because of artificial cockblocks put in by blizz obv

And I specifically called you on the part where you claimed the high end game lacked difficulty, never once have I debated the difficulty of the leveling portion of the game.

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Kuwen Furyblades
Hunter of Memento Reejeryn
Champion of Faydark

I'm not ignoring the complexities of the fights, I was simply pointing out that even with the ins and outs of a specific encounter (blizzards, AE Polymorphs, hateful bolts, cleaves, portals, infernals, smoking blasts, thunderclaps, etc etc etc etc etc)...all that boils down to human interaction. Your raid wipes to Flame Wreaths because someone wasn't paying attention and moved...same as the positive/negative charges on Thaddius. The "mob" didn't wipe you, one of your raiders did. The boss didn't send you to the closest graveyard, the asshole in your raid not paying attention did. Thats not difficulty, thats a simple matter of watching your fucking screen and doing what your supposed to (or what your not supposed to).



Have you ever raided as a Holy Spec Paladin before? If you haven't, I don't want to or don't give a shit about your opinion about what I do on raids. I'm second/third on healing meters on a regular basis, being beaten by a Resto Druid and a Holy Priest...ALL FROM PRESSING 1 BUTTON. And before you say "Well you're the one who rolled paladin" I'll save you the trouble. I DID roll a paladin, specifically to be a healer. It's the first healing class I've ever played in any game and I find it quite interesting and more relaxing to play then the hunter I raided as for 2 years.



Are you talking any type of game or just MMO's? You want an MMO (and I'm not limiting my comments to just RPGs because your question was so literal that I am going to answer it literally) harder then WoW, try EVE Online.

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You must be referring to Gruul and Nightbane then, right? If memory serves, both were dead in under 3 weeks upon release of the expansion.

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Kuwen Furyblades
Hunter of Memento Reejeryn
Champion of Faydark

I'm curious as why you don't count human interaction into the difficulty of the game. Many of the encounters were specifically designed for that very purpose, otherwise the game would be much too easy, wouldn't it?

Human interaction kind of has to be the X factor for raiding, doesn't it? Kind of the fundamental reason we all play MMO's, so it makes sense that Blizzard would try to leverage the difficulty of encounters on our abilities to think for ourselves and act accordingly.

For the most part everyone here is pretty bright and has the ability to focus. On a grand scale, it is not as easy for many groups to get 20 or 40 people to focus. When MC was popular, I raided with one guild that couldn't get people to loot core hounds, and this was something that went on for months.

I'm not saying a well oiled machine of people paying attention can't sweep through content easily, I just think there are a lot more people watching TV while they play than you think. You're spoiled by having a focused raid group.

I don't count human interaction into the difficulty of the game because Blizzard has NO CONTROL over you (or your raid). Blizzard can't MAKE you move into or out of a boss ability like Flame Wreath, Blizzard can't FORCE you to not cast a specific ability when you were supposed to (unless that is a mechanic of the fight, which is something you should've been aware of), nor can they PREVENT you from pay attention to an encounter.

Blizzard also can't stop real life from happening around you while you're raiding. I'll be honest, I nearly caused a wipe on Chromaggus once because my daughter was rocking back and forth in her high chair (which is always within my arms reach) and it fell. Because I went and attended to her, I missed a Tranq Shot...can I blame that on Blizzard? Can I tell my wife I couldn't tend to our child because Blizzard prevented me from getting away from the computer? If I can, will Blizzard pay for a divorce lawyer? Not all of the people who play this game have the luxury of being single or having no distractions or nothing else going on around them during raids. I can't speak for every family man (or woman) either, but last time I checked no one's spouse would be ok with "Honey, leave me the fuck alone and do not disturb me while I'm raiding".

Blizzard can only control the mob and the surrounding environment. If you have people on your raids that have issues with pay attention or learning the ins and outs of a specific fight, that is your raid leaders fault...not Blizzards.

As for the "cockblocks"...

Actually, I think things like 360 Degree Cleaves...faster then quick dry nail polish trash respawns...Alchemy being the most broken yet required skill in order to progress are more along the lines of cockblocks...cockblocks being fixed for the most part...but cockblocks none the less....

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I think you may have missed my point. The very reason things like Flame Wreath are put into the game is to increase the difficulty of an encounter because of the human factor. Doesn't matter what MMO you are playing, that human factor is going to be used for increased difficulty.

I think you aren't giving Blizzard enough credit in that regard. I'm pretty sure the game would be extremely easy and not as exciting if they left the human interaction out of the raid encounters. Every fight would be a tank n' spank where only 2 or 3 people need to pay attention. (Tank and healers).

And I'm not talking about real life interjecting itself into the game. I'm talking specifically about the human interaction in game when everyone is there playing and focused. Even then, some encounters are difficult because of bosses randomly targeting people for abilities, etc.

Unless the raid content beyond Kara is vastly different from both Kara and all raid content pre-TBC, I can say from firsthand experience that you're vastly over simplifying to say that Holy Priest / Resto Druid does nothing but press 1 button... Sorry if paladins are that one dimensional.

Gruul was dead in 3 weeks thanks to DnT and Nihlium spending about 2k per person per attempt in consumables.

That is an artificial cockblock, and every upper tier boss mob of each zone has been like this before they nerfed the mechanics of the fight and the ability of the mobs to the point where your dedicated raider can do it, and to keep the zone from being cleared due to an incompleted script / event / bugged mob.

As for the Paladin, yes it is a very one dimensional class, on any spec, as a Ret paladin's DPS is a joke, and Prot Paladins are only great for multiple mob agro not single mob, although in hindsight, with the change to Thunderclap, i'll still take a prot warrior over a prot paladin.

Using 1 button and maybe a bit of re positioning i can out heal and out last any healer in my guild. I don't need to pot, I don't need an innervate. Thankfully it's being addressed with the slight nerf of Illumination.

It's also one of the many reasons I'm not going to play it anymore.

We can agree to disagree all day, because this thread is going nowhere.

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"I'm the best there is at what i do, bub, and what i do isn't very pretty"

Oh I ment thats all I do...priests and druids have it a lot harder then I do...paladin healing really is that simple.

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Here's the omgsofunny picture:




EDIT:

By the way, the "human interaction" argument is the most ridiculous I have ever seen.

And Sola, you still don't give Tankadins enough credit. Especially in a zone like Karazhan, where pratically everything is undead. The only boss our Tankadin has had difficulty tanking is the Maiden. He has successfully tanked everything else we have fought there, including the Prince (we haven't attempted Nightbane and Netherspite yet, though).

Hrm

As a raiding Holy/Prot pally, I tend to press more than one button. Flash of Light, Holy Light (HL rank 1 to start off with Light's Grace), Divine Illumination, and Divine Favor. If a raid member needs cleansing I will cast that. When we are fighting Undead mobs I will fear/stun or blast (excorcism or Holy Wrath). On occasion I will Divine Shied self or BoP one who needs it.

I am constantly the #1 Healer (we go in kara with this setup Prot War, Fury War (with good enough gear to be OT) Feral Druid, Healing Priest, Shadow Priest, 2 Pallies, Mage, Lock/Hunter) and I am usually #3-4 on Overhealing.

Here is my armory. I have OK gear for a Kara pally (I still need several upgrades) I have been playing this char for a long time, I started playin WoW in the summer of 2004. This is the second char I made, my hunter Ghaani was first, I xfered them to Gnomer and had to re-name my Pally as my dwarf war I have on the server has the same name. I have never played WoW to be the ultimate challenge in MMO nor did I start playing it because it was bubble gum easy. I play because, for the most part, I enjoy the game. I am a glutton for punishment because I orig rolled a pally in the hopes of a Holy Tank, but that spirit was crushed a long time ago.

If you really think so, I'd like to watch your guild raid for a night. I'd like to see your flawless kills, or your lack of raid wipes because every single person is paying attention 100% of the time without fail. I'd like to see this, I really would.

And what happens if someone does cause a wipe huh? Do you shrug it off? Do you scold them? Do you gkick them? What happens when the human interaction you think is so ridiculous fails?

For once I agree with my brother, this thread is going nowhere because obviously we all have differing opinions and those of use that will leave WoW for greener pastures will leave while those who choose to stay will stay...

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Outside of gear check fights (which are really non-existant), every single fight has human interaction in mind when they are created. Why even have flame wreaths? So people can accidentally run into them. Why have adds? So they have to be dealt with. They aren't being dealt with by bots (they are too busy farming), they are dealth with by real people with real reactions.

I could do the Romeo & Juliet fight in my sleep, since we always get that one, but it doesn't mean that I still can't miss a kick on a heal. That is the human interaction that the devs no doubt had in mind when they created that encounter. They all boil down to human interaction. No shit. You act like the game wasn't meant to take human interaction into account.

Again, I didn't say the game doesn't take human interaction into account or that encounters weren't designed around the fact that people need to pay attention...what I said was Blizzard does not MAKE you move in or out of a Flame Wreath. They certainly count on at least 1 person not paying attention who will move, but that just means you as a raider need to take it upon yourself to not be that person...because honestly, if you can't follow simple instructions like "DON'T MOVE", then you probably shouldn't be playing a co-op game of any kind.

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If it was that easy, everyone would be out of Karazhan already. I am sure even the uber hardcore guilds still have people that move during the flame wreath every once in a while. And let's face it, as a "I only stand there and push one button" Paladin, you have it 'easier' in that fight than some other classes (like Rogues, omg).

I still think that blizzard is fairly creative with encounter design. I'm not even really sure what you'd want to change about them. As neesha says, human interaction is the huge majority of the focus of encounters... that's what the game's all about. How could you change an encounter to be more difficult without affecting that?

The game is much easier to level in than others I have played, sure.. but I do know I'm a good bit further from the end game in WoW than I was in EQ, in a very very similar guild to the ones I played with there.

Karazhan has been pretty clearly defined as the UBRS of the expansion. I don't think it's really supposed to be THAT hard. From what little I've seen of the actual raid zones, they appear fairly challenging to the average raid guild.

As far as speed of zones being completed, I don't think that's really that much different than what would have been the case in other games, had the zones been completable. I'm not sure it's fair to gripe because they made a game you can actually play. The "cockblocks" all get fixed pretty quickly IMO. I prefer to think of it as a good thing.

Posting a thread implying "dumbing down the game" and referring to removing some of the potion requirements has to be the stupidest thing I have read on the World of Warcraft section on these forums. If anything, they should get rid of all potions except like healing and mana pots etc, and make all raid encounters have the same potion restrictions as arena fights.

On the topic of human interaction requirements, I think this is a good thing. In Everquest you could have a guild that comprised of 20 core quality players, and the rest being semi afk mashing a button while watching TV. In WoW, this is not a possibility - and it is great. The only problem with this is, you then have guilds who have thought they were exceptional realize how a few people have carried the majority. Come encounters that requires awareness, reaction and an above average gameing performance by a majority of your raid you suddenly sit there thinking "o shit this shitty player ruined our attempt". Yes, the shitty player's will ruin raids in situations like this -- and that is a good thing. Heightening the attention requirements of raiders heightens the difficulty of the encounter. Part of learning an encounter, and part of working together as a guild lies in laying trust that your teammates are actually performing the tasks they should be and paying attention to everything going on around them.

Removing this element would be more along the lines of this thread's original complaint - dumbing down the game.

That being said, there are a TON of problems more immediate with The Burning Crusade and it's design. The whole itemization and content structure 60-70 making everything that was put into the game completely worthless not just to raiders, but to casuals as well as new people levelling up was a major mistake in Blizzard's thought. I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess the reason for this was to close the gear gap between casual's and hardcore - particularly with Arena's in mind. In other words, they planned this wrong from the very beginning and did not anticipate or give a proper item structure capable of handleing even the first expansion's worth of content.

Course, this is just scratching the top of an iceberg when it comes to the problems with WoW today. I could write a whole essay on the matter, but will leave it at this for now.

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- Nimloth Makai
Violator of the Divine

I just don't like Kara.

My guild had been pretty active in MC/BWL/ZG/Aq's. We were just starting naxx when BC arrived. Since then we've lost a huge number of our core people who have simply gotten bored and quit. Like Nimloth said, it's obvious who carried who in BC. We have noticed a number of that now.

Regarding Kara though....it seems like you almost have to have an entire B team saved to your raid's instance depending on what boss you are on. Example: We have cleared up to Shade. (Illhoof handed us our collective asses) The best we've done so far is to get him at about 45%. Our current raid was very caster heavy, with the only meeles being a hunter, a rogue and 2 tanks. It appears that while we did fine up to Aran we now have to tell half the raid "sorry, you need to sit out on this boss you helped get to. We now need rogues..etc"

Is this the way Kara really is? It's all I've been hearing on the various boards.

Speaking of Aran, anyone have a good tip for him? I can't afford to be chugging elixir after elixir, nor can anyone else. First place I've been where you pretty much have to be drinking pots the entire time. After 10 wipes lol...that crap is getting spendy.

Yes, that is the way Kara is (replacing people). As for the Shade, we normally don't have any tanks for the fight. We have 1-2 Rogues (to kick the casts and interrupt) and the rest is ranged DPS and healers. 2 Warlocks minimum is good for that fight as well, to handle the Water Elementals that spawn (fear/banish).

As you know, the key is to keep his mana below his health so he doesn't poly the raid and drink. If you are having trouble, it is probably around the time when he polys the raid. One thing you can do is force the poly, to prevent him from doing it at the same time as the elementals are up. Just stop DPS on him at around 45% and let him get low on mana so he drinks BEFORE he summons the elementals. If everyone is on the ball, they should be able to use their healthstones/heal pots right after they get blasted out of Poly, then you can resume the fight like normal. Once he summons the Elementals, your Warlocks can concentrate on them (we also let them mark their own targets to make it easier to re-banish them so you may consider promoting them so they can do that). Another good tip is to have everyone run to the center when he is casting Blizzard. This way, you can see where it is and move behind it and follow it as it moves around the room.

ps: don't move during flame wreath :p

Damn, beat me to it.

I guess I'll throw my 2 cents in. I've only been playing since the middle of November so it's been about 6 months. I still think WoW is superior to EQ in damn near every aspect. Kara is still fun and right now the guild I’m in is running two groups clearing it each week. Basically we are swapping out players based on who needs loot from that boss still. But all of the bosses are interesting encounters, especially when you’re learning them. Gruul’s Lair is also fun and interesting. Doomwalker and Doom Lord Kazzak are nice change of pace and make for some interesting and challenging world bosses. Right now we are in the process of learning SSC and should have Magtheridon down pretty soon which opens up the Eye.

So the expansion has been out for 5 months and I’ve barely experienced half, if that, of the pve content and they’re already adding more and fine tuning things. I still haven’t had the time to get into pvp like I would like to but I’m sure it will still be there when I’m ready. From my perspective, WoW is still best thing available.

Hope everyone enjoys 10 man juggling raids. Tigole has informed us they are a smashing success!

One day, his balls will be on display at the Smithsonian.

You dont have to juggle, just leave all the hunters at the curb.

I'd be interested in reading the essay.

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Kuwen Furyblades
Hunter of Memento Reejeryn
Champion of Faydark

Aran is arguably the hardest fight in the zone in my opinion, this is counting both Illhoof and Nightbane.

My best suggestions include stacking health across the raid (ie. BoK and gear swaps for everyone), the fight can be incredibly difficult to heal and an extra 500-1000hp for everyone is the difference in a person being able to soak back to back nukes and not.

Beyond stacking Rogues and Warlocks which can trivialize the fight, know that 3 healers is ideal in my experience, you should have 2 interrupters (rogue/warrior or 1 shaman) for both fire and frost and lately I've been saving Bloodlust for 40% when the elementals spawn, not for the increased damage but for the increased healing.

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Kuwen Furyblades
Hunter of Memento Reejeryn
Champion of Faydark

Interrupt rotations for the win!

-=| KICK by Taliesn -> Fuckface the Fearsome Rogue/Warrior - NEXT!!!|=-

My group does it a similar way, but they have each person who can interrupt assigned to a particular spell school. So person A will interrupt all fire spells, person B will interrupt frost, person C is backup in case the others miss or are blocked/whatever. It requires a lot of paying attention, but works well when people are on the ball.

With World of Warcraft in the expansion the creativity and overall ideas behind the encounters are definitely not the problem.

My thoughts on the encounters discussed on this thread --

Kara is almost overly easy once you learn the fights. Gruul was fun before the nerf and perhaps slightly too hard - but he is stupid in his current state.

Doomwalker is overly easy as is Kazzak, but I guess that is a necessity with world bosses.

Mag is a creative encounter but has retarded rewards for the work.

I can't put my finger on exactly what is wrong with the game in it's current state. I have been playing since I sold my EQ character and have had every class in the game besides a warrior and warlock as my main. I have raided, I have PvPd, essentially I have played the shit out of the game. Raiding is just not enjoyable anymore. I have several accounts with different classes that are all keyed and all geared -- I cannot motivate myself to show up to raids on any of them.

I have not played since the new patch went live, but it almost feels like too little too late. Perhaps it was that the majority of my raiding time was spent on a holy paladin and a hunter, but the experience was just not there.
Spamming flash of light or eventually just spamming holy light because I was bored of having too much mana was just not a fun game mechanic. Neither was maxing my hunters damage only to be outdone by some warlock in fully crafted epic armor raping my damage with half the effort.
I still enjoy many aspects of the game but at this point in my life I just am not going to get gratification from leveling yet another character to get the same lackluster experience.

I have played MMOs for close to 8 years now - I certainly could find the time to play if I desired - I really would like to enjoy playing - Yet I do not log on and probably won't want to enough to buy another game card.

There are several guys that live in my house that play casually to semi serious. All of them have tried raiding and just can't get into it.

Basically I liked that in EQ I could just log on before raids and do my job. Log off after raids and do it the next day. Forever. No potions. No consumables. No repairs.

Fuck farming resist suits. Fuck farming herbs for hours. Fuck bandages. Fuck making pvp outside the arenas worthless. Fuck content that bugs constantly. Fuck itemization that makes no sense AT ALL - Why the fuck would a blue item out of a 5 man be > a 25 man raid epic? At this point fuck raiding in world of warcraft.

Keep in mind I just drove for 14 hours, but I am just fed up with poorly designed shit that should have been obvious if thought out. The idea that I should spend hours and hours to slightly upgrade my character and in many cases make him look beyond retarded in the process has made me lose interest. I can honestly say this is the first time in years that I am enjoying myself more playing mario kart with my friends than sitting down for a successful raid with my comrades. There was a time where the raids were epic and enjoyable, but that time has passed.

Id love to PvP again hard, but it seems like you can't accomplish much solo these days. My arena partner transfered to an oceanic time zone realm so I am basically out of options. Perhaps this is life's way of telling me it is time to stop playing computer games.

I guess finding another Arena partner is just too complicated. Quit the game.

If you want to win, yes it's very difficult. They might already be on a good team.

If you're satisfied with taking anyone and losing a fair amount, then anyone will do as long as you get your 10 games a week. If you're competitive you want the best class that complements your abilities who has moderate PvP skill. Such as uses mouse to move, has everything hotkeyed, specced correctly, geared correctly, knows what to do in each situation versus each team, can react quickly.

My 5v5 team held first place in our battlegroup for three weeks then they just got tired of the expansion and quit. All but me and the warrior. Finding replacements is not an option. So I ended up quitting.

Bit of a difference between competitive arena and people just sponging up the gear.

He wasn't talking about a 5v5 team where 3 people quit, he was talking about 2v2, where he only needs to find ONE person to play with him. Sounds like he's just making excuses, so he should quit the game rather than sit and talk about how bad things are. His whole "fuck this and that" post is a good example of people seeing the bad in everything and failing to see any good. I don't doubt that the next game he plays "is so much better than WoW".

/shrug

I still think 2v2 is pretty difficult if you want like a 2200+ rating. As a rogue you'll probably want a paladin or another rogue, both of which would probably still lose to the dreaded war/pally combo.

I prefer Rogue/Hunter over Rogue/Rogue, although I play both combos on my 2v2 team. We have an 1800 rating this week without really much effort. I see us getting over 2k next week. And yea, Pally/anything is usually our downfall when I am playing with the other Rogue.

I fully agree with the any other game comment - I cannot see myself playing another mmo at this point.

The point I was making is that I really do want to enjoy the content out there. There are a great deal of legitimate problems with the game. I have stuck through worse before and would continue to if I was so motived.

My 2 v 2 partner was who I talked about specifically. I also lost my 3 v 3 and 5 v 5 teams with server transfers. Our server has been having problems with this a great deal. Personally - I was seriously considering rerolling with Oryx since I have greatly enjoyed playing with that group in the past but ended up leveling my paladin on Black Dragonflight since I basically share guild leadership with a few other individuals in the guild behind FoH. We lost Overrated from the server which removed several of my friends. FoH lost several core members to OR and more quit. Our hardcore playerbase died over night. We actually had people transfer BACK to lightbringer despite that being a less than enticing prospect. Arena has little to do with the problems I am having.

The player base on top of the glaringly obvious problems with raiding are what cause me concern - and also cause me not to log on. I feel like I am in a position, real life wise, that the WoW playerbase thrives off of. I am in my early 20s, with lots of free time, and lots of friends with free time too.

You may ask what those obvious problems are, perhaps suggest I am making them up to hop on the anti wow bandwagon. Let me be clear, when you actually get to the content with the ideal group is can be very fun. Karazhan is very entertaining when you do it. The problem is that you need the same group for a full 7 day period. You need tanks, heals, dps, bells, whistles for all the days you want to do it. The only week where I haven't had at least some people issues for kara was the week we did every boss in the zone in one sitting. If you could grab any 10 random people and do kara it would be fantastic. People would be there all the time. Maulgar and Gruul, I guess they were fun when we did them the first few times. After that those fights are just a snoozefest, I usually end up trying to kill our tank with shatter on Gruul so that the fight will be more interesting. Our guild gets Kazzak and Doomwalker nearly every week. The enjoyable part is the mass numbers of Alliance that show up to stop us. Sadly this content is only available once a week and to only a few people. As for SSC, I have done a few fights but I have only completed them on my paladin so they were boring. If I get around to doing them on my hunter or rogue I might have a different opinion. Farming for several hours to do content that is not even fun is retarded.

Farming heroic badges for resist suits to be used in raid content, it stuns me that anyone wants to do it. I do a few heroics a week and they are basically only fun when you put some sort of gimmick to them. Farming herbs for hours was fucking stupid, there is no way around that. Making Alterac Valley, Warsong Gulch, Arathi Basin, and Eye of the Storm give a reward that basically is worthless to anyone raiding sucks. I really did enjoy all those bgs but its hard to keep pvping when you hit the pooled honor cap. It is hard to argue my bugged content point when just one occurance of Prince in kara bugging out and becoming unattackable can completely ruin a night.

You can do 4 main things in WoW. Raid (10 man, 25 man), Instance (Normal, Heroic), PvP (BGs or Arena), Farm (Gather, kill mobs). There is not a part of these that doesn't have at least minor problems.

The number of people complaining is not for no reason. There are major problems with WoW and will continue to be. You can only wait for so long before you give up.

I haven't played for a week now and will go 1 more. After that I will return and see how things are working out post patch.