Naxxramas 60 vs Naxxramas 80 difficulty?

[Evangeliste]

It's definitely true that a main tank death was almost assuredly a wipe in vanilla and that hasn't been the case since WOTLK except for a few encounters. Especially because tanks couldn't generate threat rage starved so second aggro wasn't usually possible.

Our tank gets gibbed on mythic Mannoroth here and we just shrug as he goes to the other tank, res him and kill it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzZlIe89MA0

Problem is in Vanilla you could feign it was dev ignorance, they assumed with like 8 tanks it wouldn't be so bad but they also were trying the hard hitting way which... totally didn't add to that thinking - I mean you had x amount of healers or damagers that if died could maybe see the end of the boss so tanks were part of that ideal just... totally didn't get there in gameplay.

Its fun though that now it's generally a mechanic that kills a tank if not executed properly but there is still a margin of error to be had, so like a boss does a stacking debuff that kills you with more damage or instant slaps you, kinda thing and has been like that since earlier like TBC. There are always going to be bosses that ignore that rule but I would say in TBC they were doing a mixture of being nicer to groups and using it as a mechanic.

[Deleted]

Little anecdote/story from Naxx 80.

Naxx @ 80 was so easy that my guild (who wasn't even very good by any standard, like, we killed Illidan, yeah... a full year after the world-first, and I think we barely edged out KJ before WotLK launched), went in there the first night with 10 people just looking to do the 10man for fun, and we didn't realize we'd been clearing on 25man mode until we got to Razuvious and there were no MC Orbs.

Sure, the rogue died like every single pull and we thought it was hilarious how punishing it was to melee, and how although things were going smoothly some of the trash seemed to have a little bit too much HP, but we figured that, hey, it's the first time we're here... we're not pushing as hard, people aren't really geared yet... it's fine.

Then we went outside to switch to 10man and stomped the instance, with your odd wipe here and there, but, without taking things without any real seriousness.

Nope, this is bs plain and simple. Sorry to Call you out

[Rampant Rabbit]

Aw man I miss that trinket.

Yeah man. Feels bad.

[Akka]

Nope, this is bs plain and simple. Sorry to Call you out

Well, let me tell my own story :

We're a decent but "social" guild (and by "decent", I mean compared to the overall population, not compared to "mythic-clearing" guilds). We managed to raid in all expansions, but we were always firmly in the "midcore" side, with a mix of hardcore, midcore and casual (real casual) players. We managed to put Teron Gorefiend at 1 % before the 3.0 hits. So you see, nothing really fancy.

Our VERY FIRST dibs into Naxx was more about "hey let's see the place". We expected to just die on trash, but we wanted to see the scenery (remember, at this time, Naxx had always been this incredibly harsh place with the mystical aura of exclusiveness, not the "lol faceroll" feeling it has now). As such, with no expectation of managing anything, we just grabbed anyone who was 80 and went in (I actually didn't enter right away, I was still leveling at the time, just putting foot in the place was impressive in itself).
So you had maybe three to four people who were more hardcore and so already had done a few heroics, a few others who just had the time to get some blues, and most people who just reached 80 and were still in leveling green or TBC epics. Something like 14-15 people. I, myself, dinged 80 while the raid was assembling.
During the raid, we had three more people who reached 80, so we grabbed them and summoned them in.

In the end, in 3 hours, we cleaned two wings. With 18 people. Most of them barely 80 and in leveling gear. From a midcore guild.
So maybe the guy's story is BS. But honestly, if they managed to kill Illidan before 3.0, then it just sounds totally believable.

[warlordoflordwar]

40 man Naxx was much harder than any mythic raids.

[khalltusk]

Not much interest in it, but if guild mates need me there I will probably roll a character.

It won't be the true Vanilla experience without the stuck-crouched-over-looting bug, though.

or the tea pot rogue arms?

Yeh I will be there for friends mainly. Hopefully I have fun.

[Nitros14]

40 man Naxx was much harder than any mythic raids.

That's obviously not true to anyone who understands what mythic Kil'jaeden was at release.

[Canderous1]

Nax 25 was not undertuned. It was tuned as an entry level raid for Wrath. That is why it was so easy. Wrath was also the first expansion where they tried out the Hardmodes/Heroic raiding model and the only hardmode on release was Sarth 3D.

You can't really compare the two raids (40 and 25) due to them being for two different target audiences.

qft, this really should have been the last post on this thread.

[Tharkkun]

Very few guilds saw those initial versions. The Spellblade nerf came pretty fast, with the Augur and Elisande nerf right after it. In vanilla they didn't tune the instance one way for the very best guilds then immediately nerf it a few weeks later.



But this is my favourite dead horse to beat. It's not effort if you're having fun.

Vanilla nerfed all the time. In fact when a new raid came out they always nerfed the old raid, even back then. The difference is the patch notes weren't released publicly or a nice easy to ready format. They would announce the new stuff but nothing regarding nerfs. All the work was done by datamining and releasing undocumented changes. This was still happening in WOTLK because I specifically remember the Ulduar nerfs not being documented.

- - - Updated - - -

It's definitely true that a main tank death was almost assuredly a wipe in vanilla and that hasn't been the case since WOTLK except for a few encounters. Especially because tanks couldn't generate threat rage starved so second aggro wasn't usually possible.

Our tank gets gibbed on mythic Mannoroth here and we just shrug as he goes to the other tank, res him and kill it.

That's because they copied raiding from Everquest since that game influenced wow in many ways. They finally got rid of the stupid taunt immune mechanic. If Everquest you could cc a mob and before breaking the CC the tank would stand there and hit taunt 8 times in a row as it came off cooldown to be sure enough threat was built up or it would kill whoever was cc'ing the NPC.

The same concept was used in tank threat. Rather than use taunt they used aggro generating abilities. It's an archaic concept pulled from a game designed to punish you at every turn.

[MAGAmobile]

Naxx at 60 was harder than Naxx at 80 because of tuning. That's how it's always been for raids.

[Tordentor]

Tier chest/helm/legs used to cost 95 Emblems of Frost. Shoulders and gloves were 60. They at one point cost 1100 JUSTICE POINTS, but that was the Cataclysm successor to Badges/Emblems. This same pricing structure applied to the non-tier items, except they were ilvl 264 instead of 251 like the tier.

You not only were intended to buy tier from the vendor, it was REQUIRED. The 251 vendor version was upgraded to the 264 10H/25N version via token drop, and to the 277 25H by using a heroic raid token in conjunction with the 264 piece. You could not obtain tier of any level in ICC without first purchasing the vendor version for Emblems of Frost.

Yeah, this was wrong. However, you didn't get your 93 a week if you didn't raid. So I still question your idea that this was just handing out gear to anyone.

The best catchup mechanic at level 60 was the conversion to Honor 2.0, as it allowed any random scrub to get Grand Marshal/High Warlord gear. This launched with patch 2.0, about a month before TBC. The actual catchup mechanics in Vanilla were pretty abyssal.

I like that you qualify it with "the best", because there sure were more.

[MAGAmobile]

Yeah man nothing like spending 14-15 hours a day having people play on your account to get Grand Marhsal/High Warlord gear because the weekly honor system was terrible in Classic. Those were the good old days.

[Nitros14]

Naxx at 60 was harder than Naxx at 80 because of tuning. That's how it's always been for raids.

A lot of people think that mechanics make raids hard, and to be fair that's true to some extent for a lot of guilds. But for top end guilds the only thing that makes raids hard is insane numbers tuning.

[TemporalAnarchy]

Yeah, this was wrong. However, you didn't get your 93 a week if you didn't raid. So I still question your idea that this was just handing out gear to anyone.

I didn't remotely suggest it was handing out gear; that's you putting words in my mouth. I simply pointed out that your notion that it WASN'T the intended mechanic to obtain tier was ridiculous, as it was the ONLY method in which you could obtain tier.

You also only got a max of 83 emblems per week for most of ICC's lifespan.

I like that you qualify it with "the best", because there sure were more.

That's why I said "abyssal" instead of abysmal. It was a Vanilla joke. There were abyssal armor drops from Silithus, but that was ilvl 68 at the VERY highest. Keep in mind that's still 8 ilvls lower than T2. T0.5, if that's the other catchup you had in mind, was only ilvl 60; this was lower than even tier 1.

I can't figure out for the life of me why you think there were catchup mechanics in Vanilla. And I'd REALLY like to hear what you think they were. Perhaps I'm just forgetting them; as a Naxx raider I didn't exactly NEED to play catchup (technically I farmed up Earthstrike; I had atrocious trinket luck).

And, for the record, I'm not counting Honor 2.0 as a GOOD catchup mechanic. Even saying it's the best; the revamped blue sets were roughly on par with T1 and the epic sets were at least close to T2. That wasn't a viable catchup for Naxx, which I believe was the point of this discussion. It was also only around for about a month prior to TBC, which means most people would have likely not even gotten full sets by then.

[GrinnersGrin]

How many sockpuppets does K*ngen have?

[Hctaz]

well you can compare them because they are mechanically identical. its the same raid, the differences are in the numbers. what abilities would kill ppl on each boss or cause a wipe was basically exactly the same.

Yes but the problem was that they were LITERALLY the same. They basically nerfed the entire instance by simply not scaling it up at ALL. Stuff that hit for 1k a sec in 40 man naxx hit for 1.5k a sec in 25 man when the player's health bars all increased dramatically. They gutted the mechanics by barely increasing the damage on anything. I think they dramatically underestimated their future class balancing and the amount of health and damage players would be doing at level 80. I know it shouldn't have been as hard as Vanilla Naxx since one was the end game raid and the other was the entry, but they seriously didn't even try to make it challenging for anybody.

[Nitros14]

Man I just spent half an OP pointing out how they weren't mechanically identical and these posts are happening.

[MAGAmobile]

A lot of people think that mechanics make raids hard, and to be fair that's true to some extent for a lot of guilds. But for top end guilds the only thing that makes raids hard is insane numbers tuning.

I'd argue mechanics is what makes an encounter memorable. Tuning does as well, but I digress.

[Hctaz]

That's obviously not true to anyone who understands what mythic Kil'jaeden was at release.

Mythic KJ was a return to Vanilla WoW raiding with the unkillable overtuned bosses making a return as well. Good times. At least they nerfed him sooner than 77 days.

Vanilla and Tomb were very similar in some regards. The only thing I don't like now was how many things would one shot your entire raid for one person fucking up. In Naxx, if you stood in two ticks of some fire, you were dead. If they did this same thing today, dying in that fire would cause your corpse to explode and deal 40 billion damage to all players within 400 yards of you.

I feel like that's not necessary.

[RapBreon]

A lot of people think that mechanics make raids hard, and to be fair that's true to some extent for a lot of guilds. But for top end guilds the only thing that makes raids hard is insane numbers tuning.

That's always been the case, complicated mechanics that apply no pressure are just something you ignore. People just don't necessarily distinguish the mechanic itself and the effect of the mechanic.

- - - Updated - - -

Vanilla and Tomb were very similar in some regards. The only thing I don't like now was how many things would one shot your entire raid for one person fucking up. In Naxx, if you stood in two ticks of some fire, you were dead. If they did this same thing today, dying in that fire would cause your corpse to explode and deal 40 billion damage to all players within 400 yards of you.

I feel like that's not necessary.

I personally don't have a big problem with it, stuff like that is not only more visibly (by a shitty graphic overlay, man Blizzard's suck), but code-red addon alarms screaming at you. Sometimes the base game itself darkens your screen with a filter to let you know you have a mechanic. I don't think Vanilla let you know other than 'hp descending'.

Harder to die to fire now I would say. So you're punished by killing everyone else haha!