SWP Balancing suggestions #7973

Blockfisch · 2025-03-24T16:05:33Z

Blockfisch
Mar 24, 2025

Heyo,

as i did SWP with two independent guilds this week, i would like to give some feedback on how well tuning is done right now and what could be improved. Other people are very much welcome to use this discussion too.

If there is a better place to make tuning suggestions, please let me know. I specifically avoided discord, as i feel the devs would prefer it to be done on GitHub.

For my summary, see comment 1.

Big thank you to the devs for their work on SWP and beyond, the first three bosses released in a good state! Nice stuff!

Thank you,
Blockfisch

Useful links:
https://github.com/azerothcore/mod-zone-difficulty/blob/master/data/sql/db-world/zone_difficulty_mythicmode_creatureoverrides.sql
https://github.com/azerothcore/mod-zone-difficulty/blob/master/data/sql/db-world/zone_difficulty_spelloverrides.sql

Blockfisch · 2025-03-24T16:22:56Z

Blockfisch
Mar 24, 2025
Author

Kalecgos:
Both normal and mythic seem to be well balanced. Both were doable and provided an appropriate challenge for their respective difficulty.

Brutallus:
The reduction to 2.3x HP on mythic was much needed, on 3.5x it would have been to much. Interestingly, the 2.3x times HP setting seems to be a mistake, as the description says it should be 2.5x, but the difference is minor anyway.
It could maybe be cranked up to 2.6x or 2.7x, but i would refrain from increasing it at all right now, as it might make the boss too long for it's very short enrage timer. In our well geared mythic group, the fight duration was 5:30 minutes at 2.3x.
On normal the boss was well doable.

Felmyst:
The 3.5x HP modifier feels too high. The boss has a lengthy enrage timer at 11 minutes, but spends round about half of that time in the air, where only rDPS can hit it for a few more seconds before she starts her three breath attacks, during which she is essentially not being DPSed.
It was not possible for us to kill her before the enrage, as we could not do enough damage in time, despite generally consisting of reasonably good players in good gear.
This was also exacerbated by the very hard hitting Encapsulate mechanic. It currently hits very hard. Damage for some classes is borderline unsurvivable, particularly slower moving classes with weak defensive cooldowns, e.g. warlocks and priests.
The mechanic can be reacted to 1 second before damage starts, since she targets and faces a raidmember before the aoe damage begins. But this was not enough, particularly for the aforementioned classes in the targeted group, to reliably make it 20y away from the main target, especially for people who do not have good reactions or are on a bad connection.
On normal the fight is also on the tough side, maybe a bit too much so. Encapsulate damage is slightly more manageable, but the fight is still a harder dps check than Brutallus(!), when it should be a mechanics focused boss.

Suggestions:
Kalecgos: no changes
Brutallus: no changes
Felmyst: Reduce HP to 3x(Mythic) and 2x(normal), exclude Encapsulate from tuning

EDIT 1:
Implemented changes: Felmyst HP reduced to 2.3x on mythic, Encapsulate excluded from tuning.
The removal of tuning from encapsulate works very well. It does enough damage to be threatening, but gives players a chance to live if properly reacted to.
The change to 2.3x HP also worked out well. On strong teams, the HP feels a little undertuned now, but it should feel managable for most teams. 3x would be a little tougher, albeit might still feel too much for some. Good stuff!

1 reply

Krateozshael Mar 24, 2025

I fully support this suggestion. Even from a healer standpoint its almost impossible to counteract the spelldamage buffed encapsulate from Felmyst.
Also as someone pointed out in the discord you require roughly 4.2k AVERAGE DPS from every DPS during Felmysts groundphase on mythic. This is blantly said mathimatically impossible if you dont stack 15 warlocks in the raid. Therefore giving the Skele-dragon the same treatment as Brutallus is necessary :)

Blockfisch · 2025-03-29T22:34:32Z

Blockfisch
Mar 29, 2025
Author

Twins:
While the HP pool is on the high side, due to the design of the fight, it is not much of an issue. Most of the current trouble with the boss comes from the very high continuous damage output. There is currently no one singular damage mechanic that feels overtuned. It is a combination of all of their abilities doing a lot of damage, making the fight a tough healer check.
On normal difficulty, the fight is clearable for an experienced team with some practice attempts.

One thing that has to be said, is the standout predictability of the implementation of the mechanics. Currently the arguably most dangerous ability of the encounter, Conflagration, can be cheesed entirely by smartly manipulationg Alythess' threat table. As i do not know what the correct implementation for the mechanic is, i will not make any suggestions about this. It does take away a sizeable portion of otherwise additionally present difficulty of the fight though. This should be taken into consideration, should the implementation of the mechanic be changed in the near future.

Suggestions:
Twins: Reduce damage output of the fight by 20-30% on mythic through individual ability adjustments or tuning exclusions. If possible, i would like to suggest targeting particularly spiky damage abilities.
My personal suggestion would be to lower Flame Sear damage by 20%. I would also suggest lowering Dark Strike damage (main application + DoT component), but since Shadow Images currently seem to last a few seconds too long, reducing their duration would be a more appropriate way of reducing the damage of that ability.
On normal a 5-10% damage reduction could be considered, to lower difficulty slightly and keep the two difficulty modes noticably seperate in their damage received.
Alternatively, Flame Sear could simply be excluded from tuning, lowering damage across mythic and normal significantly. In that case Dark Strike damage should be left unchanged. When a change to the duration of Shadow Images is implemented, maybe this would have to be reevaluated though.

Another option would be to reduce the damage of Flame Touched by 20%, in which case no other changes should be made. Nerfing both Flame Touched and Flame Sear might overnerf the fight, altough it is admittedly hard to judge.
If the exclusion from tuning route is taken, it should be either Flame Touched OR Flame Sear. Excluding both would reduce the damage output of the fight to pretty easily manageable levels.
This could be considered though, if Conflagrate mechanics are changed to be less predictable, making the fight substantially more dangerous. Adding this mechanic "back into the fight" might justify nerfing both abilities, if only to not overspike difficulty, as Conflagrate is a borderline guaranteed raid wipe if missmanaged.

EDIT 1:
The fix to Shadow Images (-2 second duration after fix) already made a noticeable difference in difficulty, although less than what i believe would be warranted. Damage intake - particularly during Phase 1 - is still very high and uncoordinated/weak groups will struggle enormously to down the boss.

0 replies

Blockfisch · 2025-04-04T09:11:02Z

Blockfisch
Apr 4, 2025
Author

M'uru:
Tuning feels good so far. Very manageable on normal, i expect the same for mythic.
Good Job! :)

EDIT 1:
Would like to revise that :D. Normal M'uru feels like what mythic should be like after the tuning is now correctly applied to normal. Mythic on the other hand we didn't even try, because we know we can't clear it.
My suggestion would be the same as for Brutallus, reduce tuning to 2.5x or so on mythic and 1.8x or so on normal.

EDIT 2:
On 2nd thought, the HP is not the problem. It only manifests, that the damage output of the fight is very high in the end.
Technically it would be better to adjust the root cause of the issue, which is the enormous amounts of damage in P2, making the fight unhealable in the end.

0 replies

Blockfisch · 2025-05-02T23:44:41Z

Blockfisch
May 2, 2025
Author

All bosses on mythic are doable currently. Twins feel a lot easier and less rng'ey now, after the fixes to conflag and shadow nova targeting. Substantially lower healing check, but higher dps check due to not being able to reset stacks on the Alythess tank anymore.

M'uru P2 is though but doable, need strong dps tough and it's best to aavoid having too many melee. A small nerf to the ramping damage in P2 would be welcome but is not strictly necessary.

I don't think there are currently any changes needed to tuning on any of the first 5 out of 6 bosses :).
Waiting for KJ release now.

0 replies

Blockfisch · 2025-05-26T12:35:26Z

Blockfisch
May 26, 2025
Author

KJ seemed to be well balanced on normal and mythic. There also don't seem to be a lot of bugs with him, all of the egregious ones were fixed before his release.
Very nice!

0 replies

Nyeriah · 2025-05-27T00:11:48Z

Nyeriah
May 27, 2025
Collaborator

Thanks a lot for such detailed feedback, it is much appreciated!

0 replies

chromiecraft

SWP Balancing suggestions #7973

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Blockfisch Mar 24, 2025

Replies: 6 comments · 1 reply

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Blockfisch Mar 24, 2025 Author

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Krateozshael Mar 24, 2025

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Blockfisch Mar 29, 2025 Author

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Blockfisch Apr 4, 2025 Author

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Blockfisch May 2, 2025 Author

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Blockfisch May 26, 2025 Author

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Nyeriah May 27, 2025 Collaborator

Blockfisch
Mar 24, 2025

Replies: 6 comments 1 reply

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