Trial of Valor is Overtuned

[Minttunator]

When we go into heroic EN, we do not do mechanics. We put our dicks on the table and the table breaks. When we do NORMAL ToV, we have to actually do mechanics and take it seriously.

I just want to say I love the way you put that!

My guild isnt all that good, we are super casual but we have cleared heroic EN and been farming it a few weeks, we got into ToV normal and got odin down relatively painlessly but guarm was destroying our tanks/raid. Just seems strange since its supposed to be a continuation of EN that going from heroic EN to normal ToV would be a show stopper. Was pretty frustrating for us.

My experience mirrors yours - I'm in a casual guild that can clear EN HC without too much trouble but we wiped a bunch of times on normal Guarm and then many more times on normal Helya (more than, say, heroic Cenarius during progress). We did get them down eventually but normal ToV is definitely harder than heroic EN for my guild and I'm not sure it should be that way - especially since the bosses drop weaker gear.

[Accendor]

I'm calling an overtuned raid overtuned because its overtuned.

But it is not overtuned, so why call it overtuned? It is just difficult, that's all. Give it a few weeks when everyone has much better gear again and it will be faceroll like everything else (except Mythic mode of course).

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I just want to say I love the way you put that!



My experience mirrors yours - I'm in a casual guild that can clear EN HC without too much trouble but we wiped a bunch of times on normal Guarm and then many more times on normal Helya (more than, say, heroic Cenarius during progress). We did get them down eventually but normal ToV is definitely harder than heroic EN for my guild and I'm not sure it should be that way - especially since the bosses drop weaker gear.

We never had problems with Guarm, downed him in the second try (First one we screwed up somewhat with the breath) but Odyn took us around 4 or 5 before that and Helya even more after that, but it was still doable on the first evening (normal mode). I heard from a lot of people tha Guarm was harder than Odin for them, but we really did not have that problem...

[Icoblablubb]

But it is not overtuned, so why call it overtuned? It is just difficult, that's all. Give it a few weeks when everyone has much better gear again and it will be faceroll like everything else (except Mythic mode of course).

so what u are saying is *guys overgear that raid and its faceroll* kk

[Felfaadaern Darkterror]

Trial of Valor-N was tuned just about right. We wiped maybe once or twice on Odyn, once or twice on Guarm, and 6 or 8 times on Helya. If it had been any easier, we would have been yawning. As it stands, it's a nice challenge to followup EN. Looking forward to starting heroic ToV next week.

[anaxie]

... I think you're confusing Diablo with WoW.

Warcraft is Diablo now so I mean???

[Accendor]

so what u are saying is *guys overgear that raid and its faceroll* kk

What I am saying is: Buff the rewards, so it is no longer overgearing it.

[Akka]

My experience mirrors yours - I'm in a casual guild that can clear EN HC without too much trouble but we wiped a bunch of times on normal Guarm and then many more times on normal Helya (more than, say, heroic Cenarius during progress). We did get them down eventually but normal ToV is definitely harder than heroic EN for my guild and I'm not sure it should be that way - especially since the bosses drop weaker gear.

We never had problems with Guarm, downed him in the second try (First one we screwed up somewhat with the breath) but Odyn took us around 4 or 5 before that and Helya even more after that, but it was still doable on the first evening (normal mode). I heard from a lot of people tha Guarm was harder than Odin for them, but we really did not have that problem...

As a 7/7 HC (no mythic) guild, we downed Odyn and Guarm pretty quickly, but they are probably a bit overtuned for a normal mode (remember, not only we had HC EN gear, which is above what normal-difficulty guild would have, we also have players who can down EN HC, which is nothing to brag about but is also above what normal-difficulty guilds should be expected to have).
Helya Normal on the other hand, took us about the same amount of tries and efforts to kill as Xavius HC, maybe a bit more (both kills we did were pretty messy and by the skin of our teeth). She's DEFINITELY overtuned.

Odyn and Guarm HC also feel pretty overtuned. Both do very high amount of damage and have an amount of health which feels simply beyond what we ought to be producing with something intended for "heroic". Maybe it'll get better with practice, but for now it simply feels mechanically excessive, or tuned for people with higher legendary and artefact levels as we have.

[Deleted]

I'm 7/7H 0/7M (don't have a raid team). I killed heroic Helya in a pug last weekend. I don't have a single piece of Mythic raid loot.

The fight is fine and should be a challenge. It shouldn't be something face roll that you go in and clear it in one week. I do think the loot rewards should have an increased ilvl though.

Let's see... ive been leading full hc/mythic pugs on openraid before and finder then for years so I know pretty much whats going on... right now, even in normal tov, most pugs miserably fail. And the few successful ones in HC usually require at least 880 and achievement... so i really wonder how can someone like you, just 7/7 hc and without achi, could get into a such group. 2 ways i guess... either you got VERY lucky with hc drops (or did a whole lot of m+ 10 and more) and ended up at 885 without mythic EN, or you play a healer and somehow you got invited when they needed one in some imba pug.
Either way, tov is overtuned for the target its intended for, and just because you got lucky once doesnt change that.

[PowerGamez]

Let's see... ive been leading full hc/mythic pugs on openraid before and finder then for years so I know pretty much whats going on... right now, even in normal tov, most pugs miserably fail. And the few successful ones in HC usually require at least 880 and achievement... so i really wonder how can someone like you, just 7/7 hc and without achi, could get into a such group. 2 ways i guess... either you got VERY lucky with hc drops (or did a whole lot of m+ 10 and more) and ended up at 885 without mythic EN, or you play a healer and somehow you got invited when they needed one in some imba pug.
Either way, tov is overtuned for the target its intended for, and just because you got lucky once doesnt change that.

I'm an 874 Boomkin. I always rank in the 90th+ percentile and have previously played in guilds ranked world ~80-250th. There was a group in the group finder tool looking for 870+ people. I was lucky enough to get an invite and made it quite clear from the first pull that I knew the fight and that I knew how to play my class. It wasn't easy (took over 6 hours) but we stuck it out and ended up getting a kill.

[Lellybaby]

Odyn heroic has some major over tuning issues.

Its incredibly punishing to smaller groups. No matter the size of your raid you still have 5 rune-bearers that each have to be killed, (Its particularly hard when 2+ healers are picked as well).

[Meiffert]

As a 7/7 HC (no mythic) guild, we downed Odyn and Guarm pretty quickly, but they are probably a bit overtuned for a normal mode (remember, not only we had HC EN gear, which is above what normal-difficulty guild would have, we also have players who can down EN HC, which is nothing to brag about but is also above what normal-difficulty guilds should be expected to have).

That's the problem though. People look at EN as a metric to compare against, but that's just wrong. Tuning of EN was wrong, tuning of other instances shouldn't be the same.

I made a picture to illustrate it more easily:


Helya is not harder than Lei Shen, Garrosh, Blackhand or Archimonde on the same difficulty. Yes, she is massively harder compared to Xavius, but that's only because Xavius was a joke.
It's not ToV difficulty that's an outlier, the EN difficulty was.


Now that being said, there are two points to be made:

1. Flex scaling wasn't implemented very well, particularly for Odyn, which is way more manageable with larger groups (you have 5 players fixated, which in a small group can be pretty much your entire raid, while you still have 20 other "free" players in a large group to help out). This could be adjusted by lowering the health of the mobs more or just decreasing the number that spawns.

2. The instance is very short, making it difficult to "farm the first easy half to gear up for the later harder bosses". It only has the later harder bosses.
What you can do is farm some gear in +1 difficulty of EN. I know it sounds weird for normal mode players to be required to farm some heroic and for heroic players to farm mythic, but the difficulty of the instance is so low, that it is possible. At least the first 4 bosses of EN can be killed because their difficulty is really about 1 more difficulty lower than where it should be.

I understand that it can be tricky, especially for heroic groups that don't have 20 many roster for mythic, but in that case you might just have to farm for an extra week or two, getting some wf/tf gear, legendaries, more AP traits etc. to help you out. The good thing is that you don't have to be in a big rush, because there are only three bosses to kill and nowhere to move up from there (since mythic is not available for these groups).

The issue really is that EN was so easy that everyone cleared "their" intended difficulty in a week and the instance which should have lasted until Nighthold was done and left a several months long empty space. ToV is a bandaid fix to this problem, it has some scaling issues, but I don't think there were many better alternatives.
Making it as undertuned as EN wouldn't have solved the problem, just moved it along.

[Tehterokkar]

That's the problem though. People look at EN as a metric to compare against, but that's just wrong. Tuning of EN was wrong, tuning of other instances shouldn't be the same.

I made a picture to illustrate it more easily:


Helya is not harder than Lei Shen, Garrosh, Blackhand or Archimonde on the same difficulty. Yes, she is massively harder compared to Xavius, but that's only because Xavius was a joke.
It's not ToV difficulty that's an outlier, the EN difficulty was.


Now that being said, there are two points to be made:

1. Flex scaling wasn't implemented very well, particularly for Odyn, which is way more manageable with larger groups (you have 5 players fixated, which in a small group can be pretty much your entire raid, while you still have 20 other "free" players in a large group to help out). This could be adjusted by lowering the health of the mobs more or just decreasing the number that spawns.

2. The instance is very short, making it difficult to "farm the first easy half to gear up for the later harder bosses". It only has the later harder bosses.
What you can do is farm some gear in +1 difficulty of EN. I know it sounds weird for normal mode players to be required to farm some heroic and for heroic players to farm mythic, but the difficulty of the instance is so low, that it is possible. At least the first 4 bosses of EN can be killed because their difficulty is really about 1 more difficulty lower than where it should be.

You're right, Helya is not *hard*. the only thing that makes her such a cockblock is the gear requirement. If your raid doesn't have over half the players with 35 traits and at least 2 Shadow Priests and 2 Hunters, you have 0 chance of killing her.

The mechanics, sure they are challenging, my guild is just about getting P1 sorted, but we still lack a lot of DPS so we have to Bloodlust on pull to make the DPS check(6th breath+7th tentacle set), even with BL we can't make it without having everyone alive.

If there is one thing I've learned from years of raiding, it's that only gear can hold back guilds, executing a fight is the "easy" part. But if you need gear, then you can't really beat the fight through pure strategy.

[Akka]

2. The instance is very short, making it difficult to "farm the first easy half to gear up for the later harder bosses". It only has the later harder bosses. What you can do is farm some gear in +1 difficulty of EN. I know it sounds weird for normal mode players to be required to farm some heroic and for heroic players to farm mythic, but the difficulty of the instance is so low, that it is possible. At least the first 4 bosses of EN can be killed because their difficulty is really about 1 more difficulty lower than where it should be.

You see, that's right there the problem in your argument. True, Helya Normal doesn't FEEL harder than Archimonde Normal of BlackHand Normal. But the thing is, when we did both, we weren't fully decked in BRF HC or HFC HC. By the time we were, we would roflstomp them. We STARTEd Helya NM with nearly one gear tier above what she's supposed to be fought with.
You're right, we can't "farm the first easy half to gear up for the later harder boss". But it's not because there is no "first easy part", it's because we are already above this part - we are already above the "later harder boss" part too, Helya drops ilvl 875 and that's about where I am (ilvl 872 now), and I'm one of the least-geared player in my raid (yeah, Legion is boring, I nearly only play for raids).

We could down BlackHand HC and Archimonde HC without needing needing get gear from Mythic. We could down the previous bosses with gear that was part one tier below, part one tier equal.
ToV ? We ALREADY are around the "gear cap" they should have, and even HC Odyn and Guarm feel like brick walls - like we're missing a good 20 % DPS to reach the requirements.

The issue really is that EN was so easy that everyone cleared "their" intended difficulty in a week and the instance which should have lasted until Nighthold was done and left a several months long empty space. ToV is a bandaid fix to this problem, it has some scaling issues, but I don't think there were many better alternatives.
Making it as undertuned as EN wouldn't have solved the problem, just moved it along.

I agree that EN was somewhat undertuned, but I disagree it was that much, and ToV IS overtuned. To reuse your graph, I'd say it's more like you should up one line the last two dots : EN below by one line, ToV above by one.

[Meiffert]

Sure, but I think that's pretty normal for the final bosses. I doubt that many guilds killed Archimonde HC in BRF heroic gear or HFC normal gear. Most people killing him already had the same ilvl that he dopped (guilds killing him early had mythic BRF gear and heroic progression guilds had full HFC heroic by the time they managed to get him down).

Now, my experience is of course not typical for normal mode raiders, but it took us 15 tries to get Helya heroic. That might seem like a lot for a mythic quality guild with full mythic EN gear (880 ilvl), but the thing is, I also had double digit amount of wipes on my first heroic Blackhand and Archimond (also done in full mythic BRF gear).

I think people kinda forgot how hard the final bosses usually are. It took months for an average heroic guild to get Archimonde. We are only starting week 3 now.

[Deleted]

Sure, but I think that's pretty normal for the final bosses. I doubt that many guilds killed Archimonde HC in BRF heroic gear or HFC normal gear. Most people killing him already had the same ilvl that he dopped (guilds killing him early had mythic BRF gear and heroic progression guilds had full HFC heroic by the time they managed to get him down).

Now, my experience is of course not typical for normal mode raiders, but it took us 15 tries to get Helya heroic. That might seem like a lot for a mythic quality guild with full mythic EN gear (880 ilvl), but the thing is, I also had double digit amount of wipes on my first heroic Blackhand and Archimond (also done in full mythic BRF gear).

I think people kinda forgot how hard the final bosses usually are. It took months for an average heroic guild to get Archimonde. We are only starting week 3 now.

If you are just a group of normal mode raiders, you will never have the gear level needed to kill anything in ToV normal.

Overtuned.

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lol, I've seen you before; you seem to have a vendetta against anyone doing any hard content whatsoever. I recommend no one try to argue with this kid.

Not at all.

I think that mythic should be as hard as balls and neroic a decent challenge.

Normal mode, however, should be piss simple. Its supposed to be an entertainment mode for people who don't give a shit.

[chronia]

Normal mode, however, should be piss simple. Its supposed to be an entertainment mode for people who don't give a shit.

Thats where LFR fits in, normal mode is for ppl that want to play organised group content with usually a group of (long time) friends or family that don't sitout players not performing top notch, dont care about specs that ppl play, don't care about raid setup that much as long as they have 2 tanks, some healers and some dps, don't care about how many traits someone has, but just play to raid and have fun as a group of friends without being bothered by a toxic community as is the case in lfr.

Normal should not be hard, but it also shouldn't be piss easy. I do think though that normal ToV definately needs a nerf here and there (esp for small groups), but it should not be faceroll as you state.

[Akka]

Sure, but I think that's pretty normal for the final bosses. I doubt that many guilds killed Archimonde HC in BRF heroic gear or HFC normal gear. Most people killing him already had the same ilvl that he dopped (guilds killing him early had mythic BRF gear and heroic progression guilds had full HFC heroic by the time they managed to get him down).

Again, that's the point : we're already at ABOVE the gear available when encountering Helya. If you play in normal mode, you should have at most a bit above ilvl 860 when reaching her (and that if you farmed both previous bosses enough to cover your entire raid with their gear). We're not at a bit more 860, we're at more than 870...
She's a bit easier than Archi/BlackHand, but we're fighting her with a whopping 10-15 ilvl more compared to what gear should be expected than when we fought them.

[Deleted]

Thats where LFR fits in, normal mode is for ppl that want to play organised group content with usually a group of (long time) friends or family that don't sitout players not performing top notch, dont care about specs that ppl play, don't care about raid setup that much as long as they have 2 tanks, some healers and some dps, don't care about how many traits someone has, but just play to raid and have fun as a group of friends without being bothered by a toxic community as is the case in lfr.

Normal should not be hard, but it also shouldn't be piss easy. I do think though that normal ToV definately needs a nerf here and there (esp for small groups), but it should not be faceroll as you state.

Its not me stating it, its blizzard.

Normal = beer league.

And yes, normal ToV is hilariously, massively, insanely overtuned. it also makes the highmaul mistake of punishing small groups. its supposed to be "friends and family" not "friends and family and 8 puggers because otherwise the fights mechanically impossible."

[Deleted]

Blizzard balanced themselves into a corner with Titanforging. Do couple world quest open some emissaries and you're gonna be 850+ in a week. Run a week of M+ and you're gonna be 880~.

You can no longer make bosses that can be downed with -15ilvl on their loot. If boss is doable with -15-20illvl avg it's going to be a cakewalk and people will say it's a joke tier.

Normal requires you to respect 1 mechanic, heroic requires 2 mechanics and mythic 3 mechanics. If you can't manage 1 mechanic maybe raiding is just not for you? You can do LFR, pet battles, wq.

[D3athsting]

I predict number of runebearers scaling with raid size with one of next hotfixes, how are you supposed to kill 5 spread runebearers with 10ppl and 2 of them being tanks?