Reason why people say TBC was harder

[Doomchicken]

As an oceanic player that had to run the game on 300 plus MS, had vastly more successful runs of shattered halls than failures whilst pugging most of them as an elemental shaman back when it had no hex and said elemental shaman rotation consisted of spamming lightning bolt until tier 6 gear for single target anyone that tells me that TBC was harder than today gets added immediately to my ignore list for being stupid and wrong.

[Anthony3187]

As an oceanic player that had to run the game on 300 plus MS, had vastly more successful runs of shattered halls than failures whilst pugging most of them as an elemental shaman back when it had no hex and said elemental shaman rotation consisted of spamming lightning bolt until tier 6 gear for single target anyone that tells me that TBC was harder than today gets added immediately to my ignore list for being stupid and wrong.

DPS Rotations were vastly easier in TBC. I 100% agree on that. In general boss fights had less abilities but individual mechanics were more punishing (like those in Karazhan and Heroic/Mythic Emerald Nightmare today)

I would argue that tanking and healing was definitely trickier in TBC than it is now in Legion. TBC had harder tank/healing/threat mechanics to deal with (not to mention Taunts that were 8 yds and could "Miss", tanks getting insta-gibbed with "crushing blows", 5 second mana-regen rule for healers, chain-potting just to keep your mana up, etc, etc

Class mechanics had way more depth in TBC, and you were expected to know your entire arsenal including CC etc in dungeons. Individual DPS rotations were definitely easier back then, but tanking+healing+threat management were a lot trickier back then 110%.

I absolutely love how the pace in Return to Karazhan is slower and groups take the dungeon more serious when it comes to trash pulls and mechanics. It's how dungeons should be compared to steamroll speedruns that Mythic+ gives us (In my own opinion of course)

[ImpTaimer]

BC was harder because gearing was still difficult and content was purposefully made to reduce soloing and slow leveling outside of groups.

Data mining / guide websites were still blooming and people hid their secrets. Blizzard still tried to keep stuff secret on PTR.

They just need to remove PTR. Devs don't fucking listen anyway. Post-Activision Merger team is so fucking smug even though they only got their positions through job connections / seniority and not experience. Then you got all the useless mouthbreathing parrots who blindly defend them as if they suffer from compulsive ass-kissing.

"You're just being entitled and not evolving bloo bloo." ~squawked the parrots who use addons and reads guides before even stepping foot into new content.

Gearing was interesting adventure from Vanilla through WotLK. "Want to play a class a certain way? Gear for it! We'll only nerf it if it's blatantly overpowered."

Now its "Want to play the class the way we intend it? I hope you like crippling RNG with no clear goal because we'll nerf anything for any reason!"

[Deleted]

It wasn't so much Ruin that made shadow bolt spam so good, it was the Improved Shadow Bolt talent that would boost the damage of all shadow users, which in turn boosted the health and mana regenned by Shadow Priests.

If you're talking about the raw damage of shadow bolts then you also have to take into account the benefits of Shadow and Flame and Demonic Sacrifice, the two talents you ended with in the 0-21-40 spec.

You are quite right. I forgot about ISB. But hey:

Improved Shadow Bolt - Your Shadow Bolt critical strikes increase Shadow damage dealt to the target by 20% until 4 non-periodic damage sources are applied. Effect lasts a maximum of 12 sec.

Which brings us to:

Even with low amounts of crit, destro was still right up there with the other specs. It's not like you have 0% crit if you're not in full T5. Crit/hit gear existed prior to T5 content, as did crit gems and crit enchants.

With low amounts of crit you have basically disabled 2 very essential talents. And you needed 16% spell hit to be hit capped which means you had to collect all pieces of blue gear with spell hit on it and fill all the sockets with spell hit gems. On contrary Affliction tree provided 10% hit to affliction spells.

Been a while, but I believe to be hit capped in T4/early T5 you had to go full blue hit gems and one hit trinket. I also think affliction was better AOE wise which is why they were favored in SSC. Also I think gem gear was relatively rare. Not sure about that one though.

Exactly. People forget that there were 3 secondary stats important to caster DPS:

spell hit > spell power > spell crit

Later on T6 spell haste rating came on to the stage as a 4th.

Dungeon blues, Kara & crafted epics had 1 or 2 of those stats. Choose 2 and you gimped 3rd. On contrary T5 items had 2-3 secondary stats and you ended up with high amounts of all of those because higher item level and higher stat budget for items with 2-3 secondary stats.

[Deleted]

TBC and hard ???
Pfff
Wasnt that hard
Warlocks only need to use 1 buton (i remember there was a pic these days with big Shadowbolt buton in the center of the screen )
My hunter also do big part of his rotation with 1 buton macro(it was because something tied with autoshots i cant remember )

[Deleted]

Another big thing on why it was harder was lack of data mining and public known knowledge. Warcraft for the most part was still a wild west back in the day and searching for anything normally required a thing called "thottbot" which was a very primitive search engine for the game.

Lets say TBC was released now. With the current level of data miners and public knowledge of the game the game would be almost as easy as it is today. Difference however is EVERY dps rerolling to lock to raid and many classes left to vanish.

[Echo of Soul]

TBC and hard ???
Pfff
Wasnt that hard
Warlocks only need to use 1 buton (i remember there was a pic these days with big Shadowbolt buton in the center of the screen )
My hunter also do big part of his rotation with 1 buton macro(it was because something tied with autoshots i cant remember )

Rotations are a pretty small part of PVE encounters. TBC had a lot of difficult areas that couldn't be solved by playing your character better.
Positioning, raid composition, BiS gearing & theorycrafting, threat & mana management.
Sure the mechanics were easier and the rotations but everything that's been stripped away from the game over the years was still there and had to be handled which made the encounters very difficult. If you'd add current boss mechanics and dps rotations to TBC content most of it would've been impossible.

[Dergiab]

So all you warlocks that spammed shadowbolt during the whole of TBC, how did that work for you at Magtheridons lair?

[Deleted]

Rotations are a pretty small part of PVE encounters. TBC had a lot of difficult areas that couldn't be solved by playing your character better.
Positioning, raid composition, BiS gearing & theorycrafting, threat & mana management.
Sure the mechanics were easier and the rotations but everything that's been stripped away from the game over the years was still there and had to be handled which made the encounters very difficult. If you'd add current boss mechanics and dps rotations to TBC content most of it would've been impossible.

I dint know english in that time only site who checked was thotbot or something for quests and yet we got cleared all raids (but we raid 5-6 hours 6 days in the week ).Back in the time we just learn how to play by our mistakes now ppl just say that you are noob bewcause you dint look in to Youtobe for example
Same was in Vanilla the only addon who i ever use then was that range one for C`thun

[Futhark]

One thing that is funny is that during TBC, I got scared out of Heroics because of how hard they were for a filthy casual like me. I mean, wiping at the trash at the entrance hard.

Now in Legion, I am scared to do Mythics. It's full circle, man!

[hnlntm]

One thing that is funny is that during TBC, I got scared out of Heroics because of how hard they were for a filthy casual like me. I mean, wiping at the trash at the entrance hard.

Now in Legion, I am scared to do Mythics. It's full circle, man!

Find the right group of people who play at your pace and don't mind dying, you'll be fine.

[Armourboy]

So all you warlocks that spammed shadowbolt during the whole of TBC, how did that work for you at Magtheridons lair?

I think so many people who disliked TBC or want to put it down seem to forget that things were much different before people got gear, especially the sunwell badge gear.

Early TBC was pretty rough, you had to have CC as a tank not just because of threat but because you didn't have the gear to survive all of that mess. Healers generally didn't have the mana, and DPS weren't able to survive hits like they can now. Now later in TBC you saw the 1 button Warlocks, and 1 button Resto Shaman type things, but during that first raid tier things were pretty rough.

As far as people saying players are better today, I'm not sure I buy that, I certainly was a better player back then, but then I had to be. I may be a more informed player today, but I'm not sure I was better. Solo healing heroics as a Paladin could get interesting at times, especially with no AOE heal. I was a blessing throwing machine, with god knows how many rank spells in my rotation ( Pretty sure I had at least 3 Holy lights alone ). LoH's sucked you dry, and Paladins without a Shadow Priest were pretty much dead in the water until a pot came off CD. I think I used LoH's as much as a mana return as I did to save someone ( or maybe that was vanilla, been a while). I definitely was better at thinking on my feet back then. Heck I healed a Paladin through normal Shadowlabs with less than 7k health, I'm not sure my fingers work well enough to do that now

People also tend to forget that those that were pretty good at CC were a god send. Hunters that could trap two targets at once and keep another kited were a thing of beauty. Maybe that was the difference, you could tell the great players from the good players, from the ok players, to the ones you didn't want near you.

Keep in mind I don't consider TBC my favorite expansion either, so it's not like I'm just dying to have it back. There are some things I would like to see make a come back, mainly the threat, it sucked so much out of the game when it didn't matter anymore.

[Fenderxx]

I think so many people who disliked TBC or want to put it down seem to forget that things were much different before people got gear, especially the sunwell badge gear.

Early TBC was pretty rough, you had to have CC as a tank not just because of threat but because you didn't have the gear to survive all of that mess. Healers generally didn't have the mana, and DPS weren't able to survive hits like they can now. Now later in TBC you saw the 1 button Warlocks, and 1 button Resto Shaman type things, but during that first raid tier things were pretty rough.

As far as people saying players are better today, I'm not sure I buy that, I certainly was a better player back then, but then I had to be. I may be a more informed player today, but I'm not sure I was better. Solo healing heroics as a Paladin could get interesting at times, especially with no AOE heal. I was a blessing throwing machine, with god knows how many rank spells in my rotation ( Pretty sure I had at least 3 Holy lights alone ). LoH's sucked you dry, and Paladins without a Shadow Priest were pretty much dead in the water until a pot came off CD. I think I used LoH's as much as a mana return as I did to save someone ( or maybe that was vanilla, been a while). I definitely was better at thinking on my feet back then. Heck I healed a Paladin through normal Shadowlabs with less than 7k health, I'm not sure my fingers work well enough to do that now

People also tend to forget that those that were pretty good at CC were a god send. Hunters that could trap two targets at once and keep another kited were a thing of beauty. Maybe that was the difference, you could tell the great players from the good players, from the ok players, to the ones you didn't want near you.

Keep in mind I don't consider TBC my favorite expansion either, so it's not like I'm just dying to have it back. There are some things I would like to see make a come back, mainly the threat, it sucked so much out of the game when it didn't matter anymore.

That is a very interesting point. In TBC great players had a lot more ways to shine.. not just DPS numbers, but the ability to CC, kite, focus down targets, and interrupt. All of those things still exist but you had a much simpler tool kit back then and really had to on point in the early days.

[Deleted]

I think so many people who disliked TBC or want to put it down seem to forget that things were much different before people got gear, especially the sunwell badge gear.

Early TBC was pretty rough, you had to have CC as a tank not just because of threat but because you didn't have the gear to survive all of that mess. Healers generally didn't have the mana, and DPS weren't able to survive hits like they can now. Now later in TBC you saw the 1 button Warlocks, and 1 button Resto Shaman type things, but during that first raid tier things were pretty rough.

As far as people saying players are better today, I'm not sure I buy that, I certainly was a better player back then, but then I had to be. I may be a more informed player today, but I'm not sure I was better. Solo healing heroics as a Paladin could get interesting at times, especially with no AOE heal. I was a blessing throwing machine, with god knows how many rank spells in my rotation ( Pretty sure I had at least 3 Holy lights alone ). LoH's sucked you dry, and Paladins without a Shadow Priest were pretty much dead in the water until a pot came off CD. I think I used LoH's as much as a mana return as I did to save someone ( or maybe that was vanilla, been a while). I definitely was better at thinking on my feet back then. Heck I healed a Paladin through normal Shadowlabs with less than 7k health, I'm not sure my fingers work well enough to do that now

People also tend to forget that those that were pretty good at CC were a god send. Hunters that could trap two targets at once and keep another kited were a thing of beauty. Maybe that was the difference, you could tell the great players from the good players, from the ok players, to the ones you didn't want near you.

Keep in mind I don't consider TBC my favorite expansion either, so it's not like I'm just dying to have it back. There are some things I would like to see make a come back, mainly the threat, it sucked so much out of the game when it didn't matter anymore.

I dont remember in detail, but I was a Holy Paladin back then as well and I never had any problems in Heroics, the only one that gave me troubles was that boss in Auchenai Crypts, that slowed casting.

The dungeons were harder when TBC launched, because they were harder than Classic and not many were prepared for it, but after a few weeks, even the heroics werent much of a problem. Also Karazhan was so easy it wasnt even funny, we cleared it in two days without any preperation.

[kary]

I can't remember if you had 60 or 100% illumination in TBC, but hpals were pretty good for heroics, lol.
And there was the old seal of wisdom + whacking when mana got tight haha. That being said, I ditched my paladin early T5, so my memory could be foggy :/

[laplacedemon]

I think so many people who disliked TBC or want to put it down seem to forget that things were much different before people got gear

I think people who are comparing different difficulties are being fair though. Heroic dungeons without overgearing them were the highest difficulty of 5-man content in TBC, but we have m+ up to 15 nowadays. If you do a high difficulty mythic without overgearing them, you can see how much of a player is expected regarding using their toolkit effectively including cc, planning cooldowns, kiting -more of a tank thing though unless it's skittish- while not losing dps/hps. It's very easy to die, a lot of things one-shot or close to one-shot and there isn't that much room for mistakes (there's still some of course).

A great player still shines among the 'good dps', but you need to put them in the right environment.

[Tharkkun]

It was only harder because the player base in general was terrible. Now with alternative avenues to gear those terrible players aren't forced to raid so they've been eliminated from the pool. So you generally have more skilled players in raids today. You don't hear about just getting "a body" in the raid for mechanics much anymore.

[Armourboy]

I can't remember if you had 60 or 100% illumination in TBC, but hpals were pretty good for heroics, lol.
And there was the old seal of wisdom + whacking when mana got tight haha. That being said, I ditched my paladin early T5, so my memory could be foggy :/

It was 100% at the start and you stacked critical like crazy, it was nerfed throughout the expansion to where that wasn't the viable way to gear.

I'll also add to others that replied, If you were in a top flight guild, I'm sure Kara and heroics were easy, for those that weren't, or were in feeder guilds, it was a completely different story. Once we added a couple people from an SSC/TK guild that collapsed things got much easier from a raiding stand point.

[TheWorkingTitle]

The reason people say it was more difficult is because it was. There's nothing else really to it. Classic was even more difficult though.

[Granyala]

I do think today's Mythic raids are much harder than anything before Sunwell (Vashj / Kael excluded) and higher Mythic+ dungeons are harder than TBC heroics as well.