Dread Guards Nightmare overtuned

[DJ_Sicosis]

Like I mentioned my guild isn't attempting Dread Guards on NiM.

 

You can't have every boss of equal difficulty, and some bosses will be more challenging in different areas to others. Compare Vorgath to Kephess in NiM EC; Vorgath was the 'pushover boss' of that instance, TWH is the 'pushover boss' of this instance. I enjoy how much it lulled everyone into a false sense of how easy NiM TFB was going to be.

 

Only thing I will agree on in this post is the "pushover" boss selection.

 

My argument against it. Give then information sourced out during the PTS by Dulfy and other guide writers, the DGs were meant to be in my mind the 2nd hardest boss next to TFB. That ranking was completely based on added mechanics, not having RNG pixie dust, or on the flip side, a boss who completely wrecks top rated raid teams for 8-12 hours not because of lack of knowing mechanics, class know-how, etc....but simply because everyone can't push 2800-2900 DPS sustained based on class.

 

Now when other guilds are skipping over the DGs and going and killing TFB and TFB is a pushover in comparison, which, from PTS was the hardest boss (Styrak-type fight), where it was a DPS check, but it wasn't anywhere near as high as what is needed for the DGs? Something is a bit off there.

 

The fight itself is fine, but highly unlikely you are not going to hit the enrage at 40-55% on Kel'sara and its a wipe. Some guilds have done 20-30%, but that is still a lot of meat left on the bone to try to push before she stomps your face in.

Edited June 13, 2013 by DJ_Sicosis

[Spyderwraith]

Simile is not name-calling.

 

Then allow me to take affront to the fact that you've likened me to an ankle biting chihuahua dog without actually calling me an ankle biting chihuahua dog.

[vVvCheese]

It's hard, but possible. If nobody gets it down in 3 weeks without skipping it to get 75s from beyond it, then let's talk nerfs. I showed that it's mathematically possible. Let's see if the top guilds can find those numbers in a few weeks, if not, then we can talk nerfs.

[FridgeLM]

Then allow me to take affront to the fact that you've likened me to an ankle biting chihuahua dog without actually calling me an ankle biting chihuahua dog.

 

Go right ahead, slick.

[Krazy_Karl]

It's hard, but possible. If nobody gets it down in 3 weeks without skipping it to get 75s from beyond it, then let's talk nerfs. I showed that it's mathematically possible. Let's see if the top guilds can find those numbers in a few weeks, if not, then we can talk nerfs.

 

First off, I haven't seen anyone from the progression guilds say this fight is "too hard", the problem they've identified is with the enrage timer. THESE ARE NOT THE SAME THING. Those who are claiming the progression guilds are asking for a nerf, do so falsely and are one; oblivious to the actual problem, and two; misrepresenting the intrests of everyone involved. What makes a fight "hard" in a game like this are environmental, and champion npc opponent stimulants which must be countered by player decisions and reactions—otherwise known as mechanics. Although, a tight enrage can be part of a mechanic, enrage is meant to wipe you when, outside of poor gear or strat, you are just plainly taking too long—preventing you from stacking healers and DoTing the boss to death. Progression guilds have praised the mechanics and the added difficulty placed on healers on this particular fight.

 

Please actually read the posts in this thread. You're misrepresenting the problem with the fight.

 

Thanks.

 

TL;DR: We aren't asking for a nerf, we are asking for them to fix the enrage timer.

 

Regards,

KK

[vVvCheese]

Please actually read the posts in this thread. You're misrepresenting the problem with the fight.

 

Thanks.

 

TL;DR: We aren't asking for a nerf, we are asking for them to fix the enrage timer.

 

Regards,

KK

 

Please read my post where I show that the enrage timer is 100% beatable. An increase in the enrage timer is a nerf to the fight.

 

It's post #168 in this thread, since it probably got lost in the petty scuffle above.

Edited June 13, 2013 by vVvCheese

[countpopeula]

10500 Raid DPS is an average of 2625 effective DPS per Damage Dealer.

 

It's tuned to require perfection. It is mathematically possible at the very least, and week 1 plausible at best.

 

We've seen raids put out those numbers, and it's not AOE padded. Every drop of damage going in is ST-DPS, either because of the raid comp being ST classes, or because the raiders are good enough to know that the incoming damage is already at the tipping point (where it should be for an arena fight like this) and attacking anything but the primary boss activates the bosses' synergistic damage increase. Still, 2600 is not enough and enrage is not met. Call it 2500 for arguments sake because I stand at 2500-2600 in this fight

 

Perfection in this raid is not attainable on the level of maintaing 2600 effective DPS the entire fight with 72 BIS. DPS will get doomed, 6-12 seconds of downtime depending on puddle placement. DPS will get Strangled, 1-2 lost GCD's, happens 3-4 times. DPS will have to run from Deathmark, 10 seconds. DPS will probably have to offheal themselves, more lost GCD's. DnT's recorded run was smoother than our best, and I'm sure someone has gotten them closer. Their enrage is still not a margin that does anything but raise the flags, ESPECIALLY when weighed against the subsequent fights.

[Krazy_Karl]

Please read my post where I show that the enrage timer is 100% beatable.

 

Your math may be correct in theory, but in practice it's wrong. I ignored it as it's irrelevant because you are basing it on theoretical numbers, not actual numbers. Those guilds who have actually seen the enrage know what the numbers and parses look like. Until you use actual numbers to back up your claim, you're flat out wrong.

 

Then again, given you're just spouting napkin math, I would assume you have yet to see the enrage on DG.

 

Regards,

KK

[Rambovi]

 

Only thing I will agree on in this post is the "pushover" boss selection.

 

My argument against it. Give then information sourced out during the PTS by Dulfy and other guide writers, the DGs were meant to be in my mind the 2nd hardest boss next to TFB. That ranking was completely based on added mechanics, not having RNG pixie dust, or on the flip side, a boss who completely wrecks top rated raid teams for 8-12 hours not because of lack of knowing mechanics, class know-how, etc....but simply because everyone can't push 2800-2900 DPS sustained based on class.

 

Now when other guilds are skipping over the DGs and going and killing TFB and TFB is a pushover in comparison, which, from PTS was the hardest boss (Styrak-type fight), where it was a DPS check, but it wasn't anywhere near as high as what is needed for the DGs? Something is a bit off there.

 

The fight itself is fine, but highly unlikely you are not going to hit the enrage at 40-55% on Kel'sara and its a wipe. Some guilds have done 20-30%, but that is still a lot of meat left on the bone to try to push before she stomps your face in.

 

 

 

There is another problem you have to see.....

Not every Raidgroup has the Best Setup... as long as there is a huge gap between the possible dps of the DPS-Classes the fight need to be possible with nearly the worst setup.

So no not 4 times Shadow xD but what i saw in the video was 2 marauders 1 Mercenary and 1 Sniper.

And i think this is one of the best setups not the best DPS setup but one of the best.

We for example have 1 Sentinal 2 Commandos and 1 Gunslinger.

And with 2 commandos its much harder cause of the Dmg from lighting field =)

But lets wait if they will change something, cause we dont skip a boss!

[DJ_Sicosis]

Please read my post where I show that the enrage timer is 100% beatable. An increase in the enrage timer is a nerf to the fight.

 

It's post #168 in this thread, since it probably got lost in the petty scuffle above.

 

I love how people like you are coming up with theoretical numbers that obviously don't take into account the fights mechanics. 2625 might be a good rough number to have per DPS class and what is required, but in order to achieve that, with Dooms, Strangles, GCDs, and adds playing the roll, you're looking at anywhere between 2900-3100 sustained DPS from every class to meet that margin with mechanics.

 

Granted, that is purely a rough estimate.

[vVvCheese]

We've seen raids put out those numbers, and it's not AOE padded. Every drop of damage going in is ST-DPS, either because of the raid comp being ST classes, or because the raiders are good enough to know that the incoming damage is already at the tipping point (where it should be for an arena fight like this) and attacking anything but the primary boss activates the bosses' synergistic damage increase. Still, 2600 is not enough and enrage is not met. Call it 2500 for arguments sake because I stand at 2500-2600 in this fight

 

Perfection in this raid is not attainable on the level of maintaing 2600 effective DPS the entire fight with 72 BIS. DPS will get doomed, 6-12 seconds of downtime depending on puddle placement. DPS will get Strangled, 1-2 lost GCD's, happens 3-4 times. DPS will have to run from Deathmark, 10 seconds. DPS will probably have to offheal themselves, more lost GCD's. DnT's recorded run was smoother than our best, and I'm sure someone has gotten them closer. Their enrage is still not a margin that does anything but raise the flags, ESPECIALLY when weighed against the subsequent fights.

 

Feel free to check my numbers, but that is the required number unless I made a calculation error despite triple checking after being in there last night. Perfection is not attainable by any group YET to keep those numbers up. We've had the boss for one night and people are declaring it impossible. Even in our (sadly limited) pulls last night, our effective DPS was creeping closer to that number, our healers were saying they were finding more windows to throw damage, and our tanks (especially myself) were finding more windows of opportunity to deal damage to the needed target.

 

As for the DnT pull that everyone is claiming proves it's (nearly) mathematically impossible, I see plenty of down time and room for improvement, though that is the best pull (and better than any we got in last night) thus far.

[Krazy_Karl]

We've seen raids put out those numbers, and it's not AOE padded. Every drop of damage going in is ST-DPS, either because of the raid comp being ST classes, or because the raiders are good enough to know that the incoming damage is already at the tipping point (where it should be for an arena fight like this) and attacking anything but the primary boss activates the bosses' synergistic damage increase. Still, 2600 is not enough and enrage is not met. Call it 2500 for arguments sake because I stand at 2500-2600 in this fight

 

Perfection in this raid is not attainable on the level of maintaing 2600 effective DPS the entire fight with 72 BIS. DPS will get doomed, 6-12 seconds of downtime depending on puddle placement. DPS will get Strangled, 1-2 lost GCD's, happens 3-4 times. DPS will have to run from Deathmark, 10 seconds. DPS will probably have to offheal themselves, more lost GCD's. DnT's recorded run was smoother than our best, and I'm sure someone has gotten them closer. Their enrage is still not a margin that does anything but raise the flags, ESPECIALLY when weighed against the subsequent fights.

 

You left out that DoT specced classes are losing all DPS when the shield goes up and have their damage reflected back at them. I think you hit most of the other major mechanics that cause a DPS decrease.

 

I think what everyone is forgetting is that this is a mechanics driven fight.

 

But I mean, 4 Gunslingers/Snipers could probably manage the DPS necessary. Unfortunately for us, we don't have that in our ranks.

 

Still waiting on a Bioware response...

 

Regards,

KK

[Anysao]

Has it occurred to you that perhaps it is SUPPOSED to be like that?

It is not unheard of for players to burn the boss through an enrage. Perhaps that's what you simply need to do.

[countpopeula]

Has it occurred to you that perhaps it is SUPPOSED to be like that?

It is not unheard of for players to burn the boss through an enrage. Perhaps that's what you simply need to do.

 

Have you seen Kelsara's enrage mechanic, like, ever? Where she turns into Carl Lewis and insta sprints across the room to one shot people back to back to back? You can buy maybe 10, 15 extra seconds of less than optimal DPS because players are going down and hampering raid DPS. This would only matter if you had her at 150k HP or less, even then it's iffy.

[e_nk_ay]

Have you seen Kelsara's enrage mechanic, like, ever? Where she turns into Carl Lewis and insta sprints across the room to one shot people back to back to back? You can buy maybe 10, 15 extra seconds of less than optimal DPS because players are going down and hampering raid DPS. This would only matter if you had her at 150k HP or less, even then it's iffy.

 

I lol'd at the Carl Lewis part.

[vVvCheese]

I love how people like you are coming up with theoretical numbers that obviously don't take into account the fights mechanics. 2625 might be a good rough number to have per DPS class and what is required, but in order to achieve that, with Dooms, Strangles, GCDs, and adds playing the roll, you're looking at anywhere between 2900-3100 sustained DPS from every class to meet that margin with mechanics.

 

Granted, that is purely a rough estimate.

 

People like me? You mean people that are in there actively trying to clear it, and actually seeing what kind of DPS my raid group can put out when we execute perfectly and comparing that to the enrage timer, and seeing that while it's close, it certainly seems to be doable?

 

Give it a few weeks before we bring out the nerf party. Maybe someone will get it down. If not, color me wrong and increase the timer. Personally, I'm really excited I went in there and got clobbered all night last night, and look forward to getting clobbered tonight again.

[Khevar]

I don't think you comprehended any of the feedback given in this thread. We like the fight. It stresses tanks, heals, and dps to perform at their best levels. The only problem is the enrage timer. I am happy to have a challenge in game, what I disapprove of is the currently impossible to beat enrage timer. I am glad that bioware finally put in a fight with finely tuned mechanics that challenge everyone in the operation instead of being faceroll. Now if they would fix the enrage timer by 30s-1 min that would make this perfect and I would give BW a 10/10 for this encounter.

While a slight adjustment like you describe would be probably best, somehow that seems unlikely to happen.

 

We made it to the DG last night, as I can confidently say that fight is beyond our reach at this time.

 

HOWEVER, Bioware isn't very skilled at using the "nerf hammer" gently. I fear that all this talk about "impossible" is going to result in them adjusting this fight far far far too much towards easy.

 

Choice 1: This fight is the hardest one in the game (even if by mistake) and requires skipping it to run the rest of the instance, as well as NM S&V to get enough new gear to beat it.

Choice 2: This fight is nerfed down to be too easy.

 

I vote Choice 1. Choice 3 of a "slight adjustment to the enrage timer" would be nice, but just look at the track record of previous nerfs. Seems unlikely they would do that.

Edited June 13, 2013 by Khevar

[e_nk_ay]

While a slight adjustment like you describe would be probably best, somehow that seems unlikely to happen.

 

We made it to the DG last night, as I can confidently say that fight is beyond our reach at this time.

 

HOWEVER, Bioware isn't very skilled at using the "nerf hammer" gently. I fear that all this talk about "impossible" is going to result in them adjusting this fight far far far too much towards easy.

 

Choice 1: This fight is the hardest one in the game (even if by mistake) and requires skipping it to run the rest of the instance, as well as NM S&V to get enough new gear to beat it.

Choice 2: This fight is nerfed down to be too easy.

 

Choice 1 would be something WoW has had for the last several years, but people in the progression thread seem to think it's some heinous thing to do

[TenderDeath]

As for the DnT pull that everyone is claiming proves it's (nearly) mathematically impossible, I see plenty of down time and room for improvement, though that is the best pull (and better than any we got in last night) thus far.

 

Want to know a secret? I am not satisfied with the DPS in our DnT attempts. I know it could have been much better, and that will eat at me because I'm more inclined to beat my fists bloody against a wall for posterity's sake. If anything, just to prove that we could have had a much better attempt. Give me 65 attempts on a boss and we will make vast improvements. Our guild made a decision to move on, and I respect that.

Edited June 13, 2013 by TenderDeath

[Lostpenguins]

1309032 + 1716816 + 1394913 + (47535 * 2 * 3) = 4705971

 

Note that I'm doubling the Legionaire to represent the AoE DPS loss due to the need to kill the remainder of the adds. I'm assuming you have enough AoE DPS that you don't need to single-target them down.

 

11204.692857143 DPS required

 

Tanks: 1.2k each

Healers: 0k each

DPS: 2202

 

Estimated Ciphas bubble delay: 12 seconds. Accounting for this delay:

 

420 - 24 = 396

 

11883.765151515 DPS required

 

DPS: 2371

 

This is not mathematically impossible.

 

I think what guilds are seeing right now is multi-fold. First, tanks are probably not pulling their weight. Second, DPS are unfamiliar with the NiM mechanics and psyching themselves out a bit, and thus losing a LOT of DPS due to mechanics. The numbers that people are posting (e.g. 2.6k DPS) are net over the whole fight and probably include a lot of incidental AoE on bosses that heal back up. The numbers I posted above are effective DPS, which means that you don't get to count incidental AoE on the other bosses toward your effective number.

I didn't look farther into this, but you're forgetting a few things in the napkin math you're doing:

1) The tanks are dps'ing bosses that go back to full hp when the previous boss dies, meaning that tanks dps cannot be factored for the first boss entirely nor for the dps on the last boss during Ciphas kill.

2) You're forgetting to remove dps from a target if Kelsara is fixated on them during P3 and for the tank who gets force leech one them.

3) You're forgetting the dps loss that a dps has when they get doomed.

 

That's a lot of downtime on individuals that isn't being factored into the equation.

[Lostpenguins]

I hear what KBN has to say, and you can tell that people are simply getting frustrated by an 8man fight requiring more than 1 day of raiding to kill. We've seen this on NiM 16 Tanks and Kephess, I've been there. Obviously I feel for all raiders in this case...when you continually wipe ~30% it's hard to see any way to get to a kill. It's chipping away though, making small changes across your entire group to find extra dps. Some guild will approach this with an open mind and outperform expectations.

 

For those that claim impossible, I'll ask you, how far is possible? I think you'll find that whether you say 50% or 20%, there's a guild out there that will beat your expectation.

I've raided since Vanilla WoW and I've never, ever, ever liked Hard Enrage mechanics. They are there because healing is/was OP and the people designing had to find a way to make it so the fight couldn't last forever if your dps was derp but your healing was not derp.

 

Soft enrage mechanics are always the best way to do these things. I can think of several boss fights that had soft enrages.

 

I feel that BW did the "Diablo 3 Nightmare version". They tested it and after testing raised the bar higher w/out actually checking anything. Adding extra mechanics to a fight is a great way to make Nightmare more interesting... simply raising the coefficients on damage and hp is dumb.

[ML_DoubleTap]

I'm not going to pretend to be at the level of some of the folks running this content currently...but, to declare it impossible like 2-3 hours in to the patch seems for lack of a better term, arrogant. Some have mentioned trying everything, even RIDICULOUS methods...how many could you have really tried in less than 2 hours?

 

Maybe it is impossible. I respect ya'll opinions, but would just like to see a little more grit from the best of the best before throwing in the towel. I follow several of you both on twitch and your forum posts and I've heard several saying the didn't want first day clears...now there's a roadblock and reqeusts for a nerf after a couple hours. I'm sure you can see where the community's confusion is coming from. To assume you're doing it perfectly in such a short time is foolish.

[e_nk_ay]

I'm not going to pretend to be at the level of some of the folks running this content currently...but, to declare it impossible like 2-3 hours in to the patch seems for lack of a better term, arrogant. Some have mentioned trying everything, even RIDICULOUS methods...how many could you have really tried in less than 2 hours?

 

We spent 4 hours on it, and I saw streams were guilds were in there for 7+ hours.

[TenderDeath]

I didn't look farther into this, but you're forgetting a few things in the napkin math you're doing:

1) The tanks are dps'ing bosses that go back to full hp when the previous boss dies, meaning that tanks dps cannot be factored for the first boss entirely nor for the dps on the last boss during Ciphas kill.

2) You're forgetting to remove dps from a target if Kelsara is fixated on them during P3 and for the tank who gets force leech one them.

3) You're forgetting the dps loss that a dps has when they get doomed.

 

That's a lot of downtime on individuals that isn't being factored into the equation.

 

This needed to be said.

[ML_DoubleTap]

1) The tanks are dps'ing bosses that go back to full hp when the previous boss dies, meaning that tanks dps cannot be factored for the first boss entirely nor for the dps on the last boss during Ciphas kill.

 

I suck at this game and my main is a healer..but even when I tank this fight(on HM) I put damage on the DPS target. You shouldn't be doing more than enough to just simply keep aggro on your tanking target. Depending on your class, you can do that w/ AOE that hits both. With my shadow that just meant making sure Slow Time and Force Breach hit him to lower incoming DPS and keep aggro.