Originally Posted by
Zibi
This is my big problem with the triggered vs activated via portrait debate. "More immersive than clicking a button on your portrait"
Hodir, Freya, Ignis, Thorim, Flame Leviathan, Vezax and the like you actually did LESS than click on your portrait. To activate Freya's Hardmode, just clear 3 packs of trash then pull the boss. Hodir, just kill him fast. Thorim.... just go fast. Flame Leviathan, just skip everything and go straight up the middle to the boss. Ignis, see Hodir. Vezax you just... kill the boss. And honestly, while people love Mimiron's button, it's just one click to activate the arbitrary hard mode, and I think in some ways Yogg fits in there as well, since all you do is NOT talk to the keepers and go down to fight him.
All in all, I understand why people liked the multiple difficulties (Yogg 4 keepers down to 0, Flame Leviathan 4 towers to none, Sarth 0 drakes to 3) and I liked those as well, but I can understand why Blizz no longer desires to make them so frequently (I presume balancing 4 versions of the same boss in 3 different difficulties takes excessive amounts of time). When it comes to most of the Ulduar Hard Modes, however, after a while it just felt gimmicky. After farming full heroic clears of Ulduar for weeks/months, it gets REALLY old. It would've been nice to just flip a switch for hardmode and clear thru, rather than "oops, someone lagged and we missed hardmode, wipe now or we lose it for the week."
Anyway... that's just my 2c.