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A List of Ulduar Tuning Errors

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Garyoak
#1 - Dec. 10, 2022, 10:58 p.m.
Blizzard Post

While it’s been great to see such a swift response to some of the bugs and erroneous post-nerf behaviours with Ulduar, I’ve noticed a ton of other inconsistencies with the raid from observing streams and checking damage values on logs. I’ve compiled a list here, which will hopefully be useful to the devs for bringing us the full pre-nerf version of the raid.

Ignis the Furnace Master

  • The boss’s HP value is post-nerf, 20% lower than its original value of 24.4 million.
  • Flame Jets looks like it’s dealing post-nerf damage, which is half the pre-nerf value. The initial hit should be 10-11k. The ticking damage (2k/sec) appears to be correct, as is the 8 second duration.
  • Scorch looks like it’s not doing enough damage. The pre-nerf value is 4,770-5,230 damage/0.5 sec for 3 sec.
  • Are Constructs being correctly activated every 30 sec instead of every 40? Timers are showing 30, but it feels like there’s some kind of delay.
  • It was documented that Constructs took more than 10 stacks to go Molten, but I’m unsure of what the pre-nerf value was.
  • I don’t believe Strength of the Creator’s buff value was ever 15%. Is this an intentional change to the fight’s tuning? If so, it shouldn’t be removed upon shattering a Construct, and it should stack once every 30 seconds. The original version of Ignis did not lose stacks of the buff when a Construct died, but I’m unsure if you are classifying this as a bug or not (such as Ignis meleeing people he grabs for the Slag Pot). Further, I believe Strength of the Creator should only apply to his melee attacks.
  • Is Ignis’s melee damage correct? It was nerfed at least 3 separate times, the first of which being a 15% damage nerf that occurred alongside an attack speed buff to make him less likely to 1 shot tanks. Tank damage never looked scary on PTR.

Razorscale

  • Razorscale’s actual pre-nerf berserk timer is 6 minutes, not 10. It was 6 minutes on day 1 only, then nerfed to 10 on 4/15/09.
  • Are the mole machines observing pre-nerf spawn behaviour? They used to be more spread out, making it harder to pick up adds. Further, the Dark Rune Watchers could originally cast Chain Lightning while moving (and the Chain Lightning was nerfed on 4/17/09, so it might be worth checking if it’s the correct value or not).

XT-002 Deconstructor

  • The boss’s HP value is post-nerf, 10% lower than its original value of 25 million.
  • Originally, XT could use Light/Gravity Bomb attacks while casting Tantrum.
  • Is Heart Overload spawning more adds? One of the nerfs reduced the amount of adds spawned.
  • Life Sparks had their HP cut in half at one point. Do they have their pre-nerf HP? It’s worth checking since XT’s HP value is post-nerf.
  • If I understand the detailed tooltip of Heartbreak on Wowhead correctly, then the +40% damage should apply to all of XT’s damage, which includes the bombs and Tantrum.

Thorim

  • Not a bug report but more of a response to your pre-nerf post: Unbalancing Strike wasn’t on a reliable timer originally. It was also an instant attack, not an “on next swing” ability, which means he could do Unbalancing Strike as a combo with his normal melee attacks. Further, the unpredictable version of Unbalancing Strike was able to miss, whereas the tuning update made it unerring and on a precise timer.

Mimiron

  • Firefighter’s health/damage buff is post-nerf. Currently, it’s +25% health/+25% damage, whereas it’s supposed to be +30%/+30%.
  • Proximity Mines are fully post-nerf. Their damage is only 12k, whereas it’s supposed to be 15k at least. More Mines are supposed to spawn per batch, and their lifespan is supposed to be longer, so there will be 2 sets of Mines up most of the time.
  • Mimiron is not supposed to root himself in phase 4 while casting Laser Barrage. This was an early nerf to the encounter.
  • Mimiron’s phase 4 animations for VX-001 are wrong. He’s supposed to have hands and do an ability called Hand Pulse. I’m unsure if Hand Pulse is functioning correctly (it’s a different attack than Rapid Burst in that it pierces targets as opposed to forking).
  • Shock Blast and Laser Barrage could occur simultaneously in phase 4 pre-nerf.
  • Self-Repair’s original cast timer was 10 seconds, and on PTR, it’s 15 seconds (post-nerf).
  • I’m unsure if this made it to live servers in 2009, but Firefighter’s original timer on the Ulduar PTR was 8 minutes. Obviously, this only matters if the 8 minute version actually hit live servers.

Yogg-Saron

  • Phase 1 Guardians are post-nerf, both in HP value, which is 15% lower than its original 1.1 million value, and in that they do not cast Dominate Mind.
  • Immortal Guardians should have 500k HP, and appear to have a 15% HP nerf, too.

Algalon the Observer

  • The visual of the floor in his room during the encounter is way too bright.
  • Algalon’s hitbox, or at least his targeting circle, is far too small.

This is all I’ve been able to observe so far, and there might be some big things I’m missing. Hopefully this is useful.

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Aggrend
WoW Classic Game Producer
#3 - Dec. 12, 2022, 4:59 p.m.
Blizzard Post

This is a really helpful list, Garyoak. Thank you!

To set expectations; the strict definition of what exactly is pre-nerf is a bit less clear than in previous tiers, because many of these fights had numerous changes over time so we might choose not to set one data value or another to one specific point in time universally, instead opting for a later or earlier state that make sense stacked alongside other iterations of that boss that we are reverting to. One thing we mentioned in our recent WoW Community Council discussion was that we need to be careful about reverting these fights to pre-nerf as there may be a combination of changes that were made at different times that, if all reverted together thoughtlessly, would create a version of the fight that was never experienced by players at all. To a degree this is somewhat unavoidable, especially on fights that had bugs or other very early adjustments, but we are trying to minimize this as much as possible.

All that being said, just eyeballing this list there’s very likely some things in here we might have missed or would want to revisit based on the values we chose initially, and we’ll be looking at it.

Thank you again for compiling this!