WotLK to MoP: A Trend Analysis of Raiding Difficulty.

[Deleted]

You do. Yogg saron is not the only fight in ulduar. We cleared that raid (including yogg) in a week no problem. ToT has taken it's toll on us though. We've had to sit players we took before who were decent but not top of the line raiders.

I am sorry, but there is no way in hell you cleared ulduar in a week (unless you mean a week in ICC when you had full 277 gear) and had problems in ToT. If you had the same raid team that cleared ulduar in 1 week you would clear ToT in 1 day.

[Glorious Leader]

The laundry list for Deathwhisper looks smaller but honestly you were dealing with roughly the same amount of mechanics at a time as Horridon, and the overall fight structure is frightenly similar to Horridon at the core. MC mechanics can also be incredibly disruptive to some players with less skill.

Raids grow with the playerbase, people who I know that ONLY raided in vanilla insist that the bosses with 1-2 mechanics WERE hard. ToT's difficulty has been tuned in regards to what casual players are used to by now. Even heavily touted casual heavens like ICC exposed people to DPS races, add fights, CC, interrupts, dispells, raid wipe mechanics and punishing mid-tier encounters.

The only loser in ToT in my opinion are new players who have not had the chance to grow with the game, which is why I've suggested the introduction of a training raid in the past, where new players learn the base rotes of raiding (DPS, Healing, Tanking) in a team (NOT RANDOM) environment and get slowly introduced to different kinds of mechanics in that proper environment. Start off slow with a patchwerk, then show them a fight with an add, then show them a fight with a debuff, eventually leading to a boss with a combination of requirements.

Not only does it look longer it is longer. Again you can't get around the developers saying fights are more complex because well look at that THEY ACTUALLY ARE. New players and weaker raiders are the losers. Adding a new difficulty will do nothing to correct the flawed premise that raids must forever be increasing in difficulty and complexity to gauge the interest of the already existing (and crumbling) raiding player base. Normals simple need to be made easier if you want any hope in having normal raiding in the future. Further stratifying and adding another layer of of difficulty will only serve to divide the dwindling raiding population base even more.

The MOST at absolute that should be done (vis a vi another difficulty) is to add a super heroic challenge mode raid at the end after heroic modes. It would award no gear, would scale like challenge modes and would be purely for challenge and accomplishment. That's it. I frankly don't think we should really give a fuck about the people who are currently wallowing like pigs in shit in this difficulty but the developer seem to hold a special place in their hearts for these people so I guess we have to give them something. You should be happy if you get that frankly. Anything more is grossly inequitable, in fact raiding as a whole is probably grossly inequitable itself. I mean we couldn't get dungeons (which a whole lot more players did) because we had to get extremely big overtuned difficult raid tiers. We couldn't get easy access to raid gear and easy valor because well people killing bosses complained about how easy it was to get valor gear as if the majority who didn't raid but still wanted character progression actually gave a fuck what jonny awesome raid could or couldn't do or his fucking prestige mattered one god damn bit.

The developers have things so god damn backwards. no wonder casuals weren't engaged. The developers didn't bother to engage them in any meaningful way.

[Radio]

[QUOTE=Glorious Leader;21298611]Not only does it look longer it is longer. Again you can't get around the developers saying fights are more complex because well look at that THEY ACTUALLY ARE. New players and weaker raiders are the losers. Adding a new difficulty will do nothing to correct the flawed premise that raids must forever be increasing in difficulty and complexity to gauge the interest of the already existing player base. Normals simple need to be made easier if you want any hope in having normal raiding in the future. Further stratifying and adding another layer of of difficulty will only serve to divide the dwindling raiding population base even more.[/quote[

Horridon's laundry list is vastly disproportional to the amount of mechanics you have to pay attention to within a 1.5 minute timespan, and that was my point in it's comparison with Lady Deathwhisper.

A training tier != a new difficulty, it means a content/level independant series of bosses which essentially are a series of raiding training dummies of slowly increasing complexity. There can be some standardised rewards added but it's main purpose is to sit there as a training grounds for players (hey look that training grounds phrase that blizz has acknowledged before).

You said before that people were happy with 4/12 pugs in icecrown, why aren't they happy with 4-6/12 pugs in ToT now? Horridon has been nerfed to oblivion to the point where all of the full trade pugs on my realm get past it and I see cliques of 4-6/12 players forming and running together frequently.

The MOST at absolute that should be done (vis a vi another difficulty) is to add a super heroic challenge mode raid at the end after heroic modes. It would award no gear, would scale like challenge modes and would be purely for challenge and accomplishment. That's it. I frankly don't think we should really give a fuck about the people who are currently wallowing like pigs in shit in this difficulty but the developer seem to hold a special place in their hearts for these people so I guess we have to give them something. You should be happy if you get that frankly. Anything more is grossly inequitable, in fact raiding as a whole is probably grossly inequitable itself. I mean we couldn't get dungeons (which a whole lot more players did) because we had to get extremely big overtuned difficult raid tiers.

I don't need super heroic challenge mode raid, I'm only 4 boss kills ahead of you. I love the pace of this instance, there is nothing wrong with having difficulty on a boss (fun can be found from challenge). Whatever happened to having fun while wiping? Some of the funnest raiding in my life was spending 2 weeks on moroes, a fundamentally shit simple boss but we kept wiping, and noone bitched even once.



That image was used in this thread to say that ToT is too hard, I say that it is perfect. Out of all the people participating, thousands of people are raiding normals and have something to look forward to overcoming. The two casual walls of the instance aren't overly pronounced which shows healthy progress amongst the community. The chart doesn't need to be flat it needs to be steady curve with a couple of dips and a few coasts.

[Deleted]

I am sorry, but there is no way in hell you cleared ulduar in a week (unless you mean a week in ICC when you had full 277 gear) and had problems in ToT. If you had the same raid team that cleared ulduar in 1 week you would clear ToT in 1 day.

ulduar normal was tuned way lower for current gear than tot normal was though.

My old guild cleared ulduar normal first week aswell, we cleared tot first week, but I'd say ulduar was easier.

[Deleted]

While it's an interesting read, the issue here is that you're not distinguishing between 10 and 25 man's. Back in ICC, 10 man normal was equivelant to what LFR is today - the easiest game mode, could be done with most pugs, dropped the lowest Ilvl loot, etc, etc.
This means that it was pugged, and thus tons of guilds would have killed the encounter, and alot of them with mains from more established 25 man guilds to carry them through it (because 10 man didn't lock 25 man).
So you taking the numbers of guilds that's killed 10 man marrowgar is severely skewered, simply because of PuG's creditting more than one guild at a time.
That all changed with T11 and 12, which really should be included in your statistics, at the very least because you'd see that the participation amount in T11 was far bigger than T13 - 71K guilds killing the first boss, and 50K finishing the tier.
The reason for the drop in Dragon Soul normal mode participation can be accounted to a diminishing amount of raiders (84K->71K->64K->55K), but also to the fact that the DS normal modes were tuned to be slightly harder on the gear checks than any previous normal modes were, because LFR is / was supposed to change normal mode from "what everyone does when they're bored and have a little extra time, requiring no organization and no set raid schedule". Effectively adding a third difficulty mode that shaved away the bottom percentages of players, because the normal modes became harder.


Also, wowprogress stops tracking kills when a new tier is released.

I read your entire post OP and credit for putting in the effort. However Draco is absolutely right about 10 man back in ICC being LFR mode in Cata and MoP and thus your numbers really won't hold.

And saying that we aren't allowed to point out flaws in your statistics isn't really fair, when there's an obvious flaw - the one just mentioned.

I saw all the angry and frustrated posts about Normal Horridon being too hard for a second boss and I also argued, that it's mechanics that makes this boss hard and not really the gear. My point is, that Blizz has stated, that they'd rather want bosses where mechanics matter over gear check fights like Patchwerk.

With LFR introduced, I believe that a lot of players who back in Wrath wanted to raid and did so by pugging, are now just sticking to LFR. It's good for the people who like that but the flipside is, that people don't really have to worry much about mechanics. So when they actually do start raiding Normal mode, they aren't used to dealing with mechanics at all. Suddenly they actually have to be able to do their rotation, while also making sure they're not standing in fire, target switching and use interrupts and dispels.

One may argue that the gap between LFR and Normal mode is too big, but what's the solution? We all know what LFR would be like, if they increase the difficulty - not doable. But if you nerf the Normal modes, then the gap between Normal and Heroic will be too big. The people who think that Normal Horridon is too hard, will then just come back and say that Heroic Horridon is too hard fort he second boss as well. And since 10 and 25 is supposed to be somewhat equal and reward the same gear, they can't just go back to 10 man being the easy mode - not without screwing over a lot of 10 man Heroic guilds, who don't want the difficulty level changed and then be forced to go back to 25 man raiding.

[Glorious Leader]

[QUOTE=Radio;21298810]

Not only does it look longer it is longer. Again you can't get around the developers saying fights are more complex because well look at that THEY ACTUALLY ARE. New players and weaker raiders are the losers. Adding a new difficulty will do nothing to correct the flawed premise that raids must forever be increasing in difficulty and complexity to gauge the interest of the already existing player base. Normals simple need to be made easier if you want any hope in having normal raiding in the future. Further stratifying and adding another layer of of difficulty will only serve to divide the dwindling raiding population base even more.[/quote[

Horridon's laundry list is vastly disproportional to the amount of mechanics you have to pay attention to within a 1.5 minute timespan, and that was my point in it's comparison with Lady Deathwhisper.

A training tier != a new difficulty, it means a content/level independant series of bosses which essentially are a series of raiding training dummies of slowly increasing complexity. There can be some standardised rewards added but it's main purpose is to sit there as a training grounds for players (hey look that training grounds phrase that blizz has acknowledged before).

A training "tier" is in effect a new difficulty, you've just given it a new name. Like let's say MSV was the training tier ( i guess roughly akin to naxx?) well what happens 6 months later when players haven't improved in the 6 month time span you've allotted them for the "training tier". What your basically describing is another difficulty. What happens to the guy who subs halfway through the expansion or at the end when the training tier is over and done and he wants to do this new awesome raid he saw in the patch that made him buy the game or resub to the game?

You think it's a good thing, that's fine your welcome to that opinion. Now it doesn't matter that you don't understand why it's a bad thing because frankly I'm tired of trying to explain it to you. I don't expect a human will understand why it's a bad thing to the ant that you've crushed him with your boot. Just know that it will have to corrected if you expect normal raiding to be sustained.

[Radio]

A training "tier" is in effect a new difficulty, you've just given it a new name. Like let's say MSV was the training tier ( i guess roughly akin to naxx?) well what happens 6 months later when players haven't improved in the 6 month time span you've allotted them for the "training tier". What your basically describing is another difficulty. What happens to the guy who subs halfway through the expansion or at the end when the training tier is over and done and he wants to do this new awesome raid he saw in the patch that made him buy the game or resub to the game?

You missed the point of content/level independant. The training tier never ends, it is always there for new players to put themselves through once or twice to get the gist of what raiding is about. It will be far less overwhelming and far more productive than LFR/normal raids are at the moment.

The training tier could just be an instanced walk through the countryside with repurposed boss models from various times in wow serving as boss-bots. It's not going to be, for example, easy MSV. Think of the training world/levels in a lot of games, they serve to either be done once/twice or skipped by those who don't need it, they're often either irrelevant to the story or an introduction to the story. It would only have to be modified as core game mechanics change, it doesn't matter if the current raid is Mogu'shan Vaults, Molten Core, Siege of Orgrimmar or Assault on Sargeras' Finger Nail, it still exists as is.

EDIT: Even include it with the Training Grounds that players ask for, Training grounds can have provisions for learning:
- class
- role
- group play
- raid play
- pvp
- numbers and stats
- etc

It would be far more intuitive then the current tutorial/levelling/early end-game experience.

[Glorious Leader]

You missed the point of content/level independant. The training tier never ends, it is always there for new players to put themselves through once or twice to get the gist of what raiding is about. It will be far less overwhelming and far more productive than LFR/normal raids are at the moment.

The training tier could just be an instanced walk through the countryside with repurposed boss models from various times in wow serving as boss-bots. It's not going to be, for example, easy MSV. Think of the training world/levels in a lot of games, they serve to either be done once/twice or skipped by those who don't need it, they're often either irrelevant to the story or an introduction to the story. It would only have to be modified as core game mechanics change, it doesn't matter if the current raid is Mogu'shan Vaults, Molten Core, Siege of Orgrimmar or Assault on Sargeras' Finger Nail, it still exists as is.

EDIT: Even include it with the Training Grounds that players ask for, Training grounds can have provisions for learning:
- class
- role
- group play
- raid play
- pvp
- numbers and stats
- etc

It would be far more intuitive then the current tutorial/levelling/early end-game experience.

In other words a tutorial mode? Tutorial modes simple don't address what players struggle with and they also don't acknowledge that players have serious limitations in what they can and can't do physically. Some players don't have as much working memory and that can only be stretched so much. Some players have terrible difficulty with moving and dps while keeping their cooldowns and rotations in mind. Some players have terrible reaction time. All of these are physical limitations that people have and can only be improved by a limited amount certainly not what's being asked in normals. At some point normals will still be to complicated, especially relative to what the tutorial will be teaching them. Again it's a very simple principle. So long as the developers insist that the complexity in fights continues to go up and up and up you will see less and less players being able to do them. It cannot go on forever increasing complexity because at some point it will be so complex that it will require literally PERFECT FLAWLESS execution. At some point even heroic raiders will be left in the dust. The trend will have to correct itself, either by less complexity or by the game simple ending.

[Deleted]

I read your entire post OP and credit for putting in the effort. However Draco is absolutely right about 10 man back in ICC being LFR mode in Cata and MoP and thus your numbers really won't hold.

And saying that we aren't allowed to point out flaws in your statistics isn't really fair, when there's an obvious flaw - the one just mentioned.

I saw all the angry and frustrated posts about Normal Horridon being too hard for a second boss and I also argued, that it's mechanics that makes this boss hard and not really the gear. My point is, that Blizz has stated, that they'd rather want bosses where mechanics matter over gear check fights like Patchwerk.

With LFR introduced, I believe that a lot of players who back in Wrath wanted to raid and did so by pugging, are now just sticking to LFR. It's good for the people who like that but the flipside is, that people don't really have to worry much about mechanics. So when they actually do start raiding Normal mode, they aren't used to dealing with mechanics at all. Suddenly they actually have to be able to do their rotation, while also making sure they're not standing in fire, target switching and use interrupts and dispels.

One may argue that the gap between LFR and Normal mode is too big, but what's the solution? We all know what LFR would be like, if they increase the difficulty - not doable. But if you nerf the Normal modes, then the gap between Normal and Heroic will be too big. The people who think that Normal Horridon is too hard, will then just come back and say that Heroic Horridon is too hard fort he second boss as well. And since 10 and 25 is supposed to be somewhat equal and reward the same gear, they can't just go back to 10 man being the easy mode - not without screwing over a lot of 10 man Heroic guilds, who don't want the difficulty level changed and then be forced to go back to 25 man raiding.

LFR isn't raiding. As you mention 10 man was the 'LFR Substitute' in TBC and Wrath, and it worked very well.

Pairing the easy to organize raid format with a undertuned raid instance worked very well.

In Cataclysm, pairing the easier to organize format with a 'balanced' 10 man difficulty, worked very badly. Why do the harder to organize, and harder to coordinate 25 man format, when 10 man has all the easy factors and none of the downsize? Even though 10 man still wasn't as hard as 25 man, it was still out of the reach of most casual raiders.

No doubt you think the format's are 'balanced'. No so. Blizzard said in the round of recent interviews that 10 man was easier throughout Cataclysm, one of the additional reasons that 10's are suffering in MoP. Even though the balancing is better in MoP, you've just got to look at a lot of the fight mechanics, and realize that it will be always be easier in 10 man.

10 man heroic guilds are screwing over the game, just so they can support their own selfish playstyle. Screwing over 25 man guilds with by getting the same reward for easier content, screwing over the casual guilds by pushing them all into the cesspit that is LFR.

[Definition]

People have just moved to LFR. Normals are as easy as they've always been.

[Keashaa]

The only thing that suprises me is the "fact" that during T10 and T13, the progression curve is like a flipped exponential function, with the early bosses being defeating by many guild and the number of kills sinking the further you progress into the raid instance. T14 and T15 look more like 1/x, with the first boss being defeated easily but the second boss is already a blocker.

[Deleted]

@ Glorious Leader:

I remember your posts from the "Normal Horridon is too hard" threads and I remember you saying over and over (just like now), that content needs to be nerfed, so that more people can do it. The quote you have as signature pretty much confirms this.

But this is an argument that neither side can win. Cause just as you keep saying that other people think too low of themselves, that they're actually among the top 5% guilds cause they cleared Normal ToT the first week etc., I and others will keep saying, that it's a L2P issue. That people could improve so much, by reading up on their class, ask for help on MMO in stead of complaining and by using proper gems/enchants/reforging.

In my opinion it has a lot to do with dedication and not being lazy.

Let me give you a little anecdote:

A social member in my guild likes playing WoW. He has a lot of characters at max level and he enjoys doing LFR but would rather do Normal modes. Last week we were 2 raiders who joined LFR with him. We kept wiping on Horridon, cause a) People didn't kill adds, pushed the boss before the last gate was down, b) kept standing in poison clouds and frost orbs c) didn't move accordingly to charge.

So my guildie (who was raid leader), myself and one of the tanks started to tell people what to do and when. We told them why they needed to dps the adds and how to handle the Charge. We put up markers and went again. The same thing happened and now we took at look at Recount. We pointed out the people who were more or less afk, the healer who was actually a dps and so on. Then we went for the third time, all the time calling out "Swap to the Priest" and "Interrupt the Dinomancer" etc.

Anyways, we kept wiping and after having kicked several people for being horrible and still wiped, we left. Then I looked at Recount again and noticed that this social member of ours did the exact same thing the people who got kicked did - he tunneled the boss as MM Hunter..... I asked him why he insists playing MM (he's been playing MM all of T14 as well) on a fight like Horridon and why he didn't switch to the adds. He didn't respond, not even after I whispered him (I'm the co GM and officer of my guild, so you'd think he at least would reply to me).

Anyways, he's the kind of person who won't ever get past Normal Horridon, unless someone boosts him. He's the type of player who wants to play a silly spec, regardless of the consequences for the rest of the raid, the sort of person who doesn't read up on his class(es), who doesn't care about his output. He stands in fire and is generally what I would consider a bad player.

Now I don't know if your raiders are anything like this guy but I bet that there's a lot of players around just like him. And it doesn't matter how much you nerf Normal modes for that type of people, not when the fights evolve around mechanics rather than dps check. Cause in the end, players like that need LFR mode or Patchwerk style fights in order to defeat them.

My point is, that if you're that casual, why even bother with Normal mode? And inb4 you say that you do research and play your class right etc, I bet that if we armory your raiders and look at your logs, we could point out several things they're doing fundamentally wrong. Things that could easily be fixed, if you bothered reading up on your class.

Anyways, I know you won't agree with any of this and you don't have to. But at least accept that we have different opinions and maybe point the finger at yourself and your raiders for not putting in enough effort, rather than calling for nerfs and calling everyone else elitist.

[Deleted]

Interesting read but unfortunately as this game is now catered to the whole "I can't do this so please fix it!" whining in the official forums and people giving up too easy, this is the way the raiding scene will continue to drop. Back in TBC when there would be a hard boss you would have people HUNGRY to keep attempting the boss until they went blue in the face in which they still continued to do so where as now if your guild doesn't clear normals in the first week.

I think the entire normal/heroic change introduced in ToC led to this behavior as a guild back in TBC would be proud to be 4/9 in Black Temple where as guilds who are stuck in normals at the moment feel like failures that they wasn't able to clear the entirety of NORMAL mode not allowing them to be doing the easier bosses on heroic thus not being able to get the same gear as other raiders.

[Deleted]

LFR isn't raiding. As you mention 10 man was the 'LFR Substitute' in TBC and Wrath, and it worked very well.

Pairing the easy to organize raid format with a undertuned raid instance worked very well.

In Cataclysm, pairing the easier to organize format with a 'balanced' 10 man difficulty, worked very badly. Why do the harder to organize, and harder to coordinate 25 man format, when 10 man has all the easy factors and none of the downsize? Even though 10 man still wasn't as hard as 25 man, it was still out of the reach of most casual raiders.

No doubt you think the format's are 'balanced'. No so. Blizzard said in the round of recent interviews that 10 man was easier throughout Cataclysm, one of the additional reasons that 10's are suffering in MoP. Even though the balancing is better in MoP, you've just got to look at a lot of the fight mechanics, and realize that it will be always be easier in 10 man.

10 man heroic guilds are screwing over the game, just so they can support their own selfish playstyle. Screwing over 25 man guilds with by getting the same reward for easier content, screwing over the casual guilds by pushing them all into the cesspit that is LFR.

I believe the interview your're referring to is the one on Legendary? The one with Hollinka and GC right? GC actually said, that 10 man Heroic seemed tuned a bit too hard on some encounters. And you may thing that 10 Heroic is easy as hell but that's very subjective. I dare say that Heroic Spine was way harder on 10 man than 25 man. That Heroic Council is harder on 10 man than 25 man. It goes both ways and there's pro's and con's about both formats. So lets not start the whole 10v25 argument again shall we.

[Glorious Leader]

@ Glorious Leader:

I remember your posts from the "Normal Horridon is too hard" threads and I remember you saying over and over (just like now), that content needs to be nerfed, so that more people can do it. The quote you have as signature pretty much confirms this.

But this is an argument that neither side can win. Cause just as you keep saying that other people think too low of themselves, that they're actually among the top 5% guilds cause they cleared Normal ToT the first week etc., I and others will keep saying, that it's a L2P issue. That people could improve so much, by reading up on their class, ask for help on MMO in stead of complaining and by using proper gems/enchants/reforging.

In my opinion it has a lot to do with dedication and not being lazy.

Let me give you a little anecdote:

A social member in my guild likes playing WoW. He has a lot of characters at max level and he enjoys doing LFR but would rather do Normal modes. Last week we were 2 raiders who joined LFR with him. We kept wiping on Horridon, cause a) People didn't kill adds, pushed the boss before the last gate was down, b) kept standing in poison clouds and frost orbs c) didn't move accordingly to charge.

So my guildie (who was raid leader), myself and one of the tanks started to tell people what to do and when. We told them why they needed to dps the adds and how to handle the Charge. We put up markers and went again. The same thing happened and now we took at look at Recount. We pointed out the people who were more or less afk, the healer who was actually a dps and so on. Then we went for the third time, all the time calling out "Swap to the Priest" and "Interrupt the Dinomancer" etc.

Anyways, we kept wiping and after having kicked several people for being horrible and still wiped, we left. Then I looked at Recount again and noticed that this social member of ours did the exact same thing the people who got kicked did - he tunneled the boss as MM Hunter..... I asked him why he insists playing MM (he's been playing MM all of T14 as well) on a fight like Horridon and why he didn't switch to the adds. He didn't respond, not even after I whispered him (I'm the co GM and officer of my guild, so you'd think he at least would reply to me).

Anyways, he's the kind of person who won't ever get past Normal Horridon, unless someone boosts him. He's the type of player who wants to play a silly spec, regardless of the consequences for the rest of the raid, the sort of person who doesn't read up on his class(es), who doesn't care about his output. He stands in fire and is generally what I would consider a bad player.

Now I don't know if your raiders are anything like this guy but I bet that there's a lot of players around just like him. And it doesn't matter how much you nerf Normal modes for that type of people, not when the fights evolve around mechanics rather than dps check. Cause in the end, players like that need LFR mode or Patchwerk style fights in order to defeat them.

My point is, that if you're that casual, why even bother with Normal mode? And inb4 you say that you do research and play your class right etc, I bet that if we armory your raiders and look at your logs, we could point out several things they're doing fundamentally wrong. Things that could easily be fixed, if you bothered reading up on your class.

Anyways, I know you won't agree with any of this and you don't have to. But at least accept that we have different opinions and maybe point the finger at yourself and your raiders for not putting in enough effort, rather than calling for nerfs and calling everyone else elitist.

I mean no I don't agree in principle but in practice what your saying is also equally stupid. I mean let's say it's true. Let's say everybody who can't cut it in normals is just lazy morally bankrupt good for nothing scrubs. Well okay they represent a large majority of the player base apparently. They also (IMO) represent a chunk of the players who left. Do you expect that the developers can turn to those players and say "HEY GUYS guess what? This guy on a forum informed us that you all sucked balls and don't deserve the privilege of seeing NORMAL raids so if you left will you please come back now that you know your entitled assholes? And if your unhappy with raid difficulty and get left out because your a good for nothing scrub will you please continue to sub to the game anyway?"

In principle I disagree with everything you say and in practice this whole moral world view you people have tried to attach to this issue is basically death for raiding and the game itself.

[reflection]

What I think is a big problem is that you just have shit gear when going into ToT. If you only raided normal and maybe didn't clear T14 completely you have a maximum ilvl of lets say 494 (and this is a high number). Then you can go for some lfr 502 and that's it. None of those raiders will spend like 50k gold for some 522 crafted epic boots. Anyway you will get an ilvl of arround 500 when you start wie ToT. Jin'Rokh is no problem, but all bosses after Jin'Rokh are. It's not about those hardcore raiders here starting ToT with an average ilvl of 512+. ToT gets MASSIVELY easier with more gear. Horridon adds falling faster, Tortos dropping faster so less chance to do something wrong, not to imagine Megaera...

I think that just the gap in the beginning is very tough. What I really like is that each boss is kind of a challenge (maybe except twin consorts - don't know what they were thinking on this boss). Until Durumu I felt the raid to get constantly harder. After Durumu I felt the encounters to get a little easier. I personally even found Lei Shen kind of easier then Durumu, because Lei Shen is not very random.

[Deleted]

I mean no I don't agree in principle but in practice what your saying is also equally stupid. I mean let's say it's true. Let's say everybody who can't cut it in normals is just lazy morally bankrupt good for nothing scrubs. Well okay they represent a large majority of the player base apparently. They also (IMO) represent a chunk of the players who left. Do you expect that the developers can turn to those players and say "HEY GUYS guess what? This guy on a forum informed us that you all sucked balls and don't deserve the privilege of seeing NORMAL raids so if you left will you please come back now that you know your entitled assholes? And if your unhappy with raid difficulty and get left out because your a good for nothing scrub will you please continue to sub to the game anyway?"

In principle I disagree with everything you say and in practice this whole moral world view you people have tried to attach to this issue is basically death for raiding and the game itself.

Will you stop putting words in my mouth already? You're making this sound personal and you just add whatever word you find fitting, to make your point sound more valid - it ain't working. So stop putting words in my mouth already.

You believe that "we people" and our "moral world view" is what killed raiding, I say that the decline in raiding guilds and players in general is more complex than just elitists and their moral world views.

Btw, you didn't really respond to what I said about improving, did you now? Let me ask a different way then, a way you won't just try to ignore.

Why didn't you post a thread in the raiding forum here on MMO, asking for help with Normal Horridon, providing logs and wait for people to reply? Why have you spend so much time her on MMO complaining about the difficulty of ToT, rather than asking for tips and help? Surely there's people here able to point out where you need to change your approach or tell you why exactly you're wiping. Wouldn't that have been time better spend?

Don't ignore it this time.....

[Pua]

Why are you comparing an un-nerfed ToT to an end of expansion DS and ICC? It's a rediculous comparison.

I'm not. I think I should reiterate this:

The Icecrown and Dragon Soul comparisons are there purely because they're the tiers that have seen the most involvement.

I explicitly state at the start of the thread that those sections are heavily leaned against being usable data and I think all they show is that progressive nerfs worked. That's why I also ask for people not to point out the flaws in those sections, because I know what they are. If you look at my post history throughout this thread, you'll see I agree with pretty much every criticism.

What those graphs do show, is that players didn't give up when progressive nerfs were being put in place, and even when LFR was there (in the case of Dragon Soul).

If someone wants to argue that most of the guilds having trouble with normal modes are simply breaking up and falling into LFR, they can; the data clearly supports that assumption. The numbers for T11 and T12 are actually pretty healthy for 10-man normal modes all in all, though it's a pretty sharp decline.

What I urge people to be looking at is the normal mode participation rate in Mists of Pandaria.

Heart of Fear, particularly, is absolutely devastating and sheds more than half of the guilds that killed the Stone Guard on its own.

While we can argue that these individuals are giving up because they can, given a queued loot dispenser being available, this alarming drop in normal modes simply isn't sustainable if allowed to continue.

I hope that clears up any confusion about the first section of the post, and where you should be concentrating.

[Glorious Leader]

Will you stop putting words in my mouth already? You're making this sound personal and you just add whatever word you find fitting, to make your point sound more valid - it ain't working. So stop putting words in my mouth already.

You believe that "we people" and our "moral world view" is what killed raiding, I say that the decline in raiding guilds and players in general is more complex than just elitists and their moral world views.

Btw, you didn't really respond to what I said about improving, did you now? Let me ask a different way then, a way you won't just try to ignore.

Why didn't you post a thread in the raiding forum here on MMO, asking for help with Normal Horridon, providing logs and wait for people to reply? Why have you spend so much time her on MMO complaining about the difficulty of ToT, rather than asking for tips and help? Surely there's people here able to point out where you need to change your approach or tell you why exactly you're wiping. Wouldn't that have been time better spend?

Don't ignore it this time.....

I actually did post raid logs. We had already killed Horridon by that time though. Were already 11/12 and I don't need or want your help. Effectively though the root of what your saying is that people don't just try enough. They'd rather complain on forums. Well I find that to be far more insulting (it suggests that they are in fact lazy and just entitled and whiners) and also wrong. They quit raiding. They don't come on forums to complain or to get help. They simple leave. It's patronizing in the extreme even if you don't intend it to be that way. hell it's fucking NORMAL. When I get normal is D3 or SC2 I didn't go to a website or forum for it. I just beat the game because well ITS NORMAL. God NOrmal sc2 holds your hand so fucking much. Jesus. I know you want to deflect away from raid difficulty well you can't or at least you can't for much longer. Say it with me now the trend of increasing complexity and difficulty is unsustainable. A correction will have to be made.

[voxTree]

Now I don't know if your raiders are anything like this guy but I bet that there's a lot of players around just like him. And it doesn't matter how much you nerf Normal modes for that type of people, not when the fights evolve around mechanics rather than dps check. Cause in the end, players like that need LFR mode or Patchwerk style fights in order to defeat them.

My point is, that if you're that casual, why even bother with Normal mode? And inb4 you say that you do research and play your class right etc, I bet that if we armory your raiders and look at your logs, we could point out several things they're doing fundamentally wrong. Things that could easily be fixed, if you bothered reading up on your class.

Exactly. Which is why I brought up the poor recruitment = less progression view a few pages back.

Finding quality raiders is hard nowadays. We've gone through a shaman who didn't use their Ascendance/other CDs properly, and when they did they spammed Lightning Bolt in Ascendance as elemental (they also maxxed out at around 80k DPS in ~510 gear). We had a hunter who had no idea how to AOE as survival... apparently Multishot is a hard concept. Had a mage who barely used his level 90 talents and had no idea what Ice Block was. I can go on and on about other applicants who outright failed miserably. People who have no idea what a hit cap is, etc.

People are just lazy now. You can nerf the content into the ground and they will still probably have problems with it. To be completely honest, if you haven't cleared normal ToT by now then your guild is either happy with it's easy-going pace, your raiders don't care, or your leaders aren't very good and you're using horrible strategy.

Downtime between attempts also plays a factor in casual progression. Depending on the run back, my guild pulls again within 3 minutes generally. Some of the casual raids I've seen sit around and tolerate random AFKs between wipes, often taking a large chunk out of their raid night.

Bottom line is there's a million factors in play when it comes to ToT progression. I think it's silly that casual raiders are calling for nerfs. Work harder, friends. Put some effort in. I'm fairly certain that Blizzard doesn't design raids (outside of LFR) for friends and family guilds who refuse to read up on the content and refuse to discipline their raiders.