Retrospect on Raiding in Wrath

Welcome to my 3.3 preview live from my time on the PTR, this is Gustava, and this week I am going to talking about dungeon updates.

Let’s look back for just a second, since Wrath is little over a year old now and the story of this saga has really changed raiding. We started in Obsidian Sanctum and the return of Black Dragons.  Twilight Drakes showed us the first taste of hard modes and fire avoidance. Then we return to a classic raid: Naxxarmas. Raised from  the depths of vanilla WoW raiders’ nightmares as a new level 80 raid with Tier 7 gear. New raiders could learn the joy of slimes, Patchwork and Deep Breaths/Frost Tombs all over again. Once you got  a key in Naxx, you can go fight Malygos bringing new meaning to fighting fire with fire – with drakes.

Ulduar opened its gates in 3.1 where hardmodes abound and new Tier 8 gear. From the massive tank opening that was way better than flying drakes in the Malygos encounter to the madness of Mimirons’ fight with a giant robot and an old God with a thousand maws. Ulduar was truly a challenge with its epic scale with some of the hard modes offering more replay value  than ever.

Following that: the Trials of the Crusader opened its doors in 3.2. The fights were new and challenging with monster beasts,  demons, champions and undead – plus the Tier 9 gear. Now all that’s left is the icy fortress of the lich king in 3.3 and a conclusion to the epic tale of Northend once and for all.  At least, we think so . . .

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Icecrown Raid Difficulty Functionality (source)

In the upcoming patch we are adding a new feature to the Icecrown raid instance that allows the raid leader to change the instance’s difficulty setting on a boss per boss basis. The way the raid leader chooses to switch is the same as now, by right-clicking on the character portrait. The difficulty settings can be changed from inside Icecrown Citadel, with some restrictions. For example, you cannot change the difficulty in combat or during certain events specified by our design team. To enable the ability to change the raid difficulty to heroic, you must first defeat the Lich King on normal mode, as doing so unlocks the heroic version of this raid instance. There is no heroic version of trash; meaning changing the difficulty will only affect boss difficulty.

We chose this particular functionality because we didn’t want to use the Trial of the Crusader method, and have four versions on a raid of this size. We felt the Ulduar method of having to know a certain trick to do on the boss was difficult to communicate and tied too heavily to achievements. We might eventually convert Trial of the Crusader over to this new system but Ulduar and Naxxramas will likely never change.

Disenchant option

There is a new option in the game in 3.3 for loot when rolling. You can roll need, greed or pass right now but a disenchant option will be available after this patch goes live. It works as the same greed in terms of order of importance still losing to need but instead of getting the item you get what it disenchants into instead.
Enchanters, dont worry, Blizz will keep your skills useful. If there isn’t a Enchanter in the group of the right skill level the option simply won’t be available to the party. This is a great way of dealing with drops in dungeons if no one in the group needs anything.

Chill of the Throne/Icecrown Aura (From Daelo)

For Icecrown Citadel, we are implementing a spell that will affect every enemy creature in the raid. The spell, called Chill of the Throne, will allow creatures to ignore 20% of the dodge chance of their melee targets. So if a raid’s main tank had 30% dodge normally, in Icecrown Citadel they will effectively have 10%.

Why are we doing this?

The high levels of tank avoidance players have obtained is making the incoming damage a tank DOES take more “spiky” than is healthy for raiding. Ideally, tanks would be receiving a relatively constant stream of damage over time. This allows healers to better plan their healing strategy, broaden their spell options, and simply give more time to react. Tanks could use their cooldowns more reactively. Instead, the current situation is that if we make a hard hitting melee boss and a tank doesn’t avoid two successive swings then the tank could very well be dead in that 1-2 second window. The use of reactive defensive abilities instead becomes a methodically planned affair, healers have to spam their largest heals just in case the huge damage spike happens.

We’ve been trying to do a fair amount to mitigate the effect of high tank avoidance on the encounter side of things during this expansion with faster melee swings, additional melee strikes, dual wielding, narrowing the normal variance of melee swing damage, and various other tricks. There’s a limit to what we can do, however. So to give us a bit of breathing room we’ve implemented Chill of the Throne. Going forward past Icecrown Citadel, we have plans to keep tank avoidance from growing so high again.

Occulus Nerf (The nightmare is finally over)

  • Many bosses and creatures have had their total health reduced.
  • Several bosses and creatures have had cooldowns on specific abilities increased, effect durations reduced, and damage on some of these abilities reduced.
  • Ring-Lord Conjurers and Sorceresses now hang out in packs of 4 instead of packs of 5.
  • Vehicle scaling on the drakes based on the rider’s item level has been increased to make them more powerful.

Icecrown Citadel: The Frozen halls (New 5-Man Dungeons)

In 3.3 there will be three new dungeons in the Icecrown zone.  These are the hardest five mans and drop level 219 (Ulduar 10man) normal and 232(Trial of the Crusader 10 man) heroic level gear. Having tested the Heroic modes of these instances on the PTR, they’re a real sight to behold and quite hard. Don’t attempt the heroic versions without an complete set of 219 gear or better. These instances feel like doing a five man Naxx.
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Here are the new dungeons and what will iLvl gear will be dropping in each one

The Frozen Halls

  • Level 219: Normal
  • Level 232: Heroic
Icecrown Citadel
  • Level 251: Normal 10
  • Level 264: Heroic 10 / Normal 25
  • Level 277: Heroic 25
I hope you find something to look forward to from the New ICC raid, the new five mans, or getting your first clear of Occulus. Blizzard is making sure the end of Wrath goes out with a bang and we will finally get a shot at killing the Lich King once and for all. The dungeons and raids of Wrath have far exceeded our expectations of what Blizzard could do since Burning Crusade and I have no doubt they will continue to impress in Cataclysm. Only time will tell, until then, enjoy raiding and always Dominate.