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

[munkeyinorbit]

People making these out like they were harder than they actually were. All you did was CC and pull back to avoid patrols/running mobs. The main problems was people would try to do heroics right when they hit 70, instead of having some max lvl gear on.

Maybe thats what you think the problem is, but the other posts would indicate that you are wrong. That is not the reason at all. If you were there then you would remember that you needed to get rep requirements to even get into the dungeons and some of them still had more requirements to get in. If you are going to lie about playing a game, at least get it close to right.

[Mormolyce]

TBC Heroics have enjoyed a very overstated reputation. Mechanically they were very simple, the main difficulty was the way the game used to work... or not...

Cata heroics were pretty difficult on launch. They were pretty tame by the time of the nerfs though, thanks to gear inflation.

Mechanically they were quite a step up from previous expansions though.

[purebalance]

Or people like you were just horrible fucking players and remember easy dungeons being "WHOA SUPER DOOPER HARD GUYS!" When they were a joke mechanic wise and if your group wasn't full of knuckledragging spastics could clear them easily.

The amount of people I see write things like "WHOA SHADOW LABS WAS INSANE!" and I think back to Slabs and how none of the Mechanics were in anyway hard and basically required you to have an IQ that was higher than lukewarm temperature.

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If you had a Pally Tank that had a hard time hold threat, you had a bad pally Tank.

Nope definitely not horrible, but way to deflect from your own bad memory. You were not clearing it in 30 minutes in t4 gear when the actual heroics were tuned for having that level of gear if not higher.

Your own bad memory shines when you mention shadow labs when the final room of trash had interrupts necessary and not every class had access to them. So the only thing horrible here is not players, but your recollection. You're clearly trying to overcompensate for your own apparent lack of skill by making audacious claims.

[Usagi Senshi]

Hardest part of doing TBC heroics for me was getting people to take my enhance shaman to them. I switched back to rogue for a reason until Wrath launched but I would still do heroics and PVP for a change up.

Stupid people that didn't know how to CC, watch aggro, or prepare for a potential enemy CC is what fucked me in some TBC/Cata deals.

[Yunaqt]

Not overly hard, would farm them all in a day for badges with ease.
High level M+ / CMs are harder, just during this time there was no LFG/Raider.io/wowprogress so to form your groups it was trade chat or guild.

Gear was a lot less accessible than it is today so less people were running the one's considered to be more difficult, SLabs/MagT/ShatteredHalls.
But they really were not that difficult just CC, LoS pull gg. Player skill has obviously skyrocketed since this point, I know I was absolute trash tier during my BC days barely managing to clear BT.

[Typhoria]

Maybe thats what you think the problem is, but the other posts would indicate that you are wrong. That is not the reason at all. If you were there then you would remember that you needed to get rep requirements to even get into the dungeons and some of them still had more requirements to get in. If you are going to lie about playing a game, at least get it close to right.

Revered wasn't hard to get. Quests alone would get you nearly through honored, even assuming you did no dungeons prior. So running 1 or 2 of the max level dungeons would put you at revered while not giving you adequate gear.
But go ahead and say they were all super hard because you weren't prepared or too reckless with pulls.

[Nurasu]

Just speaking from what I remember as a healer, BC had hard trash from all of their CC, so we had to CC. Cata early on had hard bosses and mana was a real bitch compared to anything we had to manage since Vanilla right out of the gate. M20 is just hard from a DPS/HPS standpoint, you have to pump out everything you can all the time. 3 different scenarios of difficulty.

[Auxora]

It's apples and oranges to compare them really. There were difficulties in a lot of other ways, since BC was before any sort of group finder. So if you lost a player (especially a tank) it could literally take an hour to replace them. There were lots of other challenges as well such as much longer runs back after a wipe, wpvp at entrances, having to make sure you had consumables including hunter ammo, people being on point with cc, tougher attunements, etc. Missing 1 round of cc or interrupt on a simple trash mob in TBC could mean a wipe. The much longer runs back are partially why it's tough to compare since you could do 5 attempts on a boss in the time it took to do 2 back then.

Also, back then addons were much less helpful to fights than the more complex addons now. Combine that with many mechanics being new then that people are very used to now, and just by evolution fights have to be more complex now. Whether that means more difficult or not is pretty subjective. I'd say both were/are tough, it's just that they have changed so much over the years that I don't know a person can say 1 or the other are harder. It's like comparing a 2017 Mustang and a 1969 Mustang.

[Radaney]

Cata Heroics were hard af pre-nerf. After nerfs they were a joke.

BC Heroics weren't that hard, just pretty long and tedious. You didn't wipe that often, just had to be careful with ccing so it generally took longer.

[Nitromonger]

I cannot comment compared to today's high M+ runs, but the main difference between Cata and TBC was almost entirely due to threat management IMO. I played a warrior tank during BC. This was before shockwave, when our only means of aoe was the occasional thunderclap and cleave. Tab sundering, target marking, focus fire and crowd control while using LOS for many pulls all lead to a more creative environment for the tanks during TBC. Paladin tanks were the kings of aoe threat management with consecrate and mana bars > rage. We still used CC during pre-nerf cata heroics, but tank threat was almost a non-issue regardless of class.

[Foj]

A big reason would be quality of life changes they have made to the game since then. Such as respawning. If your raid wipes now, a healer can soulstone and mass rez the raid and within a few minutes, you can be pulling again. Back then, a healer could soulstone, get mana, rez a few rez capable classes, get more mana, rinse repeat until everyone either ran back or was rezzed.

In terms of running back, every few bosses or so there is a new "load point" in the raid where people are automatically ported to make the run shorter. If you wipe in ToS, you're not too far from the boss you're on. If you wiped back in SSC, you had to run all the way through Zangarmarsh to SSC, zone in, then run all the way back to the boss you were on.

In short, no the game wasn't harder back then, it was shitty design along with the addition of quality of life things to the game that make the difference between then and now.

Ah the good old days of rezzing in Outland.

Your tombstone appeared on the map where you would be if the dungeon was connected to the world map. So ... good luck finding that entrance if your memory was a little hazy. (Double good luck if you started in Wrath in Dungeon Finder.) (Although the best of the best in this regard will always be Deadmines for Horde.)

Then, the runs and swims and "which fucking stairway is it God dammit oh holy shit we're in Shadow Labs this time fuck I'll be right there"

Who doesn't miss that, really?

[Xaikar]

Tanks lacked aoe, unlike now the catch-up mechahic was not there until Sunwell. Now its after every tier and the 5 mans stay relevant. In TBC 5 man gear stayed exactly the same so if you leveled and alt there was no way to just buy a set of current tier it was just being carried through everything. Also good god does anyone rember Resto Druids not being able to normally Rez. All they had was battle Rez so people were running back all the time. Prot Warrior + Shatterd Halls just uninstall the game.

[Christan]

High level Mythics are sometimes harder but some of the BC heroics were super long and comparable to short raids.

Agreed, short raids, but there was a ton of skippable trash in a lot of them, and a shortcut in the water one(okay only akip like 4 packs but) -water route....cant remember name rofl
In addition
Some of the bc heroics you wanted group in kara+ gear to make it easy, arc bot etc...early on for mana tombs having a tank in shadow resist gear helped amazingly, even if it was cloth, first boss does pure shadow damage,
after T6 gear, ret tank almost everything no cc, except for -the harder ones, where you'd CC,


Ohh and bot didnt need kara+ gear if you had a magic damage group and priest...mind control+ (i think initially 2hr buff, got nerfed to 1hr and now even lower) but an enemy had an amazing spell power buff (initially helped amazingly for prot palas and casters, later when they changed healing power/ spell power into one stat it helped healers but it was to easy by then.


Early on it was about cc, and stacking group right to complete some of them, or taking whatever(god dont do moonkin plus spriest as dps...still needed solid dps) and for sethekk having a priest to shackle MC mob, or having a group that knows how to nuke the freaking mc totem <,<

Imho..every expansion has had difficult wnough dungeons, but the learning curve on later ones where things like dbm/bigwigs, etc, made things a lot easier (Most bc heroics were like stepping into grim batol during cata, hard but doable, could still be tough without decent gear, but ohh so easy once you got things down pat.

And how much easier ot was to get geared in later xpacks, sure bc had more drops per person than vanilla raids, but not as much as later on(if i remember right?) also remember using pvp gear to pve with ilvl scaling down in pve content kind of helps that but early xpack it can still be good

So....
More sources of equipment plus widespread use of dbm'esque addons, as well as blizzards version of it....makes things easier from one standpoint...minus all that, the difficulty is still there, just ohh so much easier to overcome

[Tech614]

BC heroics where only hard because 2/3 tank specs had no aoe so you had to cc and even in groups where you had a pal tank unless you had 3 locks the aoe dps wasn't even going to be impressive.

You throw current tool sets at TBC heroic and everything is tuned the same numbers wise and they would be face rolled to no end.

Cata heroic where way fucking harder then TBC heroics, because we actually had all those QoL toolset changes and you still had to cc some packs to not get destroyed. Cata 5 man bosses(at the very start) also lasted as long as some high level tyranical fights do.

Neither is close to a +20 difficulty wise. Not even remotely.

[Yunaqt]

Addons RIP any difficulty, they definitely were not "short raids", ones like Slave Pens were done in under 10mins just chain pulling into the next groups (like they are now).

The only reason to run them was for badges, outside of that they were pointless as the gear was average unless you were a fresh toon but with Kara & ZA so accessible even with a pug group of potatoes they were largely redundant outside of said badges or for fun social content with guildies/friends.

[Christan]

Tanks lacked aoe, unlike now the catch-up mechahic was not there until Sunwell. Now its after every tier and the 5 mans stay relevant. In TBC 5 man gear stayed exactly the same so if you leveled and alt there was no way to just buy a set of current tier it was just being carried through everything. Also good god does anyone rember Resto Druids not being able to normally Rez. All they had was battle Rez so people were running back all the time. Prot Warrior + Shatterd Halls just uninstall the game.

Umm....tank aoe was fine, just low damage, people actually focus firing on the dangerous mobs was where it was at, usually each pack had 1-3 dangerous mobs, and you'd cc the more annoying ones or focus fire the one tank was hotting while aoe kept off healer, after first mob dies you could aoe to your hearts content, exceptions being paladin aoe was great, and bear, bears got armor cap bit not uncrushable, amd paladins could indeed get unhittable(crit cap+parry+dodge+base 5% mitigations....think you needed slightly over 100% and you couldnt get a crushing blow

Then again i am sure it greatly depended on quality of tank...some tanks...ugh, palas had less cd's than war but better aoe, wars just had thunderclap...20s(?)cd and cleave for 3 targets i think bc...may of been pre-wotlk patch but they had devestate add sunder, so they would clap cleave and dev main target twice then tab to w/e ktm threat meter or omen(mid bc) said heals was going to pull off, clap again, by third clap agro was solid except against druid healers..............fade actually dumping threat was amazing, then again alli druid healers could shadowmeld, ot would drop combat, get a quick drink on last mob for speed runs or use it as a super fade....

Hunters abused fd for mana and nelf rogues got extra openers, was a great time(i was an altoholic in bc as well even if i am retired now)


I mean...bad aoe, plus a tank that doesnt know wtf tab targeting is was indeed a recipe for disaster, but thats far from no aoe

In bc since people focus fired mobs more instead of aoe spam, mostly tank aoe was to keep off healers until everyone was so overgeared they were easy as hell

[crazyman2]

TBC dungeons were largely hard because of trash. The bosses weren't mechanically complex and didn't cause a whole lot of wipes with a few exceptions, but trash was an issue - it just hit too hard, and prot warriors in particular didn't have a good toolkit for holding or even really getting threat in the first place on large pulls.

So you had to have tons of CC, and most classes at the time had either bad CC or none at all. Rogues and mages were probably the only classes with actual reliable CC, and rogues couldn't reapply. Hunters and locks were useable, but actually required active effort to CC (a bad hunter would wreck you every time), while rets, warriors, druids, and shamans had nothing and priest MC took your priest out of the fight too.


So things like "LFM Shattered Halls, need 3 mages" was a thing that happened back then.

Cata heroics had really hard, mechanically complex bosses compared to TBC heroics, but the trash was easier because the players had a better toolkit

[Logwyn]

Back then tanks had (mostly) no AOE tanking abilities,

Paladin say hello.

[Christan]

TBC dungeons were largely hard because of trash. The bosses weren't mechanically complex and didn't cause a whole lot of wipes with a few exceptions, but trash was an issue - it just hit too hard, and prot warriors in particular didn't have a good toolkit for holding or even really getting threat in the first place on large pulls.

So you had to have tons of CC, and most classes at the time had either bad CC or none at all. Rogues and mages were probably the only classes with actual reliable CC, and rogues couldn't reapply. Hunters and locks were useable, but actually required active effort to CC (a bad hunter would wreck you every time), while rets, warriors, druids, and shamans had nothing and priest MC took your priest out of the fight too.


So things like "LFM Shattered Halls, need 3 mages" was a thing that happened back then.

Cata heroics had really hard, mechanically complex bosses compared to TBC heroics, but the trash was easier because the players had a better toolkit

Orry, but a good hunter was the god class of cc back then, rogues had sap and a cd-blind, cant re-sap because mobs in combat.

Reasons hunter > mage, can re-trap sure, but you could ALSO split pulls if you knew wth you were doing.
You could also double trap on particularily hard pulls, (trap, wait for most of cd, md to pet, first enemy trapped, second mob youre smashing hits on drop drap in front of you, could wing clip n kite if you got timing wrong.

Roots without a cooldown from druids was sexy as well, granted very limited, priests were the only ones for undead mobs...there werent a ton but galavanting into kara before tanks wrre unhittable priests were gods, and in sethekk helped a ton, actually quiet a lot of em had some nasty ud enemies....


But yeah, hunters, lock void walkers could tank a bit also, and if the lock pulled em back he could fear but yeah....to risky... but there was a ton of CC available idk what youre talking about, repentance even for ret(ugh...ret were better than van sure but still meh compared to pure dd... hybrid tax...)

And..as lovely as prot pala tanking was in bc..li HATED
mana tombs, and cot hyjal...mana burn was horrible to a prot pala....relying on dps to interrupt shadow guys in mt, while stunning healer...etc...mt just bleh overall rofl...get a good rogue though and easy peasy


I do agree with crazyman to a point about Shattered halls, 3 is overkill but you wanted a frost mage for the pulls healing to 2headed ogre boss, side pulls, especially of you were teying to get enchant....geoup of 4-5 enemies in conbat with each other and a mortal strike that could demolish most tanks, and still hurt in t5/6, mages just....kite geoup while other dd n tank take out ms guy, then tank taunts off mage...bc dugeons were all about knowing what to do without prevalence of boss mods.

On that note...heading to bed, fat fingering phone screen to much

[Noblebanned]

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.

TBC heroics were difficult for one reason-Tanks had no air threat. Shattered halls gauntlet was pretty much the only difficult part. Cata dungeons were much more difficult upon release. I was in a relatively good guild, 3rd on Sargeras-US, and we actively had to put effort in to clear them in decent time upon release, until the nerfs happened