Patch 10.96 will be coming out the door today at approximately 12 PM (Noon) US Central Time. This will be the launch of the Beta for the Hard Mode Raids. The official launch of the Hard Mode Raids will be on July 16th at 12 PM (Noon) US Central Time.
You can enter the Hard Mode Beta through the Guild City door inside of Highsteppe, this means to enter the Normal Mode Raids, you can still queue up via the social tab, or enter through the door in the cave near the Obnobi camp in the Flooded Rainforest. As with the Normal mode Beta, you will receive no loot drops. There is a thread for feedback for the Beta here :
Note: When leaving the Hard Mode Raid Beta via the portal into Highsteppe you will end up outside of Highsteppe and need to use âReturn to Graveyardâ to be placed back inside town. This is a side effect of not saving any of the progress from the Beta.
Changes from Normal to Hard mode include increased difficulty on the bosses, along with a few new mechanics ensuring that raid parties entering the instance are in for a fight that has very small room for errors, and should give challenging game play options for the most veteran of players.
We have also put in a patch for the Shaman totems that should stop them from force re-spawning when they are being held or in air while being thrown.
There will be a blog post coming next week outlining our plans and timeline for the future content we have begun working on and are excited to share it with the community.
I tested it last night and did not loose anything with PVP on inside of Highsteppe, if you try exiting through the door going to the Flooded Rainforest though you probably will.
Were looking for feedback on the community on this. We tried making the hardmode pretty hard for the veteran players and making the normal mode accessible for the average players. So we ended up on the side of really hard for tuning on these raids. So once we get some feedback we will make adjustments as necessary.
We did not have time to get this fixed before todayâs patch, but plan on having a patch for it on or before the 16th
As for the boss and adds resetting on Boss 4. It looks like there is a sort of hole in the navigation map for monsters. There is an area between the fountain and where the boss spawns where if you walk near it, the monsters think they canât reach you, so they reset. Weâll hopefully get a fix for it pushed out tomorrow. For now, if you avoid that area, that should stop them from resetting.
2nd boss is impossible for groups who are fine beating +2 gear shards and all other raid bosses, including the endboss, even if they get assisted by a couple people in +3-4 gear (we had around half the raid overgeared, the rest fairly new players, no chance, no matter if we followed intended mechanics or âshortcutsâ). Has been noted in the beta, but no one cared. No big deal since noone missing out on that boss needs his loot, but still. (I am talking about normal, donât care much about hm this is likely for the chosen few anyway, have fun âŚ).
We will definitly try that, the boss is real easy, but that costed alot of nervesâŚ
âŚ).