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!




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!"
This article was originally published in forum thread: Paragon Sneak Peek: Ragnaros, the Firelord started by Boubouille View original post
Comments 255 Comments
  1. Slowshi's Avatar
    because paragon is so open about sharing strategies while competing for kills. Also.. so many mechanics, that would be a programming nightmare haha.
  1. Irisel's Avatar
    I fell for it. Dates dont mean anything to me, so I forgot it was april fools.
  1. Kujja's Avatar
    The picture is also called "ragnarosparagonnotajokeatallseriously" in case ppl didn't notice yet Also - even if Paragon did test it, they wouldn't give info about it out.
  1. Rukah's Avatar
    Nice Rift icons.
  1. mmoce213c955fb's Avatar
    My face when this ain't no April fool's prank, but a real friggin' thing:

  1. keRmis's Avatar
    So much hate, haha.
  1. Dunee's Avatar
    however much this sounds like a joke I actually believed it at start.. then I thought of how awesome the encounter actually sounded and got sad : /
  1. mmocce676f6b0f's Avatar
    nice joke :P
  1. Sanctioned's Avatar
    Well technically it might still be an Aprils Fools joke. It's April 1st already in some parts of the world.
  1. kerwyn's Avatar
    *shrug*

    Fight mechanics are believable and kinda cool.
  1. Stixxz's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by DrakeWurrum View Post
    Too obvious.

    Also: It's March 31st still.
    Not in EU.

    Bit obvious though, could of come up with something better though.
  1. Cronnix's Avatar
    LAst years jokes were better, this is just.. poor
  1. nonamekiller's Avatar
    Oh yea, it's April 1st in the EU.... I forgot!
  1. Gwain's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Dunee View Post
    however much this sounds like a joke I actually believed it at start.. then I thought of how awesome the encounter actually sounded and got sad : /
    So is the joke on us or on Blizzard? If Paragon can invent an April Fool's encounter that get people interested, what does it say about people who get paid to do that but don't manage it?
  1. kerwyn's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Cronnix View Post
    LAst years jokes were better, this is just.. poor
    ps, if this is a joke it's not blizzard's.

    Unless you're referring to what paragon did last year, which I can't even remember.
  1. mmocb78b025c1c's Avatar
    he got me damn
  1. mmoc124d4cbc78's Avatar
    Meh, I thought it was real. I was like "OMG that fucking cool, gratz Paragon!!!11oneone!1".

    I hate this day
  1. Vetali's Avatar
    I feel really stupid for falling for that at first.
  1. Asmileyface's Avatar
    Despite it being an april fools joke someone put a shit load of time into writing the strategy guide.
  1. littlewisp's Avatar
    Argh, I'm so gullible.

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