Was really excited we were gonna have hardmodes in MC and also thought it was neat it was going to be related to fire resistance. Spending time before raid release figuring out which fire res pieces were good and how to fit them in the set is a good addition to the pre-BiS farm.
But then the raid releases and we realize the ‘recommendations’ are in fact an actual requirement to not get one shot by a conflag mechanic. This is such a boring and thoughtless mechanic. Instead of teams now being able to decide for themselves what resistance they want to aim for (like eg a Huhuran type fight), where maybe they stack fire res to be safe or maybe they push otherwise BiS gear to pump through, there is a literal number you have to reach or you die.
Out of range of pally aura and drop below cutoff? Dead. MoTW dispelled? Dead. So now the ‘challenge’ is literally can you fill up your gearset with fire res (who cares that you spent all that time farming t0.5 and pre-BiS, you aren’t gonna wear it) and reach this number?
I understand the initial thought behind it but I think the execution (one shot conflag mechanic) is really poor. For the love of god please dont just copy and paste this for different schools of magic each raid tier.
8 Likes
Yeah, I gotta hand it to the SoD devs, this is the most absolutely pants-on-head stupid way to implement a raid requiring resist gear. A literal pass/fail check of “you must have X resist or you unavoidably die” is unbelievably lazy and not fun or interesting.
The point of resist gear fights is that you can modify chances of success with more/less resist gear, but having it outright require a specific arbitrary number or you instantly fail, is just dumb as all hell.
4 Likes
Due to the healing throughput of SoD healers the only other option to enforce resistances on a raid wide scale would have been a scaling res sickness style debuff that becomes worse with less resistance. Which also would have been frowned upon, because anything other than not wearing resist gear is blasphomy to them.
I do agree that this hard mode is a bit janky. My best guess is that they were trying to have an “increased” difficulty while also catering to the casuals by not making mechanics do more. Although as you can see from the forums currently, you can’t do anything to make the casuals happy unless you’re handing the gear to them on a silver platter for simply logging in. 
If they gave clothies more options for FR gear, it might be a little easier to close the gap. However, outside of crafting the MC gear, there isn’t a crazy amount of FR options out there for them, whereas anyone that wears leather gets 90 FR just from throwing on a 3 piece of volcanic.
Would you rather the hardmode be more dancing? like mechanics to avoid and stuff?
Stuff that can be avoided if one knows what to expect, where to go, and is able to execute on it?
Well stated post.
I like the SoM mechanics to spice things up but I am with you 100% on the pass/fail FR check.
The ability to gear up or down relative to your healers ability is a good call out, as well. That nuance is lost with hard FR break points.
I didn’t realize it was truly this lazy an implementation. This feels like the absolute laziest way to up the difficulty.
What next, a “Spirit Check”, where if you don’t have a minimum Spirit score, you die of boredom?
well I guess it’s not pre-bis if you can’t do the raid in it now than is it??? Or maybe you just have to do heat 1 until your group is geared enough with t1
thats already a mechanic, it’s on the instanced world bosses
Its the only way they can avoid groups bringing 4 shadow priests and just healing any rot damage dealt to the raid, vampiric embrace is so powerful that it is causing raid design problems, this is why nota had 4 shadow priests, they knew that if the raid had rot damage they’d just instantly heal it all in every group with their spriest army
The community would not enjoy the quad shadow priest meta i’m sure, because if the raid was difficult enough to challenge the spriest gods then it would be unhealable for people who didn’t have the spriests
https://vanilla.warcraftlogs.com/reports/6RBYhaHdc17x94J8#boss=-3&difficulty=0&type=healing&options=8
the top output healers are 3 shadow priests, they heal their party so much that there is nothing left for them to heal and they dump thousands of hps into overhealing
so instead of just nerfing VE, they implement a mechanic that just 1shots you if you don’t have X resist
lmao
yeah that’s totally the reason
Oh my god, who thought that entering the lair of an ancient lava elemental with a direct increase in requirement might be dangerous?
Everyone was expecting to need fire resist
nobody was expecting it to be “you must get exactly this much FR or you die instantly”
yeah nerfing the utility of the previously bottom dps in sunken temple prior to this raid coming out would certainly work out in their favor
yeah it’s cute they called it a recommendation lol 
uh, yeah, recommended if you don’t like getting 1 shot by an AoE aura that hits everybody
It is far too easy in a situation like that to simply brute force your way through with no choice. If they had done what you suggested, and missed the mark on value (which would be REALLY easy to do) they run the risk of the hard mode being so easy you just stack hyper buffs and push through while ignoring it. Just like everything in classic.
There is no good, right, or correct way really with how things work in classic and the huge difference stacking consumables and raid buffs makes. There’s a REASON they made all consumables into guardian and battle elixirs, and removed world buffs entirely.
nobody is saying it’s easy but a hard line that automatically kills you if you don’t meet it ain’t it, chief
Thats always been a thing, just not instant.
Right after gole you go through a corridor into the next bosses.
Most guilds on prog wouldnt let you past that point without decent fr.
Its ALWAYS been a thing
blizzard has a long history of doing stuff like this. its a flawed game design from the developers. mandatory requirements are not fun or skillful.
when the playerbase ask for skillful harder content we want harder content. not the SAME content with a “twist of if you dont have X fire res then you insta 1 shot” thats not skillful that screams “you must play the game 12 hours a day 7 days a week” to farm the requirements. or “buy gold to do this content”
i want a challenge. MC heat 3 is not a skill challenge, rather a time gate challenge. bc if u have the fire res, then it makes it just regular MC( heat 1 ).
What could they have done to properly implement heat in MC?
-easy, less fire res = more dmg taken / more fire res = less dmg taken
add more punishing mechanics like they did in SOM
but this 1 shot if you dont meet X is just stupid lol. not everyone has 12 hours a day to spam the same dungeons over and over to get low droprate fire res gear.
devs definitely taking an L with this 1
i wont be doing heat 3 until week 3+ once i passively get my fire res via t1. I don’t mind farming a few off pieces.
If SoD put in real mechanics the community would flip out. Mechanics aren’t classic. Hitting a certain amount of a stat and collecting buffs is classic.