Poster: Leica at 12/16/2005 2:22:05 AM PST
Subject: [REPORT] Comprehensive AQ40 Feedback |
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Vis Maior (Bonechewer) and Immortality (Skullcrusher) just concluded a very successful joint raid of the 40 man AQ Raid Zone. Over the course of the night we were able to defeat Skeram, Sartura, Fankriss the Unyielding, Princess Huhuran, and get a look at two of the zone's optional bosses.
What follows is a cogent, and hopefully coherent collection of our overall impressions on the zone, the encounters, and potential issues we encountered. We spoke with a GM during the encounters, and they were actively seeking feedback, so we decided to post it here as a follow up and to share out thoughts with the player base. This is by no means a strategy guide, and certain information is intentionally left out. (Warning: Some spoilers are unavoidable)
Just to provide perspective and background information on our gear and raid experience -- Vis Maior was 12th worldwide to kill Nefarian, and Immortality was 6th. Both guilds have consisted of power gamers since the game came out, and are well equipped in fire and nature gear (50+ emerald dragon kills each). Our comments assume content is intended to be at or beyond BWL level.
Some Pictures for those too lazy to read, or the illiterate:
http://www.vismaior.org/aqpics/
[Trash Pre-Skeram] The trash prior to Skeram has been tuned to a level much more appropriate for the raid zone. During the first week of test we felt it seemed very easy, bordering on trivial. Eradicator mana drain rates were easily controlled, and the packs of sentinels were easily tanked and burned down. The increased drain rate of the eradicators, and the sharing of power between sentinels have ramped up the difficulty of the pulls to an appropriate level.
[Prophet Skeram] The Prophet Skeram Encounter continues to be plagued by desync issues which can destroy an otherwise clean attempt on the boss. The encounter itself is a very fast paced, enjoyable fight, it's difficult to gauge its difficulty with the desync issues which can frequently cause the loss of tanks for no reason other than a bug. Additionally, the teleports can still cause multiple prophets to land on the same platform, in some cases a warrior will pick up 2 of them, be in melee range of both, yet still be spammed with earth shock. This encounter feels almost finished with the exception of a few bug fixes and small tuning of the prophets abilities.
[Trash Skeram through Sartura] Not too many comments here, however, one bug that should be mentioned is that when afflicted by mind flay from the Brainwashers there is the chance that the target becomes bugged and put into a permasnare mode. The only way to remove this bug is to either relog, or mount up on an AQ Battletank if you are lucky enough to have one.
[Vem and His 2 Buddies] This fight is pretty chaotic, and I must say, a neat idea to have 3 different loot/difficulty levels. The fear we encountered during the fight seemed to be aggro wiping, but perhaps it was poor luck? Some kind of warning for the Princess's heal, if it's meant to be interruptible like the Prophet's AE, would be appropriate.
[Battleguard Sartura] Our raid attempted Sartura twice unsuccessfully, trying strats and testing abilities. After our first few attempts we were contacted by a GM on the server who explained that the encounter in its current state is considered far more difficult than intended due to the difficulty of the adds. He requested that we attempt the encounter again as we had before, but this time he would despawn the adds so that we could fight Sartura herself to watch her abilities and our fight. We found the fight with Sartura to be very engaging and fun once we were helped to overcome the hurdle of her difficult adds.
[Trash Sartura through Fankriss] The trash clear between Sartura and Boss three was fast paced, and fun. We made it through quickly, with minimal casualties, but had a fun time doing it. Seemed easier than previous trash in the zone. As a matter of personal opinion I found the clear to be a bit on the easy side, I would compare this trash clear to a faster paced but easier broodlord trash clear.
[Fankriss] Fankriss was a much easier fight than we believe was intended. He seems to mirror the first boss of AQ20 with a few twists. One common ability between the two is the debuff which he stacks on the tank. In the AQ20 encounter this ability is used frequently enough to force tank transitions throughout the battle making the encounter much more dynamic and increasing the overall challenge to the fight. Fankriss, on the other hand, used this ability so infrequently that not only were tank transitions not required, but the debuff was never stacked on our main tank more than twice during the course of the fight. The GM confirmed that tank transitions were intended, so some minor fixes are necessary here.
[Viscidus] Another optional boss. We didn't put a lot of effort in here, but he seemed very difficult on first impression. Both spell and melee damage was extremely mitigated. Perhaps he has very high defense, armor, ac and resist to begin with, as detect magic failed to show any buffs. But again, we spent VERY little time here, just an initial impression. Cool world geometry though.
[Trash Fankriss through Princess Huhuran] The first scorpion pairs seemed very easy, trivial even. They dropped with no casualties with the exception of a caster who seemed to be randomly one shotted. I would place the difficulty of the scorpion pairs below that of MC trash. Too easy.
The Wasp and Wasp + Battleguard packs that followed presented a nice challenge in comparison to other trash in the zone. The difficulty matched their later position in the zone compared to earlier trash. Their roam paths were well designed, a careful puller in this area will be necessary, but each pull is manageable.
[Princess Huhuran] From 100% through 20% this boss fight could use a bit of a buff if it's supposed to be greater than, or equal to, BWL in difficulty. Frenzies are spaced far enough apart as to require only 2 hunters, with the exception of unlucky dot stacking, there isn't much of a trick. The fight becomes fun towards the very end. Damage output in the end is VERY VERY high. 5200damage AE/2sec + 200% attack speed makes it difficult to transition tanks, just want to make sure this is intended. A good fight, but could use a few minor tweaks.
[Anubisath Defenders] The Anubisath Defenders are EXTREMELY hard. We didn't spend a ton of time here, but our initial (a few attempts) impression was they might be too difficult. I can understand if resist gear is needed, but 15k meteors might be a bit much. In their current state, these trash mobs (there are 5 between the wasp boss and the twin emps) are harder than any boss prior, or in BWL. The shadow storm and shadow bolt hits very hard for its frequency. A possible bug we ran into was that the same mob on different pulls had different abilities (shadow/arcane versus the meteor version). I'm not sure if this is supposed to be random, but I thought I'd throw it out there.
[Twin Emp's] While we didn't have a chance to attempt this encounter, we were able to sneak a few crafty players in for a look. Very cool room/fight layout and excellent models, textures, and graphics. Didn't get enough test time for worthwhile feedback.
[Other random comments]
- The faction item dropped by bosses doesn't always appear on the corpse for players who have died during the course of the encounter.
-Desyncing on boss one is a KILLER. Please get this fixed ASAP.
-Some itemization tweaks would be desirable.
-Good mix of trash mobs. Also, no real itemization yet (if ever)
Props to our Vis Maior crew, and the guys from Immortality for making this happen.
Overall, we're very excited about AQ40. The atmosphere and immersivness are unlike any we've seen in a raid zone to date. The graphics and textures of the tortuous tunnels and chambers are stunning. Boss 3's model is a little disappointing as it is identical to that of AQ20's first boss, a new color at least would be appropriate.
Last, is there anyway the players can get some more communication from the devs on when these issues might be fixed? We, and many other guilds I'm sure, would like to revaluate content and provide feedback. Is there any way to contact a developer/GM on test to get past content that is admittedly broken (boss 2 adds tonight for example)? We plan to hit test again soon, and will try and provide further feedback…
Arkinia, Leica <Vis Maior> of Bonechewer.[ post edited by Leica ]
Leica - <Vis Maior>
http://www.vismaior.org
| | | http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?fn=wow-dungeons&t=273628&p=#post273628 | | | Poster: Tigole at 12/16/2005 9:03:49 AM PST
Subject: Re: [REPORT] Comprehensive AQ40 Feedback |
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Thanks for the excellent feedback.
Regarding sync issues, we're aware of these and investigating them. I don't have any sort of ETA at this time.
| | | http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?fn=wow-dungeons&t=273628&p=#post273939 |
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