Sepulcher of the First Ones Adjustments Coming in 9.2.5

As Patch 9.2.5 unlocks cross-server Mythic Sepulcher, and as we move into the later months of the tier, the team wants to continue to smooth out pain points for both progression and repeat kills on several bosses in the zone. Including this round of changes, we’ve made quite a few adjustments to Sepulcher in recent weeks, so we wanted to share a bit more context around our goals.

We’ve heard extensive feedback from players running Sepulcher on all difficulties that a number of mechanics in Sepulcher feel too unforgiving, and that there are just too many places where a single error by a single player can cause an unrecoverable wipe. We agree, and several of our recent changes have been aimed at reducing those penalties. This is a major topic of discussion within the team as we plan Dragonflight raid encounters and focus on delivering satisfying progression experiences for players on all raid difficulties.

Below are the changes that will be included in 9.2.5 next week during maintenance, and you’ll see them in the 9.2.5 patch notes:

Sepulcher of the First Ones

  • Artificer Xy’mox
    • Decipher Relic cast time increased to 30 seconds on Mythic difficulty (was 25 seconds).
  • Prototype Pantheon
    • Imprinted Safeguards reduce damage and healing taken by 35% on Mythic difficulty (was 50%).
  • Lihuvim, Principal Architect
    • Lihuvim’s health reduced by 10% on all difficulties.
    • Protoform Schematics health reduced by 10% on all difficulties.
  • Halondrus the Reclaimer
    • Ephemeral Eruption initial damage reduced significantly on Mythic difficulty.
    • Lightshatter Beam increases the damage taken from Lightshatter Beam by 300% on Heroic difficulty (was 500%).
  • Anduin Wrynn
    • Anduin Wrynn’s health reduced by 5% on all difficulties.
    • Monstrous Souls health reduced by 5% on all difficulties.
    • Anduin’s Despair health reduced by 10% on all difficulties.
    • Anduin’s Hope movement speed reduced on Heroic and Mythic difficulty.
    • Remorseless Winter damage reduced by 10% on all difficulties.
    • Hopebreaker damage over time reduced by 15% on all difficulties.
    • Fiendish Soul’s Necrotic Claws cooldown increased by 50% on all difficulties.
  • Lords of Dread
    • Mal’Ganis and Kin’tessa health reduced by 5% on all difficulties.
    • Swarm of Decay and Swarm of Darkness damage reduced by 7.5% on all difficulties.
    • Ravenous Hunger now heals the Inchoate Shadow for 13% on Mythic difficulty (was 10%).
    • Cloud of Carrion no longer disorients when jumping between players on Heroic and Mythic difficulty.
    • Infiltration of Dread duration increased by 10 seconds on Heroic and Mythic difficulty.
  • Rygelon
    • Collapsing Quasar Field duration increased by 50% on Mythic difficulty.
  • The Jailer
    • Rune of Compulsion’s absorb reduced by 33% on Normal and Heroic difficulty, and 10% on Mythic difficulty.
    • Misery no longer knocksback on Raid Finder, Normal, and Heroic difficulty.
    • Decimator no longer knocksback on Raid Finder and Normal difficulty.
    • Diverted Life Shield no longer heals on Mythic difficulty.
    • World Crusher produces 2 less Bloods of Azeroth on Mythic difficulty.
    • World Shatterer produces 1 less Blood of Azeroth on Mythic difficulty.
    • Phase 4 is now triggered at 15% Health on Mythic difficulty.
5 Likes

Well… That is definitely a set of nerfs alright.

2 Likes

what do those jailer nerfs even mean with the bloods of azeroth?

why do they spawn less bloods? are we getting more healing per soak now and only need to do 1 each time?

4 Likes

This raid isn’t even going to resemble its release level at all by the end of this.

1 Like

That is because in designing for world first guilds they systemically overtuned these bosses on all non raidfinder difficulties.

5 Likes

There are always nerfs, but this has been a bloodbath.

The entire raid should just be called “Shade of Selpucher of the First Ones” at this point.

2 Likes

If you really wanted to make the raid an enjoyable place, remove the excessive trash so that raid teams can focus on boss mechanics during their time in there instead of wasting half of their time clearing trash.

7 Likes

Good, nerf it into the ground, and tune your mythic raids so they actually start falling over when the ilvl of the raid is damn near maxed out for the patch. Let us bully the raids again.

3 Likes

To start, a huge thank you for looking into it. Just a few thoughts on Anduinn.

I am a bit confused here as this doesn’t seem to solve the actual problem. Reducing damage doesn’t fix the fact that if one person is 5 yards in the wrong place, it’s a wipe, especially on smaller raid sizes.

For examples (this is from our attempts on heroic):

  • the moment two people run into each other in the last phase, we lost 6 people, not 2 (we wiped at 7%… so close to our first kill!).
  • If one person doesn’t shoot the star in the correct direction, or the boss steps 5 yards too close to a grim reflection in phase 2, it’s a wipe because interrupting is impossible.
  • We’ve stopped trying to absorb the befouled barrier when only half the raid is up top, because if someone steps in it with the Domination Word: Pain they die, note over half the people left up top is inflected with either Domination Word: Pain or running out for the Wicked Star. Instead, we’ve become extremely DPS dependent on the lower group getting up fast enough to absorb the barrier, so just another dps race to fix what seems to be a weird mechanic. This also means we can’t do it if one good dps is dead.

My person recommendation (just throwing out ideas) for smaller raid sizes (heroic):

  • Reduce the radius of damage from two people hitting each other
  • Reduce the initial damage from Befouled Barrier so the top only needs 1 healer (I was doing a healing convokes as a boomkin + 2 healing top to prevent the Domination Word: Pain’s from killing people) for 14 people.
  • (alternate) don’t let Domination Word: Pain be cast for 20 seconds after the barrier is down, so we can actually absorb the barrier. That might be too hard to code in though.
  • (alternate) if it is intended for the group downstairs to absorb the barrier, increase the length of the barrier to 10 seconds + downstairs time limit.
  • Make it so grim reflections can be stunned but not interrupted as part of getting hit by divine star. This encourages utility rather than “wiping” as a solution.
  • (alternate) Make it so grim reflections are immune to the star if they boss comes too close. Remember, only 1 tank a few dps, and everyone has to be on the add to have enough damage.
  • (alternate) Only have 2 Reflections for sub 15 people… fewer people mean fewer CC options, especially with half a raid up top for the second set of Reflections.

Just some ideas to actually fix the issues at hand. Reducing health shouldn’t be needed at all if the actual mechanics provide the time needed. This may be some personal bias, but I don’t like dps/hps races to fix the problems with mechanics.

Also, given the iLvl expectation for Heroic Anduin should be ~262 iLvl (assuming only gear from raid), is it possible for a 10 man group 2/2/6 or 2/3/5 to do it with that low of gear without being mythic level players (should be heroic level gameplay, not mythic level gameplay)?

Thanks!

4 Likes

Not really even at the herioc level this raid was fairly simple. It’s been a good challenge so far on mythic and a pleasant change from the typical change from faceroll up until you hit the midway mark.

This was really sad too. We were rocking it and 1 person in a group of 15 shifted not even a yard, bam! 6 people dead.

Heroic Anduin has been the most nerfed boss in WoW’s history in terms of the sheer number of nerfs.

In NO WORLD is the eighth boss in an 11 boss raid being harder on Heroic than the first five bosses on Mythic even remotely acceptable.

It’s not though. Killed it pre nerf week 2 of release. Still haven’t killed thr first 5 of mythic and can tell you they are way harder. You are also wrong about the nerfs as tos and eots raid had bosses nerfed even harder than anduin has been.

I have killed the first 5 bosses on Mythic, and Lihuvim, and Halondrus, and can absolutely tell you beyond ANY shadow of a doubt that week 1 Anduin was harder than anything up to Lihuvim.

The raid is perfectly fine as is, We do not need these nerfs, People just need to read mechanics or watch a 2 minute video instead of joining a raid and only contributing to a wipe

2 Likes

How unbelievably stupid.

Groups are burning anduin so fast that they are flat out ignoring the 2nd down phase because you can push him to phase 3 before it even happens… and you give him a health nerf?

Zero nerfs are needed on heroic difficulty… you spoonfed mythic level raid gear or better to anyone who ran a few dungeons.

Better have another raid in the works if you just want everyone to smash their faces on their keys and clear all difficulties.

This game’s developers are insanely clueless.

I feel the same way about the Lords of Dread nerfs.

They’ve nerfed the raid to the ground so much that very very little skill is actually required to clear it. If you can’t kill it now, your group is just embarrassingly bad. Stick to LFR if you can’t find people capable of walking their small circle into a large circle in an orderly fashion.

1 Like

“People who were doing mechanics wrong were dying. We agree this shouldn’t happen. You should be able to do things wrong and win anyway.”

What kind of insanely idiotic thought process is that?