Comments on: [WoW] A first look at the firelands

By: Maker

Maker — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 18:24:23 +0000

I’m not at all surprised with how fast the hardmodes are falling. 7/7 Normal was insanely easy. (12/13 player) Remember these fights were on the PTR for ages. This gave those guilds plenty of time to master the mechanics and work on the fights.

As of last night, The Gatekeeper was a major roadblock for those guilds. He may very well be a gearing issue. Initial reports were that he has far more health, more mechanics, and the SAME 6 minute enrage timer. Preliminary rumours have been that everyone in the raid must be pulling at least 33k dps. It’s extremely tightly tuned.

If this is a case of overtuning, then gear checks aren’t so bad. It’s been a long time since there’s been a gear check fight. I’m looking forward to Staghelm and Rag’s mechanics. Those should be a whole lot of fun.

I expect this instance to last until the new year. With the current nerfed rate of rep gains, it’ll be a good 4-5 months before I’ll get exalted. Another Hydraxianish grind.

By: Shintar

Shintar — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 14:05:06 +0000

Heh, I’m not a big fan of the MC aesthetic myself. I think it’s interesting how for you just having an open sky makes that much of a difference. Personally I just don’t care for black, barren raids, regardless whether they are set in a cave or on an open plain.

By: Azaael

Azaael — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 13:05:52 +0000

Agreed that Firelands LOOKS a lot better than the rest.(BWD had a nice BWL kinda feel, which is one of my favs…but still felt like a poor man’s version/copy.) It actually has a rather nice aesthetic, though I suspect after 3 months we’ll be sick of fire, just like in MC.

And to give an example of the difference of speeds-the World First Sinestra didn’t happen until Jan 20th. Now, you could factor in holidays here-but at the same time, we’re in the dead of summer, another notoriously slow time, but these guilds don’t exactly rest when it comes to this.

It COULD well be that Staghelm or Raggy stick guilds for a good month. We don’t know, but t 11 did seem to go down at a much slower pace than t12.

By: spinks

spinks — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 09:52:21 +0000

You’d expect them to clear the normal modes for sure, unless they’re buggy, but to get through the hard modes that quickly too?

By: Simon Jones who is blogless

Simon Jones who is blogless — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 09:50:38 +0000

I’ve given up being suprised at top guild clearence speeds. At this point, we know that Hardcore guilds are gonna clear the raid in the first week or so unless

A) It’s insanely buggy (C’thun)
B)Phase One is Several Weeks Long and is called “Farming up relatively rare resist gear” (Everything in Vanilla, Matron Sexy in BT)
C)Requires some a fairly specific set up and/or fairly specific gear (Nef shadowflame cloak farming, Naxx 40 4 Horsemen Warrior Tier set bonus, Pre-Nerf Nef 2 and Pre-Nerf Yogg.)
D)It’s Gated.

Apart from that, bosses drop because the top guilds may actually be pretty good at the game.

By: spinks

spinks — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 09:44:32 +0000

I do like it lots better than the T11 instances, where I really did just dislike them on sight. Ugh, caves and tunnels. At least this looks as though it’ll be a cool place to explore.

By: Azaael

Azaael — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 09:08:53 +0000

I’m a bit meh on the place, myself. Rhyolith is a horrible gimmick(the ease of the encounter is determined on how the volcanoes spawn; we got him dead easy the first night we even tried him, then he was a pain the past try.) Shannox is fine unless you’re a warrior doing nothing but hitting the intervene button to prevent another tank’s stacks(though I think thankfully we won’t use that method anymore). Beth’tilac is a good fight, however. Baelroc looks promising. Alysrazor is one of those ”a nation divided” fights that make me spit blood(as in,your raid is split up doing stuff. Ranged are split from melee, melee are split from other melee…you get the idea.) [ I just read MMO champ-they seemed to fix the Rhyolith annoyance of him constantly popping up volcanos behind him, and now he can steer better than an old pimp caddy with rusty steering.]

I have a feeling the trash will get old once the small guys stop giving rep past 5999/6000(only bosses and the Big trash-Molten giants, etc, will give it), though for now I’ll take the steady rep.

I dunno, IMO? For all the time they spent trumpeting this place I found it cold. And they better not make it last six months. It made me reminicent of MC in the way that I would have rather had MC back(yes, Molten Bore itself.) I really hope Blizzard decides to copy SoE when it comes to making the classic server. When they did that with Everquest, I thought it was *awesome* and I think more MMO companies should do the same.

And hardcore guilds are clearing this in RECORD time, which is pretty alarming. Oh, they’re way better than I’ll ever be, I know that-I’m sure I’ll personally find challenge here for awhile-but when it took at least almost a month for the 13 last tier, this time it’s literally been *days*.

I hope that my tune changes. While I like it more than last tier I think, and DEFINITELY more than TotC, it’s nowhere even CLOSE to touching Ulduar and BWL in my book. So…Yeah, Average is a good way to say it. I don’t have any REAL strong dislike for the place but it hasn’t really made me go ”OH AWESOME”.