Normal mode boss difficulty and gating issue

[Deleted]

I pretty much agree. What I would add is that stoneguard is a big cockblock for a lot of people. Feng falls over and then people struggle with gara again. Spirit kings on normal is a trash pack with epics. No way on earth that gara and spirit kings are equal on difficulty.

how can anyone struggle on gara, on our progress we 1-2 shotted it like some undertuned bullshit, same with spirit kings

[jfragment]

So I decided to go back and look at our DBM wipe count. The first image was built on how I felt the bosses were in difficulty. This is by our wipe count. It tells a completely different story. Pretty interesting that the data doesn't match how I feel. I guess boss difficulty sometimes deals with a lot of outside factors like roster boss, annoying apps, core healer having the flu for 2 weeks, etc etc.

[Deleted]

Terrace of Endless Loot is right - we got lucky enough because our GM had a friend that had HOF complete already and he lent us TES every week for free epix
For me wipe count shows something like this (note that I guild swapped a lot during beginning, went 10 -> 25 -> 10 again) Elegon and any further kill is done in my current guild, with pretty good players in roster IMO.

Stone guards - around 15 wipes
Feng - 50 wipes on 25 man (this was epic fail) 4 or 5 wipes on 10-man
Garajal - around 5 wipes
Spirit Kings - <5 wipes
Elegon - a LOT of wipes, total of about 70 before first kill
Will of Emp - 5 wipes

Imperial Vizjer - 10-15 wipes
Blade lord - ~15 wipes
Garalon - around 30-40 (not so many as Elegon tho, first berserk timer problems here)
Wind Lord - 20 wipes (got it right the moment people learned how to CC)
Ambershaper - around 25 wipes (hardest normal in this tier - it was a draw in fact, the boss was dead but so was everyone in the raid - yes it was a kill and wipe in one)
Empress - 8 wipes (surprisingly good raider performance here, killed the same night Unsok went down)

Protectors elite mode - 3 or 4 wipes
Tsulong - around 10
Lei Shi - around 10 too
Sha of Fear - ~15 wipes, awfully long fight but overall bland and basic

I'm about to start HC progression next reset. 50 wipes on Feng is pretty unexpected to see but that 25-man guild was epic failure, it broke into two 10-mans and 8/10 of my current guild are those former 25-man raiders.

Out of all three instances Heart of Fear seems to be most accurately tuned, starts out moderate but picks up quickly in difficulty. But this difficult bosses aren't gear cockblocks, bosses after Garalon are even harder. Elegon is kind of hard, being placed before really easy encounter that is Will (similar to Spine HC which was harder than Madness HC, esp at higher nerf percentages), and Terrace is what it is - epic gear farming place. No reason whatsoever to lock it from non-6/6 HOF people, because in fact HOF is a lot harder instance than Terrace mechanics wise.

[Coolascancer]

Agree that terrace is lol and hof is only half lol. I suppose my idea of difficulty is skewed compared to most people,(cant fathom as to why elegon is considered hard, maybe the last 20 percent when you are undergeared as a healer) but the only thing i can think of now that would be hard to do (i havent entered heroics yet and as such have an immature opinion but we are talking about normals) is IF during wind lord you had to run between wind bombs with like 1 pixel inbetween as a safe zone. this situation might occur but its certainly not mandatory. The rest of the fights are face roll if you can use a keyboard and mouse reasonably well.

[jfragment]

Agree that terrace is lol and hof is only half lol. I suppose my idea of difficulty is skewed compared to most people,(cant fathom as to why elegon is considered hard, maybe the last 20 percent when you are undergeared as a healer) but the only thing i can think of now that would be hard to do (i havent entered heroics yet and as such have an immature opinion but we are talking about normals) is IF during wind lord you had to run between wind bombs with like 1 pixel inbetween as a safe zone. this situation might occur but its certainly not mandatory. The rest of the fights are face roll if you can use a keyboard and mouse reasonably well.

I understand that you are amazing at this video game. I'm being sincere. But you must be able to see that you are (well assume since your perspective is that of a 1-3% top guild and if it's not I can't see how you think all of this is easy when you're 9 weeks in and haven't killed a single heroic) not the norm. I also understand the need to post this for personal recognition or validation. BUT when you look at the numbers on WoWProgress, you can see that Elegon IS in fact hard for the majority of the raiding community. The first kill of elegon was by Exodus on Oct 2, 2012 and as of this writing that is about 9+ weeks ago. Only 56% of all raiding guilds that killed stoneguard have killed Elegon. That, by definition in any wow tier, is a hard boss ESPECIALLY for not being the last boss. It's reminicent of Val in BWL to me. I think it's completely overtuned and should be fixed so all those guilds that could kill Will, 3 bosses in ToES, and 2 in HoF. It doesn't make any sense to keep the raiding community back if there are so many easy bosses AFTER this guy. I understand they will be able to outgear the encounter but it feels much more like a HM encounter as everyone as to be near perfect to win at the "casual" level.

A lot of you won't agree. And you'll state things like "faceroll" and "IF during wind lord you had to run between wind bombs with like 1 pixel inbetween as a safe zone" .. but I just don't get telling people who may be struggling on Elegon (46% of the community) that it's SOO easy. It just seems kind of silly as it simply isn't true. My guild has been fighting the roster boss like crazy and even we're 2/6hm 6/6 4/4. So by no means are we fancy or world first but I can put myself in the shoes of others or even just look at the numbers and see which bosses are the cock blocks and they are simply in the wrong places and they should be fixed.

Ahhh end rant. Back to being a dad /ducksFlames. -- just for full disclosure here is my guild / progress / dates -- just to not be fancy but to show where my perspective is coming from - http://www.wowprogress.com/guild/us/...nis/Adult+Swim

[Deleted]

From my experience the only bosses we had problem with is Elegon and Garalon mainly due to gear. We were stuck at Elegon for 2 weeks also because we didn't have a complete roster at start of MoP.
Terrace of Endless is way to easy compared to HoF. Some of it might be that we spend 2 weeks gearing up in HoF and that way Terrace just felt easier, but still we 2 shotted elitemode. I could understand if it was normal order of Protecters but elitemode didn't feel hard on normal mode. We cleared Terrace in 1 raid night after spending 2-3 weeks clearing HoF, so Terrace felt to easy.

[KaPe]

Monstrosity explosion isn't what kills the raid, it's the debuff he puts on player with explosion. Unless you have Disc priest shielding that person, he will most likely die.

The what? There's no such thing. The only thing Monstrosity does besides Explosions, is AOE stomp in melee range, and throwing tank at random player. No 'debuffs' anywhere.

[NeverStop]

I understand that you are amazing at this video game. I'm being sincere. But you must be able to see that you are (well assume since your perspective is that of a 1-3% top guild and if it's not I can't see how you think all of this is easy when you're 9 weeks in and haven't killed a single heroic) not the norm. I also understand the need to post this for personal recognition or validation. BUT when you look at the numbers on WoWProgress, you can see that Elegon IS in fact hard for the majority of the raiding community. The first kill of elegon was by Exodus on Oct 2, 2012 and as of this writing that is about 9+ weeks ago. Only 56% of all raiding guilds that killed stoneguard have killed Elegon. That, by definition in any wow tier, is a hard boss ESPECIALLY for not being the last boss. It's reminicent of Val in BWL to me. I think it's completely overtuned and should be fixed so all those guilds that could kill Will, 3 bosses in ToES, and 2 in HoF. It doesn't make any sense to keep the raiding community back if there are so many easy bosses AFTER this guy. I understand they will be able to outgear the encounter but it feels much more like a HM encounter as everyone as to be near perfect to win at the "casual" level.

A lot of you won't agree. And you'll state things like "faceroll" and "IF during wind lord you had to run between wind bombs with like 1 pixel inbetween as a safe zone" .. but I just don't get telling people who may be struggling on Elegon (46% of the community) that it's SOO easy. It just seems kind of silly as it simply isn't true. My guild has been fighting the roster boss like crazy and even we're 2/6hm 6/6 4/4. So by no means are we fancy or world first but I can put myself in the shoes of others or even just look at the numbers and see which bosses are the cock blocks and they are simply in the wrong places and they should be fixed.

Ahhh end rant. Back to being a dad /ducksFlames. -- just for full disclosure here is my guild / progress / dates -- just to not be fancy but to show where my perspective is coming from - http://www.wowprogress.com/guild/us/...nis/Adult+Swim

My friend's guild was stuck on Garalon for 3 weeks. This week, their raid leader bought an Empress boost from us for 100k. Honestly never expected to be able to sell boosts this early on in an xpac, seeing as no T14 bosses have a 100% mount drop. More gates please so we can fill up the guild bank by selling boosts.

[Maleric]

I understand that you are amazing at this video game. I'm being sincere. But you must be able to see that you are (well assume since your perspective is that of a 1-3% top guild and if it's not I can't see how you think all of this is easy when you're 9 weeks in and haven't killed a single heroic) not the norm. I also understand the need to post this for personal recognition or validation. BUT when you look at the numbers on WoWProgress, you can see that Elegon IS in fact hard for the majority of the raiding community. The first kill of elegon was by Exodus on Oct 2, 2012 and as of this writing that is about 9+ weeks ago. Only 56% of all raiding guilds that killed stoneguard have killed Elegon. That, by definition in any wow tier, is a hard boss ESPECIALLY for not being the last boss. It's reminicent of Val in BWL to me. I think it's completely overtuned and should be fixed so all those guilds that could kill Will, 3 bosses in ToES, and 2 in HoF. It doesn't make any sense to keep the raiding community back if there are so many easy bosses AFTER this guy. I understand they will be able to outgear the encounter but it feels much more like a HM encounter as everyone as to be near perfect to win at the "casual" level.

A lot of you won't agree. And you'll state things like "faceroll" and "IF during wind lord you had to run between wind bombs with like 1 pixel inbetween as a safe zone" .. but I just don't get telling people who may be struggling on Elegon (46% of the community) that it's SOO easy. It just seems kind of silly as it simply isn't true. My guild has been fighting the roster boss like crazy and even we're 2/6hm 6/6 4/4. So by no means are we fancy or world first but I can put myself in the shoes of others or even just look at the numbers and see which bosses are the cock blocks and they are simply in the wrong places and they should be fixed.

Ahhh end rant. Back to being a dad /ducksFlames. -- just for full disclosure here is my guild / progress / dates -- just to not be fancy but to show where my perspective is coming from - http://www.wowprogress.com/guild/us/...nis/Adult+Swim

The likely reason so many guilds have trouble getting past Elegon is that it's hard to carry people through the fight. So it's not hard for "the majority of the raiding community," it's hard for the one or two baddies per guild who are holding back the majority of the raiding community.

[blargh312]

IMO Stone Guards was the hardest fight in Vaults aside from Elegon. The rest were all pretty easy.

[Nivrax]

The what? There's no such thing. The only thing Monstrosity does besides Explosions, is AOE stomp in melee range, and throwing tank at random player. No 'debuffs' anywhere.

Amber Shaper continue to use his skills through phase 2, including Parasitic Growth. Get this on person with high remaining time, explosion go off, target needs to be healed and debuff is going nasty very early and snowballs from there.

[volrath50]

IMO Stone Guards was the hardest fight in Vaults aside from Elegon. The rest were all pretty easy.

Yeah, for uncoordinated social guilds, a lot of them cannot get past Stone Guard. I'd really be curious to know how many are stuck there. I know my brothers are in a social guild that cleared 30% nerfed normal Dragon Soul, but have not managed to get Stone Guard below 70% in over 50+ wipes.

[Kalmah]

Amber Shaper continue to use his skills through phase 2, including Parasitic Growth. Get this on person with high remaining time, explosion go off, target needs to be healed and debuff is going nasty very early and snowballs from there.

If you have a disc priest the debuff is a complete non-issue.

[PBitt]

Well...we are definitely carrying a few people in my ten man raid, but the only ones that took some time to kill were Elegon, Garalon, Empress...and...ugh...Ambershaper, because vehicles are way too hard for some people.

MSV: Elegon was the only boss in MSV that I felt had an overtuned requirements compared to the rest of the raid...I mean we wiped on him about 35 times I guess (1 shot him ever since) and we then proceeded to one-shot Will of the Emperor with zero deaths. I really don't feel any of the other bosses in there were overtuned, the other 5 are around the same difficulty....even some half-competent raiders should be getting these bosses down in only a handful of tries. especially with all this LFR gear (and the experience) I assume people have by now. If they can't, there is some serious L2P issues going on which is not fault of the encounters. I've looked at a lot of logs for guilds struggling with this kill and the dps are all 40k or lower in 480ish gear. so even if the encounter was tank and spank, they'd still be having a bad time.

HoF/ToES: Mostly well-tuned, TBH, we got held up at Garalon because we had to 3 heal it because we only had one good healer at the time *and* we had 2 sub 50k dpsers in addition to not having any really OP classes for the fight like a rogue. Amber Shaper sucked because the vehicles were way too hard of a concept for some. The other four I didn't mention feel well tuned and I would say they are indeed in roughly ascending order of difficulty, not that the other 2 are terribly hard, but when you have people that can't carry their weight, then it gets tedious. This is why lots of guilds have problems on those bosses. ToES is undertuned for sure for a raid that comes after HoF, because HoF is certainly more difficult all-around.

[Aceshigh]

I took my 10 man into Terrace and we 2 shot protectors on Elite, none of us having any PTR experience or anything. It would have been a 1 shot but we had a healer DC in p3. We then sailed through Tsulong and Le Shi with I think 5 wipes total between them. At first I was absolutely puzzled how this could happen, the instance after HOF being so drastically easier than Amber-Shaper and Empress (even though Empress only took us about 9 attempts). Then it dawned on me: Blizzard had intended to release HOF and Terrace at the same time, meaning they probably had the first few bosses in each tuned to be progressed on at the same time, killing the first bosses of Terrace before you'd go and kill the final couple in HOF. It was a last minute decision to split the two and I would bet ANYTHING that is why Terrace felt like it was tuned as a joke. Regardless of the last minute split though, elite protectors on normal was beyond laughable in its tuning, was not expecting that at all.

[sarasun]

Garalon was hard when we first did it, mainly because we had no rogue, no warrior, and our DPS DK was soaking the cone attacks, meaning 0 melee cleave on legs. Made the DPS-check tight, even though other DPS checks have never been a problem for us.

[Thyranne]

Since we killed Elegon for the first time we've always 1 shot him (except when we wiped at 100k because I was on my laptop (4 FPS ftw) and couldn't pop my defensive cooldowns.

It took us 2 attempts to kill the Will of the Emperor (in our 1st attempt our DK dc'd when we started).

Took my guild 1 week to kill Garalon then it took us 3 attempts to kill Wind Lord (First 2 attempts people were failing at the CC's). I was the top 2 healer as a protection paladin with Glyph of the Battle Healer.

Now we are stuck at the empress because our monk tank gets destroyed after 2 secs into phase 2. Seriously, we get to phase 2 with np when he picks his adds he dies really really fast.

We'll probably have him kiting them next week.

[NightZero88]

For my guild we are not amazing, we're only 5/6 2/6 at the moment however we only managed to kill Elegon last night. When we first went in to Elegon we couldn't get him down in 2 protectors. We only put about 15 attempts into it though. After that we went to HoF and killed the first two in about a week. Now we're at Garalon and having some issues again but we have only been raiding 1/2 nights for the past month due to the holidays. Since we downed Elegon we'll probably kill Will since its supposedly very easy but again due to holidays that won't happen until at least next week.

All that being said, Elegon is a very hard boss DPS/tactics/healing wise for being the 4th boss in the first raid. It is way overtuned considering Will is easier and even the first and 2nd bosses in HoF are easier. Eventually you will get the gear to beat it (like we did) but it's a bit silly that most guilds will move to the second raid rather than finishing the first due to a boss being very difficult.

[fangless]

The first three bosses in Terrace don't have many difficult to grasp mechanics. That's probably why it's much more simple than the 2nd portion of HoF.

It's a shame that you need to do HoF to get to Terrace, but the item levels are the same :P And it's less difficult. /shrug.


At least there is a progression path there, and it gives you stuff to work towards instead of just skipping MSV and killing Sha then twiddling your thumbs.

[Deleted]

This seems pretty accurate. Last night we went to Terrace for first time, and 2 shoted elite protectors, killed tsullong in 6-th or something try, and killed Lei on first go without even knowing tactics that much. Had 3 wipes on Sha, but we called it a night, gonna kill it today.