Reason why people say TBC was harder

[darklogrus]

It's funny to see people saying that CCing and assisting the tank was such a skill intensive thing back in the day for WoW. I remember playing EQ and FFXI and that sort of stuff was just common knowledge. In fact you didn't really make it to the higher levels in the game if you were bad at this sort of stuff.

Yeah back in FFXi one wrong move cost you a days worth of Xp,

[Deleted]

And thats exactly how dungeons are supostu be tunned. Amd no just add diffiuclty layers what only causes burn out, item and power inflation and destroys epicnes of thre game.

The dungeons have no purpose if you need more gear than what the dungeon provides, it even destroys comps because if you didn't have a soft CC or hard CC your class was utter trash in heroics.

[TheRabidDeer]

Actually, the reason why TBC seemed harder is because this site and other sites which give a full in depth walk through of encounters did not exist in the same vain that they exist now.

Straight until 2.1 when Black Temple was (officially) released, gear in the game was still broken. Boots from Lady Vashj were a side grade from boots from the very first raid boss in the expansion.

You required a minimum gear level which, the only way to get it was to get lucky. Gruul was bullshit for people just starting out hydross required nature resist gear until the changes in 2.1 were made.

Also there were a lot more "new" mechanics that we've never seen any iteration of before. The triangle of pain from mother Shazras for example was the first of its type. In the same raid tier, another boss had a similar mechanic where you had to clump together to avoid damage.

To make a long story short: TBC was more difficult, but it was not "harder". Were TBC's gear properly normalized (even towards the end of the expansion) as gear has been since the end of Wrath, I can guarrentee you that most fights with the exception of the ones in Sunwell would be just as "easy" as most other expansions.

Another problem is that back for the entire duration of TBC, the act of releasing a "kill" video was a super big thing. Being able to see Method's kill of vashj for example was kinda special. With each release of a kill video (Nihilum's kill of Mother Shazras, etc) you learned some of the boss fight but not enough information was give for proper execution.

Now, well before the raid tier is released on live, people already know the fight like the back of their hand from the PTRs. Oh that reminds me. BUGS. TBC had some horrible boss bugs which in some cases made completing some encounters nearly impossible without some cleaver use of game mechanics. Everybody thought muru was super difficult except for the fact that his pulsing attack was dealing more damage than it actually should of. After that "Nerf" (which was actually a fix to put the fight in tune with how it should of been) Muru was reduced from the hardest (non broken) boss of any expansion to one of the easiest.

While i am on the topic of Sunwell, Am i the only person who think the eredar twins is like the best boss fight in the game? I am not even kidding. 14 healers for a 25 man raid was insane but besides the ledge boss, there was never a time where it felt like bullshit. It was a legitimately hard fight with close to zero bullshit.

There were guides for bosses it just usually wasnt a video guide. You had guides like this: http://www.mmo-champion.com/content/315 Twins was fun but I think if you ran 14 healers that might be a bit much. Definitely a lot of healers though. I liked that raids back then had varying compositions though I can't see that working anymore sadly. And the Muru nerf was put in because almost nobody could kill him. Tuning was the major problem with raids back then but also what made them fun and challenging. The nerf they decided to do is what made it so much easier (but still quite hard, as only 700 guilds killed him before patch 3.0 hit). They nerfed the health on the adds when killing the adds in time was a huge part of the fight

[Deficineiron]

No, the issue with the dungeon was that it was still tuned around tier 5 gear equivalent, when you started getting tier 6 is when you could start steamrolling. That's why every group back in the days always wanted 3 CC's for SH heroic if they had karazhan gear.

actually they were tuned to be completable by t4/dungeon 70 blues that had their act mostly together and had some cc. the devs knew they were hard, they seem to have put quite a bit of effort into making them that way.

doing them in t5 was outgearing the intended tuning.

[Echo of Soul]

BC only had 1 difficulty(mythic).

how many mythic raid bosses have you beaten, 4 weeks after release? even complete guttertrash in BC would've at least cleared up to curator or more(maybe not shade of aran/prince), have you at least cleared up to cenarius, maybe il'gynoth?

dont use free-loot mode as a gauge of raid difficulty in modern wow.

Well I raided mythic in WOD and 4 weeks from starting mythic to clearing it sounds about right. HFC took a little longer and HM was a bit faster but it evens out throughout the expansion. I'm raiding a lot more casual this expansion, 3-6 hours per week and we're not going to aim higher than heroic but that's not really relevant to the discussion.

- - - Updated - - -

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.

Well there's really not that much incentive to clear the raid in four different difficulties. Once you've seen the content you've seen the content, subsequent clears isn't really that big of a deal when you've seen everything there is to see the first week of launch.

Back in TBC and even parts of Wrath getting to see the last boss of a raid was a big deal. You'd been progressing through the raid for weeks or even months and finally you'd reached the end, and downing that boss was a great experience.

[Holofernes]

Uhm, Circle of Healing was a beast back then if you say theres lack of AoE heals. No CD... Id spam the hell out of it and top meters LOL....

uhm ud be oom after 10 seconds, with the mobs of heroic instance still at 80% hp

[anon5123]

TBC was harder mostly due to bad/clunky class mechanics.

Some healers could not dispel magic effects (Shaman, Druid) and Paladin/Druid did not have any AoE heals. (well, except tranq but that's a cooldown)

Paladin was the only tank that had decent AoE threat. Other tanks had to tab-target single target abilities. I mean sure, Thunderclap and Swipe existed, but they only hit 4 targets and did very little damage/threat. Paladin tank was practically mandatory for Kara, because of so many pulls that had 5+ mobs. (that and, lots of undead mobs to use Exorcism on) But on the flip side, their single-target threat was not as good as a druid or warrior, so you would get turned down from raids because they needed a "main tank".

DPS casters could actually run out of mana. Ele shamans, Spriests and Boomkins had to chug mana potions. Running out of mana on a raid boss was a real threat, in T4/T5.

Hybrid tax was still a thing. Spriest did mediocre DPS, ran out of mana very easily, and had no AoE. Was only brought to raids because Vampiric Touch restored mana for the healers. Boomkin / Ret / Ele / Enhance had it a little better, but still did not do as much DPS as pures and were mostly just brought for their buffs.

And the heroics themselves were just very highly-tuned. They did not become trivial until you were in full T5 gear, and even then, you could still wipe if you pulled more than 5 or 6 mobs, as lots of mobs had things like aoe fears or silences or stuns, or just hit ridiculously hard. It's true, lots of trash packs in Shadow Labyrinth required CC because the mobs hit like fucking trucks AND had abilities. Trash was way harder than the bosses.

[bledgor]

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

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Vanilla had the easiest most simple bullshit rotation in the history of WoW and BC didn't do much to expand to it. As a warlock i finally could cast my dots, after which I just cast shadow bolt. At the same note i had no CDs I just had dots and shadow bolt, demonology currently is several degrees most complex, aff has more complexity, only destro is somewhat similar but they fucked destro so I wont fight you there.

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.

No Naxx was not saw by anyone because it was only out a short time before BC launched so most players didnt have a good time to see it, sunwell was a bit better but not great. The attunments slowed people but again not the biggest issue. It wasn't difficulty either, the raids were easy,.

The issue was gear/gearing, as there was no catch up mechanic really (valor patched some holes, but was limited) as top tier guilds had to poach from those below them to keep progress going or face going back to old raids to gear players for progression, which just resulted in huge issues as guilds poached from one another and those at the bottom could never go up since their players either left to go to a better/more progressed gear or they got poached anyways. If you lost a healer during SSC/TK progression you had to go grab a healer and take them through Mag/Gruuls/kara to prep them for progress and attunments (which also required slave pens). If you were doing MH and lost someone and recruited someone not already on it you had to do TK and SSC again for attunement and gear as well. Once you outgeared those fights they really weren't hard. I remember clearing almost all of MH in 2 weeks in a good (not top quality) gear (everything but archimond).

[TheRabidDeer]

No Naxx was not saw by anyone because it was only out a short time before BC launched so most players didnt have a good time to see it, sunwell was a bit better but not great.

Naxx was out for about 7 months before BC launched so people had plenty of time to get to it, it just had some of the worst gear checks imaginable. First you had 4h where you had to fully gear I think it was like 8 tanks. Then you had to craft frost resist gear for a full raid of 40 people with drops that only came from inside naxx for sapphiron. The fights were really hard too, just on the level of tuning not really the mechanics.

[kary]

Naxx was out for about 7 months before BC launched so people had plenty of time to get to it, it just had some of the worst gear checks imaginable. First you had 4h where you had to fully gear I think it was like 8 tanks. Then you had to craft frost resist gear for a full raid of 40 people with drops that only came from inside naxx for sapphiron. The fights were really hard too, just on the level of tuning not really the mechanics.

Basically to be successful in naxx you wouldve had to have AQ40 on farm before it dropped. Otherwise you wouldn't have been able to catch up your raid in time.

[Deleted]

Translation: BC seemed harder because it fucking was harder.

After playing throughout a TBC and recently on a private server I can only agree. Not only that but the gameplay, classes and abilities just simply worked and paid off so so much better.

Current WoW just feels like a cluster fuck of who gives a shit until top difficulty modes, everything is meaningless. Performing well or being terrible means nothing.

[anon5123]

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Vanilla had the easiest most simple bullshit rotation in the history of WoW and BC didn't do much to expand to it. As a warlock i finally could cast my dots, after which I just cast shadow bolt. At the same note i had no CDs I just had dots and shadow bolt, demonology currently is several degrees most complex, aff has more complexity, only destro is somewhat similar but they fucked destro so I wont fight you there.

Casting dots? In BC? No, the highest dps for Warlocks was going a deep-destro spec and just spamming Shadowbolt. Crits would be huge and cause a debuff that increased shadow damage, only making Shadowbolt that much more valuable.

But yeah, claiming that rotations were easiest in Cata..rofl, no. Back in vanilla, mages literally just spammed frostbolt, or fireball in AQ/naxx, rogues just did 5 combo point Slice&Dice and Eviscerate, Warriors spammed bloodthirst, whirlwind and heroic strike, etc...dps was ridiculously easy in vanilla. The hardest part was getting the right gear and using the right spec; the actual "rotations" were braindead simple.

Basically to be successful in naxx you wouldve had to have AQ40 on farm before it dropped. Otherwise you wouldn't have been able to catch up your raid in time.

Pretty much, yeah. It had such a high bar of entry that barely anyone was able to actually complete it before BC released. Not only did you need to have 40 people in full AQ40/BWL gear, but they also needed to be attuned which meant either dropping a fuckton of gold, or being exalted with Argent Dawn. Though, considering how late it released in vanilla, you'd likely already be at least Honored with them, from running strat/scholo so many times.

But for someone just hitting 60 shortly before naxx release, yeah, it was impossible to ever see the inside of the instance. So I can understand why Blizzard wants to make everything super-accessible now. They don't want another situation where only 1% of the playerbase even enters the instance.

[Kyanion]

After playing throughout a TBC and recently on a private server I can only agree. Not only that but the gameplay, classes and abilities just simply worked and paid off so so much better.

Current WoW just feels like a cluster fuck of who gives a shit until top difficulty modes, everything is meaningless. Performing well or being terrible means nothing.

Fun fact: You weren't playing TBC, you were playing a shittier version of it on some private server.

[Aori]

TBC had far more personal responsbility, in particular for DPS. DPS had to kite, CC, manage threat(this was a dps problem not a tank problem). I loved the tight rope walk of threat management. It separated good tanks from bad tanks, bad dps from good dps.

One thing many people forget or even didn't know was a thing is parry hasting. This alone caused so many issues for ignorant melee. Best example of this was Prince Malchezaar, a lot of new people to raiding and it was fairly heavy movement. Melee DPS would find themselves sitting in front him often and on Phase 2, you could see even an overgeared tank go from full to dead in the blink of an eye.

I miss the threat the most, I really enjoyed old school warrior tanking, I miss it. Being able to aoe tank 4 mobs in dungeons and raids in Vanilla/TBC was an accomplishment. You were a standout if you could do it. The healers loved you if you could hold an entire group of mobs.

I miss the personal mechanics, it made characters feel different, challenging and unique. Nowadays everything is starting to feel the same. I honestly have no sense of accomplishment from any WoW activity anymore.

[Holofernes]

myth + 5 with 850 feels like heroic tbc instances in blue /kara starter gear, minus the aggro struggle for tanks, minus random stuns from mobs that need to be guess-pre-shieldwalled to survive them. (but u got pretty good at guessing them with experienc, and with t5 those mobs didnt always kill you)

[munkeyinorbit]

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.

Only bad paladins didn't have enough mana. BC used down-ranking. No one used their highest ability spell. Instead of using, say, level 8 of a spell, they used rank 4 instead. This enables them to constantly cast spells to keep tank alive. Usually there was one tank. Usually there were 2-3 pallys and usually there was not a lot of movement. So they stood there and just spam healed tank. Difficult indeed.

The bad players are the ones that say that BC was difficult. It really was not difficult, just more grindy. Rotations for dps were non existant. All dps that raided, there were lots that just were not viable such as elemental, oomkin and ret, had simple 1-2 button rotations. The top dps of the whole expansion was a lock just spamming shadowbolt. Mechanics on bosses were near non existant. Difficulty was a joke. You just needed to be lucky (not good) enough to find a guild that raided what you wanted.

1. People had far less HP. This was a function of Cata when Blizzard really didn't know how to stop people being globalled AND they never knew how to balance healing. In Vanilla/BC and LK, a tank was in constant danger of exploding in 1-2 globals. This was basically because bosses had no mechanics, so it was harder to kill a raid. You had to wipe a raid somehow and this was the way. By the time we got to Cata (and it didnt really pay of till WoD), Blizzard decided that it was OK for tanks not to be healed for a few seconds, because the raid would be wiped in mechanics. Having less HP does not make a game harder.

2. AOE tanking was not really a thing and CC was used in Raids as well as Dungeons. Only warriors tanked raids, but the other two were pretty good at off tanking or dungeons. Warriors had a max of four targets they could thunderclap so CC was a thing. This did not make the game harder. It actually made it easier because you had mobs that were out of the equation. Sheeping was not hard to do. I played hunter in SW but I bought my mage with 7k HP during trash to sheep mobs. He was in greens and yet he was in the hardest instance in all of BC. Yeah. It was difficult.

3. People had to remember to resheep or the warrior had to not thunderclap next to mobs? You must have really played with bads. CC was the easiest thing to do. I remember having 7 targets CCed in some trash pulls. Compared to today, that is just crazy. But it wasn't hard. Get assigned to a target, and CC it on pull. How hard is that? Not very.

4. There was two aoe spells and that was it. You may or may not have had a priest, but the had circle of healing for their group. Great heal depending on the boss. But who cares. You had 2-3 palladins and 3-4 resto shamans. All shaman did was cast chain heal. That was it. Chain Heal Chain Heal Chain Heal Chain Heal Chain Heal Chain Heal Chain Heal Chain Heal Chain Heal Chain Heal Chain Heal Chain Heal Chain Heal Chain Heal Chain Heal Chain Heal. Maybe a hero. How is that hard. It was the most OP thing in the entire game. Even more OP than warlocks. If you were struggling on a boss? Lose a dps or two and bring more shamans for chain heal. Not difficult at all.

Tank Skill. You just described a tank for any expansion. Yes, threat is a non issue now and it was great as a dps to push a tank as hard as I could without pulling aggro. But really, there was no real skill to keeping threat. All dps used omen and the ones that were going to pull aggro, except warriors, had a threat dump. In BC you brought Locks, Hunters, Rogues with a smattering of other classes just to fill it out or buff the raid (shadow priest for example, a single mage for food maybe, encahnce shaman for windfury). There was also blessing cant pull from a tank, a paladin buff that lowered dps threat. As long as you MDed at the begining, it was very diifuclt to pull off a tank unless you were just bad at the game.

Conclusion. You would have had a very bad time at the game if you think BC was hard. It wasn't difficult at all. You just had to use common sense and use the tools at your disposal. I loved BC but the game is far more challenging now than it was back then.

[Rhoe]

Your tank sucked. Until you got to T6+ you only had severe aggro problems if your tank sucked. I played prot warrior, holy priest and SP in BC.

Our tank didn't suck. He might not have been top 100 world, but he was fine. Demanding that someone in a certain role play way better than everyone else just so he won't hold the rest of the players back and bore them to death doesn't seem like good design to me. And it certainly wasn't fun. I'm much happier with current day tank design.

[Holofernes]

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.

with full s4 gear u had 14 k hp as tauren warrior. with s2, /s3 gear which was the season when bt /mh were relevant , u had 11 k hp. I had some parts of pvp in my pve set, for armor pen reasons.

(and i always played with my shaman buddy and swordspec btw, which was way more fun (and dps) than mace stun, and windfury swordspec globalling those druids was a lot of fun, and at some point in the long games, stuff lined up) but sometimes for bgs i speced into mace and used the feral mace (did nearly no dmg, but stun was still strong enough to kill people with it

As a tank at illidan i had fully buffed 18 k hp, and tanks in sunwell had like 22-24 k hp max.

I joyfully remember my best 5vs5 team ever: 3 restoshaman 2 warri, with a bloodlust and mana tide rotation. SO MUCH FUN. 2.5 k rating, nobody wanted to qeue against our team.

[Aeula]

Only bad paladins didn't have enough mana. BC used down-ranking. No one used their highest ability spell. Instead of using, say, level 8 of a spell, they used rank 4 instead. This enables them to constantly cast spells to keep tank alive. Usually there was one tank. Usually there were 2-3 pallys and usually there was not a lot of movement. So they stood there and just spam healed tank. Difficult indeed.

I played as ret, not holy. And whilst I agree TBC wasn't terribly difficult if you were lucky, aware and knew what you were doing. My main point was that the rotations made the game harder than it is right now. Because they were so basic.

[Deleted]

actually they were tuned to be completable by t4/dungeon 70 blues that had their act mostly together and had some cc. the devs knew they were hard, they seem to have put quite a bit of effort into making them that way.

doing them in t5 was outgearing the intended tuning.

And no one in their right mind would go in their dungeon 70's, let alone having a succesful run in karazhan gear. Having T5 was ideal so i don't know why you keep insisting that it was outgearing it, since there's a reason why people thought the tuning was retarded.