What's going on at Blizzard?

Xarpolis

Life's a Dream
14,106
15,611
Is wow difficulty hard though? Normal and heroic modes are already pretty beatable even in the half ass gear we have available to us. Mythic is a bit of a challenge but that is still more of a gearing up dedication gear check difficulty overall.
The entirety of WoW's raiding content in 1.0 wasn't hard. But a few key fights were, and they made people work hard. The earliest being probably Onyxia. Between the hatchlings spawning and her tail whip and deep breaths, you really had to figure it out.
Molten Core was fairly easy as well. There were a few small learning curves, but you could readily get to Ragnaros without too much trouble. Learning him was difficult, though.

Also, figuring out the very first fight in Blackwing's Lair was pretty rough. Very steep learning curve, but the mechanics themselves were easy. The 2nd fight of BWL was a big gear check. Your DPS had to be substantial to beat Vael's death timer.

A lot of AQ40 was easy though. But a lot wasn't. The twin emps were incredibly difficult. Getting your raid force to understand swapping from one side to the other, while not pulling the emps together at the same time. Also, C'Thun was ruthless. You had to figure out the stomach phase, dealing with all of the tenticles, killing EVERYTHING, and still attacking C'Thun during the allotted time that he wasn't under a shell. This fight took so much practice. Viscidus was also a pretty big gear check. He was rough.

Then you get into Naxxramus. Every wing was hard, but Patchwerk was hands down the largest gear check to date. You HAD to clear as much of the other wings as possible before even attempting him. If your warriors weren't in 4 piece t3, good luck.
Thaddius killed SO MANY people. They were too stupid to swap sides. 4 Horsemen were rough. Loatheb was was hard, but I think Heigan's "DDR" style run through the ooze was even harder for people to learn. Spider wing was kids shit.
Then you get to Sapphirion. Ouch, she was nasty. And Kel'Thuzad himself. Ugh. When it came to skill, WoW's raids had EQ beat hands down. YES, they eazy moded the shit out of everything. You all get trophies. But it WAS ruthless.
 
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Reca

Trakanon Raider
19
2
Um given I have already gone in and killed 2 bosses in a pug this weekend in half ass level up gear I am not sure what part of this you feel to be totally false. I went in with half ass gear with no consumables in a random pug with no voice chat and managed success against the two bosses I had time to fight. I am pretty sure an actual guild run with consumables and a bare amount of coordination can do these fights. Right now the biggest hindrance is basic gearing and most people are a bit under geared or non optimally geared but that is all poopsock difficulty to get that sorted out not actual raid difficulty.

I tend to agree, the only thing remotely challenging thus far in the raid scene is Xavius. I still see a lot of people not prioritizing their stats (Giving up stats for ilvl), not fully enchanting/geming their gear, not using consumables. What's really frustrating is that in our raid core, we don't have a single person with a legendary item yet. When doing these flex raids having just one person dogging it in heroic makes a significant impact, the mechanics themselves are straight forward.
 

ZyyzYzzy

RIP USA
<Banned>
25,295
48,789
I tend to agree, the only thing remotely challenging thus far in the raid scene is Xavius. I still see a lot of people not prioritizing their stats (Giving up stats for ilvl), not fully enchanting/geming their gear, not using consumables. What's really frustrating is that in our raid core, we don't have a single person with a legendary item yet. When doing these flex raids having just one person dogging it in heroic makes a significant impact, the mechanics themselves are straight forward.
There are mechanics that people need to do. What mechanics were there in EQ prior to like OOW that actually required something other than dodge ae or tank adds/heal offtank?
 

Khane

Got something right about marriage
19,823
13,338
I haven't enchanted any of my gear and am only using the cheapo gems at this point because my raid group is only doing normal right now and it's not needed. Feels like a waste of money flasking/fooding/enchanting for fights it isn't needed for.
 
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ZyyzYzzy

RIP USA
<Banned>
25,295
48,789
I haven't enchanted any of my gear and am only using the cheapo gems at this point because my raid group is only doing normal right now and it's not needed. Feels like a waste of money flasking/fooding/enchanting for fights it isn't needed for.
Me too. Finally broke down and wasted 1k on ring enchants for more vers for mythic+ though.
 

skrala

Silver Knight of the Realm
316
53
There are mechanics that people need to do. What mechanics were there in EQ prior to like OOW that actually required something other than dodge ae or tank adds/heal offtank?

As a rogue I had to stand in one spot and press a button every 10 seconds. How much harder do you want it to be without requiring Korean-level APMs?
 

ZyyzYzzy

RIP USA
<Banned>
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As a rogue I had to stand in one spot and press a button every 10 seconds. How much harder do you want it to be without requiring Korean-level APMs?
Being a rogue in EQ was the worst. We couldn't afk and still do amazing dps. Such BS, cough cough monks.
 

Reca

Trakanon Raider
19
2
There are mechanics that people need to do. What mechanics were there in EQ prior to like OOW that actually required something other than dodge ae or tank adds/heal offtank?

I should clarify myself, EQ raids are easy (less the ones that were not intended to be beatable, AoW, Emperor, Rathe Council). In my opinion WoW has always been more difficult than EQ. I was just more or less implying that current WoW is easy (Mind you mythic raiding is not currently out yet).

Everquest you could always rely on the top 10 percentile in your raid comp to carry you to victory in almost all circumstances. In WoW you need to rely on essentially 85-90% of your raid composition - at least on mythic difficulty.
 

Nirgon

YOU HAVE NO POWER HERE
12,697
19,570
EQ was beaten by single pulling and CH chains.

Wall dodging aoes in ToV was a good don't stand in the fire mechanic.


I think Yogg was harder than if a geared team was ready for AoW tbh. Except for the whole tons of people crashed on engages thing in EQ lawls.
 

ZyyzYzzy

RIP USA
<Banned>
25,295
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EQ was beaten by single pulling and CH chains.

Wall dodging aoes in ToV was a good don't stand in the fire mechanic.


I think Yogg was harder than if a geared team was ready for AoW tbh. Except for the whole tons of people crashed on engages thing in EQ lawls.
Heh bugs were the hardest mechanics. I remember the dragon in PoV (maybe) after a patch had its AE bugged and it would just translocate you to bind. Was interesting...
 

Nirgon

YOU HAVE NO POWER HERE
12,697
19,570
The server vs client HP update is what made AoW and others so ridiculous. You could take a few rounds and heals and still have enough HP to survive but because of all the rigamaraw going on between the two it'd just knock you unconscious and pain and suffering your ass.

Hope that makes some sense. It was the worst.
 

Merrith

Golden Baronet of the Realm
18,088
6,906
The entirety of WoW's raiding content in 1.0 wasn't hard. But a few key fights were, and they made people work hard. The earliest being probably Onyxia. Between the hatchlings spawning and her tail whip and deep breaths, you really had to figure it out.
Molten Core was fairly easy as well. There were a few small learning curves, but you could readily get to Ragnaros without too much trouble. Learning him was difficult, though.

Also, figuring out the very first fight in Blackwing's Lair was pretty rough. Very steep learning curve, but the mechanics themselves were easy. The 2nd fight of BWL was a big gear check. Your DPS had to be substantial to beat Vael's death timer.

A lot of AQ40 was easy though. But a lot wasn't. The twin emps were incredibly difficult. Getting your raid force to understand swapping from one side to the other, while not pulling the emps together at the same time. Also, C'Thun was ruthless. You had to figure out the stomach phase, dealing with all of the tenticles, killing EVERYTHING, and still attacking C'Thun during the allotted time that he wasn't under a shell. This fight took so much practice. Viscidus was also a pretty big gear check. He was rough.

Then you get into Naxxramus. Every wing was hard, but Patchwerk was hands down the largest gear check to date. You HAD to clear as much of the other wings as possible before even attempting him. If your warriors weren't in 4 piece t3, good luck.
Thaddius killed SO MANY people. They were too stupid to swap sides. 4 Horsemen were rough. Loatheb was was hard, but I think Heigan's "DDR" style run through the ooze was even harder for people to learn. Spider wing was kids shit.
Then you get to Sapphirion. Ouch, she was nasty. And Kel'Thuzad himself. Ugh. When it came to skill, WoW's raids had EQ beat hands down. YES, they eazy moded the shit out of everything. You all get trophies. But it WAS ruthless.

I didn't remember Patchwerk being as big of a gear check for us, nor did we clear all THAT much before him. Was mainly just the healers learning how to not be shit, and heal big spikes. I'm trying to remember the exact order we cleared through Naxx 40, at most before Patchwerk we did Spider wing (agreed it was kids shit), Noth, and Instructor. Perhaps Heigan before Patchwerk as well, but I'm not even sure we did that before him.

Thaddius lol...we had so many issues being on one of the older servers with lag during primetime every night we were learning him. We would end up pushing raid time back a few hours for Thaddius attempts to help.

I don't remember the DDR for Heigan being as big an issue as people dying in the room he would randomly teleport 3 random people into with the damn eye stalks that would damage/snare you. Certain classes definitely were at a disadvantage getting out of there alive back into the main room, especially if no healer got ported in with you.

Our strat for Loatheb was interesting, guilds were burning so many materials on shadow pots and shit we decided to not use anything on learning attempts until we could get the healing down and survive long enough that we knew the healing/dps would be good enough if we just added the pots/bandages/etc to survive long enough to kill it the rest of the way. Once we finally started using shit to prolong/survive the fight, killed him on the 4th attempt. The saddest thing I remember about Loatheb mats was one other Alliance guild on our server not knowing they could just run GY in SM for grave moss.
 

Malakriss

Golden Baronet of the Realm
12,336
11,727
Patchwerk was a gear check, Merrith. A ranged slot gear check for the main tank who just upgraded to a gun which was only at 180 skill and he freakin' missed the pull shot resulting in the most hilarious raid wipe ever.
 
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Tenks

Bronze Knight of the Realm
14,163
606
Yeah PW was a simple DPS burn. The only mechanic involved was I think you needed 3 or 4 off-tanks to taunt PW when the main tank got a stacking debuff too high. Or maybe it was a timed thing because PW had a gib mechanic. I don't really remember other than I had to taunt for my MT.

And Thaddius sucked because our most geared resto druid was Brazilian and he was kind of retarded and kind of laggy. He'd account for at least 2 wipes a night on him.

Ragnaros was also a bit of a gear check fight as well. People didn't really understand that so tons of classes were stacking fire res but in reality if you were giving up too much DPS for FR it was actually a hinderance to the fight. Ascent kind of showed that when they stripped off a ton of their FR to finally get him down. We got him down a few weeks after them after talking to them about what they did differently. Ascent was also chain crashing our MC instance because they were using AV banners for +life% on Ragnaros and each and every time it would crash the instance -- but they kept doing it for some reason.
 

goishen

Macho Ma'am
3,567
14,612
Also, figuring out the very first fight in Blackwing's Lair was pretty rough. Very steep learning curve, but the mechanics themselves were easy. The 2nd fight of BWL was a big gear check. Your DPS had to be substantial to beat Vael's death timer.


Second fight of BWL was a lot more than a gearcheck. It was a tank's fight, plain and simple. Tank not in the correct place? Wipe. Tank doesn't transition properly, when all other fights are loose with transitions, wipe. Tank loses aggro for even two seconds, possible wipe. It taught tanks how to... Well, tank.

Our guild alliance had him like two weeks into it with DPS. After two months we finally got him down. And then proceeded to mop up the three (I think?) bosses following him.
 

Tenks

Bronze Knight of the Realm
14,163
606
Second fight of BWL was a lot more than a gearcheck. It was a tank's fight, plain and simple. Tank not in the correct place? Wipe. Tank doesn't transition properly, when all other fights are loose with transitions, wipe. Tank loses aggro for even two seconds, possible wipe. It taught tanks how to... Well, tank.

Our guild alliance had him like two weeks into it with DPS. After two months we finally got him down. And then proceeded to mop up the three (I think?) bosses following him.

DPS also had to pay attention to when they got the debuff to go to the dedicated "die here" zone. Eventually add-ons would just whisper you when you got it which made it much, much easier. I think my guild actually killed him the first night BWL opened. Or at least I know we killed him in the same run we first killed the 1st boss.
 

Cad

<Bronze Donator>
24,487
45,378
Yeah PW was a simple DPS burn. The only mechanic involved was I think you needed 3 or 4 off-tanks to taunt PW when the main tank got a stacking debuff too high. Or maybe it was a timed thing because PW had a gib mechanic. I don't really remember other than I had to taunt for my MT.

And Thaddius sucked because our most geared resto druid was Brazilian and he was kind of retarded and kind of laggy. He'd account for at least 2 wipes a night on him.

Ragnaros was also a bit of a gear check fight as well. People didn't really understand that so tons of classes were stacking fire res but in reality if you were giving up too much DPS for FR it was actually a hinderance to the fight. Ascent kind of showed that when they stripped off a ton of their FR to finally get him down. We got him down a few weeks after them after talking to them about what they did differently. Ascent was also chain crashing our MC instance because they were using AV banners for +life% on Ragnaros and each and every time it would crash the instance -- but they kept doing it for some reason.

We never used FR gear for Rag, maybe 1 or 2 pieces only. If DPS dropped enough to where you had trouble with killing the sons then things went to shit. During the main phases it was kind of a joke.
 

Izo

Tranny Chaser
18,488
21,283
Standing in a digital line for pixels.
I remember when WoW announced instanced dungeons and raids and the EQ crowd was basically calling the game training wheels. Now I don't think anyone in their right mind would play a non-instanced MMO.
If they don't want profit, sure.