Alternate paths of progression: Why ICC and Ulduar were the best raids

[eschatological]

I don't think anyone here will argue that asking players to interrupt is asking too much. For players where such normal mode mechanics are too challenging for them, there is always LFR.

But I think that's what people are implicitly saying when Horridon is a "wall" in normal mode progression. Because if you have the DPS for Sha of Fear, and Jin'rokh, you have the DPS for Horridon (which overall is lower, but gets boosted by AoE and a debuff on the boss), it just requires...you guessed it, interrupts, smart dispels, smart switches.

[Sesshou]

If you are too casual to bother interrupting, you are too casual for normal mode. Normal mode is about having important mechanics to manage properly, but with some margin for error and without strict throughput checks. If raiding to you is ignoring mechanics and mashing your dps buttons, you clearly don't want fights with mechanics in them that require you to do anything... just go do LFR because that is exactly what you are looking for.

[Ehrenpanzer]

Raid instances shouldn't have difficulty curves. You need checks at the beginning of the instance so that people know what's needed to progress further on. You can complain about Horridon being too rough in the beginning, but if you can't down him, how are you going to down some of the harder fights later on? If ToT was built your way, then fights like Jin'rokh, Tortos, and Ji-Kun would all be near the beginning and then you'd be stuck on Megaera, Elder Council, etc all back-to-back-to-back. I know, especially for my guild, that we enjoy the little breaks between hard bosses so that we know "Hey if we can get this boss down, the next will be a piece of cake, etc."

Plus Jin'rokh is the gear check while Horridon is the coordination check. All instances since the beginning of WoW have had checks at the start. SSC had Hydros which was a HARSH gear check, Black Temple had Naj'entus which was a skill / gear check, MSV had Stone Guards, and so on.

You could also SKIP Hydross...and Naj was a "can you click on the spine" check...

[rowaasr13]

No it's not. It's really not. Icc was FAR more accessible than ToT. ICC had a much better difficulty curve. It had much better lore. The fights were more engaging. Throne is just wall after wall after wall designed to FORCE players who should be running ToT to go back and do previous raids in an effort to further gate ToT and make sure it lasts as long as possible. Gear check after gear check boss.

You have 4 points of access open in ToT for people that need "accessibility" in raid (funny you've used that word, generally it is strongly tied with providing for people with "disability"). 2 points are already open, one more opens next week. Go, use them.

---------- Post added 2013-03-29 at 12:52 PM ----------

And of course the response from the community to this problem is by and large plugging their ears and insisting that it isn't the raid or Blizzards fault. The problem is that my guild is bad and the players in my raid are bad. Well that response hasn't really gotten them far before and won't get them anywhere now. I'm sure even people who claim my raid struggling on horridon is bad don't want to see less people raiding normals. So why they continue to advocate for a system that only PUSHES players to raid lfr instead of normals is beyond me.

I don't give a flying fuck about how many OTHER people raid, so any change made to accommodate OTHER people that will affect my enjoyment of challenges I have in normal raids will spoil MY fun. I don't see how dumbing down content for people that can't grasp WoW's easy game mechanics would be advantage to anyone. Players preferring challenge would leave because they can't get it. Players preferring to whine would stomp over dumbed content and leave.

Look I'm all for hard bosses on normal. I just think their needs to be easy ones in the mix and more of them earlier on. That way you actually build up some progression, get some confidence behind you as you progress and have some options other than wipe on horridon for hours on end because Blizzard wants you to go back and farm LFR or content you already cleared.

Go farm T14 normals? Pretty good way to gain confidence and get used to normal mechanics, if you're after that and not just shiny lewts.

It's possible that all these players are bad but so what. Bad players pay their 15 bucks a month to and their participation in normal content is JUST AS IMPORTANT as pro elite normal guys who think they're the best. In fact I would argue that it really isn't even that black and white and you'll see even some GOOD players get pushed out of raiding normals because their friends they liked raiding with can't cut it in this new normal atmosphere.

Stop this fucking electronic welfare shit. "I'm paying my monthly income tax, so I'm just as important as everybody, why you're not letting me pilot airplane like that pilot guy over there!" Actually that's even far-fetched. It is not like somebody stands at entrance of ToT and throws you away, you have access to exactly same content as every other player. If you don't have simple coordination to play it - that's your problem.

---------- Post added 2013-03-29 at 01:50 PM ----------

By defending Blizzards normal raid tuning you are effectively advocating people to run LFR.

No, it is you who is advocating that people should run LFR. Only in your opinion it must be called "normal".

[Pua]

McDonald's food is awful but it still remains one of the most popular foods in the world. See what I did there?
Popular doesn't equal good.

I never said it did.

What I am saying is that Icecrown was popular for a number of reasons. Those reasons include things like the completion of a story arc that started years before, a huge non-linear raid instance, the "x-factor" of the reputation rings and legendary weapon, very different themes in the main hall, interesting and new boss mechanics, a proper learning curve and significant gearing options.

I'm not sure why you're trying to be so dismissive of opinions that differ from your own. Straw-man arguments impress rubes, nobody else.

I'm saying it's absurd of you to criticize the talent of the design team because you don't like the linear nature of the raid. Nothing more, nothing less. I'm not attacking you personally, and reading between the lines for an attack that isn't there in an effort to be more combative isn't helping anyone.

Nice try.

What's not helpful is taking a quote outside of the context it was posted in (which was very clear), trying to look clever by criticising it on a completely different metric, and then feigning innocence when you get called on it. These are troll tactics, and I identified them as soon as you started.

Again, here's my question which no one on the "Horridon is overtuned" side seems to want to answer: Is asking a raid group of 10 people to interrupt on maybe 2 adds, 3 if you're really slow on 2nd door, dispel smartly, and target switch too much to expect of normal-mode raiders?

I'll answer; it's because mechanics have nothing to do with tuning. "Tuning" is the punishment doled out for getting something wrong, and that's why Horridon is overtuned; missing a single interrupt on the Gurubashi section is disproportionately punishing on normal mode, as is lacking disease resistance when you get to the Drakkari or being cleaved by the mounted Amani. The damage these mechanics do is too high for raids with an item level lower than 500, and Blizzard's solution is unhelpful.

Missing an interrupt or two should be painful, but it shouldn't induce wipes in normal mode. At the moment, it is, and that's why I'm saying Horridon is overtuned for his place in a linear raid. To add a bit of context, I also believed Ignis was too much in Ulduar given he could be taken as the second boss, but you didn't have to fight him so he was far less of an issue.

[Kazgrel]

All this about ICC being non-linear, yet I can count on one hand the number of times we didn't got Plague > Blood > Frost (in that order). Ulduar is a bit better example of alternate paths (with the keepers). Naxx is still the best with this design, even though the level 80 version of the entire place was faceroll for the most part. In a different sense, Sartharion also provided different paths in the sense of "how many drakes do we leave up?" when he was current content.

[eschatological]

I'll answer; it's because mechanics have nothing to do with tuning. "Tuning" is the punishment doled out for getting something wrong, and that's why Horridon is overtuned; missing a single interrupt on the Gurubashi section is disproportionately punishing on normal mode, as is lacking disease resistance when you get to the Drakkari or being cleaved by the mounted Amani. The damage these mechanics do is too high for raids with an item level lower than 500, and Blizzard's solution is unhelpful.

Missing an interrupt or two should be painful, but it shouldn't induce wipes in normal mode. At the moment, it is, and that's why I'm saying Horridon is overtuned for his place in a linear raid. To add a bit of context, I also believed Ignis was too much in Ulduar given he could be taken as the second boss, but you didn't have to fight him so he was far less of an issue.

Except one stack of poison volley *isn't* a big deal. From the dungeon journal:

Venom Bolt Volley – The Gurubashi Venom Priest unleashes a spray of vile toxins that inflicts 13875 to 16125 Nature damage to all enemies instantly, and 13875 to 16125 Nature damage every 3 sec for 1 min. This effect stacks.

That's 138k-151k healing every 3s, between ALL your healers. I'm sorry, but if you're having a problem with Venom Bolt Volley, it's because you're missing a metric ton of the casts.

The diseases on the Drakkari door? Again:

Deadly Plague – Risen Drakkari spread a Deadly Plague when they strike players, inflicting 45000 Shadow damage every 3 sec for 5 min.

But it only hits one person at a time.

These are not difficult things to heal through, unless the stacks become ridiculously high....which comes from missing most of your interrupts and not target switching properly.

I honestly don't know what to think if you thought Ignis was too hard for a normal mode raider. All you had to do was literally stop doing anything when he cast Flame Jets, and do stuff when he didn't, and be aware about who got put in the pot (Hint, they started taking a lot of damage).

[edlike]

Nice try.

What's not helpful is taking a quote outside of the context it was posted in (which was very clear), trying to look clever by criticising it on a completely different metric, and then feigning innocence when you get called on it. These are troll tactics, and I identified them as soon as you started.

No one is feigning anything. You said the design team isn't as talented as the design team from Wrath because they are not giving us options on normal progression path. I said that is absurd. Just because you feel like a victim doesn't make it so. Get over yourself.

[Pua]

Venom Bolt Volley – The Gurubashi Venom Priest unleashes a spray of vile toxins that inflicts 13875 to 16125 Nature damage to all enemies instantly, and 13875 to 16125 Nature damage every 3 sec for 1 min. This effect stacks.

That's 138k-151k healing every 3s, between ALL your healers. I'm sorry, but if you're having a problem with Venom Bolt Volley, it's because you're missing a metric ton of the casts.

On top of not insignificant tank damage, the passive melee damage from mobs that could be spread among multiple players, and the additional damage people could be taken from puddles. This isn't insignificant damage to heal through if you're talking about normal mode raiders in gear under an average of 500.

Deadly Plague – Risen Drakkari spread a Deadly Plague when they strike players, inflicting 45000 Shadow damage every 3 sec for 5 min.

But it only hits one person at a time.

See above - there are plenty of other things causing damage at similar times, and I'm 100% positive there is more than one person who is diseased at any one time.

You're also conveniently ignoring the fact that charges are also pretty difficult to handle depending on who's targeted and what they're doing at the time. I suppose you're maybe not ignoring this, but choosing to say "it's easy" and ignoring the statistics from sites like WoW Progress; people are having significant difficulty with Horridon. The drop off between him and Jin'rokh is substantial and this debate is going to go round in circles because I've answered your question (backed up by what we're seeing) and you're going to say "interrupts, target switching and deepsing is easy".

Any fight can be relegated to such talk. But if we took all of the stages individually, Horridon probably has the same number of mechanics bosses like Ragnaros had - for the second boss of the instance, it's too much, and you can see that.

I honestly don't know what to think if you thought Ignis was too hard for a normal mode raider. All you had to do was literally stop doing anything when he cast Flame Jets, and do stuff when he didn't, and be aware about who got put in the pot (Hint, they started taking a lot of damage).

My apologies, reading back the way I've worded the previous post is a bit confusing. Ignis was punishing on normal mode raiders who, very often, didn't have the single-target nuke in their raid. By "didn't have", I mean "didn't have classes with an ability to manage it". We HAD to take our hunter who was Marksmanship at the time for Ignis, because nobody else had the desired on-demand nuke. For that type of problem, Ignis was at least a problem you could ignore.

Horridon isn't.

No one is feigning anything. You said the design team isn't as talented as the design team from Wrath because they are not giving us options on normal progression path. I said that is absurd. Just because you feel like a victim doesn't make it so. Get over yourself.

Yep; trolling.

I've told you twice to only quote me on the context of MY post, and you're completely ignoring it and continuing to argue for your innocence. My apologies, but you're very, very obvious now.

There's a bridge somewhere you need to get back under.

[Sesshou]

I'll answer; it's because mechanics have nothing to do with tuning. "Tuning" is the punishment doled out for getting something wrong, and that's why Horridon is overtuned; missing a single interrupt on the Gurubashi section is disproportionately punishing on normal mode, as is lacking disease resistance when you get to the Drakkari or being cleaved by the mounted Amani. The damage these mechanics do is too high for raids with an item level lower than 500, and Blizzard's solution is unhelpful.

Missing an interrupt or two should be painful, but it shouldn't induce wipes in normal mode. At the moment, it is, and that's why I'm saying Horridon is overtuned for his place in a linear raid. To add a bit of context, I also believed Ignis was too much in Ulduar given he could be taken as the second boss, but you didn't have to fight him so he was far less of an issue.

That is such a load of crap. Did you go look at the horridon thread here thats over 30 pages? Lots of guilds in the 490-496 range had people post in there saying they killed it pre-nerf. Even more got it post nerf. That poison will not wipe you at 1 stack. You can pretty easily survive 4 or so I'd say. Same thing with the disease, if you are handling it properly, it isn't going to wipe you and it isn't like you have 5 seconds to dispel or they die. And you are whining about a cleave? I guess Onyxia was overtuned massively because her cleave would 1 shot most dps... that is the easiest mechanic to deal with... don't stand in front of it.

None of those mechanics are overtuned. You just want to be able to nearly ignore them which means LFR is the place for you. Normal mode is suppose to have important mechanics which require attention but generally won't instantly wipe you. You have plenty of leeway with the poison/disease. I have no idea how hard the cleave hits, but a tank picking up a mob and facing it away is one of the most basic raid mechanics ever.

And what do you mean on top of tank damage... blow your cd's while tanking horridron on gates 2 and 3 where raid damage is high. You can tank swap so a different tank is on him for each one and therefore will have tank cd's for both.

My apologies, reading back the way I've worded the previous post is a bit confusing. Ignis was punishing on normal mode raiders who, very often, didn't have the single-target nuke in their raid. By "didn't have", I mean "didn't have classes with an ability to manage it". We HAD to take our hunter who was Marksmanship at the time for Ignis, because nobody else had the desired on-demand nuke. For that type of problem, Ignis was at least a problem you could ignore.

Let me get this straight... he was punishing for normal mode because no one in your raid with a big single target spell knew how to target something other than the boss and cast it? If you can't be asked to switch targets, you don't belong in normal mode. What did you do with the first boss in firelands then? Skip him too?

Horridron is really the same thing as Ignus. It is a fight where people need to switch off the boss to do really easy tasks. If you can't be asked to do that, they made LFR for you.

[Deleted]

On top of not insignificant tank damage, the passive melee damage from mobs that could be spread among multiple players, and the additional damage people could be taken from puddles. This isn't insignificant damage to heal through if you're talking about normal mode raiders in gear under an average of 500.



See above - there are plenty of other things causing damage at similar times, and I'm 100% positive there is more than one person who is diseased at any one time.

You're also conveniently ignoring the fact that charges are also pretty difficult to handle depending on who's targeted and what they're doing at the time. I suppose you're maybe not ignoring this, but choosing to say "it's easy" and ignoring the statistics from sites like WoW Progress; people are having significant difficulty with Horridon. The drop off between him and Jin'rokh is substantial and this debate is going to go round in circles because I've answered your question (backed up by what we're seeing) and you're going to say "interrupts, target switching and deepsing is easy".

Any fight can be relegated to such talk. But if we took all of the stages individually, Horridon probably has the same number of mechanics bosses like Ragnaros had - for the second boss of the instance, it's too much, and you can see that.



My apologies, reading back the way I've worded the previous post is a bit confusing. Ignis was punishing on normal mode raiders who, very often, didn't have the single-target nuke in their raid. By "didn't have", I mean "didn't have classes with an ability to manage it". We HAD to take our hunter who was Marksmanship at the time for Ignis, because nobody else had the desired on-demand nuke. For that type of problem, Ignis was at least a problem you could ignore.

Horridon isn't.



Yep; trolling.

I've told you twice to only quote me on the context of MY post, and you're completely ignoring it and continuing to argue for your innocence. My apologies, but you're very, very obvious now.

There's a bridge somewhere you need to get back under.

You're talking as if interrupting is hard, when people have to anything else besides that - well welcome to raiding...... Why would people take dmg from the puddles, they should be moving, unless they're clueless and stand in shit and die. Why would the adds be on random raiders, unless your tank is shit at picking them up or unless your raiders are spread out way too much, making it hard for the tank to pick them up?

Below ilvl 500, means that you barely did any Heroic bosses in T14 and then I want to ask you, if you couldn't kill any Heroic bosses in T14, what makes you think you'll do better in T15, where the encounters are obviously tuned to 496 minimum - cause that's what you would have, assuming you've gotten all your normal items. But I still wanna bet, that if you gave my raiders ilvl 496 gear, we'd still kill Horridon and that's the difference. Cause you're implying that Horridon is a wall, unless people have ilvl 500+ and that's BS.

If you lack co-ordination, if you don't know how to play your class, how to reforge properly, use the best enchants, food, flasks, pots and if you can't do more than just tunneling, what on earth makes you think, that you'd be able to kill the following bosses? I mean, if they nerfed Horridon, you people would just be complaining about Council being overtuned in stead.

Again, all the things you're listing are all quite easy to handle on Normal - assuming you aren't completely without skill. And while that may sound harsh, it's still what's makes the difference between actual raiders and people who barely managed to clear T14 on Normal. You want to see the new content, I get that. But if you linked your raiders armory or a WoL parse, I'll bet you that many of us could find several things your raiders are doing wrong. Cause that's the thing, a lot of less serious raiders don't actually know how to min max or how to play their class properly.

[clevin]

We're talking normal mode progression and Horridon being an "early wall." Effusions can both be interrupted and burned fairly easily. You have at least 6 available interrupts in your group (1 tank + 5 DPS) in normal mode. That's a matter of switching targets.

So, again, the question is: is that asking too much of normal raiders?

No, we're not. That's not the topic of the thread despite the fact that some of you want it to be. The TOPIC is that since ToT is linear you don't have any options. You have to kill bosses in order. A winged, branching design gives you some flexibility - if Boss X is giving you fits, you can try Boss Y. One might really be as hard as the other but sometimes people struggle with the mechanics of one boss and don't struggle with the mechanics of another.

The issue isn't really Horridon, it's the linearity of ToT which removes the option of even trying, say, Council instead. This can apply to later bosses too which is why it's not really about Horridon. Each boss presents a potential wall and you can't simply say, "F this, let's got try X instead" whereas in certain places in Ulduar and ICC you could. Sure, you had to kill Putricide eventually to move on, but if Festergut was giving you issues on a given night you could do Rotface. For some time in Ulduar my raid was having issues on Thorim since we had to split up... so we killed Hodir and Freya first. If the Keepers had been linear and Thorim was first, we'd have been blocked from any of them. I don't see why it's so hard to understand this point.

Horridon is simply the example because more people have seen him and because he's the 2nd boss. If you got blocked on, say, the 6th boss you can still farm 5 bosses until boss #6 goes down. If you're having issues with Horridon, you can farm one boss and then you're stuck. THAT is the issue, not whether people should be stuck or not.

[Sesshou]

I don't know, I think that kind of is the question. You are saying options are good because you can do something easier. A good instance should have a ramping up difficulty which this one does (well aside from 2 near the very end, but you couldn't skip from boss 2 to boss 9 or 11 in ICC or ulduar either). ICC didn't really give you much choice aside from rotface/festergut anyway because the rest were gated.

The real issue is people that shouldn't really be doing normal mode ToT getting stuck because they have to actually execute mechanics and then whining that they have no options. If you are stuck on horridron, council and tortos aren't somehow going to be easy...

And you are wrong about the number of bosses you can farm. There are 17 bosses you can go farm, 16 of which got a fairly large nerf directly and through you getting some 522 gear.

You throw the example of people stuck on the 6th boss... why do none of the people stuck on the 6th boss or later seem to be coming here to whine about it? And hey those of us not doing cutting edge heroic progression get choices back as soon as we clear normal mode because you can skip over bosses when you pick which heroic you want to work on.

[clevin]

I don't know, I think that kind of is the question. You are saying options are good because you can do something easier. A good instance should have a ramping up difficulty which this one does (well aside from 2 near the very end, but you couldn't skip from boss 2 to boss 9 or 11 in ICC or ulduar either). ICC didn't really give you much choice aside from rotface/festergut anyway because the rest were gated.

No, I'm saying the raid can try something DIFFERENT. For example, Council isn't easier, but it's different and time and again, I've seen raids get stuck on one boss's mechanics but be fine on another despite the fact that the two are really similar in how hard they are.

The real issue is people that shouldn't really be doing normal mode ToT getting stuck because they have to actually execute mechanics and then whining that they have no options. If you are stuck on horridron, council and tortos aren't somehow going to be easy...

NOT THE TOPIC. People have gotten derailed on the Horridon example or whether ICC was great or sucked. The topic is raid design, linear vs winged and the advantages and disadvantages of each. So many of you want to come in here and stroke yourselves because your raid's doing well but that's unproductive. Look beyond yourselves and think about this from a design perspective. If you made ToT winged but otherwise exactly the same boss fights and trash, how would that hurt things? What might the advantages and disadvantages be? Simply jerking off on the page about how good you are or how bad others are does nothing to advance that discussion.

And you are wrong about the number of bosses you can farm. There are 17 bosses you can go farm, 16 of which got a fairly large nerf directly and through you getting some 522 gear.

No I'm not. In ToT they can farm one boss. Read my example again. Oh and let me now when MSV drops 522 gear too.

You throw the example of people stuck on the 6th boss... why do none of the people stuck on the 6th boss or later seem to be coming here to whine about it? And hey those of us not doing cutting edge heroic progression get choices back as soon as we clear normal mode because you can skip over bosses when you pick which heroic you want to work on.

And here's where you need to grab a dictionary and look up the word 'example'. I picked 6th straight out of the air.

[Sesshou]

Horridon is simply the example because more people have seen him and because he's the 2nd boss. If you got blocked on, say, the 6th boss you can still farm 5 bosses until boss #6 goes down. If you're having issues with Horridon, you can farm one boss and then you're stuck. THAT is the issue, not whether people should be stuck or not.

Does not say "can farm one boss in ToT and then you're stuck." You can go get 496, 502, and 509 gear. 502-509 is already seriously out gearing the first half of ToT and then with 1 boss of 522 and valor 522 items, you are miles ahead of the gear they expected people to be using for normal modes first bosses. So there are in fact loads of bosses you can go kill to get more gear in order to make horridron easier.

The raid can try something DIFFERENT. Go do some t14 stuff you haven't done, and if you are stuck on anything in normal, there is definitely something in t14 you haven't done.

The topic is Alternate paths of progression: Why ICC and Ulduar were the best. So yeah, ICC being crap or not is absolutely relevant. You are missing the point about horridron. The point is that the difficulty is gradually ramping up which is just as good of a design as giving you some "options" which are just easier bosses on the side. I would argue that it is a far better design. Those easy side bosses like Ignus and Razerscale are just boring wastes of time and it is a better design to have all the encounters be involving.

You are the one needing to grab a dictionary to look that up, and then you might have a chance at comprehending that I was discussing your example as such. Specifically being on the 6th boss wasn't relevant for what I said either. I just chose the same one you did to go along with it. The only ones with real problems with it are the ones who shouldn't be doing normal mode ToT in the first place because they don't want to deal with mechanics. Those past what is available on LFR don't seem to be here whining about lack of options.

[Celista]

But I think that's what people are implicitly saying when Horridon is a "wall" in normal mode progression. Because if you have the DPS for Sha of Fear, and Jin'rokh, you have the DPS for Horridon (which overall is lower, but gets boosted by AoE and a debuff on the boss), it just requires...you guessed it, interrupts, smart dispels, smart switches.

If you are too casual to bother interrupting, you are too casual for normal mode. Normal mode is about having important mechanics to manage properly, but with some margin for error and without strict throughput checks. If raiding to you is ignoring mechanics and mashing your dps buttons, you clearly don't want fights with mechanics in them that require you to do anything... just go do LFR because that is exactly what you are looking for.

I agree that interrupting/target switching is not terribly difficult, but I think it is appropriate to describe it as a wall of sorts if people aren't progressing past the second boss. I'm not surprised that this is happening because this always happens on encounters of this design...remember what a nightmare Corla was unless you ran with your guild/a premade, and that was a just a dungeon encounter...

I think Horridon is as intentional as the general linearity of design raids have taken this expansion due to LFR release. Firelands was the last real raid encounter where you could run around and choose most bosses at your liking. Before, raid encounters (not all) had that gradual increase in difficulty or encounter choice in order to get raiders in the door and get some boss kills; now LFR serves that purpose. Horridon also keeps T14 content relevant because it gives guilds something to work on if they can't coordinate their interrupts...really, Horridon is not that hard but I suppose that seems rather subjective if your guild is struggling.

ICC is a really bad example by the OP. I was on a very low-ranked server during ICC. I had two alts and ran one of the alts in my guild's alt run each week, but I had to pug with my other alt or run with other guilds...in 25 man, the bad/uncoordinated groups (the ones who had issues with mechanics and whatnot) would go 4/12, maybe 6/12 if they showed a little bit of coordination. Often they would try skipping PP and going to do blood wing or Valithria, but if they had issues with PP they almost never were able to get any additional bosses down....but as I said, it wasn't the best server and progression was really poor.

[Pua]

I'm going to make maybe a couple of more posts and then leave this thread alone; it seems people can't look past their own experiences.

That is such a load of crap. Did you go look at the horridon thread here thats over 30 pages? Lots of guilds in the 490-496 range had people post in there saying they killed it pre-nerf.

People on the Internet lie. Wowprogress said differently. In that first week, practically nobody with gear below item level 503 defeated Horridon on 10-man.

And you are whining about a cleave? I guess Onyxia was overtuned massively because her cleave would 1 shot most dps... that is the easiest mechanic to deal with... don't stand in front of it.

And this is why people like yourself aren't worth speaking to. Nobody (least of all me) is "whining"; simply sharing an opinion on why people have found Horridon so challenging. Comparing Onyxia is a deliberate straw man, because Onyxia is a single target that doesn't appear staggered when you're potentially trying to pick up other things.

None of those mechanics are overtuned. You just want to be able to nearly ignore them which means LFR is the place for you.

At what point did I suggest I wanted to ignore them? A mechanic you ignore isn't a mechanic at all; the developers may as well call it "unavoidable raid wide damage to make sure you have something to heal". In fact, in a previous post, I even stated that missing interrupts and the like should be painful, but not overwhelming. And for all your arguing that such things aren't overwhelming, a large number of people are saying that their healers are struggling.

Stop looking at your own experience and assuming its universal.

Stop, take a breath, and read what people are saying instead of dismissing it.

Normal mode is suppose to have important mechanics which require attention but generally won't instantly wipe you. You have plenty of leeway with the poison/disease. I have no idea how hard the cleave hits, but a tank picking up a mob and facing it away is one of the most basic raid mechanics ever.

You don't have "plenty of leeway" in 496-498 gear, which is what a normal mode raider would have first pulled the boss on. And like I said, people in that gear, weren't killing Horridon on the fist week. They just weren't.

As for "picking up a mob and facing it away", you're being deliberately dismissive. You know, full well, it's not just picking up a mob and facing it away.

And what do you mean on top of tank damage... blow your cd's while tanking horridron on gates 2 and 3 where raid damage is high. You can tank swap so a different tank is on him for each one and therefore will have tank cd's for both.

So tanks can blow cooldowns and not need any heals throughout the Gurubashi and Drakkari stages? Wow, I've yet to see that be the case.

Look; you can either accept that people have trouble with this fight, as they're trying to tell you, and that there ARE reasons for it. If you can't accept that, perhaps forums aren't the place for you.

Let me get this straight... he was punishing for normal mode because no one in your raid with a big single target spell knew how to target something other than the boss and cast it? If you can't be asked to switch targets, you don't belong in normal mode. What did you do with the first boss in firelands then? Skip him too?

The adds on Ignis needed a 5k hit to shatter, this had nothing whatsoever to do with player skill; Riplimb and Rageface responded to accumulated damage, so the mechanics are totally different. If you're going to be so dismissive, at least try to be accurate.

Horridron is really the same thing as Ignus. It is a fight where people need to switch off the boss to do really easy tasks. If you can't be asked to do that, they made LFR for you.

To you.

There are other players out there.

You're talking as if interrupting is hard, when people have to anything else besides that - well welcome to raiding...... Why would people take dmg from the puddles, they should be moving, unless they're clueless and stand in shit and die. Why would the adds be on random raiders, unless your tank is shit at picking them up or unless your raiders are spread out way too much, making it hard for the tank to pick them up?

You're talking as if interrupting is the only thing people have to do. People take a tick or two of damage from puddles when they first spawn under them. Adds might be on random raiders because they spread out for puddles in different directions.

Below ilvl 500, means that you barely did any Heroic bosses in T14 and then I want to ask you, if you couldn't kill any Heroic bosses in T14, what makes you think you'll do better in T15, where the encounters are obviously tuned to 496 minimum - cause that's what you would have, assuming you've gotten all your normal items. But I still wanna bet, that if you gave my raiders ilvl 496 gear, we'd still kill Horridon and that's the difference. Cause you're implying that Horridon is a wall, unless people have ilvl 500+ and that's BS.

Okay, this is where you just start spouting the usual elitist claptrap we've all heard 1,000 times. "Barely doing any heroic bosses in T14" should have no impact on what you do in the Throne of Thunder normal mode, assuming you geared up in and cleared T14 normal. That's how the progression is meant to work. Also, a blue post very heavily implied that Horridon was designed around players in 502 gear, an unbelievable hard average to achieve if you weren't doing heroic raiding in the previous tier.

But your last part is pure gold. I'm telling you that according to wowprogress, an absolutely tiny number of guilds killed Horridon in the mid to high 490's; close to none. My raid leader went through nigh on every kill when we started work on it to see if we were just being poor or there was another problem.

If you lack co-ordination, if you don't know how to play your class, how to reforge properly, use the best enchants, food, flasks, pots and if you can't do more than just tunneling, what on earth makes you think, that you'd be able to kill the following bosses? I mean, if they nerfed Horridon, you people would just be complaining about Council being overtuned in stead.

Can I politely request you drop the "you people" talk? Don't dehumanize me because I chose to drop my commitment to raiding for more important things. Take a look at my history pre-MoP to see the standard I used to raid at.

Again, all the things you're listing are all quite easy to handle on Normal - assuming you aren't completely without skill. And while that may sound harsh, it's still what's makes the difference between actual raiders and people who barely managed to clear T14 on Normal. You want to see the new content, I get that. But if you linked your raiders armory or a WoL parse, I'll bet you that many of us could find several things your raiders are doing wrong. Cause that's the thing, a lot of less serious raiders don't actually know how to min max or how to play their class properly.

This is my latest kill of Horridon; I'm Zellviren, was barely ranked item level 500 when we did it, and I'm in the world's top 20.

Tell me what to improve.

[clevin]

Does not say "can farm one boss in ToT and then you're stuck." You can go get 496, 502, and 509 gear. 502-509 is already seriously out gearing the first half of ToT and then with 1 boss of 522 and valor 522 items, you are miles ahead of the gear they expected people to be using for normal modes first bosses. So there are in fact loads of bosses you can go kill to get more gear in order to make horridron easier.

Wow, I can get 502 and 509 gear in normal T14? Oh wait NO I CAN'T. That's heroic T14 stuff and it's simply idiotic to argue that a raid should have to have heroic T14 gear, especially from later bosses, in order to progress on the second boss of NORMAL ToT. You're not worth replying to however... like many here, it's all about you and you're incapable of seeing things from other perspectives.

[Deleted]

I'm going to make maybe a couple of more posts and then leave this thread alone; it seems people can't look past their own experiences.



People on the Internet lie. Wowprogress said differently. In that first week, practically nobody with gear below item level 503 defeated Horridon on 10-man.



And this is why people like yourself aren't worth speaking to. Nobody (least of all me) is "whining"; simply sharing an opinion on why people have found Horridon so challenging. Comparing Onyxia is a deliberate straw man, because Onyxia is a single target that doesn't appear staggered when you're potentially trying to pick up other things.



At what point did I suggest I wanted to ignore them? A mechanic you ignore isn't a mechanic at all; the developers may as well call it "unavoidable raid wide damage to make sure you have something to heal". In fact, in a previous post, I even stated that missing interrupts and the like should be painful, but not overwhelming. And for all your arguing that such things aren't overwhelming, a large number of people are saying that their healers are struggling.

Stop looking at your own experience and assuming its universal.

Stop, take a breath, and read what people are saying instead of dismissing it.



You don't have "plenty of leeway" in 496-498 gear, which is what a normal mode raider would have first pulled the boss on. And like I said, people in that gear, weren't killing Horridon on the fist week. They just weren't.

As for "picking up a mob and facing it away", you're being deliberately dismissive. You know, full well, it's not just picking up a mob and facing it away.



So tanks can blow cooldowns and not need any heals throughout the Gurubashi and Drakkari stages? Wow, I've yet to see that be the case.

Look; you can either accept that people have trouble with this fight, as they're trying to tell you, and that there ARE reasons for it. If you can't accept that, perhaps forums aren't the place for you.



The adds on Ignis needed a 5k hit to shatter, this had nothing whatsoever to do with player skill; Riplimb and Rageface responded to accumulated damage, so the mechanics are totally different. If you're going to be so dismissive, at least try to be accurate.



To you.

There are other players out there.



You're talking as if interrupting is the only thing people have to do. People take a tick or two of damage from puddles when they first spawn under them. Adds might be on random raiders because they spread out for puddles in different directions.



Okay, this is where you just start spouting the usual elitist claptrap we've all heard 1,000 times. "Barely doing any heroic bosses in T14" should have no impact on what you do in the Throne of Thunder normal mode, assuming you geared up in and cleared T14 normal. That's how the progression is meant to work. Also, a blue post very heavily implied that Horridon was designed around players in 502 gear, an unbelievable hard average to achieve if you weren't doing heroic raiding in the previous tier.

But your last part is pure gold. I'm telling you that according to wowprogress, an absolutely tiny number of guilds killed Horridon in the mid to high 490's; close to none. My raid leader went through nigh on every kill when we started work on it to see if we were just being poor or there was another problem.



Can I politely request you drop the "you people" talk? Don't dehumanize me because I chose to drop my commitment to raiding for more important things. Take a look at my history pre-MoP to see the standard I used to raid at.



This is my latest kill of Horridon; I'm Zellviren, was barely ranked item level 500 when we did it, and I'm in the world's top 20.

Tell me what to improve.

lol you go on about how the rest of us have to accept, that some people don't agree and think that Horridon is horribly tuned, while you at the same time don't accept our opinions - that's just lol.

Also, l2 read kkthx. I didn't comment on the amount of guilds with ilvl 496 ish gear killed Normal Horridon within the first week, cause I don't know. What I said, was that if you gave raiders who actually killed Heroic bosses in T14 the same ilvl gear as some of these guilds have, the boss would still go down.

You seem to take this way too serious, all because we don't agree with you? I'm suddenly de-humanizing you - Get over yourself......

Yes, you ranked 18 as a Protection Warrior - well done. But everyone knows, that one person doing well isn't going to make the boss roll over, if the rest are being crap. Not saying your raid group is crap, this is generally speaking.

You may not be able to change anything in order for the boss to die, but your raid leader sure as hell can. You're 3 healing it, with the Resto Druid doing less than what most tanks can do. This is what I and others have been talking about. Lack of skill, lack of awareness, bad strategy (as in 3 healing it, when you then don't have enough dps to kill the adds fast enough) are all things that just add up.

I don't know nor care what standards you used to raid at but if you were anything serious, you should know that most times when bosses aren't dying, it's not because it's overtuned, it's because the players aren't skilled or geared enough.

And as many others have said, if you can't kill Normal Horridon, you have the CHOICE of going back to T14 Heroic.

As to why people began to derail it, well that's because the original poster did so himself. So don't put that on the rest of us.

[Sesshou]

I agree that interrupting/target switching is not terribly difficult, but I think it is appropriate to describe it as a wall of sorts if people aren't progressing past the second boss. I'm not surprised that this is happening because this always happens on encounters of this design...remember what a nightmare Corla was unless you ran with your guild/a premade, and that was a just a dungeon encounter...

It is only a "wall" because blizzard intentionally made the first boss stupidly easy so everyone can get at least 1 boss. Unfortunately what happened is that people expect the whole instance to be on the same level as the handout... hopefully blizzard learned their lesson about making the first boss far easier than what follows...

Wow, I can get 502 and 509 gear in normal T14? Oh wait NO I CAN'T. That's heroic T14 stuff and it's simply idiotic to argue that a raid should have to have heroic T14 gear, especially from later bosses, in order to progress on the second boss of NORMAL ToT. You're not worth replying to however... like many here, it's all about you and you're incapable of seeing things from other perspectives.

Maybe 509, but heroic MSV is easier than anything in normal ToT (besides Jin) after that nerf and with the 496 and random 522 pieces you should be in by now.

I'm going to make maybe a couple of more posts and then leave this thread alone; it seems people can't look past their own experiences.



People on the Internet lie. Wowprogress said differently. In that first week, practically nobody with gear below item level 503 defeated Horridon on 10-man.

Yeah and you know what else people on the internet do? Make baseless claims. You are just assuming they lied because you want to think that. Did you check out all the people in that thread saying that? Doubt it. And you are the one who can't look past their own experiences. It isn't a gear check anyway. The ones clearing it are the ones who are actually working our their strat and adapting to mechanics. Our alt/social raid went in there with ~485-490 and did it because they know what they are doing. If you want more gear, there are ways to get over 500 without killing Horridron. Those 503 guilds you mention wouldn't have been able to kill it either if they played like the people stuck on it and did a piss poor job managing fairly simple mechanics (kick this, dispel that, don't stand there).

And this is why people like yourself aren't worth speaking to. Nobody (least of all me) is "whining"; simply sharing an opinion on why people have found Horridon so challenging. Comparing Onyxia is a deliberate straw man, because Onyxia is a single target that doesn't appear staggered when you're potentially trying to pick up other things.

Hmm we must have different definitions of whining. People coming to the forums saying how Horridron is overtuned when it is just their raid trying to ignore mechanics like they don't matter sounds like whining to me. Actually Ony 10/25m did have stuff that appeared and you could have to deal with those big adds and Ony at the same time. Doesn't matter though. A cleave is one of the most simple mechanics in all of WoW raiding and even some dungeons. Thats like saying an interruptable spell with a 10 second cast that 1 shots some one is overtuned. Sure the damage is high, but that is balanced with how easy it is to deal with.

You don't have "plenty of leeway" in 496-498 gear, which is what a normal mode raider would have first pulled the boss on. And like I said, people in that gear, weren't killing Horridon on the fist week. They just weren't.

You are full of crap. Lots of people in the 496-498 range killed him the first week. Hell, my guild was only at 500. Now maybe a majority weren't, but whatever. It was completely doable in that gear. You had ample leeway... how much leeway do you want? You can live through a 4 stack of poison, do you want a 10 stack to be survivable? At that point you might as well remove the poison entirely. Same thing with the other mechanics.

As for "picking up a mob and facing it away", you're being deliberately dismissive. You know, full well, it's not just picking up a mob and facing it away.

So tanks can blow cooldowns and not need any heals throughout the Gurubashi and Drakkari stages? Wow, I've yet to see that be the case.

Look; you can either accept that people have trouble with this fight, as they're trying to tell you, and that there ARE reasons for it. If you can't accept that, perhaps forums aren't the place for you.

It is that easy. Your tank doesn't really need to bother with the smaller stuff, just grab the bears. I also never said the tank wouldn't need any healing, but he shouldn't need to be the focus of your healers. Use your raid cd's and have your dps help out while healers dispel.

The adds on Ignis needed a 5k hit to shatter, this had nothing whatsoever to do with player skill; Riplimb and Rageface responded to accumulated damage, so the mechanics are totally different. If you're going to be so dismissive, at least try to be accurate.

What comp did you regularly run with where no one could do 5k? Lots of classes could, it just wasn't equally easy for all of them. Though I guess I did misunderstand riplimb and rageface... boss was so trivial even on heroic I didn't really care.

To you.

There are other players out there.

What do you mean to me? Its to everyone. If you take away mechanics where you switch off the boss to do trivial tasks, you end up with LFR or something even easier. If you expect to not do those things and succeed, they made a difficulty for that. If you reduce normal to the point where you can tunnel the boss and ignore everything else, what would you say is the point in having that separate from LFR?