Is WoW getting easier or players are getting better?

[ThrashMetalFtw]

It's been getting easier since Cataclysm, and argubly easier since Wrath. TBC was the real dungeon/raid challenge, and Vanilla... while broken In many many ways, was still a challanging time of It's own but unfairly so. So TBC to me Is still the best and most difficult time of WoW hence why I liked It. I don't like Legion where you're given things on a silver platter, want an epic? Go jump on a vine casket, kick squirel nuts around, grow wisps as a tree, or simply press W with an AoE buff that kills everything around you until you complete world quest...

That's the most bizzare "Challange" I've ever seen on WoW, so bad. Now TBC, you wanted an epic? A specific one too with good stats? Go run the Blood Furnace on Heroic, and no It won't be easy, mobs take CCing, single-targetting you can't just aoe everything or you'd spend too much mana and die mid-fight... I don't care what anyone says about current WoW, TBC had the difficulty down and people whined that It was too difficult and then they toned It down In Wrath until It remained that way for filthy casuals to keep doable.

If you can't take down a challange, due to your bad knowledge of tactics or bad execution of theirof then you just did a mistake and have to do It again. You should be punished for not remembering the tactics and executing them Incorrectly, as well as mis-healing something, not dpsing properly, not tanking properly cause you also couldn't just aoe taunt everything... Sure TBC had many flaws as well, classes weren't all that great In some respects but It was still the best time In WoW over all followed by Wrath's systems and story, despite the difficulty spike going down, the story made up for It for me.

This is so upside down it's not even funny. Bosses have been getting more complex, more oneshot mechanics and more "one guy failing can kill the entire raid" situations since WotLK. The raids have been getting progressively harder since WotLK, not easier... Assuming we are comparing Classic/TBCs raids to current day Mythic raids (HC from WotLK to MoP), since that's the direct competition. The easier modes were added as alternatives, but the hard versions have always been there, and the hard versions have been getting progressively harder every single expansion.

Also, stop fapping over TBC 5mans HCs. They were not that hard at the time, they were most certainly easier than the Cata 5man HCs on launch, which were kinda similiar to Legion Mythic 0 dungeons (on launch in appropriate gear, obviously). If you compare any TBC HCs to something like M+ 15 or higher, regardless of which affixes you have, the TBC HCs start looking like LFR in comparison.

The fact that you used Blood Furance as an example also makes me think that you didn't actually play back then, as it was considered one of the easier HCs. At least use the ones that were actually hard, like Shattered Halls, Shadow Labyrinth, CoT: Escape from Durnholde or Botania. Then again, these were only hard if you had a grp full of undergeared retards. TBC HCs were never really hard for any organized grps of ppl with some kind of understanding of the game and its mechanics.

[Esad]

LOL in vanilla most classes had 2 or 3 button rotations

what class+spec that was relevant would that be? i had right about 12-14 buttons in my fury rotation with stance dance/overpower making my rotation super dynamic. for most specs it was way harder back then to maintain a 98+% efficient dmg rotation than it it nowdays. there is literally 3 button rotations now with random procs and thats it.

[Ehuehuecopter]

Frostbolt and Shadow bolt spam

Also please write down all the 12 spell for the rotation

[Hitei]

what class+spec that was relevant would that be?

Balance, Fire, Combat, Shadow, Resto and Resto, HPally.

You know, when people weren't being assigned to sit on a boss and auto-attack so that they could kick a specific spell, or hitting one downranked spell so that they could buff when short term buffs wore off.

Would love to know what 12 buttons you were hitting during your regular rotation though.

[ls-]

Frostbolt and Shadow bolt spam

Also please write down all the 12 spell for the rotation

Prob various ranks of the same spell Like I had on my priest

[Ehuehuecopter]

LeL hope not because it would be Dank af

[ThrashMetalFtw]

what class+spec that was relevant would that be? i had right about 12-14 buttons in my fury rotation with stance dance/overpower making my rotation super dynamic. for most specs it was way harder back then to maintain a 98+% efficient dmg rotation than it it nowdays. there is literally 3 button rotations now with random procs and thats it.

Rogue, Mage, Hunter and from what I remember about the talent trees/spells back then, probably everything except for Locks. I want you to list the 14 button rotation for Classic Fury Warrs btw. Only rotational dmg spells obviously, if we start counting utility/CD/movement spells and stuff, most specs probably have 15+ buttons to press today aswell, and no, stance dancing doesn't count, since that could easily (and should for efficiency) be macroed into the spells you wanted to use when changing stance.

Rotational complexity was a joke in Classic and TBC. I mean, you can argue about raid difficulty, but this on the other hand? Nope. EVERY class got SIGNIFICANTLY harder to play in WotLK, and most classes' rotational complexity peaked in either Cata or MoP (most casters in Cata because of all the casting while moving casters got in MoP, most melees in MoP), while some classes of today are harder to play than anything back then, Shadow Priest with S2M, Feral Druid, Demo Lock and Unholy DK being the most obvious examples of Legion classdesigns that make ANYTHING from Classic and TBC look like mindless t6 era Shadowbolt spam, pun intended.

[Aggrophobic]

Bosses are easier. Addons are better. People tend to overgear shit. Thats the gist of it

No, bosses are not easier at all.

[Ehuehuecopter]

Some people didn't remember MOP Feral or Unholy BOS prepot+rot

Because ofc was better playing easier rotation and arguing about Pruning now xD

[Heathy]

players get better and the game does actually get harder, the bosses in ToS are mechanically harder than the bosses in NH.

I didn't really down rank in classic, only when we got to razorgore because full rank flash heals would pull aggro on all the adds running into the room. threat management was pretty much the entire difficult part of that encounter, but i can't say there was any other place that it really mattered or was considered part of the overal difficulty in general.

[Ehuehuecopter]

Rogue, Mage, Hunter and from what I remember about the talent trees/spells back then, probably everything except for Locks. I want you to list the 14 button rotation for Classic Fury Warrs btw. Only rotational dmg spells obviously, if we start counting utility/CD/movement spells and stuff, most specs probably have 15+ buttons to press today aswell, and no, stance dancing doesn't count, since that could easily (and should for efficiency) be macroed into the spells you wanted to use when changing stance.

Rotational complexity was a joke in Classic and TBC. I mean, you can argue about raid difficulty, but this on the other hand? Nope. EVERY class got SIGNIFICANTLY harder to play in WotLK, and most classes' rotational complexity peaked in either Cata or MoP (most casters in Cata because of all the casting while moving casters got in MoP, most melees in MoP), while some classes of today are harder to play than anything back then, Shadow Priest with S2M, Feral Druid, Demo Lock and Unholy DK being the most obvious examples of Legion classdesigns that make ANYTHING from Classic and TBC look like mindless t6 era Shadowbolt spam, pun intended.

Since we are talking about war fury

Just look George BWL video.

Look the rotation complexity :V

[Deleted]

Obviously, classes are much more complex and bosses much more intricate than they were in — say vanilla. But the World of Warcraft difficulty curve has been one of slight linear increases, while the skill, time investment, knowledge and tools available to the players has been on an exponential increase. PvP is a different story — it peaked some expansions ago and has been in disarray ever since. But at its core, as a PvE-game, World of Warcraft is much, much more difficult. That's why new players have a very hard time getting started on WoW today compared to 12 years ago.

[Hitei]

Since we are talking about war fury

Just look George BWL video.

Look the rotation complexity :V

Maybe he meant hitting cleave 12-14 times between the whirlwinds. :^)

[Charge me Doctor]

Rogue, Mage, Hunter and from what I remember about the talent trees/spells back then, probably everything except for Locks.

Speaking of warlocks, i'm fairly sure that you could get by with 1 button, utilizing an addon that was basically a bot, you could do shit like "if target doesn't have curse - apply curse", "if your mana <25% - life tap", "if none above - shadowbolt", you just rammed one button for a duration of 11fps fight and hope that you won't DC.

[Ehuehuecopter]

Maybe he meant hitting cleave 12-14 times between the whirlwinds. :^)

Eheuheieheue :V

Hope not.

[Charge me Doctor]

players get better and the game does actually get harder, the bosses in ToS are mechanically harder than the bosses in NH.

I didn't really down rank in classic, only when we got to razorgore because full rank flash heals would pull aggro on all the adds running into the room. threat management was pretty much the entire difficult part of that encounter, but i can't say there was any other place that it really mattered or was considered part of the overal difficulty in general.

Wasn't overheal threat removed by the time BWL was released?

[Heathy]

Wasn't overheal threat removed by the time BWL was released?

I played disc for the threat reduction talents and the larger mana pool so i generally remember not pulling that much aggro as a priest, plus fade was usually always there to save me. threat was definately still a problem when we finally started doing bwl which was pretty close to the release of tbc say 5 months or so before. I can't remember exactly if overheal created aggro, the game did still have that old touchy threat system where mages could easily pull aggro.

again for me the only boss i remember bothering to down rank for was razor because of the sheer amount of adds running around you didn't really want to pull aggro or you could quite easily die. i can't really remember any other encounters where threat was that much of a problem or used as part of the overall challenge to the encounter.

[Charge me Doctor]

I played disc for the threat reduction talents and the larger mana pool so i generally remember not pulling that much aggro as a priest, plus fade was usually always there to save me. threat was definately still a problem when we finally started doing bwl which was pretty close to the release of tbc say 5 months or so before. I can't remember exactly if overheal created aggro, the game did still have that old touchy threat system where mages could easily pull aggro.

again for me the only boss i remember bothering to down rank for was razor because of the sheer amount of adds running around you didn't really want to pull aggro or you could quite easily die. i can't really remember any other encounters where threat was that much of a problem or used as part of the overall challenge to the encounter.

I wouldn't call it "touchy", it just tanks didn't had proper tools to generate threat, so everyone had to hold their balls. Then crit FoL happens and paladin bubbles (or dies). Don't remember that being a problem in BWL tho, thought that it was fixed by then or just my memory being all over the place and mixes up with private servers which have their patches all mixed up and things that shouldn't be fixed yet were fixed already

[Senea]

Definitely isnt easier, the difficulty back in the early days was entirely different. Obviously the array of addons that are available now as opposed to back then have had a profound effect on the current raiding environment. What made the older raids more challenging was the lack of gear dropped by bosses, for example a 40 man boss would drop roughly 3 pieces of gear, in addition the bosses in vanilla hit damned hard. Four Horseman in old Naxx required 8 tanks, bear in mind that there was no respeccing on the fly back then, so guilds that got this far generally had to get their tanks from elsewhere, not only that, they had to be really well geared and attuned to Naxx.

Now going back to how hard bosses hit back then:
Four Horseman - Mograine/Rivendare (Level 60) - 2160 - 2640 frontload damage + 4800 DoT in 8 secs. Identical to Ragnaros' Elemental Fire, mitigated by fire resistance. Applied as a 25% chance on melee hit to proc.
Four Horseman - Mograine/Rivendare (Level 80) - 2160 - 2640 Shadow damage to his primary aggro target. Applies a dot which does 4,800 shadow damage over 8 seconds. Cast every 15 seconds.

20 level difference and they hit for the same amount! If you were super unlucky you'd get a string of those abilities on each melee hit due it proccing off melee hits in classic.

So vanilla raids were damned difficult, but it was an entirely different difficulty to what we see now

[Belisaurio]

OMG this. Molten Core... yeah people could be afk. Especially during trash. /follow was a thing. I remember that one night when our GM called it, the "hardcore" of our guild did not agree and just roflstomped MC with the remaining 25 people who actually knew how to play and were determined.
During BWL... not so much really, tho at some dragon fight (can't remember the name) we stood LoS to avoid being flamed to death and we had to afk as healers to regain mana. We took turns. But that was it basically.

Chromaggus was something like that XDDDDDD I don't remember really well that fight, but if the boss could target you, you had a change to take the cromatic debuffs (3 or 4 colours). And to dispell the debuff you used some dust (item) to create a rotation using all debuffs (blue<green<red<yellow).
In the end, you had 20 players rotating debuffs, and 20 players afk outside of sight (well, you needed their dmg between rotations, so not 100% afk, but that tactic was the eaziest one that I remembered).

Crazy shit at that time, but every fight had their own dificult, and appart from early MC, nobody could AFK (having a guild full AQ40 with AQ20/40 trinkets stomping BWL/MC, doesnt' count).