Tier 9 - Trail of the Crusader

[Xcruiser]

H25 Anub'arak was a great end boss for a number of reasons, and I agree with the person who said earlier in this thread that he deserved a much better raid instance in front of him. Nevertheless, I was proud of getting Grand Crusader seeing as the attempt system was so unforgiving.

That aside, pretty much everything else implemented in 3.2 was pretty terrible.

[StationaryHawk]

I enjoyed all of the bosses, and the raid in general. It's probably my least favourite raid of WotLK (save maybe the filler raid), but it wasn't "terrible". And despite what others have said, I enjoyed the look of the tier armor as well. I think what people didn't like about it was that it all took place in the same arena, except for the last boss.

[ambigiouslynamed]

i dont like it since the tier gear are reskins, individually theyre decent and some are nice but put together theyre terrible

[Deleted]

I litterally PUGGED Beasts of Northrend normal mode the first week, with few wipes and the "Not one, but two jormungar!" achievement.

This was not supposed to happen.

[Iceman2500]

Here's why I hated ToC:

1. It killed off Ulduar too soon; Ulduar still had plenty of life left in it at that point to keep people occupied until ICC.
2. If you were serious about min/maxing, you had to do it 4 times a week to maximize how many badges you got.
3. Uneven difficulty; on 25 man, every boss on heroic mode was about the same difficulty, then you ran into the brick wall that was Anub'arak. Sadly Blizzard has repeated this mistake (Lich King, Ragnaros) since then.
4. If you wanted the 258 level T9, H Anub'arak was the only source of it. Imagine if the only way to get the 410 T13 was to kill H Madness of Deathwing and no other boss dropped it.
5. Limited attempts; the entire concept should never apply to the main bosses of a raid, only bonus bosses like Algalon or Sinestra. It puts unnecessary pressure on players and makes raiding less fun. Somehow Blizzard had the great idea to apply this to ICC as well; having only 10 attempts on Professor Putricide when the Plague wing opened up was infuriating.

To me, ToC wasn't a real raid, it was a 10/25 man Ring of Blood event.

[Gemini Soul]

My two favorite parts of ToC was:

1.No trash

2.The trophy token system, which they should of stuck with when they made the changes to 10/25 lock outs. My group has been clearing DS-10 since it came out and we still have people that don't have Normal/Heroic 4pc.

[Deleted]

iirc the main reason why trial of the crusader was so light on content was because more resources were placed preparing isle of conquest

[Sunknight]

I think one of the biggest problems people had with tier 9 was most likely because of the content it came between. Icc was a great raid and if you ask around most people will say ulduar was one of the best raids blizzard has made. This could have been because totc was so bland with so little bosses, less variation, and less change of scenery but i loved the entire argent tournament in its entirety and how we were preparing to storm icc.

[willowe]

ToC as a raid was 'okay.'

Not the best, by any means, but it lacked mostly everything that made Kara, Ulduar and ICC the best raids ever:

1. Size. It was a tiny room. One room. Uld/Kara/ICC felt epic due to the vast sizes of the rooms you were in, ToC was a small room....like fighting 4 bosses in Putricide's Room.

2. Encounters. Faction Champs and Northrend Beasts were horridly annoying fights. Valkyr Twins were pretty boring once you got through the only mechanic. Jaraxxus was ok, but nothing special. A'nub, was, well, the best boss, by far, in the place. Still though, with ICC, even the 'worst' fight, Lootship, it was unique and interesting, though very under-tuned. And was there a 'bad' fight in Ulduar? Nope. Same with Kara.

3. It Was 'Book-Ended' By Two of the Three Best Raids Ever. So it's going to be crap, right?

4. Tier Nine was by far the ugliest Tier Set of Gear in WoW History. Really. I get the 'factions' idea, but if you played Alliance, you tier sets were HORRIBLE. I got to 'luck' out and be the Warlock in the 'ugly Mage' set, the Death Knight in the 'ugly Paladin' set, and the Druid in the...what the hell do you call the Leather Alliance set, other than God Awful? Again, you were book-ended by some awesome tier sets, T8 had a pretty iconic Warlock set, and, T10 was the closest to T6 we've come in terms of the 'perfect tier of gear.'

[Deleted]

TOC 5 Normal.
TOC 5 Heroic.
TOC 10 Man
TOC 25 Man
TOTGC 10 man
TOTGC 25 man

Totally Over-used Content
Truly Over-used Terrible Game Content

I had no issues with it at first. But honestly Reusing the same "zone" for 6 separate instances was bad design, Doing it multiple times over the course of a week on various characters was even worse And I shit you not I actually fell asleep in there once.

The basic idea was a good one, just very poorly introduced and executed, as on paper it sounds good. Gather a group of azeroths best, have them show what their capable of against the beasts and demons of Northrend in preparation for entering Icecrown Citadel. However it turned into a major case of Déjà vu, with a possible 4 times in the same raid people just got sick of it.


not that any of this matters as the content is well over 2 years old and completely outdated so no one should really be bothered by it now.

[alpha119]

i think ToC was just a bad raid overall

[Spotnick]

The problem with TOC is that it was a 3 months only tier, and we could run it 4 times a week. They fixed that in ICC. Personally I was still progressing in Ulduar and it pissed me that ToC 10 was dropping better gear than Ulduar 25, making Ulduar useless to raid.

I didn't dislike the fights, they were actually fun, problem is doing them 4 times per week for a while burned the raid for everybody. Blizzard learned from their mistakes and it gave us ICC, so in a way, let's all be happy those flaws were in TOC and not ICC.