The nerf bat falls again!

[crowdx]

Hi all,
so I see in today's patch notes they nerfed Forge of Souls and some of the older instances a little. I welcome some of the changes to the Devourer of Souls because most of his abilities just drag out the fight length and after a few runs just become a grind to kill him.
The UP changes I am not quite sure about, I only just finally cleared this on my main team and really it was not too hard. The boss with the sword was easy and now with only 1 sword spawn it seems like this will be ridiculously easy!
Something that does disappointment as a multiboxer and non-raider is the fact that story line needs people to raid to enjoy it. If Gear Score did not exist I am sure I could get a PuG, but with my realm it is so heavy into GS, people are looking now for 5200 and above to join PuGs which is crazy.
I really think they need to have a 5 man version of this story line as a continuation fron the Halls of Reflection, that to me would make it much more open for non-raiders, which all the changes over the last year/WotlK have been focused on, i.e. the casual player being able to experience all the game content. I know running FoS, PoS and HoR with my wife was very fun with the way the story moved through them, it made the first time runs very rewarding.
Any thoughts?

[Khatovar]

My thoughts on the changes to things like UP are the same vein as yours with Devourer. Once you've done it, it just becomes a timesink. I don't enjoy engaging Sorrowgrave or Shadowseeker, having her on the ground for 5 seconds, up in the air for 15 or whatever, down for 2 up for 15.... especially when my team is mostly melee-range. Nor do I enjoy having to deal with waiting on Skadi {and deal with an extra wave of adds} if I just needed to launch one more harpoon to down him.

It just gets tedious after a while. It doesn't add anything to the challenge, it's just stuff that forces me to sit around and wait.

[KAC]

My thoughts on the changes to things like UP are the same vein as yours with Devourer. Once you've done it, it just becomes a timesink. I don't enjoy engaging Sorrowgrave or Shadowseeker, having her on the ground for 5 seconds, up in the air for 15 or whatever, down for 2 up for 15.... especially when my team is mostly melee-range. Nor do I enjoy having to deal with waiting on Skadi {and deal with an extra wave of adds} if I just needed to launch one more harpoon to down him.

It just gets tedious after a while. It doesn't add anything to the challenge, it's just stuff that forces me to sit around and wait.

They nerfed the devourer? I have only done FoS on normal fighting this guy and he is ridiculously easy anyway. I can do the whole normal instance and kill him in only 19-20 mins. I just zerg brohjamn and dont even worry about his shards healing him and basically run around for the devourer encounter. I sometimes wipe if my slaves lag a bit and get caught in the wailing souls beam attack but other than that my god the instance is a joke and they made it easier...are you kidding me. I logged on about a month ago to check out the new stuff and saw they changed the emblem system around allowing you to get nice items for doing the same lame ass dungeons over and over again. I recently got the acheve for looting 1000 emblems on my tank and my other chars are not far behind. I have all the new triumph gear you can buy with emblems now and just started running the normal icc 5 mans for basically epic gear that is easier to get than anything in the old 5 man heroics. I admit it is hard to determine encounters where you are not just given the kill once you know the right strat it does become pointless which begs the question if you can do it once why should you have to keep doing it for any item thereafter if you are tagged with a win on that boss hell just go to a vendor and buy any of his drops! WoW is fast becoming a game where obtaining better gear,which is the whole point of the game, is getting to be so trivial its not even worth playing anymore. If blizz wants to nerf all the instances so even the dumbest person in the worst group can kill anything they are eventually going to turn a lot of people off by doing this. I don't like playing with kids hence the reason I multibox. I don't need to hear the whining and stupid shit that kids say so I will never raid again and will only 5 man. MY only suggestion would be to make hard modes on 5 man stuff that drop the same crap as the 25 man instances so people like myself have a reason to go through all that contenet to get the best gear and be able to have enough damage to progress to the hard modes to obtain end game gear but I sure as hell wont do it with 24 other people.

[Ellay]

They place things on a high tier in the beginning and then slowly lower the scale so it becomes more and more accessible to the masses. I would note that it seems like they lower the bar much faster than they used to though.

As a multiboxer who doesn't raid anymore like I used to I definitely feel the same way about wanting a progressive story mode that group sized instead of requiring a raid. Looks like the only way to enjoy that content for the new expansion to come out so you can clear through it.

[zenga]

If Gear Score did not exist I am sure I could get a PuG, but with my realm it is so heavy into GS, people are looking now for 5200 and above to join PuGs which is crazy.
...
Any thoughts?

As a matter of fact on my server i heard similar voices. Random people telling me it was hard to get a spot in a raid group. While i don't have any desire to start raiding soon, i just passed their names to eachother. Those guys started with their own raid group, all people who are undergeared according to gs, and there seems to be more of them than people that actually do raid. So far it seems to be a success, though i can imagine their learningcurve is higher. Might be an idea for you ...

[Fursphere]

GS has nothing to do with player skill, apptitude, or "learning curve".

[Littleburst]

I wonder why they dont make the RPstuff in COT skippable....

[crowdx]

GS is totally rubbish, my wife's toon is only at early 4k GS and yet she puts out the same dps as my mage which is several 100 above her. When I am in Dalaran I see so many toons with over 5k GS and yet none of my current toons have hit 5k even though they are fully epiced with most of their slots filled with item levels 219 or above.
As someone said before, (might have been here) people are filling slots with high gear score items just to get the magical number required and then swapping those items out when the raid starts.
A good example is Sundial of the Exiled, really good trinket which has a lowish GS but is a really nice trinket with good crit and high proc on the spell boost.
A nerf I would like to see would be the annoying HoS timed fight, I know it is more for a MB than regular players but that fight is a pain :(

[Khemikal]

Blizz has admitted that they will slowly nerf stuff. They want the old(er) content to not be a huge drag on your time. They want you to be spending time in the new dungeons/instances anyway. The less time you spend messing around in lesser content (5mans) the more time you spend in the raid instances.

While gear is easier to obtain now, realize you are still not going to get the newest/best gear from running 5mans. The quicker someone can get their T8/9 they quicker Blizzard can get that toon into the new content. That is all the new emblem mobel does. Imagine if you could have run Strat/Scholo/BRS for emblems that bought T2 back when Naxx came out. Would it make it easier to get into Naxx so you could see the content? Yes. Infact it would almost allow you to get into Naxx on multiple endgame characters. Again, exactly what Blizzard wants. So, gear does come faster which allows you to do the newest instances, it is not however a charity case to give you the best gear in game. You still have to raid to get that.

As for GS, I wish Blizz would have never made the ilvl visible to the player, or even public knowledge. Simply taking this out would make it so much harder for there to be a universal 'guide' as to what a player can/can't do.

Look at me, I got carried through T9 10-man content with my friends one day and got handed everything I want, my GS is over 9000, I can do anything in game. Oh yeah, I've only been playing for 2 days, got WoW for my 12th birthday. <--- This is what not having GS would prevent. No more unskilled/immature 12 yr olds saying they deserve a spot because of their GS.

[zenga]

Look at me, I got carried through T9 10-man content with my friends one day and got handed everything I want, my GS is over 9000, I can do anything in game. Oh yeah, I've only been playing for 2 days, got WoW for my 12th birthday. <--- This is what not having GS would prevent. No more unskilled/immature 12 yr olds saying they deserve a spot because of their GS.


What's wrong with a 12y old saying that? In the end it comes from a 12y old kid .... and he is probably playing with less worries than most of the adults do. I was warned by others that there are many younger people playing wow. I knew that upon signing up, accept it and deal with it. The least of my worries is what others say/think nor how they play. If a kid has fun using gs then let him have his fun, just don't use it yourself.

Gearscore in the end does what's in it's name: score your gear. If a certain category of players pays too much attention to your gear instead of your abilities, then just don't do business with them. It's like people who only look at a cars horse power to determine if it's any good.

I think my point is that i don't understand why gs seems to make so people upset :P

[crowdx]

For me what upsets me is that if I want to find a random PuG , GS has made it very hard. Before GS the PuG leader would take a quick look at gear or armory and decided on that, now it is all about over 5k GS to even be considered which on my server I see a LOT of players with 5k and above and so takes all my toons out of the running to get into PuGs.
Yes I could start my own PuG BUT I want to spend an hour or so running a Raid e.g. Ony 10 Man, not the whole evening putting a group together. Spending and hour or two running a Raid was possible before GS.
Let's hope Blizzard bans the GS mod lol

[Ualaa]

They have an addon now, Under Achiever.
Where any link you make, shows your toon as having that achievement.

Now they need an addon, where GearScore believes you have a 5500 GS or whatever.
Irregardless of the gear you have.

It should not be (and on my server is) a requirement to have a GS far above what you need for the content.
It should be (but is not) that you just need to know the fight and be geared enough for the content.
Pre-Ulduar, when most of the server was fresh to 80, in a mix of quest blue/greens, Naxx 10 was easily doable.
Toons in that level of gear today, have 2500-2800 gear score.
Some idiot on my server wanted to do Naxx 10 as a pug, but was requiring 4500 GS, which is better then full Ulduar 25 gear.

Blizz would be better off with hiding the Gear Score completely.
Or if the player base wants it, having an internal rating like they have for instances in the LFG tool.
With a substantial boost to alts rating, if any toon has done the encounter successfully.
So it measures both your gear and your knowledge of the encounter.
But does not say, geared for any specific raid, but rather yes, this toon can do the raid you're attempting.

[Bot]

Now they need an addon, where GearScore believes you have a 5500 GS or whatever.
Irregardless of the gear you have.


have a look into an addon called gearscorebreaker. im not sure if its still updated or not but last i heard it does exactly the thing you would want.

[BobGnarly]

What's wrong with a 12y old saying that? In the end it comes from a 12y old kid .... and he is probably playing with less worries than most of the adults do. I was warned by others that there are many younger people playing wow. I knew that upon signing up, accept it and deal with it. The least of my worries is what others say/think nor how they play. If a kid has fun using gs then let him have his fun, just don't use it yourself.

Gearscore in the end does what's in it's name: score your gear. If a certain category of players pays too much attention to your gear instead of your abilities, then just don't do business with them. It's like people who only look at a cars horse power to determine if it's any good.

I think my point is that i don't understand why gs seems to make so people upset :P

It makes people upset because it's an arbitrary metric to judge you by in totality. Yes, gear is an important part of successful raiding, but as has been said over and over, it's not the only part. Many people (the ones with a clue, I'd say) will take a GS disadvantaged player who doesn't stand in fires or attack mobs while the tank is pulling over that 5k+ GS daily RDF wonder any day.

But, as I said, gear is an important part, so let's look at that part. Even here, the GS most people use isn't enough information. It just sums up ilvl and adds in some gems and calls that good. That's fine if you know that, and good raid leaders will. In other words, they take the information as a first-pass filter, but they realize there is more to gear than ilvl and will actually inspect the player to see what they're wearing.

To give an example, my mage is still using Abyssal Rune. OMG, ilvl 200. Pretty ghetto, right? This trinket is arguably the best arcane mage trinket in the game right now, but my GS gets dinged big time for having it. I've had opportunities to "upgrade" it but I've chosen not to because I know my class and know that that "upgrade" would actually be a downgrade. You think Timmy the GS Commander knows that? Not likely.

So it frustrates people like me that I know my class well enough to realize what a gdlk trinket that is, only to be left of a raid because some moron with a mod doesn't have a clue.

Actually, it doesn't frustrate me at all because a) I rarely pug, and b) when I do, I use the trinket as my own idiot filter. I don't want to raid with a RL that doesn't know good gear when they see it. It doesn't bode well for the success of the raid, in my experience. I was just explaining why it frustrates others. :)

[Khemikal]

Ualaa hit it on the head. When a new expansion comes out guilds run into the first level of raids in blues and heroic gear. They clear it after banging their head against the wall. They push through it, get the gear from that instance and are ready for the next. Fast forward to the third level of instances of the expansion and now a brand new 80 needs a 4k+ GS to go into Naxx??? Yes the same place people cleared in blues/heroics/possible greens BEFORE it was nerfed, yet now that its been nerfed you are going to require the person has been there a few times to get in. Its a friggin catch 20-20. You are told on your newly dinged 80 that you can only go if you have been before. How in the hell is that supposed to work?

My friends started doing a little test of their skills. They tossed on the exact same blues/heroics they had when we started doing Naxx (we were one of the first 5 guilds of our faction to enter Naxx) and jumped into Ulduar. They fully cleared. Was it as easy as it was when they had all the Naxx/Ulduar gear. No. But they did clear it. Just another case showing skill is a lot more important than the cumulative ilvl of your gear.

Don't get me wrong. I'm all for a gear grind to show a separation to show where/what you are working on. But, it needs to be that there is a REAL requirement for the gear grind. Some random person I probably have only seen around Dalaran telling me I can't go to an instance because some addon says my gear isn't good enough is NOT a good reason. Yes there are times when it is probably right (a 25k hp tank isn't going to do well in ICC25), but I'm willing to bet 90% of the time people are trying to get into the level of content they are ready for.

As for the 12 yr old comment, that was not aimed to piss of the little kids. Just a stereotype that obviously got my point through.

[Zub]

i think you guys are all missing the point.

of course you don't need to pull 4kdps to clear Naxx or Heroics.
of course GS is not a real measure of skill, move-out-of-the-fireness, or even gear (as the trinket example shows)

having a raid / heroic full of 4kdps and a 50khp+ tank will be quicker than 2kdps and less of a hassle.
it's got nothing to do with fairness, or not knowing the game, it's got only to do with 5 emblems in 15min > 5 emblems in 40min.

It's unfortunate, but it's the simple truth.

the GS is another quick-and-dirty way of assessing someone without spending much time.
no they don't take the low gs people, because they know a high gs toon will be available in 5 seconds..
it's their PUG, their rules.. if you don't like their rules, i'm afraid your only solution is to build your own PUG :(


PS: i don't mean to be harsh, i'm suffering from the GS thing as well, but it much less frustrating when you understand the real reasons why you get rejected.

[Bigfish]

Gearscroe is a measure of your potential, not your skill. Far too often I see people complaining that they can't get in to things because they don't meet some arbitrary gear score. Look, I feel for the undergeared skillful player as much as anyone, but bottom line, if you're decked out in all ilvl200 stuff, youre not going to perform beyond the best of the best as they were in naxx.

That said, I also have a particular impatience with people who can't be bothered to up their GS from daily dungeons. It only takes a week or two to get up to ICC appropriate numbers, and bottom line, if you don't put forth the effort to gem/enchant your gear, I don't think you're going to have put in the effort to know your class or the fights well enough to contribute up to expectations.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

I wonder. If they added an option to "only queue with people over X gearscore" to the LFD tool, would those people who selected that option then bitch and complain about slow queues while the mere mortals had a good time with fast queues?

Hmm...

[BobGnarly]

Since I'm part of "all", I'll respond and say I think you are missing my point. :)

Yes, I realize its their pug and they can do what they want. And I'm actually fine with that, as I explained in my post.

The point I think *you* are missing is that this type of elitism, beyond just being distasteful in general, eventually leads to a situation that does matter. Eventually, everybody (that cares about pugging) will be a slave to GS because, let's face it, most people just follow the leader and don't think much for themselves. Eventually, you won't be able to gear to your choice unless you don't like raiding or have friends/a guild. Do you think that's healthy for the game? I don't.

I'm not saying anything other than it sucks. That's all.

Anyway, I'm gonna bail out on the derail here, think I've made my point as well as I can anyway. Cheers.


i think you guys are all missing the point.

of course you don't need to pull 4kdps to clear Naxx or Heroics.
of course GS is not a real measure of skill, move-out-of-the-fireness, or even gear (as the trinket example shows)

having a raid / heroic full of 4kdps and a 50khp+ tank will be quicker than 2kdps and less of a hassle.
it's got nothing to do with fairness, or not knowing the game, it's got only to do with 5 emblems in 15min > 5 emblems in 40min.

It's unfortunate, but it's the simple truth.

the GS is another quick-and-dirty way of assessing someone without spending much time.
no they don't take the low gs people, because they know a high gs toon will be available in 5 seconds..
it's their PUG, their rules.. if you don't like their rules, i'm afraid your only solution is to build your own PUG :(


PS: i don't mean to be harsh, i'm suffering from the GS thing as well, but it much less frustrating when you understand the real reasons why you get rejected.

[Zub]

I wonder. If they added an option to "only queue with people over X gearscore" to the LFD tool, would those people who selected that option then bitch and complain about slow queues while the mere mortals had a good time with fast queues?

Hmm...
it would be funny because you'd get alot of people with wrong high iLevel items. e.g. a warrior with a i999 cloth chest piece or something.

[Khatovar]

I wonder why they dont make the RPstuff in COT skippable....

It's coming, just not yet.
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=22749572006&pageNo=1&sid=1#6


Changes to Culling of Stratholme that allow players to skip past the initial story elements will be in a future patch. What seems simple ended up taking a bit of time to implement, and will take just as long if not longer for QA to fully test. I wanted to make sure the quests are still able to be completed, and nothing broke in some rare but significant boundary cases.

Along with the huge change to allow skipping, there's other smaller changes. I lowered the delay after the first boss dies until the undead waves start again. Arthas no longer physically runs from the front to the inn, he just teleports there. Arthas runs to the bookshelf instead of walking.

[Owltoid]

GS has allowed PUG raids to be formed relatively quickly. Complain all you want, but some metric is needed to quickly assess potential. The way around it? Raid like in the old days with your guild.

[crowdx]

So in response to upping the gear to get higher GS rating, my Druid is sub 5k GS and yet he has a mix of Nax, Emblem of Triumph and Crafted gear, I have no idea how I can get a higher gear score on him without raiding. I think it is his trinkets which are pulling down the GS but nothing else I have seen can replace the trinkets and so I am stuck :(
My whole main team is pretty much decked out in what I feel is the best gear avaialble to them and yet none are above the magic 5k GS.

[Multibocks]

Why havent they nerfed the Brann Event yet? I still have some problems with this event (mostly on my melee team). It's ridiculous that they are making easy bosses easier, yet they don't even mention this one. Hell even if you are super awesome it still takes 5 mins for the whole thing to go down, yet the Brann walking to the event was unbearable? (LOL he took like 30 secs to walk over.)

[crowdx]

TOTALLY agree, I just posted about the Brann event and how I am still getting my ass kicked on it yet CoS is a cakewalk (very similar in my opinion).
Even if they nerfed the hp on the mobs or something and that damn laser still seems to hit like a truck :(

[Multibocks]

I think they should shorten it to 4 mins or more time between waves, but something needs to be changed... I mean if you are going to make VH faster and all, why not the brann event.

[Zappy]

Why havent they nerfed the Brann Event yet? I still have some problems with this event (mostly on my melee team). It's ridiculous that they are making easy bosses easier, yet they don't even mention this one. Hell even if you are super awesome it still takes 5 mins for the whole thing to go down, yet the Brann walking to the event was unbearable? (LOL he took like 30 secs to walk over.)

The first time I completed this event on my melee team (DK/4rets), i barely completed it as my entire group wiped right as it finished.

I got halls of stone again a few nights ago and retried it, and wiped pretty bad on the first attempt. 2nd attempt I figured it out and got the "Brann Spankin' New" achievement. I found fighting in the hall a little easier for the achievement, however the fight mechanics are the same regardless of your positioning. Tank and spank for the most part. When the focused beam comes out, it's important to strafe out of the way of it quickly, and you'll take very little damage. I didn't even have to use the DS/DS rotation.

[daviddoran]

I pad my gearscore with an itemset in outfitter called "GS" that just maxes out every item from both my specs, etc. It puts on some pvp gear, etc. It makes my GS number go up.

Just get the badge trinkets, and equip em only when trying to get into a pug, and switch to your ideal stuff once you are in, etc.

I also hate the ones that demand you link an achieve... How can i get an achieve in ICC 10 if i cant get into an ICC10... I just say "i have achieve on my other toon, but that one is saved to my guild run"

Waiting for monday also helps, as raid leaders are more desperate to fill the spot.

[Owltoid]

If there are plenty of people struggling with the 5k GS, then why not just start a raid asking for 4k GS? Seems like you'll get a ton of replies.

[Multibocks]

To get to 5k gs run heroics until you are full T9, then run ToC10/25 to fill in odd pieces. ToC10 is pretty darn easy and I imagine the gs requirement (for pugs) would be low, like 4100. Getting the achieve is really the hard part, because no one wants to invite someone that they have to teach how to raid.


P.S. Isnt this GS stuff getting old now? I mean all of these posts that are just lamenting how lame the system is... I don't think there are a whole lot of people that like it, can we just agree it sucks but is here to stay?

[Fuzzyboy]

Ok, I'll take a moment of my time to rant about the those don't like gearscore and achievements are required to do a pick-up raid.

These are the conventional arguments:

1) lolol achievements don't mean anything, just because a player doesn't have achievement, doesn't mean they're not a good raider or don't know tactics

2) lolol gearscore doesn't mean anything - I have seen lots of people with high gearscore who don't know how to play

First of all, I'm not actually disputing the claims in those statements, but simply their relevance. The thing is - pick-up raids are about clearing content fast that is considered to be farmable. This means to some extent outgearing the instance and/or already being trained in the tactics applied. Secondly, pick-up raids are about getting the job done - thus minimizing the likelyhood of wipes and spending time explaining tactics.

We can also assume the following:

1) While an achievement doesn't prove that you're a capable raider in the instance in question, there's a greater chance that you are, if you have the achievement, than if you don't

2) While gearscore doesn't prove that you know how to play your class, there's a greater chance that you are able to play your class, if you have decent gear.

3) No mechanics exist in game to measure skill and knowledge - gearscore and achievements are as close as it gets without individually evaluating each player, which would take too long.

So the reason behind the gearscore and achievement inspects (a good PU raid leader will inspect gear/gems/talents as well as achievements) is to minimize the chance of failure. Even though you may think it's unfair that you, the greaters raider since sliced bread (despite you not having done any raids and your 3500 GS) , get passed up for someone who has done the raids before and has way better gear, but is a poorly skilled raider, it's really not. The reason? The PUG-leader has no way of knowing about your awesome skills and you have no way to prove them.

TLDR: Gearscore is among the least sucky tools to evaluate player without performing a time-consuming individual analysis / chat.

[daviddoran]

My biggest beef with gearscore is the fact that the numbers that they are requesting are getting way too high too fast. I've seen ppl in trade asking for a 5.4k GS to get into ToC 10... IMO the highest they should be asking for is the max you could have gotten in the raid one tier below, i.e. to get into ICC 10 you should be in full ToC 10 gear.

It's a necessary evil, and the best bet is to keep trying, find a pug willing to take you, get your achievement, get lucky on some rolls, and once you get that, you're in like Flynn.