wow Mythic Antorus Raid Testing: August 17-21

[Starym 3,775]

 

We're going back to Antorus to test some more bosses starting Thursday, and it's all Mythic all the time this week! We also get the first wing of LFR starting Friday.

August 17-21 (source)

On Thursday, August 17th and Friday, August 18th we will be conducting raid tests of Antorus, the Burning Throne. Once testing has concluded on Friday we will be testing the first wing of Raid Finder difficulty over the weekend.

Thursday, August 17th

Portal Keeper Hasabel - Mythic Antorus, the Burning Throne
13:00 PDT (16:00 EDT, 22:00 CEST)

Eonar - Mythic Antorus, the Burning Throne
14:00 PDT (17:00 EDT, 23:00 CEST)

Friday, August 18th

Imonar the Soulhunter - Mythic Antorus, the Burning Throne
13:00 PDT (16:00 EDT, 22:00 CEST)

Varimathras - Mythic Antorus, the Burning Throne
14:00 PDT (17:00 EDT, 23:00 CEST)

Friday, August 18th - Monday, August 21st
Light's Breach - Raid Finder

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.

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.

[Yridaa 490]

7 hours ago, Starym said:

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

*ToS version* Jee, look at how everyone frantically keeps moving into the swirls to soak things on most of these bossfights.

 

*Ion Hassikostas*. It's okay, it's just PTR. Even if we bring it to live, we'll just say we had hundreds of manhours testing this ourselves and thought this wasn't an issue. In fact, we'll just say it was indeed a mistake but then proceed to have the next raid introduce the same soak mechanics on the first few bosses. They'll agree to it, and those that don't; people will claim they're using tinfoil hats anyway. It works in our favor no matter what happens.

[Maruken 31]

1 hour ago, Yridaa said:

*ToS version* Jee, look at how everyone frantically keeps moving into the swirls to soak things on most of these bossfights.

 

*Ion Hassikostas*. It's okay, it's just PTR. Even if we bring it to live, we'll just say we had hundreds of manhours testing this ourselves and thought this wasn't an issue. In fact, we'll just say it was indeed a mistake but then proceed to have the next raid introduce the same soak mechanics on the first few bosses. They'll agree to it, and those that don't; people will claim they're using tinfoil hats anyway. It works in our favor no matter what happens.

This whole post pisses me off.

Despite popular belief, professionals still make mistakes.  To assume that Ion, a professional game developer at a massive company, was lying, is tinfoil hat worthy, whether you like it or not.

Yes they're "paid to do it" and we're all "paying customers" but in the end they're only human. If something slips through the cracks they shouldn't cop so much damn hate for it.

Edited August 16, 2017 by Maruken

[Yridaa 490]

But if they really regret the decision then why proceed with the same methods in the next raid?

 

It is on the PTR, there's still many weeks to go before we even get into the raid. Yet I am willing to bet my WoW "career" that they will not change the soak mechanics in the Artorius raid into a different mechanic.

 

Tell me how I can agree with your point of view. I'd love to be more optimistic.

[Tri 138]

the mechanic may not change but it can certainly be altered to be more reasonable, take highmaul we had a soak mechanic there that worked, started with a couple and gradually built up, something like that is fine. there's been many raids with soak mechanics they were just a bit overzealous in ToS. so watching ptr and going in with the knowledge of kiljaeden there is potential to say hrm okay lets just make it 2 soaks instead of 20, something to that effect.

however, on the same hand i do agree with you yridaa we do get a lot of "oh we messed up but we learned a lot" and then the same things happen. take gating of broken shore, oh hey yeah no we messed up won't happen again aaand argus is gated. we heard similar things at tanaan jungle, we hear the same story quite a bit and end up with similar problems so being skeptical is understandable.

[Starym 3,775]

6 hours ago, Maruken said:

This whole post pisses me off.

Despite popular belief, professionals still make mistakes.  To assume that Ion, a professional game developer at a massive company, was lying, is tinfoil hat worthy, whether you like it or not.

Yes they're "paid to do it" and we're all "paying customers" but in the end they're only human. If something slips through the cracks they shouldn't cop so much damn hate for it.

Personally I don't think he was lying, but there's simply no way they spent hundreds of hours tuning KJ. That would mean that they literally have morons testing the bosses. I'm guessing he was frustrated and either "rounded up" or just said hundreds to imply "we spent a lot of time". And honestly I'd rather believe that they simply didn't test the boss enough than to think they are THAT incompetent at tuning bosses themselves that after HUNDREDS of hours on ONE boss they still came up with the disaster that was KJ pre 3 separate huge nerf waves :)

[Valks 2,373]

On 8/16/2017 at 1:47 PM, Starym said:

 And honestly I'd rather believe that they simply didn't test the boss enough than to think they are THAT incompetent at tuning bosses themselves that after HUNDREDS of hours on ONE boss they still came up with the disaster that was KJ pre 3 separate huge nerf waves :)

Going with this as well as the best guess. With all the hate that was pouring out of people, it's not surprising that he might have rounded an estimate or spoken too quickly and then just left it rather than correct it. They needed to respond to claims that they had screwed things up and he did. It wasn't the best response, but maybe there have been changes behind the scenes that we can't see with the testing team etc.