World First of today VS World First of yesteryear

[Angelicat]

First off, congrats to all the guilds at the forefront who will down Imperator Mar'gok soon. I just want to preface this entire post by saying that this is not a way of me discrediting anyone's kills and such, as I realize that they've put in a lot of effort to get to this point and have some of the best players of their respective roles.

There's a lot of people who think that encounters of the past are nowhere near as complex as encounters of today. I agree with that for the most part - most encounters these days do dwarf the older encounters in terms of things you need to memorize and pay attention to. However, this seems to also mean to those people that because of the above, encounters of today are harder than encounters of yesterday, and while that may be true, there is something related to that I would like to discuss.

I've been raiding for a long time now, and I don't quite know when this started happening (I was in a decent guild up to cata, where we broke up and I quit for a while and came back in MoP casually for a bit before raiding more again towards the end of it up to now), but I was always under the assumption that world first guilds went into encounters with way LESS gear than what the encounter required and thus was doing something much harder than what the rest of us had to do. I went to watch a video of some of the first kills in Mythic Highmaul and their DPS was so insanely high that for certain parts of some fights that my guild has struggled with in Mythic (I.E. Brackenspore), they've made it so easy just because of how high their DPS is.

Of course, they have some of the best players and a decent amount of stacking of classes that perform best in certain encounters, but nowadays, it seems like world first guilds are actually entering the raids with the highest ilvls that is unattainable by the majority of mythic guilds in the first few weeks who don't do multiple alt runs (and I'm talking about A LOT of alt runs, which I think is a good majority of guilds, even the higher percentile of them), and possibly higher than what most guilds would start mythic at. So while encounters are harder now mechanic wise, I feel like it's unfair to say that they are harder as a whole because what used to be a disadvantage for world first guilds is actually now their biggest advantage in the world first race - having a good 10-20 Ilvl above even a "top end" guild. I won't claim it's easier however because I've never been in that position.

How do you guys feel about this? As I said, this is not a slight against anyone, but I think that as a whole, what used to be a race that most guilds could take part in has started becoming extremely exclusive over time with not just how much time you can put into your actual raids of progression, but also how much time you can put into outside of it.

[Wildtree]

I believe, the guilds of the past pride themselves into accomplishing things with sub-par gear rather than with as much gear as it gets....

Guilds of today however using the tools provided by the game to maximize their outputs, and Blizzard caters to that, else the raid would have been available from day 1. But that wasn't the case.

Which means, for very serious hardcore raiders the way was:

Run 5 man heroics as soon as you can possibly do..
Run challenge modes as much as you possibly can..
Get the crafted gear items that are possible and needed. For that have your guild work together so as many raiders have their trinkets and gear fully upgraded.
Be as highly geared as it possibly gets, in order to take on the race. Like a maximized race car, if you will.
Complete your gear where needed with Normal and Heroic mode gear..
The hell, even followers gear or LFR gear cannot be neglected for those that had very bad luck with drops from the other sources..

So, the times changed, the approach changed, and the mindset changed too.

[Raiju]

For the earlier boss in mythic, sure. They have more gear than many going in.

For the later ones? Not so much. While the top guilds are doing these fights in 570~ ilvl, the gear dropping throughout the instance is 585 (before WF). Most of the slower guilds will be predominantly mythic geared by the time they are on margok, which means by then we will have a massive gear advantage over those trying to kill it right now.

[Wildtree]

For the earlier boss in mythic, sure. They have more gear than many going in.

For the later ones? Not so much. While the top guilds are doing these fights in 570~ ilvl, the gear dropping throughout the instance is 585 (before WF). Most of the slower guilds will be predominantly mythic geared by the time they are on margok, which means by then we will have a massive gear advantage over those trying to kill it right now.

585? Then I stick with LFR. That gives me better gear

[Angelicat]

For the earlier boss in mythic, sure. They have more gear than many going in.

For the later ones? Not so much. While the top guilds are doing these fights in 570~ ilvl, the gear dropping throughout the instance is 585 (before WF). Most of the slower guilds will be predominantly mythic geared by the time they are on margok, which means by then we will have a massive gear advantage over those trying to kill it right now.

Well does that not depend on the number of "freebies" in mythic? An average guild in the first week of mythic will probably only be capable of killing Kargath, and they will take longer to get to that 670 ilvl point without doing multiple alt raids even in Heroic. So while they may eventually get to Mar'gok with a higher ilvl, it will have taken them far, far longer, since they won't be getting as many kills on the harder mythic bosses and thus will have a harder time getting there.

I mean, Butcher is like the ultimate patchwerk for the most part with strict healing requirements. There's nothing really special about that fight besides the DPS and healing requirement, and when guilds are already 4 healing it and having the DPS to beat the fight, then that probably means the place as a whole is doable with that Ilvl and that anything else they gain is just icing on the cake at that point (this could be proven wrong on Imperator obviously).

Besides all that though, I was really just touching on world first kills mainly.

[Deepsidedj]

For the earlier boss in mythic, sure. They have more gear than many going in.

For the later ones? Not so much. While the top guilds are doing these fights in 570~ ilvl, the gear dropping throughout the instance is 585 (before WF). Most of the slower guilds will be predominantly mythic geared by the time they are on margok, which means by then we will have a massive gear advantage over those trying to kill it right now.

I had 570 in SoO lol, these guilds are so bad.

[Raiju]

Yes, typo for 685 guys :P point stands @Angelicat most classes get 2 upgrades from kargath iirc, meaning before you even look at other fairly easy mythic bosses you'd have similar or higher ilvl than the world first guilds.

[Dangg]

I think there was a huge increase in difficulty in every raid tier until naxx 40 in classic, continuing a bit until late BC and then it stayed pretty much the same with slight variation.

If you watch a Molten Core videos compared to Ulduar or Lich King it's like a different game in terms of how much slacking and bad play is allowed. Lich King until now looks similar in terms of flawless play needed other than changes in gameplay.


Some bosses might have more mechanics, but that doesn't necessary mean that they are more punishing, have higher dps/healing requirments or less room for mistakes.

[Deleted]

op is right, raiding today is more about time and less about skill

[mercychan]

I think alt groups really started back when Paragon brought alts to practice on Algalon's 60 minute timer in Ulduar, and then you saw a lot of top end guilds doing it for Heroic ICC's limited pulls. Getting lots of gear the first week was a consequence of the flexible system, where you stacked alts who weren't saved to get more loot to drop and funnel all of that loot to mains. Guilds did two to five+ alt runs, depending on how hardcore/prepared they were. This is depressing to me because now top end raiding is gated behind being able to run alt groups for 60+ hours in a week ON TOP of pulling a mythic boss for hours of attempts. This problem is exclusive to WoD because of three separate difficulties(655,670,685) with their own lockouts and the flexible system on two of those. It's become a super-ultra grindfest and reeks of burnout. The difference between the top 20 and the top 100 this tier was a raid average of 20 ilvls on the first week, and that is incredibly retarded.

[twelvethirty]

World first then was for fun, world first now is to pretend youre a big deal and that raiding is an e-sport or something.

[Spotnick]

You seem to think gear is the only reason for world first.

Those guys don't have guides, they have to create a whole strategy and execute it perfectly.

Plus, the real race will start soon, this tier barely started. Everybody will be evenly geared for Blackrock Foundry.

[Brianjosel]

World first then was for fun, world first now is to pretend youre a big deal and that raiding is an e-sport or something.

And in my opinion, this has gone on to mold how the game is designed.

[Forgottenone]

Vanilla through Wotlk world fists were something may guilds talked about, they seemed important and people followed the big guilds. I notice now that only a couple people even bother looking at top guilds but the majority of my raid doesn't care.

World first are still special, just a different kind of special now.

[ThrashMetalFtw]

Vanilla through Wotlk world fists were something may guilds talked about, they seemed important and people followed the big guilds. I notice now that only a couple people even bother looking at top guilds but the majority of my raid doesn't care.

And yeah, that is obviously just your guild, not majority of them. WF races now are infinitely more interesting than they used to be back in the days.

As for Blizzards design philosophy, there is a clear difference between pre-TBC raids, TBC raids, WotLK raids excluding end bosses, and WotLK end-bosses/Cata/MoP/WoD raids. For the past 5 years, raiding has followed the trend started in WotLK with bosses like Yogg, HC Anub and HC LK.

[ujx]

Gear funneling from split raids in week 1 normals is bullshit and should somehow be removed. Put out mythic week 1. Method and all these tryhard guilds are going into mythic with ~666 ilvl while the average guild goes in with 640-650 ilvl depending on drops. It's bullshit. Back in the day, WF guilds would actually be undergeared, making it even more of an accomplishment.

All these new cata babies and teenage fanboys don't have a clue as to what kind of cesspool the new "race" has become. Method/paragon/etc don't have problems with enrages on fights where 90% of "average" guilds will. They can brute force mechanics because of their ilvl. Paragon 1 shot mythic Twin Ogron. Any guild that didn't do 5 split raids was having a problem meeting the enrage on that fight. Not Paragon, they weren't even close. 13 wipes on Brackenspore mythic for Paragon, most guilds again have trouble with the dps requirement.

Blizzard needs to fix this. It's already a battle of who can raid 70 hours a week, let alone afford an alt army to stack your raid with.

[Unilythe]

Gear funneling from split raids in week 1 normals is bullshit and should somehow be removed. Put out mythic week 1. Method and all these tryhard guilds are going into mythic with ~666 ilvl while the average guild goes in with 640-650 ilvl depending on drops. It's bullshit. Back in the day, WF guilds would actually be undergeared, making it even more of an accomplishment.

All these new cata babies and teenage fanboys don't have a clue as to what kind of cesspool the new "race" has become. Method/paragon/etc don't have problems with enrages on fights where 90% of "average" guilds will. They can brute force mechanics because of their ilvl. Paragon 1 shot mythic Twin Ogron. Any guild that didn't do 5 split raids was having a problem meeting the enrage on that fight. Not Paragon, they weren't even close. 13 wipes on Brackenspore mythic for Paragon, most guilds again have trouble with the dps requirement.

Blizzard needs to fix this. It's already a battle of who can raid 70 hours a week, let alone afford an alt army to stack your raid with.

So... You have to put in a shitton of work to get world first, and that's a bad thing?
So you want a fair shot at world first too without putting in as much work as they do?

Yeah, it's ridiculous how much they play to get the world first, but that's the entire point. Putting in more work yields a better payoff. Why is this bad?
I'm legitimately confused at why you are upset about this.

This is coming from someone who raids 2-3 times a week, 3 hours per raid, so I am neither casual nor a hardcore raider. I'm mentioning this because most of the time the go-to response for this type of debate is "oh look another casual" or "Oh look another elitist hardcore raider".
Even with the amount of gear they have, 99% of the raiding guilds would not be able to clear even half of Highmaul Mythic.

Also, "Cata baby" is a term often used to describe people who want the game to be easier, so I have no idea how that is relevant. If anything, you want the gap between hardcore and casual to become smaller, so that would make you a "cata baby". But in the end that's just calling people names, drawing hastened conclusions, and it adds nothing to a discussion.

[Zevoa]

To quote Manaflask's interview with Premonition 3 years ago:

Time investment in raiding. Do you think it's basically a necessity to be able to raid almost all day every day now, in order to be competitive in the World First race? What are your thoughts on that?

It's 100% necessary. It began as an arms race, and I can remember back to TBC when guilds weren't actually raiding insane hours and still pulling world firsts. Then, guilds started to just raid more and more, squeezing in more raiding hours inside of their days, to beat those that used to be ahead of them. This keeps happening until guilds are essentially raiding as soon as the servers are up, and then at some insane hour early in the morning until extremely late at night. I can't pretend to know how this is actually possible for such long periods by so many guilds, but I do know that it's something that we can't do and also aren't interested in doing. We took off one day for Firelands heroic release, and that was the first day. We didn't do too bad, and were content with the progress and firsts we obtained. However, after that, we quickly fell 'behind' due to the raw difference in time we had. We're going to have the same idea for Dragon Soul; taking one day off, but then resuming a mostly normal schedule. You can only get so far or do so well within X amount of time, and apparently that's the rank we ended up at. Time to see if it varies in Dragon Soul!

In closing, do you think we're headed in the right direction in top-end raiding, on Blizzard's side and on the guild's side? (I'm refering mostly to the long hours and alts etc required now as top end guilds)

It's not required. It's just what you should do if you want to stack everything in your favor. There's nothing Blizzard can realistically do to stifle the desires of the hardcore to spend every waking hour on the game to gain an advantage. It's up to the players to think about where the line is drawn, and if they want to jump on the boat. Think back to TBC - SSC and TK saw world firsts from US and EU sides, and on the US the raids were about 4 or 5 hours long. Nowadays, that's nothing. If you put the mentality and mindset of a guild of present back to the content in TBC, you'd see everything cleared in one day. People are spending close to infinite time on the game, ie playing it endlessly. How can you realistically support that player?

http://manaflask.com/en/articles/the...le-premonition

[Dawnrage]

Putting in more time is one thing, but I think that gear is a different story. When you start playing a lot and start having a more gear than people who also play a lot but not invest all their time into something as stupid as multiple alt runs and gear funneling, then that's a problem in my opinion.

I'm fine with guilds raiding more than me doing better than me progression wise. I can't say I'm fine with guilds playing as much as I do outside of that getting more gear than I do however, simply because I don't choose to spend all my time on circumventing the lockout system. I don't know why Blizzard caters and actually encourages this either. There's stuff they can do to prevent this and make the "world first" race more fair but I guess in their eyes the race itself probably doesn't mean a thing so they couldn't care less.

[Dabrix32]

op is right, raiding today is more about time and less about skill

#1 ban DBM
#2 bring back 40 man raids.