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

[Dangg]

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

That's complete BS. No way you did any BC heroic other than Mechanar and Slave Pens in under 30 min with appropriated gear.

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.

the magtheridon WF kill was done like 6 weeks after release

[ZaeHSBR]

Back then tanks had (mostly) no AOE tanking abilities, threat generation didn't scale to keep up with DPS, defense rating gimped scaling even more, and to top it off many heroics were used as raid attunement gateways for geared players.

This ^

tab sundering all day as a warrior tank. everybody was looking for a paly tank for easy consecration threat.

[Dsc]

There was Zero tank Aoe, unless you count Tt5/6 pallys picking up flowers in bot. ( I don't know how any tank besides a pally handledReliquary of Souls, or for that matter Hyjal. ( I did Hyjal with two warrior tanks and an awesome hunter. /wave Vandalist)

As for the five man thing. CC and interrupts and Tank Skill/Knowledge (which is a joke today) was Paramount.

Did I mention CC? And making sure you built a proper group?


I think alot of you played since 360 degree swipe became a thing, tanks being crushable? by a dungeon boss? WTF do you mean???

It's a completely different game now. If you want to talk about cat? as a holy priest early it was hell. teaching people to CC and not stand in crap after Wrath? even as I had and was in a server 1st HLK guild was painful, with some gear it became not so bad, TBC held Heroic difficulty much longer,

Vanilla though... Most people didn't aim to raid. ( I did eventually) It was all getting Keyed to do stuff to get some questlines ( attunments) and blues to go raid.

I've been retired for years. (early MOP) In my trash set I won't wear, without doing a real raid I hit 621... If I tried even a little I'd be 640. (last "raid" I pugged was NH Heroic, on a blind pug. I could run it weekly with my guild on alt night .. but meh, maybe last teir. M+? lolol = gogogogogo whats an interrupt?/ gogogo, don't stand by /in what??? gogogogogo

It's like wrath babys on meth.

[Zka]

BC heroics had 3 pain points:
- damage incoming to tank was FUCKING MASSIVE and spiky at some pulls. Undergeared tanks were sometimes literally globalled.
- many bosses had pretty heavy dps requirements, you just blasted them to fuck ignoring mechanics or you died
- healaggro - tanks were not so good at aoe tanking and heal aggro was sometimes massive due to point #1

Bringing 2-3 appropriate CC made most of these heroics pretty trivial.

Cata heroics were painful in the first weeks due to mana being an issue and tuning was really tight. It was really impossible to outheal mistakes on dungeon bosses. This is when they introduced a new healing paradigm: unavoidable damage was slow, healing was only equipped to heal this. Avoidable damage was huge and healers didn't have enough hps and mana to cover it. Then it got adjusted a bit + people started gearing up and the issue disappeared.

[Deleted]

Actually no, Fury Warrior had passive threat reduction in talents and generally did less threat than other classes. Other classes had threat reduction talents to compensate such as Shatter, Feign Death, Vanish, Feint, Fade etc etc. All specs had threat management issues to overcome. Fury Warrior would not be taken with a Warrior tank in an ideal group because Fury Warrior had AOE in their single target rotation, and was also fairly low dps without strong group buffs, but on the contrary would be taken with a Paladin tank because the Paladin needed Demo Shout to survive and the use of Whirlwind would not be an issue with Pala AOE tank capabilities.

Say what?

I remember we hade a melee grp, with a shaman, and the rogues dident get Windfury bacuse i was a warrior and pulled aggro.
On some bosses i went and just stood there chillin the in again.
For raids atleast, always tank heroics.

[Racthoh]

all i remember from cata launch was that you just cc'd everything you could and the bosses had a few instant death mechanics that you needed to waddle out of. everyone was used to pulling entire instance in a wrath dungeon so they called it hard in comparison to that but really it was just slower.

[Deleted]

The difficulty was not only in terms of dmg taken, mob health, healing needed and so on.

The difficulty was the need of cc, harder job for tanks to keep aggro, way worse gear options and scaling as well as people being less informed about their classes and specs. It needed coordination similar to a raid to complete them in a timely fashion. It is more or less impossible to create a similar experience by now. Karazhan might have been closest we had to that (assuming no outgearing and a random group).

(Nonetheless the damage of several mob abilities and stuff surely were too high just for dungeons)

[Hctaz]

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.

I can attest to this from having my memory jogged again when Warmane's BC servers first came up. Those dungeons were hard, and they were significantly harder based on your composition. Not every single group of 5 players would be as successful as others. Taking a warlock as your only form of CC was a nightmare. Taking warlock over a mage was also usually a nightmare. Having a rogue for Sap and a mage for poly were both super useful. Also, kidney shot and Blind were very useful tools as well, and kiting was frequently used. Tanks could get fucking destroyed.

I think the game has definitely gotten easier but players have also gotten a little better simply based on the tools available. People back then didn't have access to the same kind of resources that we have today. It's easier for a newb to get good now than it was back then. We have entire discords dedicated to our classes.

I do think that the difficulty has shifted as well. It was either a matter of dps or a matter of mechanics back then and I think very few fights are as barebones today. Gearing was also much more important. Some fights needed very specific resistance gear or they would be impossible. I also think mechanics were much more precise. Some of the strategies involved required people to stand in very specific spots without the use of markers and some of the addons we have today. The mechanics had to be easier simply because the tools available were not as good.

[Wuuzikli]

They were longer instances. It took actual cc like in pvp. And it wasn't button mashing just to do top dps in your easily high ilvl gear.

[Dsc]

The difficulty was not only in terms of dmg taken, mob health, healing needed and so on.

The difficulty was the need of cc, harder job for tanks to keep aggro, way worse gear options and scaling as well as people being less informed about their classes and specs. It needed coordination similar to a raid to complete them in a timely fashion. It is more or less impossible to create a similar experience by now. Karazhan might have been closest we had to that (assuming no outgearing and a random group).

(Nonetheless the damage of several mob abilities and stuff surely were too high just for dungeons)

It's not the same, as it came out when people were already 855-867 from EN... I did the "Kara Reloaded" at about 855, sometimes with lower groups. ( but appropriate for content) Kara this Xpack came close. They did a good job at not making it a faceroll, unless you were in TOS gear. for the time and place, they did well.

Interrupts dps race, and moving from maiden? with trash that actually one shot idiots? (philanthropists)

I liked Kara revamped.

[Pooti]

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

Warrior Thunderclap had a 4 target limit until 3.0 changes.

[Lochton]

Hmm... How to compare..

You know, when Cata Heroics were just released and they were tougher than at the middle of Cata? Well, double that and that is how Heroic TBC dungeons felt. As for Mythic 20+, not touched them. I have the ilvl but apparently you need some separate ranking for you to be accepted.

[Deleted]

By and large, no. TBC heroics were not mechanically complex, but they were incredibly highly tuned and unforgiving. While executing the tactics for any given encounter was not particularly hard, a single mistake could result in a wipe. This was also often more to do with the trash than the bosses, since tanks had very little ability to generate AoE threat back then. You basically had to focus a single mob and CC as many of the others as possible, ideally only fighting 1-2 at a time if you could. If an ability was resisted, someone messed up their CC, or the tank lost threat for any reason, mobs were liable to run straight for the healer and kill them very quickly. Most CC also couldn't be cast without aggroing packs back then, so it all had to be coordinated to go off at the same time.

People tend to confuse "hard" with "punishing" when they talk about vanilla and TBC encounters. Almost everything since then has been more mechanically complex, but also far more forgiving, both in terms of the risk of a wipe and the amount of time needed to recover afterwards. Part of the perceived difficulty in old heroics and raids was that wiping could take a good 5-10 minutes to recover from every time, sometimes even longer. If you spent too long on an instance then the trash would also start to respawn, meaning that you'd either have to take the time to clear it all over again or call it for the night (as was often the case, since no one enjoyed clearing trash repeatedly).

With groups that had high end gear in late TBC the heroics became a lot easier, particularly if you had a Paladin tank who could generate decent AoE threat. It really was just about your gear and the level of CC/threat you had available to you. High level Mythic+ dungeons these days are *immensely* more complex and challenging than TBC heroics ever were, and infinitely more well designed to boot. It's also worth bearing in mind that most specs, too, are far more challenging to play compared to their TBC iterations.

The TLDR is that TBC gameplay was very simplistic compared to what we have now, but incredibly highly tuned and a lot more punishing by comparison. Basically it suffered from the cheapest and easiest form of difficulty tuning a dev can implement, rather than the challenging-but-fair high-end difficulty we have these days.

This is the only comment we need here.

[Dsc]

And now it's run in, maybe try not to stand in bad, AOE all things, press lit up CLC button on demand and... /win


I'd take actual pre thinking, skill and a threat meter over the mindless crap we have anyday.

[Alvito]

Ahh... Memories

"LFM H MGT DAILY NEED ROGUE AND MAGE"

I ran a lot of rogue, mage, hunter groups back then. To top it off it was all on the same server so you were at the mercy of ppl in your own neighborhood being able to do what was needed.

[klaps_05]

Trash in TBC heroics was pretty brutal until SSC/TK gear came into play. Any ranged physical mob would annihilate clothies and leather, while shadowbolt-type casters would destroy tanks. Aggro generation was a complete bitch - I had a Protection paladin alt and it was still a massive effort to make sure people dont get instagibed.

Cata heroics were a bit different - I remember running revamped SFK and Deadmines, people were zerging hard and getting destroyed by mechanics. Many people never understood how to do the first boss in SFK. Trash was rather forgiving, but dungeons were quite clustered.

Mythic+ and 20+ are something like a breed between both and I personally love it. You can easily steam through M+10 to M+15, however after that things change. On Fortified week, you need to know what kind of control you need to apply to mobs to make sure you dont get 1shot. E.g., nearly every mob in DHT can 2-3-shot you on a +20 Fortified week, and this does not even account for affixes like Raging or Bolstering. On tyrannical weeks, you need to be just as smart when dealing with bosses - a few months ago, doing a high HoV Herja was only possible with sacrificing the tank on every beam and giving him a CR.

Personally, I would love to see how Mythic+ will look next expansion - it is probably one of the best features added for replay-ability!

[mysticx]

And now it's run in, maybe try not to stand in bad, AOE all things, press lit up CLC button on demand and... /win


I'd take actual pre thinking, skill and a threat meter over the mindless crap we have anyday.

Pre-thinking: Sheep moon, Sap star, focus skull (And forget about getting into any PuGs as DPS unless you had some form of CC)

Threat meter: At the start of a pull just stand there doing nothing for a while so the tank can build up threat

Oh yeah, so brilliant...

[Yassy]

Not really comparing apples to apples. They were difficult for different reasons.

TBC heroics were difficult more because of class design. Put TBC tanks/dps/healers into todays Dungeons and they would be pure misery.
For example, Thunder Clap was only usable in Battle Stance for the beginning of TBC. Revenge might have cleaved to two additional targets if talented, not sure on that, but regardless Prot Warriors which were the most common tank at the time had almost no AoE Threat tools.

In addition, the game as a whole lacked Significant AoE control, especially stuns like Shockwave. Cool downs werent homogenized as they are now. CDs were actually a core strength/weakness for rogues whereas now its a mandatory function for every class.

The biggest difference was in the punishment for failure. Not every healer had a res. Runbacks were incredibly long. Almost no dungeon allowed you to mount. Few classes had a sprint or movement ability in the first place. Think back to WoD and running UBRS. Now imagine instead of the dungeon having checkpoints, you had to run from the start of the instance to wherever you died. Now take it a step further and imagine you not only had to do that, but also return to the instance as a ghost as well. From a graveyard in searing gorge.

Bottom line is the game was very different than and the difficulties were different. The difficulties of basically anything Pre Cata, is thst the game punished failure by absorbing significant amounts of time from you. Some people would call that difficulty, some dont. Just as some people dont considered timed runs difficult.

That being said i think high Mythic + is harder than TBC.

[Equoowe]

And now it's run in, maybe try not to stand in bad, AOE all things, press lit up CLC button on demand and... /win


I'd take actual pre thinking, skill and a threat meter over the mindless crap we have anyday.

What is harder, marking a mob pre-pull and keeping it CC'ed until you are ready to kill it or timing CC to stop a cast or buffed mob while also doing damage to it?

The people that say CC isn't needed in today's game clearly need to step out of LFR.

[link4117]

What is harder, marking a mob pre-pull and keeping it CC'ed until you are ready to kill it or timing CC to stop a cast or buffed mob while also doing damage to it?

The people that say CC isn't needed in today's game clearly need to step out of LFR.

Uhhh, do you not need to do both these days? Heroic dungeons used to be you need to keep high dps, keep some targets cc'd, and stun or interrupt the ones you can't cc.