Appears that a lot of the same arguments are being repeated over and over. There's clearly a number of people who think it's fun to experience challenging content, and a number who don't. Is there a way to compromise, and make everyone happy? Of course. Buff Naxx at release to make it challenging and fun for even the top guilds, and then progressively nerf it over time. Buff hp 50-100% (depending on the boss) at the start, observe how guilds are doing, and what their feedback is like on the difficulty. Then, after a month or two, if it becomes necessary, set a schedule for a global 5% hp nerf every two weeks, or once a month, or whatever. The people who want to get a blizzlike naxx experience will get it, and the ones who don't will get what they want after a couple months--that is, if they don't first realize that they're actually having a lot of fun...
The Question of Naxxramas Difficulty
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Labathor
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Release a blizzlike Naxx on Kronos and release a hardcore buffed Naxx on the PTR? Keeps both parties happy since there likely isn't a way to have a selection for the raid leader to set it to hardmode before zoning in like TBC.
lol. It's sounds simple but guilds will be wiping left, right and centre on all that shit. Look at Ossirian. Good guilds still wipe occasionally on him and it's a nightmare to do with pugs. Anything that isn't pure "tank & spank" usually causes problems.
I ran an alt in a partial pug MC last week. We wiped a couple times on Rag before downing him and got "Sons" on the kill. Dps is a huge problem for medium/lower tier guilds. You can bypass so much with good dps. It's tough on the lower end because when you get a good dps core, and gear them up, they get poached by a more established guild. A Blizzlike Naxx will be cleared by a few guilds early on. For everyone else it will be a struggle.
OnslaughtFei
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Well Ossirian isn't blizzlike on this server. Its way overtuned.
The amount of optimization that goes into DPS even with shit guilds is way over low tier guilds in 2006. My guild was 2nd most progressed on the server and as you can see in our 2006 vids we still have dagger rogues, claw rogues, arms dps warriors with zin'rokh, frost mages in naxx, no nightfall, affliciton locks in full nemesis and no debuff optimization at all. We have keyboard turning assholes, a main tank on dialup and look how disorganized everyone is. Almost everyone was PVP spec and first kill vids never had consumables or world buffs because first boss kill vids are after many attempts of learning mechanics.
The amount of optimization that goes into DPS even with shit guilds is way over low tier guilds in 2006. My guild was 2nd most progressed on the server and as you can see in our 2006 vids we still have dagger rogues, claw rogues, arms dps warriors with zin'rokh, frost mages in naxx, no nightfall, affliciton locks in full nemesis and no debuff optimization at all. We have keyboard turning assholes, a main tank on dialup and look how disorganized everyone is. Almost everyone was PVP spec and first kill vids never had consumables or world buffs because first boss kill vids are after many attempts of learning mechanics.
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Fact is Naxx went out 4 months after AQ opening gates Event. Respec cost was 50g and the main source of gear was still BWL+MC.
Few guild killed Cthun before Naxx opened, barely no alliance bothered with Viscidus (no blue craftable NR gear with CC rep), ouro was bugged for 3 months. So only a few token to spare between 40 players.
And because dkp system with no prio, you could end up with druid, hunter and paladin t2.5.
So now, if you guild is stable or attract easily full geared players, yeah you would have a full raid of T2.5 for Naxx and even with mouse clicking because we are past 1year of AQs ID.
I wish Kronos someday open a new server and fix some mistakes they did to improve raid difficulty and immersion, Arcanite reaper used to be the main weapon for warriors for weeks, DM/N-E-W should be released later in the time line, some gear are useless when you can easily grab rank 8 gear and use 2p bonus with the improved pvp set, which normally came way later on.
Few guild killed Cthun before Naxx opened, barely no alliance bothered with Viscidus (no blue craftable NR gear with CC rep), ouro was bugged for 3 months. So only a few token to spare between 40 players.
And because dkp system with no prio, you could end up with druid, hunter and paladin t2.5.
So now, if you guild is stable or attract easily full geared players, yeah you would have a full raid of T2.5 for Naxx and even with mouse clicking because we are past 1year of AQs ID.
I wish Kronos someday open a new server and fix some mistakes they did to improve raid difficulty and immersion, Arcanite reaper used to be the main weapon for warriors for weeks, DM/N-E-W should be released later in the time line, some gear are useless when you can easily grab rank 8 gear and use 2p bonus with the improved pvp set, which normally came way later on.
crimsonsage
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Do you think a guild who puts this level of effort into raiding should be able to kill a single boss in any raid? Jesus.
Spazztastic
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Yeah we don't deserve any boss kills because we ginvite and boost players that are fresh to vanilla
Well, this is the lower part of people getting taught how to play the game. Some catch up, some don't, in the long run you gain from doing this. I rather do that then raid with 34 people like otehr guilds and call myseld elite.
Make no mistake, Naxxramas like the other raids will be carried by the top players in the guilds.
Always have to laugh that people writing this are the same people being afk 5 times a raid, farming lotus and not contributing on trash, or expecting to raid AQ40 with Deadmine Rings, but hey, everything to make yourself look better i guess.
To come back to the topic. Removing worldbuffs seems the "easy" fix to make it more enjoyable for all people.
If you feel this is not enough, boost the HP up 10-25%, will also be okay for everyone that is really trying, which should be expected.
Naxxramas is a fun instance with some of the better bossfights, bypassing that is not fun anymore.
Losse
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I calculated the average raid dps of all raiding guilds for their past 5 Ebonroc kills. I am not sure how indicative this could be for Naxxramas testing purposes, but I'll compare with Patchwerk anyway.
Bottom line: the lowest average was still above 10k raid dps. I suppose almost nobody has world buffs at this point. Assuming tanks are kept alive, every guild currently raiding is able to kill Patchwerk by beating the enrage timer with almost half a minute (or more) without ever setting foot into Naxxramas.
https://pastebin.com/AsMzLeFj
Bottom line: the lowest average was still above 10k raid dps. I suppose almost nobody has world buffs at this point. Assuming tanks are kept alive, every guild currently raiding is able to kill Patchwerk by beating the enrage timer with almost half a minute (or more) without ever setting foot into Naxxramas.
https://pastebin.com/AsMzLeFj
Somewhat indicative for what a "burn phase" fight like Noth or Heigan might look like, but not a longer one like Patchwerk. Ebonroc is a 30 second - 1 minute fight for most guilds, where some kill it so fast that dps is inflated significantly by full cooldown uptime. Nightfall and Annihilator debuffs are up, which likely won't be on Patchwerk (at least for the first kill), a lot of guilds have a fully buffed fury warrior dual-wield tanking, and a fully buffed fury warrior go defensive to taunt curse/buffet, healers are dpsing, and above all, mages are frost. And throw in the fact that a lot of those numbers are inflated by world buffs ofc.
To get good "Patchwerk" dps data, you need a stand-and-shoot style fight that lasts at least 3 minutes, that also doesn't have all of the above things I listed. Like I said in the other thread, it would really be beneficial to everyone--developers most of all, if we could get a test dummy on the PTR, or even on the live server for which we could properly simulate Patchwerk-style conditions: correct armor, correct resistances, super high amount of hp, etc. We did several dps tests on the PTR dummy in Theramore, but that dummy has 0 armor, so the results aren't indicative of actual dps...
Losse
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Aside from mages being frost, noone of these are in effect in a lower tier guild, which was the point of my post (the lowest tier guild possibly being able to kill Patchwerk with 0 Naxx loot). Ebonroc is indeed not a good measure of raid dps for high tier guilds. Ofcourse the comparison between Ebonroc and Patchwerk is also not fully doable for low tier guilds, because there is still a big difference between a 2 minute Ebonroc kill by a lower tier guild and a 6+ minute Patchwerk kill by the same guild. But it's the closest data I could get.
The community could easily acquire "Patchwerk" dps data if the leadership of guilds (high and low tier) would be willing to dps Ebonroc without wbuffs for 5 mins.
In the internal poll I posted on my guild's site before this one, the situation is pretty much the same - 11 for some Naxx buffing and 9 against. Among those that are against, there're 3 officers - they are very dedicated people. And 2 officers voted for the buff. I realize that these numbers are too small to draw conclusions from. But it's a mistake to think that all (or even most of) hardcore players are in favor of buffing Naxx.
Also, keep in mind that admins can decide whatever they want, can put different weights to different votes and to their own opinion. So I can still hope for e.g. invisible changes - who knows, maybe all who voted against don't have a 60 on their paired account
Or maybe Chero really wants to buff Naxx and let people feel his work on their bones. You, on the other hand, can hope for opposite. Let's wait and see But But ... i thought every guild could do 20k dps average on single target for 1:30 minute.
Seems like many of us will enjoy a full Heigan dance. Still, even if worlds buff dont benefit everyone the same way, it's still an improvement of 20-40% raid dps which we wont have on Patchwerk according to the general consensus. And trinket and CD inflate dps a lot on fights like Ebonroc. So for most guild it will still a challenge even without increased HP.
crimsonsage
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The absolute worst guilds in this data averaged over 12k dps, the server as a whole averaged over 16k dps. On average the server does 16k dps without ignite damage included, because Ebonroc is a boss where you have frost mages. Heigan has 1.8M hp, meaning that the average guild on this server will kill him in ~110 seconds assuming they don't even use Ignite. Throw ignite in there where you're getting ticks for 4500+ DPS and now all a sudden you're killing him in 90 seconds, if you're an average guild who doesn't get any better between now and the time of Naxx releasing.. not even accounting for all the upgrades you'll get in Naxx after a few weeks.
crimsonsage
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I'm not speculating at all. In our guild we consistently have 6000 DPS ignites with world buffs. 4000 without is easy. On Fankriss when top guilds are getting those fast kills with insane DPS, we are killing the boss before any adds even show up. So the DPS number isn't inflated by AOE damage.
Here's a 29 man raid that did 16000 DPS on Fankriss. https://vanilla-twinhead.twinstar.cz/?boss-kill=581260#bosskills_players:0-3+8+1
Putting in absolutely no effort and thinking that raids should be tuned to that difficulty is just absurd. This is the pinnacle of vanilla raiding, fighting bosses that were cleared by less than 1% of the population back in vanilla.
on 6000 dps ignite. That means 12k ticks. A number that does not even come close to 6k dps can only be produced with all world buffs (DMF and silithus), spell damage trinket, stacking scorch before critting with enough pyroblasts that the ignite does not fall off, nightfall up all time, arcanite dragonling full stacks, pi on every mage. I think you mixed up 6k ticks which mean 3k dps with the actual dps.
Further, what many people here wrote, is the influence of trinkets and cooldowns on ebonroc. Usually all CDs are ready on him after the trash packs. For a more realistic dps you should either use fights like flamegor or magmadar, because usually on these fights - even though they are very short - you have only some cooldowns ready and not burn all of them on one boss. This way you get a more realistic depiction of how the dps would look like in a longer fight WITH some cooldowns.
Using ebonroc as an example is a bit missleading.
Looking at the poll results assuming that most who actually have an opinion about this have voted it looks like the community is heavily divided.
Only two options reached something like a majority which are the "no to invisible changes" and "no to changing fixed timers". No question regarding worldbuffs and changing monster stats reached even 50%. I would assume that we would have needed way more decisive numbers to make the point that we really want the developers to change their design philosophy (up to now) from trying to get as close to blizzlike numbers as possible to tailoring custom content for the community.
If the numbers show one thing it clearly is that, whatever is decided in the end, at least one third of the population won't be happy with it. So since we (the community) cannot speak in unison about what we want and it would be wrong to just cater to one specific group the best option seems to be to stay as close to the old approach.
By asking the question to the community and putting up the poll you now know for certain that you will disappoint a decent part of the community no matter which options you choose. The important part now is, no matter which road you take, how to justify the decision. Imho the most sustainable is to keep doing what you were, aim for blizzlike numbers.
You can always do DPS calculations and take wild guesses about how to tune content to make it enjoyable for person x or y, but the best possible point to justify your decision will always be "these are blizzards numbers or at least as close as we could get to them.
Can we get an official or semi official statement on how Kronos staff is interpreting the results of poll and discussion so far, how long you intend to keep the poll open and a rough estimate on when you are doing your decision?
P.S.: I would love "hardcore" custom content of all the vanilla instances (incl. all lowlevel instances) tuned for geared out naxx players on a different server later.
Only two options reached something like a majority which are the "no to invisible changes" and "no to changing fixed timers". No question regarding worldbuffs and changing monster stats reached even 50%. I would assume that we would have needed way more decisive numbers to make the point that we really want the developers to change their design philosophy (up to now) from trying to get as close to blizzlike numbers as possible to tailoring custom content for the community.
If the numbers show one thing it clearly is that, whatever is decided in the end, at least one third of the population won't be happy with it. So since we (the community) cannot speak in unison about what we want and it would be wrong to just cater to one specific group the best option seems to be to stay as close to the old approach.
By asking the question to the community and putting up the poll you now know for certain that you will disappoint a decent part of the community no matter which options you choose. The important part now is, no matter which road you take, how to justify the decision. Imho the most sustainable is to keep doing what you were, aim for blizzlike numbers.
You can always do DPS calculations and take wild guesses about how to tune content to make it enjoyable for person x or y, but the best possible point to justify your decision will always be "these are blizzards numbers or at least as close as we could get to them.
Can we get an official or semi official statement on how Kronos staff is interpreting the results of poll and discussion so far, how long you intend to keep the poll open and a rough estimate on when you are doing your decision?
P.S.: I would love "hardcore" custom content of all the vanilla instances (incl. all lowlevel instances) tuned for geared out naxx players on a different server later.
Perhaps we have different definitions of sustainable, because to me, a sustainable future for Kronos is not one where the majority of guilds clear Naxx in one night or within a week. A lot of people were going to quit after seeing Naxx regardless, but even more will quit out of disappointment, if what they waited two years for is just another easy 40 man raid like AQ, BWL, and MC were and still are.
However, if Naxx were buffed to the point where it's challenging even the Synced the Vanguards of the world (blizzlike experience), then it would likely take at least several weeks, and maybe even a few months to clear the whole raid for the majority of other guilds. At least that would keep players active and engaged for a longer period of time...
Buff boss hp to the point where Synced/VG level dps is barely beating Patchwerk berserk timer (blizzlike experience), and if it ends up being too hard, then implement a nerfing schedule (one 5% hp nerf every month, or two weeks). That's the easiest compromise I can think of, that appeases both crowds. As I said before, it's easy to start out making a raid too hard, and then scale it down. The opposite is not true however. If Naxx starts out too easy, then it's going to be impossible to make it harder after the fact, without a huge uproar. Please don't make that mistake!
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Smooglab
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The decisions of the later questions (to change or not to change boss stats and timers) are a follow-up question to the first one.
If you decide to allow guilds to use world buffs in Naxx, the option of increasing boss HP and shorter enrage timers becomes quite valid. However, it will also become a lot harder to properly tune (and test) the encounters for guilds that are not buffed at all versus those who have every single world buff.
It seems most people agree to some form of a "no world buffs in Naxx" version, it would make testing and tuning a lot easier, make possible DCs/crashes/bugs less frustrating and it would simply level the playing field a lot more; where clearing Naxx doesn't become a matter of who saved the most worldbuffs and spend the most time outside of the instance.
If you decide to allow guilds to use world buffs in Naxx, the option of increasing boss HP and shorter enrage timers becomes quite valid. However, it will also become a lot harder to properly tune (and test) the encounters for guilds that are not buffed at all versus those who have every single world buff.
It seems most people agree to some form of a "no world buffs in Naxx" version, it would make testing and tuning a lot easier, make possible DCs/crashes/bugs less frustrating and it would simply level the playing field a lot more; where clearing Naxx doesn't become a matter of who saved the most worldbuffs and spend the most time outside of the instance.
crimsonsage
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You're totally right regarding the ignote damage, thanks.
It's funny how you acknowledge that the entire community won't be happy either way, so your solution is to cater to a specific part of the community :lol:
It seems like having an overtuned raid that declines in difficulty to blizzlike values over the course of 6-8 weeks might be the most reasonable compromise.
Ouro is the boos to choose if you're trying to make dps comparisons with heigan.
Ouro has 2million HP and submerges after about 90s (unless you get him to 20%)
Heigan has 1.8 million with his dance phase starting at 90s into the fight
The HP is not identical but the fight length of Ouro prior to submerge is a decent indicator for how you do on heigan before the first dance.
Ouro has 2million HP and submerges after about 90s (unless you get him to 20%)
Heigan has 1.8 million with his dance phase starting at 90s into the fight
The HP is not identical but the fight length of Ouro prior to submerge is a decent indicator for how you do on heigan before the first dance.