Friday, April 20, 2007

How to Make an Old World Heroic

I've had this sitting around in my notes for awhile and decide to post it today. Its a little rough around the edges but I think it gives a good outline how a old world dungeon could be turned into a heroic one. It takes less time to make a heroic version of a dungeon then it does to create a new one from scratch. Thus while in-between expansions releasing new heroics would seem to be the quickest way to get a more steady stream of "new" content out to your end game population.

Target:
Uldaman

Mob Upgrades:

Scorpions: Made into level 70 non elites with poison similar to carnivorous bite from the ramparts

Bats: Made into level 70 non elites with AoE silence + dmg ability

Troggs: Made into level 70 elites and grouped in threes or fours. Warriors would be able to enrage and gain 50% damage. Shaman Troggs would make use of earthbind and fire nova totem.

Earthen: Made into level 70 elites whose attacks would hit comparable to other heroic mode casters

Stone Golem + Earthen: The Golem would be linked to the earthen and have to be destroyed first else the earthen would respawn from it

Shadowforge Dwarf (shadowcaster): Made into 70 elites which would use the improved Soul Drain found in the Botanica

Shadowforge Dwarf (melees): Made into 70 elites which would use mines and grenades with a silence component

Boss Upgrades:

Ravelosh:
The first boss in Uldaman with two adds could be a fight structured much like the Watchkeeper in the Ramparts. In the case of Ravelosh I would recommend that instead of charging the 2nd person on the hate list he would throw a boulder and stun that person for 2 seconds instead. His adds would also heal him so they would have to be dealt with first.

Ironya:
The second boss in Uldaman should play out like a mini Maiden of Virtue fight. Give her a consecration ability and the paladin ability to put one person to sleep. If you want to get real creative give her a large aoe lightwell like ability that will heal her unless the main tank pulls her off of it. This ability would be much like the shadow well ability the large voidwalkers in the Arcatraz have.

Galgan Firehammer:
This dark iron dwarf needs a few more tricks to be challenging. I suggest giving him the ability to drink some whiskey and do a dragons breath type attack. Give him some more hunter like abilities like a burning net that does damage and scattershot.

Obsidian Sentinel:
The perfect way to make this boss fight heroic would be for him to summon a group of eathen whenever he went down 25% in life. He could be structured like the giants in the Outlands so that he got smaller after each group. At the end the earthen he would be a little tiny stone golem. If him summoning a full group of earthen makes the fight too hard then simply have him spit out two or three instead.

Grimlock:
The King of the Troggs already has some nice abilities on the non-heroic version. To make him a true terror though I suggest giving him the mind control totem that Jindo uses in ZG. That combined with his little basilisk friend should make things interesting especially if you gave him the ability to cleanse crowd control effects.

Archaedas:
This guy was already impossible for most groups of mid 40s to kill. Still would need something special to spice the encounter up for an heroic run. Just to be demented I think he should be able to channel a spell on the earthen which stuns them for a couple seconds then explode for AoE fire damage. He can even shout out something nice like "Return to the Makers and take these trespassers with you". Add in a increased spawn rate on the earthen statues so that two come to life at the same time and you got yourself a nice hard end boss.

Loot:
All boss mobs should have improved blue loot that have stats comparable to heroic Old Hillsbrad. Also make sure that some of the loot has off spec stats so that every class will want to come. One of the worst things about Karazhan is that almost all the loot is focused on raid spec builds only, examples: Prot Warrior, Holy Paladin.

Each boss should have a chance of dropping an epic gem. While the final boss should always drop an epic item, and two of the blue loots from the previous bosses. A major frustration with dungeons is when a boss refuses to drop that one item you need. By making the final boss also drop blues which could be from any of the other previous bosses you reduce this frustration a little bit. This loot system might not work in the smaller 3 boss instances of the Outlands but in the bigger old world dungeons I think it makes sense.

6 comments:

Keystone said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Keystone said...

Excellent idea!
I would love to run a Heroic Deadmines!

Kinless said...

I'm still enjoying the 1-59 experience.

Bored at 70 does not appear to be my fate. I have too many characters to have that happen. By the time I get a few more to 70 we'll have the next expansion, and all the new possibilities out there.

Anonymous said...

Not interested, waste of time. Lets have Blizz work on new content and fix class balance, and priests.

Anonymous said...

"One of the worst things about Karazhan is that almost all the loot is focused on raid spec builds only, examples: Prot Warrior, Holy Paladin."

Because you have to raid to get it. I wouldn't want to spend hours helping other folks get their gear for them to go and use it in Battlegrounds. In the long run, it makes my job easier even if I'm not the one recieving the piece.

Anonymous said...

Hey there, just found your blog, linked off of Molten Fury. I've added your blog to my Blogroll, as I've got an active WoW blog too.

I'll be back to note up your entries when I don't have so much work to do!

Valdesta
WoWGrrl player blog