Sepulcher world first race duration

[Biomega]

At this point it's almost impossible for a raid to be balanced around 3-week WF progression. It would require either outright gating (not having bosses available to even try), or balance that's so off it's basically broken. Nothing could keep top guilds progressing for 3 weeks but also be killable by mere mortals.

[shanthi]

At this point it's almost impossible for a raid to be balanced around 3-week WF progression. It would require either outright gating (not having bosses available to even try), or balance that's so off it's basically broken. Nothing could keep top guilds progressing for 3 weeks but also be killable by mere mortals.

It's theoretically possible, but the balancing would be extremely tight. The "mere mortals" have some advantages--they get strategies for each mythic boss crafted for them ahead of time, so they don't need to figure out the optimal ways to do encounters, and they can have much better gear than the WF raiders will have in the first couple weeks. Setting a high bar that challenges WF raiders for a few weeks but succumbs to those slow "soft nerfs" of the raid seems like it could be doable, just with a lot of difficulty.

[Log Cabin]

It's theoretically possible, but the balancing would be extremely tight. The "mere mortals" have some advantages--they get strategies for each mythic boss crafted for them ahead of time, so they don't need to figure out the optimal ways to do encounters, and they can have much better gear than the WF raiders will have in the first couple weeks. Setting a high bar that challenges WF raiders for a few weeks but succumbs to those slow "soft nerfs" of the raid seems like it could be doable, just with a lot of difficulty.

It isn't really that... world first raiders rarely feature the best players in the game. They feature people playing wow for over a hundred hours a week running heroic a dozen time to funnel loot in bizarre comps of 16 hunters then class stacking in ways to break the fights on a per boss basis.

Usually most guilds that clear in the first 2 months have rather comparable gear to world first raiders just from them effetively farming heroic for months worth of lockouts in the first week.

[Relapses]

It isn't really that... world first raiders rarely feature the best players in the game. They feature people playing wow for over a hundred hours a week running heroic a dozen time to funnel loot in bizarre comps of 16 hunters then class stacking in ways to break the fights on a per boss basis.

Hard, hard disagree with you there. There's more to being a WF raider than just having ridiculous amounts of time to pour into the game for every RWF. You can check the logs for a lot of these raiders and you'll see that they're consistently performing in the top 1% of their given class/role. It's that consistency that separates a WF raider from the mere mortals able to no life the game once every four or five months.

[Temp name]

Either 1 week because the last bosses are undertuned jokes, or 2 weeks because they'll nerf them into a doable state when it becomes obvious that they hilariously overtuned something
In the unlikely event that they actually tune it well (I would actively bet against this happening) it might be a reset kill on week 3

[Log Cabin]

Hard, hard disagree with you there. There's more to being a WF raider than just having ridiculous amounts of time to pour into the game for every RWF. You can check the logs for a lot of these raiders and you'll see that they're consistently performing in the top 1% of their given class/role. It's that consistency that separates a WF raider from the mere mortals able to no life the game once every four or five months.

Was comparing them to other CE raiders mostly. There isn't that large of a divide till you get to world 300 and further down or at least that used to be the cut off point im not sure how the population has held up.

[Kralljin]

Hard to say, but i expect a clownfiesta when 3 bosses aren't being tested at all, the last boss that i recall that hasn't received any testing at all was Ra-den in ToT.

...and that didn't go over that well.

[Biomega]

It isn't really that... world first raiders rarely feature the best players in the game.

That depends entirely on how you define "best". One might argue that consistently finishing in, say, the Top5 of the WF race is, in fact, what MAKES you one of "the best players". And the time invested is absolutely part of it - skill is only one aspect of being "the best", practice and dedication are a part of it as well. You can be super skilled all you like, but if you don't put in the hours you'll never reach full potential (and this goes for things other than WoW, too).

Many people also look to things like logs and meters, but that is an extremely skewed picture. Ranking #1 on a fight's DPS charts requires a very specific, very narrow skill set - and while many WF raiders do also in fact tend to rank highly, a lot of the top logs (particularly towards the end of a tier) are simply people who know how to stack things in favor of DPS ranking and not people who are good all-around players with all the requisite skills to show WF-worthy performance.

[Revamp Man]

They said the reason for gating was actually story.
https://ptr.wowhead.com/news/sepulch...duin-in-324846

Which makes 0 sense because Nathria only made sense at the end of the campaign but it’s blizz

I’m waiting for 10.0

[s_bushido]

Which makes 0 sense because Nathria only made sense at the end of the campaign but it’s blizz

Nathria is canonically cleared about halfway through the campaign. By the time you got up to hauling Kael'thas around Revendreth in that campaign, I'm pretty sure the raid had already been open for at least a couple weeks. Everything to do with Denathrius, his anima-stealing shenanigans, and the lead-up to the raid was covered in the leveling story.

[Alanar]

Who cares who kills it first anyway?

Want to be the first to get a signed poster from the raidleader?

[shise]

Min. 1 month.
likely month and a half.

They will make sure to make the fights as broken as possible to gain time of actual fresh content.

- - - Updated - - -

Hard to say, but i expect a clownfiesta when 3 bosses aren't being tested at all, the last boss that i recall that hasn't received any testing at all was Ra-den in ToT.

...and that didn't go over that well.

I think that we need more of that.

Today we get way too much data mining and testing before it comes out. That only contributes to burn out faster.

I don´t say do what FF14 does (that is plain stupid), but the beta and PTR should be far more limited in access and duration.
Also, ensure that things don´t get data mined...

[Kralljin]

I think that we need more of that.

Today we get way too much data mining and testing before it comes out. That only contributes to burn out faster.

I don´t say do what FF14 does (that is plain stupid), but the beta and PTR should be far more limited in access and duration.
Also, ensure that things don´t get data mined...

I'm up for it when Blizzard steps up their QA department, because when bosses are
1) bugged
2) have a workaround / cheese
the devs need to pull a good solution out of their ass within a short timeframe, which can easily produce a less statisfying solution.

But i doubt that this somehow combats burnout, people will still learn it within hours of a release, because information spreads like wildfire on the internet.

[Woobels]

It's basically impossible to predict this because tuning is such a delicate thing. For all we know Anduin is bugged to fuck and unkillable or undertuned and he dies in a day so everyone is immediately on Zovaal. Probably 2 weeks though, I hope it's not gonna be as much of a bugfest as N'zoth was.

[Aedruid]

lol that's horrifying, but I guess WF raiders are used to being beta testers so it doesn't matter if it is in PTR or live

I dont think any bosses should be on the PTR. Blizzard needs to test their own content thoroughly and not allow spoilers to be present before a patch goes live. Also along the lines of the WF race, it would separate the weak from the strong!

- - - Updated - - -

Hard, hard disagree with you there. There's more to being a WF raider than just having ridiculous amounts of time to pour into the game for every RWF. You can check the logs for a lot of these raiders and you'll see that they're consistently performing in the top 1% of their given class/role. It's that consistency that separates a WF raider from the mere mortals able to no life the game once every four or five months.

I agree with this, being a WF raider is tough. Being able to perfect mechanics while being the top 1% in your role is hard AF

[Maell]

2 weeks. You would only get 3 weeks if last 4 bosses would be all 200-300+ attempts.

[Revamp Man]

I'm up for it when Blizzard steps up their QA department, because when bosses are
1) bugged
2) have a workaround / cheese
the devs need to pull a good solution out of their ass within a short timeframe, which can easily produce a less statisfying solution.

But i doubt that this somehow combats burnout, people will still learn it within hours of a release, because information spreads like wildfire on the internet.

The reason their QA sucks is because they don’t really run anything in the way players do
They god mod testing sometimes and the players actually understand the fights better lol

[OokOok]

None of the last 4 bosses are going to be on PTR at all.

4+weeks. They will have 0 knowledge of any fight.

It's called datamining, they do it and they will do it. They will have a plan prior before reaching the final boss, things may change as they always do, and things may be diff when they actually get there, but the datamining will give them an idea of what to expect and several pre based plans of how to attempt pulls.

[Kralljin]

The reason their QA sucks is because they don’t really run anything in the way players do
They god mod testing sometimes and the players actually understand the fights better lol

They godmode testing because of time contraints most likely, if you're being given a day to test 8 fights, you have about on hour each, which isn't nearly enough to completely test every aspect of an encounter.
Here i'm not even counting the theorycrafting, of just thinking about what could work on a fight or how you could cheese it.

And that assumes that they can even field an entire 20man raid (for Mythic) internally.

[Mentacyde]

In reality, doesn't the race begin immediately after the precious patch's endboss dies? PTR testing, sims, practice w new setups, and the heroic week of clearing beforehand?

Adapting to the new changes isn't particularly difficult but I imagine it's incredibly time consuming especially if you aren't on the clock at that point.