Players who have been making runs on The Black Temple may have noticed that one of the bosses, Gurtogg Bloodboil, isn't as powerful as he used to be. Apparently, since the World of Warcraft patch 2.2, the mutated Fel Orc hasn't been hitting his main targets as often as the developers intended him to.

Blizzard's Lead Encounter Designer Daelo has given word that they have hotfixed the boss, thereby increasing his chance of hitting back to pre-2.2 days. It looks like the update is working because more and more players are once again having a hard time taking down Bloodboil.

If you plan on making a Black Temple Run any time soon, you may want to take this new information into consideration. Since this boss can now it for massive damage more consistently, players may want to consider swapping out a mage or two for more healers.

Have you been to Tempest Keep lately? In case you're planning to pay Kael'thas a visit in the near future, be advised that the instance is a bit out of whack. In a thread in the World of Warcraft Forums, players talked about how the weapons in phase 2 of the Kael'thas instance have more HP than usual.

Blizzard poster Daelo dropped by the said thread and here's what he had to say:

We looked into this, and found a new bug. Any of the enchanted weapons that are alive at the point when Prince Kael'thas resurrects his advisors will immediately have their health increased.

We currently cannot hotfix this issue, but we hope to resolve the problem relatively soon.

Unless you want to compensate for the buffed weapons in the instance, you might want to postpone calling on Kael'thas Sunstrider. We'll update you on this one and other World of Warcraft news as they happen so stay tuned.

 

We found a fairly interesting subject on this trip to the World of Warcraft Forums: the Illidan Stormrage instance. Some players were concerned about the Enrage timer that caused most guilds to wipe - those who don't have enough damage per second (DPS) to beat the berserk timer which currently stands at fifteen minutes.

Sixteen pages into the thread, Blizzard poster Tigole acknowledged the problem saying that the issue was being looked at. Players swarmed and asked about what the devs have been busy doing. Tigole explained that they are backlogged in patches because patch 2.2 got held up on the PTR. He also gave an ETA for patch 2.3 or Zul'Aman - first week of October. Hopefully, Blizzard will be able to stick with the ETA.

And another thing to be happy about, here's Daelo's announcement:

Ok, we're in the process of deploying a hotfix that will change Illidan's berserk timer to 25 minutes. I'll make a post when our server people tell me it's been deployed to the realms. We're also looking into what went wrong in our processes that led us to the 15 minute timer suddenly appearing.

How's that for prompt? (You can check out the entire post by Daelo by clicking the via link below.) Certainly, Illidan will be more manageable once the hotfix goes live. Stay tuned for more WoW news.

A number of World of Warcraft players were curious as to why they can't seem to get loot and reputation from the Mount Hyjal instance when running in small groups. Of course, the said players brought the concern to the WoW Forums for an official answer.

Before WoW patch 2.2, players can only get reputation from the Scale of the Sands faction by killing off the bosses at Mount Hyjal. Now, raid groups can get rep from the Bronze Dragonflight division by killing the waves of trash mobs as well. So is the instance bugged? Blizzard poster Daelo (Lead Encounter Designer) explained:

There are indeed protections put in place that should make it extremely difficult for very small groups of players to activate the Battle of Mount Hyjal event and be rewarded with either reputation or items from killing the incoming enemy creatures before the players suffer a defeat. Whenever an enemy wave spawns, there's a check done to see if you've killed enough of the enemy creatures. If you haven't, then loot/rep is disabled for that wave of spawns. If you have killed enough, then that wave and further waves of creatures leading up to the next boss have loot/reputation.

Under relatively normal conditions where a full raid is attempting to fight through the enemy waves of creatures to defeat a boss, all creatures past the first wave should reward reputation and have a chance at item loot.

Daelo added that the precautions taken were put in place to prevent a large number of Mount Hyjal instances from being created since that scenario would cause "performance problems for the server." Know what that means, right? You'll need to grab more friends if you want to grab some purple loot from the said instance, and maybe some rings via reputation.

In the World of Warcraft, even demi-gods sometimes need a hot fix. The same is true about Archimonde the Defiler, the being who single-handedly destroyed Dalaran merely to prove a point and celebrate his arrival on Azeroth.

Blizzard Lead Encounter Designer Daelo posted the complete details of the changes. He stated that it is being implemented to spread out the changes in a "more expedited manner." Of course not every planned change to Archimonde could be done as of the moment, so the rest will have to follow with patch 2.2. Here are the changes that have already been introduced:

• Archimonde now casts fear in a bit more consistent manner, roughly every 40 seconds.
• Fear's cast time is now 1.5 seconds.
• Grip of the Legion now has only a 60 yard range.
• Red Soul Charge now only silences players for 4 seconds.

These changes should make the encounter a little less rough for the players, much like playing rugby with a rhino instead of a T-Rex. Regardless of the hotfixes, we can still expect that Archimonde will be wiping quite a few parties out as they try to take him down.

 

More changes are in store for patch 2.2, it seems. Daelo posted a list of additional changes that would be implemented with patch 2.2, which deal with tweaks to dungeon and raid encounters.

Besides making certain things easier or faster to accomplish in Blizzard's World of Warcraft, one of the other noteworthy things mentioned in these changes is the implementation of some changes to heroic dungeons based on the feedback given by players. No word exactly on what those changes are, but we hope they make certain portions easier or more rewarding.

In any case, below are the changes mentioned by Daelo. Expect us to cover any additional changes as they get posted by the community managers.

Archimonde

• Archimonde's Fear had a recast time that could be very inconsistent, which would cause problems for tanks who were waiting to react to the fear being cast. Along with making the fear more consistent, the minimum time between fears has been increased and the casting time will be 1.5 seconds.
• Grip of the Legion will not be able to target players who were just Air Burst, and it now has a non-infinite range.
• Red Soul Charges silence for 4 seconds instead of 6 seconds.
• The bug where Priests with Spirit of Redemption creating two Soul Charges on death is fixed.

More changes after the jump!

Just a couple of weeks back, we reported that two bosses, Al'ar and Vashj got hotfixes. Well, those hotfixes were actually recalled when some problems were encountered. Daelo, Lead Encounter Designer had promised that they will reapply the fixes and announced earlier today at the World of Warcraft Forums that they have been reapplied.

Here are the hotfixes:

- During Phase 2 of the Lady Vashj encounter in Serpentshrine Cavern, there was a significant chance that a Coilfang Strider could spawn at a particular point that would cause the creature to evade. The Strider evading would then reset the entire encounter prematurely. We've made a modification to the spawn point that should prevent this behavior.

- During Phase 2 of the Al'ar encounter in Tempest Keep, Al'ar occasionally charges at a random player. The damage dealt by the Charge was severe enough to immediately kill a lightly armored target even if the player was at full health. We've reduced the damage done by this Charge ability. Al'ar's swing timer is also reset on the Charge, which should prevent a normal melee swing immediately after the Charge occurs.

Note that there was a slight clarification in the Al'ar encounter. Anyway, time to visit Serpentshrine Cavern and The Eye at Tempest Keep perhaps?

Still having problems with World of Warcraft's boss Lady Vashj in Serpentshrine Cavern? Well, don't worry because Blizzard has already admitted that the encounter, and the whole cavern for that matter, is quite buggy.

In fact, several hot fixes have already been implemented before. Speaking of which, Blizzard Lead Encounter Designer Daelo dropped by WoW's official community forum and informed players that a new hot fix concerning visibility is now up.

Aside from the Coilfang Strider spawning rather weirdly, players have also reported frame rate issues in Serpentshrine Cavern. Daelo explained,

A change to the visibility rules for many of the creatures there has been made. Players will no longer be able to see many of the creatures at a completely unlimited distance, but at the more normal visibility range you typically experience with outdoor content.

Aside from that, the lead encounter designer also mentioned that no spawning was made to the actual spawning of the zone. And on a side note, please don't forget to checkout patch 2.1.2 on the Public Test Realm, ok?

Blizzard poster Daelo has announced on the official World of Warcraft forums that Blizzard will be making some difficulty adjustments to many of the later bosses in Black Temple and Hyjal.

These difficulty tweaks were decided upon after getting feedback from guilds. According to Daelo, the changes will increase the damage dealt by the encounter to the raid as a rule. Due to the timing and the nature of the changes, players may notice that some of the tool tips for the re-tuned abilities will have incorrect information.

The encounters getting the damage buff are as follows:

• Gurtogg Bloodboil
• Teron Gorefiend
• Mother Shahraz
• The Illidari Council
• Illidan Stormrage
• Archimonde

Daelo also noted that these changes are not intended to make the encounters impossible to accomplish. "Even with the increased difficulty, I do expect some of them to be quickly beaten again after guilds experience the changes and adapt," said Daelo.

 

Some raiders have found phase two of Al'ar and Lady Vashj in World of Warcraft a bit problematic due to certain bugs. In the Lady Vashj encounter, it is known that a Coilfang Strider spawns at a certain point that occasionally causes the encounter to reset. In the Al'ar battle, the problem is a bit more insidious. Phase 2 Al'ar randomly charges a player, and if it happens to be one of the lightly armored ones then it kills them outright even at full life.

Blizzard Poster/ Lead Encounter Designer Daelo has announced that two (simple) hot-fixes have been implemented to address these problems in the raids.

Hot fixes:

• During Phase 2 of the Lady Vashj encounter in Serpentshrine Cavern, there was a significant chance that a Coilfang Strider could spawn at a particular point that would cause the creature to evade. The Strider evading would then reset the entire encounter prematurely. We've made a modification to the spawn point that should prevent this behavior.
• During Phase 2 of the Al'ar encounter in Tempest Keep, Al'ar occasionally charges at a random player. The damage dealt by the Charge was severe enough to immediately kill a lightly armored target even if the player was at full health. We've reduced the damage done by this Charge ability.

That said, it looks like people will start running more raids with impunity. While I agree the Lady Vashj problem had to be fixed, the Al'ar charge was pretty cool. It really added a level of unpredictability to the raid. Be sure to keep checking for more updates on World of Warcraft.