Awful Archimonde alterations in 2.4.2
by Alex Ziebart 
May 14th 2008 at 1:00PM
As usual with WoW patches, patch 2.4.2 includes a couple of wild bugs. My personal favorites(and by favorites I mean I absolutely hate them) are the bugs(changes?) to the Archimonde encounter.Now, this may just be "Onyxia Deep Breaths moar" syndrome, but the official Dungeons and Raids forum has some pretty substantial(mostly anecdotal) evidence to the contrary. What are these bugs? Well, it seems Archimonde's Doom Fires are spawning on top of the melee and immediately chasing them, rather than travelling out towards the ranged first. Seeing as this fight is generally carried entirely by the melee DPS, that changes the fight quite a bit. The second change/bug is that... your main tank can now be Air Bursted! Hooray! That isn't annoying at all! Sarcasm is sweet!
Archimonde certainly isn't the most difficult encounter in WoW and it is still able to be beaten even now, but I personally hated this encounter with all of my heart and soul to begin with. This doesn't help much. Admittedly, I haven't seen these bugs/changes in action personally yet, but I do not ever want to see them, either. Have I mentioned I hate Archimonde?
Filed under: Patches, Analysis / Opinion, Raiding
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Adam Holisky May 14th 2008 12:45PM
First. And let me say as the meat shield that has to tank Archimonde kill after horrible kill, I am having a lot of "nerd rage" over having to deal with Air Burst now.
How do they possibly expect me to hold aggro? What's going to happen to the raid when I get Air Burst and he goes and melts the face of the top 10 dps before I land?
Air Bursting the tank is something you learn not to do on day one of Archimonde attempts.
See. Nerd rage.
Badger May 14th 2008 1:34PM
== NERDRAGE!! ==
I'll spare you the rest of the script.
Allison Robert May 14th 2008 4:38PM
Agreed.
I respec to resto and typically join the melee group to keep the tank and melee healed at all times (not inclusive of Air Burst, obviously), and being in melee range was already dodgy enough. There used to be a total melee safe spot (no Doomfires, no nothin') before....I want to say patch 2.3? Then you started seeing Doomfire in melee range a lot more (we wiped over and over to melee getting complete encircled by Doomfires with nowhere to run if one looped back to us - even better if you get Air Burst right afterwards).....and now this.
This is already an ugly, luck-influenced (I would hesitate well before saying luck-based, but it sure plays a role) encounter that can be real hell to get new raiders through. I can't begin to imagine what it's going to be like if melee is getting Doomfired all the time, because that is HELL to heal through on melee that aren't rogues with CloS up.
We've survived *one* Air Burst on the tank when one of our melee got too close. Not an experience I care to repeat.
Ooph. My guild's hitting Hyjal probably Thursday or so, we'll see how it goes.
Foxlit May 15th 2008 4:54AM
For what it's worth, we have had melee air burst the MT prior to the patch (careless, but happens), and that was not a tragic disaster you make it out to be - Archimonde simply chases the tank, and, assuming your healers are competent and your tank knows what to do with those Tears, it's entirely recoverable (minor positioning run-around aside).
Fear on the tank shouldn't really be an issue either; fear ward prevents it in most situations. Fear on the healers running to adjust position? Bring more shamans.
Aikiwoce May 14th 2008 1:10PM
I saw these changes last night. While it doesn't make the fight impossible, it definitely adds a new level of difficulty.
The Doomfires had a minimum turning radius before, and you could "juke" them while running away to lose them. Now they can do a complete 180 on top of itself. Most fires now spawn, and turn on melee/tanks.
We didn't have any tank air bursting or air burst + fear, but I'm sure it's there.
I also think they increased the cd on archimonde's fear, as the DBM timer wasn't anywhere close.
I guess they wanted to tune this fight around 1-2 melee dps it seems. Go Blizz!
Chris May 14th 2008 1:15PM
I just thought of a new nickname that I'd like to start propagating when talking about PvE'ers and their gear: "Scripted Epics". No wonder you guys hate PvP so much; every encounter is different.
Tridus May 14th 2008 1:21PM
Yeah, nothing quite like win trading for epics to show off "skill", right?
Chris May 14th 2008 1:25PM
Original. Very original.
Matt May 14th 2008 1:36PM
And what's original about "scripted epics"? Go back to your l337 1600 rated arena team.
Badger May 14th 2008 1:35PM
Nice work dragging a completely irrelevant (not to mention stupid) topic of discussion into a thread on software glitches.
illepic Jun 9th 2008 2:20PM
Ugh, Arch was absolutely brutal on us last night. The pseudo-security that melee had during this fight is almost entirely gone and we watched many a yellow square go dark (
garreth Jun 9th 2008 2:22PM
Aaaand that's what happens when I click the "confirm comment" email link 4 weeks too late. Ignore my previous comment please!
Tridus May 14th 2008 1:23PM
For some reason I just can't comprehend (as a software developer myself), Blizzard patches always have all kinds of undocumented/unintended consequences. This is hopefully one of those times.
If they actually intended to change the fight like this... wow. This is already one of the worst fights in the game due to how bloody random it is. More of that gives me a good reason to want to fire the encounter designer out of a cannon.
Nathan Jessup May 14th 2008 1:27PM
Yea... definitely watched our melee get smoked a couple of times last night. As if this fight wasn't enough of a pain.
Xin May 14th 2008 1:54PM
it the fight is doable then it's not a bug, stop whining and relearn the fight
Tridus May 14th 2008 2:10PM
Relearn what? When the tank gets targetted for airburst, there's nothing to learn. Its not like the tank can avoid an airburst targetted on himself. You just hope he's wedged up against something so he can't go flying, because if he does is a wipe as soon as Archi chases the tank, is out of melee range, and Finger of Death's someone.
This is not balance tweaking, the fight is fundamentally broken.
Xin May 14th 2008 2:12PM
omg stop whining!@!!
Lori May 14th 2008 2:21PM
Are these people complaining about difficulty the same hardcore raiders that complain about the game being made too easy for casuals?
Argent May 14th 2008 2:54PM
probably n9ot, since most true hardcore raiders will most likely have dropped hyjal by now in favor of more time in sunwell.
these changes pretty just fuck people coming through now after the attunement reqs have been lifted.
kdeselms May 14th 2008 2:51PM
Are the people making smartass comments about this discussion anywhere near progressed enough into the game that they'd be affected by this news item? Stop trolling news posts that have nothing to do with you.