Nighthold difficulty

[Selerian]

So with NH opening next week, do we have any impression on how hard it's gonna be? Considering most of the raiders of any decent guild are at least +880 ilvl, what should we expect?
I'm mostly asking in regards to Normal difficulty and whether or not it should be considered being skipped and go directly into Heroic. My guild is pretty decent but we raid only 2 times per week so with Nighthold hosting 10 bosses, even if the raid is easy in Normal, it will still be time consuming and delay our Heroic clear (and thus our Mythic progress).
What's the relevant feedback from the PTR?

[Leih]

With most of the major raid testing all the way back in Beta, and only some minor testing in the 7.1.5 PTR, it's really hard to have any clue how the tuning is going to be for Nighthold at the moment... Things have changed so much since most of the fights were tested in terms of class tuning and mechanics.

Obviously we can guess from the mechanics which fights are more complicated, but the actual tuning is a bit of a mystery right now.

[Deleted]

I have the feeling that its going to be a shit show for us plebs. All top guilds will have a roster of people with 54 traits and blizzard will tune the raid for them.

[kubuntu]

First few bosses dont look hard even on HC but after then next one are quite challenging even on normal

[Nuckels]

Nighthold mythic will be impossible to balance due to the state of AP in its current form, especially the last few bosses. You either tune Guldan around 54 traits and any guild that doesn't have 90% of their raid there fights the numbers boss and not the encounter or they tune it for 40/45 and then any raid that has 54 traits for 90% will stomp it.

Normal and heroic will probably be tuned around having 30/35 traits respectively and roughly 870/880 ilvl.

I'd say look at your rosters AP level and ilvl and base it off that. If your whole raidteam is 880+ and 35+ traits i'd just jump in to heroic.

[Akka]

As other have said, the retarded Legion design when it comes to gear power means that the raid will be either vastly undertuned, or vastly overtuned, or a mix of overtuned and undertuned.
It's just not possible to tune a raid adequately with something like a 30 % in power variance.

[Deleted]

Hope they're all as tough as m xavius.

[Aureli]

ToV was already tuned to have 35traits. Mythic Nighthold gonna be pain in the ass for most casual guild without most of their members 45+

Even last few bosses in hc gonna be hard with 35 traits.

My guild spend spend most of our raid time in last month by farming m+, you gonna change gear in Nighthold pretty fast.

Btw. Difference between 35 and 54 is like having 2 extra damage dealers in 20 man raid without increasing difficulty.

[Deleted]

I bet normal is balanced our 35 ranks, HC 42 or so and Mythic is full 54 and expectation of at least 1 BiS DPS Legendary per character.

[Teaon]

Mythic is going to be the guilds breaker, mark my words

[precious]

Guldan is the new archimonde on steroids. Many guilds will stack on him and plenty of guilds will start mythics without having kille him. Exactly like what happened in hellfire.

Normal is tuned around 35 traits and hc maybe 3-4 traits above. But guldan might need full traits and certain legendaries for hc only guilds.

[Phookah]

I feel like it might be a tad on the easy side after the whole ToV fiasco, but then again this is Blizzard.
They just throw darts at a wall to balance difficulty

[Azlo]

I bet normal is balanced our 35 ranks, HC 42 or so and Mythic is full 54 and expectation of at least 1 BiS DPS Legendary per character.

Unless there is special code that basically gives everyone a free BiS DPS legendary, I don't see how that is a good requirement at all.

[Deleted]

Unless there is special code that basically gives everyone a free BiS DPS legendary, I don't see how that is a good requirement at all.

Not a requirement but an assumption. Blizzard knows and sees the numbers that things like, for example, Shadow Priest belt/shoulders give DPS increase % wise.
Same for all DPS classes.

Same for tanks/healers. They probably tuned bosses in M under assumption.

[Azlo]

Not a requirement but an assumption. Blizzard knows and sees the numbers that things like, for example, Shadow Priest belt/shoulders give DPS increase % wise.
Same for all DPS classes.

Same for tanks/healers. They probably tuned bosses in M under assumption.

If your content is tuned around it, it becomes a requirement. For the record, while I am salty about legendaries, I have never said that they were a requirement in EN because it was tuned without the expectation of you having any. Pre-nerf Guarm on the other hand, clearly expected 35 traits + 1-2 DPS legendaries, so it became a requirement at that point.

Yes, blizzard has to know that there are those that have done 2000 MoS runs out there, but to tune your game around it means that you expect the entire playerbase to have done 2000 MoS runs.

I'd rather them give us another EN in terms of tuning than ToV. Having the talk with the guild to require that everyone grind out to 54 traits to even progress sounds like a nightmare.

[antelope591]

They have no choice but to balance mythic nighthold for 54 traits, at least the later bosses. So I imagine its gonna be pretty hard.

[Deleted]

I hope they tune NH as hard as ToV. Yeah, we are still stuck on M Odyn. However once Ilg fell, we cleared EN M the same reset (last year). Cenarius took a little more than 30 attempts.
Xavius - 9.

No. I want to be stuck on bosses, beat my head against the monitor and feel the game resist me. I hope I'll get that. Once basic know-how of EN M encounters was clear, they fell.

Everyone knows how to do M Odyn yet it we still wipe.

[Kazuchika]

Mythic is going to be the guilds breaker, mark my words

Yeah can't wait till Gul'dan dies in 4 days to either Method or Serenity and then other people get stuck on it for a week, cheat, get banned again and we get to laugh all over again

[Spotnick]

Depends if the tuning is based on 54 traits or 35.

[Azlo]

I hope they tune NH as hard as ToV. Yeah, we are still stuck on M Odyn. However once Ilg fell, we cleared EN M the same reset (last year). Cenarius took a little more than 30 attempts.
Xavius - 9.

No. I want to be stuck on bosses, beat my head against the monitor and feel the game resist me. I hope I'll get that. Once basic know-how of EN M encounters was clear, they fell.

Everyone knows how to do M Odyn yet it we still wipe.

This is a problem though.

Mythic Ilgynoth, for example, was tuned probably at ilevel 880 with <35 traits.

When you and I hit Mythic Ilgynoth, we were likely around 885-890, with 35-40 traits on your raiders. The fact that we aren't as skilled as the top guilds means that we use gear and artifact traits to "nerf" the content so that it can be done.

If Mythic NH is tuned around 54 traits, full NH gear and BiS legendaries, there is nowhere for us to go. We might get maybe 2-3 ilevels from having ilevel 940 legendaries rather than 910's a few months from now, but the overall gear between us and the top guilds are already minimal due to titanforging.

Top guilds are going to walk into mythic NH with gear very similar to what we, being months behind, are going to walk into mythic NH with. You will see Blizzard nerfs to bosses, and imo that's the worst feeling ever - to kill things post-nerf.