wow Exorsus GM Extensively Talks About ToS

[Starym 3,800]

 

As promised, Alveona, Exorsus' guild master, has posted his opinions on the Tomb of Sargeras Mythic race on reddit. He goes really in-depth not only on the hot topic of Kil'jaeden, but the rest of the raid as well - from the difficulty curve, to what he thinks went wrong with the instance, hardcore raiding mythbusting and more.

As you can imagine he's not too thrilled with the whole thing, but the post is well explained and we can get a feeling of what their frustrations on the boss(es) were much better. It's definitely worth a read if you're interested in the perspective of top-end raiders and in what tuning of a new raid looks like in the extremely early days of a new (Mythic) tier. Here are some highlights from the post:

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I. Difficulty Curve:

7. Kil'jaeden. Boss received 3 waves of nerfs before actually being killable. Apart from nerfs, boss had some very serious bugs, leading to very slow progression. I’ve seen a lot of comments like “get good” or “you forgot what is challenge”. Of course I know that 80% of such posts is just trolling, however to make sure everyone understands what was happening - https://puu.sh/wSQN3/ac457ff435.webm . Good luck dodging such things. This bug ruined ~8% of our pulls. Now talking about nerfs – we barely have seen boss pre-first nerf, which reduced Armageddon damage, however this nerf itself didn’t really helped a lot. Until 10th of July getting to second phase was really hard (best way was to avoid tanking mob and push the boss asap). Transition phase itself had crazy timings, leading to knockback at the same time as Armageddon. Not to mention “Focused Dreadflame” damage was around 30m, meaning even if you’re splitting it with 9 persons with 20% versatility it’s still ~ 3.5m damage to each person, which is ridiculous, unless you’re immuning it. However after the second batch of nerfs (Adds hp nerf, Focused Dreadflame damage halved , 2 less Armageddon zones, knockback distance reduced, timings on all phases tuned to be more realistic) we’ve started making some real progression on the fight. The last, but bot least was damage on last phase from “Darkness of a Thousand Souls”, it has been nerfed by 40%, to make sure it’s possible to stay alive on last phase without bringing 6 healers.

 

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II. What’s went wrong with ToS?

3. Immunity stacking. Half of ToS encounters are way easier if you stack immunity classes (some of them are not even possible before some nerfs without such stacking). Soaking different zones, removing debuffs from you, ignoring some abilities. That’s something that has been a thing all the time, however in ToS it’s just came up to a new level, which is a very bad practice. Why such issues came up this time? I have no idea to be honest.

...

Talking about “why are you blaming Blizzard”, “stop your harsh comments” etc posts, I’m not writing all of this to blame, I really hope such info can help them to avoid making same mistakes twice, and I’m pretty polite, from my point of view. As a dedicated fan of a game I’m only interested in WoW PvE raiding scene to become more and more popular and attractive.

 

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III. Some hardcore raiding mythbusting

3. “Back in the days progression took 2 months and now they’re whining after x days of progression on a boss/raid overall”. You all should realize you can’t compare current situation with those old days, every top guild is running 6-7 splitruns and trying to gear up everyone to best possible gear asap, creating special addons for the bosses and wasting some enormous amount of time per day, which all were not a thing before. Fun thing is If we’re talking about Fallen Avatar, for example, average raid ilvl for top 2 kills were 929-930, with FA itself dropping 930 ilvl items (yes, it’s a bit inaccurate due to 2 legendaries and weapon, but still). So for example 1 more reset of a Mythic reclear will not increase your dps dramatically (unless you’re super lucky for titanforged relics), since you’ve got almost all necessary items in heroic splits / previous mythic clears.

Be sure to check out the whole thing for better context and even more info.

[Daemon 11]

Finally, a nice post to shut up all the people comparing Legion raiding to vanilla and BC, giving Exorsus grief for 'complaining' the boss was too challenging (you guys dont know what a challenge really is), and also to all the people complaining that they are 'cheesing' mechanics with good soak classes. Some people just dont appreciate the effort these guys put into this game, and this tier. Its already demoralizing enough to lose out to world first, but then to see all these comments giving grief to Exorsus for the things i listed above is really pathetic to say the least. You guys think the GM just 'complains' after finishing a tier for the sake of it? Of course not, he is only trying to help Blizzard do their best in the future to ensure broken bosses like Mythic KJ dont happen again.

[Allseye 96]

4 hours ago, Daemon said:

Finally, a nice post to shut up all the people comparing Legion raiding to vanilla and BC, giving Exorsus grief for 'complaining' the boss was too challenging (you guys dont know what a challenge really is), and also to all the people complaining that they are 'cheesing' mechanics with good soak classes. Some people just dont appreciate the effort these guys put into this game, and this tier. Its already demoralizing enough to lose out to world first, but then to see all these comments giving grief to Exorsus for the things i listed above is really pathetic to say the least. You guys think the GM just 'complains' after finishing a tier for the sake of it? Of course not, he is only trying to help Blizzard do their best in the future to ensure broken bosses like Mythic KJ dont happen again.

I agree, this is a really a good feedback at developers and designers and lets hope/pray this will increase the quality for untested encounters.

But i have another pov, if this post should "shut up" the people. In my opinion there is a reason why some people said "don't complain about difficulty, it should not be easy at all". The problem is, that Exsorus and Method were complaining and instead of giving a proper feedback (which is understandable due to progress and not giving a hint to other combatants). If there is no proper justification, then this will lead to such statements. Look, i absolutely understand that it is frustrating to fight a broken encounter and wipe over and over again. But what is Method and Exsorsus expecting if they tweet complains? The reaction of the community was predictable and they have to accept (and ignore) such statements.

And now i'd like to defend the work of developers and designers of Blizzard (and no, i'm absolutely not a fanboy). So again: what are these top-raiding-guilds expecting? How many % of WoW-Players will ever see the mythic fight of KJ? How can someone blame the developers and designers for not investing that much time in such an ecounter? I really wish myself back to the days without that difficluty smashing. With more time for developers to introduce fights like Lady Vashj, Kael'thas, Illidan and so on.

As a conclusion if someone is interested on my pov: cut off these first kill race. That doesn't improve my (and approximately 99% of the players) quality of raiding. If there are bugs and broken mechanics in such fights, accept it or let it be.

 

[Maruken 31]

I'm more annoyed at their kneejerk reaction. They are one of the very best raiding guilds in the world and help represent the hardcore WoW raiding scene. Blizzard messes up once in god knows how many years, and they react like that. Doesn't paint a very good picture if you ask me.

I'm glad that they sat down and had a more professional talk about what happened though. Good luck to them in Antorus, and hopefully Blizzard have learned from their mistakes.

Edited July 28, 2017 by Maruken

[Prophet001 598]

2 hours ago, Maruken said:

I'm more annoyed at their kneejerk reaction. They are one of the very best raiding guilds in the world and help represent the hardcore WoW raiding scene. Blizzard messes up once in god knows how many years, and they react like that. Doesn't paint a very good picture if you ask me.

I'm glad that they sat down and had a more professional talk about what happened though. Good luck to them in Antorus, and hopefully Blizzard have learned from their mistakes.

Yeah they act like whiny kids.

Seeing KJ survive so long is nice imo.

[MrEdren 114]

Method got him what, 9 days before you described him as 'killable'

He was therefore killable

Cry into your vodka and accept that you aren't as great as you think.

Edited July 28, 2017 by MrEdren

[Starym 3,800]

13 minutes ago, MrEdren said:

Method got him what, 9 days before you described him as 'killable'

He was therefore killable

Cry into your vodka and accept that you aren't as great as you think.

He was referring to all the hotfixes before Method killed him, there were 3 huge un-documented waves changes to the fight before Method's kill. You can read them all here https://www.icy-veins.com/forums/topic/32075-method-wf-tos-interview/.

5 hours ago, Maruken said:

I'm more annoyed at their kneejerk reaction. They are one of the very best raiding guilds in the world and help represent the hardcore WoW raiding scene. Blizzard messes up once in god knows how many years, and they react like that. Doesn't paint a very good picture if you ask me.

I'm glad that they sat down and had a more professional talk about what happened though. Good luck to them in Antorus, and hopefully Blizzard have learned from their mistakes.

While I agree it was a kneejerk reaction this is FAR from Blizzard's first screwup in years in terms of the race/tuning. Basically every single Mythic only endboss (and a looot of Mythic bosses in general) are full of bugs and poor tuning when the WF guilds get to them. So I feel like KJ was like the final straw or something like that, it always happens every tier, just not for as long and as massive as KJ and both guilds that had to experience it kinda just threw their hands up in frustration (where throwing their hands up = posting on twitter :D )

[MrEdren 114]

32 minutes ago, Starym said:

He was referring to all the hotfixes before Method killed him, there were 3 huge un-documented waves changes to the fight before Method's kill. You can read them all here https://www.icy-veins.com/forums/topic/32075-method-wf-tos-interview/.

While I agree it was a kneejerk reaction this is FAR from Blizzard's first screwup in years in terms of the race/tuning. Basically every single Mythic only endboss (and a looot of Mythic bosses in general) are full of bugs and poor tuning when the WF guilds get to them. So I feel like KJ was like the final straw or something like that, it always happens every tier, just not for as long and as massive as KJ and both guilds that had to experience it kinda just threw their hands up in frustration (where throwing their hands up = posting on twitter :D )

I guess I'm not really sure why this is unexpected - they don't allow external testing of Mythic endbosses, and IIRC they've really never allowed for the final boss of any raid (see also: C'thunkillable).  Not to dismiss it as a nonissue, but I don't know how much they can really do in-house.  I'm also still not convinced that they aren't aware of the issues and just using them to create fixes for larger (read: non world first) consumption.

[Nathex 8]

More that anything it just sounds like they are angry cause they got second and not first and they want something to blame. Method made a few comments on the difficulty and then just let it go. Exorsus needs just be happy that they cleared the content and got the world second and move on. 

Edited July 28, 2017 by Nathex

[Banard 61]

7 hours ago, Maruken said:

They are one of the very best raiding guilds in the world and help represent the hardcore WoW raiding scene. 

"best" is objective. See those raid schedules? 

The best description i ever read about these "top guilds" their unpaid alpha testers.

I think it would of been hilarious to not nerf it for a length of time. Wait for a bunch of guilds to be on equal footing then announce "nerfs" next week and when servers will be back online and see who can kill him first. 

That be a race...100 guilds around the same ilevel knowing the nerf is in and the raid is open at X:XX o'clock.  It would be hilarious to see one of those crazy good 6 hour a week guilds beat these "top" guilds. 

 

Edited July 28, 2017 by Banard

[Starym 3,800]

5 hours ago, Banard said:

"best" is objective. See those raid schedules? 

The best description i ever read about these "top guilds" their unpaid alpha testers.

I think it would of been hilarious to not nerf it for a length of time. Wait for a bunch of guilds to be on equal footing then announce "nerfs" next week and when servers will be back online and see who can kill him first. 

That be a race...100 guilds around the same ilevel knowing the nerf is in and the raid is open at X:XX o'clock.  It would be hilarious to see one of those crazy good 6 hour a week guilds beat these "top" guilds. 

 

It may be hilarious but it wouldn't show you who the best guild is. I suppose it would depend on the nerfs, but for example with C'thun the World First didn't necessarily go to the best guild, it was just there because the nerf came in EU raiding times and Nihilum was still raiding at the time slamming our heads against that unkillable wall, basically giving us the WF by default. So basically it would come down to luck and/or who got in the raid first. And again if the nerfs weren't that big you'd again need a long time to kill the boss and again the guilds which stayed and played the longest would have an advantage (presuming all guilds at equal player skill).

I do totally agree with you that any 100% fair race should NOT require these types of commitments from players, it's ridiculous to expect guilds to have 20+ of their members take 2-3 weeks off from work or even if they don't work to just not do anything else every day for that amount of time. Blizzard have it in their power to fix this (tournament realms, give all guilds the same fully geared chars, they can choose whichever class legendary, whatever, you limit the realm uptime to 4-6 hours a day or even less etc etc) but they will never do that because they don't really care about the race.

7 hours ago, MrEdren said:

I guess I'm not really sure why this is unexpected - they don't allow external testing of Mythic endbosses, and IIRC they've really never allowed for the final boss of any raid (see also: C'thunkillable).  Not to dismiss it as a nonissue, but I don't know how much they can really do in-house.  I'm also still not convinced that they aren't aware of the issues and just using them to create fixes for larger (read: non world first) consumption.

I'm not sure what you mean with that last sentence. I can tell you for a fact Blizz can indeed create well tuned bosses without anyone testing them, it's simply a matter of resources (and talent). Gul'dan didn't get any complaints, why do you think that is? Bevause they had time to do him properly and make a real boss, while with KJ there was less time and they didn't expend more resources to compensate and so he was in a worse condition. I mean I don't understand your argument I guess, it's clearly possible for Blizz to do proper endbosses without external testing (to a point, like a said there's always issues and bugs etc, it's just a matter of how big, how many and how fast they get fixed) and they didn't do it for Kj, that's ALL this is about.

I understand people really dislike these top guilds complaining (although I honestly can't understand why), but please trust me on this, if the general populace EVER ran into bugs and tuning issues like this when they came to any boss, there would be infinity billion more whining and complaining, and it wouldn't be anywhere near as constructive.

[Daemon 11]

19 hours ago, Allseye said:

I agree, this is a really a good feedback at developers and designers and lets hope/pray this will increase the quality for untested encounters.

But i have another pov, if this post should "shut up" the people. In my opinion there is a reason why some people said "don't complain about difficulty, it should not be easy at all". The problem is, that Exsorus and Method were complaining and instead of giving a proper feedback (which is understandable due to progress and not giving a hint to other combatants). If there is no proper justification, then this will lead to such statements. Look, i absolutely understand that it is frustrating to fight a broken encounter and wipe over and over again. But what is Method and Exsorsus expecting if they tweet complains? The reaction of the community was predictable and they have to accept (and ignore) such statements.

And now i'd like to defend the work of developers and designers of Blizzard (and no, i'm absolutely not a fanboy). So again: what are these top-raiding-guilds expecting? How many % of WoW-Players will ever see the mythic fight of KJ? How can someone blame the developers and designers for not investing that much time in such an ecounter? I really wish myself back to the days without that difficluty smashing. With more time for developers to introduce fights like Lady Vashj, Kael'thas, Illidan and so on.

As a conclusion if someone is interested on my pov: cut off these first kill race. That doesn't improve my (and approximately 99% of the players) quality of raiding. If there are bugs and broken mechanics in such fights, accept it or let it be.

 

Sure i dont disagree with your 'pov', maybe exorsus and method should of put more detail into their tweets but what i want to encourage the most is for casual players to have a more open mind about method and exorsus 'povs'. You say the reaction of the community was expected, but what im saying is that the community should not be so narrow minded, these guilds just smashes their heads against a boss for the better part of a week (more in exorsus' case), these guys should realise the frustration of these guilds. Sure maybe they should of gave a bit more insight in their tweets, but would you do the same if you just wiped on a boss all day for a week straight? I dont think so, be a bit more open minded, and see the point of view of these players.

[Allseye 96]

4 hours ago, Daemon said:

You say the reaction of the community was expected, but what im saying is that the community should not be so narrow minded, these guilds just smashes their heads against a boss for the better part of a week (more in exorsus' case), these guys should realise the frustration of these guilds.

Yeah, the community could not be so narrow minded. But it will never be this way because there is no reason to do so. It's the top guilds decision to take 2 weeks off and do the race. They know endbosses are untested and that there could (or will) exists bugs. So don't complain about that fact, it's just ridiculous. There is no mercy in the community, and there hasn't to be. It's presumtuous to expect the developers fixing such bugs on untested ecounters within a short period. Such fixes serves a few people and so the costs aren't justifiable. 

8 hours ago, Starym said:

I understand people really dislike these top guilds complaining (although I honestly can't understand why), but please trust me on this, if the general populace EVER ran into bugs and tuning issues like this when they came to any boss, there would be infinity billion more whining and complaining, and it wouldn't be anywhere near as constructive.

Oh well, there is a reason to dislike such guilds. It's because they complain about something which is not relevant for about 99% of the community. Afterwards we're seeing "fixes" causes problems for a much greater part of the community (as we have seen for Elisande in Nighthold by creating more bugs which affected other difficulties). This happens because Blizzard don't take the time to fix it properly.

I agree, but if more people run in such problems the effort for fixes is justifiable. Whining and complaining it's not a problem itself, it depends on the impact of the problem, doesn't it?

 

[MrEdren 114]

On 7/28/2017 at 6:32 PM, Starym said:

I'm not sure what you mean with that last sentence. I can tell you for a fact Blizz can indeed create well tuned bosses without anyone testing them, it's simply a matter of resources (and talent). Gul'dan didn't get any complaints, why do you think that is? Bevause they had time to do him properly and make a real boss, while with KJ there was less time and they didn't expend more resources to compensate and so he was in a worse condition. I mean I don't understand your argument I guess, it's clearly possible for Blizz to do proper endbosses without external testing (to a point, like a said there's always issues and bugs etc, it's just a matter of how big, how many and how fast they get fixed) and they didn't do it for Kj, that's ALL this is about.

I understand people really dislike these top guilds complaining (although I honestly can't understand why), but please trust me on this, if the general populace EVER ran into bugs and tuning issues like this when they came to any boss, there would be infinity billion more whining and complaining, and it wouldn't be anywhere near as constructive.

• I mean that if they get their data from the top guilds, they can more easily figure out how far down to tune it for everyone else - they most certainly have the info to do so. 
• Regarding GD, I don't claim to be a mythic raider so I can't answer that.  It does seem, however, that Helya was much more of an obstacle than GD was.
• I can't agree or disagree that they had the resources but chose not to  use them, and tbh I don't think you can either unless you have a lot more inside info than I think
• Vael, Viscidus, all of Naxx 40, Magtheridon, pretty much all 3 5-man ICC wings (not a raid, I know), Mimiron hardmode just to name several.

[PatrickHenry 293]

Thing is, 100% fair race will NEVER happen, especially with random legendaries, titanforging/warforging/socketing/etc. 

Unless we're talking premades, the point is utterly moot.  Even then there will be guilds that put MORE time in, either in whole or in large parts of the whole, than the others.  More time in is more experience and that's not something Blizz can hotfix or premades can even out.

[DeathsDesign 92]

I get the whole WF race and the prestige/accomplishment it can bring.  The thing about that is, If you're a "top guild", you're in the competition for world first, and tuning is THAT bad, you're only bringing frustration on to yourself.  Don't get me wrong, if you're even slightly competitive and you're in a world first race regardless of how bad tuning is you're going to repeatedly bash your head against the wall until something breaks, I get that.  However, don't complain and expect people to instantly go "oh you poor soul".

This post however was a constructive post.  It brought to light the reasonings behind the frustrations that they were displaying, and that is fine.

The casual player will probably never see Mythic until it's either previous or end of current tier content.  Do they really care if mythic bosses are tuned properly (especially at the beginning of current content)? Most likely not because it has no direct impact on them.  By the time semi-hardcore players see the content it will be nerfed a few times over with some tweaking left to do.  Hardcore players are directly impacted by mythic tuning and bug fixes.  

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“Top guilds already killed all bosses on PTR”. Quite popular one, I admit. In fact every PTR test of a boss lasts ~ 2 hours, servers are not quite stable and ping is far from ideal (at least for us it’s 200-300ms). Main purpose of a PTR test for top guilds is to check abilities and find out which classes are the best for encounters, rather than simply to kill the boss asap and write in twitter “world 1st Harjatan PTR Mythic down”. Last boss is something we’re not seeing on PTR at all (not sure if it’s a good idea), but even for pre-last bosses we’re not able to test all the phases of it due to very limited timeframe + scaling / server stability etc.

The thing about this is that the true design of the PTR is for bug testing.  Personally I don't think raid testing should be on the PTR at all if the only reason they are doing it is to check abilities and find out which classes are best for the encounters.  That should be reserved for live raiding (yes I know not a lot of people will agree with this).  I personally think that raid testing should be done by Blizzard only QA employees in a closed environment, this way top guilds have to actually perform progression by learning the fights and mechanics in real time, thus giving them the actual accomplishment of WF and WS.

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Tuning encounters for immunity classes. Lately a lot of abilities are being tuned for different immunes / damage reductions and similar mechanics, which are limiting classes we may bring to encounters. As an example – Mythic Kil'jaeden has 2 tanking Armageddon zones, however one of your tanks always has Fel Claws debuff, which increases your physical damage taken by 250%. So you’re forced to soak 30m phys damage Armageddon zone with someone, who can immune it (hunter/mage/paladin). And there’re plenty of other examples, especially in ToS (Dark Mark, Armageddon, Focused Dreadflame, Burning Sphere, Touch of Sargeras, Unstable Soul, Rain of Brimstone, Lunar Beacon)

I agree that this is becoming an issue.  I get that Blizzard is trying new things (or a revamp of old things), however, it's getting out of hand.  Even for Heroic my guild has been forced to bench players on K'J to favor immunity classes.

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Implementing Balance changes in (7.X.5) patches right before new raid tier. Changing classes right before the raid is a awful decision. And it’s not only hardcore players issue. Let’s imagine I’m a casual player enjoying my class, looking forward playing it in a new raid. I know that i’m well aware of how to play my class, which legendaries, rotation and everything else I need to use. And suddenly, 2-3 weeks before a new raid my class is changed. What if I’m not a fan of them, there’s no time to reroll and for some people not enough time to adapt to all the changes. For the top guilds it’s not an issue, however because of that developers are getting new “balance and tuning” info too late, meaning some classes are staying too good for progression (hello Arms warriors), meanwhile other classes are just benched (Ret paladins, Frost DK etc).

This is complete crap.  With all of the extra content they added in 7.2.5 with the Broken Shore, relinquished gear, increase on TF levels and mythic+ changes it is 100% possible within 1 week to go from a fresh 110 to an ~890-900 item level character.  This is 100% determined by how you manage your time once new content comes out.  As an example my hunter went from 100 to 110 in about 1 days playtime (over the course of 2 days starting on a Friday evening after work), and was 870 item level within 3 days after that before even completing my order hall campaign.  By that following Friday I was about 895 item level which was still about 2 weeks before the release of ToS.  I am by no means a hardcore player, I just maximized the time I had.

[Valks 2,375]

On 31/07/2017 at 8:42 AM, DeathsDesign said:

This is complete crap.  With all of the extra content they added in 7.2.5 with the Broken Shore, relinquished gear, increase on TF levels and mythic+ changes it is 100% possible within 1 week to go from a fresh 110 to an ~890-900 item level character.  This is 100% determined by how you manage your time once new content comes out.  As an example my hunter went from 100 to 110 in about 1 days playtime (over the course of 2 days starting on a Friday evening after work), and was 870 item level within 3 days after that before even completing my order hall campaign.  By that following Friday I was about 895 item level which was still about 2 weeks before the release of ToS.  I am by no means a hardcore player, I just maximized the time I had.

This last bit wasn't just a focus on gear, but on actually learning to maximise performance on the class. Gearing is easy, but speed-learning how to play a completely new class can be tough. If Survival suddenly became the best Hunter spec and one of the top class specs right before Argus, people everywhere would struggle horrendously to play it. It's by far the most challenging spec to maximise the potential of and takes far longer than a few weeks to master. People currently still play BM over SV regardless of how good SV sims simply because of how much more difficult it is to play.

[DeathsDesign 92]

1 hour ago, Blainie said:

This last bit wasn't just a focus on gear, but on actually learning to maximise performance on the class. Gearing is easy, but speed-learning how to play a completely new class can be tough. If Survival suddenly became the best Hunter spec and one of the top class specs right before Argus, people everywhere would struggle horrendously to play it. It's by far the most challenging spec to maximise the potential of and takes far longer than a few weeks to master. People currently still play BM over SV regardless of how good SV sims simply because of how much more difficult it is to play.

That's a fair point, and I'll agree with you on that point.  I feel like for the average player it's harder to swap classes and play them to the potential they can play them at than it is for top teir players, it doesn't take away from all of the mental work they have to go through to perfect the class once they learn it.  For top tier players the curve is larger but for 80-90% potential it's shorter.  At least that's how I feel about it lol.  We are all just human after all and susceptible to mistakes.

[Valks 2,375]

23 hours ago, DeathsDesign said:

That's a fair point, and I'll agree with you on that point.  I feel like for the average player it's harder to swap classes and play them to the potential they can play them at than it is for top teir players, it doesn't take away from all of the mental work they have to go through to perfect the class once they learn it.  For top tier players the curve is larger but for 80-90% potential it's shorter.  At least that's how I feel about it lol.  We are all just human after all and susceptible to mistakes.

Yeah, I know what you mean. Plenty of people are happy to play a class well, not many people seek to completely perfect their numerical DPS output, so they spend less time perfecting it.