#12 - June 28, 2007, 2:37 p.m.
Q u o t e:
I have a tricky situation here. I had an interesting discussion with my guild regarding raids and the way they are designed.
Interesting discussions are always a pleasure :-)
Q u o t e:
Here is what I think:
When developers want to create new raid dungeon they first decide where in the line of dungeons they want to put it. They then consider equip that is available on that level and they choose difficulty so that balanced raid is able to clear the dungeon with good team work and skill.
It is of course not a simple thing to create a new raid dungeon, but I would say that this sounds more or less about right.
Q u o t e:
Let's take Gruul's lair as an example here. Developers knew that the raid that will try to go to Gruul's lair will probably have some decent blue gear from 5 man dungeons and epics from Kara. I don't think they expect everyone to be full in epics from Kara because the drop is random. I believe that they consider decent gear from Kara and 5 man instances rather than full epic set from Kara.
I do not have the exact data on this, but again this is more or less correct. Creating a new raid dungeon that it is impossible or near impossible to prepare and gear up for would not make much sense at all.
Q u o t e:
So, lets just take a priest as an example ( I play holy priest). When Gruul was designed, developers asked themselves:"What is the required +heal, mana and MP5 for a holy priest to be able to success in Gruul's lair?" Well, I guess that they set the line for it and they have done it for every single class in the raid. So if someone has better stats or equip then its only an advantage. Now, back to my problem. When my guild started to farm Gruul's lair I had around +1000 heal unbuffed and our best priest something around +1500 heal. We were still fine and we were able to clear sufficiently. Now, I have around +1200 unbuffed and our best healer around +1700 unbuffed. I believe that +1200 heal unbuffed for Gruul's lair is more than enough and that designers probably set line around +1000 unbuffed.
I would say that you are correct in your assumption that +1200 healing unbuffed should be sufficient for success in Gruul’s lair, however it is not possible to say that the designers have set a fixed limitation of minimum +1000 healing unbuffed as there are no such exact or fixed limitations
(more on that below) :-)
Q u o t e:
Well, this is where my guild disagree. They believe that there is minimum tolerance from Blizzard and that my +heal is way too low and that other healers have to "work" for me to make up the difference. I strongly believe that developers allow us to have 1-2 deaths in the raid and still successfully kill a boss (as was proved many times in my guild - sometimes, even healer died and we still killed the boss) and also that they don't expect the whole raid to be in full epic items that are available on that level. I would say that the gear requirement is around 70-80% that is available on that level.
Of course there is some sort of “minimum tolerance” limit somewhere that needs to be reached before you will be able to succeed in clearing certain dungeons, which means that at some point in time your gear will quite likely not be sufficient for certain raids, and you therefore need to spend some time and resources improving your gear before you can progress any further. But the actual limitation by “minimum tolerance” of gear is a very elusive and indefinable thing, because there are so many variables or factors that come into play when raiding.
Things like gear, skill, experience, raid composition and class combinations, talent builds, etc. and so forth all have an influence on how well a raid will do, and that is why you see no clear definitions of these things. Some raidgroups manages to do well with relatively little +healing on their healers, whereas other raidgroups for various reasons might require better or more +healing gear for their healers. The gear quality of the tank for an example will often also have a direct influence on the +healing gear required by the healer.
But what I am puzzled about is this: If your guild was able to clear Gruul's lair sufficiently with less +healing gear than you have now, then I don’t really see why this discussion started in the first place :-)
Q u o t e:
Now, am I wrong to think that my +1200 unbuffed is plenty for the Gruul's lair or developers set the line higher and I really have to get better gear as other healers in my guild "work" for me to subsidize the gap? I'm not talking about mana reg as you can easily replace it with mana pots and I usually use 1-2 mana pots in a raid so mana is not an issue here at all.
In my opinion +1200 healing unbuffed is quite sufficient, but again it really depends on how well your guild is doing when you are raiding. If you find that you wipe all the time or are having really tough time on certain bosses, then you might need more +healing, however it is also likely that someone else in the raid needs better gear, for an example the tanks. As I mentioned above the “minimum tolerance” line is quite blurred as there are many variables and factors in play when raiding, and successful raids doesn’t depend fully on +healing gear.
Q u o t e:
Is there any chance we could get some info on how raids encounters are designed in terms of gear and requirements? (lets presume that skill is perfect) What I tried to explain to my guild is that its obviously easier for the raid to have better gear than the required one but it is not essential. I believe that +1200 heal unbuffed is more than enough for Gruul's lair. What about you?
I do not think I can explain it further than I already have because you have pretty much already said it yourself. A dungeon will of course be easier to clear the better gear the raidgroup has, but it is not necessarily essential to have the best of the best gear that is possible to get before attempting a new raid encounter.
Some guilds have managed to deal with Gruul's lair with less than +1200 healing gear on their healers, and others required more than +1200 healing gear.
Q u o t e:
Another thing I mentioned to my guild was this:
I said to them, that when blizzard releases new raid dungeon and it goes live then that is the real beta test. They observe how raiders are doing and then they make some adjustments if the difficulty is different to what they intended. Is that correct? Is my interpretation correct with it?
In many ways your interpretation is very true. Beta tests are of course extremely important to make sure that things works as intended before a release, but there will almost always be some quirks and issues that unfortunately doesn’t get discovered during a beta test.
Many times it can be said that the “true” beta test of a new raid dungeon begins right after the end of the actual beta test phase, because it is right there and then that the new raid dungeon is truly being played and tested in a live and public environment. It is only natural that new raid dungeons are getting tweaked and adjusted in various ways in a relatively short period of time after release.
Q u o t e:
I would highly appreciate if we could get some light on this topic as my guild sometimes seems to me as they never have enough. I wouldn't say a word if we were raiding Mount Hyjal etc. as my +1200 unbuffed is not enough for it but in Gruul's lair its more developers calculated with I believe.
Well I have answered your questions to the best of my ability, so I hope that you were able to get at least some benefit of the things I had to say :-)
