Cata not so MB friendly

[Multibocks]

Back in TBC if you walked into a heroic with quest blues/greens you'd get your ass kicked

Actually I remember soloing heroics with 5 shaman and doing pretty well. I hit 80 right before Wrath launched with my shaman team and went right into heroics. How's that for easy?

Ok if you did it when Wrath first came out then I call bullshit. I remember the multiple threads that popped up, "How do I kill the elemental boss in Gundrak?" as an example. Yes if you came after the initial rush then it was easier, strats were out. No one was facerolling heroics when Wrath first launched. Sorry.

You know what would be cool though? If heroics were impossible for boxers in Cataclysm. Oh the joy! It would be so FUN!

edit: Also boxing software has come a fucking long way and talents have been redesigned for many classes. Ele sham used to have NO scaling talents. So ya, shits easier now, want a cookie?

[thefunk]

nothing is impossible - people here have proved time and again. Especially 10 boxing, i personally was skeptical and yet seeing people clear most of ICC is pretty spectacular.

It raises a particularly interesting point about multi-boxing

Do you play for the challenge of playing against the initial design of WoW, or because you can easily kill/clear content? Like Khatovar I'm in it for the complexity and challenge of "can it be done with 1 person".

[kate]

I'm personally fascinated by the areas of process automation and effort scaling. While we cannot automate when boxing in WoW, we can do effort scaling, and it's quite interesting to try and accomplish this.

Now that I am feeling somewhat more comfortable with the mechanics of WoW and the various fights in general, as well as the physical mechanics of boxing (meaning: I have a reasonably ergonomic key layout, I am not so surprised by everything I experience in the game that I forget to move people out of fire, or otherwise get too excited and spam random keys, etc.) I'm really enjoying looking at it from a standpoint of how the fights work as phases and steps, and how to devise approaches that allow one person to accomplish what, by design, should take at least 5 to do.

The other thing I like about boxing - though I also experience this when I am solo boxing and tagging along on a raid - is that I can stand back a bit and look at fights like they're kind of an RTS, except much more interesting because there are so very, very many variables that can affect each unit involved. When raiding with Nighthawke and Coltimar (we will get you, Toravon!) it was really pretty interesting to be able to spend 10% of my attention on healing as needed with the other 90% watching what we were doing from a tactical standpoint and figuring out what was going awry or areas of improvement.

[Alemi]

Actually I remember soloing heroics with 5 shaman and doing pretty well. I hit 80 right before Wrath launched with my shaman team and went right into heroics. How's that for easy?

In BC you could pretty much run 5 shaman without a tank and complete every heroic. I did - especially when we horribly outgeared the instance. At the start of Wrath, there was absolutely no soloing any complete instance with 5 shaman. Esp when our Earth Ele's and Fire Ele's didn't scale either (wasn't this fixed when Ulduar came out?).

edit: Also boxing software has come a fucking long way and talents have been redesigned for many classes. Ele sham used to have NO scaling talents. So ya, shits easier now, want a cookie?

Truth.

Remember when, as an ele shaman, the only "fix" for us was to spec into dual-wield to double flametongue to keep our dps only slightly below par with other dps classes that scaled? We didn't get Shamanism until 3 months after Wrath hit and right before Ulduar came out. Fun times!

[thefunk]

or otherwise get too excited and spam random keys

I can't count the amount of times I've reverted to button mashing every key in desperation to avoid the group wipe. I'm tempted to paint my OHSH*T button in red (the druid battle rez) as I always forget which one it is in the heat of the moment...

Personally I'd prefer Blizz carried on designing the game for solo play and it's up to us boxers to find a way to 'beat' the design, so to speak, rather than having a load of kill quests, tank'n'spank instances and sub cancellations galore. I'd quickly get bored.

[Iceorbz]

Have you beat any hardmodes? Come back when you have done Alone in the Dark and LK 25 HM. No way you will say that shit is easy.

Makes me fucking angry when people call this game easy yet they haven't even tried the hard shit. Well no wonder it's easy!

Most of wow is a gearcheck, not a skill check. Yes I can perform to standards of an "elite" player, I did in MC, BWL, ZB, Naxx, ToC, and yes I've done some hardmodes in ICC (and would have done more) if I choose to raid instead of level my RAF. I have been able to keep the percentages and timing of cooldowns and rotations to those parsed by computer models, while account for boss movement and encounter mechanics. My current schedule only allows for a few nights a week to play, not to mention gearscore nazi's. I think cataclysm will change this when we only have to do a few raids on a person instead needing to do 10, 25's, voa's, weekly's, daily pvp's and such to keep up with the gear each week.

I really think the quality of player has gone down in this game compared to some raid guilds in others games like everquest (In its competitive time period). Many players don't even know how other classes function and are unable to think outside of the box for just about everything.

I see some fights that require a few interesting mechanics, but there haven't been many that I'm like "HOLY SHIT- Thats rough". I mean honestly, when people can down the content the week it's out.... how hard was it really? When you can multibox content -- how hard is it really? There is a large margin of error allowed by this game, sure in some hardmodes it may gib you... but how often will you lose a raid if one healer is off by a second or two?

Anyone remember healing chains, and orders? Class specific healing assignments, real raid triage (I will let him die because hes not important, and I can't spare the mana to save him?) Specific assignments for innervate, cd rotations that stuff made the game exciting and fun and it shouldn't be just "hard modes", it should start with face rape and make people work hard for it. I think Heroic Halls of Reflection should be a symbol of the minimum difficulty for an low level encounter (at 80).

[Iceorbz]

You know what would be cool though? If heroics were impossible for boxers in Cataclysm. Oh the joy! It would be so FUN!

edit: Also boxing software has come a fucking long way and talents have been redesigned for many classes. Ele sham used to have NO scaling talents. So ya, shits easier now, want a cookie?

I would like to see us forced to manage a few more cooldowns, and CC. Having to use hex I think will be interesting.

When's the last time you were worried about interrupting a mob other then gundrak? Make use more abilities and be creative, we were in Halls of Reflection, we will be in cataclysm. I think blizzard is on the right track

[Multibocks]

I would like to see us forced to manage a few more cooldowns, and CC. Having to use hex I think will be interesting.

When's the last time you were worried about interrupting a mob other then gundrak? Make use more abilities and be creative, we were in Halls of Reflection, we will be in cataclysm. I think blizzard is on the right track

You know this is fine the first time, but seriously who wants to CC this, interrupt that, Kite him, oh and dont touch that x 365? If Algalon, Lich King, or Alone in the Dark was my daily quest everyday? Ya that would get so on my nerves. At what point does this become fun? If you have beat it once great. If blizzard requires me to beat it again 7 times a week it's no longer fun and it's tedious. I don't think dungeons that we need to clear daily for the new emblems should be "challenging all the time." Which is what you seem to want.

If I had to do a lich king heroic that took 2 hours to complete, because of wiping, I wouldn't be playing this game. That is pure masochism and not fun.

I think blizzard's model right now is perfect. When Lich King first launched the dungeons were difficult and I did spend quite a bit learning each encounter and wiping. By the time Ulduar was dropped it wasn't so hard anymore. This is good, because I don't really care to do a wipe fest everyday for my daily. I think they got it perfect.

[Iceorbz]

You know this is fine the first time, but seriously who wants to CC this, interrupt that, Kite him, oh and dont touch that x 365? If Algalon, Lich King, or Alone in the Dark was my daily quest everyday? Ya that would get so on my nerves. At what point does this become fun? If you have beat it once great. If blizzard requires me to beat it again 7 times a week it's no longer fun and it's tedious. I don't think dungeons that we need to clear daily for the new emblems should be "challenging all the time." Which is what you seem to want.

If I had to do a lich king heroic that took 2 hours to complete, because of wiping, I wouldn't be playing this game. That is pure masochism and not fun.

I think blizzard's model right now is perfect. When Lich King first launched the dungeons were difficult and I did spend quite a bit learning each encounter and wiping. By the time Ulduar was dropped it wasn't so hard anymore. This is good, because I don't really care to do a wipe fest everyday for my daily. I think they got it perfect.

I think your exaggerating quite a bit. As you can see, I think halls of reflection is the perfect difficulty for a "heroic instance". Having to use your classes abilities is why they were put in the game. We used them in Vanilla, and BC... then went away from it towards the end of BC and into Lich King using more spells then consecration + a caster aoe was the standard. Dungeons don't have to be rediculous, I don't feel like we should ding 80 and be hitting heroics.

[Multibocks]

What should we be doing? Pre-Heroics?