[Muffin Man]

Source: Regill Some comments about Ulduar hard modes: I can say from personal experience, Freya 3 elder is beyond brutal. My guild has done every major hard mode, excepting firefighter, one light, and freya 3. I've now wiped on freya 3 close to 200 times over more hours than I care to count. I can not understate how difficult this encounter is. It is tuned to the ragged edge of possibility, assuming completely perfect play, by all 25 players, for 10 minutes straight. Someone disconnects? Wipe it up, your done. I'm really starting to think it is too hard. 0.18% of US guilds have managed Freya 3 (wowprogress.com). By comparison far more guilds managed Muru pre-nerf, and we all know how insane that was. 99.5% of guilds have absolutely no hope of ever completing freya 3, they simply aren't going to have 25 players who can play to utter perfection. I have nothing but respect for Ensidia, Premonition, etc for managing this level of difficulty, and certainly they deserve fun content too. But honestly does the game need encounters tuned such that less than 50 guilds in the United States will ever manage it? I feel that tuning hard modes should be for the top 1 to 2% at worst. I recall from a while back a blizzard developer commenting that they never intended to make another Sunwell, that it was simply too hard. Well they made something worse than sunwell, in terms of difficulty.

When you said this, I was reminded of the Premo kill post:

Source: http://www.premoguild.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3713 As for the fight itself, we can definitely say it's the most challenging content thus far, certainly a step up from even M'uru/KJ in coordination and demands on the raid.

It's interesting to see the numbers about how many people have actually done it (at the time Premo was US first or so?). The difficulty is even more impressive considering that the gearing upgrades for Ulduar/25 raiders are much, much more than what was available to SWP raiders stuck on M'uru.

It's interesting to hear that it's not just my 10 man group that's falling apart to summer. I'm starting to feel like I'll just follow long and take a WoW holiday if we can't replace missing spots soon too. I dunno if that makes me feel better that we're stalled raiding or makes me feel like I should quit while I'm still ahead so to speak.

It was also interesting hearing your honest thoughts on hard modes, always fun to hear that you guys are human too =p.

[Edgar]

Was the NZ accent thing a Darlene reference?

[swelt]

Great podcast, very topical and applicable to what's going on.

[michah]

Having completed heroic: 3x Knock, and heroic: firefighter, i'll say this much about the hard mode setup in ulduar: there are 9 "hardmodes", 7 of them are fights that anyone who really wants to do it, can do it, and do them in a few nights. Then there's freya and mimiron. Those fights are not on the same plane as the rest of the fights.

That all being said - technically speaking, we're only about 2 months removed from the original release of this content. In the time from M'uru's original release (early may) until his first major nerf (july or 2 months later, however you want to look at it), there were less than 100 kills, so in terms of m'uru vs. freya, there are for more freya kills along that time line. That being said, if you were to compare Mimiron to M'uru, there are far less kills :P

[Yoshia]

despite that you didnt have any ready introduction, i enjoyed the "intro" anyway more of this please

[Morixi]

Source: Mr.Winkle So you're not a robot?

Lore sounds hot ^_^

[agranyoch]

Just on a different note, I think you actually can soft-reset the instance to get the watchers in Yogg-Saron leave the prison and get back up again if you want to do a Conqueror of Ulduar attempt, fail it and then want to go for the hard-mode(s).

This can't be possible for Freya, due to the Emblems you get from Elders...

[Regill]

Source: michah Having completed heroic: 3x Knock, and heroic: firefighter, i'll say this much about the hard mode setup in ulduar: there are 9 "hardmodes", 7 of them are fights that anyone who really wants to do it, can do it, and do them in a few nights. Then there's freya and mimiron. Those fights are not on the same plane as the rest of the fights. That all being said - technically speaking, we're only about 2 months removed from the original release of this content. In the time from M'uru's original release (early may) until his first major nerf (july or 2 months later, however you want to look at it), there were less than 100 kills, so in terms of m'uru vs. freya, there are for more freya kills along that time line. That being said, if you were to compare Mimiron to M'uru, there are far less kills :P

That's a good point about not all hard modes being equal. I finally got freya 3 heroic last night, and it is most certainly a noticeable step up from the other hard modes. Perhaps a step too far.

I'm honestly curious if Mimiron will live up to his fearsome reputation on hard mode, heroic. My guilds going after that encounter next this week. Are there so few kills (less than 20 US?) because its really that much harder than the other hard modes like freya, or because very few guilds have even risked attempting it seriously?

With Muru, everyone was working on Muru, you didn't have any choice of progression path. With Ulduar hard modes you have choices, it is not set in stone which you do in what order, which I personally enjoy about the instance.

[michah]

freya has more rng involved in whether or not you kill it, mimiron is more about mastering the encounter. that in itself may actually make the fight less frustrating than freya, as losing due to stupid crap all happening at once is really frustrating for alot of folks

mimiron's difficulty lies entirely in your raid composition. it's the ultimate "bring the class" fight. the berserk timer is very well tuned, and phase 2 legitimately destroys raids in a fashion unparalleled by any fight in any instance up to this point. that all being said, we spent 25 raid hours on freya +3 and 30 raid hours on mimiron, so I guess technically, it's not that much worse huh.

[12hett]

So I went from D2 to playing a Prot Warrior in WoW. If D3 comes out I will most definitely develop carpal tunnel.

[Ciderhelm]

Source: michah freya has more rng involved in whether or not you kill it, mimiron is more about mastering the encounter. that in itself may actually make the fight less frustrating than freya, as losing due to stupid crap all happening at once is really frustrating for alot of folks mimiron's difficulty lies entirely in your raid composition. it's the ultimate "bring the class" fight. the berserk timer is very well tuned, and phase 2 legitimately destroys raids in a fashion unparalleled by any fight in any instance up to this point. that all being said, we spent 25 raid hours on freya +3 and 30 raid hours on mimiron, so I guess technically, it's not that much worse huh.

Michah, thanks for adding your input in the thread.

[Krenian]

You guys are terrible. That's all.

3 minutes of total hilarious at the start

But the summer thing that Lore and Cider touch on is quite true. In the guilds I've been in, summer's been brutal for recruitment slash raiding (I can't find the damn slash..balls).

...Times I've sat while raiding and looked outside at the sun setting where I could be reading, I've lost count. You have to be dedicated. I'm just content the weekend is free at this point for me and I can do my going out then.

Also Lore..you have people playing golf at 8pm? Crackpot.

[Cookie]

I agree about Freya+3 being hard, but my reaction was different. Ulduar25 normal mode is very easy. Hard modes such as heartbreaker and FL+4 in their current incarnation are almost as facerolling easy. Vezax hard was terribly designed. Hodir, and Thorim are the better designed ones, but they're nowhere close to Freya.

When the first pull was made, I was expecting something easy to medium, but wow, Freya's hard mode is really well done, and there's finally something challenging and requires the raid to play at its best. We've only tried it 3 hours a few days ago, but I'm really looking forward to trying it out again this week and downing it will feel a lot more like an achievement than current hard modes have been. It's a great encounter.

My favourite boss in Ulduar is still Mimiron though, it's the most creative boss in Ulduar imo.


I have to disagree on the limits as well, Limits on time test your wipe recovery more than anything. Limits on tries are only marginally better and do not foster a healthy raid envoirnment at all. Knowing you'd be "wasting" a try by either making a mistake personally or having something beyond your control happen really affects morale amongst members. I forsee a lot of arguments and drama over failed attempts with people blaming the person who made a mistake. The Immortal achievement did that to some guilds. I don't raid ages a day, but I'm not looking forward to the limits system. Raiding with a guild full of pissy people is not fun, sure it is partly a guild issue, but I see it mainly as a raid design issue.


But Cider, wowprogress says less than 7% guilds in the world have completed Ulduar normal mode, so you're probably in the top 1% -.-


Summer's hitting us pretty hard as well, and recruitment is open to pretty much every class, but so far we seem to be doing better than most guilds. There's still new apps coming in, and progress is going quite okay.

[michah]

mimiron and freya were both nerfed today, pretty heavily. i guess the elitist side of me wants to be upset about it, but i'm glad more folks will get the chance to go for the drakes

[Cookie]

Source: michah mimiron and freya were both nerfed today, pretty heavily. i guess the elitist side of me wants to be upset about it, but i'm glad more folks will get the chance to go for the drakes

I heard that Mimiron was nerfed, but not Freya. What are the exact changes and how easy has it become?

There was a post on the official forums from a person saying that they had 2-shotted Mimiron >.<

[michah]

they apparently removed the damage buff and lowered the total health. p3 and p4 of the fight were never terribly difficult, it was just tough to string off alot of p4 attempts in a row because p2 is nightmarishly difficult. with the damage buff being gone, getting through p2 is not a heck of a lot more difficult in hard mode than it is in easy mode, so getting strings of attempts on p4 would be likely, and that basically means a kill is eminent

ultimately the fight isn't very difficult if you can get through p2 consistently, so go kill it!

edit: there was a bb thread insinuating that freya was changed, it dosen't appear to be - keep an eye out on it, with mim getting scaled down, she's likely to be next.

[Cookie]

Freya didn't feel any different, but on the 3rd hour, we managed to get to the last wave of adds spawning. I'm fairly certain we'll get her down this week.

[Bullwerk]

JUst a quick question for clarity here. Lore you mention that the 10 man hard modes are so much easier than the 25 man hard modes. Does the group that you run with to do 10 man hard modes also run 25 man ulduar and hards? If so then your comparison is not valid in any way. Guilds that progress solely (or 90%) at the 10 man level will have a different view point all together. Just a thought.

*EDIT* Another comment from the podcast. I agree with the idea of limited attemps or timers as often on some servers the difference between "progression guilds" and everyone else is time put in. A guild like mine that that raids 8-9 hours a week looks paltry and pathetic even thoug when in reality spend less time learning each boss and getting them down than guilds determined to wipe for 40 hours a week. The effect it would have on the top guild would be an extra week or two I imagine. Those guilds that win by sheer time on target will be penalized and skill will once again be rewarded. just my opinion, my personal and truly biased opinion.

[Darksend]

Source: Lonan JUst a quick question for clarity here. Lore you mention that the 10 man hard modes are so much easier than the 25 man hard modes. Does the group that you run with to do 10 man hard modes also run 25 man ulduar and hards? If so then your comparison is not valid in any way. Guilds that progress solely (or 90%) at the 10 man level will have a different view point all together. Just a thought.

My alt group, in a group with 8 alts in strickly 25 naxx and 10 ulduar gear, and 2 mains in 25 man hard mode gear, completed the glory of the raider under an hour ago.

To put things in perspective:

The 3 tanks are me on my warrior our MT warrior on his DK as the 3rd alt tank and our DK OT as our pally alt OT. Our healers are all alts, 2 priests and a druid (the 2 priests are a resto durid and holy pally main) and the druid is a resto shaman main.

The only 2 mains are an enh shaman and a hunter.

Now you can also dismiss my credability by saying "but you killed mimiron hard mode 25 man while fullfilling the same roles as tank healer and DPS just on a different class that can do the same role." But the fact remains our alts are alts for a reason and even though we have the 25 man experience and the 10 man experience from our mains, they still have much less gear.

It took us less than 1 hour of attempts to do mimiron this week having only done it for about an hour on alts last week. We have been doing freya hodir thorim and yogg hard modes for 3-4 weeks 1shoting them most of the time on alts.

[Andomar]

The download link appears broken?

EDIT: it gave a 404 error but it's fixed now! so nvmd.

P.S. What's with the "accept the rules" thing?

Designing for People Who Have Better Things To Do With Their Lives - Joel on Software

When you design user interfaces, it's a good idea to keep two principles in mind:

1. Users don't have the manual, and if they did, they wouldn't read it.
2. In fact, users can't read anything, and if they could, they wouldn't want to.