My 10-man team, MNK, hit up Crimson Halls for the first time last week. It took us a bit of time to get the hang of the Blood Prince Council, and we eventually had to go with a 3-tank strat (Hrist really wanted to do it with just 2), and we were very pleased to take them down.
We had a good chunk of time to spend doing some learning on the Blood Queen, and we figured we’d probably get through all of our 15 attempts.
There must be something about having limited attempts on a boss that brings out the most comical in the MNK tarded side, because it went from annoying to frustrating to downright hilarious. Pally DI’d someone on a wipe, and on recovery they were rezzing people rather than having them run back. Got too close to the blood queen and activated her. Bam, there goes an attempt.
Next attempt a healer runs in with the tank and the OT doesn’t. Healer gets killed in the first couple of seconds. Wipe. And immediately after the wipe a pally tries to rez someone, gets to close to the boss again, and engages her again. This is what our night was like.
My favorite moment was when Badass Mage and I got blood linked. We ran toward each other and at the same time I jump-disengaged toward him and he blinked toward me — end result being we sailed past each other. It was just that kind of night.
I’m not totally sure how I feel about the gating mechanism they’re using in ICC. I like the fact that they’re opening one wing at a time. In fact I kinda wish they were using 3 weeks between wings rather than two. Ironically the first wing was the only one we cleared the week it opened and that’s the one that we had forever on.
I think the method of slowly opening wings lets more casual guilds feel like they’re closer to the endgame progression by giving them more time on each wing. When you’re only playing a few hours a couple times a week, that extra time helps.
But I’m really not a huge fan of the limited attempts. I get that they’re trying to make skill a factor, rather than just having raid teams spend 8 hours a day on the boss and get the server first from sheer time rather than skill. But when the attempts are *so* limited — only 10 or 15 between a couple of bosses — it really makes every silly little mistake a much bigger deal. What would normally be a bit annoying or a bit funny, depending on your mood, is suddenly a big deal.
Now, we weren’t thinking that we’d take the Blood Queen on our first night there either way, and certainly from the handful of legitimate attempts we had, healing is going to be a huge issue there. But I really would have liked to have a bit more of a chance to learn on her. Instead one off night — and this was a really off night on that boss — and we’re done. Give me totgc style 50 attempts. That keeps the true craziness down without making every little error seem like a huge disaster.
Lol, that blink+jump disengage thing sounds so plausible
Bring on character collision!! =)
Glad you brought up the issue of disengage on this fight. I’m still working on better aiming/timing my disengages, so I will definitely need to watch out for it in this fight. . . when my team gets there. Keep up the good work!
POV:
An “Off Night” should result in a raid team losing there chance to down the boss. This is end game content and It is already easy enough compared to classic or BC. The sheer ease of getting geared enough to do the majority of ICC is ridiculous, so yeah, I do think there should be this attempt system in place where you can’t just run it over and over til finally the stars align. This will give the casual players a chance to at least expirience it but the more “hardcore” to complete and progress through. It’s the way it should be, ICC isn’t just some heroic that anyone can walts into and pew pew there way to success. It takes knowledge, execution and teamwork…Enough said.
Except the point of the gating is to limit the “hardcore” raiders. They generally blow through content by taking a massive amount of time at it. I don’t object to the limited attempts so much as such a massively low number.
The hardcore guild really object to it because it counters their biggest advantage, time. The guilds between casual and hardcore don’t like it because it really overemphasises little mistakes and people are getting booted from raids for a little screw-up (this is a major issue of discussion atm). Casual guilds are affected the least, since they they raid little enough to not be very affected by the limited attempts.
So this isn’t something that favors hardcore over casuals. It was designed to do the opposite, and does it pretty effectively. Again, I don’t object to the limited attempts so much as the number they chose.
A positive aspect of the limited attempts is that I think it makes the progression of a guild a far better indicator of their skill. Previously, this could be overcome by simply throwing time at it.
The Magic Number:
Your point on harcore vs. casual on the attempt system is duely noted and I agree. Going into more depth.. The magic number of 15 for 2 bosses I have a hard time objecting to. If you can’t down a boss on 7(.5) attempts your team is one or all: Not skilled enough, Not geared enough, Not learning anything from their previous mistakes. Now there could be a few more added to that but what it all boils down to is if your raid team can’t focus, learn, execute, and communicate.. then they don’t get rewarded.. or even the chance to be. Blizzard has been very friendly to players lately IMO and I’m glad to see a little bit of the “Sucks to be you” content that they are opening up with End Game Content.. Again, this is meant to be difficult!
In TotGC, almost any team (or pug) was more likely to run out of raid time (or fall apart) before EVER reaching the limit on number of attempts. 50 is really really high.
I think blizzard did it right. and 15 is just about right for these fights, THIS week. keep in mind that even as you said, you’ll do better next week. You’ll have more attempts to use too. Also keep in mind that as weeks go on, you’ll have better gear. AND not only that, but they’re releasing a escalating zone-wide buff to represent the growing strength of the ashen verdict.
the gating just keeps content limited, the attempts limit keeps progression measurable.
I think you should hold your judgments of the attempts system for when you’ve almost reached Arthas heroic. I feel that the whole design brilliance will become much more apparent to everyone at that point… whether it be 2 weeks from now for some, or 3 months from now for others (with the assistance of the stacked zone-wide buff)
/agree
P.S. (without having done research and just hearing from guildmates) I believe the buff is what the heroic LFG system one is.. “Luck of the Draw”..although they will obviously call it something else.
Disengage + Blink = Comedy. Good story.
Nice post
The limited number of attempts is a very good thing imo.
Our guild used to raid 4 nights a week, we still have 4 nights scheduled however at most we have raided perhaps 2.5 nights max over the past number of months. I guess you could call us serious casual.
Content has been so easy for so long, getting something that requires some actual focus is a pleasure.
Some guilds when new content came out would literally raid all day to get world or server firsts. With only a limited number of attempts (15 right now) it serves to separate the skilled from the folks who just happen to have a ton of time.
My 10 man team is nothing really special but we have every achievement it is possible to get in ICC so far (except everybody getting the blood queen one, seriously who at blizzard thought that was a good idea?) Having 2 hunters in my 10 man team has to help
But this is normal content(it is really not that hard), not heroic. How will 10 man teams deal with these fights when they (hopefully) really get hard?
I laughed when I saw the blink/ disengage thing, I can just picture that happening. One way to counter that is simply having a set area in the room to get yourself too when you have that debuff, we use the diamond in the center of the room. I am sure most do that, but having a set spot rather than running towards each other makes the fight much easier on the healers too
A huge issue facing some guilds is recruitment. Why join a raiding guild if you can simply PuG your way to decent gear? Imagine if you could do that in arenas, join the random skirmish q and end up with gear close to or the same as what you could get from being on a top team? Making these PvE fights only accessible to better organized teams/ guilds is a trend I hope blizzard continues. So many guilds at least on my server have fallen apart because you simply can not recruit players.
Love the story i think everybody has nights like these, some nights it just does’nt work for you others you can not seem to put a foot wrong . As for the attempts i can’t really say yet as my guild has only just started doing ICC last week and we have not really got that far yet as we have alot of new members lately which is always good and we are just finding out where everbody stands in the way of talent, gear etc.Keep the stories coming Frost had a good chuckle over this one especially the mage blink while you disengaged have a awesome picture in my head of what happened , looks like you were both too much on the ball lol maybe the suggestion of picking a spot sounds like it would be a good 1.
If everyone stopped overgearing for the content there would be far less people QQing about the difficulty of the content. The natural step up from ToC 10 norm is ICC 10 norm. i.e. the first wing is designed for a team with an average ilvl of 232 (or 245 for 25man). Its not suprising that a guild like Exodus blows threw all the normal content when they are already starting the content with gear half a tier above the designed base gear lvl.
Perhaps Blizz should gate gear when content is first relesed; i.e. debuff heroic gear to normal gear untill the heroic modes are relesed. Does not help with people kicking around 10 man content in full 25man gear but it could be a start. I lol’d at a member of my realms top guild when he QQ’d about the hotfix to 10man Marrowgar. When your raid team has 258 gear, you can’t exactly complain about bosses that drop 251 gear being too easy (especially as he didn’t like the idea of 25man Marrowgar’s damage being increased)
Just downed this ***** tonight, with only 2 attempts left. I can’t say I did anything special myself, but I *love* our healers.
But if we’re only getting 15 attempts on Putricide, Blood Queen, and Lich King combined, I agree wholeheartedly with Frost that it’s too few. Neither one is anywhere near on farm for us, and only the most hardcore progression guilds will be able to even see the Lich King for more than 1-2 attempts in the coming weeks/months.
Accidentally aggroing the boss on limited attempts is one of those crossroads for the attitude your guild develops. Laugh it off, or let bad feelings fester in your gut until they rot your face off some day. Wait, what am I saying?