Just How Hard Were TBC Heroics vs Cata Heroics or Mythic 20+?

[Deleted]

lol fucking no they weren't. the longest was about 30mins and that was Slabs.

TBC heroics were relatively easy. Most people just think they were hard because they were Bad players at that time in the early years of WoW and remember it being difficult for themselves.

Mechanics were mostly braindead,

30 mins? The speedrun challenge for SHalls was on a 45 minute timer that didn't even start until after the first boss. Those things took over an hour easily.

[Mic_128]

I remember being estatic when about midway trhough BC Druids were able to cast thorns indoors. Suddenly I was useful as a CC! I wasn't getting rejected from groups because "We need something with CC."

[kamuimac]

I often hear alot of people praising the difficulty of TBC heroics. Bragging about how much easier things have been since then. I've always been curious just how hard these dungeons were. Was the difficulty entirely skill based? I found this old video from Preach while watching some of his old stuff. He's saying how he was challenged by TBC heroics but found the launch week Cata heroics to be trivial in comparison. Is this true? Were pre-nerf cata heroics really that much easier than TBC heroics? Has there ever been a difficulty in the game besides mythic raiding as hard as a TBC heroic?

Also, TBC raids took months to be fully cleared by a single guild. Why was it that Lady Vash took so much longer than Mythic Kil'jaedin to clear? Was he really that much easier than her? I assume she was so bugged that it was impossible.

oh come on - old hcs were like mythic +6-7 tops. they were never anywhere close to +10 and comparing them to +20 is pointless - the only reason why were hard was because you werent outgearing them by 30 itlv and you were doin them with random people often without nay communication.

[Stretchie]

They were hard but the worst part was always finding a group or replacing a lost group member. That was how they could take hours

Boss mechanics weren't too bad but trash felt much rougher than now. While current groups are all about "how much trash can we skip?", I don't remember that happening much at all in those days. Also you very often had to cc and manage trash in ways rarely done now. Remember "Group looking for one more dps. Mage or similar preferred for cc".

That was the only way I remember them being harder

[Netherspark]

It's not really fair to compare them directly. Players were in relative terms alot weaker than they are now or in Cataclysm. Gear was harder to get, classes weren't tuned very well, and didn't have the tools and cooldowns they do today.

Sometimes TBC heroics would be a total pushover, and sometimes you'd wipe repeatedly on trash. I suppose they were alot less forgiving than modern dungeons - you, everyone in the group, needed to be absolutely alert and responsive throughout the whole instance. Every trash pack could be a challenge, and a wipe if not handled properly (mostly CC & threat management). Even higher Mythic+ don't require that same level of attentiveness.

[SherriMayim]

People complained prior to the Skittish nerf.

Old WoW Vets had flashbacks of Shattered Halls.

I did at least.


The Burning Crusade Heroics, at appropriate gear levels, were some of the most strenuous content that WoW has ever put out.

Mythic+ Affixes like Teeming or Skittish, were baseline for many dungeons, along with patrols en masse for each room you did.

More often then now you had to clear ALL the trash, or it would get pulled with the boss.

CC was mandatory, as packs were often in groups of 6 or 7, and a tank could only reliably tank maybe 3 mobs, and you had to wait for 3 sunders before attacking and tab target to prevent from overthreating the tank.

There were also a few fun 'Quirks', like Resto Druids didn't have a regular resurrection spell until late in TBC, granted it's not specifically a TBC Heroic thing but it was still a nuisance to have to make such a long run back if you died.

Paladin tanks were gods, like, they were so amazing that I still have residual thigh-quiverring squirmy sensations when I talk to my pally tank friends, and DK friends cause that Death and Decay / Consecration, means I don't have to wait to DPS and you can pull all the mobs? Hnnghh oh Tank-Senpai~ <3

And then there's boss mechanics, while most of them were fairly trivial at higher gear levels, and a good chunk were super heal x, or get to y, in between tank and spank, there was one boss that was an absolute nightmare.

"TIME FOR FUN!"

This boss in Shadow Labs was the bane of my existence, I remember wiping on him for almost an hour because he would scream this... and dash towards the healer and two-shot the sucker and then peel off onto the dps and wipe us.


I don't think they could do Burning Crusade level Heroic Difficulty as a baseline anymore just because of the sheer hell that came with it, and gated behind that hell was Karazhan's attunement!

While I do wish they returned attunement stuff I think that they have found a good way to give people who miss BC Difficulty a taste of what they're looking for in Mythic+, which in my opinion, has been the biggest achievement in WoW in the past 5 years hands down.

[snitcher geralt]

in vanilla/bc, you died when you fucked up, the margin for error was almost non-existent until you REALLY outgeared something

now the margin of error is higher even in mythic/mythic+20, still not high in those cases (infinitely higher in normal/heroic mode raids/dungeons), but you have more room to fuck up now than you used to because you have more ways to fix situations than you used to. if you step in shit you can use a movement speed boost to get out asap then heal yourself up with deathstrike or a lock rock that puts oldschool lock rocks to shame

the game isn't tuned as tightly now, there are plenty of very hard to borderline impossible (for the average player they are impossible) things to do but the meat of the game is FAR more forgiving than it ever was

the difference is you have a path to avoid the hard shit while still playing the "whole" game

you were stuck on heroic dungeons if you couldn't beat heroic dungeons, your ass wasn't gonna be geared enough to clear the first raid if you couldn't deal with the heroic dungeons

even "carries" were different, you weren't getting carries through current content when BC came out, maybe in late BC the power gap was enough that a person or two could be carried but only on a few servers that had elite guilds, average "good" guild on an average server never was in a position to carry anyone through a whole current raid the way everyone can now, shit you can carry a quarter of a raid these days

[Rotted]

kara/mags/gruul stuff, didn't takes us long from launch to get heroics farmed easily. used to knock them all out 1 after another on a Saturday arvo with partner and friends.

I agree with this guy, on a completely unrelated note a flying pig just passed over head.

anyways

take it with a pinch of salt, it is important to remember like 'dracula' said here, it was a different time in wow and a lot of us were experiencing content for the first time / kids etc.

That being said. Heroic wise, TBC was easily the hardest. The mechanics needed thought and couldn't be zerged down. Trash in some places was extremely punishing and the rewards were blue quality items. IF you got lucky you might see a epic once in a blue moon which would make you squeal with excitement.

Cataclysm I'd say wasn't on par with TBC, it was difficult to begin the expansion with. However, a lot of this had to do with the fact a lot of people were complacent from wrath, happy with zerging heroics and ignoring everything because it was doable. People went into cataclysm with that thought and it bit them right on the arse. What cataclysm didn't have was continuing difficulty through out the expansion dungeon wise. This was due to getting easier epics more often. We just outgeared all of them in a short space of time in comparison to TBC.

Heroics in MoP, WoD and legion are a joke in comparison.

Now Mythic 20? Yet to run it, but I'm 100% sure that is harder than TBC heroics, even if it wasn't timed. I'd say mythic (and keep in mind comparing it from when I was a kid to now) 11/12 is the equivalent to TBC

[zezel81]

What the hell are you even talking about? When did raiding come into this discussion, other than your foolish need to prove how badass you were for playing during TBC? Or defending a bugged boss that didn't get fixed for a long time, with something that needed multiple nerfs and nearly a thousand pulls to be killed by best guild in the world? If Blizzard "tried to bring it back", you'd have them remove titanforging, remove coins, remove split raids, limit gear drops, only hotfix most gamebreaking bugs after at least a month and revert classes to one/two button rotations. All that to have people like you worship them for it, while raiding would die from the lack of interest.For the added bonus, it turned out that you missed a stealthed assassin and he'd jump your healer during boss fight. Fuck both that place and Arcatraz. If it weren't for attunement, no one would run them before 2.1 fixes.

Raiding is dying now. Not because difficulty or the game is old. It was old during WoTLK. It becuz of TF/Gear jump per patch. Casuals are not killing it. It is a group of ppl devs/players want rewards for nothing. Like the players expect FPS fast reward in a MMO. I have played sense vanilla and play now. I took a break on MoP and WoD. Legion is it for me and many others. The new Devs need removed for the cataclysm they have brought to WoW.
The game it self is great but put in TF/WF, never ending grind on AP/AK w/ catch-up, ilvl jump from each patch, epics are no longer epic, and bg/PvP turns the game to almost worthless. Only things worth anything are toys, transmog, mounts, pets, and sometimes titles. They made the game even the ppl afk can get ilvl 935+. Why even try to do a mythic raid if you can go afk get better gear?

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I agree with this guy, on a completely unrelated note a flying pig just passed over head.

anyways

take it with a pinch of salt, it is important to remember like 'dracula' said here, it was a different time in wow and a lot of us were experiencing content for the first time / kids etc.

That being said. Heroic wise, TBC was easily the hardest. The mechanics needed thought and couldn't be zerged down. Trash in some places was extremely punishing and the rewards were blue quality items. IF you got lucky you might see a epic once in a blue moon which would make you squeal with excitement.

Cataclysm I'd say wasn't on par with TBC, it was difficult to begin the expansion with. However, a lot of this had to do with the fact a lot of people were complacent from wrath, happy with zerging heroics and ignoring everything because it was doable. People went into cataclysm with that thought and it bit them right on the arse. What cataclysm didn't have was continuing difficulty through out the expansion dungeon wise. This was due to getting easier epics more often. We just outgeared all of them in a short space of time in comparison to TBC.

Heroics in MoP, WoD and legion are a joke in comparison.

Now Mythic 20? Yet to run it, but I'm 100% sure that is harder than TBC heroics, even if it wasn't timed. I'd say mythic (and keep in mind comparing it from when I was a kid to now) 11/12 is the equivalent to TBC

You would think a +20 mythic would be but it is not. If you grab old school players and they Cc and do all mechanics like TBC. You will win easy.

[Zyky]

Yeah, but mythic blackfuse, mythic thok and mythic spoils were all fun yet challenging boss fights. Granted, you could holy priest solo heal mythic garrosh after a week or two of gearing, but at the time they held some difficulty. Nobody expected how dumb SoO would get with those trinkets+orange cloak for everyone.

None of those fights were even remotely difficult lol Spoils and Thok were 3-10 shot by remotely decent and geared groups. Siegecrafter was easy as fuck too if you stacked hunters for the belts.

[Deleted]

I remember, it took us like 3-4 days to be lvl 70, the day after we got our keys and tried to go into heroics, the first one was slabs ( lol ), we got our ass kicked.
I was the priest and agrohealing was the hardest part but in this dungeon i found the POM bug very soon.
From this moment it was a cake walk, spam POM 3 times then big heal, the tank never ever lost agro to a single mob, even ranged one.

Yes it was a bug exploit but hey, gotta fight with what you got.

[Zyky]

"These fights weren't hard they just required class stacking!" H lei Shen was a brutal fight without it, H garrosh was no walk in the park, H siegecrafter was tough, M blackhand was insane with actually fun mechanics, as well as M mannoroth, M imperator... NH and EN still had some good fights that were not 1 mistake = wipe to the levels of ToS, but that could be because I'm sick of that place already .

Class stacking has been a thing since the beginning of the game, if you're running with trash classes/specs/players of course something is going to feel harder than it actually is. Any decent guild will recruit out of having say an Outlaw Rogue if they're remotely serious about progression.

Heroic Lei Shen was a joke when you had a decent comp. H Garrosh could be solo healed in 10 man heroic and 2 healed in 25 heroic....are you joking? H Garrosh was probably the easiest end expansion boss ever made. M Blackhand really? Having a Monk tank sit in the corner with the vehicles so that you could completely ignore the only difficult part of the fight? lol. M Mannoroth was a garbage fight you could literally have 5 mages and have no problems with any of the mechanics(same for Mythic Xhul too before you try to even bring that up). But I've already lost any sense of you being even decent at the game the second you said heroic garrosh was hard.

[Cæli]

tbc heroics were not that hard, they were "hard" because the tank could die like that and we needed CC, else the tank couldn't tank it

it is way harder to maintain a good raid group for comparison, and in mythic the individual performance needed is higher, the trash in bc was harder but it was just a little time to fight, if we wiped all we did was to rebuff and re pull

[Decyde]

TBC was great. People might think they were harder because they were. You had to actually cc targets and assign a kill order.

Wrath and onward, it was a joke. Wrath I could just swipe as a guardian to a boss, aoe mobs down there and repeat. Cata wasn't different other than you might have had to take priority of a mob here and there.

MoP was like wrath in you pulled to a boss and aoe crap down.

WoD was hard as balls at the start but there was no reason at all to do heroics for a while. Mob health and damage was mostly to blame for that but there was no gear in there worth using that you couldn't get better outside of the dungeon.

WoD mythic dungeons were a joke later on after HFC came out. I use to pug them all and clear them all in 90 minutes total.

Legion dungeons were pretty stupid for the most part. Heroic is a joke and mythic should have been pugable via the finder.

Mythic + is meh, what you make of it. You aren't going to be inviting scrubs at random to do them so it's mostly want crap mechanics are that week.

[Serissa]

kara/mags/gruul stuff, didn't takes us long from launch to get heroics farmed easily. used to knock them all out 1 after another on a Saturday arvo with partner and friends.

ROFL. Do you understand that you're overgearing it by 2 tiers?

Why don't you try and remember how painful it was in quest/normal (intended) gear?

[Deleted]

People saying TBC heroics were difficult are a little confused.

What they are actually talking about is:
Mobs dealt a lot of damage - the end. So basically, the difficulty you experienced is based on how well your tank or healer performed.

Every mythic 7+ and +++ is more difficult for the individual player. Not anymore, because we outgear +7 obviously, but yeah...that did happen to heroics back then too.

It's literally based on how fast the tank died because gear and damage taken didn't add up early on.
And people confuse CC with difficulty or something.

[Argorwal]

Bull. This idea that people today are just SO much better is one of the more conceited arguments people use here. You might have played with shit players but I didn't.

As a couple of people have mentioned, things were just different then. Threat was an issue, CC was needed in TBC and in combat CC (Blind, Kidney Shot, Sheep, etc) were one of the things that set good DPS apart from not so good DPS.

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Also, there wasn't some super-easy version of SSC. You raided the one difficulty there was and you did it with the gear from T4, maybe some Arena gear.

Are you suggesting you've managed to play WoW for 10+ years and are not any better at the game now than 10 years ago? You're basically saying you are the same quality of player from TBC to now, and none of the experiences clearing dozens of challenging raids and dungeons, optimizing gear, simming, addons, or any other feature has improved your ability as a player for 10 years?

If you work at a job for 10 years do you not get better at it at all?

[Softbottom]

CC was the problem in tbc. Bring 2 mages and a hunter as your dps lol. Cata heriocs were not hard either. Players were just bad.

[Deleted]

tbc heroics were not that hard, they were "hard" because the tank could die like that and we needed CC, else the tank couldn't tank it

it is way harder to maintain a good raid group for comparison, and in mythic the individual performance needed is higher, the trash in bc was harder but it was just a little time to fight, if we wiped all we did was to rebuff and re pull

it also depended on the tank, there was a certain moment in which Paladin were OP as shit even in low gear. After a couple run and some pieces in karazhan, a friend of mine was just pulling 2 pull at a time in the corridor in shattered halls.

[Ehrenpanzer]

]Mythic 20 wut. That shit is harder by a MILE. Old five mans are easy comparatively, because there is no timer. You could take as long as you want and CC every mob in there if you want.[/B]
Now imagine doing MGT without being able to CC mobs and having to do it in a half hour. Then it would be hard.

idk what the fuck you are on about with KJ as well. It took dudes what, 850 pulls? Was it more?
100 percent sure it didn't take guilds 800 pulls to kill Vash. It took longer time wise, but that's not at all relevant to difficulty.

1. This is like comparing a Lamborghini to a Model T Ford and boasting how much better your car is. Of course it is, they've had YEARS to refine development, implement mechanics and re-balance classes. This is most asinine comparison I have seen on these boards.
2. You can CC mobs in mythic+, not sure what kind of point your nonsensical ranting there was trying to make? Also with the right group comp (*gasp* just like in mythic+!) MGT was easily beaten in much less then 30min
3. Your information is based on what? What you feel like should be true? What you want to be true? Or what you need to be true to try and justify being a an asswipe to someone on the forums?