If Naxx40 released in today's modern raiding enviroment, how long would it last?

[caervek]

You choose Thaddius to be the fight that's a nightmare? Same polarity left, different polarity right. Done. It was one of the easiest mechanics in there.

That was my point, just because the mechanics of a fight are simple/straightforward doesn't make it easy.

Chess is a ridiculously simple game from a mechanics POV...

[Deleted]

Naxx 2.0 was incredibly toned down compared to Naxx 1.0, I wouldn't even consider them the same instance really besides aesthetics, and it was cleared within 24 hours by the top guild, that cleared it back in the day and already had experience doing harder versions of the fight.

That was because all the bosses hit like and were made of paper, it was deliberately undertuned to make a good entry level raid, it was basically the UBRS of WotLK. I remember tanking patchwerk in a dress for the lols :P

It's because how the battle system changed. You were dealing more DPS across the board, more healing (especially AOE) and without the ressources issues you had in vanilla.

As Naxxramas was designed for the old battle system (where you had ressources management to do and weren't able to handle AOE that well), obviously it wasn't much of a challenge with the 3.0 battle system.

[Kittensteaks]

The difficulty of Naxx 40 was mainly getting 40 semi-competent people with the right gear and attunements together and online (people often forget how bad internet was back then, not to mention how buggy the game still was at the time). The pool of people who met the requirements wasn't huge, which led to tons of poaching and other antics.

To answer the question, it would depend on how long it took to get the gear needed for the gear check bosses and not much else, as mechanically Naxx wasn't that complex, though it was more mechanically demanding than other vanilla raids.

[Deleted]

once people have the gear for patchwerk, the tanks for 4HM it would be cleared super easy. mechanicly compared to todays bosses naxx was simple entry bosses are more chalenging mechanicly compared to most classic bossses.

[Steridin]

After reading all comments here, i think there are some who failed to understand that the hardship we had back then wasn't as much about the fight mechanism as today. Like some mentioned, back then, you don't simply look for pugs and go into the raid, there are the basic of endless grinding of gear that involve rare materials and reputations, some even involve the need of helps from your guildies. Throughout the grinding of gear and pots and repair bot (including its rare schematic and levelling engineering), there are also endless gankage if you're on pvp servers and a time consuming of picking up your body, both spirit running and resurrection pending time from multiple death. Of course, we then come to the mechanics of the fight, on top of each raid requiring almost the bis outside of the current raid (including those from previous raids), we also need to farm for certain items and pots specifically to increase the chance of success for the attempts, fire resistance gear for the first 2 tier, then nature resistance and shadow resistance for zg and aq, and then shadow and frost for naxx. Ok, only then we start talking about executing strategies, with limited networking technologies and the less common of game streaming and guides back then (well, if you're raiding, you belong to the elite 10%), even Blizzard admit that it was trial and error back then (talk about the first time attempting pre nerf C thun, the balls-breaking frustration). Oh, so you got the perfect strategies, now we talk about the perfect setup. What? you got elemental boss like Gaar? holy hell rogue poisons wouldn't work, fire mage wouldn't work, etc. What do you do? call out to the 20-60 (i have seen more than that waiting to be invited into the raid) members awaiting to be invited into raid that do frost damage, or good physical damage, etc. After that, what? you got a boss that is not immune to nature elements? oh, remove the guy and bring back the rogue that deal more dps than him when poisons work. Good, you got that part. 8-12 hours past and you finally got past 2nd or third boss as there was too much time spent on trial and error determining the fight mechanics, and your tanks' eyes are bleeding, you need to get your second and fourth rank tanks in. Oh wait, the 4th tank don't have enough gear? ask the other raiding guild if they have sufficient geared tank that isn't locked. They don't? oh screw that, your first or third rank tank need to stay on with like 6 packs of red bulls and twinkles, while ultimatum to the 4th tank to grind for gear at the mean time. The grind, the strats, the roster were just some of the hardships we've had back then, I'm not trying to be elitism but while i made a lot of friends and great memories (ts meltdown from 1% onyx wipe, first time hammer falling, knocking on aq gongs, etc) in my early college days, i think the game has come a long way to be friendlier to a larger spectrum of players. As somebody had said, good players will still strive regardless of which expansions, it's not just about how intelligent the player is, but also how much time he spent in game that allow him to be that bit familiar than others. It's hard to imagine if blizz intro naxx 40 now first time, as the game has come a long way to accommodate the other 90% of the player base. Like someone mentioned, ae heals were a luxury back then, survival skills are mostly for tanks, the viable specs are limited, the grind is real, the roster (especially as a raid leader of a world first pushing team) were a nightmare, and the game was more like a full time job than just a game, thanks to elitism from EQ. However, the community within server were tighter, people log on just to connect with each others online were real before Facebook, ninja loot is a god-forbidden thing and name change was just a dream. While the lore of the game is just retcon feeding on previous success, Blizz had definitely set a high benchmark and standard for the genre, with its story telling and players participation. Lastly, i think blizz should just learn from Square Enix model of FF11 and FF14, an MMO doesn't need to go on forever, sticking to its limited foundation of the whole game systems, such as graphic, but to bravely introduce a different version that continues from previous stories, and build on from there. Let's face it, the game has lasted more than a decades, it has its glorious days, it is time to let it fade into hall of fame of pc gaming, and bring back the innovation and authenticity of the good old Blizzard Entertainment for the next in the franchise. I grew up playing every single Blizz games, the Blizzard Entertainment i knew was a quality oriented developer, bold, creative, and authentic. Blizzard that i know now, is all but a spoilt child feeding off late dad coffer. We had one generation of Warcraft 1/2 heroes such as Durotan and Lothar, then we had the 2nd generation of heroes in Warcraft 3 in Malfurion, Vol'jin, and Thrall. We have been with the 2nd generations for almost 20 years. It is time to just introduce a totally new version of the franchise, with 3rd generation heroes, and of course, new classes idea, better graphic, or even game mechanism. I look at my new born son and thought to myself, his generations is going to be all about becoming with the game, participating in it, such as VR. What are keyboard and mouse to them in 10-20 years time? When someone said there would be at least another 10 years of exciting times for wow, i hear nothing but a last stance struggle of pride and public liaison. I just hope Blizzard can figure out something soon, with the ideas of other franchise running out, the profit of other franchise might be able to allow some leeway for developing a brand new WoW 2.0. Sorry for the wall of text, just my 2 cents.

[Logwyn]

I agree he isn't a great player skillwise. But he still organized and lead top guilds for years.

Wasn't this the guild that charge you real money to be in? Hell if you were paying my bills for the month I'll go run a top flight hard core guild like that.

- - - Updated - - -

Snip.

Can you go back and edit your post using paragraph breaks. I'll be happy to read it and see what you had to say if you do. Now its hard to read. Thanks!

[Jtbrig7390]

One lockout.

[Nitros14]

It's interesting how people view it today vs then.

You know 80 Naxxramas was tuned at LFR level and 60 Naxxramas was tuned at mythic level, a bit different. Example: Many people felt Grobbulus was the hardest boss in Naxxramas 80. It was the only boss that wasn't heavily nerfed and changed to be much easier.

[Varaben]

Resist gear is the biggest thing and as you say, patchwerk was tightly tuned. I'm not sure there are actually bosses in the game today or recently in the game that had that level of DPS requirement.

It's really just impossible to say because it comes down to how fast you can farm resist gear, where it drops, etc. You're comparing apples to....something very much not like apples, so it's not clear how anyone would possibly answer this question.

[Ehrenpanzer]

Part of the reason Naxx took so long was grinding gear for/recruiting tanks for 4 Horsemen. Assuming that cockblock is still in place, a similar time frame I would guess.

If not, it would go down pretty quickly, players tool kits are much bigger/better than in Vanilla, for instance most classes had 0 self sustainability, healing was entirely on your healers outside of bandages (Which people did use in raids), and AoE healing pretty much wasn't a thing except chain heal, this lead to things like needing frost resist pots and using them on things like KT's frost volley ect. And healers getting behind because people failing mechanics like are generally what lead to wipes. AoE healing to the extent we have now would trivialize a majority of vanilla content tbh.

Bear in mind you could chain-pot back then though... none of this 1 per fight nonsense

[Lesane]

It wouldn't last a single week. Raiders these days are infinitely more hardcore than before and the mechanics of Naxxramas are a joke compared to modern raids.

This has been done before by the main tank of Nihilum came back to wow and was able to clear the current raids in under a week the best players are the best for a reason regardless of what you idiots think

Because he got carried and had a huge pool of players to recruit from due to his publicity

Don't be so sure. As he said in the post. Resist gear is still a factor. If that would not be the case you're right. But some bosses you needed full resist gear, and some were just meant to be almost overtuned, you needed very, very good gear so you had to farm naxx some weeks to get it. Or maybe just one week because how top guild raiders do this splitup thingy were they take 50% mains and 50% alts and clear as much as possible and give all the gear to the mains and then the week after the mains almost got BiS gear. And because naxx is a 40 man you could probably split it up in 10 mains and 30 alts and be able to clear every boss that does not rely on gear. Anyway the point is that it would not take 90 days to clear it. People are not new to the game, they know what they are doing and the tacs were real simple.

The top guilds would just split run to farm the resist gear, buy it off of other guilds or just poach players from other guilds.

With the same difficulty and resistance gear required?

Months, probably.

Most of the Naxx40 difficulty was artificial. Resist gear requirement, class stacking requirements, gear requirement, 40 player requirement etc. All stuff that modern hardcore guilds will find a way around (having shitloads of max level alts, gear funneling, poaching etc.). The actual encounters themselves really weren't that hard. A lot of players sucked ass back then and I'm pretty positive there were clickers in some of the world first Naxx40 kills.

[Nitros14]

Naxx 2.0 was incredibly toned down compared to Naxx 1.0, I wouldn't even consider them the same instance really besides aesthetics, and it was cleared within 24 hours by the top guild, that cleared it back in the day and already had experience doing harder versions of the fight.

Yeah basically.

Anub'rekhan: Tanks sitting in locust swarm and surviving at 80, hilarious. Beetles far less dangerous.

Faerlina: Boss did the same raid damage at 80 and 60. Absurd undertuning.

Maexxna: Web wrap was 8 seconds at 60, and the boss was immune to taunt. And you could only have one copy of a HoT on the tank at a time. And shield wall's cooldown was 30 minutes. Not to mention spiders actually killing people.

Noth: Missed a curse? Welp. Though the decursive add-on trivialized that until they broke decursive in the 2.0 patch. Also immune to taunt so blinking mattered. And him not dying instantly meant you saw the later skeleton phases.

Heigan: Watch a video of 60 vs 80. They slowed the dance down dramatically and removed the entire tunnel teleport part of the fight.

Loatheb: Loatheb was absolutely stupid at 60 for consumable and dps requirements. Wanna kill Loatheb? Go turn in an Onyxia/Nefarian head for rallying cry of the dragonslayer and head to zul'gurub to get your world buffs, then try not to die on the way to Loatheb. Don't blame them for changing it.

Patchwerk: Not overly different, needed 4 tanks at 60 of course but.

Grobbulus: Pretty much the same actually.

Gluth: No more taunt immunity so tank swaps using the fear weren't a thing. The vast increase in numbers of control abilities and aoe ability more the culprit here.

Thaddius: They did increase the amount of time you had to move a fair bit, but this fight was always a fight against lag more than anything.

Razuvious: Always easy either way.

Gothik: Really really gutted. The culprit is tank mechanics and tuning though, aoe threat used to be really difficult but at 80 it was just spam your aoe threat button. Used to be mass CC involved here.

Four Horsemen: Removing the two shield walls the horsemen did at 50% and 20% was huge because it allowed total zerging instead of the intended merry go round of debuffs.

Sapphiron: Basically the same, this fight was tightly tuned at 60 and extremely undertuned at 80.

Kel'Thuzad: Lots of changes here, the last two minutes of phase 1 with rapidly spawning mobs disappeared. Frostbolt became resistable and didn't one shot the tank. Immune to taunt at 60 and always mind controlled his current tank which caused a lot of chaos with threat. Frost Blast lost its killing tick, did 104% in 80ramas and 130% in 60ramas, also didn't chain infinitely anymore. Plus all the new aoe healing for melee frost blast and instant heals made it less scary in general. At 60 you'd use a diamond formation to split the melee up to avoid a catastrophic 10+ melee frost blast, but shadow fissure loved to fuck that up along with the boss running around after chains due to the tank MC.

Guardians used to gain stacks when switching targets not just over time and were CC-able, but if you CC'd more than three Kel'Thuzad dispelled them. Kel'Thuzad also phased at 45% not 40%. Not to mention he cast his spells less often at 80. This fight was brutal at 60 and really underwhelming at 80.


I don't know why people are talking so much about resist gear. It's literally just Sapphiron that required it and you got frost resist drops from the first 13 bosses plus frozen runes in every room to craft what you were missing. Six tanks was a thing for four horsemen and four piece tier 3 plus that nat pagle spell hit trinket helped reduce raid wiping taunt resists.

[Machismo]

Mechanically, Naxx 40 wasn't too difficult. Modern aids have many more mechanics to deal with. Naxx 40 would still crush most of today's raiders. The amount of work required before and after a raid was what made it truly difficult. A person could easily spend 15-20 hours a week just trying to get all the materials for raiding. You also have the issue of not having immediate rewards like you do today. Most bosses dropped 2-3 pieces of gear, and you had to split it between 40 people. Resist gear was also a pain in the ass, and meant more farming/preparation outside of raids.

There's also the issue of the older mechanics being much more unforgiving, and you had 40 people who could all possibly screw it up for you. Nowadays, if someone screws up a mechanic, it usually means that the raid takes some more damage. In Naxx, if someone screwed up a mechanic, you spent 3 minutes rezzing and buffing.

[Deleted]

Naxx40 would be done in 1-2 days, the place has no mechanics

[Nitros14]

Naxx40 would be done in 1-2 days, the place has no mechanics

Mechanics aren't what keep things unkilled a long time. Tuning is. Mechanically complex encounters that were mostly execution like mythic Gorefiend, Xhul'horac, Thogar and Imperator Mar'gok died real fast.

Method and Paragon didn't take 9+ days to kill mythic Archimonde because they couldn't not cross lines, figure out which stack to go to with mark and taunt infernals away from each other. They took 9+ days because the numbers were grossly overtuned for their gear level and the margin for error was near zero.

Hell the level 60 Heigan dance is a lot harder mechanically than Seething Corruption. Figuring out how to do your group and tank rotations on Four Horsemen and then executing it takes some real thought.

Players have so much more to work with now too. They don't have to worry about threat, or aoe threat. They have things like misdirect, tricks, bloodlust, a million personal defensives, raid cooldowns, tank cooldowns outside of a 30 minute shield wall, stampeding roar, aoe healing, personal sprints, cheat deaths, death grip, mass death grip, ring of frost, mass entanglement, passive cleaves, every class has aoe, 30 yard range taunts.

In a way that adds complexity and lets encounters be more complex, but without all those things a lot of Naxxramas mechanics start to feel a lot more scary. To pick up a Guardian of Icecrown at 60 a tank had to physically walk over to it and use his melee range taunt on it (that had a 15 second cooldown). Now he asks a hunter to misdirect it to him, or throws his shield at it from 30 yards away or taunts it from 30 yards away or charges it. To heal a melee frost blast at 60 without losing them you either had 3-4 priests Prayer of Healing a melee group and hope you got them or individually heal all of them within 4 seconds, now one healer could just hit an aoe smart heal on the group and none of them would die anyway because a disc priest would've preshielded them.

To build threat on multiple adds at 60 you had to individually target and hit them all and they'd easily get ripped off you, which made fights like Gothik a horrible mess where you couldn't just aoe everything and had to CC things to keep up.

[RoKPaNda]

It would take about a week max. Naxx is very simple in mechanics compaired to todays. Imagine putting vanilla raiders into todays raids, they would quit in a day or two.

That's a nice fallacy that modern tryhards like to perpetuate.

If we're talking about Naxx being released for the first time ever, to modern raiders that had never seen it or anything like it before, with all of it's original mechanics and such intact it would still be considered a very difficult raid even if the actual boss fights have less going on than modern boss fights. Yes there are things that exist in raids now that would make cutting edge Naxx raiders struggle, absolutely, but they'd eventually get it. And there are things that existed in Vanilla WoW that no longer exist that would make modern raiders that never did those fights when they were current struggle, but again if they were dedicated they'd get it eventually.

While raid philosophy has changed dramatically, the hardcore raider hasn't. Once they meet the gear requirements and understand the mechanics they will bash their head against the encounters until they get it.

[OrcsRLame]

This has been done before by the main tank of Nihilum came back to wow and was able to clear the current raids in under a week the best players are the best for a reason regardless of what you idiots think

Kungen's a shit player compared to any tank in a top 5 guild. Which is okay, the players are the best for a reason after all. I honestly think Serenity would clear Naxx 40 in a day. Even Patchwerk and 4 Horsemen.

[Socialhealer]

This has been done before by the main tank of Nihilum came back to wow and was able to clear the current raids in under a week the best players are the best for a reason regardless of what you idiots think

carried, i could go back and AFK in 40man raids, the other 39 can still manage the content np.

[Dsc]

Goodness no. The level of "slop" designed into the current raids is pitiful.

Long gone are the days of "so and so screwed up = wipe"

Long gone are the days of = we finally fot our MTs and a solid roster of healers geared.. whoops cross recruited.

WTF is this pushback shit? It would be laughable.

[Boathouse]

If Naxx 40 came out today it would be cleared in less than a day. Naxx is a joke in comparison to todays mechanics.

Edit: Just some "proof" that I actually did it rather than the countless others who pretend.