World of Warcraft XIII: Even Aspects Get Nerfed

[Dublock]

@Dub
You want the tentacle to target the hunter for Impale I take it?
Yeah, you basically need your tank to get pretty far away from the tentacle, and it needs to happen just before the cast starts. It's actually kind of a pain to time it that way, part of why we just roll with 2 tanks and 2 heals and don't bother with anyone special taking an Impale.

Also, protip, you know that set of tentacles that show up in heroic? We have the person afflicted run to a set spot near the corruption, but not too close. "Cleave" splash range is actually pretty big, hit boxes are pretty big, and we just have range burn the thing down, melee stays on tentacle and uses cleave effects. There is no need to have them drop the tentacles in that time vortex, it just messes up people's positioning.

Yup that is the plan, but the timing of the tank leaving and the hunter being in range of the impale is a bit trickier then they thought. We had it down on our last attempt last night so I hope it won't be an issue again. I *think* we had 3 heals instead of the other tank.

Also we have yet to have any issue with downing the additional add with our range, we have only one melee dps (granted, a good one, but only one). Although you do bring up a point on the positioning. The only difficulty we had was people thinking to stack and not stay away -.-

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For purposes of clear discussion, Gated Progression in this context refers to the need to clear Raid X to access Raid Y to access Raid Z, and ignores any and all attunements.
Many people herald the success of TBC rather blindly, forgetting the issues this caused, constantly.
Not attuned to Black Temple? Well, your guild has two choices come raid night. Not bring you, or go back and clear out SSC/TK. Not attuned to Hyjal? Same choices.
Getting a group to do things like Gruul and Magtheridon when everyone else was in Sunwell? Yeah, good luck.
This lead to many guilds 'poaching' other guilds of talent, which just made progressing on a boss in a lower tier all the harder. You think you have trouble right now replacing a tank who goes missing? Back then, your tank would just be gone, off with another guild further progressed than yours. If he's not a jerk, he might be willing to come and walk you through something next week or so, but most didn't return.
In before "but that never happened to me personally, [insert anecdotes about friends]"
Trust me, it killed guilds.

Also, for the people who complain that they can't find a group to do T11 and T12 right now but have killed Deathwing?
Imagine the inverse for a moment. You're stuck in T11 and seeing Deathwing is pretty much an impossibility, barring a miracle, or a carry from another guild. Except, that guild would have to carry you through T11 AND T12 before you could ever set foot in T13.

This also makes it remarkably difficult to involve things like alts. It's a pain in the butt enough to gear up through multiple tiers of content, never mind doing so with an alt, never mind if there are barriers such as gated progression to deal with.

Yes, right now you can go and clear 5 man heroics then LFR and kill Deathwing. In the old world you could toil in 5 man heroics for ever, maybe clear Karazhan if people were still running it. Which, by the time Sunwell rolled around, finding a Karazhan group was a feat unto itself. Which is why statistically, very few people saw anything past Gruuls and Magtheridon. 10% of players saw SSC or TK, 1% even set foot into Black Temple, let alone Sunwell.
Currently, 11% of Guilds (not players, guilds, out of more than 60 thousand guilds tracked) have managed to down Heroic Deathwing. Just short of 6% have the Meta Achievement completed. That is a huge improvement over the Burning Crusade's Gated Progression model. And equally successful was the non-gated system used in Wrath which saw much higher numbers of players downing the Lich King and Ruby Sanctum and a much larger raiding playerbase than TBC could ever have dreamed of.


As the above rant relates to Mists of Pandaria, where there is some small amount of Gated Progression in that you have to clear Terrace in order to access Heart of Fear, but the difference is twofold. The Gate in this case is a skill gap, not a gear gap. Heart of Fear comes with the advertisement right on the box, this raid is harder than Terrace. It's also only gated (so far as we know) between two raids on the same Tier, not two raids in two different Tiers. IE-Tier 14 clear will (likely) not be a requirement to access Tier 15. And even then, it isn't going to require a quest from one to access another, much like the fiasco of Keys for Eye of Eternity back in Tier 7.
The negative I see here is when people do eventually hit that skill gap, but so far it isn't looking too severe, and the testing is looking really sharp for normal mode. In LFR I imagine that the ilevel minimum to enter Terrace will be lower than the ilevel to enter Heart of Fear, or it might be the same item level. If there is a difference, it won't be much, and there are more ways to improve your gear than ever before in MoP.

Just some thoughts.

(spoiled the last paragraph for space saving measure)

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I joined in WotLK, and I reached level 80 the day before the random dungeon finder patch.

I would have found it annoying to go back and do Malygos, etc before I could touch ToC and ICC.

Although on my realm there is some guild poaching, although not nearly to the degree that I bet was in TBC. There are currently 4-5 guilds worth mentioning on my side of the server in terms of heroic progression, the current top guild managed to convince another guild to merge for a few top raiders to push them over the edge in terms of getting spine down.

The last two or so weeks have lead to one tank leaving for another guild, a few people like me trying to come into the action to fill in (yay!), and everyone else trying to make sure the raid team is filled with people that know what to do. Yesterday was the first day where we did not have to explain anything to anyone, and we downed the first 6 bosses in a hour and 20 mins, with two stupid wipes on Ultra, downed spine in ~6 attempts, and got 4 attempts on Spine.

Personally I am looking forward to the gated content in MoP, its in the same tier so there is still some incentive to run both raids, and it won't be a drag to drag the guild in there (pun intended :P). Also I hope that means that it will be even harder and give some guilds more work to do since there is a warning.

Now if they do not extend that across tiers I will be ok with it.