Another raid, another dominating performance for DREAM Paragon in Heart of Fear 10 man. We checked in with their GM, Seita, for a short chat to see what he thinks of the instance, Zor'lok, Amber Shaper and a comparison to Mogu'shan Vaults as well.
So the big headliner in HoF was Imperial Vizier Zor'lok, in both difficulties. With two separate nerfs in 2 days and it still being the hardest boss in the instance after the nerfs (except maybe Empress and Amber Shaper?) what are your thoughts on the matter, how did it all play out in 10 man and how do you think Blizzard should have handled it?
Pre-nerf Zor'lok was killable with the right RNG, the changes were welcome as it was the first boss of the instance. It just sucked to spend so much time for the boss and being so close to a kill and then have it all taken away by nerfing the boss. The most welcome change would have been to have the boss always choose the right platform, but we never saw that change, that would have saved a lot of time and frustration.
I would say 1/2 nerf Zor'lok difficulty would be good for 4th boss of an instance? As a first boss of an instance it's still too hard if you would want the bosses to be gradually harder.
After the first boss was down the next few were a bit of a joke, right?
Blade Lord, Garalon, Wind Lord were all faceroll caliber. Wind Lord would have been a lot better if he had 2-3x more hp and enrage for that hp.
There was another nerf on Amber Shaper Un'sok, in the middle of your tries, how much did it impact the boss and do you think you'd have gotten him before it?
If the nerfs would have been in from the beginning, we would have killed Amber-Shaper in about 2 hours? The boss actually died on the third pull after the nerf. In the end we spent around 12h on boss tries.
What was the overall difficulty like after all the nerfs, compared to Mogu'shan?
In 10hc: Empress > Zor'lok > Will > Spirit Kings > Amber-Shaper > Rest (after all the nerfs to the bosses)
Empress took a while compared to Will of the Emperor, was it an ok tuned boss or still too easy?
We spent around 20 hours doing tries on the boss and some of that time was wasted on trying different (stupid?) stuff, in the end I would say the boss was too easy for an "end boss" of an instance. I didn't really enjoy what was "hard" about the boss, which was P1 raid damage/gibs.
Considering the speed of your competition in 10 man, is it even possible to balance the bosses so they're a challenge for you but also possible for the rest of the field to do?
I know it's pretty problematic. I'm confident the average skill in our raid is higher than any other 10 or 25 raid group trying the bosses, on top of that we are really hardcore and can put in the time.
With relatively fast progress like this and mostly easy bosses, are you still enjoying raiding as much as you did before? Or is the more relaxed climate nice and compensates?
I would still prefer if the progress took longer and for the bosses to be harder overall. In this instance bosses: 2, 3, 4 were wasted and that made the instance worse than it was. I actually have enjoyed the 10man raiding atmosphere more than 25man, probably because in 10man you can trust that everyone does their job, in 25man you have to spend more time babysitting and organizing stuff which was a lot of work. A couple of serious challengers in the 10man bracket would be more than welcome.
Any hope for some real challenge in Terrace?
In terms of bosses you can always hope there's a real challenge ahead. In terms of the other 10man guilds I'm hoping that a challenger would arise, but at the moment it doesn't look like it.
