wow Watcher Addresses Early ToS Raid Testing

[Starym 3,779]

Raid testing is already starting tomorrow and Watcher explains why.

Only three guilds are done with Mythic Nighhold so far (Exorsus, Serenity and Method), so this week's announcement of the next tier's raid testing starting tomorrow on the PTR wasn't received well by the raiding community. Two Heroic bosses will be up: Gornoth and Harjatan and Watcher explained why it s was necessary to do this early and reminded everyone that Tomb of Sargeras wasn't being released immediately with patch 7.2.

Watcher (source)

On Friday, February 10, we will be conducting a preliminary raid test of two Tomb of Sargeras Heroic bosses. This is as much a stress test and server-stability test as anything else, and these bosses will be revisited later on.

Remember that Heroic difficulty scales for any group size between 10 and 30 players, so feel free to assemble and bring a group of any size within that range. Mythic, of course, requires a fixed 20-player group.

Friday, February 10

Gornoth - Heroic Tomb of Sargeras
13:00 PST (16:00 EST, 22:00 CET)

Harjatan - Heroic Tomb of Sargeras
14:00 PST (17:00 EST, 23:00 CET)

As always, this testing schedule is very fluid and subject to the realities of a PTR 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: In Dalaran, Orgrimmar, or Stormwind, you may speak to Nexus-Lord Donjon Rade Sr. in order to teleport into the raid zone while it is open for testing. (The option to teleport into a zone will not be available when the zone is not open for testing.)

Q: What character should I use to test the raid?

A: Whichever you prefer. We will be scaling players' effective level to 110 for raid testing, and their item level to an appropriate threshold for the encounter(s) being tested. For 7.2 raid testing, we'll be granting players all the new 7.2 artifact traits IF players have done the quest to reveal those new traits. Complete the Broken Shore intro experience in order to access this quest.

Q: How long does testing last?

A: The primary purpose of testing is to give us the information we need to balance the encounters, evaluate how mechanics are playing out in practice, and identify bugs. Once we're satisfied that we've received that information for a given boss, we'll be shutting down testing. Usually this takes anywhere from 45 minutes to 2 hours, but there are no guarantees.

Q: Raid testing already? Only a handful of guilds have even finished Mythic Nighthold! Are you out of your damn minds?

A: We realize this is coming right on the heels of plenty of raid content on the live servers, and that competitive guilds feel like they need to get every bit of exposure to upcoming content in order to be properly prepared. It's not ideal timing, but it's a consequence of the way we're structuring our content releases, and something we're looking for ways to improve and continue to refine over the course of Legion. As we've said in the past, Tomb of Sargeras will not be available right when 7.2 unlocks, and a quest arc (akin to the 7.1 Suramar Insurrection campaign) will lead up to its opening. We certainly do not want to rush players through content faster than they can enjoy it - Nighthold is going to be the premiere raid for some time to come.

But Tomb of Sargeras, at least as far as art assets, and most descriptive text, voice overs, and so forth goes, needs to be in patch 7.2 data. That means we need to begin testing it far earlier, relative to the date when the raid will actually go live, than we have in past expansions. But this week's test is just dipping our toes in the water to assess the stability of the overall testing environment, identify class bugs or server issues that might hinder raid testing, and get the process started.

These two bosses will be retested in the future, and likely more than once. There are weeks of raid testing to come, and it's exceedingly likely that testing for numerical tuning purposes and bug fixing will occur in a PTR environment even after 7.2 is on the live servers. If you can log on this Friday to help us test, that's of course much appreciated, but if not, please rest assured that there will be plenty of additional opportunities to come.

[Sharknad0 67]

It really feels like they are making their same mistakes as before in releasing content far too quickly. My guild did not even start mythic ToV because of how difficult things were at first, even in heroic, and doing heroic following the nerfs. I felt like I had no time to enjoy ToV, get gear, progress, etc. The whole point of this game, for me and most of my raid group, is raid progression, and we have yet to be able to even do so since we do not run multiple alt runs and one-hundred mythic + dungeons a week. We have to progress through normal for gear to do heroic, then heroic for mythic, but have had no time to do so yet in this xpac. I hope the comment on NH being the premiere raid for some time to come is true, or this is going to be yet another year or more of no content leading to the next xpac, which I think would be a bad decision on Blizzard's part.

Edited February 9, 2017 by Sharknad0

[RoseZ12 6]

1 hour ago, Sharknad0 said:

It really feels like they are making their same mistakes as before in releasing content far too quickly. My guild did not even start mythic ToV because of how difficult things were at first, even in heroic, and doing heroic following the nerfs. I felt like I had no time to enjoy ToV, get gear, progress, etc. The whole point of this game, for me and most of my raid group, is raid progression, and we have yet to be able to even do so since we do not run multiple alt runs and one-hundred mythic + dungeons a week. We have to progress through normal for gear to do heroic, then heroic for mythic, but have had no time to do so yet in this xpac. I hope the comment on NH being the premiere raid for some time to come is true, or this is going to be yet another year or more of no content leading to the next xpac, which I think would be a bad decision on Blizzard's part.

your fault if you play that broken piece of content.. had a reason why they brought nighthold so soon. nighthold hc is already on farm content.. even with pubs so we need new content.

Edited February 9, 2017 by RoseZ12

[Bladehawk 6]

I doubt we'll step into the Tomb of Sargeras before late May or early June. Patch 7.2 will probably arrive 4-6 weeks prior to that; sometime in April or May. There's plenty of time to clear and farm Nighthold, unless you and/or your guild did absolutely nothing in the Emerald Nightmare or M+ dungeons. If that's the case, you'll have to work harder than a guild that has a "gear advantage" coming into NH and can skip Normal entirely to farm Heroic and progress in Mythic. But it's not impossible.

[ChaosDecides 30]

I wish they had a specific team that tested these things and raid guilds weren't allowed to play the raids before official release. Seeing the be all end all of PVE content downed in no time at all is extremely underwhelming.

[Archimage 98]

16 minutes ago, ChaosDecides said:

I wish they had a specific team that tested these things and raid guilds weren't allowed to play the raids before official release. Seeing the be all end all of PVE content downed in no time at all is extremely underwhelming.

Agreed. Hardcore players tend to take advantage of the PTR to practice the fights.

I watched Asmongold's video, where he explained  that doing progression raiding is exhausting, and with the increased content releases people can get burned out.
Only 3 guilds have downed Mythic Guldan, and is currently resting, but now Blizzard is asking people to test Heroic difficulty ToS.

What is next: Mythic+ Raids?

[hazard3321 0]

On 2/10/2017 at 2:44 AM, ChaosDecides said:

I wish they had a specific team that tested these things and raid guilds weren't allowed to play the raids before official release. Seeing the be all end all of PVE content downed in no time at all is extremely underwhelming.

Being a Game Tester before, I'm certain they do have 1 or 2 teams that do the raiding content. The benefit to a public beta test is that it can uncover some more unforeseen circumstances, as well as figure out a baseline for raiding, whether its a pug or organized groups