Reason why people say TBC was harder

[yinyatto]

TBC and vanilla fights were gear checks through and through minimal mechanics, where now its a brain check can you deal with these mechanics if yes then the encounter will be fairly easy if no your raid will highly likely just get completely rekt there still is the odd gear check boss every now n then in new raids however they still tend to have some mechanics to deal with more than the average vanilla boss does at the very least, the game is alot harder for a dps then its even been.

[Marrilaife]

14k WAS what tanks had in tempest keep and such. 16k-17k was what you saw on geared to the teeth black temple tanks.

I sure remember all these dps warriors with the freebie 2v2 pvp gear around these HP pools. Back when meta was resto druid + warrior with macestun and whatnot.

Legion must be the first expansion after vanilla where you can't just cap arena at whatever rating and get full set of welfare gear. Ok, at start you couldn't get shoulders or something, they had rating requirement. Also back then pvp gear had too much stamina, then it had resilience, then it had pvp power or whatever "suboptimal" stats but was still better than dungeon gear or early rading gear, expansion after expansion.

[TheRabidDeer]

I played ret and didn't do many dungeons, so my experiences don't match yours.

So you were the 1 token ret paladin in the raids, huh? I don't remember ret being awful in BT/sunwell but I think before that they were in horrible shape.

[Auxora]

BC was far harder than Legion. You actually had to mark 3 targets at least, sometimes 4, on almost every pull in a heroic dungeon, and cc at least 1-2 of them. Interrupts weren't just a nice bonus, you wiped if you missed more than 1 or 2 of them. And people mention easier raid mechanics which were also far harder. Just look at progression time...even hardcore guilds took many weeks just to clear the first 3/4 of Kara back in BC. The same level guilds cleared EN normal in the first week.

It's really not even close. And anyone arguing it didn't play in BC and is just trying to base it off private server play now, which isn't really the same thing. Even the "simple" mechanics back then were tough because they were newer and unknown. Fights by necessity have had more mechanics added just through evolution and not wanting to see the same old ones people have become accustomed to now, along with the improvements in DBM which assisted far less back in BC. Most importantly more mechanics does not mean harder, because the mechanics now are far more forgiving. It's not like back in BC where one person in a 25 man messing up one mechanic (flame wreath for ex.) wiped the entire raid the first time it was messed up. Today, someone does the same in EN and it's more of a slight inconvenience the group just has to adjust to, and just too many mistakes eventually wipes a raid.

I'm totally fine with the way things are now though, as much as I loved BC. After 3 expansions of more and more casual, it would actually be a mistake in design to just completely in 1 fell swoop in Legion to flip all the way back to BC difficulty. If they had it just would have really alienated and driven away too many players that have been used to the wow style over the past 5-6 years. Legion did shift gears in the right direction more towards BC difficulty, but just steps in that direction and still quite a ways from that level of difficulty. So this adjustment partially there is fine. Maybe in the next expansion we'll see it move another step towards BC difficulty, which I'd be fine with as people adjust a bit more to harder content than we've seen this decade.

[Absintheminded]

TBC's main issue is that all the abilities were weak. Compare playing a paladin then to playing one now. Back then you had to use a seal and auto attack. Mana didn't regen as fast, so if you used too many abilities you'd become useless and you'd be forced to use wisdom to regen your mana.

Now you get your full rotation pretty early on, mana isn't an issue at all and your abilities hit like a truck due to how they scale.

At level 1 maybe, but you really don't know what you're talking about if that's what you think playing a paladin was like in TBC.

[Himora]

TBC had amazing pvp because all classes had the ability to counter-play with tools they had, where skill mattered. these days with the pruning of just about everything & the embarrassing class balance, the game is as easy to play as ever.. that passes on to PVE aswell, EN N/HC was a joke... aoe the trash while watching a movie on the other monitor... burn bosses while watching movies & occasionally move away when DBM tells you to.

[TheRabidDeer]

BC was far harder than Legion. You actually had to mark 3 targets at least, sometimes 4, on almost every pull in a heroic dungeon, and cc at least 1-2 of them. Interrupts weren't just a nice bonus, you wiped if you missed more than 1 or 2 of them. And people mention easier raid mechanics which were also far harder. Just look at progression time...even hardcore guilds took many weeks just to clear the first 3/4 of Kara back in BC. The same level guilds cleared EN normal in the first week.

Yea.... no. The top guilds didn't have too terribly much of a problem with karazhan. TBC launched Jan 15th and people killed Nightbane Jan 28th (which means people leveled to 100, cleared dungeons for base gear then went through kara). It was fun but didn't take many weeks to clear kara. Magtheridon took a while though, he was a bit overtuned at release and saw some nerfs before he was killed about 6 weeks after launch.

[Aeula]

At level 1 maybe, but you really don't know what you're talking about if that's what you think playing a paladin was like in TBC.

It was like that for the majority of the leveling experience. Seal, Judgement, Auto Attack was pretty much the rotation.

[Sluvs]

I did not the feel the game was harder back then. I believe the gear walls were higher.

I tanked in my paladin all the way through TK, and the only problem that i ran into was always being undergeared. Like ALWAYS. Which has a downsides and upsides. The Upside is that I was always after some other upgrade, because it was simply needed. The downside is that difficult was highly artificial, if i managed to get a 2-3 upgrades, a content that was hard would easily become trivial because of the lack of mechanics.

These days, if you overgear the content by a little, it still can be challenging because today´s mechanics are way more complex.

But honestly, rotations were boring as fuck back then. Basically holyshield + keep consecration up. I do miss auras though.

[Gadzooks]

Yea.... no. The top guilds didn't have too terribly much of a problem with karazhan. TBC launched Jan 15th and people killed Nightbane Jan 28th (which means people leveled to 100, cleared dungeons for base gear then went through kara). It was fun but didn't take many weeks to clear kara. Magtheridon took a while though, he was a bit overtuned at release and saw some nerfs before he was killed about 6 weeks after launch.

From what I remember, the real gear/guild team checks were Gruul, Mags, and then The Eye. Kara wasn't especially hard, for a dedicated raid team - Kara was being pugged from day one, and those groups struggled past the Chess Event, but still managed to clear. That's what I remember, anyway.

- - - Updated - - -

TBC had amazing pvp because all classes had the ability to counter-play with tools they had, where skill mattered. these days with the pruning of just about everything & the embarrassing class balance, the game is as easy to play as ever.. that passes on to PVE aswell, EN N/HC was a joke... aoe the trash while watching a movie on the other monitor... burn bosses while watching movies & occasionally move away when DBM tells you to.

PvP in TBC was a fucking blast - especially if you were a rogue, like I was. Stun-locking ruled - until everyone cried enough and they broke it. Arenas were new enough they weren't completely gamed by that point, and could be fun.

- - - Updated - - -

Hard in the repetitive nature (aka having to run people through KT then TK/SSC for attainment and gear one you lost a player? Not hard, but fucking annyoing).
Hard in mechanics? Well you already admitted it wasn't.
Hard in poor balancing (aka things 1 shotting you?) Yes and no, but then again their are plenty of mechanics that 1 shot you now, back then you had a lot more forgiveness though in that you had unlimited battle res' per an attempt, no debuff from blood lust, etc.

I cleared BT before the big nerf, we were working on bruta when prepatch nerf dropped. As for heroics yeah my guild was pretty intense in requirements, we had kara runs that first weekend after launch (it was rough since day 1/2 our server was basically kaput, but we still tried).

Your guild was not typical, then. I would bet the majority of raid guilds didn't reach the Sunwell until very late in the TBC cycle. I know my guild blew up on BT, RoS killed us.

[bledgor]

BC was far harder than Legion. You actually had to mark 3 targets at least, sometimes 4, on almost every pull in a heroic dungeon, and cc at least 1-2 of them. Interrupts weren't just a nice bonus, you wiped if you missed more than 1 or 2 of them. And people mention easier raid mechanics which were also far harder. Just look at progression time...even hardcore guilds took many weeks just to clear the first 3/4 of Kara back in BC. The same level guilds cleared EN normal in the first week.

It's really not even close. And anyone arguing it didn't play in BC and is just trying to base it off private server play now, which isn't really the same thing. Even the "simple" mechanics back then were tough because they were newer and unknown. Fights by necessity have had more mechanics added just through evolution and not wanting to see the same old ones people have become accustomed to now, along with the improvements in DBM which assisted far less back in BC. Most importantly more mechanics does not mean harder, because the mechanics now are far more forgiving. It's not like back in BC where one person in a 25 man messing up one mechanic (flame wreath for ex.) wiped the entire raid the first time it was messed up. Today, someone does the same in EN and it's more of a slight inconvenience the group just has to adjust to, and just too many mistakes eventually wipes a raid.

I'm totally fine with the way things are now though, as much as I loved BC. After 3 expansions of more and more casual, it would actually be a mistake in design to just completely in 1 fell swoop in Legion to flip all the way back to BC difficulty. If they had it just would have really alienated and driven away too many players that have been used to the wow style over the past 5-6 years. Legion did shift gears in the right direction more towards BC difficulty, but just steps in that direction and still quite a ways from that level of difficulty. So this adjustment partially there is fine. Maybe in the next expansion we'll see it move another step towards BC difficulty, which I'd be fine with as people adjust a bit more to harder content than we've seen this decade.

At the very start of BC, sure you had to cc, but by the time players started getting gear from raids it was just aoe and kill. Same thing happens in mythic+ now but people just chain AoE stuns and slows to kite the mobs if needed while chaining cool downs. The game is infinitely more difficult because BC was literally cc 1-2 mobs and dps 1-2 down.

As for raids, LOL you mean when you had as many Bres' as you had druids/shamans/warlocks (yes you had to pre SS but you knew which raiders died regularly). Not to mention I remember quite a few fights people died early and we got kills. Now if you have more than 1 person die during mythic Ursoc and don't have your 2nd bres up it is basically a wipe. Shit mythic I'llgnoth has more mechanics than Gruuls Lair + Mag together. The mechanics aren't very forgiving today, they are less forgiving than BC by a margin. I feel like you are comparing LFR EN to raids like SSC or TK and think that is fair, when it isn't, you don't hear people comparing regular LK to BC raids, they always focus on heroic/hard modes, and mythic EN is leagues beyond SSC and TK, where any mistake can instantly drop you.

I really wish all blizzard would release a vanilla/BC server so all this bullshit people keep spewing about them can just be shown for being the bullshit it is.

Your guild was not typical, then. I would bet the majority of raid guilds didn't reach the Sunwell until very late in the TBC cycle. I know my guild blew up on BT, RoS killed us.

I mean considering sunwell didn't launch till the end of the TBC cycle yeah....

TK wasn't hard, there is a reason one of the bosses was called lootreaver. The only thing that sucked was Kael, and 50% of that was because each attempted lasted forever due to the separate stages of the fight and the RP. Otherwise you just had to have competent DPS who grabbed the legendaries they needed, kill the adds in the right order, and manage the phoenix. SSC was basically the same (lol at fire totem agro on leo the blind, only part of Vash that sucked was having people coordinate the orbs properly in phase 2). This concept of BC raids as being difficult are laughable (at the time people considered them hard because vanilla was soooo lackluster in difficulty in fights that blizzard had to overturn things to make it artificially hard, like playing soccer at a basic level might be hard for a person with one leg, but that doesn't mean they are playing a high level of soccer).

[TheRabidDeer]

From what I remember, the real gear/guild team checks were Gruul, Mags, and then The Eye. Kara wasn't especially hard, for a dedicated raid team - Kara was being pugged from day one, and those groups struggled past the Chess Event, but still managed to clear. That's what I remember, anyway.

I wouldn't say day 1 it was being pugged, but it was definitely pugged fairly early on. Gruul took a couple weeks and magtheridon took about 6 weeks like I say (due to overtuning, he was killed the day after some nerfs came in). SSC required a Magtheridon kill for attunement so that took a while after the first Mag kill. Most of SSC was killed fairly quickly except for Vashj. Oddly enough the world first Vashj kill happened more than a month before the world 2nd kill because Nihilum had a bug happen to them where Vashj reset to 1hp and a priest who was soulstoned used it and killed her with SW.

[Syero]

I miss having one difficulty. Now there are like 20 different difficulties lol

[Deleted]

Don't forget downranking spells. Kids these days will never know the struggle of having an action bar full of every rank of Flash of Light.

At least you had a lot of abilities


Wait a moment...
Now: multiple difficulties is TECHNICALLY new content
Then:multiple spell levels is TECHNICALLY more abilities

OH GOD. THEY'RE ADDING DOWNRANKING AGAIN AFTER WE CRY ABOUT ABILITY PRUNE, AREN'T THEY?!

[TheRabidDeer]

As for raids, LOL you mean when you had as many Bres' as you had druids/shamans/warlocks (yes you had to pre SS but you knew which raiders died regularly). Not to mention I remember quite a few fights people died early and we got kills. Now if you have more than 1 person die during mythic Ursoc and don't have your 2nd bres up it is basically a wipe. Shit mythic I'llgnoth has more mechanics than Gruuls Lair + Mag together. The mechanics aren't very forgiving today, they are less forgiving than BC by a margin. I feel like you are comparing LFR EN to raids like SSC or TK and think that is fair, when it isn't, you don't hear people comparing regular LK to BC raids, they always focus on heroic/hard modes, and mythic EN is leagues beyond SSC and TK, where any mistake can instantly drop you.

I really wish all blizzard would release a vanilla/BC server so all this bullshit people keep spewing about them can just be shown for being the bullshit it is.

Shamans don't have a bres, they have an ankh and if the shaman used ankh they would be low on mana and would need to drop a tide and get an innervate which could hinder the fight later on. Also, you usually didn't stack bres or warlocks so you might have like 4 bres (dps druids weren't really a thing and resto usually only had 1-2 and you'd have to wait for the offtank to pick up a boss if you ran with a druid tank). Some fights people could die early and you could chug along but others you couldn't. Magtheridon for example if people died too early could pretty easily cause a wipe, especially if they die near a blastwave cooldown and you had to get somebody else to a certain cube in time.

All in all, I don't think it is really fair to compare BC with Legion raids. They were different times with different mechanics and people had different abilities. I honestly liked the BC raids better though since things feel more varied. Right now raids are all 2 tanks, 4-5 healers and the rest DPS. Tanks just tank, healers just heal, and DPS does DPS. Stay out of bad, interrupt what you can, and follow whatever positional mechanic is on the boss. In BC you might have 1-2 tanks, some offtanks, some healers and a bunch of DPS but the DPS didn't always just DPS, they sometimes had other responsibilities. It might be mage tanking High King Maulgar, cube clicking/offtanking/kiting/CCing infernals in magtheridon, or throwing the core on Vashj (and shaman needing to keep a grounding totem up near tanks for shock blast). For DPS it was more than "do absolutely the highest DPS you can"

[RoKPaNda]

tbc just had mobs with high auto attacks, you didnt really require any skill.

poly x. now use your 1 button rotation on skull kek.

Well you never played BC. Rotations were made much simpler in Cata and have only gotten easier since.

Attunements and consumables had nothing to do with Sunwell being cleared by almost none of the players, even going in with full BC gear.

I see this mentioned a lot, but the situation was actually more dire than that. It's not even that Sunwell was barely seen by anyone. Kael/Vashj/Illidan were also seen by barely anyone. Everything after Razorgore in Vanilla was barely seen by anyone. Raids are designed now so that they can be beaten by garden variety player on Normal/Heroic and then barely anyone clears the last bosses of tiers on Mythic.

[Deleted]

Well you never played BC. Rotations were made much simpler in Cata and have only gotten easier since.

Did...did you just say BC rotations were difficult or complex or something?

[Marrilaife]

Did...did you just say BC rotations were difficult or complex or something?

Pressing curse of elements (or w/e name the shadow damage debuff had) then shadowbolting to death was hard yo!

[Deleted]

Sorry mate buty mythic dungeons are only hard beocuse of timer. Boss mechanics are very simple and forgiving. Yeah and btw game difficulty is always defined by lowest possible difficulty and never the highest becouse no matter if you play LFR or raid Mythic it is still same content and same raid.

You have absolutely *no* clue, do you?
Literally nothing you wrote there is objectively true, not even partly.

Especially the part about difficulty being defined by the lowest possible difficulty.... ehh, what? What does that even have to do with your "same content" nonsense?
My head starts to hurt. Ugh.
By that logic, BC 5man heroics do not "exist" or something because the normal mode of the dungeon exist, "mah content, where is it, send halp".

Go play your touristmode bullshit and just be quite, please...

Pressing curse of elements (or w/e name the shadow damage debuff had) then shadowbolting to death was hard yo!

My finger still hurts from rolling the mousewheel for 4h several times a week

[TheRabidDeer]

I see this mentioned a lot, but the situation was actually more dire than that. It's not even that Sunwell was barely seen by anyone. Kael/Vashj/Illidan were also seen by barely anyone. Everything after Razorgore in Vanilla was barely seen by anyone. Raids are designed now so that they can be beaten by garden variety player on Normal/Heroic and then barely anyone clears the last bosses of tiers on Mythic.

Definitely true. At least before 3.0. Fewer than 360 guilds cleared sunwell before patch 3.0 (though quite a few came after that as the nerf was HUGE with the WotLK patches leading up to its release). To give some indication of how hard sunwell was: Sunwell came out on Mar 26 and patch 3.0 came out on Oct 18th. Only 358 guilds killed KJ before that patch.