip was imbalanced, but not too imbalanced. Like so many things on so many encounters before. Which is exactly why we brought 10 feral Druids. It may be stretching the boundaries, but that's only a good thing - perhaps there will now be less encounters that have mechanics like this that inherently cause massive imbalances between classes.

xaar of Paragon - the top feral druid in that video (usually plays Resto I think?)
From: http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...1#post10285891

If they brought 5 Feral Druids, 5 Fire Mages, and 5 Unholy DKs and used their Stolen Powers for Rips, Combustions, and 1 DK disease (extended via Festering), would you be okay with that kill?

It's not remotely an exploit to use a 2250% damage increase on a DoT because DoTs are better than nukes.

On another fight, they noticed that one class could do enormous amount off damage, 3 times more than every other class(as you can see on damage meter), and yet some fanboys states that they thought it was by design.

Druid damage on that fight was only so high because of how Rip scaled with the buff.. Paragon were the best guild at the end of Wrath so they needed to keep that spot.. which obviously meant they need to find the most effective ways to kill a boss.
If Wrack was used to kill Sinestra, they could basically avoid most of the fight (I think) due to not having to deal with adds(?) because they would kill her so fast, on Nefarian.. they still got close to the enrage timer but druids were just the highest scaling dmg source for that fight.. they still had to deal with every part of the fight.

It's funny how morons are are constantly saying that Druids hitting for that much is not a broken mechanic. They just so happened to have 11 druids or so just by coincidence? Not to take advantage of the exploit at all.....

Anyways none of this really matters to me I just hope that MMOChamp stops reporting on all these basement dweller losers and gets back to reporting actually interesting things.

Originally Posted by Argroth

It's funny how morons are are constantly saying that Druids hitting for that much is not a broken mechanic. They just so happened to have 11 druids or so just by coincidence? Not to take advantage of the exploit at all.....

Anyways none of this really matters to me I just hope that MMOChamp stops reporting on all these basement dweller losers and gets back to reporting actually interesting things.

It's not a broken mechanic, it's part of the fight...

Look at Stolen Power: http://www.wowhead.com/spell=80624 (MMO-DB only has the PTR version).

15% damage increase at 150 stacks is 2250% increased damage.

You get this after every mind control. It's just Blizzard giving an 'epic feel' to a fight by making the boss have a TON more health than usual, and giving you a damage buff to compenstate (Sinestra is the same way, you get 100% haste and infinite resources for 3 minutes).

It's funny how morons are are constantly saying that Druids hitting for that much is not a broken mechanic. They just so happened to have 11 druids or so just by coincidence? Not to take advantage of the exploit at all.....

They happened to have 11 druids because Rip scaled better with the 2250% damage buff you get (damage buff is intended) than other classes DoTs - how is that an exploit?

Why so many people fail at basic math is beyond me. Once again: There was no Rip bug. Rip was working correctly with the Stolen Power buff, this is a mathematical fact. It was (and apparently still is) possible to get crits exceeding 1M damage by using that buff, it is an intended part of the fight. It was not an exploit to use Rip, just as it is not an exploit to use Combustion or any other high DPCT ability now.

It also seems necessary to point out again that class stacking is allowed by Blizzard. It has been allowed ever since WoW came out, and Blizzard has not made any statements that the amount of characters of a certain class should be kept below [insert an arbitrary limit] in a raid. Indeed, there have been full 25-paladin raids as well as full 25-druid raids, and Blizzard has allowed them to keep their kills and loot.

Originally Posted by Mithsploit

Double standard is double standard.
It works on boss abilities sometimes, and it worked on this one. Normal ability used in a normal way doing what it is supposed to do. Changed for one encounter. Same as Rip.

Doesn't it bother you at all what an absurd position you end up defending just to hold your gimped argument up?

Seriously, I give up. Between people sporting a raging confirmation bias and trolls who think their own lack of understanding of percentages constitutes evidence of bug exploit, this is a colossal waste of time.

Originally Posted by Simca

It's not a broken mechanic, it's part of the fight...

Look at Stolen Power: http://www.wowhead.com/spell=80624 (MMO-DB only has the PTR version).

15% damage increase at 150 stacks is 2250% increased damage.

You get this after every mind control. It's just Blizzard giving an 'epic feel' to a fight by making the boss have a TON more health than usual, and giving you a damage buff to compenstate (Sinestra is the same way, you get 100% haste and infinite resources for 3 minutes).

Double Standard is still Double Standard.

Look at Spell Reflection: http://www.wowhead.com/spell=23920

Sinestra uses Wrack. Spell Reflection worked with Wrack. It did absurd damage. Spell Reflection no longer affects Wrack.
Nefarian uses Stolen Power. Stolen Power worked with Rip. It did absurd damage. Stolen Power no longer affects Rip.

Originally Posted by touche

10 man is more harded than 25 man BY FAR. ( if u have 10/25 pro players) ..

No it's not, in a 10 man abilities like chain lightning are more easily avoidable, but in a 25 man you have more people in the same amount of space.

Originally Posted by Mithsploit

Double Standard is still Double Standard.

Look at Spell Reflection: http://www.wowhead.com/spell=23920

Sinestra uses Wrack. Spell Reflection worked with Wrack. It did absurd damage. Spell Reflection no longer affects Wrack.
Nefarian uses Stolen Power. Stolen Power worked with Rip. It did absurd damage. Stolen Power no longer affects Rip.

Oh, you're completely right. Using an intended buff to do slightly-more-than-intended damage is totally the same as abusing an ability against an untested boss to 1-shot it. /epicfacepalm

Originally Posted by Mithsploit

Double Standard is still Double Standard.

Look at Spell Reflection: http://www.wowhead.com/spell=23920

Sinestra uses Wrack. Spell Reflection worked with Wrack. It did absurd damage. Spell Reflection no longer affects Wrack.
Nefarian uses Stolen Power. Stolen Power worked with Rip. It did absurd damage. Stolen Power no longer affects Rip.

Stolen Power still works with Combustion. It still does absurd damage.

Doing absurd damage is the point of the fight, otherwise they wouldn't give you a 2250% damage buff, and the combined hp pool of the encounter wouldn't be 50-100 million more HP than any other fight.

haters who have no clue about fight mechanics were crying out loud how cheaters paragon were... now after 10 pages of explanations, they finialy shut up. /relief

Originally Posted by muto

No it's not, in a 10 man abilities like chain lightning are more easily avoidable, but in a 25 man you have more people in the same amount of space.

Once again, Al'akir and Ascendant Council. The 2 same fights that have been stated ad nauseum by those arguing for 25 mans being more difficult. Give us another fight so that the 2/13H encounters doesn't make the argument so weak.

Did anyone mention that Combustion is on a 2 minute cool down and needs a high ticking ignite to do some decent damage and rip isn't? :x

It's not comparable.

Originally Posted by Noze

Did anyone mention that Combustion is on a 2 minute cool down and needs a high ticking ignite to do some decent damage and rip isn't? :x

It's not comparable.

What they were doing with Rip? They were timing all cooldowns and trinkets and stuff with it, yeah, it's very comparable.

If you don't want to compare it though, just use a DK's Blood Plague + Festering Strikes.

That's still multi-million damage.

Originally Posted by Mithsploit

Double Standard is still Double Standard.

Look at Spell Reflection: http://www.wowhead.com/spell=23920

Sinestra uses Wrack. Spell Reflection worked with Wrack. It did absurd damage. Spell Reflection no longer affects Wrack.
Nefarian uses Stolen Power. Stolen Power worked with Rip. It did absurd damage. Stolen Power no longer affects Rip.

Spell reflect typically doesn't affect major boss abilities, damage buffs typically affect rip. That's the difference.

The people saying that this is the same as ensidia's use of Saronite bombs or exodus' brain room glitch are absurd, you obviously have no idea of how either encounter was coded.

With exodus. they put a pair of players in an position that is meant to be unobtainable through divine intervention, then aggro'd the spawning mobs, causing them to evade glitch due to not being able to reach their highest aggro target. The moment "Evade!" pops up, you've hit an unintended mechanic.

With the Lich King, the encounter uses terrain constructs for the outer edge of the platform, similar to the floor in ToC. The contructs have a limited amount of health, and enter a different state when they are low on health. The lich King has two abilities, one which damages them enough to change state, another that heals them back to the original state. However, the health values are very low, and when they took extra damage from the grenades, they were pushed into negative health, which glitched the construct and caused it to reset to full health. This is especially damning for ensidia, because they got a glitch involving grenades and the terrain constructs in ToC discovered and fixed on the patch 3.2 ptr.

Nefarian was poorly tuned. It was not broken, it was not a bug. It did exactly what everyone who saw, or coded, the mechanic thought it would do. However, once they saw what paragon did, they thought it encouraged too much class stacking, and decided to retune it to close the gap between warlocks and druids on that fight, and classes withwithout a strong refreshable dot, like warriors and ret pallies. If you think everyone who got a kill on a boss that was later retuned should have their gear and achievements stripped, then every raiding toon would be naked after every hotfix they implement. Hell, Method used grounding totems on double dragons to mitigate blackout, which was hotfixed, they also used the door glitch on atramedes, which was also hotfixed. Both of those are a lot more questionable than class stacking for extra damage. Every guild that has downed Heroic Atramedes has done so via some sort of glitch, be it the infinite gonglock or the wall of justice. So I guess no one is a legitimate 13/13.

After experiencing both sides of the coin for years, and now with Cata content, I have to side with the 10 mans are more "harded" group. 10-man is way overtuned, and in cases, more glitchy (why they don't put as much effort into the tuning/play testing in 10's, which are most popular now is beyond me).

You can look at it like this:

- 25 mans take more effort to coordinate. Sure BUT..
- 25 mans have vastly more ranges of margins of error to boot, where you can lose more than 2.5x's the players and still complete an encounter. Plus there's more interrupts and cc's to throw around as well.

In that, 10 mans, especially due to the trending overtuning by blizzard, is the harder scenario this time around. Maybe blizzard will address this next time content hits, 6 months from now (most likely unfortunately).

Originally Posted by Simca

Uh, except every single ability in the game works with Stolen Power, not just Rip.

Wrong.
It never worked with many abilities, for example Arcane Missiles, Festering Strike, but notably Deep Freeze and Starfall.
Deep Freeze crits for 140k -> 3M with Stolen Power.
Starfall -> 1.5M

Blizzard deliberately made those 2 OP abilities unaffected by Stolen Power, to prevent stacking of frost mages or boomkins.

Rip -> 4-5M damage... Blizzard failed...

Originally Posted by Simca

It's not a broken mechanic, it's part of the fight...

It is broken mechanic. Blizzard disabled Deep Freeze and Starfall, but overlooked Rip.

Originally Posted by Simca

Fire Mages can still use Combustion on heroic Nefarian right now for multi-million damage Combustions. It's only very slightly less damage than Rip.

Combustion is on 2 min cooldown. It requires huge DoTs in order to be effective. It doesn't work on amplified (via stolen power) Living Bomb, and it doesn't work on amplified Pyroblast DoT. It works only on Ignite produced by amplified Pyroblast crit.
Pyroblast has 50% to crit (with t11x4 and glyph of pyroblast).
If are lucky to crit, Pyro+Combustion will do total of 2.5M damage.
In practice, you are able to use Combustion on average 1.5 times during the fights. Rip you could use every time you were MCed.