Last night Duranub had our second outing in Ulduar. It was one of those nights with tons of things going wrong out of the officers control. Pulling together the raid was a bit less than easy, with more than a few of our solid core members having to be gone for various valid reasons. Next we received command performances from a few of our most heinous serial AFKers with zero options to simply replace them and be done with it. In addition to all of this, my connection was completely unstable causing me, the main tank, to disconnect in the middle of a couple of solid razorscale attempts.
All of these issues aside we managed to still come in, tighten up the razorscale strategy and pull out our first kill in spite of having two tanks DC in the middle of it. It turned out to be a very frustrating night in general but all of that aside we performed very well on the content we managed to attempt.
Shoulders of Misfortune – Bracers of the Broodmother – Remorse
After downing razor we moved in to Ignis putting in several attempts. Towards the end of the night we seemed to be getting the rhythm of the fight down. Sadly we ran out of time, but I believe that Tuesday we can tighten things up and with any bit of luck pull out our third boss kill. I am still impressed with the difficulty, it seems to be the perfect balance. I realize we have only been a few bosses into Ulduar, but I am greatly saddened by the news today that they appear to be nerfing by as much as half the damage taken from various effects within the zone.
I understand tuning encounters when they fall into the category of being “cheap”. Meaning there are overpowering attacks that cannot be predicted or mitigated in any reasonable fashion other than praying for good luck. However so far every fight I have seen in Ulduar appears to simply be a matter of learning the pattern of the fight, knowing how to adjust to each change, and then executing well.
Dumbing down content due to player whining always disturbs me a bit. Maybe they are looking at the numbers and seeing larger majorities of raids wiping over and over to content, but to me Ulduar seems tuned JUST fine. What I do see however is players who have been lulled into a sense of complacency by the “lol-easy-mode” content that was Naxxramas. Several raid groups I am friends with, each have a faction of players who just want to return to farming Naxx because Ulduar is ‘”too hard”.
To be honest, I love the chalenge level of Ulduar. I know that Naxx was suppossed to be an easy entry level raid instance, but back in the day Molten Core was an entry level raid also, but I remember wiping on the first two fire giants, back then you could not just lawzAOE all the trash without getting creamed. It feels great to be back doing content that I have to pay attention to, where I have to watch what I’m shooting and what my is noming on. To be honest, this is what raiding should be like in Wrath, not a cake walk that can breezed through on cruise control, but where you have to think and and react and know what you should and shouldnt be doing.
Nothing pisses me off more than, stupid afk. You think for only 2 1/2 hours twice a week these people could figure out how to pay attention and or make the time available for that alone. Emergences happen. Yet as you point out its the same folk going afk all the time.
If it isn’t one of us with connection issues, it’s the other, it seems, huh? But we are indeed a durable group of nubs — 2 tank DCs on Razorscale, me dying and being battle rezzed 3 times, and we still down him, heh. I really think we would have been able to down Ignis had we not lost so much time to afk’s, on our last attempt it was really starting to come together.
The repair bills might suck, but being someone who never really experienced the “real raids” in BC, this is definitely a nice change and a real challenge compared to the loleasymode that has been the majority of what I’ve experienced so far.
Also, I totally approve of your usage of the Nerf logo, I lol’d.
Oh man, I’ve had those nights in my guild. Where you’re missing your best players, and the raid is going so horribly you can’t wait for the night to be over.
And on the nerf, I disagree with it, too. To be quite honest, none of it is especially difficult, and the fights that are relatively hard aren’t unbeatable. I’m appalled that the future of raiding we’re looking at is ridiculously easy (normal) and ridiculously hard (achievements). I don’t like that it’s Blizzard’s way of trying to appease both player types.
Great blog, by the way. And the layout is wonderful, too!
I couldn’t agree more.
I love Ulduar BECAUSE it is harder. I miss the days of hard content.