The Raid Observer: Week 2, Heroics Begin With More Morchok

And here we are at the outset of heroic modes and the race is showing evidence of the aftermath of the Great LFR Ban of Patch 4.3.

So far a few predictable elements and some possibly surprising aspects are showing up as we hit the heroic modes. Read on!

 

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Heroic Modes Begin

This morning (GMT)--before the EU guilds had joined the heroic race--we had 582 guilds that had cleared the first boss (Morchok) on heroic mode. In contrast, only 8 guilds had killed Zon'ozz and 9 had killed Yor'sahj. The jump from Morchok to the next two bosses seems to suggest that there may be some variation in difficulty between these bosses.

 

By this afternoon (and the tracking sites are not updating consistently, so take these with a grain of salt!), we can see another 289 guilds (including EU guilds now) have killed Morchok. We also have at least 14 guilds having downed 3/8 bosses, which translates to a 50/50 split between US and EU server guilds (though the 25-man results table is dominated by US server guilds). And this is before the majority of EU server guilds log in for the traditional 8 pm GMT+1 raid start this evening. With a handful of guilds already halfway through the heroic raid instance will we see a repeat of Firelands with the first 7 bosses being quite straightforward and the last one a real challenge, or will it be different. The problem is that we can't get a full idea of what's happening until probably at least tomorrow or Friday, when all of our servers are in the race. We also have to consider the aftermath and impact of the account ban situation.

 

Post-LFR Ban and the Heroic Race

So due to the suspensions from the LFR exploit it appears that some guilds that typically raid on the 25-man level have opted to regroup and start the heroic modes off giving 10-man raiding a go. Paragon has stated as much on this site and has been quick to clarify that they do view these races as different and they intend to rejoin the 25-man race as soon as their bans are lifted. In the case of Paragon this is interesting as they did manage, back in July, to not only be the world's first guild to kill Ragnaros HC on 25-man mode but also went on to kill the boss on 10-man before anyone else did. I find this decision by these guilds to be somewhat controversial as it could adversely impact the race for those guilds who are dedicated to 10-man raiding only. And so far, a cursory comparison of 25-man rankings and 10-man rankings has a lot more EU guilds doing 10-man modes than we're seeing on 25-man level. This seems to suggest that at least so far, those top-ranked guilds that do traditionally raid at the 25-man level may have been subject to the ban and have opted to pursue the 10-man content with their unbanned roster. And do the early numbers suggest--so far--that we've had more EU guilds banned than US guilds, at least in the top tier? (This is a very hesitant statement I just made as I am reluctant to rely too heavily on tracking sites alone and I know that quite a few EU 25-man raiding guilds haven't started raiding just yet--or they are just about to.)

 

Early days and hours still.