Illidan Stormrage gains berserk...

#1 - Sept. 27, 2007, 2:32 a.m.

i agree wtih blizzard that the old illidan was far too easy ( we pretty much 15 manned 30% of him on our first kill). but giving him a 15 min enrage timer is a bit steep too! should probably change it to maybe 18 min, or 20 or something so that you'd have to execute the fight perfectly without anyone dieing.

Tigole

#303 - Sept. 27, 2007, 4:57 p.m.

we're checking this out

Tigole

#313 - Sept. 27, 2007, 5:12 p.m.

Q u o t e:

whoa, back from the dead

haha, no we've been around. patch 2.2 took longer than expected on the PTR and that has held up 2.3 and 2.4 which are going to be great patches for evereyone. between 2.3 and 2.4 we have a new 10 person dungeon coming (zul'aman), a new 5 person dungeon coming (with heroic difficulty), a new 25 person raid, lots of new daily quests, new pvp honor and arena rewards -- really something for everyone. while voice chat is an awesome feature (and going to get even better over time), there's not a whole lot to say about it just yet.

everyone is working hard on getting 2.3 on the PTR, polishing 2.4 and, most importantly, building an awesome expansion -- wrath of the lich king.

we'll get this illidan issue figured out and follow up with a post later today.

Tigole

#317 - Sept. 27, 2007, 5:22 p.m.

Q u o t e:
ETA on when zul'aman will hit ptr for testing?

hopefully, first week of october.

Daelo

#357 - Sept. 27, 2007, 7:59 p.m.

Ok, we're in the process of deploying a hotfix that will change Illidan's berserk timer to 25 minutes. I'll make a post when our server people tell me it's been deployed to the realms. We're also looking into what went wrong in our processes that led us to the 15 minute timer suddenly appearing.

And now, I want to discuss berserk timers for a little while...

It was certainly not our intent to add a strong DPS check to this encounter with a new 15 minute berserk timer. Pretty much all of our encounters have berserk timers, but the vast majority of them are set at values that you'll probably not see during normal play. They exist mainly as safety check to make sure that the fight isn't being beaten with some really odd strategy or some kind of undiscovered exploit.

Now, some of them do have very aggressive berserk timers as part of the overall challenge. Encounters like Hydross the Unstable, Patchwerk, and Leotheras the Blind come to mind. The timers for those encounters enforce a minimum DPS requirement on the raid, which means you can't stack the raid with healing classes, have your DPS be very timid, and expect to win. If we set these kinds of timers TOO aggressively, then you have to stack in the opposite way with fewer healers and more damage dealing classes. Our challenge is finding the sweet spot.

Other encounters have more "organic" limits to the overall fight length. Gruul the Dragonkiller eventually grows to the point of destroying tanks in one hit, Lady Vashj's ever growing Spore Bat army wears the raid down, etc. Those mechanics are all pretty cool, but every encounter is different. Some fights work well with these kinds of soft organic time limits, but sometimes the simple brick wall of a berserk timer promotes a bit more tension and sense of urgency.

So back to Illidan... the 25 minute Berserk timer is not designed to be an aggressive timer. Raids fighting Illidan should have plenty of time to beat him.