To Hot To Handle Difficulty

[Torc]

So … that raid… Too Hot to Handle.... kinda living up to its name.

After watching you fight the good fight for a couple of weeks, and going over the data, we’ve concluded that the raid is over-performing modestly for our goals.

As a result we are currently a testing a few changes that will affect all difficulty levels, although the adjustment to Elite will be much smaller. None of these changes affect core mechanics of the raid, and instead will target pacing. The fixes should be live within a few weeks, but we’ll have an exact date soon.

A few notes:

This is one of the most difficult raids we’ve seen in while. There have been no Elite completions, and very few Hard completions, across all servers. A fair number of Normal. The guides we see posted have become more accurate (yet not perfect), indicating knowledge of the raid mechanics is mostly out there. There are a few wrinkles though that if you guys don’t understand yet, it will cost you. Giving no spoilers though.

This raid was designed to push our raiding community harder, and to shake up things. To see what life would be like if Elite first completion was something that might not happen day one of release. We’ve actually gotten a lot of positive feedback on this count. Even if the raid seems crazy, there is always the question for some, can you find a way?

We opted for putting the gauntlet in Elite rather than Reaper because the Reaper tree power doesn’t match up well with the first skull, and skull ten is just….bonkers.

Our minor nerf to Elite was after some consideration of not touching it at all, but the thinking is since it hasn’t been beaten yet moving the goal post slightly closer will just mean more people will be in the race.


-T

P.S. - So we almost called this raid “Go die in a fire”, but we thought that might have been to on the nose…

[Yamani]

P.S. - So we almost called this raid “Go die in a fire”, but we thought that might have been to on the nose…

But with Too hot to handle you can play the song with it!

[Teeaaa]

P.S. - So we almost called this raid “Go die in a fire”, but we thought that might have been to on the nose…

My party will never see this coming.
*evil maniac laughter*

Otherwise, yea. Raid is awesome and hard (in the way that I'd only want it harder). Now that I know that there's some things that we haven't gotten yet, I'll be looking through all the details!

[Eldried]

Being in a Endgame Raiding guild, I like the new difficulty on Elite/reaper. I never liked a raid being beaten on Elite a couple hours into release.

I think Normal is a difficulty that can be beaten by pugs, people just need to learn the raid and maybe bring a balanced party.


I would like Elite/reaper to stay as it is.

[Unsinful]

Having wasted wayyyyyyyy too many hours of my life testing and running this raid on normal adnausium and completing hard a few times, and smashing our faces into elite over and over again to no success i fail to see how there is still an undiscovered mechanic here.

I would love to personally break down everything we have found torc and see if we know something y’all maybe didnt know that we knew about. This “mechanic” is driving me crazy and its probably the answer for how we can complete this raid on elite. If we are truly missing something still we will keep looking but I’m finding it harder and harder to believe every day of testing that goes by.

I’m fine with elite being only slightly modified and reaper not being touched because reaper difficulty is for those of us who want the challenge. I Think the raid is vastly overbalanced on normal and even on hard.

My problems with the raid on hard and higher are the amount of mobs (namely red names) that spawn out of nowhere. The DPS check is so high I wonder if its even possible to ever complete this above a skull or 2. R1 seems like the way to win because reaper points=win when comparing elite and R1.

[ChadB123]

I really like this raid. The challenge was a breath of fresh air! Keep the mechanics coming, we enjoy the push.

[SerPounce]

In theory I like the idea of raiding content that isn't beaten overnight, but as a player who's not in an "elite raiding guild" I would like to some day get to complete this raid like I have all the others in the game. Since at this point not even the people I know in raiding guilds are consistently completing it that was feeling pretty far out. I've given up on ever actually getting any loot from this raid, but I'm still hoping I get to play it at some point. Hopefully this change will make that a more realistic possiblity.

[Vorachtin]

So … that raid… Too Hot to Handle.... kinda living up to its name.

After watching you fight the good fight for a couple of weeks, and going over the data, we’ve concluded that the raid is over-performing modestly for our goals.

As a result we are currently a testing a few changes that will affect all difficulty levels, although the adjustment to Elite will be much smaller. None of these changes affect core mechanics of the raid, and instead will target pacing. The fixes should be live within a few weeks, but we’ll have an exact date soon.

A few notes:

This is one of the most difficult raids we’ve seen in while. There have been no Elite completions, and very few Hard completions, across all servers. A fair number of Normal. The guides we see posted have become more accurate (yet not perfect), indicating knowledge of the raid mechanics is mostly out there. There are a few wrinkles though that if you guys don’t understand yet, it will cost you. Giving no spoilers though.

This raid was designed to push our raiding community harder, and to shake up things. To see what life would be like if Elite first completion was something that might not happen day one of release. We’ve actually gotten a lot of positive feedback on this count. Even if the raid seems crazy, there is always the question for some, can you find a way?

We opted for putting the gauntlet in Elite rather than Reaper because the Reaper tree power doesn’t match up well with the first skull, and skull ten is just….bonkers.

Our minor nerf to Elite was after some consideration of not touching it at all, but the thinking is since it hasn’t been beaten yet moving the goal post slightly closer will just mean more people will be in the race.


-T

P.S. - So we almost called this raid “Go die in a fire”, but we thought that might have been to on the nose…

I mean, I'm happy your not nerfing it into the ground. I have loved the challenge of this raid for sure, keep em coming.

[Odysseus2011]

Being in a Endgame Raiding guild, I like the new difficulty on Elite/reaper. I never liked a raid being beaten on Elite a couple hours into release.

I think Normal is a difficulty that can be beaten by pugs, people just need to learn the raid and maybe bring a balanced party.


I would like Elite/reaper to stay as it is.

I absolutely agree; I would love to see changes to this raid being made on Normal/Hard for puggers that are struggling for completions but would prefer that higher difficulties be unchanged.

From personal experience there are 2 main abilities which make this raid hard for the average group and those are the forgewraith's Deathward and nearby Heal on Death features. Currently the Deathward does not apply to Orange named mobs in normal but the heal effect does while both apply on hard. I would suggest removing the heal feature for normal as well, and then remove either the DW/Heal for hard but not both; while leaving Elite as is. Imo this would help out pugs tremendously.

[Arkat]

P.S. - So we almost called this raid “Go die in a fire”, but we thought that might have been to on the nose…

OMG, that would have been GREAT!!!

[FlavoredSoul]

I hope you keep these nerfs very mild on normal/hard, and preferably made no changes on elite.

Personally I think World/server first raid completions for elite should be a massive achievement months in the making.

It's hard to give more feedback without knowing more details about what the changes are, but I very much hope that it's limited in scope to maybe slightly less mobs.

The smaller the changes the better.


Also I hope you take into account the planned to Epic destiny's and additional epic pastlives bringing more power into the hands of the top 1% raiders, which will make Elite slightly easier even without changes.

Every much hoping that the first challenging raid in a while isn't overly nerfed.

[Feal]

which mechanic are we missing? maybe related to the walk on air while dead?^^

I enjoy the raid, very nice, agree on making normal and hard easier, and adjust elite a bit

[redoubt]

We opted for putting the gauntlet in Elite rather than Reaper because the Reaper tree power doesn’t match up well with the first skull, and skull ten is just….bonkers.

Could you expand on this statement please? Its sounds like you made elite harder because of the reaper trees.

[psykopeta]

sorry, coming from someone who hasn't run the raid (nor previous raids on higher diffs lol, maybe i won't run the raid in... months? XD)

but being an expert from the golden wow era:

don't touch it, pugs will keep running it (and every) raid on norm due to effort/payout

leave elite for elite players, leave reaper for reaper players

"OH BUT I DIDN'T BEAT THE RAID ON ELITE SMASHING THE KEYBOARD BUT I HAS LOTS OF HP AND PRR AND SUCH"

no, just no, we needed almost 3 months to beat c'thun, your boss died much faster, just don't do it, let hardcore players play hardcore, let norm players play norm and if they aren't worthy... well, they can get gear and knowledge from plenty places and your release is too young to be nerfed

[Cantor]

sorry, coming from someone who hasn't run the raid (nor previous raids on higher diffs lol, maybe i won't run the raid in... months? XD)

but being an expert from the golden wow era:

don't touch it, pugs will keep running it (and every) raid on norm due to effort/payout

leave elite for elite players, leave reaper for reaper players

"OH BUT I DIDN'T BEAT THE RAID ON ELITE SMASHING THE KEYBOARD BUT I HAS LOTS OF HP AND PRR AND SUCH"

no, just no, we needed almost 3 months to beat c'thun, your boss died much faster, just don't do it, let hardcore players play hardcore, let norm players play norm and if they aren't worthy... well, they can get gear and knowledge from plenty places and your release is too young to be nerfed

That's fine for elite. Ddo/dnd is about the story for a lot of people other games do graphics better etc... there is no reason to deny people normal, 12 random people should be able to normal if they are halfway playing. I hope normal gets a good adjustment, maybe just balance hard to control gap between difficulties and make elite as hard as you want.

[HungarianRhapsody]

Fixing some.of.the bugs in the raid would go a long way toward making the raid more manageable

[Arkat]

Fixing some.of.the bugs in the raid would go a long way toward making the raid more manageable

Such as?

[Torc]

Could you expand on this statement please? Its sounds like you made elite harder because of the reaper trees.

Just doing what we usually do.

Over the history of game we've periodically put in an extra curve ball on elite in raids or capstone content, or sometimes in epic as supposed to heroic. Many of these curves can be pretty subtle like an existing ability is much more powerful. Sometimes there is something brand new in the space. When reaper came in we didn't really feel the need to change and move curves up to reaper, because reaper is a much more procedural system, especially in raids where no champs or reapers spawn.

-T

P.S. Killing Time got an minor exception to champs/reapers in raids there under the premise you were falling in time into a dungeon experiences, so reapers and champs were present in those sections. Those sections also typically had monsters stated like a dungeon experience rather than a raid to match that premise.

[Thar]

I wonder if the missing mechanic is related to the cooling tanks. We've completed it with completing the cooling tank puzzles in part 3 and with not completing the puzzles.

what bugs i've seen... lag... and trash pops continually and boom done.

i've completed multiple times on normal.

Hard is a bit crazy without the instakills/turning of orange names.

otherwise it is too much for the normal pug. a select defined roles are needed that you can't trust pugs to fill. and a normal pug should have at least a 50/50 shot at completing. ie they paid for the content too.

[apep1412]

Just doing what we usually do.

Over the history of game we've periodically put in an extra curve ball on elite in raids or capstone content, or sometimes in epic as supposed to heroic. Many of these curves can be pretty subtle like an existing ability is much more powerful. Sometimes there is something brand new in the space. When reaper came in we didn't really feel the need to change and move curves up to reaper, because reaper is a much more procedural system, especially in raids where no champs or reapers spawn.

-T

P.S. Killing Time got an minor exception to champs/reapers in raids there under the premise you were falling in time into a dungeon experiences, so reapers and champs were present in those sections. Those sections also typically had monsters stated like a dungeon experience rather than a raid to match that premise.

Minor corrections: Reapers spawn in all reaper raids, not just Killing Time. All non-boss, non-raid-boss mobs in Killing Time can be champions; it's not limited to any particular sections of the raid. Unless there's been a change to those two that hasn't been announced yet. Should I be submitting bug reports with screenshots for these if they aren't WAI?