wow Method WF ToS Interview

[Starym 3,800]

 

In Method's WF interview we find out there were 10+ undocumented nerfs on KJ, a few on Avatar, we hear about class balance and a lot more!

Just as Exorsus got the World 2nd on Kil'jaeden, some of the Method raiders took some time to do an interview with, well, the Method site! Among other things we find out the details on the huge number of undocumented changes to Kil'jaeden that happened before the kill, as well as a few on Avatar. We also get to hear about the class balance in Mythic Tomb and how Rogues were the stars for the final two bosses, as well as a whole bunch of other details for the raid and KJ in particular! Here are a few snippets:

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Moving on to the first really big hurdle of the raid, Fallen Avatar (453 wipes, 5 days 7 hours). First off, were the any stealth fixes and changes to the fight before you'd killed it?

Kuriisu: The first change was 5% hp nerf, absolutely needed as we were nowhere near the kill when that one was implemented.
The 2nd and most important nerf was Sear damage per stack reduction (30% -> 20%) and, more importantly, the rate at which the boss gets stacks while standing in fire was reduced (it went from 1 stack every 1.8 seconds to every 2.5 seconds). This was huge because before the nerf while moving the boss to a new platform he would very often get 3 stacks, rarely 2 and after the nerf he would get 2 stacks and in very rare cases only 1.

The funny thing is, when all those mathematical impossibility memes were happening we also all felt that way, but then we had a god pull which could have resulted in a kill if we played a bit better. Shortly after that the Sear nerf happened, and we knew we could easily kill the boss even on a non godlike pull. The fight had a disgusting amount of RNG before all the nerfs, if marks targeted non immunity classes or targeted people that already used immunites, it'd result in a fast wipe. If 2+ healers got a mark it was an instant wipe (all 3 healers having it also happened quite a few times). After they nerfed it for the 3rd time, reducing the damage of mark by 25% and making it not able to target healers, p2 basically turned into a joke.

Also, took us about 80 pulls to go from 0,5% wipe to a kill. And honestly even though our kill looks super clean that's just because it was a super good pull, dps doing crazy numbers, RNG being kind with marks and so forth - we still could have improved a lot, which proved to be true on the re-kill the next week.

Let's get to the big topic then. 654 wipes, a little under 12 days spent on him and you're still the only guild to have killed the endboss, 7 days later, and a lot of comments have been thrown around about him. First off: was he in any way possible before the most recent hotfixes?

Deepshades: I don't think we had any chance to kill the boss before the hotfixes. Even with 950 equipped Item Level we probably would struggle to down him pre-nerf.

Justwait: Possible? Maybe. It would take weeks of gearing if we'd want to be able to do it before any of the fixes were applied. Not really the way bosses should be designed in today's raiding scene.
 

Were there any stealth fixes that didn't make the hotfix notes?

Justwait: There were a lot of fixes throughout our KJ progress, sadly because of the holidays in the US (4th of July weekend) it took them longer to implement than we'd hoped and halted progress a lot.

Friday 7th:
- Armageddon now ticks for ~418k on mythic (from ~670k)

Monday 10th:

- Wailing Reflections spawn on tank deaths.
- Focused Dreadflame reduced to 15,600,000 (from ~30,000,000).
- Erupting Reflection HP reduced to 156600000 (from ~170000000).
- Wailing Reflection HP reduced to 288144000 (from ~304000000).
- Hopeless Reflection HP reduced to 33000000 (from ~40000000).
- Armageddon now spawns 8 small and 2 large missiles on mythic (down from 10 small).
- The knockback of Rupturing Singularity has been reduced ~5% on Mythic.
- There is more space between Armageddon Rain, Rupturing Singularity, and Erupting Reflection spawning in p1.
- There is more space in between abilities on the first intermission.

Thursday 14th:
- Darkness of a Thousand Souls damage reduced to 520000 (from 864600).
- Intermission 2 had some visual bugs with the Rupturing Singularities (Not really affecting our strat).

 

Obviously Rogues were a big hit on Avatar and KJ, were there any OP classes or must haves in ToS? What do you think of class balance in the raid overall?

Deepshades: I think the class balance in general was pretty decent. The only problem was that most of the hard bosses had soaking abilities which made Rogues just overpowered. Kil'jaeden also had a few abilities that made it really hard for classes with low movement which decided our setup on him.

Kuriisu: Rogues are obviously broken as usual. Warriors are pretty broken, Hunters and Moonkins are very good, 1 Warlock is required, the rest is pretty much whatever.

Lorgok: Class balance was very good overall except for warriors's dps being ridiculously op(I don't even know how you can let a class like that go through after months of PTR) and rogues being the "key" class on every boss you need mobility/soaking/damage.
I am really looking forward to changes for rogues&warriors.

Scripe: Yes, Rogues were way too strong this tier. DPS wise most classes were fine, obviously when you go for world first even if a class is a tiny bit worse you don't want to use it. However, utility wise some classes were way too strong to the point where it was stupid. We even considered gearing 5 Rogs initially but then thought "surely 4 must be enough", jk...

Check out the full interview with a lot more details over at Method.gg.

[Yridaa 490]

When I see these numbers, all I can think of is "We really need another statsquish, just like with the WoD-prepatch."

With the inflation we've seen in between end-game WoD and mid-game Legion (Right now), we are likely to see the next xpac first raid tier to have tanks sitting at ~50M hp, if we do indeed follow the same trend.

They should just do a statsquish so the first raid content in the next xpac will have tanks sitting at around 100K HP, meaning DPS/healers sit at around 60-75K. It just makes it look so much cleaner.

Just think of the D3 Necro/DH glitch combo. What was it again? 18,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 damage? I think I may even have missed a few zeroes. Of course I'm making a bad example here, but seeing numbers like 18,492 looks a lot more clean than 32,568,712

Hey this level 120 ilvl 1285 trinket only gives 12,583 int and 8285 haste. That's nothing compared to my int in the character sheet which is 583,521.

[Starym 3,800]

57 minutes ago, Yridaa said:

When I see these numbers, all I can think of is "We really need another statsquish, just like with the WoD-prepatch."

With the inflation we've seen in between end-game WoD and mid-game Legion (Right now), we are likely to see the next xpac first raid tier to have tanks sitting at ~50M hp, if we do indeed follow the same trend.

They should just do a statsquish so the first raid content in the next xpac will have tanks sitting at around 100K HP, meaning DPS/healers sit at around 60-75K. It just makes it look so much cleaner.

Just think of the D3 Necro/DH glitch combo. What was it again? 18,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 damage? I think I may even have missed a few zeroes. Of course I'm making a bad example here, but seeing numbers like 18,492 looks a lot more clean than 32,568,712

Hey this level 120 ilvl 1285 trinket only gives 12,583 int and 8285 haste. That's nothing compared to my int in the character sheet which is 583,521.

That's one of the major things that kills me whenever I go back to D3, those idiotically huge numbers... The other thing is, well, everything else pretty much :D

[Tri 138]

11 hours ago, Starym said:

That's one of the major things that kills me whenever I go back to D3, those idiotically huge numbers... The other thing is, well, everything else pretty much :D

I love the stupid big numbers in diablo 3 XD. 

It is interesting to see each tier which class or even spec suddenly becomes super popular due to mechanics. This raid rogues where the hot topic. I remember in blackrock everyone wanted at least one dk for their gorefiends grasp and that was about it. I'm always curious what the raid environment does to class value/popularity :)

[Valks 2,375]

18 hours ago, Starym said:

That's one of the major things that kills me whenever I go back to D3, those idiotically huge numbers... The other thing is, well, everything else pretty much :D

They made it slightly better by condensing the numbers from 1,000,000 to 1M, at least! It means your screen isn't full of random numbers that can't be read fast enough while clearing a rift.