What Hardmode type do you prefer?

[Darkelementz]

Ulduar and to a lesser extent ICC hard modes were the best. I like when the jump in health and damage also brings a change of mechanics, like FL, freya, mimiron, vezax, yogg, deathwhisper, marrowgar, and nef heroic.

When it's just the same fight as normal except more damage, it looses the appeal and creativity what drew us to hard mode raiding. We like a challenge, not a "you have to do 10% more damage only to make the shorter enrage timer" on certain fights now. (particularly, rhyolith, staghelm, and baelroc)

[Deleted]

There has been the occasional "I don't care which" response. If you wish to elaborate on why you think neither option is more appealing than the other then that's fine, but please don't post just to say you don't care about the topic. That'll just clog up the thread with spam. Thank you

[Wilderness]

I think most people didn't do Ulduar when it was current or are thinking back through rosy glasses. They didn't have hardmodes for every boss, and most of them that they did have were "triggered" before you ever pulled the boss, basically like toggling normal/heroic now.

Ulduar and to a lesser extent ICC hard modes were the best. I like when the jump in health and damage also brings a change of mechanics, like FL, freya, mimiron, vezax, yogg, deathwhisper, marrowgar, and nef heroic.

When it's just the same fight as normal except more damage, it looses the appeal and creativity what drew us to hard mode raiding. We like a challenge, not a "you have to do 10% more damage only to make the shorter enrage timer" on certain fights now. (particularly, rhyolith, staghelm, and baelroc)

What's the difference between heroic Nef and heroic Staghelm? You have to do more damage and each has a mechanic which buffs your damage. I wouldn't put Marrowgar or Vezax on any list of real mechanic changes - higher damage and bone spikes during bonestorms isn't exactly changing the fight at all, and Vezax is just not dps'ing the vapors until an add spawns, then killing said add. It made mana much more of a concern, but again it didn't change the fight itself much at all. There are 9 hard modes in Ulduar and 1/3 of them are just dps races (Vezax, Hodir, XT).

I do wish that they'd do some more multiple difficulty fights like Yogg, I'd be pretty happy if most big bad endbosses of each tier (like Sinestra or Rag for T11/12) had several difficulty settings so they could tune the last 1 or 2 to be crazy hard to challenge the world top guilds.

[This name sucks]

I think most people didn't do Ulduar when it was current or are thinking back through rosy glasses. They didn't have hardmodes for every boss, and most of them that they did have were "triggered" before you ever pulled the boss, basically like toggling normal/heroic now.

To be fair most of the bosses that had no hardmode were kind of stupid anyway. With the exception being iron council.

[AlexDevillord]

Triggered ofc. In that type of switching more epicness

[darkwarrior42]

I think most people didn't do Ulduar when it was current or are thinking back through rosy glasses. They didn't have hardmodes for every boss, and most of them that they did have were "triggered" before you ever pulled the boss, basically like toggling normal/heroic now.

I did Ulduar when it was current content, and I vastly preferred the triggered model, for multiple reasons.
1) Style. "We have challenged Freya without defeating her attendants, to see if we are capable of defeating her" vs. "Hey guys, hang on a sec, need to toggle the difficulty from normal to heroic... ok loading screen... ok, there we go, Shannox has more health now." It's a game, but it's an RPG, or at least it's supposed to be... anything that reduces the amount of game interface we deal with in the raids is a good thing.
2) Fun. I find having to do something, even if it's silly, to be far more engaging than just a menu toggle.
3) Having simple heroic/non-heroic precludes multiple difficulties. LFR adds a third level, but that's still not the same. They could bring back multiple tiers of difficulty.. but only with triggered difficulties (which could be used in conjunction with a heroic toggle, but that still makes it a triggered difficulty).
4) Lockouts become far simpler. Since 10 and 25-man now share a lockout, each raid now simply has a lockout. You're saved, or you're not.

That said, I doubt Blizzard will ever go back. Aside from "creativity concerns", what I consider to be an advantage (point #4) they would view as a disadvantage. They like handling the heroic lockout differently, and forcing the raid to clear all bosses prior to the final boss on heroic to be able to challenge the final boss on heroic. That's a bit harder to handle with triggered difficulty only, though not impossible.

[Darkelementz]

Since DW has 4 assisting dragon aspects, it may go back to the different difficult level thing. Who knows, since nobody has yet tested heroic DW final encounter. I hope they do, since that made yogg and sarth awesome fights

[sgtslappy]

Holy crap @ the results. And Blizzard said they didn't like the Ulduar HMs. Their fans obviously did. Wow.

There are 115 responses. There is a not a good indication of what the entire customer base likes what.

[Deleted]

I didn't like it, it really gets old. Give trigger.

[Nobleshield]

I didn't raid Ulduar when current but I did do some HM stuff later to fool around. I liked the triggered because you could slowly progress towards it. IMO the absolute best would have been like Sarth (which I sadly also did not do when current), where each difficulty gives you some bonus rewards. Instead of being all or nothing like it is today, or even just "trigger it or do it normal", it was "Okay this week let's try 1 drake up." and then it was try two, and finally try three. You could basically "demo" what the next highest difficulty level was by doing the lower one (i.e. you get a feel for how it's going to play out) and because you got some kind of bonus item (in today's terms maybe it could be an extra loot drop, so there wouldn't have to be separate loot tables, I don't know...) it wasn't a total waste.

I would prefer triggers though, things like for instance... Hardmode Shannox means not killing Rageface or Riplimb or, IMO, it should have been reversed - normal should be like HM is now (don't kill dogs), and HM should be where he enrages and does the big AOE thing after both are dead (doing more damage ofc). That would be a good example of a triggered HM if you ask me.

As I recall, Blizz said they didn't like the Ulduar model because it wasn't always obvious what you had to do to trigger the hard mode, which led to one of two likely scenarios:

1) You never trigger the hardmode because you aren't sure exactly how to get it to hard mode
2) You trigger it by accident when you don't want to, and therefore wipe because the boss just goes from being normal to hard immediately.

[Sills]

Ulduar was just terrific. I love that you could set the fight at different difficulties with the different levels. Ulduar all the way!

[Irony]

The Uld way, it just felt more immersive than clicking a button on your portrait.

[Deleted]

Ulduar type hard modes, definitely.

[Spawnstar]

Triggered, ie. XT 002. If you can't trigger it, you'll never be able to do the hardmode. I really like that.

Also the ones where you need to build up to it like (insert name of the first Uld boss, which I forgot) where you can select which towers to destroy/keep, and Yogg, with keepers.

Flame Leviathan

[Zibi]

Holy crap @ the results. And Blizzard said they didn't like the Ulduar HMs. Their fans obviously did. Wow.

Yep, all 105 of WoW's players.

[Youarefired]

Ulduar will win every poll except for anything negative against it. It was perfect!

shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

[mitbrandir]

Not sure if this is what you are asking, but i believe ulduar implemented hardmodes the best. You had to complete the fights with entirely new mechanics...not just X mob has Y more health and does Z more damage.

I think this is also one of the reason why Ulduar was loved so much. The hardmode was actually brought total new mechanics to deal with , and not just like the "hardmodes" ( achies ) that we got now. Those achievement were also actually hard , like Orbit or Firefighter.

[Zibi]

The Uld way, it just felt more immersive than clicking a button on your portrait.

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.

[feigning]

I loved the tiered difficulty ala Sartharion and Yogg-Saron, but other than that, they didn't make a difference. All the Ulduar hard modes weren't really triggered in an interesting way. Freya was just go straight to her, leaving the elders up. Her actual hard mode was pretty great, but the trigger is what the question is. Toggling it through the interface is no less boring than just doing the fight faster. Hodir, Thorim, and XT were all just do the fight slightly faster and/or better. Run the gauntlet faster, kill the boss faster, or actually kill the heart. The only trigger that was interesting was for Iron Council and that wasn't even much of a trigger, it was just more fun fighting the bosses down in a new order...

[PHsname]

I definitely prefer having an entirely different fight (a la Cata and IC raids, or ToC).