40 man vanilla raids = LFR difficulty?

[Morbownz]

No it is not true. Most of MC fights were fairly simple once you understood them but they still relied on people not to fucking up. Most fights had something that fell to one class to get right like using decurse or tranq shot. You could even have Ragnaros on farm and still wipe if you messed it up, like poor raid positioning in P1 or poor control of the sons in P2 which could lead to not making the timer before the next wave of sons.

[Deleted]

No it is not true. Most of MC fights were fairly simple once you understood them but they still relied on people not to fucking up. Most fights had something that fell to one class to get right like using decurse or tranq shot. You could even have Ragnaros on farm and still wipe if you messed it up, like poor raid positioning in P1 or poor control of the sons in P2 which could lead to not making the timer before the next wave of sons.

ALMOST (not all) every fight in classic, allowed for people fucking up. Can't deal with the bomb? Stand outside the raid. Heal too braindead to do the door-dance on Firemaw? Off to ranged dps healing you go. The literally ONLY group which wiped the raid by fucking up, were the tanks, and not even them most of the time. There was no such thing as an enrage timer. There were barely any mechanics which required tank-switches, such things are now standard on EVERY boss.

Poor raid positioning? What does that have to do with personal skill? Its the raidleads responsibility to get the raid to move to the correct position. If someone is too stupid to follow THAT GUY, then its his own fault, but most wipes that had to do with raid positioning were TACTICAL mistakes, which had nothing to do with personal failing. If the raid is ordered to move somewhere, and that move happens to be garbage, that is an indicator of the raidlead being an idiot, not the raiders having no skill.

Tranquilizing Shot is ONE BUTTON, and it was learned by a drop on the guy before the boss where it was required! (Yes I know its required for more, but we talk about MC here, and even on guys like Chrom or Flamegore it was not more than pressing ONE button!) WHAT DOES USING THAT BUTTON HAVE TO DO WITH SKILL? Back then hunters had two buttons that mattered: Arcane Shot and Spacebar, to keep their character from afking.

Ofc you could fall to Raggi if you "messed up". You can also fall to LFR Immerseus if you "mess up". What kind of argument is that?

[Deleted]

BWL AQ And NAXX was fucking epic...

[Deleted]

Entry level raids were very easy mechanics wise. Comparable to current LFR. It's still possible to wipe there and there are/were somewhat challenging encounters there (Geddon, Ragnaros vs Garalon, Durumu, Lei-Shen etc.). But overall if people had basic grasp of what's going on it was piece of cake.

Problems started in Tier 2. People got out of relatively easy MC and got massive "ice bucket challenge" poured onto their heads with BWL first boss. Suddenly you can't kill the boss with 20 people afk. You have to coordinate the raid, deal with multiple things at once and pay attention to individual responsibility.

So i'd say T1 was on par with today LFR. T2, T2.5 and T3 were above this. Couldn't compare these to any of today's raids because the difficulty came from different sources than today. Back then the hard part was resist gear grinds, consumable grinds, lengthy attunement grinds and getting together 40-person roster composed of correct classes. I still dread the naxxramas boss that required your raid to have 8 prot warriors. Might sound trivial but good luck finding 5-10 GEARED raiders in matter of like 2-3 weeks. Especially the GEARED part was horrible. Gearing a character to T3-worthy level wasn't a piece of cake with 2-3 items per boss for 40 people. Now you just carry new guild member through SOO HC and he's 565 ilvl after one or two runs with decent RNG.

Thank god those are now things of the past. Challenge is where it's supposed to be - in actual boss fight. Not in mundane grindy tasks throwing logs under your feet to slow you down.

[Unholyground]

It is going to be easy enough that everone wbo wants the mount will get it.

[Maltah]

We got better. The overall skill of players has improved over the past 10 years since MC. Although it did take a lot of top guilds months to bring down bosses instead of hours. Then again there wasn't as much raid testing so people were unfamiliar with the fights, and blocks were specifically put in place by Blizzard to slow down progression.

Kiting and holding aggro on multiple dragon adds in Razorgore wasn't what I would call "easy" for hunters. It wasn't an ability inherent to the class like tranq shot, and took some time to learn how to do it properly. I think in vanilla we took it for granted that all hunters could do it, but considering what I've seen from LFR hunters, I'd be shocked if newer players ever had to think about 360 jump shots for PvE. Chain trapping and properly pulling trash (back when hunters used to pull trash) was considered a skill. Then again maybe we were just really really impressed with ourselves.

Other than that, I would agree that most vanilla fights were pretty basic from a DPS stand point. I recall healers having to juggle down ranking healing spells, and mana conservation was a real thing.

But if we're comparing just MC to LFR... they didn't call it Molten Bore for nothing.

[Deleted]

Entry level raids were very easy mechanics wise. Comparable to current LFR. It's still possible to wipe there and there are/were somewhat challenging encounters there (Geddon, Ragnaros vs Garalon, Durumu, Lei-Shen etc.). But overall if people had basic grasp of what's going on it was piece of cake.

Problems started in Tier 2. People got out of relatively easy MC and got massive "ice bucket challenge" poured onto their heads with BWL first boss. Suddenly you can't kill the boss with 20 people afk. You have to coordinate the raid, deal with multiple things at once and pay attention to individual responsibility.

This.

Mechanics-wise, Molten Core was incredibly easy. Anyone who says otherwise probably never played vanilla in the first place, or is simply glorifying stuff to fulfill whatever ego-boost he needs, rationalizing his 4-hour single-spell spam as "l33t skill".
There is a reason Baron Geddon is ALWAYS mentioned whenever something refers to MC: Because its the only boss in the entire raid, which has some form of personal-responsability mechanic.

Thank god those are now things of the past. Challenge is where it's supposed to be - in actual boss fight. Not in mundane grindy tasks throwing logs under your feet to slow you down.

Flipside of that coin however, is a certain degree of boredom, as there is not really anything going on, after the raids. Repetitive tasks are boring, yes, but they made the moment of the actual victory so much sweeter.

[Morbownz]

ALMOST (not all) every fight in classic, allowed for people fucking up. Can't deal with the bomb? Stand outside the raid. Heal too braindead to do the door-dance on Firemaw? Off to ranged dps healing you go. The literally ONLY group which wiped the raid by fucking up, were the tanks, and not even them most of the time. There was no such thing as an enrage timer. There were barely any mechanics which required tank-switches, such things are now standard on EVERY boss.

Nearly every fight in MC had a mechanic that could not be ignored. You had to do it correctly or you wouldn't get past it. Wether it was removing debuffs from healers on the first boss of MC, or sheeping the correct adds on Domo at the right time to avoid spell reflect or even decursing the magic damage debuff or handling the teleports on Shazzrah. They had to be done right. Sure, you could have a few fuck ups but the more fuck ups the raid makes
the harder the fight became on everyone else.
Enrage timers were known as Soft enrage timers, which meant the timer was on your raid not the boss... example, could you handle another wave of sons on Ragnaros with all that mana drainage whilst having less CC/DPS? no? Solution? Kill Ragnaros before second wave of adds. Did you have the DPS left to kill Vael when you were down to your last tank? No? Solution? kill him before you run out of tanks.

Poor raid positioning? What does that have to do with personal skill? Its the raidleads responsibility to get the raid to move to the correct position. If someone is too stupid to follow THAT GUY, then its his own fault, but most wipes that had to do with raid positioning were TACTICAL mistakes, which had nothing to do with personal failing. If the raid is ordered to move somewhere, and that move happens to be garbage, that is an indicator of the raidlead being an idiot, not the raiders having no skill.

Ragnaros had a huge AOE Knockback that would mess up positioning, I doubt there was many raids where the fight ended with everyone literally on the exact spot they were assigned by the Raid leader. So then it falls to the player. I also consider good positioning for a raider skillful, it can wield great results for your DPS when you position yourself perfectly and restrict the amount of movement needed during phases.
Most of the fights that had a positioning requirement also had movement too. This is where it falls to the individual. C'thun for example. You could allocate the positioning but it was down to the raider to be in the right place at the right time.

Tranquilizing Shot is ONE BUTTON, and it was learned by a drop on the guy before the boss where it was required! (Yes I know its required for more, but we talk about MC here, and even on guys like Chrom or Flamegore it was not more than pressing ONE button!) WHAT DOES USING THAT BUTTON HAVE TO DO WITH SKILL? Back then hunters had two buttons that mattered: Arcane Shot and Spacebar, to keep their character from afking.

Tranq had a CD, which meant it became part of a rotation between each hunter in the raid and since you probably weren't Hit capped starting out MC it could be resisted which meant back up was needed, and more communication was required. Arcane shot and spacebar? sounds like your inventing stuff to prove a point. Hunters had a rotation consisting of aimed shot, multishot and depending on your weapon speed auto-shot clipping. Since most hunters that knew what they were doing spec'd marksmen in MC I'd say this affected a wide range of players.

Ofc you could fall to Raggi if you "messed up". You can also fall to LFR Immerseus if you "mess up". What kind of argument is that?

You have to think outside the box here, stay with me. Do you think Ragnaros has wiped more farming raids than LFR immerseus? That's my arguement.
MC was harder than LFR for the exact reason that Garrosh has probably wiped more raids in LFR than any other boss... it requires some kind of co-ordination, just like the last guy in ToT LFR did.

[Deleted]

Back then hunters had two buttons that mattered: Arcane Shot and Spacebar, to keep their character from afking.

They also had feign death to drink water !

edit :
To the guy above me, do you realy think that spaming the decursive maccro need skill ?
Come on, you were a skilled healer if you knew how to configure decursive so he would dispell yoursell and other healer first !

Next you are gonna say that pressing one macro like hunter did during BC was a skilled rotation too.

[Kraenen]

Of course, 'watching your aggro' amounted to waiting for 5 sunders, after that all you could to was ask youself the question 'Is the boss attacking me?', if the answer was yes, you had aggro.
I always found the notion of aggro management absurd in Vanilla and TBC since the game provided absolutely no tools for determining how much threat anyone had or was generating. Even the threat meter addons that existed back then were mostly based on educated guesses because there was no way for the client to access the threat tables.

No not really. You didn't play vanilla, but even past the five sunders a high dps could pull aggro if he didn't throttle it properly. It was like a sixth sense you had which now you no longer need

[Morbownz]

To the guy above me, do you realy think that spaming the decursive maccro need skill ?
Come on, you were a skilled healer if you knew how to configure decursive so he would dispell yoursell and other healer first !

Next you are gonna say that pressing one macro like hunter did during BC was a skilled rotation too.

No, I am not saying decursive required skill. You and the guy that originally quoted me are saying that just to prove your point. I am saying these mechanics could not be avoided. You see? how simple was that to understand?

Back on the topic, LFR and MC were designed for different audiences. LFR is the tourist mode of raiding, MC was a progression instance. At the time MC required alot more from the average player to complete than LFR does today. Any of the encounters in LFR notorious for going wrong and causing wipes are usually the encounters that require some co-ordination.

Nope I wont be discussing a one button macro for Hunters, I will be sticking to the subject rather than making stupid claims that have absolutely nothing to do with the topic at hand just to prove an entirely different point that nobody was discussing in the first place.

[Deleted]

No not really. You didn't play vanilla, but even past the five sunders a high dps could pull aggro if he didn't throttle it properly. It was like a sixth sense you had which now you no longer need

No I most certainly did play vanilla. I didn't say that dps couldn't pull aggro, what I'm saying is that managing it was purely a matter of guesswork, because the game gave you absolutely no indication on where you were on the threat list(other than some mechanics that targeted the person who was first or second on the list).

[TheWorkingTitle]

Some people in general discussion said that 40 man vanilla raids had the same difficulty as LFR. Is this true?!

I believe it was a PITA to get attuned, but were the raids/mechanics on a LFR level or were those people full of it?

If you gave the average LFR'er a Vanilla WoW version of their character, took away their addons, and put them into a Classic Raid, they'd wipe repeatedly.

Healers having to down-rank their spells and Ranged DPS having to manage their mana as well? DPS needing patience and awareness to avoid pulling aggro throughout a whole fight? Coordinating group compositions to benefit the most from certain class' auras? Critical target switching phases? Raids having to avoid insta-death mechanics? Et cetera, et cetera.

Imagine a LFR group trying to coordinate Razorgore's fight. Let alone the trash leading up to Twin Emperors or any fight in Naxx 40. Wipe fest even more than current day LFR.

[mokruul]

Naxx40 was the pinnacle of raiding imo. The Vanilla raids were just as easy as LFR mostly because they lacked Mechanics. You pretty much ran in and nuked everything.

[Marema]

LFR is harder than vanilla raids. Seriously.

[Deleted]

Nearly every fight in MC had a mechanic that could not be ignored. You had to do it correctly or you wouldn't get past it. Wether it was removing debuffs from healers on the first boss of MC, or sheeping the correct adds on Domo at the right time to avoid spell reflect or even decursing the magic damage debuff or handling the teleports on Shazzrah. They had to be done right. Sure, you could have a few fuck ups but the more fuck ups the raid makes the harder the fight became on everyone else.

The same is true for LFR. Stand in Garroshs Annihilate, and you get killed. If you stay in front of Horridon as a DPS/Heal, you are in trouble. Most of the MC mechanics however, concern only a very small number of people (eg. Lucifron: I could not care less what's going on as a Warlock or Hunter...as long as the guys with decursive did their job). If a Warlock on Thok doesn't know how and where to kite, the raid is in deep sh**.

Enrage timers were known as Soft enrage timers, which meant the timer was on your raid not the boss... example, could you handle another wave of sons on Ragnaros with all that mana drainage whilst having less CC/DPS? no? Solution? Kill Ragnaros before second wave of adds. Did you have the DPS left to kill Vael when you were down to your last tank? No? Solution? kill him before you run out of tanks.

And where exactly was the soft enrage on Lucifron? On Magmadar? On Gehennas? On Garr? On Shazz? On Majordomo? On Golemagg? On Harbinger? And Healer mana on Raggi? Please...maybe in Dungeon blues. As soon as our healers had T1, they could have done Raggi all day long. The Mana-Burn was completely irrelevant btw., as it was limited range. So with a bit of movement, heals could avoid it completely.

Ragnaros had a huge AOE Knockback that would mess up positioning, I doubt there was many raids where the fight ended with everyone literally on the exact spot they were assigned by the Raid leader. So then it falls to the player. I also consider good positioning for a raider skillful, it can wield great results for your DPS when you position yourself perfectly and restrict the amount of movement needed during phases.

Well, then our raid apparently was the high elite, because incredibly unlikely as that may sound, we actually managed to RUN BACK TO THE PLACE WHERE WE STARTED, AFTER A KNOCKBACK! Ohhhhhhhhh! So Skill! Very L33t! Much Paragon!

http://i.imgur.com/VCqdxeo.jpg

Btw. have you been to Raggis chamber? There is a Rock, if you stand before it, you get knocked back 3 meters, and still land within casting range. Please tell me, what elite, super secret skill is required, to plant ones butt next to a rock the size of a house?

Most of the fights that had a positioning requirement also had movement too. This is where it falls to the individual. C'thun for example. You could allocate the positioning but it was down to the raider to be in the right place at the right time.

If by "movement" you mean "walk out of the fire" (Magmadar), "walk out of the raid" (Geddon) and "walk back to where you stood" (Raggi), then you are correct.

And we are not talking about C'Thun. We are comparing LFR and MC. C'Thun was one of the most difficult fights of all times, not because vanilla was "de sh*t man!" but because it was ridiculously so overtuned to the point where it actually was MATHEMATICALLY IMPOSSIBLE to beat the encounter until it got patched. Even after the fix, C'Thun was not correctly tuned. Oh, so a tactical nuke is a more powerful weapon than a water pistol? WHO WOULD HAVE KNOWN? ^^

Tranq had a CD, which meant it became part of a rotation between each hunter in the raid and since you probably weren't Hit capped starting out MC it could be resisted which meant back up was needed, and more communication was required. Arcane shot and spacebar? sounds like your inventing stuff to prove a point. Hunters had a rotation consisting of aimed shot, multishot and depending on your weapon speed auto-shot clipping. Since most hunters that knew what they were doing spec'd marksmen in MC I'd say this affected a wide range of players.

Tranquilizing Shot was on a 6 second cooldown. Magmadar used Frenzy once every 15-20 seconds. There are somewhere between 3-6 hunters in a 40 man raid, minimum. Would you like to add something to these numbers?

Except at some point hunters even began skipping Aimed shot, when they realized the DPS gain was minimum. Multishot I give you. What you conveniently left out here: These abilities were not used as a "rotation" in nowadays sense of the word. They were simply fired whenever ready, as the class not even had a limiting energy mechanic (with hunters using mana). It was pure faceroll mode, and it was the same with almost every single class.

You have to think outside the box here, stay with me. Do you think Ragnaros has wiped more farming raids than LFR immerseus? That's my arguement.
MC was harder than LFR for the exact reason that Garrosh has probably wiped more raids in LFR than any other boss... it requires some kind of co-ordination, just like the last guy in ToT LFR did.

No, really? Less people got to Ragnaros? Wow! That surely is indicative of a much higher skill requirement, and has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with the fact, that LFR can be reached with an automated search tool used by almost 7 million people, whereas Ragnaros required you to gather 40 people in an organized fashion, on your own, limited to people from your realm.

Here is a little experiment for you: Try to get 40 guys, each with a cup of tea in the same room, and tell them to take a sip, all at the same time. Boarding your Train of thought, from that we can logically deduce, that drinking a cup of tea is WAY MORE DIFFICULT than doing LFR *facepalm*

Here is a little out of the box thinking for you: What percentage of LFR raids broke up on Thok/Siegecrafter/Garrosh, and what percentage of raids who made it to Raggi downed him?

[Deleted]

Tranquilizing Shot was on a 6 second cooldown. Magmadar used Frenzy once every 15-20 seconds. There are somewhere between 3-6 hunters in a 40 man raid, minimum. Would you like to add something to these numbers?

It wasn't reduced to 6 seconds until patch 3.0.8, in Vanilla it was 20 seconds if I'm not mistaken and you really did need to set up a tranq rotation for Magmadar.

[Barnabas]

No the average LFR group would wipe over again on Onyxia. The afk guy would get feared into the whelps and it'd be over.

[Hexian]

And we are not talking about C'Thun. We are comparing LFR and MC. C'Thun was one of the most difficult fights of all times, not because vanilla was "de sh*t man!" but because it was ridiculously so overtuned to the point where it actually was MATHEMATICALLY IMPOSSIBLE to beat the encounter until it got patched. Even after the fix, C'Thun was not correctly tuned. Oh, so a tactical nuke is a more powerful weapon than a water pistol? WHO WOULD HAVE KNOWN? ^^

So then why is this thread titled all 40 man vanilla raids = LFR difficulty??

It's hilarious the only argument vanilla haters have is to compare the first ever raid Blizz puts out to LFR. But hey let's forget the other four raids that were in vanilla. More than any other expansion btw.

- - - Updated - - -

LFR is harder than vanilla raids. Seriously.

Great argument, well thought out.

[narcissusdark]

Vanilla mechanic wise was a shit-ton easier than even LFR. Only "hard" part of Vanilla was that it took longer to get everything - attunements, resistance gear, farming crap, even levelling.

With that said, the knowledge base back then was worse, and we didn't have any of the guides or AddOns like DBM/VEM (CT Raid Assist, hooooo!) up to the standard we do now where it basically tells us everything we'd want to know so we can prepare.

lol you talk about how easy the raiding was, but yet, u couldn't do it without addons.. shows how crap you all were... i did the raids without addons... i didn't need any assistance or guides or addons telling me how to play, the reason you did, was because you sucked.
and the cheek of raid leaders and guilds telling me that i HAD to have all these addons or i cant play, lol what a joke. ...

INFRACTED: Please post constructively. -Nobleshield