We’ve made the following slight adjustments to the test environment:
Johnny McWeaksauce now also exists in all the capital cities (near the bank) to help players teleport to Naxxramas.
The buff in Naxxramas has been reduced in strength to keep groups from inadvertently skipping mechanics that we’d like to see tested. It’s still a significant buff, to make sure pick-up-groups can test.
This testing schedule is very fluid and subject to the realities of a test environment. We might have to change the time of a testing session, change the bosses being tested, or cancel a test entirely, due to bugs, server hardware issues, etc. Keep an eye on this forum for the latest information, and thank you in advance for testing and providing feedback.
Q: How do I get into the raid zone?
A: To facilitate and expedite testing, there is an NPC named Johnny McWeaksauce that has taken up temporary residence at Light’s Hope Chapel in Eastern Plaguelands. He will provide players with Naxxramas attunement and instant teleportation into the Naxxramas raid. Johnny’s brother Jimmy, can be found within the raid and will provide access to consumables and reagents.
Q: Can I test with less than a full, content-ready raid group?
A: There will be a zone aura present within the raid that will provide players with a significant health and damage boost to help them overcome the challenges of Naxxramas. The intent of these raid tests is not to provide a challenge that perfectly matches what we expect players to experience when the raid goes live. The intent is to exercise boss mechanics and give us additional confidence that the raid encounters are behaving as expected. The hope is that even if you cannot muster a full 40-person raid to test with, or wish to form a pick-up-group on the PTR, you can still participate and make considerable progress within the dungeon if you so desire.
Please use the in-game bug reporter to send us any bug reports or issues that you encounter while playtesting on the PTR. We appreciate you taking the time to test this content, and we look forward to your feedback.
It is a good thing. Unfortunately people were more concerned in testing whether they could just overcome the mechanics rather than testing the mechanics.
The double damage buff far exceeds the consumes’ damage output increase, but does nothing to help with the other numerous things consumes are useful for.
The reason you see faster speeds in the world buff category is because the people pushing for speed are doing so in the world buff category. No one seriously competes in the no world buffs category.
Furthermore, casters benefit nowhere NEAR double damage from world buffs. Even being generous, you’re looking at no more than 25% more DPS, maybe 35% with Darkmoon Faire.
I’ll tell you this: our melee get fully world buffed every week (WCB included), and they don’t even come close to the DPS they were doing on the PTR with no consumes or world buffs on top.
You’re telling me no one in the no world buff category in the entire world uses all consumables and has good gear?
The world buff category also includes raids with only a few people with buffs or not all of them, which is the majority of parses you can’t just link the average of all parses.
Look at the high end of what’s possible. Where everyone actually has their buffs.
The highest warriors with are literally doubling the highest warriors without.
And it’s not even just about fight duration, look at Twin Emperors. The highest warrior dps with buffs is 1200 dps with a 1:34 duration. Without is 572 dps with a time of 3:16 so they got a second death wish.
Admittedly the buffs are not as huge for casters, which is why raids are bringing 25+ warriors.
Alright, man. I don’t intend to argue with you about it at length. World buffs aren’t anywhere close to double damage.
If your point is that “if everyone does more damage, the boss dies faster and everyone’s DPS goes up,” that’s true of literally every aspect of self improvement, such as gear, consumables, talents, rotation, and tactics.
The top parsing warriors are people like Ahlaundoh, who has his entire raid log out between every boss so he can use Recklessness on every fight, and has people use Juju Might on his summoned tentacles from his trinket.
If you don’t want to actually look into the logs thoroughly to get a better understanding, just do the math yourself. Take the base damage of abilities, add the attack power, crit, and haste, and you’ll see it’s not even close to double damage.
Then consider that world buffs only increase spell crit for casters, not spell power. They don’t get spell haste, so their DPS literally only goes up, on average, by the amount equal to their crit, give or take 5% because of Ignite rolling. How much crit do you get from full buffs on a Mage in BiS? I guarantee it’s not 100%.
Then reason the speeds are nearly half on the best world buff runs compared to the best non-world buffed runs is because NO ONE IS PUSHING FOR SPEED WITHOUT WORLD BUFFS.