Rising difficulty

[AeneasBK]

Immerseus/Protectors - Easy
Norushen - Harder
Pride/Galakras/Juggernaut/ - Easy
Shamans - Harder
Nazgrim - Easy
Malkorok - Harder
Spoils - Easy
Thok - Hard
Siegecrafter/Klaxxi - Easy
Garrosh - Hard

I'm not disputing your experiences; I've edited it to reflect our guilds experiences. Mostly the same but found Dark Shaman much tougher than Nazgrim.

Also for some reason we suggered on Malkorok. Its like the simplest boss fight in tiers; just unforgiving if you screw up.

[Rosstafa]

We literally one shot Consorts without even looking at strats. Horridon kept us busy from the 2nd raiding night to the last pull on the 6th.

Same here. Horridon lived up to his name pre-nerf. Consorts and Klaxxi are both surprisingly easy considering the fact they're second to last bosses. Perhaps Blizzard made them easier so we go into the much harder final bosses with more confidence.

I'm not disputing your experiences; I've edited it to reflect our guilds experiences. Mostly the same but found Dark Shaman much tougher than Nazgrim.

Also for some reason we suggered on Malkorok. Its like the simplest boss fight in tiers; just unforgiving if you screw up.

That's interesting. We killed the Dark Shamans on our first attempt, though I think we got lucky. We wiped on it on later attempts, but not much.

[Sinndra]

ehh.. i dont guess i really care much one way or the other. i vote for having more choice in which bosses a group fights, and when. Ulduar, ICC and to a lesser extent Naxx 2.0, were good examples of this. dont arbitrarily make a boss fight harder simply because its further down the hallway. some groups based on skill or comp, will find some bosses harder and some easier. they shouldnt all be the same difficulty for everyone at all times.

having varying difficulties based on skill/comp and multiple roads thru a raid = more fun with less wasted time. some groups simply handle some mechanics better than others. or they learn it faster than they learn others. being blocked by one hard boss knowing a much easier boss is on the other side makes everyone feel like they are wasting time. having issues on this boss? ok lets go try this other boss, maybe we can handle its mechanics better. that way we are possibly downing 5 bosses a week instead of just 2.

[Reyina]

Thinking about it more, I think I voted wrong. Rising difficulty makes more sense.

[dusselldorf]

I would prefer being able to do bosses, aside from the final boss, in any order.

[Reyina]

I would prefer being able to do bosses, aside from the final boss, in any order.

Ulduar was nicely non-linear. We should see more of that.

[Deleted]

Rising difficulty, but I think SoO did it more in tiers rather than a normal, gradual increase.

Immerseus/Protectors - Easy
Norushen - Harder
Pride/Galakras/Juggernaut/Shamans - Easy
Nazgrim - Harder
Malkorok/Spoils - Easy
Thok - Hard
Siegecrafter/Klaxxi - Easy
Garrosh - Hard

There seems to be tiers almost, so you can kill two easier bosses before hitting a harder one. It's better that way in my opinion, because it means all the really tough bosses aren't at the end, but spread through the raid without making it feel irregular. ToT was not well scaled to begin with, so you had some hard bosses where they really shouldn't have been. SoO overall has spread the tough ones out nicely, while still maintaining an overall gradual increase in difficulty with the rest.

Mathematically checking the progress numbers on wowprogress, it would define the average difficulty of the normal bosses to be from easiest to hardest

sha<<<paragons<juggernaut<protectors<nazgrim<spoils<malkorok<siege<shamans<norushen<<<gala kras<<<<<thok<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<ga
rosh


and ehr, for some reason my posts writes "gal akras" instead of galakras even though it is galakras when I edit it, weird.

[PrairieChicken]

Rising difficulty but we currently have too much (number of modes). Needs to be reduced

[AeneasBK]

That's interesting. We killed the Dark Shamans on our first attempt, though I think we got lucky. We wiped on it on later attempts, but not much.

Yeah for us Dark Shaman is always just a bit messy really usually one or two deaths to something random. DEFINATELY not looking forward to THAT heroic. But I think due to the emphasis on killing adds and not hitting him in defensive stance we were given before we reached him; we found Nazgrim a breeze.

Are you 10 man or 25; jsut again, curiosity

and ehr, for some reason my posts writes "gal akras" instead of galakras even though it is galakras when I edit it, weird.

You made that list all one word so its breaking it up in the neatest way it can think of I guess.

[twelvethirty]

Rising. Nobody liked being cockblocked on Horridon

[Fluttershy]

Rising difficulty is best.

don't want this random ass @!#!@ like tier 11 and ToT. Though SoO starts at "0 difficulty" to "minor difficulty" for 3/4ths of the instance.

[Deleted]

Rising difficulty is best.

don't want this random ass @!#!@ like tier 11 and ToT. Though SoO starts at "0 difficulty" to "minor difficulty" for 3/4ths of the instance.

Well, if you take a look at the failure rates of both raids in normal mode after about 4 months, this is what you get.

Red line ToT
Blue line SoO

Y-axis: Failure rate in %
X-axis: Boss Nr. (keep in mind ToT 12 bosses, SoO 14 bosses)





The difference seems bigger in ToT, but that is simply because the raid itself was much much harder. The relative difference between the bosses were in fact a lot smaller, but because the raid was harder the differences seem bigger. Horrido only had a failure rate 2x~ of Tortos which is far smaller than the difference between juggernaut or shamans, and almost twice as small as the difference between Galakras and Juggernaut.

And if you compare the peaks. Garrosh and Thok has the two highest failure rates in normal mode, Garrosh had a failure rate 250% higher than Thoks, the easiest boss where Sha, which Garrosh had a failure rate 4523% higher than Shas. Compare that to ToT, where the difference between Horridon and LS, Horr was only 44% higher and 838% higher than Primordius which was the easiest boss.

So relatively speaking, ToT was far smoother and linear in difficulty, however beause SoO was so much easier, it is far less noticeable there.

[nekobaka]

Well generally they was at least always rising just tended to ramp up faster towards the end while at the same time there would be fluctuations especially with more open choice progression paths. Blizzard has gone in with more effort to try and equalize them.

At least publicly I have not seen Blizzard say they purposefully try to make such wide variances within the same raid with big hang ups and generally comment about how certain bosses in the middle was harder than intended and at times have said some was too easy. Also players will perform differently with different types of mechanics and fight characteristics which can result in mechanic execution being harder despite the numbers being right from planned.

If the raid is going to be straight linear then I think it should be a ramp up and I am fine with the last boss being even a bit of a step up from that as long as the entry level heroic boss isnt a joke in comparison like it tends to be that even PuGs do it like T10 and T11 for example. For more open raids I am fine with some side bosses being harder or easier and even end wing bosses being harder like ICC. It is nice to mix things up especially with something like raiding which can get fairly routine.