Next Tier Race

[Deleted]

A lot of encounters in Vanilla were bugged and/or abilities worked differently. Was 4 Horsemen a hard fight? Mechanically not really, but taunts could be resisted at that time, making it necessary to gear a lot of warrior tanks and even giving them a +spell trinket which had to be farmed.

Also, does anyone remember what had to be done to be prepared for a raid night when you were progressing Naxx? All world buffs, food buffs and flasks etc.? Mechanics were so simple in Vanilla, raiding was so time-consuming. How long did BWL take? Suppression room and lab room? Holy crap.

And re-introducing this into WoW nowadays would be very bad, I like how it is today. With the BRF World First race over, I can say those races are getting more interesting all the time.

[Erlaya]

There are quite a few things that should change on the raiding front in my mind that could change the race for world first for the better

1) Release Mythic at the same time as Heroic - There is zero reason to stagger it now. Basically the first week just becomes 9 runs to gear your entire raid in the newest tier.

2) Heroic/Mythic Shared lockout - This would basically mean that instead of doing a massive 9ish runs on heroic with your raiders to get them all that gear on week one you would have to make a choice of this vs actually trying to progress through the dungeon on Mythic. Now gear checks become a lot more apparent as players haven't been funneled as much loot in the first couple of weeks of progression.

3) DPS Checks up front on bosses and mechanics in the back. Take Blackhand for example, the DPS check is P1 and P3 with the mechanic check being P2. If your DPS check is up front it forces the guild to have the gear before they can even begin to work on the mechanic portion of the fight. Additionally if you keep the DPS check short enough it doesn't feel like you slog through each time. If it's the reverse you end up with 10minute fights that have 8min of perfect execution followed by a 2min DPS check which when failed means you have to start all over with 8min of perfect execution. Doing it the other way around makes it so the first time you execute perfectly you win.

4) There is no reason you can't make a certain boss ability on Mythic require something from the instance. Think Ony cloak for Nefarian in BWL, but with less RNG involved (I'd have to sit and think on this one to come up with a sufficient idea). Maybe a final boss ability does massive damage (but is survivable with CDs/Gear) without this certain trinket, but you can get two people in your raid the trinket each week through a quest item drop off the previous boss. So given enough weeks the boss is nerfed by gear and more of your raid having the trinket in question.

There are many ways to increase the length of time that an instance lasts while not massively over tuning the instance or straight up breaking it and I commend Blizzard's encounter designers for being mostly spot on with doing this, it would still be nice to see more LK length races (without the overall instance nerf/gated attempts).

[kidsafe]

With t17 race closing down with several guilds managing to kill Mythic Blackhand, I really begin to wonder if this race is just simply too fast? I remember back in the old days of Vanilla and TBC, A single boss took weeks to kill. Yes, I know that these bosses were ridiculously over-tuned, and extremely few guilds managed to see the full content prior to a nerf. Blizzard has shifted its stance towards allowing more people to see the content and allowing more and more people to experience the things they make. However, that is the reason LFR, Normal, and Heroic exist.

LOL. Mythic Blackhand just dismantled Blood Legion, and random casuals on the sidelines want the content to be harder?

This is the most difficult encounter Blizzard has ever designed. Guilds took forever to kill MC/BWL/AQ40/Naxx bosses because 1) everyone was terrible back then and 2) 40-man raids spread that shit talent even thinner. In addition, the best guilds these days are putting in insane hours just to get this far. It's been 5 weeks, and how many guilds have Blackhand down? Yeah...

[Deleted]

race is too fast? wat

T9- cleared first week
T10 - all bosses that werent gated with limited attempts were killed the week they were available.
T12- cleared 2nd reset
T13- cleared 2nd asian reset
T14 - raids were cleared the first week they were out
T15- cleared 2nd reset
T16 - cleared 2nd reset
T17-cleared 2nd reset

Every single tier since heroic was introduced in T9 that wasnt gated/ had limited attempts was cleared the first or second week. T11 was released all at once instead of raid by raid like they did in T14 and T17 and was available on normal day 1 of the expansion and all of heroic on 2 week 2 so you cant really compare that one to every other tier.

[sdracklryeg]

race is too fast? wat

T9- cleared first week
T10 - all bosses that werent gated with limited attempts were killed the week they were available.
T12- cleared 2nd reset
T13- cleared 2nd asian reset
T14 - raids were cleared the first week they were out
T15- cleared 2nd reset
T16 - cleared 2nd reset
T17-cleared 2nd reset

Every single tier since heroic was introduced in T9 that wasnt gated/ had limited attempts was cleared the first or second week. T11 was released all at once instead of raid by raid like they did in T14 and T17 and was available on normal day 1 of the expansion and all of heroic on 2 week 2 so you cant really compare that one to every other tier.

You could go back further than that

The hardmodes of Ulduar were available from week 1 but people obviously didn't bother with them so if you look at week 2 as the start of the Ulduar, everything but Alone in the Darkness and Heartbreaker, both of which could be argued as just being overturned (Heartbreaker especially, all the top 19 kills happened the day of the sixth reset), were killed within 2 resets

All of Tier 7 was killed in 3 days

Sunwell was gated but everything was killed the week it opened, if you added together the days taken, It would have been cleared in 2 weeks if it was all available

Black Temple was cleared in 2 weeks

4/5 of Hyjal was cleared in week 1, and then Nihilum focused on Black Temple instead so Archimonde took 3 resets

[Deleted]

Times change and they will never change back. The top guilds (at least Method) have already mix-maxed everything they can and from Blizzard viewpoint, there isn't really much more you can do to challenge them in a meaningful way without offering literally impossible content. The argument about "four horsemen lasted x number of days blah blah" doesn't stand anymore; if you would bring the Method squad back in time to Naxxramas40 and give them exactly the same tools and gear that raiders had at that time and wipe their memory of anything they know about it...they would still kill it in one weekend. Back then, every single guild raided casually, from today's viewpoint. It didn't take much more than one hardcore- minded leader (Kungen) to gather those world firsts.

Anyhow, there's probably still some tools to try. The limited attempts thing doesn't really work because it would just cause a massive alt-gearing process where the top guilds progress on the boss with a bunch of alt squads and whoever does the most work with gearing alts, wins. But you could for example make an instance/boss that opens daily at 8PM server time and closes at 11 PM server time and that's it.

Or another option would be an epic end-boss fight that lasts for 30-60 minutes with 10+ phases and has almost zero room for error. A ridiculous guild killer that would traumatize all hardcore raiders for life, sure, but hilariously awesome from a "spectator" viewpoint. That would obviously require quite an effort from Blizzard's side to be done properly.

This is 100% true. Back in Classic, MC/BWL/AQ times, I raided with For the Horde (later Manaflask) on Destromath EU, which was arguably one of the best EU/World Guilds at the time.

Looking back, out of the 40 people there were at least 50% not super dedicated and min/maxing players. I remember that when we got our EU Chromaggus First Kill, some people had the Icy Chill Enchant on their Weapons, which for people who dont know that, did absolutley nothing in a Raid envorionment. The Encounters were much, much simpler and people were definitely not as experienced and dedicated to min/maxing like nowadays. BUT we had a very dedicated staff of raidleaders who made up the Strats and we simply followed it. Encounters were not finetuned to the last milisecond, didnt have super close enrage timers, and didnt require the preperation guilds nowadays show.

It comes down to this. Comparing old time raiding to nowadays, it's like comparing bread with pizza. Encounters lasted longer because people were not as experienced, didnt take time off of work and school to raid 18 hours a day. Our "progress" Schedule was a normal 6 pm to 10 pm schedule 5 days a week, which was considered super hardcore back then when you raid 5 days a week for 4 hours. It was enough back then.

Do you think guilds had over 500 wipes in 1 Week when they did 4HM back in Naxx? No they didnt, they probably didnt rack up those 500 wipes over the Months the encounter was alive. Take it for what you want, but with the effort players nowadays put in (taking vacation days for progressing 12+ hours a day, theorycrafting in advance to bring the best comps and so on) and most important the experience they have from over 10 years of raiding, it is sheer impossible that Blizzard designs beatable encounters which last for over 1 week.

- - - Updated - - -

With t17 race closing down with several guilds managing to kill Mythic Blackhand, I really begin to wonder if this race is just simply too fast? I remember back in the old days of Vanilla and TBC, A single boss took weeks to kill.

This part of the post is enough to tell that you are neither even close to Mythic Blackhand nor have played in Vanilla/TBC.

[Corzo]

I don't think it goes too fast, considering the amount of time, theorycrafting, and general skill of the top world guilds. However, i wouldn't mind seeing harder tuned fights, IF Blizzard would give us the increasing 5% buff that we have seen in ICC and DS. This would make the race be harder, perhaps last longer, and still give other guilds the chance to kill content before it becomes irrelevant and meningless.

[kidsafe]

A stacking buff like in ICC and Dragonsoul was a cop-out and messed too much with encounter balance. It is a reflection on the laziness of the raid designers at the time. Each encounter should nerfed individually because increases in DPS, HPS and damage reduction affect encounters to different degrees.

And I'm sorry, but Blizzard does not owe a random world 1000 ranked guild the right to complete Mythic content every tier. Blackhand should be nerfed slightly. It doesn't need a 30% handicap over the next 3 months.

[Finbezz]

Mythic blackhand takes hundreds of wipes to down at this point and that's if you're one of the best guilds in the world. The fact you're saying it goes too fast says a lot.

[threads]

There's so many factors that exist now, a final tier boss will almost always be killed in the first week at this point. Guilds are running 5+ heroic funnel clears, practicing strats on ptr, and just better in general than they used to be.