Disabling world buffs

Recent forum topic about whether DMF damage buff should always be 10% or random 1-10% as it is now sparked an interesting discussion about world buffs and issues associated with them. Many people think, that the world buffs harm Kronos community. They make certain people log out for days just so they could show up to the raid fully buffed. They also kill world PvP in places like Blackrock mountain, as no guild wants to risk losing their world buffs.
In no WoW expansion Blizzard repeated putting world buffs in game. They even went out of their way to disable any buffs that players might have gained in the outside world when they entered a raid instance.
On the other hand, vanilla consumable and potion stacking is crazy enough even without world buffs. This too was later changed in patch 2.1 when Blizzard introduced elixir categories (Battle and Guardian).
The record boss kill timers are currently crazy (24 seconds on Ragnaros, 48s on Onyxia, 1 min 17s on Nefarian and 1 min 34s on C'Thun) and I think we all know that Naxxramas will be cleared the day it is released, world buffs or not.

I want to know what the Kronos community opinion on world buffs is, as well as hear arguments from both sides of the fence.
On one hand this could help solve the aforementioned issues. On the other hand it could hinder the players who are willing to go the extra mile.

Just for clarity, by world buffs I mean things like Heart of Hakkar, Head of Onyxia/Nefarian, DM tribute buffs, Songflower buff, DMF buffs, etc.

peeps are more try hard than they were in 2005
logging out after every boss to save your precious buffs until the next pull is just cringy to me

It's their choice to log out; does it harm the server? Maybe. But with that logic any game mechanic that doesn't fit certain players and make them play less or even quit, harms the server too, and usually it's the player that adapts to the game, not the other way aound, otherwise what's the point of all of this?

Some people prefer to simply play the game, without trying to bend the rules as much as they can to get personal profit, they just enjoy the moment. Some others enjoy more the numbers and all the theorycrafting more than actually playing the game. This is basically "extreme logic" vs "simply playing", or "brain" vs "heart"; you need a mix of these two things to actually have an enjoyable and balanced game experience.

P.S. Have you ever wondered what's the point of all this grinding? Like when you'll get all the gear you wanted, what's gonna be left? The answer is all the friends you met in the game, all the nice and bad moments you had while playing. So enjoy what you have now as much as you can; Kronos or any other server/game wont last forever, enjoy it now.

Once in a lifetime you get to a point when you start to not care about stuff. If somebody wants to do it like that let them do it. 99% of us won't actually give a fuk if boss can be killed under a minute.

What matters is if you having fun the way you do things or not

1. I like the idea as it increases difficulty
2. I dislike it as Naxxramas aint a walk in the park like the ones out currently

note: maybe only remove them from raids below naxx ? nice to see a constructive thread about it :smile:

Suggestion: maybe add a function that a raid leader has to type ".competitive" or ".hardcore" which enables hardcore mode which disables world buff inside a raid and needs to be activated before anything is killed inside. Afterwards it then records time taken and such similar to realmplayers creating a unique speedrun where worldbuffs cannot help.

^^^
Guilds have been running farmed raids without World Buffs anyway for a while now to safe Hearts and Heads for Naxx.

I don't really see the point of talking about this kind of change this late in content.

This whole subject is BS.

1) All post-Classic arguments are simply invalid. They have nothing to do with Classic WoW.
2) If you want to increase difficulty of a raid, do not apply the buff at all. There is no need to remove it from the game. If you somehow accidently applied it, you can always right click on it.
3) Start thinking about low levels. Raiding is not the only thing in game, and you're basically suggest to ruin an important part of the game to normal players. And what for?

I suggest this topic gets locked before it becomes flaming.

Disclaimer: I am not the one to make the final decision on the suggestions being brought up in this topic. I can however say that community feedback will help the Team make the right decision when the time comes. What follows is my personal thoughts and some open questions for the community to reflect or give feedback on.

I think world buffs should be available in all raids except for naxxramas. Reason being that theres nothing else after Naxxramas. World buffs can help new guilds establish themselves on the server, build up gear in the lower raids in order to get "ready for naxx" and the older guilds can enjoy faster clears on their farm raids and look forward to the "real" challenge on their naxx days.

The main problem is that the world buffs are too powerful when all of them are used together. Full world buffs allow guilds to disregard boss mechanics. Not completely obviously, but to a great extent. If you can kill Gluth before the first decimate, if you can kill Faerlina without needing to sacrifice adds, if you can kill Maexxna without getting stunned during the berserk... we can go on and on. Is this what the community wants?

Downsides of removing the buffs is that you can't compare your dps or clear-speed with guilds from other servers. We would pretty much be in our own category - but maybe thats fine? Another point is that buffs benefit some classes more than others, even to the extent that some talent builds only works in pve when you have world buffs, such as fury tanks for example. Players are designing their entire gear collection and raid talents around the assumption that they will have world buffs during the entire raid. This would have to change - but again, maybe thats fine? It doesn't matter anymore that somethings unavailable to you, if its unavailable to everyone else as well. Or what?

Buffing naxxramas to the point where you really don't want to go in there without world buffs is also problematic, but that is really what you would have to do. The downsides here are not only that it takes time to get these buffs, and that you run out of characters that can keep buffing the guild on a weekly basis, but also the fact that losing your world buffs on the way to the instance can have much greater effect - the potential for griefing would be greater than ever.
Secondly, and which is even worse is that after you wipe and lose all your world buffs, what then?

The third way that some will argue is that players should be able to decide whether naxxramas should be a challenge or not. By this people mean that guilds can just choose not to use the world buffs. I think going down this road would leave Naxxramas cleared very early and this would be a very anti-climactic experience for the community, as well as reduce the servers lifespan.

Yet another option could be to disable world buffs upon entering naxxramas only the first 100 days after release. This would allow for an exciting release, and let the dps-races with no restrictions unfold at a later point. This would also smoothen the transition into naxxramas for guilds that join Kronos at a later point, and therefore haven't had a chance to farm AQ40 for a year, let's say.

Getting world buffs eats up time and makes most encounters a complete joke. Right clicking your own world buff will do nothing if the rest of your guild is buffed.

Let's try to keep Naxx a challenge, please remove buffs upon entry and tune encounters accordingly. Otherwise it's going to feel an awful lot like the WOTLK Naxx which was easily cleared by most PUGs...

It would not make much sense to remove the world buffs for current content - it would simply prolong each of the raids many players already fed up with for quite a few minutes, and would also frustrate the dps racers.

However, I really like the idea of removing the wbuffs upon entering Naxx. This way devs can really make it challenging yet not unbeatable. Otherwise, indeed, we can face one of
1) Undertuned - Naxx is pretty easy to clear with wbuffs (even if relatively hard without, it would still suck)
2) Overtuned - "eeehh opposite faction wiped us, we can't clear this shit unbuffed, raid over"

Disable world buffs in Naxx till KT has been killed a few times.

Too many realmplayer scum would quit the server if they couldn't raid with buffs so you can't permanently disable them.

Bazzil said:

Buffing naxxramas to the point where you really don't want to go in there without world buffs is also problematic, but that is really what you would have to do.

Click to expand...

You hit the nail on the head there (And I'm glad there is at least one unbiased and rational person in the testing team); if you buff the instance to make Naxxramas challenging (at least experiencing all phases of fights) taking into account fully world buffed characters' dps, you make it almost impossible for 'lesser' guilds who do not have 40 people fully worldbuffed, who don't have either the coordination or will to do so, to enjoy naxx and/or ruin raidnights of guilds being wiped on their way there or who die to Patchwerk e.g.

This reminds me of the start of retail TBC when Serpentshrine Caverns was tuned around having flasks and worldbuffs, some people got their challenge, most burned out or quit raiding until they tuned it better two weeks later. You got 1 chance on Hydross, wipe and it was raid over. No worldbuffs at the release of naxx would indeed be the only solution, it'll provide the most genuine naxxramas experience, for every guild.

It's too late to disable world buffs on pre-naxx content anyways. Even if you did disable them, at this point most guilds would skip all the boss mechanics that can be skipped anyways.

You could double Naxx boss armor, hit points and resistances and remove world buffs.

Naxx is going to be cleared by almost every raid guild in the first week regardless at this point and if you think otherwise than you're brutally mistaken. Many will have KT down within the first day.

You have given us way too long to the point where we have people with alts who are more geared than 98% of the majority of 2006 top-guild-on-server raider.

The mechanics in vanilla WOW are extremely simple, even C'thun, Four Horseman, and Kel'Thuzad. The difficulty in vanilla WOW was knowledge and with all the knowledge, every guild already has thousands of consumables pre-farmed, gear optimized, talents optimized, DPS rotations optimized. The difficulty in vanilla WOW is PEOPLE MANAGEMENT. It has never ever been mechanics. The mechanics are laughable.

Bazzil said:

Yet another option could be to disable world buffs upon entering naxxramas only the first 100 days after release. This would allow for an exciting release, and let the dps-races with no restrictions unfold at a later point. This would also smoothen the transition into naxxramas for guilds that join Kronos at a later point, and therefore haven't had a chance to farm AQ40 for a year, let's say.

Click to expand...

roarnstuff said:

Disable world buffs in Naxx till KT has been killed a few times.

Too many realmplayer scum would quit the server if they couldn't raid with buffs so you can't permanently disable them.

Click to expand...

I really like this idea, with a temporary removal of world buffs. One downside could be that world buffs affect some classes/specs more than others, but I still support the idea.

@Bazzil: I think the problem is just the player base itself not willing to play without buffs. In TBC there was (at least) one guild which raided only in blues to have a challenge. I am not suggesting to raid here in blues as well for the challenge, but I am trying to say that this problem is self-made and nobody should complain if he or she stays logged out for a week voluntarily. It is everyones own choice and nothing you have to fix imho.
However since people here act like hoards lemmings jumping down a cliff and complaining about the death potential of this activity afterwards, the 100 days or a few KT kills without world buffs sounds most promising. Maybe 100 days is too long.

Chainsaw has a point here only few would ever give up an advantage to spend more time slaving through the same content not to mention some players are very competitive and desire to see at least a small increase in their performance and thus push the limits.

The 100 days without world buff would not only be quite promising but it would be a custom limiter similar to how back then the limit was people not having experience or knowing terribly many details about the encounters. This would of course also limit how many guilds can kill X amount of Naxxramas bosses and make it more of a feat to kill them early.

If a vote for this custom 100 day rule where to be up for vote even tho it is non-blizzlike and i personally dislike such i still see it as a way to adding the blizzlike early feeling of difficulty back then as a simple trade knowledge at the cost of world buffs all on a level playing field. I would vote for such a thing.

Bazzil said:

Yet another option could be to disable world buffs upon entering naxxramas only the first 100 days after release. This would allow for an exciting release, and let the dps-races with no restrictions unfold at a later point. This would also smoothen the transition into naxxramas for guilds that join Kronos at a later point, and therefore haven't had a chance to farm AQ40 for a year, let's say.

Click to expand...

This is a good suggestion but 100days is a bit much tbh, maybe make it based on how many guilds killed KT.
After min. 30days and 5guilds with KT down.

I think world buffs aren't going to affect Naxx progression of the average guilds all that much anyway. Average guilds are going to wipe in Naxx, a lot. And if you wipe you loose all your world buffs. You can go back to Orgrimmar/STV and reaply your world buffs of course, but that's not something an average guild would be willing to do.
In my opinion most guilds are going to use world buffs as a soft nerf to the raid encounters. You know, when you have the strategy down and all you need is that little extra dps and healing.

But isn't that exactly the point?
Of course you don't use buffs once and if you die you will never take them again. You work out the strat, and once everyone knows what to do, can do in consistently and you wipe at 30% because of Enrage/Mana, then you take them and kill the boss.
"Soft nerf" is exactly what is the problem here.

If the difficulty curve of Naxxramas is anything like the rest of the Kronos realm - world buffs or not - it's going to get steamrolled just the same. Contrary to popular belief - Naxxramas is not even remotely difficult at all (unless you're the poor bastard who has to coordinate the 40 Kamchaks). I'd love to see a vanilla WoW realm again where the damage and hit points of encounters are cranked up to put guilds back in the deep end, rather than enjoy this brute-force culture that's plagued the 1.12 scene in general over the last 3 years or so, but it's probably too late and I wonder if all the dedicated PvE enthusiasts here will lose interest quickly after they find themselves struggling.

It was something I'd hoped to see on the revitalised Feenix last year because I fondly remember different tiers of guilds competing over different content in the game back in 2012-13, and it felt a lot more genuine than this 'WoW speedrun' mentality. Disabling world buffs in instances would help, but bosses need to be buffed too if the administration chooses to bring the realm in that direction.

I'll go out on a limb and say that I really think the lifespan of this project is considerably shortened if PvE continues to be as absurdly easy as it is now.



Misc points that other people mentioned:

- How are there still so many people voting "No, I dislike the current system but it's blizzlike"?!

- Allowing raid leaders to optionally raise the difficulty for their group would never work unless there was some sort of reward for doing so.

- If people are demotivated that they can't clear an instance without world buffs then that's tough - they simply need to get better. "Lesser" guilds aren't meant to enjoy Naxxramas - greater guilds are.

Yes, please do disable world buffs for Naxxramas.

If the history of WoW taught us anything it is that most people won't stick around during content drought. In the end it doesn't matter if Naxx is going to be cleared in one day or one year. When you kill Kel'Thuzad the "carrot of the stick" is gone. There is nothing more. No greater challenge avaits you. Of course, you can stick around until you have BiS gear, but most players aren't going to endure more than 3-4 months of farming Naxx. They will start raid logging and eventually quit.
Of course you can roll an alt and start running the hamster wheel all over again. But why would you do that? Artificialy making Naxx harder is only going to delay the inevitable. New people are going to come, but overall server population is going to dwindle. Although some might return for the promised TBC server with characters copied over from Kronos.
This is the reason World of Warcraft has expansions. We can argue about the changes Blizzard made over the years, but one thing is certain. If they had stopped releasing content completely after Naxx World of Warcraft would have been a dead game for a long time now.
That is the sad fate of all private servers.

Hired Gun for Sale!

For only 100g/hour I will purge your enemies of their buffs.

(Even devs can hire me if they think Naxx will be too easy)

Eywin said:

Hired Gun for Sale!

For only 100g/hour I will purge your enemies of their buffs.

(Even devs can hire me if they think Naxx will be too easy)

Click to expand...

Purging lvl 40's of their buffs cant be worth 100g/hour.