Were raids to easy this tier?

[Kaneiac]

For the average base, not even close.

Since when have world firsts ever taken months? They usually fall within the first couple weeks at most. The only time they haven't is with LK (limited attempts) and C'thun (mathematically impossible so they say). Few other bosses have taken a few more weeks.

Pretty much. Hell, even Sunwell, the longest a boss took there was 4 days, and that's often touted as one of the "hardest raids ever."

[PBitt]

I think it's just fine, from what I see....especially since we have 16 bosses, it would be painful if it was as grindy as, say, t11 was. When you look at normal DS pre-nerf, this tier definitely has the edge...I mean HoF normal with a 30% nerf will probably be about the same difficulty as DS normal without a nerf. Most of the heroic content seems about right, though with a few mishaps, particularly with Spirit Kings. I haven't delved too deeply into heroic content myself but from what I can see there are definitely a few fights, such as H Sha, that should take a bit of extra time to down, which is good.

Also, as far as my answer in the pole goes, you really can't judge by world firsts. A lot of the leading guilds still wiped a lot, not to mention this tier was gated so they had time to get heroic gear from MSV and HoF they wouldn't have had before attempting H Sha for example had all the raids been released a week after launch (plus the gated content allowed for more focused kills, focusing on either 4 or 6 bosses at a time instead of all 16 one after another).

[PrairieChicken]

Well judging from how fast the bosses go down they look like they aren't too difficult (Except Zorlok prenerf)

[Gondlem]

Difficulty is mostly fine. The end bosses in the first two zones should have been harder, bosses 2-4 in HoF should have been harder, and Lei Shi should have been much harder, an absolute joke for the second last boss really. But the big picture of the difficulty of the tier is fine aside from the end boss issue.

[Socialhealer]

lets just be happy there was 16 bosses, and 3 instances, as long as we never get anything like dragon soul again its all good.

[NewOrleansTrolley]

For the average player? No.

[Evil Inside]

It seems like world firsts just zipped past us. World first in the past seemed to sometimes take months. Do you think the raids were to easy this time around, or is world first not a good way to judge raids for the average playerbase.

EDIT: Just to clarify, I haven't completed even normal tier 14. I'm not personally saying that the tier was too easy, just that it seemed to go by faster then past tiers.

You cant compare world-first raiders to your average joe.

[Buttfear]

Raids are always easy if you put progression above everything else.

[Kashii]

Can we have some sort of guidelines on how to set up a poll.

If you have a poll where you can select only one option - then you need to address one question only. Your question was "Were raids to [sic] easy this tier?"
Adding an option that is, in fact, a separate question "world firsts = bad way to judge a tier." You need to make that a separate poll question because one could easily interpret that as another way to answer your original question as "no."

[KaPe]

Adding an option that is, in fact, a separate question "world firsts = bad way to judge a tier." You need to make that a separate poll question because one could easily interpret that as another way to answer your original question as "no."

There's a difference between "no" and "no and you're a fool (replace with "silly" if you're feeling generous) for thinking top guilds wouldn't blow through content anyway as long as it was technically killable". At least that's how I treated it.

[Propainn]

SWP was not as difficult as nostalgia presents it to be. I've cleared all content save for Cata and current content (4/6 HC 2/6 HC 4/4 Normal 25) and I can say from experience that in terms of mechanics, etc. SWP was not the pinnacle of difficulty.

Muru was killed within 4 days of becoming available. Even from a world 1st stand point it wasn't as crazy as the player base wants to make it seem.

[Totaltotemic]

A very important thing to keep in mind is that Normal modes were a lot harder this time around compared to previous tiers. This allows guilds to accurately plan their cooldowns and strats on normal mode and have it be relatively the same as Heroic. Remember the difference between normal and heroic Morchok? It was a completely different fight on heroic, effectively doubling the damage and healing needed. Normal Ragnaros was a joke and half of his mechanics could be outright ignored, and heroic added several mechanics and an entire phase. Take a look in your dungeon journal and compare the differences between normal and heroic for this tier. Usually you'll see 2 or 3 added mechanics, damage increases, and tighter enrage timers. In Dragon Soul and Firelands, fights were transformed into something entirely different without adding many mechanics, but making it so that the ones that existed weren't trivial to deal with.

LFR is easier than normals used to be, but because Blizzard doesn't have to make normal modes easy enough for the zero-addon, never been on forums, don't know what a damage meter is crowd anymore, normals can be somewhat challenging fights.

[Deleted]

This exact same topic appears every single tier.

It didn't appear in tier 10, 11 and 12.

[Kisho]

It didn't appear in tier 10, 11 and 12.

Yes it did. There's always this topic, every single time. The answer always remains the same.

[Vakna]

I think it's getting to a point where the top guilds are so good at what they do by now, that the only way to make a boss last a reset is to literally make it impossible until you reach a certain gear level. Doesn't matter how hard the bosses are anymore, the top guilds have done this for so many years they are gonna blitz it anyway. There is an extremely fine line between making the bosses challenging for cutting edge guilds, and making them physically impossible, that's what Blizzard are dealing with right now. So on that point, world firsts are not a way to judge the difficulty of a tier.

In the case of the average joe's, I'd say this tier has been one of the most challenging yet. Not in terms of real boss difficulty, because they are falling over in less pulls than some cata raids, but in terms of raid coordination. I don't remember ever having to coordinate raid cooldowns to stay alive in a normal mode, ever, and I've raided for the last 5 years. In this tier, even some of the normal modes require intelligent use of raidwalls and healing cd's, it's much nicer than seeing them all fall over in the first day like Dragon Soul.

[Deleted]

Bosses nowadays are much more complex and difficult then they were in the past expansions, so no, not even close to easy. When you average a 501 ilvl and raid 18+ hours a day it might look easy to you.

I disagree, there is nothing "complex" about any of the bosses in this tier. The only one that could be considered remotely complex is spirit kings, because there is a lot going on at once. Pretty much every fight this tier is remarkably simple on paper. It's challenging, but the challenge comes from the low margin for error and the fact there is a large amount of raid damage, because they've just taken the normal mode (which is not complex) and buffed it by 40%. It's all age-old mechanics like "don't stand in the bad thing" "run out with debuff" "switch tanks", there is nothing new of note.

[NeverStop]

Sha of Fear on Heroic is nothing like the normal version. On normal, you can ignore the crossbowmen's Dread Spray ability completely and just heal through it. On Heroic, if you get hit by two arrows you're dead.

It's just like H Rag. On normal, letting 1 or 2 sons of flames through was survivable. On heroic, instant wipe.

[reflection]

For me this is the first raid ever where the bosses just work and if you get the hang of them you are able to kill the boss. This is not like the start tier of cata where you had bosses that needed to be kicked before they actually started to cast (Maloriak HM) or something like that. This raid Tier feels good, all bosses are challenging (well at least most ) and they are fair.
The only thing I'm missing is some big end raid boss like Ragnaros or lich king. Should be the last one in terrace.

[Djuntas]

Just gief back TBC raid model, was much better. Have start bosses be easy, then comes a gear/skillcheck and then it ramps up alot in difficulty.

[KaPe]

Just gief back TBC raid model, was much better. Have start bosses be easy, then comes a gear/skillcheck and then it ramps up alot in difficulty.

Like that would change anything. People - like you - would still cry that Mu'ru got killed in 4 days, nothing is hard anymore and Blizzard should go back to the good old days.