We will be addressing an emerging tactic that trivializes certain aspects of the Vigilant Steward, Zskarn encounter. We’re planning on implementing these changes live tomorrow, May 26.
We hope that these changes will encourage more interaction with the encounter’s existing mechanics, while maintaining its prior level of difficulty.
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Developers’ note: The Zskarn changes address an emerging tactic that trivializes certain aspects of the encounter. We hope these changes will encourage more interaction with the encounter’s existing mechanics, while maintaining its prior level of difficulty.
The Vigilant Steward, Zskarn
The Vigilant Steward, Zskarn health reduced by 15% on Mythic difficulty.
Dragonfire Golem health reduced by 15% on Mythic difficulty.
Zskarn will now Berserk on all difficulties.
Adjusted the position of Dragonfire Traps.
Shrapnel Bomb reduced to 3 on Mythic difficulty (was 4).
Fixed an issue that could cause an inappropriate amount of Shrapnel Bombs to spawn.
Zskarn no longer activates Tactical Destruction based on his location.
The change of this magnitude seems to unfairly affect guilds that raid on the weekend. What’s the reasoning behind not doing these changes on a weekly reset?
From someone who’s in a weekend guild that might kill Rashok on Friday or Saturday: PLEASE, for the love of God, don’t do this. Everything else is fine but this change makes the fight substantially harder and more complicated than it needs to be and it’s extremely unfair for weekend guilds like mine that will get to a much, much, much harder version of this fight than what most guilds killed over the last several days.
This change is very very very bad. Please reconsider this.
Can this change please be postponed until next Reset on Tues 30 May? And can that change be clarified ASAP via blue post? Mid-week is pretty rough for weekend raiding guilds.
It’s wild that you’re going to change a boss mid week, or change it to buff the encounter 3 weeks into the tier after you watched the world first guilds essentially execute the strategy. Seems like it should be a go next angle, not change the boss, and you take the lessons learned here and apply them to future encounter design. Its not the playerbases fault that zskarn was designed in a way that enabled this strategy. I can’t imagine being a guild either progging this boss or on it in the near future and watch as other guilds who killed it with the ‘cheese’ strategy just continue their progression on further bosses by extending their lockouts.
Its too late to do this. Many guilds have already killed the boss and will be extending until the tier is over since reclear for gear is more irrelevant than ever before. You’re basically just punishing guilds for raiding on weekends
This is absolutely insane this change is going to go through. Blizzard is effectively letting 100 guilds bypass this boss with cheese and then buffing the boss in a way where even the RWF strats are rendered obsolete.
Just take the L blizzard, there’s no way the boss should be changed at this point.
What an amazingly bad decision. How about you find another way to kill the cheese instead of making the fight an RNG nightmare. This mechanic comes out far too fast for it to be completely unpredictable.
It is already bad enough figuring it out for colorblind folks.
What is the point of pushing this change mid week when people have already been abusing this boss for a month at this point? Just let it go through on the weekly reset.
Great change. It should take effect immediately and not be carried over to the next week. This needs to be stopped as soon as possible.
This weekend we will have a great time on this boss (my guild). Because I personally refuse to kill the boss with the strategy that everyone is killing now.
If you don’t make changes now, my guild will first kill this boss either without me or against my will. And the first kill is always the most memorable.
Do not be fooled by the messages of the majority who want to have time to kill the boss in an easy way. Now is not the time to give in to the community on this issue.
Its more about the boss being badly designed from start to finish. This was already pointed out during ptr.
Plus the only thing they will achieve is that guilds that have killed him will now consider to simply extend until Sarkareth is dead while the rest gets presented with a brick wall until the next zerg strategy is found.
Guilds without this extend their CD. So postponing these changes is a big mistake. They fixes need to be brought in immediately so that this zerg stops as soon as possible.
What i said stands. The guilds that have already killed it will just extend and by the time Sarkareth is dead and they rekill Zskarn they will be able to just zerg him down again. Or even already if their guilds gear is high enough coupled with the HP nerf. Effectively changing nothing.
While guilds like yours are presented with a harder than it needed to be brickwall.
Plus if even the person that designed this very encounter states that he and his guild are using the cheese strat than that says all that needs to be said about this encounter in the first place.
I also think that pushing this buff on Friday would be a huge mistake because we all know if it turns out to be too much and the boss is unkillable (highly possible, these changes have never been tested) then weekend guilds are screwed for yet another week, there’s no way there would be further changes until after they’re already done raiding for the week.
I mean not just weekend guilds. Can also take guilds that raid on sunday/monday/tuesday (saying tuesday because not every region has a reset on tuesday).
So if you have killed Rashok but havent killed Zskarn for some reason then ye, have fun.