Naxxramas 60 vs Naxxramas 80 difficulty?

[Heathy]

No they are not. Mechanically speaking, a good half of the fights were only superficially similar, with the new variations in the mechanics resulting in a much different fight than the original. There were significant changes made mechanically to quite a number of the fights to account for the change in raid sizes. Also the change in raid size alone made a significant difference in the complexity of many of the encounters, as having 15 or 30 less people taking up space in a room where you need to avoid things or position yourself very specifically drastically reduces margin of error. Thaddeus 40 was a nightmare. Thaddeus 10 man could literally be tank'n'spanked with no motion required from the entire raid once your gear was half decent.

well sure if we're talking naxx 10, i thought we were doing a 40 vs 25 comparison, then its pretty close but ill agree naxx 10 was toned down quite a lot compared to the 25 man.

[khalltusk]

well sure if we're talking naxx 10, i thought we were doing a 40 vs 25 comparison, then its pretty close but ill agree naxx 10 was toned down quite a lot compared to the 25 man.

Remember KTs void zones were a lot easier to spot with the updated graphics and 4H was designed to be done with 2-3 tanks for 25man. Those fights become a lot simpler.

[Heathy]

Remember KTs void zones were a lot easier to spot with the updated graphics and 4H was designed to be done with 2-3 tanks for 25man. Those fights become a lot simpler.

yes those are the exception, I'm not trying to hide that, they required above average effort for their 40 man counter parts.

I guess its like ppl say, different times, naxx 25 was easier for a number of reasons, ppl knew what to expect from the mechanics, all the classes were a lot more beefier with their abilities, players, at least i got through most of tier 6 prior to wrath so my skill was a lot better than it was at level 60.

a lot of factors play into measuring the difficulty of a raid. i think naxx 40 a second time around would be easier because of the prior knowledge but i feel it will still require the same amount of prep.

[Akka]

yes those are the exception, I'm not trying to hide that, they required above average effort for their 40 man counter parts.

Re-read the OP, MOST of the fights have mechanical differences. Nearly all abilities which required reaction time were more stringent in the 40-man version, and all the abilities requiring to avoid stuff were harder (to to having twice to four times more people to stuff in the same place) so it's hardly an "exception".

I guess its like ppl say, different times, naxx 25 was easier for a number of reasons, ppl knew what to expect from the mechanics

People didn't knew the mechanisms better, because Naxx40 had been seen by only a tiny amount of people. There was barely (if any) more knowledge of the fight for the overwhelming majority of the players than for any regular raid where you can look up the tactics on the Net.

all the classes were a lot more beefier with their abilities, players, at least i got through most of tier 6 prior to wrath so my skill was a lot better than it was at level 60.

Going through T6 after patch 3.0 is completely meaningless and has nothing to do with "playing better". But yes, the classes are much more powerful (and that's also a reason why T6 post-3.0 is meaningless).

a lot of factors play into measuring the difficulty of a raid. i think naxx 40 a second time around would be easier because of the prior knowledge but i feel it will still require the same amount of prep.

It will be "easier", yes. It will not be "easy" by any stretch, and people who go in expecting to see a slightly buffed Naxx80 are in for a brutal awakening.
(if Blizzard actually keeps the same tuning, obviously, if they start to fiddle with things then everything is off the bet)

[Shrouded]

a lot of factors play into measuring the difficulty of a raid. i think naxx 40 a second time around would be easier because of the prior knowledge but i feel it will still require the same amount of prep.

No doubt everything will be easier! People have practiced killing dragons for many years since vanilla Naxx, that alone will make a huge difference. Ultimately WoW is still a numbers game though, and numbers in Naxx 40 were very unforgiving, so even if it'll be easier it won't be easy. I think people coming in from Naxx 25 expecting a similar experience will be very surprised, though I suppose AQ40 might've tempered them by then.

[RapBreon]

Then he's an idiot. The very designers said they intended it to be tuned around MC difficulty, and GC admited they probably had undertuned the raid. You could have spared a lot of effort just telling him that.

Oi, I appreciated his synopsis!

[Blackmist]

Naxx 80 was the first raid of the expansion, designed for people in dungeon and quest blues.

There was no hard mode, and both 10 and 25 man versions were designed for people with the same item level.

The hardest thing in that tier was Sartharion-25 with 3 drakes up. How did that compare to old Naxx, a raid few of us even saw?

[Chrno]

One thing you aren't taking into account with your classic spell damage numbers is that the entire raid was expected to have resist gear on which would lower things like the damage from the rain of fire significantly.

While they certainly had resist gear in LK for Naxx it was entirely unneeded, which was the biggest turning point in raiding until cataclysm patch put 10/25 on same lockout.

In Classic resist gear was absolutely required - especially if you were a tank. Then in BC you needed it but only for a few encounters, then in LK they just scrapped it all together.

Which really brings up the fact that the most difficult part of Classic and really BC raiding wasn't encounter difficulty or skill cap but organizational. Raiding was super expensive, required a ton of mats, hardly anyone flasked, you burned through potions like a gypsy giving out love potion number 9 to the sex offender registry, you needed resist gear, onyxia cloaks and all of that for 40+ people while bosses were only dropping 2 to 3 pieces of loot.

Raiding certainly evolved into something more difficult and interesting between MC and Nax, but it was different enough from just LK to be considered an entirely different game.

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You're thinking Windfury totem.

God I miss that thing, enhance shaman in a 5 man was the only way a tank ever felt like they could do damage.

This is so true.
many people hate on resistgear being a thing, i always enjoyed getting a party together to get some resist gear in dungeons or just craft stuff. Classic was maybe abit extreme in this sense but in BC i remember getting a shadowset for BT and a nature / ice? set for SSC (first boss). i thought that was doing and pretty fun to collect.

also i remember getting 3 ice resist pieces for Naxx 80 ... but was a let down that was. We cleared naxx80 in 2 days being a black temple / sunwell plateau guild. Naxx was such a letdown that our guild broke down due to boredom ... shame

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Naxx 80 was the first raid of the expansion, designed for people in dungeon and quest blues.

There was no hard mode, and both 10 and 25 man versions were designed for people with the same item level.

The hardest thing in that tier was Sartharion-25 with 3 drakes up. How did that compare to old Naxx, a raid few of us even saw?

Sarth 25 - 3D was very well doable for any organised raiding guild back then. Esp if you raided BT / SP prior.

[SoLoR1]

As someone who cleared both naxx 60 and naxx 80, at 80 it was a undertuned joke, you went there and basically 1 shot every boss as soon as you had enough people at 80.

[khalltusk]

The main issue will be the logistics. Getting enough geared people and keeping them all the way through to being able to start Naxx is no joke. So many guilds crumbled due to members jumping ship to a better progressed guild. The amount of times we had to do a farm MC run to gear up a new guy was annoying. Same for AQ40 we kept having to go back to MC/BWL to get additional gear for new recruits.

Dedicated raiders will clear nax, will it be "easier" this time round with the same tuning. Yes, the strats are well known, it won't be super easy by any means. It just won't be the same giant wall it was in Vanilla though.

There is no doubt that Nax 80 was way easier. The issue will be how easily cleared will it be on Classic wow. IMO I think we will see far more than the original clear rate. The issue will be how well people handle the upkeep of more than 40 raiders.

[Deleted]

Naxx vanilla vs Naxx WotlK discussions bug me since WotK. Naxx was back in WotlK because only 1% of the players in Classic had seen the raid. But in when we easily ran through Naxx it was because "everybody knew the fights from classic". Let that sink in. It was all about the numbers. I remember a lot of people laughing at classic raiders, because "wow, naxx is really use, you sucked back then".

So how will it be in Classic wow? Don´t know, nobody will know how hard the raids will be before we know what patches and QoL improvements we are talking about. But if the tune it like classic in the old days, there won't be more clears than back then.

[Nefastus]

I heard someone in another thread say that Naxxramas in wrath was easy because people knew how it worked not because it was undertuned. Other people seem to think Naxxramas was hard only because people were bad.

This is one of my absolute favourite dead horses to beat, so I'm dragging out its corpse since Blizzard has decided to drag out classic's corpse for this whole shebang.

Of course, Naxxramas wasn't as hard as modern mythic raids, but numbers-wise it was tuned like them even if the mechanics were mostly simpler (although Four Horsemen from an organizational perspective is pretty complex)



So the bosses in Wrath should've had literally triple the HP to be tuned the same.

What about damage you ask?



So raiders' hp from 60-80 increased about 500%, the boss damage went up only a very small amount. 80ramas was grossly undertuned.

What about mechanics you ask? Not even considering that many mechanics were negligible at 80 because of how undertuned it was.



So Anub'Rekhan, Heigan, Loatheb, Gothik the Harvester, the Four Horsemen and Kel'Thuzad were dramatically different encounters. Also, 40-players is twenty extra points of failure where one person can wipe the group (Thaddius for example) and twenty extra people to crowd into a small room you have to position perfectly in (Kel'Thuzad.)

Also, characters could do way less. Far fewer personal defensives, movement skills. Misdirect didn't exist and taunt was melee range with a 15 second cooldown (big for Gothik, Kel'Thuzad). Bloodlust/Heroism didn't exist. Shield wall was on a 30 minute cooldown.

Naxxramas wasn't as complicated as modern mythic raids let's not be silly. But as you can see it was tuned like them numbers-wise. People expecting ease may be shocked. If you did the 80 version you were effectively doing it with a 66% health reduction and 60-80% damage reduction on the bosses.

I have to say, thanks for sharing all this info. Its great to see such detailed comparisson.

[Nitros14]

yes those are the exception, I'm not trying to hide that, they required above average effort for their 40 man counter parts.

I guess its like ppl say, different times, naxx 25 was easier for a number of reasons, ppl knew what to expect from the mechanics, all the classes were a lot more beefier with their abilities, players, at least i got through most of tier 6 prior to wrath so my skill was a lot better than it was at level 60.

a lot of factors play into measuring the difficulty of a raid. i think naxx 40 a second time around would be easier because of the prior knowledge but i feel it will still require the same amount of prep.

The bosses basically had a 66% health and damage debuff on them. That's enormous. So incredibly ridiculous. Many other raids have had 30% nerfs and it completely trivialized them.

[Yarathir]

Classic Naxxramas was harder than WoTLK Naxxramas, but even Classic Naxxramas is totally overestimated. Most of the difficulty is in preparation and management, not the tactics.

Get 40 people attuned, get them frost resist gear for Sapphiron, deal with having 8 tanks to be able to take down Four Horseman. And so on.

This is not difficulty intrinsic to the raid itself, but like I said: more so preparation and managing to pull 8 tanks out of your ass.

[Shrouded]

Classic Naxxramas was harder than WoTLK Naxxramas, but even Classic Naxxramas is totally overestimated. Most of the difficulty is in preparation and management, not the tactics.

Get 40 people attuned, get them frost resist gear for Sapphiron, deal with having 8 tanks to be able to take down Four Horseman. And so on.

This is not difficulty intrinsic to the raid itself, but like I said: more so preparation and managing to pull 8 tanks out of your ass.

It's not just frost resist gear either, it's getting 40 people enough gear to be able to both pull the DPS necessary and actually survive the high damage output. Keep in mind that vanilla loot drops aren't exactly generous, gearing up takes time. With perfect luck it takes 20 weeks of full clears of MC, BWL and Onyxia just to get everyone in the raid their tier 2 sets, and ideally you want tier 2.5 to work on Naxx - and that's not even counting the additional people you need to gear up since you probably won't have the same 40 every single raid.

[Yarathir]

It's not just frost resist gear either, it's getting 40 people enough gear to be able to both pull the DPS necessary and actually survive the high damage output. Keep in mind that vanilla loot drops aren't exactly generous, gearing up takes time. With perfect luck it takes 20 weeks of full clears of MC, BWL and Onyxia just to get everyone in the raid their tier 2 sets, and ideally you want tier 2.5 to work on Naxx.

No, of course. My point was that most of the difficulty of Naxx itself is the management and preparation, not the Naxxramas mechanics.

[Shrouded]

No, of course. My point was that most of the difficulty of Naxx itself is the management and preparation, not the Naxxramas mechanics.

Oh yes, I agree, I was just adding to what you said, really. There are a few fights that are trickier to execute (Thaddius with 40 people comes to mind) but preparing for Naxx 40 was something that took the entire lifetime of Vanilla - no catchup mechanics here!

[Novakhoro]

Minor detail:



Bloodlust did, but it was Horde only.

No it did not.

[Yarathir]

Oh yes, I agree, I was just adding to what you said, really. There are a few fights that are trickier to execute (Thaddius with 40 people comes to mind) but preparing for Naxx 40 was something that took the entire lifetime of Vanilla - no catchup mechanics here!

Personally, I don't miss it, haha.

[Shrouded]

Personally, I don't miss it, haha.

I actually do, but I say that knowing I won't have time to participate in the vanilla raid game one more time :P I won't get into Naxx 40 again, but I'll still play and enjoy WoW Classic. Looking forward to selling Mountain Silversage for ridiculous prices to all the people who do push into Naxx 40, at least!