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

[Sakki]

It wouldn't take months.

People would math it out realize what they need and apply today's methods of raiding to shorten the gear grind. Regardless what people like to think, the approach in Vanilla and TBC weren't nearly as hardcore as they are now. People field several alternate characters, raid far more and field several split runs in the first coming weeks (or more). If people knew they needed 'x' amount of gear and more importantly that Sapphiron would be impossible without said amount of frost resistance, they would merely do half a dozen split runs the first couple weeks and trounce through the instance.

Difference is that in the past, nobody had time to do some split runs, due to how demanding it was to prepare just your main character. Right now, lvling is instant, consumables are free and getting gear is very simple. In vanilla, you had to farm (a lot) to have comsumables and to pay bills - not sure if i remember correctly, but one hour farm for each hour of progress (without flasks) was not far from reality. Lvling took 8-10 days of playtime to be green lvl 60 without any impact on game and months to get any equip.

Right now, mana is not issue to anybody, everybody has cleave and aoe spells (healing and dmg), everybody has some sort of escape or cd, which helps them when they screw up or to deal with problematic stage... yeah, it is no wonder it seems easy if you have all those stuff, ppl didnt have before.

[OrcsRLame]

Difference is that in the past, nobody had time to do some split runs, due to how demanding it was to prepare just your main character. Right now, lvling is instant, consumables are free and getting gear is very simple. In vanilla, you had to farm (a lot) to have comsumables and to pay bills - not sure if i remember correctly, but one hour farm for each hour of progress (without flasks) was not far from reality. Lvling took 8-10 days of playtime to be green lvl 60 without any impact on game and months to get any equip.

Right now, mana is not issue to anybody, everybody has cleave and aoe spells (healing and dmg), everybody has some sort of escape or cd, which helps them when they screw up or to deal with problematic stage... yeah, it is no wonder it seems easy if you have all those stuff, ppl didnt have before.

A top guild of today would just sell carry runs to make their gold. And if for some reason that wasn't feasible, they'd just pay people real money to farm for them. I don't think you understand the lengths these people will go to to 'win'.

Also, personals are not used when you "screw up" in a mythic raid done with appropriate gear. You pop your personals at the right time or you instantly fucking die, because the bosses are designed like that. Not trying to sound condescending, but did you do mythic HFC in 6.2? Even post valor upgrades, some of those mechanics would rape you without personals and/or raid CDs. You won't survive an Empowered Shadowforce on Mannoroth without some kind of damage reduction, even at 746 ilvl, and that shit was done as progress at ilvl ~715-720 originally. Literally 100k less HP.

[Nuckels]

A top guild of today would just sell carry runs to make their gold. And if for some reason that wasn't feasible, they'd just pay people real money to farm for them. I don't think you understand the lengths these people will go to to 'win'.

Also, personals are not used when you "screw up" in a mythic raid done with appropriate gear. You pop your personals at the right time or you instantly fucking die, because the bosses are designed like that. Not trying to sound condescending, but did you do mythic HFC in 6.2? Even post valor upgrades, some of those mechanics would rape you without personals and/or raid CDs. You won't survive an Empowered Shadowforce on Mannoroth without some kind of damage reduction, even at 746 ilvl, and that shit was done as progress at ilvl ~715-720 originally. Literally 100k less HP.

People sold boosts even back then, gold runs in moltencore were a weekly occurance where the best guilds made some nice gold to sustain their progession in naxxramas.

Also you could survive EMP shadowforce without a cooldown to be fair unless you underhealed it.

[KaPe]

Difference is that in the past, nobody had time to do some split runs, due to how demanding it was to prepare just your main character. Right now, lvling is instant, consumables are free and getting gear is very simple. In vanilla, you had to farm (a lot) to have comsumables and to pay bills - not sure if i remember correctly, but one hour farm for each hour of progress (without flasks) was not far from reality. Lvling took 8-10 days of playtime to be green lvl 60 without any impact on game and months to get any equip.

Right now, mana is not issue to anybody, everybody has cleave and aoe spells (healing and dmg), everybody has some sort of escape or cd, which helps them when they screw up or to deal with problematic stage... yeah, it is no wonder it seems easy if you have all those stuff, ppl didnt have before.

Hell, let's just think about other benefits, not tied to direct raid performance. More bag space for tanks. No need to farm Soul Shards. No need for mage food. Ability to summon multiple people with a single cast of portal. Dual specs (well, the current version is a bit meh... but still). Guild banks. Instant mail between guild members. Ability to trade items for 2 hours, without resorting to GM tickets. Coining loot. Free epics from followers. Much easier farming for healers. Heirlooms. No attunements.

We've gone a long way to make things more convenient - which in turn made split farming a possibility for more than just a couple guilds.

[OrcsRLame]

People sold boosts even back then, gold runs in moltencore were a weekly occurance where the best guilds made some nice gold to sustain their progession in naxxramas.

Also you could survive EMP shadowforce without a cooldown to be fair unless you underhealed it.

Unless you can prove you're in a top 5 guild or link a log that proves your statement, I don't believe you. Every guild that killed it at that ilvl would have coordinated massive raid CDs for that point.

[Phuongvi]

Just giving buffs to the raids it took an hours in Vanilla.

So I guess you're going to save alot of time

[Nuckels]

Unless you can prove you're in a top 5 guild or link a log that proves your statement, I don't believe you. Every guild that killed it at that ilvl would have coordinated massive raid CDs for that point.

Most guilds bugged shadowforce during progression by moving the boss during the channel so it did minimal damage, and at 746ilvl you really didn't need a cooldown unless you underhealed. World 38 and well I don't really care if you don't believe me, you realise guilds 1 healed that stuff before 7.0 right, if you brought the same comp as most guilds did on progression (4healers) you really didn't need a cooldown to survive.

[Aphrel]

Let's say that vanilla Naxx and wotlk Naxx never existed, this raid releases tomorrow and it only has one difficulty, it releases tomorrow, how long would it take for the first guild to kill KT.

Obviously it'd be a little hard to properly introduce many of the mechanics today but let's assume it's as pure of a copy as possible in terms of difficulty.

Some things are still a factor: resist gear, consumables, Patchwerk etc are scaled to require the same high amount of dps relatively to current dps.

I imagine it wouldn't take very long but I'd like to read opinions.

there were three bosses that are essentially gear checks in naxx 40. Loatheb, 4hm and sappiron. (and patchwerk but he went down the first week even back then)

due to the amount of class stacking we have today i suspect loatheb whould go down easily. just stack the right healer and dps classes.

as for 4hm. It whould be a pain in the ass to do without tanks having the 4set that gave 10% hit on taunt. But its not impossible without it. Could turn out to be extremly timeconsuming thou.

Lastly, sapphiron. Wich whould be a pain in the ass without resist gear, however since the fight didnt seem to have any enragetimer (i never saw one), i suspect guilds could just bring a few extra druid healers and itd be fine.

I whouldnt say its definetly gonna go down the first week. but its certanly possible.

edit: If it came out TODAY with todays class mechanics it whould most likely be cleared the first day (ofc depending on tuning :P). With todays selfhealing and personal defensive mechanics both loatheb and sapphiron whould be easy even without frost resistance.
and 4hm whould be a joke today since taunt cant be resisted anymore.

[satimy]

Mythic BlackHand and Imperator were some of the most challenging bosses of all time. Archimonde would also probably be up there if the ring didnt exist

[Gilgameshh]

The question is ridiculous. It's all relevant to the game design; it's way different now, and the raid designs are far different as a result.

If legacy servers were introduced and Naxx40 had never existed but was added in the final patch of legacy vanilla, I imagine it would take close to the same amount of time to clear. The problems that existed back then would still exist.

I think it's extremely foolish to think that player skill has drastically increased since vanilla; people are just reaching ceilings that were lower in vanilla, but they've always been reaching those ceilings. It's not like WoW was something extremely new and difficult to begin with.

[Deleted]

It's not just the raid and the bosses. It's the game design overall too.

Naxx was inaccessible becasuse of many reasons:

-expensive and time consuming attunements
-high gear requirements
-gear being really time consuming to farm

Imagine that in vanilla you only had about 3 items per boss for 40 man raid. This is like what, 0,07 items per person per boss? Currently you are closer to 0,2 - 0,25 items per person per boss. And you could get wasted drops such as shaman gear in alliance raid.

Then the game was constructed as a progression journey. Catch-up mechanics were non existent. If you were caught by Naxxramas patch after few months of hiatus (say you left after clearling BWL) you couldn't just skip right to newest instance. No, you had to progress in tier 2.5 and get the gear from there, or else you didn't stood a chance in Naxxramas.

So overall, if Naxx was released today WITH CURRENT GAME DESIGN, it would be like WOTLK naxx. Because it wasn't boss design that made it difficult and inaccesible.

[Gsara]

Raiding is an entirely different game now compared to then. Gold is a complete joke to make now, it wasnt in vanilla so buying everything instead of farming it didnt happen that much. Class and game mechanics are completely different now. Things like tanking and healing are no where near as rough as they used to be for raiding.
There also wasnt a ton of videos, blogs, how to guides and sites like this to help the rest of the raiders outside of top 20 world to kill shit. Now you get it all before the xpac even releases.

Back then it was all about farming mats and waiting for blizz to fix bugs or cockblocked final bosses. Now its all about having as much gold as possible and speed leveling alts so you can split farm. Top guilds are also top for a reason, they are better players with a ton of time to spend in game compared to the other 99% of the player base. It will always be like that no matter what era of the game we talk about.

[brunnor]

How long it lasts depends on how it is implemented.

If people were dropped to level of old Naxx with all old naxx abilities and gear equivalent to what you would have had going in to Naxx, it would probably last a week or two less than it did before because all the fight mechanics are 100% known.

If Naxx was just "tuned up" to current level, it would get smashed instantly. Tons of items would drop per boss, taunt can't be resisted anymore, AoE healing is a thing, smart heals are a thing, tank's keeping themselves alive is a thing. Not to mention, all mechanics have been reused over and over and over. Things like void zones aren't special or new. It's hard to forget void zones now.

[Deleted]

Vanilla raiding was garbage and stupidly easy. It was only "hard" because you needed a good computer to be able to play with more than 10 fps, 39 other competent not window licking players and you needed a lot of time.

Bosses were artificially difficult because you needed enough gear to get through them. In terms of mechanics they for the most part tank and spank even all the way into Naxx.

[Saeldre]

A lot of vanillas difficulty came down to...

-Raiding was new for almost everyone.
-40 people is a lot of people to coordinate.
-Gearing was a pain in the ass and needed for a lot of bosses. If someone dropped from your guild chances are you were stuck gearing someone else up to replace them, which may mean running the previous raid instance or two again. A lot of fights also had pretty crazy gearchecks (4 horsemen, patchwork, etc)
-No server transfers. If you were on an average or shitty server you had to make due with the people on your server.
-No PTR or strategies available right away. When BWL was released we zoned in, pulled Razorgore and said "wtf?". Then we started playing around with our own strategies. It took awhile before there were strategies and videos posted all over.


The encounters were not as hard back then. I would imagine people would blow through them a lot faster nowadays due to having a lot of raid experience and being able to transfer servers and build a guild of like minded people.

[Nitros14]

So overall, if Naxx was released today WITH CURRENT GAME DESIGN, it would be like WOTLK naxx. Because it wasn't boss design that made it difficult and inaccesible.

Not exactly. WOTLK Naxxramas, as shown on a previous page in this thread above, was grossly undertuned and about the equivalent of doing the bosses with a 66% damage and HP debuff on them. Not to mention the actual mechanical nerfs to Heigan, Loatheb, Thaddius, Kel'Thuzad, Maexxna, Noth and Four Horsemen.

It still wouldn't be as hard as mythic raiding now, but not the pushover that trade pugs cleared on week one.

Examples:

http://www.wowhead.com/spell=28794/rain-of-fire Faerlina's rain of fire 2,500 damage every 2 seconds on people with 20,000 hp.
http://wow.gamepedia.com/Grand_Widow...ina_(original) At 60 2,000 damage every 2 seconds on people with ~4,000 hp.

http://www.wowhead.com/spell=28863/void-zone#summons Lady Blaumeux's void zone 3,000 damage every second on people with 20,000 hp.
http://wow.gamepedia.com/Four_Horsemen_(original) At 60 4,000 damage a second on people with ~4,000 hp.

http://www.wowhead.com/spell=28786/locust-swarm Anub'Rekhan's locust swarm 1300 nature damage stack on tanks with ~35,000 hp.
http://wow.gamepedia.com/Anub%27Rekhan_(original) At 60 1300 nature damage stack on tanks with ~9,000 hp.

http://www.wowhead.com/spell=28479/frostbolt Kel'Thuzad's frostbolt volley, 5500 aoe on people with 20,000 hp.
http://wow.gamepedia.com/Kel%27Thuzad_(original) At 60 3250 aoe on people with ~4,000 hp.

DPS wise here's an example. Let's take a very geared guild that could comfortably beat Patchwerk's enrage at 60, killing him in six minutes when the berserk is 7. 4.2 million hp, 360 seconds, 11666 raid dps.

Looking at old screenshots of mine, early in Wrath people were doing around 2,500/4,000 DPS on Patchwerk, or 60k raid dps in this case.

Factoring out tanks for the moment, with 26 dps in your 40-man patchwerk raid and 16 dps in your 25-man raid your dps are doing about 10 times as much damage at 80 as 60.

Kel'Thuzad in his last phase at 80 has 5.84 million Hp. Kel'Thuzad in his last phase at 60 had 1.75 million Hp.

To be tuned the same as 60 Kel"Thuzad 80 should have 17.5 million Hp in his last phase, and that's not even taking into account that due to the tank being mind controlled you had to full stop dps with chains coming.

That's like doing the boss with a 66% health reduction.

[Deleted]

It's not possible to make a direct comparison like that since back then the fights required much more strict gear checks, class composition, mana management, consumables (multiple stacking elixirs/flasks, potions, bandages, felwood plants, buff reagents, ammunition, boss kill buffs from Onyxia and Hakkar etc.), resistance gear, threat management etc.

It wasn't possible to taunt most bosses for example, and it would be easy to cause too much threat as a DPS, or run out of mana as a healer or even caster DPS (so you'd use wand, same as when you are about to overaggro).

Some of the more complex fights in Naxx 60 like Kel'Thuzad, Gothik and 4HM are probably comparable to early bosses in current raids mechanics-wise.

[Vynestra]

Hours. lol

[Hey There Guys its Metro]

Yup as others have pointed out Classic Naxx has no mechanics. Think about it, the few it does have were considered revolutionary difficult for the time.

There isn't a single boss in the game where the main mechanic is massive tank damage. That's not how the game is played any more.

[wowaccounttom]

considering that raids today require no skill, no gear, nor dedication to grinding, i would say around mid way of the tbc expansion