Ghostcrawler stopped by the beta mage forums the other day in order to address the issue of resists and immunities on the part of certain bosses. The problem here is that are sometimes special bosses in one raid instance or another that require players to temporarily put aside all the normal gear they've been working so hard to get and put on special gear just for that fight. For example if the boss is a fire elemental, then perhaps they all have to get a separate set of gear with fire resistance on it, and put it on when they get to that boss -- without it they don't have a chance of success. For other boss fights, they may find that the boss is immune to one type of damage or another, and this requires them to respec to a different talent build, or else play a supportive role whereas before they might have been the star damage dealer.

There are clear reasons why many players don't like these mechanics. Who wants to go to all the trouble of collecting a whole set of gear that you use only for one fight? Who wants to let that gear take up all that bag and bank space? Who wants to be shut out of their favorite talent build or sit somewhat on the sidelines just because the bosses they're fighting are immune to their prefered style of damage?

So Ghostcrawler comes in with the developer's logic on this issue: They don't want the raid instance to be a simple thing where you just move from one boss to the next boss, to the next, and so on. They want to break it up a bit so that different bosses require not only different strategies, but different gear, and different abilities, too. This adds a bit of anticipation, of having to get ready for the challenge rather than just stumbling into it and accidentally getting it right on the third or fourth try.

If you haven't heard yet, that 1% chance to miss with spells that has always been in place that you couldn't overcome with Hit on your gear, no matter how much you had? Kalgan confirms that it is gone. Gone like the wind! As of Wrath, at least. Are you excited? I'm excited.

In all seriousness, I find this to be a fantastic change. That 1% chance to miss no matter what you did was always annoying to me, and it was one of those random factors that could ruin your day no matter how good of a player you are and how good your gear is, both in PvE and PvP. That resisted Fear or Frost Nova in a pinch shouldn't happen anymore, if you gear properly.

Rogues? This helps you guys, too. Since your hit rating applies to both melee and spells, your poisons will benefit from +Hit, and you can reach that point where your poisons are never resisted. Exciting? Exciting!

The music drives me nuts (is it actually from a Lemmings game?), but the video is pretty funny-- somebody took 40 green-haired gnomes lemmings all the way into Undercity. They don't list a body count, but I'd imagine it's pretty high-- that spider rips right through them.

Gnome raids are an old tradition by now, but if you've never done one, this is a pretty good approximation of exactly what it's like-- lots of gnomes dying, a huge swarm of little legs and feet. The fire festival part was especially cool, but it's too bad a raid like this can't do anything really amazing-- I doubt they'd ever consider this, but how cool would it be if Blizzard implemented some lower level raids? Something that required like 60 level ones or 40 level 20s would be perfect for fun guilds like this one.

[ via LJ ]