WotLK to MoP: A Trend Analysis of Raiding Difficulty.

[Chireru93]

personally, I quit PvE when I was forced into LFR to gear up for normals. I know people will say "oh, but...valor gear!" yeah, I despise dailies, not as much as lfr, but I still despise them. So much so that my dk has been revered with the cloud serpent people since the first week of MoP (or second week, can't remember), and revered with netherwing for over 2 years now. Even when I'm close to finishing I can't stand it. Then you have to consider that there's only valor gear for like half the slots mabe, if that, and maybe MSV I could have trickled into but the others in t14 I wouldn't have stood a chance in heroic dungeon gear. Now that ToT is out, I quit PvE for good, even stopped doing heroics (not even sure why I did them since I don't enjoy them much), and just PvP. There's absolutely no way other than LFR to get the 490+ ilvl people pretty much require for ToT these days, most seem to require 500+. Now that the revolution is out, maybe, but not so much. I don't mind lfr, I don't care how other people see content, but I sure do care how I see content.

[Glorious Leader]

Every progression raiding guild clears NM the first week it opens every single tier. They really aren't that good, when I was raiding my guild was about 5th on the server. They're now 1st - we had some great recruitment in MoP and we have a really strong core now but really what happened is that all those other guilds disbanded.

A major problem "lesser mortals" have is this massive inferiority complex where you think progression raiders have some kind of god-given gift you lack. There really isn't that big a difference between you and them. I'm personally not even an awesome raider, I'd characterise myself as "pretty good". Tendency to get lazy and die to stupid things :P

In my raid group there were people who pulled amazing DPS sure, I don't even know how some of them did it. But that wasn't what got us through content - not even in HMs. Really 99% of raiding is teamwork, practice and determination. Really ridiculous amounts of determination. If you had 100 wipes on a boss per week you'd down it too.

In fact I remember we were stuck on HM Spine for absolutely forever back in DS progression. If you remember, the big thing was getting enough burst into the tendons each phase to lift the plates. Now one of our other players was a Rogue who could thrash me in the meters with one hand behind his back - and I was further up the legendary chain than he was! He was one of those guys who's obsessed with ranks and would get serious world ranks on WoL. Needless to say he was doing a massive amount of damage on those tendons, had all his CDs and procs planned out perfectly. But when we finally got that fight down, it was on a night when he wasn't there. Because our problem actually wasn't that we lacked amazing DPS like he could do, it was that our ranged team was sloppy on breaking the grips. We just improved our teamwork and coordination, broke grips better and wham, it was down. If ever there was a fight that depended on DPS that was it, but actually the real thing holding us back wasn't anything elitist at all. We downed that boss with LESS DPS than the previous weeks.

Anyway, moral of the story is, raiding isn't about being god's gift to recount. Not unless you're in Paragon/Method/etc and trying to beat everything on heroic in the first week. And even those guilds REALLY beat bosses by gluing themselves to their computers 24/7 until it's dead.

It depends how you define progression raiding guild. I happen to think my guild is a progression raiding guild, albeit it extremely casual and were 11/12 hope 12/12/ this week. The "no true scotsman" fallisy need not apply here. Actually raiding this tier is all about being gods gift to recount. We'd like to take players doing less than 80k but it's not feasible for alot of the fights especially progression attemps. The simple fact is that you cleared normals on the first week. You are better than like 95% of the player population without a doubt. You are trying to understand an ant and being a human means you lack perspective . You do not have the necessary perspective to make this call. End of story. I mean you can patronize people to death but it doesn't really matter. In the end you just have no idea.

[Osmeric]

Every progression raiding guild clears NM the first week it opens every single tier.

Let's see how many guilds that is.

In T15, less than 700 guilds downed LS the first week.

A major problem "lesser mortals" have is this massive inferiority complex where you think progression raiders have some kind of god-given gift you lack.

You are suffering from the inverse Dunning-Kruger effect.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning...3Kruger_effect

"Meanwhile, people with true ability tended to underestimate their relative competence. Roughly, participants who found tasks to be relatively easy erroneously assumed, to some extent, that the tasks must also be easy for others."

[Mormolyce]

But by that point, why bother? I don't plan to do normal final tier regardless of how much they nerf it. I've already seen the story on LFR, and there's no prestige or guild obligation to keep me going after that. I'm not going to raid for the purpose of accumulating meaningless numbers and purple pixels.

That's cool, you're exactly the target audience LFR was designed for.

[Osmeric]

That's cool, you're exactly the target audience LFR was designed for.

Yes. And that is why I think Blizzard is going to be rudely surprised, if they were counting on people who were doing LFR to keep grinding it (and moving on to progressively nerfed normal/heroic) as T16 drags on.

[Brodeo]

Usually the difficulties in games are much better suited however. Trust me you don't want to start comparing to other games. It's a losing argument. Their are but a few RARE titles that challenge the crap out of people on normal (ninja gaiden, demon souls) Especially comparing other blizzard games. Sc2 and D3 normal are jokes...

I'm not saying thats not the case, i'm just asking why it IS the case with WoW. I pay money for access to an mmo server. No different than xbl, for example. I purchased a game with all content available. The only thing stopping me is me. I understand the desire to keep people subbed by throwing them a bone, but that alienates the dedicated in favor of a volatile player base with lots of churn. Bubble and burst isnt sustainable.

---------- Post added 2013-05-30 at 11:59 PM ----------

That's cool, you're exactly the target audience LFR was designed for.

And that audience is no longer around to fill in raid spots to supplement guild attrition. My old guild was top on the server for the past 3 xpacs and broke up because of this exact reason. Theres no one to recruit because EVERYONE can raid.

[Osmeric]

I'm not saying thats not the case, i'm just asking why it IS the case with WoW. I pay money for access to an mmo server. No different than xbl, for example. I purchased a game with all content available. The only thing stopping me is me. I understand the desire to keep people subbed by throwing them a bone, but that alienates the dedicated in favor of a volatile player base with lots of churn. Bubble and burst isnt sustainable.

If the non-dedicated really do churn, that means there are even more of them as ex-players than you'd first imagine, just looking at progression stats. The ex-players must be overwhelming casuals, in even greater percentage than the playing population.

[Mormolyce]

It depends how you define progression raiding guild. I happen to think my guild is a progression raiding guild, albeit it extremely casual and were 11/12 hope 12/12/ this week. The "no true scotsman" fallisy need not apply here. Actually raiding this tier is all about being gods gift to recount. We'd like to take players doing less than 80k but it's not feasible for alot of the fights especially progression attemps. The simple fact is that you cleared normals on the first week. You are better than like 95% of the player population without a doubt. You are trying to understand an ant and being a human means you lack perspective . You do not have the necessary perspective to make this call. End of story. I mean you can patronize people to death but it doesn't really matter. In the end you just have no idea.

No I am not better. I just joined the right guild and turned up on time. And of that 95% surely at least 80% aren't even trying to raid, or didn't join a raiding guild.

Let's see how many guilds that is.

In T15, less than 700 guilds downed LS the first week.

Well yeah, raiding is a niche activity. Especially now LFR is available and is so much easier to manage (and I mean manage, ie get the right number of people online with the right classes and a good internet connection etc etc etc... that shit nearly killed me back when I was raiding casually).

You are suffering from the inverse Dunning-Kruger effect.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning...3Kruger_effect

"Meanwhile, people with true ability tended to underestimate their relative competence. Roughly, participants who found tasks to be relatively easy erroneously assumed, to some extent, that the tasks must also be easy for others."

Haha, that's flattering, but talk to my guildies about how awesome a raider I am :P

Hell some of the people in our raid group when we downed HM Spine... I'm not amazing but shit I would've kicked some of those guys out of a pug!

The fundamental problem here is the assumption that this game is so strongly determined by skill. It's really not. In reality it's mostly about getting people online at the right time and hunkering down on a boss until it dies. The big difference between "hardcore" raiders and casual raiders is just how long they are willing to wipe over and over until they perfect the strategy and the timing of their DPS/healing/tanking CDs. I think we were over 300 wipes on Yor'sahj if I remember right. You might not get it week 1 like the world first guilds, but you will down HMs that way. Never mind NMs.

---------- Post added 2013-05-31 at 04:06 AM ----------

Yes. And that is why I think Blizzard is going to be rudely surprised, if they were counting on people who were doing LFR to keep grinding it (and moving on to progressively nerfed normal/heroic) as T16 drags on.

Can't really see what you want out of WoW frankly, you don't care about gear and just want to "see the content" but complain about the fact that Blizzard doesn't somehow force you to keep repeating LFR or raiding? You kind of seem either like you're playing the wrong game or you're straight up unpleasable.

And that audience is no longer around to fill in raid spots to supplement guild attrition. My old guild was top on the server for the past 3 xpacs and broke up because of this exact reason. Theres no one to recruit because EVERYONE can raid.

So what? Would I really want to recruit a lot of people to raid NMs who don't want to be there but have to because Blizzard doesn't provide LFR? Worst case scenario raiding becomes a more niche activity, which it already is. Shrug.

Most of those players in LFR weren't raiders to begin with anyway.

[Radio]

It depends how you define progression raiding guild. I happen to think my guild is a progression raiding guild, albeit it extremely casual and were 11/12 hope 12/12/ this week. The "no true scotsman" fallisy need not apply here. Actually raiding this tier is all about being gods gift to recount. We'd like to take players doing less than 80k but it's not feasible for alot of the fights especially progression attemps. The simple fact is that you cleared normals on the first week. You are better than like 95% of the player population without a doubt. You are trying to understand an ant and being a human means you lack perspective . You do not have the necessary perspective to make this call. End of story. I mean you can patronize people to death but it doesn't really matter. In the end you just have no idea.

You can quite easily kill all of normal with 1-2 of your DPS sitting at 70-80k even if your other DPS aren't breaking 100k, my guild took 6 weeks to clear normal on a 2 night raid week schedule and most of our progression kills had 2-4 of our DPS sitting in the 60-90k range. Nowhere near requiring your entire raid to be god's gift to recount when our first Lei Shen kill had ALL of our DPS between 70-95k and the single Brewmaster (me) sitting at 140k.

[Glorious Leader]

[QUOTE=Mormolyce;21297770]No I am not better. I just joined the right guild and turned up on time. And of that 95% surely at least 80% aren't even trying to raid, or didn't join a raiding guild.

Yes you are. Subsequently you have a very poor and delusional perspective on the issue. You live in a fantasy and the rest of your post outlines this.

[Gsara]

They should just make normals close to lfr difficulty and let heroic raid guilds start in heroic. That would solve a lot of issues of normals being "to hard" for average player base.
Most players that raid dont want to spend the time to learn the fights properly from my point of view. Its either go in a kill a boss within 4 or 5 tries or stop for the night.

[Deleted]

What about replacing bosses with a target dummy that drops loot. That should be suffient to keep casuals happy.

Post constructively

[Glorious Leader]

You can quite easily kill all of normal with 1-2 of your DPS sitting at 70-80k even if your other DPS aren't breaking 100k, my guild took 6 weeks to clear normal on a 2 night raid week schedule and most of our progression kills had 2-4 of our DPS sitting in the 60-90k range. Nowhere near requiring your entire raid to be god's gift to recount when our first Lei Shen kill had ALL of our DPS between 70-95k and the single Brewmaster (me) sitting at 140k.

Hardly but that isn't accurate either. Were doing a 2 night a week schedule as well and we've found that we really had to sit players doing less than 80k easily. Even if what you say were true (and it isn't by and large) could you take an entire raid of players doing less than 70k for every figgt?

[Mormolyce]

Yes you are. Subsequently you have a very poor and delusional perspective on the issue. You live in a fantasy and the rest of your post outlines this.

I feel like I'm in this weird situation where I keep trying to pick you up off the floor and you keep throwing yourself under my feet.

[Glorious Leader]

I feel like I'm in this weird situation where I keep trying to pick you up off the floor and you keep throwing yourself under my feet.

Oh no I'm not worshipping you. I don't give a shit that your skilled in a video game. I'm just telling you like it is bra. If I told Wayne Gretzky he was good at hockey he wouldn't pick me up off the ground nor would I even been throwing myself on the ground. You just have no perspective.

[Mormolyce]

Oh no I'm not worshipping you. I don't give a shit that your skilled in a video game. I'm just telling you like it is bra. If I told Wayne Gretzky he was good at hockey he wouldn't pick me up off the ground nor would I even been throwing myself on the ground. You just have no perspective.

I just told you I'm not skilled... see this is the whole "inferiority complex" I'm referring to.

Like I said, I was in a progression guild. You don't seem to understand the difference between that and a world first guild. Those guys are your Wayne Gretzkys. We're your local hockey team that plays once a week and competes in... whatever non-professional ice hockey competitions are called (okay first I'm Australian and second I'm a nerd so I don't like sport :P). I guess in this analogy you're a guy who played hockey in school and sometimes plays with friends just for fun. We ain't no Wayne Gretzkys.

P.S. I have no idea who Wayne Gretzky is.

[Glorious Leader]

I just told you I'm not skilled... see this is the whole "inferiority complex" I'm referring to.

Like I said, I was in a progression guild. You don't seem to understand the difference between that and a world first guild. Those guys are your Wayne Gretzkys. We're your local hockey team that plays once a week and competes in... whatever non-professional ice hockey competitions are called (okay first I'm Australian and second I'm a nerd so I don't like sport :P). I guess in this analogy you're a guy who played hockey in school and sometimes plays with friends just for fun. We ain't no Wayne Gretzkys.

P.S. I have no idea who Wayne Gretzky is.

And I told you yes you are. You just don't view yourself as for whatever fucking reason, likely to make an argument where no exists. Especially relative to the what the rest of the players of the game is like. Congratulations. You are EXTREMELY skilled.

[nekobaka]

If the non-dedicated really do churn, that means there are even more of them as ex-players than you'd first imagine, just looking at progression stats. The ex-players must be overwhelming casuals, in even greater percentage than the playing population.

From an ex-player stand point there are already more players that have quit than currently play. One of the developers noted in an interview that the two numbers crossed paths in Cata and that there are far less players coming into the game than before. Going by the last quarterly report it seems Blizzard methods of trying to keep "casuals" entertained is not really working. Than again the word "casual" is far to broad.

[Radio]

Hardly but that isn't accurate either. Were doing a 2 night a week schedule as well and we've found that we really had to sit players doing less than 80k easily. Even if what you say were true (and it isn't by and large) could you take an entire raid of players doing less than 70k for every figgt?

You couldn't take a full raid of players doing less than 70k, but it doesn't require being gods of recount as you put it to do 80k, being a god of recount is in an entirely different ballpark to the figures we're discussing.

There is room to carry in ToT normal and there is room for average play, my 10 man guild is a mix of players with wildly varying levels of experience including:
- people who have cleared heroic tiers before
- people who were casual in vanilla/bc, quit during those days and only came back for either t14 or t15
- people who've never spent much time in high end raiding previously
- you get the idea

Our first two raid nights in ToT we only cleared Jin'rokh and preprepreprenerf Horridon, Horridon is an often cited difficulty wall, it took us an hour and a half of wipes to kill him with:
- a 480 healer who had only dinged 90 the week before and the player hadn't raided for 4 years
- a brand new 485 healer alt of our healer from t14
- a social rogue in our guild who only participates in our guild raids every other month
- social warlock in our guild who had only just moved to full time participation in our raid team
- all players other than those two healers sitting between 490-500, raid ilvl avg of about 495


Your problem is that you have an incredibly pessimistic view of your own and your raids skill and an incredibly pessimistic view on your ability to improve or get down bosses regardless of your abilities. Yes, ToT normal isn't as easy as ICC 10 normal during its heyday, but ICC 10 normal's heyday wasn't reached until there was at least 5-10% of raid aura buffs fuelling casual groups, for the first 2-3 months or so ICC 10 normal was difficult as fuck for casual players.

[asdfsaf]

you're forgetting that both icc and ds lasted 12 months and were both nerfed by 30%. also, people that experience wipes these days just give up and go do lfr.