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Ulduar nerfed, more nerfs on the way
Blizzard posted a list of hotfixes to Ulduar last night in their ongoing hotfix thread, almost all nerfs, and a notice that they were "making further difficult adjustments via hotfix" to Ignis, Razorscale, XT-002 Deconstructor, The Assembly of Iron, Kologarn, and Auriya, with changes to other encounters "highly likely" to occur once they're done with these. In this case I read "making adjustments via hotfix" as "giving them a good whack with the nerf stick." The specific changes that they just announced for Ulduar: The Ignis the Furnace Master encounter has received the following changes: The interrupt effect and duration of the damage from Flame Jets has been reduced, the damage from the Slag pot has been reduced, the number of Heat stacks needed to transform an Iron Construct into a Molten state has been reduced, the base melee damage done by Ignis has been reduced, and the damage bonus Ignis receives from Strength of the Creator has been slightly increased.
The best loot comes from hard modes, not just Yogg-Saron
Yesterday, Ensidia earned the world-first Yogg-Saron kill. This is not the world-first Ulduar clear, because Algalon is designed to be the hardest boss in there, but that's a story for another post. What I want to talk about here is loot. Specifically, I want to talk about the quality of Yoggy's goods, which is the same as the quality of every other drop in normal-mode Ulduar-25: ilvl 226 for armor, and ilvl 232 for weapons. The same pattern holds on 10-man, with Yogg-10's drops being ilvl 219, like the rest of Uld-10. This is a departure from previous tradition, where the last boss of a raid would drop items of higher caliber. Kel'Thuzad, for instance, drops items a full tier above the rest of Naxx (ilvl 213 vs. 200 on 10-man, ilvl 226 vs 213 on 25-man).
Hotfixes for Conflagration and Ulduar
Servers are still getting stabilized, players are reporting bugs left and right, and in general, it's the day after patchmas. So it's not too surprising that we're seeing some hotfixes. So far, here's what Blizz have let us know about: Ulduar: XT-002 Deconstructor's heart aggro radius lowered to 60 yards. Trash before XT-002 Deconstructor disabled temporarily, because there was a problem with them being linked. Shattering a Construct during the Ignis the Furnace Master encounter will now decrease the number of Strength of the Creator stack buffs he has by one. Conflagrate nerfed to do 70% of Immolate's total periodic damage instantly, down from 100%. The last point is the most significant. The stated reasoning is that destruction is too bursty in PvP, which seems to have been the reasoning for half of the changes we've seen in WotLK. I hear this nerf was not unexpected - Warlocks, how do you feel about it? Was this change deserved?
More on Ulduar and hard modes
Daelo, the lead encounter designer, has dropped a few more details about Ulduar, the tier 8 raid that is coming in patch 3.1 (whenever that happens to be). We heard yesterday that there will be more "hard modes" in the raid, analogous to Sartharion. Today we learn that, again like Sartharion, completing the hard modes will give you not only achievements but also additional, better loot. There is also, apparently, going to be an optional encounter in the raid that will be hard-mode-only; I'm picturing something like Nightbane here. Furthermore, Ulduar in general, according to the post, will be harder than Naxxramas is. Naxx was tuned easy on purpose, and the devs have been saying for a while that Ulduar will not be that way, to the same extent. The analogy Daelo makes in his post is that if Naxx is "the introduction to raiding 101 class for players who have never raided before," Ulduar is "the second year class." So we won't be hitting a brick wall, but it probably won't be compared to UBRS either like Naxx often is now. Either way, we won't know much for sure until it's up on the PTR, but I'm certainly looking forward to it.
Cinemassively: Mythos trailer
In a press release found on WarCry Network, Flagship Studios Seattle released a new trailer for their free MMO in closed beta, Mythos. The video features new footage of gameplay, and narration by a producer, Brock Jones, and programmer, Marsh Lefler. If this game seems familiar, that's because Flagship was responsible for Diablo II many moons ago.According to the press release, you can play as one of three races, Human, Elves, and Gremlins, in this free-to-play MMO. Players must take on heroic quests in search of gold, armor, and weapons in the fantasy-land of Uld. It is currently in closed beta, but you can sign up on their official site.The video is included after the jump, as it may contain ads ...
