Project Lore

Yogg-Saron, just another old god. The changes (or nerfs as some of us raiders like to describe them as) for Ulduar keep rolling in. All of the changes should be live, but some may require a realm restart. The first significant change comes to the "end boss" of Ulduar, Yogg-Saron (who's lovely face you can see to your right):

The Yogg-Saron encounter has received the following changes: Death Ray no longer hits players who are under the effect of Malady of the Mind, Guardians of Yogg-Saron no longer use Dominate Mind, the spawn rate of Guardians of Yogg-Saron is more forgiving, and these Guardians will no longer spawn if a player that is protected by Hodir’s Flash Freeze hits an Ominous Cloud.

Now, my guild is working on the fight currently and to really demonstrate the impact of these changes on our first pull of the night we managed to hit phase three of the fight (which we had never done before). If that doesn't really show how tuned down this fight has become, well I don't know what else will. The spawn rate is much slower in phase one, there are no more mind controls and basically there is zero reason for anyone to die in that phase anymore. The change to guardians spawning on a player protected by a Flash Freeze is a welcome change to say the least. There are a few other changes also (which can be read on the World of WarCraft Forums):

• In the opening sequence of Ulduar you can now see Liquid Pyrite from farther away.
• The Flame Leviathan encounter has received the following changes: the bonus health Flame Leviathan receives per tower has been reduced, the ejection height from Flame Leviathan has been reduced, the snare effect of the Tower of Frost has been removed, and the cannons on Demolishers and Siege Enginers should now break Flash Frozen vehicles in 1 shot.
• The XT-002 Deconstructor encounter has received the following changes: the health of the heart has been slightly reduced in heroic difficulty and the rate at which Gravity Bomb and Searing Light are cast has been reduced.

Being able to see the liquid pyrite at a greater distance is a welcome change. The whole Flame Leviathan encounter has gotten what seems to be a massive scaling back and I imagine we will see a lot more hard mode deaths for FL. XT-002 Deconstructor also got a nerf, mostly to the hard mode (which only 350 guilds have beat) because activating it should be slightly easier (although if you couldn't activate it before, should you even be doing it?). The gravity bombs and searing light also got their rate of cast reduced which should make the fight slightly easier or considerably easier depending on the severity of the rate change. While I appreciate the changes Blizzard has made in making raiding more accessible (as has been the philosophy of this entire expansion) it is a little annoying to be working on an encounter and making progress on it, only to see it changed and made much easier. My guild isn't a top guild but we progress fairly well on our 3-day schedule and it almost seems like at this point unless you're in a 5-day a week guild trying to clear as fast as possible you won't be experiencing these fights in their original form. While my guild will soon be one of the 3000 guilds having downed Yogg-Saron, it can't be argued that this is a much easier fight now. So raiders of Project Lore, are you a fan of these changes? Are you happy that the fights have been made easier? Do you think this is the right way for Blizzard to kind of "open up" raiding to everyone?

Click to read more ...

No one will deny that the impending release of dual specs in patch 3.1 will be a game changer, particularly for the hybrid classes out there. The ability to easily change specs based on an encounter (we need more healers!) or for an activity (no more tank farming!) will make many people's lives much easier, not to mention save some cash at the trainer. As someone who respecs once a week to do PvP, I was very excited about this announcement. Now I'll be able to PvP whenever I want to! Not only that, but I get to save the 100g I spend a week on respecs. It did get me thinking, why is Blizzard stopping there? They have made it clear they don't mind people changing spec mid raid, and they do not plan on balancing encounters around this new dynamic, so why not let us have more than 2 specs? On my Paladin I could easily have 5 specs, and I wouldn't mind one bit paying 1000g a piece for them! I can see it now, with the push of a button I could be a tank, a healer, DPS, or even a PvP healer, or PvP Ret Pally. It would be great! Maybe I'm going a little overboard here, but you see my point. While this benefits hybrid classes over the pure ones, if Blizzard is going to take away limitations, why not take them away completely? What do you guys think? Would you use tri specs, quad spec, or even the dreaded quintuple spec? I know I would.

Click to read more ...