Why Normal Mode is Still Required for Heroic Mode

[yjmark]

As the post title asks - why is normal mode still required for access to heroic mode? If you have cleared the previous tier heroic mode, you generally can roflstomp the next tier normal mode. So why "require" people do that?

If they want to clear normal mode first, then that should be fine. But, if they want to jump right into heroic modes - why not?

[smegdawg]

probably to prevent raid teams who have not yet cleared the instance from doing the easy mode heroics (i.e. H Shannox).

[Mamado]

Let's split guilds up into three sections:

1. Guilds who struggle with normal modes. They won't ever try heroic modes, so having them available won't make any difference.
2. Guilds who struggle with end-bosses on normal modes and heroic modes. They would end up clearing several heroic modes before the end boss- H Shannox is a great example.
3. Guilds who faceroll normal modes and work on heroic modes. Normal modes are just a week long timer that they'll never visit again.

The modes are only split because of group two- who would end up working progression on two fronts, both in H modes for early bosses and reg modes for later bosses, which just sounds silly. Groups one and three don't have any issue with it.

[Shammyhealz]

I believe the reason to be tuning. They want to see how players perform on the normal mode content to make Heroic scale proportionally. I.e. if an attack does 30% hp in Normal, and it appears that high end guilds were having to work harder than they should to beat it, they clearly don't want the Heroic version to do 60% hp. And also, as it is, there are a large number of bugs in many of the fights. Letting this many people work on Normal modes allow these bugs to come into light during normal mode world firsts that no one cares about, that way guilds don't lose world firsts due to crappy coding/glitches/cheats etc.

[PHsname]

Let's split guilds up into three sections:

1. Guilds who struggle with normal modes. They won't ever try heroic modes, so having them available won't make any difference.
2. Guilds who struggle with end-bosses on normal modes and heroic modes. They would end up clearing several heroic modes before the end boss- H Shannox is a great example.
3. Guilds who faceroll normal modes and work on heroic modes. Normal modes are just a week long timer that they'll never visit again.

The modes are only split because of group two- who would end up working progression on two fronts, both in H modes for early bosses and reg modes for later bosses, which just sounds silly. Groups one and three don't have any issue with it.

Awesome post.This guy pretty much has it right.

At the OP: Not every guild that works on hard modes stomps the normal mode content in one week. There are MANY guilds that take weeks and even months to clear the tier on normal mode before working on heroics. Blizzard wants to gate their progress and prevent them from getting hard mode loot to work on normal mode progression.

For the guilds that clear normal modes in the first week, as the post I quoted stated, there really isn't a point, no.

[Cirque]

Well, PHsname, though I absolutely agree with Mamado and you, I was always under the impression this gated mode is used to provide for a slightly more fair competition between different servers/realms/regions, especially after patch days, having excessive server issues, sometimes only limited to certain servers but not to others isn't rare at all (for example, our server on the release of Ulduar was exceedingly laggy, and fair competition therefore really was impossible for the first 2 days, while other servers had no issues at all). Allowing a week period grace time for the servers to settle itself, is, therefore, in my opinion most welcome even for the #3 group of raiders as described by Mamado.

[Swendel]

Does the a LFR kill of Deathwing grant heroic access? I mean, for when they put it in game of course.

[Nerraw]

Does the a LFR kill of Deathwing grant heroic access? I mean, for when they put it in game of course.

No, you need to kill it on Normal.

[Projali]

At the OP: Not every guild that works on hard modes stomps the normal mode content in one week. There are MANY guilds that take weeks and even months to clear the tier on normal mode before working on heroics. Blizzard wants to gate their progress and prevent them from getting hard mode loot to work on normal mode progression.

For the guilds that clear normal modes in the first week, as the post I quoted stated, there really isn't a point, no.

The difficulty of normal modes since T12 shouldn't require months to clear for a hard mode guild. A guild that can't clear normal modes in a decent time frame (seriously, we aren't uber top 100 guild by any means and it took us 4 hours of raiding to clear normal DS with no ptr experience) isn't going to waltz into hard modes and start gearing in 410s.

Normal requirement for heroic gates hardcore guilds, not average guilds.

[buurner]

Always has been, always will be, keeps things separate, like in WotLK when people used to just buy an LK kill and then farm gunship.

[PHsname]

Well, PHsname, though I absolutely agree with Mamado and you, I was always under the impression this gated mode is used to provide for a slightly more fair competition between different servers/realms/regions, especially after patch days, having excessive server issues, sometimes only limited to certain servers but not to others isn't rare at all (for example, our server on the release of Ulduar was exceedingly laggy, and fair competition therefore really was impossible for the first 2 days, while other servers had no issues at all). Allowing a week period grace time for the servers to settle itself, is, therefore, in my opinion most welcome even for the #3 group of raiders as described by Mamado.

That works too, but I doubt that's what Blizzard intended, and is more likely an unintended, but advantageous side effect.

The difficulty of normal modes since T12 shouldn't require months to clear for a hard mode guild. A guild that can't clear normal modes in a decent time frame (seriously, we aren't uber top 100 guild by any means and it took us 4 hours of raiding to clear normal DS with no ptr experience) isn't going to waltz into hard modes and start gearing in 410s.

Normal requirement for heroic gates hardcore guilds, not average guilds.

I didn't say it would take months for a hard mode guild to clear Normal in a tier. Read my post, and the post I quoted very closely. You're misunderstanding what we're saying.

Normal requirement wastes a week for hardcore guilds. It doesn't gate them. Normal requirement gates guilds progressing on normal. If you can clear Normal modes in the first week of a new tier, there is no "gating".