Page 1 of 18
1
2
3
11
... LastLast
  1. #1
    Deleted

    Defining an exploit vs. "clever use"; the Ensidia and Paragon debate

    edit: Adding some basic facts and pointers everyone seems to be missing... Also, please learn to read more than five lines if you intend to add meaningful conversation or argumentation to the thread. It's bloated enough as it is with one-sided opinions. I for one don't care whether you personally feel one way or the other; what I do care about is why you've come to think as you do. Hint: if you're clueless as to what this thread is about, scroll down to below the quotes in this post.

    - Ensidia's ban was from LK25 NORMAL MODE, not HM (just to get facts straight)
    - Saronite Bombs were in fact part of every Engineer-skilled dps-class's rotation at the time (EJ was recommending the use of them, among others)
    - Rip did NOT keep the Stolen Power damage buff after being refreshed via Glyph of Shred nor the Blood in the Water talent
    - every single ability in-game can benefit from Stolen Power, excluding e.g. Deep Freeze (and now Rip and Bane of Doom)
    - this is not the first time a world-n:th kill was done with a class-stacked raid; SK Gaming used a lot of Resto Shamans in Sunwell, Stars used 7 Warlocks on Yogg-Saron +0 etc. (also, see Xaar-quotes below regarding the reasons for stacking a class)
    - Stolen Power is further nerfed on the PTR at the moment, decreasing its dmg bonus to 5% from 15% (putting 150 stacks at 750% vs. 2250%); this further nerf isn't yet live, putting e.g. Method's kill at 15% still (without Rip and BoD benefitting). Something to keep in mind when argumenting legitimacy or illegitimacy of post-kill hotfixed or patched abilities... Also, see Hermanni's quote here below regarding the state of some of the fights they've faced and Blizzard's constant bugfixing and balancing

    Quote Originally Posted by Hermanni View Post
    Well I'm glad the mods in here know what they're talking about, at any rate.

    Unfortunate as it is we don't really have any crystal orb which tells us how Blizzard intended us to kill the bosses. We still are, whether we like it or not, in a way the forefront of beta testing of these bosses, regardless of if it's done on assigned beta realms or not. When you compete for a first kill, you don't really have the luxury of thinking "oh gosh this boss seems imbalanced, I guess we should make a ticket about it, disband the raid and come again tomorrow to see if it's been changed." You're right when you point out how the bosses have been changed, I can give you a quick overview of a few bosses.

    Halfus: Atonement healing was used by many guilds in killing the boss. While the boss is relatively easy and unimportant, the way Atonement healed past the Mortal Strike debuff was clearly bugged, however the method was available to everyone and it was so commonly used it hardly mattered. It's a good example of a ability or a talent working in a way that was understandably hard for the boss developers to foresee.

    Valiona & Theralion: Many guilds used Grounding Totems or Guardian Spirits to avoid the Blackouts, former of which was later changed by Blizzard to not work. This is slightly on the borderline of using class skills, but it's effectively something Blizzard overlooked and guilds used in order to remain competitive against other guilds who could just as well have been using them.

    Ascendant Council: Here we got loads of shit on us for being "stackers", even the boss was downright impossible without a ranged DPS heavy raid. How awkward it was when nobody cried for injustice when the issue with melee DPS was fixed right after our kill, making the boss kill more obtainable to guilds who hadn't been able to fill their raid with ranged DPS.

    Cho'gall: In here, our Corrupting Adherent kite was fixed a while after our kill, and the Prayer of Mending healing used by some guilds a while after that. Again, the matter is quite clear if you look at it from our point of view: Why on earth would you try to kill adds that are designed to die by themselves? So we used a tactic that revolved around this insight, but alas, it did get changed.

    Sinestra: The only thing they changed after our kill were the flames around the eggs in p1, which was a rather minor change. Again when there's such a minor issue, you can't really except us to lay down and wait for it to maybe get fixed in a few hours or days when other guilds are rallying against us for the kill. We killed the boss the way she was, and had the twilight flames been there they wouldn't exactly have made the boss last for several days longer against us.

    Al'akir: Another boss to be nerfed after the first kills. Undoubtedly some people will somewhy think of the use of Slipstreams as some form of exploiting, but pre-nerf that felt like the only reasonable way to kill the boss. Having people sit in the "audience" also made the boss' enrage timer quite difficult, so it was a double-edged blade in a sense. Post-nerf the p1 is ridiculously easy compared to the previous versions, and when you have your whole raid in the fray from the pull, the enrage timer becomes trivial. There was also a "fun" bug about Al'akir that isn't too well known: When you entered p3, the boss became permanently bugged in a manner that he would completely stop casting Lightning Strikes in p1. This made the boss extremely easy, but it was still quite obviously bugged. So in order to get a "clean" kill, we had to disband the raid and wait 30 minutes 3 times following p3 or enrage wipes to "un-bug" the boss (GM's couldn't help with this), effectively wasting a lot of valuable time when any guild could have been closing in on the kill.

    Nefarian: It's a shame the Rip (and funnily enough, Bane of Doom, even that wasn't even very good) got nerfed, but again it's not something that was entirely predictable. When a boss is killed, rivaling top guilds are extremely swift in scouting everything from raid compositions to awkward talent choices in order to have an idea what kind of strategy was being used, and our strategy was fairly obvious from our raid comp. I'm fairly sure Blizzard didn't want all the early kills of Nefarian be done with many fluffy little cats, which is why they proceeded to nerf it. It was quite funny following these forums fill with misinformed posters pointing fingers to wherever they could reach, because we were perfectly aware that the boss was not bugged in any way and we hadn't used any illicit methods to circumvent any boss abilities. We invented a strategy and committed several days to it, and it did net us a kill. As unique as the strategy was with it's ups and downs, the boss was still hard to kill, which was probably perfectly intended. I've never doubted that our kill was completely legit, as well as Method's kill, even the boss had been changed in between.

    Oh and, just because so many people like to use the "fat crits, cannot be legit" -argument in this, I'll just try to give you an idea on how it works. Just think of your biggest crit or fattest DoT tick with your best ability with all your cooldowns blown into it, and then multiply that by 22.5. This works on every nuke and DoT in the game, excluding Deep Freeze, Rip and Bane of Doom, but the damage multiplier cannot be extended past the original DoT duration.

    Exploiting isn't really a matter of opinion, and as much as some of you would've liked to see us banned, we had clear enough conscience to know none were coming our way. The only time I ever felt like we might have been doing something exploitative in this expansion was when we kited the Magmaw adds around towards the ODS room, but this tactic somehow became commonly accepted and used like a perfectly normal boss kill tactic. I'll give you a fun fact: Blizzard hadn't ever foreseen the use of the famous "Spirit Soak" -tactic for H-LK, and one could say it hadn't been intended, even it was practically the only way to kill the boss with 0% and 5% zone buffs and soon became the common tactic used by most guilds. It just happens to be so that guilds under the pressure of the race for a first kill tend to think more out-of-the-box than the developers who designed the boss that seemed nearly impossible at the first glance.
    Quote Originally Posted by xaar View Post
    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.
    Quote Originally Posted by Citaxis View Post
    You made some excellent points, this is the only thing I would disagree with you on. It appeared that you knew that Rip was significantly more imbalanced than simply "a little", thus the benching of everything but some token buff bringers.
    Quote Originally Posted by xaar View Post
    A major reason for this is actually the fact that we happened to have a total of 10 feral Druids that we could bring in our main / raid alt roster. They were the best option, so we took them all in. The result wouldn't have been that much different had we replaced 4-5 Druids with Mages or DKs - it would probably have required minor adjustments to the kite and crackles and a couple of hours more on the boss.

    That's not to say the imbalances were little. They weren't - they just weren't exclusive to Druids, but rather the top 3-4 classes. The differences between the top 4 ranged from slight to moderate compared to the overall balance issues, which were huge. We'll never know, but I have a hunch that the boss wasn't killable at that gear level without stacking those top classes heavily, while it would have been doable with zero druids. Doable, but stupid :P

    The fact that there were that many options for outrageous dps was a major factor why we thought Rip was still ok. If the rest of the classes had been balanced, it would have been a different story. This is also probably the reason why so many of us are so defensive - people are (understandably) too focused on Druids and ignore the rest of the picture.

    What in my opinion actually made ferals from "a little better" to "ridiculously good" is the defensive cooldowns for crackle, not the top of the line dps. 11 DKs would have done enough dps as well had we had the roster for it, but the bears simply wouldn't die. That was absolutely huge, although unrelated to Rip.

    I know I can't give you much of an assurement, but my aim is to simply portray the encounter from my context in a honest way, not to give any excuses.

    - - - my original post: - - -

    I am starting to get more than a little ticked off at the constant flame war between loyal fanboys of every progress guild there is - erupting in 'world n:th'-threads! What the heck, people, can't you leave the fighting out of the war room so to speak?

    I'd like to have a (hopefully) meaningful discussion about the whole concept of what an actual exploit is, in regards to world n:th progression kills. Basically, what should be disallowed, what is disallowed, and most importantly, why is or should this be so?

    I'll start off by admitting my personal opinion currently does angle my points below (and yes, I happen to be Finnish, though in no way affiliated with Paragon), but I hope to show reason behind this. Please refrain from "lol omg [guild X] did so-and-so they should totally be banned!" or other immaturity; if you can explain why my points seem wrong, I will actually listen - and I hope others do as well. So yeah, "no fanboys allowed" unless they can behave.


    The biggest point of contention recently have been Paragon's world first Nefarian kill and comparing it to Ensidia's revoked world first Lich King kill. For the completely unaware, during the race for world first LK25HC kill (I think? Correct me on 10/25 if I'm wrong) the encounter was bugged so that, of all things, the Engineering-made Saronite Bombs caused the transition-phase ledges to respawn during a "normal" phase, thus negating the Val'kyrs' carry-and-drop gibbing of people. As for the latter, Nefarian has a mechanic (http://www.wowhead.com/spell=80573) whereby your next spell/ability gets a damage bonus; it's related to Nef's HM-only MC'ing of people (I admit, I am unsure as to the specifics, but bear with me).

    Blizzard decided that Ensidia were exploiting a bug (who got a three-day ban and had their achievement revoked) whereas Paragon weren't; they did, however, tone down the effects of Stolen Power (or rather, in my opinion rather lazily hotfix it, according to WoWpedia like this: Hotfix (2011-01-18): "Rip and Bane of Doom damage is no longer affected by the damage increase of Stolen Power when engaging Nefarian.").


    I mostly agree with Blizzard's decision, and here's the basics of why. At its core, it's a matter of bypassing a whole mechanic or not. I recall seeing logs where Ensidia completely stopped dps'ing the Val'kyr since they were not a threat, but I can't at the moment cite sources on that so I won't force the part. Paragon used an intended mechanic to gain as much damage as possible by using an ability which did as much damage as possible in that one "your next move" each time they gained it. They were basically playing an undertuned fight for that comp. Imagine if, to use a random example, Tazik's Shocker (Engineering glove tinker, Nature dmg clicky) would have completely prevented the Chromatic Prototypes (adds in ph2 i.e. the "Lava! Go go pillars!" phase on Nef) from casting Blast Nova - that would be bypassing an entire mechanic. Or say if having Cat's Swiftness enchants (+6 Agi, minor run speed) would have made you immune to being Mind Controlled by Nefarian. Or if standing in Efflorescence dispelled the MC. Random crap that causes an entire mechanic or part of the fight to be negated. This is exploiting, and while it is hard to notice, should not be "rolled with" if at all possible. It's not automatically the raid's fault if they don't realize what's going on of course, but... yeah. Not supposed to happen.

    You might remember seeing Mancheese's Recount page of the Dark Simulacrum bug on Sinestra, which they reported and didn't abuse; that I would call an unintentional and potentially abusable bug, despite ostensibly only "doing as much dps as possible" - Dark Sim even states it won't copy every PvE boss move, as this could indeed have hilarious results (for example nearly 0,2 billion damage). This would have made Sinestra ridiculously easy to defeat, whereas I think Paragon still had to actually do the Nefarian fight to its full extent despite stacking the almighty Druids - they just "did epic dps" by using the right abilities at the right times.


    If I press Rip when I have 5 CP's, that's maximizing Rip's damage. That's of course alright, Ferals are supposed to do that. What if an UH DK gives Unholy Frenzy to a well-geared Fury Warrior who then blows all his CDs? Still alright. What about standing in Arcanotron's Power Generator field on the ODS encounter while the boss being dps'd is in Toxitron's Poison Cloud? Fine. What about if the entire raid blows their cooldowns while doing that? Still fine. What about pressing Obliterate as Frost DK with Killing Machine while standing in said field-setup while the raid has Bloodlust right after the Moonkins popped Treants while... and so on. You get the point.

    But what if the world first ODS kill was done via all dps being Affli Warlocks who'd trade Dark Intent while standing in the fields mentioned above while all of that other ruckus is going on, more or less? (I think that tactic isn't extremely overpowered, but bear with me) Hell and high tide there would be "QQ" about it. Sure, ODS wasn't a tier-ending boss in any way, but imagine if a guild stacked Warlocks (or Feral Cats) on a tier-ending boss, thus maximising their dps (I hear Yogg-Saron's Lunatic Gaze on ph3 prevents you from dps'ing with anything but DoTs every now and again...). I'd consider all of this legal tender when it comes to beating those encounters.


    Yes, raid stacking (having for example 11 Druids) is not an exploit in my opinion; you choose the best tanks, healers and dps for the comp and job at hand from among the players and chars you have. Forcing people to limit one class to an arbitrary number is bordering on silly. Subtlety still subpar in PvE? Don't take Sub Rogues. Unholy still really awesome? Take that UH DK player of yours if he knows his stuff. Feral Cats really good for a given fight? Take those Ferals, maybe.

    Or what if I'd arbitrarily say that you couldn't stack all-caster dps on Sindragosa, thus minimizing the effects of Unchained Magic & Chilled to the Bone? Doesn't sound logical nor fair to tell people what a "correct" and "incorrect" comp is. I say you could run with an all-Paladin raid if you so please, if say the infamous "Bubble" proved to be useful on an encounter (assuming it doesn't literally break mechanics).


    So, what are your thoughts? Is it just bad tuning from Blizzard releasing so-and-so encounters as too easy? Are Blizzard responsibly for lacklustre encounter testing? What is "not legit" or "not fair" on prog fights? And please, I made an effort to convey an opinion with arguments for it. Do the same and you'll seem all the more awesome.

    Lastly, leave the 'world n:th'-threads for gratzing and such discussion. Flame wars and opinionated bashing doesn't belong there, and it makes everyone feel bad when someone's proud victories turn into troll-bridges on these forums.
    Last edited by mmoca898f3f219; 2011-02-02 at 04:00 PM.

  2. #2
    Well-written post, but unfortunately you're talking to brick walls.

  3. #3
    For me that's easy. Use common sense. If you stack a class use a special mechanic or something that gives you an extreme advantage your common sense should tell you "clearly the guy who designed that boss fight did not expect uns to have rogues stack spellpower cloth and get one million dps" or something like that. That's exploiting flaws in the mechanic of the boss or the class abilities.

    If you have a boss that casts something bad and you use the existing environment in a normal way (hide behind a pillar for example) that's legit and your common sense also tells you, that those pillars are there just to hide behind them. That's no exploit.

    tl;dr: Just use common sense and don't try to be a smartass - then you know very well what is ok to do and what not.
    Atoms are liars, they make up everything!

  4. #4
    Mechagnome Selxxa's Avatar
    10+ Year Old Account
    Join Date
    May 2010
    Location
    Halifax, NS
    Posts
    579
    Quote Originally Posted by halmotors View Post
    Well-written post, but unfortunately you're talking to brick walls.
    Yeah.. unfortunately OP is going to get a lot of "Hurr tl;dr QQ moar" posts. I myself didn't read the post (yet, at least), but I'll refrain from commenting until then. Future posters should do the same.
    We will stand above the city, rising high above the streets
    From tops of buildings we will look, at all that lies beneath our feet
    We will raise our hands above us, cold steel shining in the sun
    With these hands that will not bleed, my father's battle will be won!

    Drakkosh Zhysta Shivarra Tesela

  5. #5
    you just wrote 13 paragraphs about people who you don't know playing a video game in a way that is debatable
    <start epic wow theme>
    A world of limitless adventure. We cast the lords of shadow and flame back into the abyss.
    <more epic wow theme>
    We held the line against the rising tide of death itself.
    <epic music peaks>
    We have endured the breaking of the world.Now we face the Destroyer and we will end him.
    <cue Bennny Hill music>Pandas! Pokemon!

  6. #6
    Deleted
    Next to that, the "fanboys" you're talking about are never going to take time to read such long well-written posts, unfortunately =[

  7. #7
    Epic! Valanna's Avatar
    10+ Year Old Account
    Join Date
    Nov 2009
    Location
    Stockholm, Sweden
    Posts
    1,654
    I have a feeling we'll need Lysah's cleaver in this one as well. Well-written post, Andergard.

  8. #8
    At the end of the day it is Blizzard that decides what is an exploit and what isnt.

    Paragon was watched by Blizz developers, so I am 100% of the opinion there was no exploit, would Method or any other guild have been treated the same if they were the first? yes.

  9. #9
    Agree its a well written post - i'd agree that by completely bypassing a mechanic you are 'exploting' and that by 'manipulating you're advantages' (as it were) you are taking advantage but not 'exploiting'.

    However, i dont blame any guild pushing for the world first to try different things to see if it works. i can imagine ensidia finding that out by accident and seeing as they are one of the first (And few) guilds on it, they may assume its intended (perhaps others things / class abilities can do that which they didnt realise. perhaps you are meant to do that instead of killing the valkyr?). without stronger guidance / rules such as the above this will continue to happen.

    85 pala (tank1); 85 DK (tank2; 85 priest (unused), 85Drood (heals); 85 lock (dps); 85 warrior (Tank3) 85 hunter ;83 Shammy (Ele/Resto);65 rogue

  10. #10
    There's really no controversy. They stacked a particular class because it worked. They didn't bypass anything or bug out the fight. They were justified. The only ones who argue the opposite are morons who can't understand the simple difference between using a mechanic for the maximum benefit, and exploiting an encounter.

    Case closed.
    <a href="http://www.siglaunch.com/sigs/index.php"><img src="http://sigcdn.siglaunch.com/sigs/wow/.png" border="0"></a>

  11. #11
    I don't think it's very well written. Ensidia used a mechanic, which they found, to defeat a boss. Paragon used a mechanic which they found, to defeat a boss. If they hadn't stacked feral druids, knowing full well it was a broken mechanic, and thus exploiting that to ensure max dps I wouldn't consider it exploiting. However, they found this mechanic, knew it was broken for feral druids, and thus stacked feral druids. I think it only shows even more that it was an exploit when they haven't replicated a kill the next raid lockout.

    If Paragon had realized rip was bugged, used their normal raid comp, and benefitted from the ferals then good for them. However they went out of their way, to stack feral druids, because they knew it was a bugged mechanic with rip. Blizzard hot fixing the mechanic only shows even more that it was a bug, Paragon stacking shows they knew it existed, and were trying to exploit it.

    ---------- Post added 2011-01-30 at 10:20 AM ----------

    Quote Originally Posted by Retsucks View Post
    There's really no controversy. They stacked a particular class because it worked. They didn't bypass anything or bug out the fight. They were justified. The only ones who argue the opposite are morons who can't understand the simple difference between using a mechanic for the maximum benefit, and exploiting an encounter.

    Case closed.
    Blizzard doesn't state the mechanics of a fight anywhere. Using your logic, how was Ensidia to know that the purpose of the valks was to kill them and not just to take someone out of the fight (such as a disc priest) for 12 seconds?

  12. #12
    Is a world's first on ANYthing in wow this important? In a year, everyone will be pugging Nefarian just for the achievment and no one will care about who spanked him first.

    "Hey baby....I saw you looking at me from across the room and I just wanted to let you know.....I killed Nefarian before anyone else. That's right."

  13. #13
    Deleted
    In the end it is Blizzard who decide whether something is a legit kill or not.
    Following this logic: Paragon's druid stack kill was legit, and Ensidia's LK HC25 was not.

  14. #14
    Titan Gallahadd's Avatar
    10+ Year Old Account
    Join Date
    Aug 2009
    Location
    Beyond the 1% barrier.
    Posts
    14,177
    very well written post, and I pretty much agree with everything you said.

    I think it's actually very simple to distinguish with is an 'Expoloit' and what is 'Clever use' keep your example of LK25Hc and Nefarion.
    LK was an exploit because it was using an item in a way that allows you to TOTALLY bypass a fairly important mechanic of the fight, completely taking the Val'kyr our of the equation, and allowing that phase to be pretty much a cakewalk (I dont know about yall, but when we were doing LK the part that fucked my guild up the most was managing the Val'kyr and Defiles, if we'd been able to totally ignore the Val'kyr it would have made the fight insanely simple)

    in comparison the Nefarion Druid thing was 'Clever use' as they weren't totally bypassing a mechanic, they where using something the boss does, as part of the fight, to there advantage. The Stolen Power buff (as well as having AWESOME buff text seriously gratz on that one Blizz ) was an intended part of the fight, and was meant to be used in this way, not to QUITE the level that it was used, but nonetheless they where using a mechanic of the fight, in the way it was intended to be use.

    IF for instance they'd usde the Dark Sim bug to almost oneshot Sinestra THAT would have been abuse, because it's obviously not meant to work in that way, or if Ensidia had got through the Val'kyr phase using the Demonic Circle trick, that would be find because it's using a spell in a clever way to get round a mechanic, without being able to totally ignore it.

    really in the end it's like Kryos said, use your common sense, if it turns out throwing Elune Stones at Ragnaros makes him rage out and die, then that is clearly a bug and doing it would be exploiting. However if he casts a buff on someone that says 'your next damaging attack will deal lolwtf% extra damage' then you'd better fucking drop EVERY CD you have, and make that one hit COUNT, because that is using the encounter mechanics to your advantage.
    Check out the blog I write for LEGENDARY Indie Label Flicknife Records:

    Blog Thirty is live! In which we discuss our latest releases, and our great new line of T-shirts.
    https://www.flickniferecords.co.uk/blog/item/30-blog-30

  15. #15
    Quote Originally Posted by Andergard View Post
    The biggest point of contention recently have been Paragon's world first Nefarian kill and comparing it to Ensidia's revoked world first Lich King kill. For the completely unaware, during the race for world first LK25HC kill (I think? Correct me on 10/25 if I'm wrong) the encounter was bugged so that, of all things, the Engineering-made Saronite Bombs caused the transition-phase ledges to respawn during a "normal" phase, thus negating the Val'kyrs' carry-and-drop gibbing of people. As for the latter, Nefarian has a mechanic whereby your next spell/ability gets a damage bonus; it's related to Nef's HM-only MC'ing of people (I admit, I am unsure as to the specifics, but bear with me).
    I hear this alot too. That ensidia exploited their world first LK25man kill (not HC). But what really happened was that the rogues used the saronite bombs in their rotation from the first attempt to the kill. This obviously means that there was no way they could know the saronite bombs caused the bug.

    Also the LK25man was very easy for the top end raiding guilds. I actualy heard ensidia downed LK25 the same night on their (probably) worse geared alts.

    So what I'm trying to say is that Paragon did this exploit intended. While Ensidia used Proffesion perks to boost dps unaware that they could completly skip the "kill valkyre" part.
    And while you may think: well its Blizzard fault they forgot rip and Bane of doom did that insane damage and top end guilds might take that to their advantage.
    And I agree, it is blizzards fault that this tier became a "first to exploit the encounter wins" race but not because they forgot rip and Bane of doom did this much damage. But because they never did anything when other guilds exploited earlier encounters in BwD. Like Atramedes, if blizzard actually did something there, banned the exploiters. Do you think people would exploit other encounters for World firsts? Because in this tier of raiding I feel like after the Atramedes kill, guilds were thinking "Hey, Method didnt get banned for the Atramedes kill why should we for this?" And then kill Nefarian with "clever use of game mechanics".

    Also if they are going to Buff the difficulty on encounters because the World first kill found a "clever use of game mechanics" They have to delete the loot/achievement for the World first kill. Or else it will ruin the World first race.

  16. #16
    Deleted
    Clever use of mehanics - using something that is intended for that fight - increase on dmg after being MC'ed and Surviving it. This is a clearly a mehanic wich players will encounter and why not use it up to its best potentional?
    Exploiting - using a mehanic wich clearly isnt intended for fight - using saronite bombs for HC LK ensidia. This was clearly not intended to be used by players.

    All those who comment Paragon on unfixed vs Method on fixed encounter , why the fu*k paragon would wait till Blizz fix it and give world first to some other...

  17. #17
    Quote Originally Posted by refire View Post
    I don't think it's very well written. Ensidia used a mechanic, which they found, to defeat a boss. Paragon used a mechanic which they found, to defeat a boss. If they hadn't stacked feral druids, knowing full well it was a broken mechanic, and thus exploiting that to ensure max dps I wouldn't consider it exploiting. However, they found this mechanic, knew it was broken for feral druids, and thus stacked feral druids. I think it only shows even more that it was an exploit when they haven't replicated a kill the next raid lockout.

    If Paragon had realized rip was bugged, used their normal raid comp, and benefitted from the ferals then good for them. However they went out of their way, to stack feral druids, because they knew it was a bugged mechanic with rip. Blizzard hot fixing the mechanic only shows even more that it was a bug, Paragon stacking shows they knew it existed, and were trying to exploit it.

    ---------- Post added 2011-01-30 at 10:20 AM ----------



    Blizzard doesn't state the mechanics of a fight anywhere. Using your logic, how was Ensidia to know that the purpose of the valks was to kill them and not just to take someone out of the fight (such as a disc priest) for 12 seconds?
    Because they were aware that using grenades bugged the platform. It was reported to blizzard, but they continued to do it anyway to claim world first.

  18. #18
    Herald of the Titans Tuvok's Avatar
    10+ Year Old Account
    Join Date
    May 2010
    Location
    West Sussex, England.
    Posts
    2,708
    Blizzard hotfixed the rip issue after the kill, and Paragon couldn't kill it without taking advantage of it. I doubt Blizzard intended it to be done like that, just as I doubt they intended the Heroic LK fight to be done the way ensidia did. I really don't care whether it's legitimate or not, to me, it's just low and dirty - and there's been so much drama and dodgy shit going on with world 1sts the past few years that I've completely lost interest in it, as the competition has lost it's integrity to me.
    "The truth, my goal."

  19. #19
    Elemental Lord TJ's Avatar
    10+ Year Old Account
    Join Date
    Jan 2010
    Location
    North Wales
    Posts
    8,015
    Paragons is a clever use of mechanics rather than an exploit, but i do think its a bit strange how they get to keep the achievment and world first if the ability they were using cleverly has been toned down.

  20. #20
    Quote Originally Posted by refire View Post
    If Paragon had realized rip was bugged, used their normal raid comp, and benefitted from the ferals then good for them. However they went out of their way, to stack feral druids, because they knew it was a bugged mechanic with rip. Blizzard hot fixing the mechanic only shows even more that it was a bug, Paragon stacking shows they knew it existed, and were trying to exploit it.



    God, people like you never care to actually study the mechanics. it wasnt bugged. IT WAS NOT BUGGED. How many times does it need to be told? Rip did the most damage to the boss with the buff and tranqulities helped alot for Electrocuties. Druid was the best class to Nefarian and they used it.

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •