What Wrath players need to know to not suck at Cata!

[tyfavre04]

You know what is more pathetic than me only starting to raid in wrath? People who think being "old school" means you are better at this game. There is people just as clueless as they were 6 years ago and the reason is they are lazy or thick.

Were Vanilla encounters more complex? no, you just had gear checks, less experienced people playing poorly designed classes and the daunting task of finding 40 non morons and co-ordinating them.

Nostalgia is such a wonderful thing.

If you think this was the poster's intent, you need to brush up on your reading comprehension skills.

[Cirque]

I'm so tired of the people who go "LOL U DIDNT DO 25HC IT WAS VERRY VERRY HARD SO THIS EQUALS WOTLK WAS VERRY VERRY HARDZ".

I mean, come on. There's a DIFFERENCE between the few people who do LK25HC and those who can't or don't want to, and who've been grinding the same undertuned instances and farm raids since day 1. Wotlk WAS easy. Deal with it. Just because a few fights were worth of the caption "very hard" doesn't make the entire expansion a challenge.

WOTLK was steamroll for most parts. Ulduar and some hardmodes in ICC were an exception. In the meanwhile, the vast majority of the playerbase had to deal with content fit for toddlers and now forgot how their classes really work.

[Skoragon]

Uh. HM LK has killed way many more guilds than any other previous guild killer. You know how many 11/12 guilds that are out there/were out there? Our guild has gotten hundreds of applicants from 11/12 HM guilds once we killed him, guilds that were breaking up.

And I'm sorry, but from everything that I've heard, the actual challenge in Vanilla fights were getting 40 people online, in a raid, and in the proper spec/class. There wasn't any actual challenge other than hoping that the 10 or so retards wouldn't fuck up.

HM LK isn't really a guild killer, imo at least. The reason behind this is that he is not a fight every has to do to advance onto the next one. It is the very last encounter in the very last (ignored Ruby Sanctum, never really counted it) raid of the expansion. He is a boss that the utmost dedicated decide to do. You'll forgive me if I'm not interested, but going through a raid to then be able to do it on a harder difficulty seems almost pointless to me.

Then again, as I said, vanilla raids had 1 difficulty: hard. It wasn't just getting 40 people online and organised. Tactics were necessary. If you were wearing T2.5 and went back into MC, you still did the tactics. Why? Mechanics made it so.

The difference between your guild killer, and vanilla's guild killer, is that Vaelstrasz was the second boss in BWL. BWL is by no means the final raid, you have AQ and Old Naxx after that. Vaelstrasz was a genuinely hard boss that you really had to work had and adapt at to get down. Even if you were tiers above it.

And I'm sorry to you, but hearing about vanilla will never be accurate to experiencing it.

[SuperflyForever]

I just can't wait for the ninja pullers and the "Go Go!" guys. Will be good to see them pull without the tank and die horribly, then rage out because he died.

[Solstark]

I'm preparing myself mentally for Cataclysm, I stated very early in WoW Classic that I'll never do PuG's again. Dungeon Finder busted that promise, but since it was pretty easy it all worked out great. Now that they'll bring back CC and stuff this might get interesting.

[Cobrakai]

Just asked guildies for Vanilla experience. I experienced all other BC fights. The difficulty in 4HM Naxx was more in getting 8 geared warrior tanks in full tier 2 than anything else. So point moot.

I'm talking about hard mode fights compared to the fights in Vanilla and BC. Normal encounters, with a few exceptions, were a joke, agreed, but hard mode fights on some bosses were definitely not. Wrath did make it easier for casuals to raid, but they did make certain bosses extremely challenging. Name the top 5 hardest non bugged encounters in Vanilla, and the top 5 in wrath will probably outdo them in difficulty.

once again, you're missing the point. No one is saying that WOTLK didn't have hard fights. It had two very hard fights - but as I said before and as dozens of people in this thread have stated, having a couple of heroic content bosses representing the difficulty for an entire expansion is faulty logic -- the dropoff in skill curve from these few select fights to the rest of the expansion - dungeons included - was ludicrous.

BC had some very difficult content as well, muru pre nerf and KJ come to mind. But all of the bosses, whether it was a casual guild or very serious guilds, took on average a longer time to learn and master than any of the fights in WOTLK. This applies to all tiers of raiding. I remember when Grull's lair first came out -- it was tuned very high for the gear that was available to players at the time. But it was still a fun instance that rewarded players who could coordinate and play to their gear level. WOTLK rewards players who dont play to their gear level. Its that simple.

Again, no one is saying that HMLK25 is easy - that would be a stupid thing to say. But it is equally stupid to state that WOTLK raiding and dungeons as a whole were harder solely based of the difficulty of these two fights.

[chunkycarl]

Good post and agree completly with it. there are far too many people that just expect everything to be carefree, easy, and quick. the fact we have to CC again is gonna cause a lot of people to become confused xD

[Dragonsword7183]

Daetur...This was a great reminder to us original WoW players of the skills we used to use that have been on the shelf the last 2 years for WotLK. Hopefully everyone takes this to heart.

[Deleted]

You know you've really hit the nail on the head, another thing, i feel, and i know a few of my guildies do, there are so many puggers cos of wrath, and ninjas may i add. Gearscore has become stupid, and people dont understand their class anymore, they purely think an achievement and gs will get them anywhere.

Pre wrath players understand CC and skull means first kill target. We understand 3 weeks of wipes on a boss, cos that's progression raiding, 2 hours of wipes for wrathers = OMG you guys suck and emo quit.

Anyone who joined in wrath, no it doesn't mean your a bad person/player what it does make you is VERY unclued up as to what actually working for epics is, and wanting to get something and get a real sense of achievement from it, and not an actual achievement. (not knocking achieves btw here, just think they're mis-used sometimes.)

Wrath easy or not compared to tbc/vanilla wow, i dont really care, what i do know, and alot of people will back me up, there are ALOT of clueless people brought into game by wrath, and hopefully, blizz will get rid of them in cata.
Whether cata will be more challenging than previous expansions, i hope so, but it really does boil down to the team u have around you.
This post, really does illustrate, what 50% of players are thinking. 50% of players are "old skool" players that remember the old stuff and now have to re learn it, 25% dont really give a shit about anything and log on to play. and 15% log on do their pvp stuff and enjoy that side of it, u'll find the remaining 10% QQ'ing at posts like this purely to atagonise people, cause drama and get attention. (which may i also add is another thing wrong with wrathers)

[Zammick]

Thank you so much for this post. I hope people will heed your words and work to improve their play style accordingly.

[Maxvla]

The best teaching instance I can think of is Blackwing Lair. We need more of this.

First boss: Kiting, mob control, positioning, relegating duties to small groups spread around the room.

Second boss: Managing cooldowns (especially tank), min/maxing for every bit of dps, situational awareness (bomb), possible line of sight depending on how you did the fight.

Third boss: Managing a long grueling gauntlet, then positional awareness for tanks getting knocked back, casters being far enough away to avoid the blastwave, melee knowing when they got knocked back to bandage/pot, etc and be very careful with agro (all dps).

Fourth boss: Major line of sight lesson, taunt rotation timing, debuff tracking, protection potion usage (also learned with Ragnaros)

Fifth boss: Taunt rotation became even more critical here. Landing too many hits on a debuffed tank would endlessly extend the fight to the point of impossibility. Threat and positioning also still apply.

3 mini-bosses (Drakanoids): Finding out the color, hopefully adapting on the first pull to the abilities present. Spreading out and quickly getting DPS assigned to the first target. Tank cooldowns.

Sixth boss: The only loot pinata in the entire place. Lessons learned from previous bosses apply, but should be learned by then.

Seventh boss: Debuff tracking, debuff curing, position management, tank switches (for bronze), PATIENCE for everyone

Eight boss: Holding your door while the other group did the same. Snaring mobs and quickly assist-style DPS. Positional awareness in phase 2 (feared into cleave, tail whip, etc). Fear break cooldowns, class ability awareness, massive AOE rush at low boss health, then keeping your cool to finish off the boss.

This raid taught me some of the biggest lessons a raider needs to know. More please.

[MoFalcon]

Good players always keep learning, it's the bad ones that don't want to learn and just spam buttons to get gear.

Yes they will.....and we will see just how many good players there are. My bet is not that many. its a totally new style of game play that takes a while to get a hang of, whether you want to believe it or not. doing it and doing it WELL are two different things.

it will be interesting for sure.

[Kouki]

Good post, However i sense alot of bias towards role's you may not be playing.
Like Healers not Cleansing debuffs or Tanks being the center of the group.

In Wotlk you cant cleanse if nothing is there to remove, in cata you will waste mana, more of us may not use it.
And Tanks are the center of the group, they beat the drum the rhythm for the run.

[fly]

You should do some "Tutorials" on on things like Target of Target and Focus / Assist. It's kind of a shame these weren't included as they are very important for people to "have a clue".

(grrr stupid posting rules)

oo (.) guild (.) gr I have vague outlines of these here, am posting to your post though as it's really nice too.

[zer0th]

Uh. HM LK has killed way many more guilds than any other previous guild killer. You know how many 11/12 guilds that are out there/were out there? Our guild has gotten hundreds of applicants from 11/12 HM guilds once we killed him, guilds that were breaking up.

And I'm sorry, but from everything that I've heard, the actual challenge in Vanilla fights were getting 40 people online, in a raid, and in the proper spec/class. There wasn't any actual challenge other than hoping that the 10 or so retards wouldn't fuck up.

Do you actually have pre 4.0 LoTD?

For some of the hardest fights in Wrath, all 25 people had to be playing 100% perfect for an extended period of time. LK, you needed 25 players playing perfectly for 15 mins.

Dude, no one really cares what you have heard. Please stop banging on like a broken record, an off-topic one at that, making up facts, when you didn't actually play the game back then to be able to compare.

[Lionhearte0]

Gratz on getting on front page. Very good read, and it's true to the very last sentence.

[Deleted]

Good post and agree completly with it. there are far too many people that just expect everything to be carefree, easy, and quick. the fact we have to CC again is gonna cause a lot of people to become confused xD

Google "How to win at pugs and gearscore" machima, and i think you'll find it's pretty much what we've experienced with wrath players and not alot previous to wrath.

[Skoragon]

The best teaching instance I can think of is Blackwing Lair. We need more of this.

First boss: Kiting, mob control, positioning, relegating duties to small groups spread around the room.

Second boss: Managing cooldowns (especially tank), min/maxing for every bit of dps, situational awareness (bomb), possible line of sight depending on how you did the fight.

Third boss: Managing a long grueling gauntlet, then positional awareness for tanks getting knocked back, casters being far enough away to avoid the blastwave, melee knowing when they got knocked back to bandage/pot, etc and be very careful with agro (all dps).

Fourth boss: Major line of sight lesson, taunt rotation timing, debuff tracking, protection potion usage (also learned with Ragnaros)

Fifth boss: Taunt rotation became even more critical here. Landing too many hits on a debuffed tank would endlessly extend the fight to the point of impossibility. Threat and positioning also still apply.

3 mini-bosses (Drakanoids): Finding out the color, hopefully adapting on the first pull to the abilities present. Spreading out and quickly getting DPS assigned to the first target. Tank cooldowns.

Sixth boss: The only loot pinata in the entire place. Lessons learned from previous bosses apply, but should be learned by then.

Seventh boss: Debuff tracking, debuff curing, position management, tank switches (for bronze), PATIENCE for everyone

Eight boss: Holding your door while the other group did the same. Snaring mobs and quickly assist-style DPS. Positional awareness in phase 2 (feared into cleave, tail whip, etc). Fear break cooldowns, class ability awareness, massive AOE rush at low boss health, then keeping your cool to finish off the boss.

This raid taught me some of the biggest lessons a raider needs to know. More please.

Don't forget the LoS issues on chromaggus imo, this really sums up how much more tactical vanilla raiding was. Not just the first time you went through either, but every single time, wether you were entering and gearing up, or going back with Old Naxx gear. It was always a challenge

[Rayzz]

Reverting back to BC trash pulling methods is what i'm going to do.
I wasn't a tank back then as DK's did not exist, but i've done marking before.
Hopefully, the best case scenario is that people would be aware that other people havent done these instances before and help them.

[Purplekitti]

I've just got to give my +1 thumbs up here. I'm sure hoping people will learn some patience, and dungeons do not become the horrid AOE fest they are now.


I particularly thank you for the comment about tanks who think they're the centre of the universe, I've experienced this both on my DPS and Healers, and it needs to end, now. They need to realise that they're part of a group