Wednesday, September 21, 2011

a crab stole my kill

Monday Night is progression night. Actually, so is Thursday. But this is a story about Monday night progression, two nights ago specifically, in which a 25 guild has put in many, many attempts on Majordomo Staghelm.

Or, as Lux affectionately named him, Majordomo Laghelm.

Now, Laghelm gave us fits. I'll admit, I was a part of the problem as I tried and failed getting healer cooldowns in some sort of order. I'm not as good at calling out things in voice chat as I'd like to think I am. I wavered between too many too early and trying to save too many too long. I was inconsistent and jumbled up timing. But anyways. We finally got the hang of it last week.

Our best attempt on Monday night was 140k, less than 1%. It was so to-the-wire that someone missed their seed and it was over just like that. A shaman even popped in the vain hopes that dots would kill the boss in the 1-1/2 seconds he borrowed to extended the encounter. But no, it was not to be, and that was our last attempt for the night.

So... well, likely you see where this is going. Enter some nerfs. We kill the first four bosses with absolutely no problems. Alysrazor is so much of a joke now that during the second tornado phase I tried to run into a tornado and I still didn't take any damage.

We one-shot Majordomo. And I couldn't even bring myself to congratulate the healers on a job well-done. Normally I bug the RL to give us EP for good first or early kills but I could only joke about it.

I didn't roll on the healing trinket, either. I wasn't sure that I wanted it (the mana regen ones win out in theory-crafting though I feel so far removed from that this tier I don't know), and on top of that, I couldn't bring myself to be excited about loot. Why bother? We totally didn't earn that.

I've been deflated.

And the worst part is, we'll be going after Ragnaros tonight but I can't get excited. At all. Because if it's anything like the nerfed Domo and Alys, then I'll never even know how that fight is supposed to feel.

So yeah. We'll be onto heroic modes soon enough, which is nice because that's what we were before Cataclysm came and made 25s hard to fill. But then, HMs are getting nerfed too. I can't say I'll feel like I've earned anything from here on out.

I wonder about the future of raiding. I understand that this mid-tier nerfing is likely a test run of Looking For Raid, but if we can look forward to more mid-tier nerfs, then there's a lot less motivation. If you can't stay cutting edge, there's no sense in trying in the beginning. Why just make some half-assed attempts in the first few months, waiting out until you can get your loot on a platter? How am I going to analyze our new healers if there's no trying fights, and does it really matter since we can probably 4-heal anything now?

Oh, cynical Enlynn is cynical. Pardon me. I assure you, the angst in the first half of the post was earned. This isn't the end of me raiding or playing WoW...

But for the first time ever, I just don't care. That, I think, is a very bad sign. I was disappointed by Cata only being three tiers and this tier only having 7 bosses. I'm not ready for Deathwing to be in the next patch. I'm not ready to think about leveling up and learning yet another paradigm.

And I'm certainly not ready for loot on a platter when our progression was actually going just fine, thank you very much.

8 comments:

  1. I know exactly what you mean. Our guild has been running two 10 mans, the progression team has had several weeks working on Raggy and the 2nd team has killed Domo once. I dps on the progression team and heal the 2nd and I'm not at all happy about these nerfs. We were doing fine thank you very much, Blizzard, Progression team had just spent the last night getting a handle on the meteors in P3 and a kill was imminent. Our second team was still perfecting the dps on Alys and refining our Baleroc strat.

    We didn't need these nerfs. And we especially didn't need the mere 7 days notice.

    It's killed any keen I had for raiding this tier and expansion really, and I was probably one of the highest attendance raiders in the guild. Now I'm getting my kicks from arena and random BGs.

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  2. "But for the first time ever, I just don't care"

    That, is the most dangerous thing that can happen in an mmorpg. People don't quit when they are angry or happy or anywhere in between, people quit when they just don't care anymore. By keeping things hard, even unobtainable for some, it adds mystique and it compels people to find a way to achieve more. Not all can, but that dangling carrot is enough to keep people going even if they are annoyed. Not caring leads to a lack of hope, a lack of excitement and drive. It leads to defeated players and a dead game.

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  3. "People don't quit when they are angry or happy or anywhere in between, people quit when they just don't care anymore."

    This is exactly why I stopped logging in and let my sub expire... I just didn't care.

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  4. The nerfs put a lot of guilds in a difficult position. I've read stories of undergeared alt/PuG raids going to 6/7 in an evening. Near the other end of the spectrum is my guild, which was 2/7 Heroic 25 before the nerf and close to killing Beth and Alys. After the nerfs we took the first four bosses relatively easily and killed Majordomo on Heroic in 3 attempts (though messily).

    Somewhere in the middle are guilds who were near to 7/7 Normal and recently at 1/7 Heroic. It looks like most of them took Normal mode attempts on their usual bosses and have come out disappointed. While not everyone wants to run Heroic modes, those guilds in the middle are perfect candidates for reaching 4/7 or 5/7 Heroic before Tier 13.

    While my guild wasn't falling down ecstatic over three new Heroic kills this week, we were pretty excited. Plus, Baleroc and Ragnaros offer us plenty of challenge going forward. For guilds just getting to Rag, the Heroic modes of the first 4 bosses are a lot more interesting and fun than the Normal modes (pre or post-nerf).

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  5. Thank you all for the comments. Sounds like I'm good company.

    Joe, I hope the hard modes will keep us busy now that they are "accessible" to us and I hope I can get over the sour taste in my mouth that killing Laghelm gave me. Messily is a great word, in that regards. I know our kill of Lag was indeed very messily. I think that was why it was so disappointing to me, knowing how sloppy it was, knowing it was ONLY because of the hotfixes we got it.

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  6. Allow me to offer a different take:

    When people get stuck, they quit. I knew Cataclysm was trouble when I had to sit raiders I'd used in SWP because they couldn't swing T11 heroics. My initial 25 man guild crumbled because Cataclysm was just too much of a grind. Tier 11 took forever. Random dungeons took forever. Fishing 10,000 fish from pools took forever. Farming herbs for flasks took forever. RNG coupled with difficulty (Al'Akir and Nef, I'm looking at you) just killed us. Needless to say, we lost people shortly before T12 was released.

    We reformed into a 10 man for 4.2. Things were fine for 4 weeks, but our progress slowed and then stopped. I'm pretty sure people dropped quickly due to T11 fatigue. Once progress stopped for a month, people stopped showing up. The nerfs magically brought them back, but the signs are clear: We won't survive until 4.3 or at least for into it.

    For those who are unhappy with the nerfs, I suggest doing the nerfed Rag in ilvl 350 gear. There are challenges to be found if one is willing to look for them. The problem is that in a group game, not everyone seeks them. The problem that hasn't hit Enlynn's guild...yet.

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  7. After years of Wrath style raiding, many people have an expectation to progress rapidly, and that is ok. Some other players may not like it, I myself enjoyed the satisfaction that came from killing a boss after weeks of wipes but in the end that is a preference. That is an expectation of raiding to a degree however. If a new boss goes down every week people will run out of stuff to raid very fast and grow bored, which is just as bad as fatigue from wiping. People's tolerance for wiping on bosses and learning from it has dwindled, and that is not the fault of the players. I think Blizz has realized fast and furious raiding with fast and furious rewards is not a pace that they can keep up with.

    The raiding fatigue threshold years ago was much higher also because, I believe, there was a lot of other distractions to do in the game. The distractions could be unfun, they could be meaningless, and they might not even be something worth doing, but having those extra possibilities, knowing that you could take a short break whenever kept people from feeling like a slave to the raid.

    With everyone working on the same tier of raiding and a lack of other "stuff" at 85 the only thing to look forward to is that next boss going down, and if that doesn't happen regularly fatigue sets in. The nerfs are only bringing to light problems that have been present for some time now.

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  8. We have not killed Ragnaros on normal yet. We have been working on him the last couple of weeks, but that was before the nerfs. Now I just want him dead and out of the way. As you said, there won't be much to celebrate when he dies.

    When an average raid group like ours doesn't get to the end of normal mode before it's nerfed, then something is wrong. In this case I'm pointing the finger firmly at Blizzard.

    We wiped on Staghelm when he had 6k health, once. Before he was nerfed, of course. :)

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