Cataclysm difficulty - A question for heroic raiders

[Deleted]

Hello guys, I haven't done big PvE (heroic modes) since Wotlk, never touched an heroic boss in Cataclysm.

I wanted to know how was the Cata boss difficulty compared to Wotlk and TBC.

Are they harder ? Easier ? Or is it roughly the same thing ?

Who are the hardest Cataclysm heroic bosses ? How do they compare to the hardest TBC/LK bosses ?

Thanks

[Sildor]

Ragnaros heroic (pre nerf) was definitely the hardest boss of the Cataclysm, and probably the hardest boss so far in WoW. Spine of Deathwing was probably the hardest of this tier, but it was much easier than Rag heroic, and the only reason why it was hard was because of the extreme DPS requirement and not because of hard mechanics. Aside from rag heroic there wasn't a boss that would compare to the big tough guys in the past, although tier 11 took a long time to clear, because all bosses were relatively hard, it just lacked that big cockblock.

[Keoren]

This is all from 25-man heroic PoV and my personal opinions.

Tier 11 in its original incarnation was the hardest tier of the three on average and competes with the best of them. It was also by far the best tier of Cataclysm despite all of its problems (hello Atramedes). Difficulty-wise it reminds me of Ulduar times a little, but I wouldn't say they're exactly comparable. T12 6/7 was somewhat disappointing even before the nerfs. To me it resembled Icecrown difficulty curve by quite a bit. T13 could've been tuned bit tighter. Deathwing especially is too easy considering its place as the last boss. Spine is one of the worse encounters in a long time.

Ragnaros was the hardest boss and the crown jewel encounter of this expansion. Don't want to start making comparisons since there would be so many things to consider.

[Mudkiper]

Although Ragnaros was quite hard and nice to defeat, it was let down by the rest of the instance, not only should the raid of had more bosses (10-12), they should of been harder, we were clearing 6/7hc on alts for a long time because it was that easy.

Tier 11 was amazing, the right number of bosses with quite a few being difficult. Firelands was let down by the number of bosses and the first 6 being too easy (except Baleroc pre-nerf), and DS is the same, first 6 were pretty easy then we had Spine which was a 10m+ trash fight that required stacking classes (pre-nerf) which was just terrible, plus spending 1-2 nights to kill the end boss (Madness) of an expansion just seems.. meh.

Overall I would say that the last three tiers of Wotlk were probably harder then Cataclysms, ICC and Ulduar were both amazing - the correct difficulty and size of raids.

[Bishy]

Tier 11 is amazing, the best tier in this expansion tbh, the hardest tier so far (thinking of Ascendant council 25m H or H Chogall, extremely intense fights).

Heroic Rag saved Tier 12, become the best boss Ive ever seen (I ranked pre-nerf Rag higher than LK HM, on the same level as Yogg+0). Tier 13 is nothing special, no lore behind it, boss fight is quite boring, the number of bosses are meh and hell no, Madness is nothing compared to Rag in terms of epicness

[Makoblade]

None of the fights are as hard as TBC, or Yogg+0, Sarth 3D or Anub Heroic 25 were when they were current.

Heroic Ragnaros, Ascendant Council and *maybe* Cho'gall were about equal to Heroic Lich King 25, and were good fights in an otherwise sad expansion.

Spine of deathwing was given a high dps requirement because Blizzard intended to use that as a gate to stopping undergeared players from passing it, of course stacking specific classes still enabled it to be done.

[Seifa]

I think every hardcore raider will say that Tier11 was the best raiding tier in Cataclysm. Most of the bosses were challenging (excluding the usual welfare heroic boss). The biggest problem of t11 wasn't the difficulty, but the lack of quality check. It was tainted with bugs and poorly thought mechanics (Chain Lightning on meeles at the Elemental Monstruosity, anyone?). The addiction of Sinestra was a nice touch, but she wasn't that hard as Blizzard said.

T12 had some nice mechanics, but waaay undertuned. Ragnaros was the best encounter, but the difficulty curve was terrible. Bosses should scale to easiest to hardest gradually, not having 6 bosses not that hard and one huge cockblock that requires 500 attempts to kill... That's bad design.

T13... no comment. I don't like it.

[Deleted]

A fellow Kazzak-er

Our guild totally agree with Seifa, even though we run 10 mans (which were a pain in the ass due to raid comp in T11). Loved the difficulty and challenge of T11.

Tier 13 there are some fun fights like Yorsahj and Blackhorn but with gear and nerfs they are much less intense now than first kills.

The annoying thing are the length of some of the fights - 15 mins for Rag, similar for Madness, and 10+ for spine HC. It just gets boring and tedious that one slip here or there and you waste a quarter of an hour.

[Keoren]

The annoying thing are the length of some of the fights - 15 mins for Rag, similar for Madness, and 10+ for spine HC. It just gets boring and tedious that one slip here or there and you waste a quarter of an hour.

I disagree. If a fight is challenging all the way through while lasting 10+ minutes, it just makes downing it so much more rewarding. While there are wonderful yet short fights, would you say Ragnaros would be close to as highly esteemed if it lasted only say 8 minutes?

[Deleted]

i think you could easily reduce the length of p1 and have only 2-3 seed phases on heroic and no one would complain. Adjust the fight so the p3 dps race is the same and similarly P4 he heals himself up more so it is similar in length.

p1 is tedious
Transition is a test
P2 seeds are the test, either you die or you can handle it. Do it 2 or 3 times, next
A slightly harder transition - ok
P3 is great.
P4 is great as well.

My real comment around fight length was that it is a pain in the ass to do relatively easy parts of the fight for 9 minutes and then "oh shit 2 meteor spawns". Same with madness platforms 1-3, for example, will anyone have issues with the cataclysm timer on the first or second platform, or even the third for that matter?

[Rioo]

T11 heroic on 10-man pre-nerfs is the most brutal tier ever in this game. I don't think we'll ever see a tier requiring so much personal requirements from each raider, both in DPS and coordination, again. The 25-man version seemed a bit more well-tuned.

The rest of the expansion is a joke, except Ragnaros heroic and the super-boring Spine fight and Gunship10 on heroic, which was the highlight this tier around for me.

[Deleted]

I disagree. If a fight is challenging all the way through while lasting 10+ minutes, it just makes downing it so much more rewarding. While there are wonderful yet short fights, would you say Ragnaros would be close to as highly esteemed if it lasted only say 8 minutes?

Epicly long fights might be more challenging but then a 2 hour long fight will be more challenging still, would you say that a 2 hour fight is a good idea? It depends on where you personally draw the line between worthy challenge and just tedious and ridiculous. I personally don't like bosses over 10min in length, I prefer really short intense hectic phases like P1 of H Al'akir.

@OP On average this expansion is about the same in difficulty as the previous two. Every tier and every xpac has obviously had it's easy parts and its hard parts, Cata is no different and it has everything from faceroll bosses to extremely difficult bosses, along with all of the timed major nerfs that are now standard for Blizzard. The differentiating factor in Cata is not quality, it's quantity. There's only 3 tiers, 2 of them are fairly short tiers and 1 of them makes heavy use of recycled models and zones so just the sheer quantity of the content isn't as high as it was in the past.

[Arhippa]

I don't mind ~10-12 min fights as long as there's only 1-2 of them in a tier and they're versatile. Spine is not versatile, that's just same thing 3 times (or even 6 times depending on how you see it). Madness is pretty much the same thing on all 4 aspect-platforms as well.

Ragnaros had 4 different phases as well as the transition phases. The difference isn't really that huge in the end, but it makes a big difference when you're doing the fight - especially when progressing.

As for the actual topic here, I pretty much agree with Seifa. While T11 did have quite a bit of issues, I still see it as the best tier in this expansion. I liked roughly half of firelands, but the first 6 felt so undertuned when you got to ragnaros that it just made the whole tier feel a bit shit. In dragon soul there's just 1 boss I enjoy with the rest being 'meh' at best.

[Niteynite]

Blizzard launched the Cataclysm raids with the intent of making the encounters more "execution" based, rather than "LOL I DOES BIG NUMBERS!".

IMO, they succeeded tremendously with tier 11. A fight does not have to be hard in order to be fun. Conclave was the perfect example of that. Even for those challenging encounters, I could not deny how much fun they were (Omnitron Heroic is still one of my favorite fights).

However, the majority of WoW players would violently disagree with me. Most players hate fights that require lots of movement or the use of an ability that doesn't damage the boss. Another forum on this site had a poll asking "What is your favorite Dragon Soul boss?" Guess which one had the most votes. Yep, it was Ultraxion.

People need to stop bashing Blizzard. They showed that they can still create some damn good encounters when they released Tier 11. But, subscriptions dropped when players realized they actually had to earn those precious epics now. Rather than put some thought into their raiding, they cancelled their subs in the masses.

Blizzard is a company, and like any other business, they are in it for the money. After the Firelands patch, when subs were down almost a million, they decided to revert back to the Wrath model of raiding. You can see that clearly in Dragon Soul. Also, on their dungeons and raids panel at Blizzcon, they said their goal for MoP raids were "to create more easily understandable encounters and move away from mechanics that simply set up groups to fail." Doesn't that sound so much like Dragon Soul?

Plus there is this whole concept of letting everyone "see the content". Originally, I thought LFR would solve that, but with the nerfing of HEROIC Dragon Soul, it turns out that Blizzard wants everyone to defeat Heroic Deathwing. If that means that later on in MoP, there will be no movement fights like Atramedes, Omnitron, or Ascendant Council, no Heroic only bosses like Sinestra, or no fights harder than Madness, then progression will have finally ended. I just think its sad that we can't have a boss like Algalon anymore because "not everyone will be able to see the content".

[Keoren]

Epicly long fights might be more challenging but then a 2 hour long fight will be more challenging still, would you say that a 2 hour fight is a good idea? It depends on where you personally draw the line between worthy challenge and just tedious and ridiculous.

There is a difference between long and too long. Not that I wouldn't like a fight that lasts two hours, as long as I wouldn't have to farm it.

[Eadoin]

IMO, they succeeded tremendously with tier 11. A fight does not have to be hard in order to be fun. Conclave was the perfect example of that. Even for those challenging encounters, I could not deny how much fun they were (Omnitron Heroic is still one of my favorite fights).

I only quoted this line to save space, I agree with everything in your post though. Every tier this expansion has been worse then the previous one. T11 was still one of my favourite tiers of content to progress though, I loved it. I was hoping that with an opening tier being that amazing, we'd finally get a raid better then Ulduar, sadly, all we got was the old Wrath back.

[Stingray]

None of the fights are as hard as TBC, or Yogg+0, Sarth 3D or Anub Heroic 25 were when they were current.

Heroic Ragnaros, Ascendant Council and *maybe* Cho'gall were about equal to Heroic Lich King 25, and were good fights in an otherwise sad expansion.

Fairly laughable comments there. Heroic Anub 25 wasn't hard at all, only reason it took guilds a bit to defeat it was the attempt limit. Sarth 3D in 25-man was straight-up easy, was only even difficult in 10-man.

And as far as Heroic Lich King 25 goes, Heroic Ragnaros was obviously much harder than Heroic Lich King 25 was at 5-10% (given the speed with which people defeated it - don't forget limited attempts). Heroic Ragnaros vs Heroic Lich King 25 at 0% would be debateable. But if you're talking about 0%, why are you even bringing Ascendant Council and Cho'gall into the conversation? Whole post just makes very little sense.

[Deleted]

There is a difference between long and too long. Not that I wouldn't like a fight that lasts two hours, as long as I wouldn't have to farm it.

That's my point exactly. "Too" long is subjective, 15 min doesn't cross a line for you but it does for some people.

[PHsname]

T11 was pretty good. It was a bit too grindy, and I really didn't like having to waste so much time traveling from one instance to another. I REALLY didn't like the overabundance of interrupt mechanics, the buggy bullshit, and a lot of the RNG involved with a lot of the encounters. It was definitely challenging, though, and so was ultimately pretty fun.

T12 actually had really good boss encounters. The instance itself was really lame. There was too much trash and too much orange. The bosses themselves could have been more challenging, but they were very interesting. The nerfs were overdone. Heroic Rag was, in hindsight, an amazing fight. It had a little bit of everything, and most importantly, was by and large a mechanically oriented fight. Despite the severe DPS requirement in p3, it was actually really fun sitting down and coming up with strategies in how to deal with everything. Overall, I really liked T12.

T13...ugh. I don't like pure numbers fights (one a tier as a benchmark is fine), and a lot of T13 comes down to numbers. It's not always about DPS, but the healing style in the tier really comes down to pushing out maximum HPS over any kind of triage or real thinking play. That's the part I was let down the most about. My favorite encounter is probably Heroic Hagara. It's the most mechanically demanding and is a very diverse fight in that sense. Spine is fucking horrible, and even Shipfight, with all its fucking bugs is just a;lskh;tal;thliuhal4h6lsag.

[KaPe]

Fairly laughable comments there. Heroic Anub 25 wasn't hard at all, only reason it took guilds a bit to defeat it was the attempt limit.

You forgot about "go back to T7 and get those +block items you sharded ages ago".

As for T13 - I kinda wonder how deeply Dragonwrath its design. Stacking in Cataclysm was unprecedented - starting from 10+ Ferals on Nefarian, to 10+ Legendaries in top guilds and X Rogues+Mages on Spine. I can only imagine how Lich King would look with 11 Warlocks, letting you ignore half of the Valkyrs. There was always *some* stacking, but never to this extent. I imagine that's part of the reason current tier is so focused on numbers and not really about tactics.

Someone mentioned boss length - well, length itself wouldn't be so bad, if it wasn't so horribly repetitive. I don't remember vanilla naxx boss lengths, but I do remember Kael taking almost 20 minutes on first kill - except he had 5 phases and there were actual differences between those, not "-20% hp, -20% haste". (good thing they shortened P1, though, that was so boring) Doing almost the same thing for over 10 minutes, with very little change... well, I suppose staying awake is part of difficulty nowadays. Added bonus for some key player randomly dying to a bug after those 10 minutes ("funny" how jumping always fails on blue).

Overall, Cataclysm difficulty is a mixed bag. T11 was the hardest "on the average", even though it didn't have any uber-bosses that kept you wiping for weeks (let's conveniently ignore dozens of guilds exploiting Atramedes, who was probably unkillable otherwise). 13 bosses is a large part of that - it had enough place for loot pinatas, while still allowing decent difficulty progression. Things weren't really based around numbers, ton of raid cooldowns and you didn't really need to stack anything - except interrupts, that is. I don't know if "single uber boss" was a deliberate design choice or just result of bad tuning, but it didn't work well for T12/13. Kinda like H LK, although I guess attempt limit kept things sane back then.