Challenge mode Changes/Additions

[Marston]

Hello there.

I haven't done a single challenge mode yet and I am not sure if I ever will, but out of curiousity I would like to know what Blizzard did to spice things up.

I know that all Enemies have ~50% more health and deal more damage. There are some larger packs or even additional packs. What would like to know, Blizzard said that mobs and/or bosses would maybe get a new mechanic. I know that the Jinyu boss in the Jade Temple has something, but that's about it. Are there any more new mechanics?

As said, it's more out of curiousity, because these changes can't be looked up in the Dungeon Journal and WoWpedia also doesn't have challenge mode changes yet (at least not since the last time I looked there).

Any answers pretty please? =3

[Caduceus]

Honestly, it won't be any fun if someone tells you here. ~1/3 of the bosses have something new added to them, I guess, maybe a bit more, as well as most of the trash having some of their spells buffed so you need to interrupt/control/cc.

If you can get ~4 guildies with the same mindset, goals and on the same skill level as you, I suggest going there. At least go for all silvers, it's pretty simple and requires like 1-3 tries depending on dungeon and rng. But it's fun, and gives you a chance to figure out tactics yourself instead of having read them on some webpage. I personally did not realize how much I missed this from TBC/vanilla until I set my foot in this new feature.

And the Jinyu boss is the exact same, boring piece of shit except his pools last longer, or some shit like that... not much of a spoiler so meh. He still sucks

[Playintrafic]

Challenge modes are simply harder versions of the heroic dungeons. Trash hits hard, real hard. Bosses are a mechanics/dps check.

The can be cleared by any 463 geared group that wants to do it and is prepared to cc. But getting better than bronze requires coordination, and knowledge of your classes.

[kaiadam]

In addition to new/bigger trash packs:

Temple of the Jade Serpent
- Wise Mari does continuous damage to anyone more than 20 yards away from him.
- I (think) you always get the pain twins instead of the sun boss. We got gold in like 45 min here so not much testing, but they did un-randomize Yan-zhu so I'd imagine they'd do so here as well.

Stormstout Brewery
- Each bopper hammer grants 1 charge instead of 3 on Hoptallus' trash
- Yan-Zhu always has bloat, jump/lines, and adds as his special abilities

Mogu'Shan Palace
- I get the feeling that there are a few new special abilities on Trial of the Kings, but I'm not sure whether they're actually new or if we just killed them too fast in normal to see. 2nd (caster) guy has a magnetic shield that sucks everyone in and does lots of pbaoe, 3rd guy does a meteor that we group up for.

Shado-pan Monastery
- Nothing new as far as I could tell

Gate of the Setting Sun
- The insect swarms summoned on the last boss has some way of 1-shotting tanks when they're dying

Siege of Temple of Niuzao
- The first boss hits everyone with detonation no matter where you stand. It's ideal to kill him before his first detonate anyway.
- There is a gong that you can whack at the end of each wave of the gauntlet that makes the next wave come faster.

Scarlet Halls
- Not entirely sure on this, but I think the the last boss' book burn spell has a larger aoe than it does on normal. Not that he should be getting burn books off in the first place.

Scarlet Monastery
- Pulling the last boss will also pull everything alive in the Cathedral itself, as it did back pre-MoP.
- Whitemane has a new spell: dominate mind. Interruptible and does what it implies.

Scholomance
- First boss debuffs random non-tank with a pulsing friendlyfire blue fire thing.
- Killing the wrong Jandice illusion does fairly significant partywide damage.
- Gandling's army of the dead ghouls (failed test subjects? failed experiment?) - he does this when he ports tank or healer - are very damaging. As in the tank takes 100k hits from them. They also do a fairly large explosion when they suicide after 8 seconds.

That's all that I can remember.

[Vereesa]

I'd just like them to shave about 5 minutes off of each gold time or alternatively just make them a lot harder. As it is, anyone and their mom have a pretty easy time streamrolling through gold and I just don't think that's right.

[theyanger]

I'd just like them to shave about 5 minutes off of each gold time or alternatively just make them a lot harder. As it is, anyone and their mom have a pretty easy time streamrolling through gold and I just don't think that's right.

Yeah, we know you're amazing or whatever, but this is ridiculous. You know that's not true, and that's why there's a leaderboard - if you want to be better than everyone else prove it there. I'm not sure how exclusive you think these sets are supposed to be but clearly it's never going to be that.

[chairmanmao]

I'd just like them to shave about 5 minutes off of each gold time or alternatively just make them a lot harder. As it is, anyone and their mom have a pretty easy time streamrolling through gold and I just don't think that's right.

Look at me! Look how good I am!

[Playintrafic]

I'd just like them to shave about 5 minutes off of each gold time or alternatively just make them a lot harder. As it is, anyone and their mom have a pretty easy time streamrolling through gold and I just don't think that's right.

Eh, not anyone and their mom. We are still working on getting silver. I'm sure if I had a better healer, or perhaps if our healer went disc, I got better at controlling the packs, and we had a 3 stun combo, yes it would be easier. But no, these are tuned about right.

No one would be getting golds if they were 5 minutes less time allowed. If you really need to swangle your epeen, try getting on the world rankings.

But saying everyone and their mom can do it, well there are 2, maybe 3 guilds on my realm capable of clearing them.

[Sakurako]

I'd just like them to shave about 5 minutes off of each gold time or alternatively just make them a lot harder. As it is, anyone and their mom have a pretty easy time streamrolling through gold and I just don't think that's right.

You are doing it as a blood dk.
Get a clue scrub

[Playintrafic]

http://www.wowprogress.com/challenge/us/gnomeregan

Apothesis, Powershift, KoK, for the most part the only guilds clearing them consistently.

Apoth is a shit bag guild, they transfer to a slow progress server to try and impress us with how much better they are than the rest. Gets over taken in realm rankings by a new gnomer guild.

Powershift are cool guys, but not as progression minded.

KoK (us) are not even a progression guild. Were casually hardcore.

I just wish my group would get a bit more stable, and put in some more time to work on them.

[Deleted]

Yeah, we know you're amazing or whatever, but this is ridiculous. You know that's not true, and that's why there's a leaderboard - if you want to be better than everyone else prove it there. I'm not sure how exclusive you think these sets are supposed to be but clearly it's never going to be that.

5 minutes is obviously a pretty big exaggeration (far as certain instances go) but I don't entirely disagree with him. Figuring out tactics and finding equally skilled players of the right classes was the only really hard part about CMs, now that every single person that wants to do them has access to such information as soon as they go on Google they are trivial at most. Most times are so forgiving that certain instances even allow gold medals after wipes and that's why you see groups like Vereesa's getting Scholo done with like 6 minutes to spare - there's just an absurd amount of room for improvement while still getting the best medal you can get. I was very excited for them when my group first started and I can't deny they were a lot of fun to complete but I was a little disappointed at how painlessly fast we were done with them all and how little improving times really mattered after that.

Not implying we're amazing but my group did them all in like 3 days, got golds during our test runs on like Siege and SM or something, the only instance that took over an hour was Brewery - our setup was good and the players were about as good as you can get but still, we have like the second or third best score on that leaderboard thing without even min-maxing, experimenting with different tactics, etc. and I think that's a little sad (even if there is a lack of people actually trying to do the challenges). I can see why they'd want to make copper and silver very accessible, if it was super hard to do most people would have no reason or will to even try and that'd be stupid but having gold be so easy kind of puts the "top" groups off; me and my group would like to get better times but none of us have a real reason to, we want to get something together and then we're like "why" and just postpone it. Obviously personal gratification or whatever is reason enough to want to do something but I'm not ashamed to admit I'd like some other vanity item or items of sorts to show for it.

Making gold much harder to get would be problematic and will never happen but I'm kind of secretly hoping they add a platinum medal or some shit like that eventually that's actually hard as fuck to get and has a reward rather than what we have now, where the only reason to get better times is to feel better about ourselves and our accomplishments in an online game and no one knowing about it or having a (1) next to our name on wowprogress or something.

[Playintrafic]

Dude Im glad it was so easy for you.

If I could get the right classes, and get people that wanted to do them everyday, then yes we could probably get them all done in like a week or something. But we can't, we are gonna be working on them a while.