Just How Hard Were TBC Heroics vs Cata Heroics or Mythic 20+?

[crazyfool319]

Bull. This idea that people today are just SO much better is one of the more conceited arguments people use here. You might have played with shit players but I didn't.

As a couple of people have mentioned, things were just different then. Threat was an issue, CC was needed in TBC and in combat CC (Blind, Kidney Shot, Sheep, etc) were one of the things that set good DPS apart from not so good DPS.

So because you played with good players that means all players were good? Back in TBC the most hardcore players had approximately how many days worth of play time sunk into their whole account? I somehow dont buy that players were just as good back then as they are now with the massive practice people have had with their classes. Just think about what your play time is now compared to back then. Even if someone was a massive addict for several years, their time actually playing wouldnt compare to someone who has the learned twitch from playing the game for a decade. You can say all you want that players back then were just as good, but if i could magically transport some of the top end raiders from tbc to raid with today or raid with any of the current top 10 guilds in the world, i would choose the modern player for practically any situation outside of waiting 2 hours to fill the raid.

[Fritters154]

You say evolved, I say devolved... Making it mindless AoE spam is not "evolved beyond that", it's devolved to no longer need it, it's the opposite, it's dumbing down for the people too stupid to use their polymorph button, and it's quite honestly sad.

If you really think an M+20 is just mindless AoE spam then you and your group must be absurdly geared. CC management is still a thing and is honestly more complex now. Sure, it has more to do with short CCs like stuns but coordination of stuns is far more involved than polying something in the corner and forgetting that it is even there.

The biggest challenge in TBC was never CC. The challenge was how tanking worked. Tanks were relatively soft, granted everyone was with less personal CDs back then. They also barely generated more threat than the dps and many mobs had threat dump mechanics, thus managing threat was actually a thing. It was basically as if Skittish was always on.

[Beelzabi]

The hard part of old raids and dungeons was:

1 - Finding decet players.
2 - Those players had to be of one specific class for the best combination, for example, a paladin tank, instead of a warrior, like others have said.
3 - Many bosses weren't balanced at all. Although they didn't have the complex mechanics we have now, those mechanics sometimes couldn't be completed, not because it was a hard mechanic, but because it wasn't balanced. The game has evolved now so you shouldn't have to worry about your class to be in a raid.

Just take a watch on any fight, and you would see how the players were so limited.

[munkeyinorbit]

I still remember the learn to play post from GC. It was pretty epic.

While the mechanics themselves were easier than Cata, the people who were doing the Heroics in BC were, on average, better players than the ones trying to do them in Cata. The reason why they were harder is that the mobs were actually dangerous. You could get one shot by a trash mob in BC. Tanks had less tools to keep aggro on the adds and there was always the chance that a DPS could aggro a mob off a tank. A tank couldn't even walk into a Heroic until they had enough defensive stats otherwise no healer could keep him up. CC needed to be used because, thunderclap could only hit 4 targets. If the tank didn't just explode, then the healer had a good chance of pulling aggro through healing aggro. Of course there were the other two tanks, I never understood why but Warriors were preferred over them every time.

Our tools were so limited that groups were looking for mage, rogue + 1 more CC as there were a lot of humanoids that could be CCed. If there were a lot of demons then Locks were considered good. Hunters were a positive but it was so hard to find one that could CC a mob for long enough as the CD on traps was less than the duration of a trap and most of them were retarded.

[Echocho]

Cata heroics were maybe half as difficult, maybe a little more

[Aggrophobic]

Dungeons were not that hard, we just lacked a lot of the tools but also the knowledge we have today.
Guides were not that common and most players actually had to learn how bosses and worked and also how their class worked. It was not uncommon to find players that had done some of the harder content in the game but didn't actually know how to play their class in an optimal way.
You also had to spend way more time to get gear. Today you will be geared enough for the content befor you even do it. In TBC you actually gor the gear from HC and raids, you could not really gear up for raids befor you started raiding.

The game was different back then but the actual dungeons or raids were not that hard, things just took more time.

[Alvito]

lol fucking no they weren't. the longest was about 30mins and that was Slabs.

TBC heroics were relatively easy. Most people just think they were hard because they were Bad players at that time in the early years of WoW and remember it being difficult for themselves.

Mechanics were mostly braindead,

Shattered halls took a long as time to do. There is a reason why after you killed the first boss you had 45 minute timer to get to the end for the Mags attunement quest. You did have things like Mech that took no time, too. The length and pace of the dungeons were all over the place back then. MgT took forever when it was new too since groups had to so heavily cc and crawl through there. The biggest reason things were hard is almost all mobs would kill non tanks. So you could only pull what your tank/healer could handle and in some cases what their classes would allow.

- - - Updated - - -

Cata heroics were maybe half as difficult, maybe a little more

At launch Cata heroics weren't too bad, they were just loads more challenging then the aoe zergfest that Wrath was at the end and people didn't know how to react. It didn't help that classes were just majorly over hauled so people were out of sorts over that too.

[Swiftshadow]

mythic+ affixes to me seems like a cheap recycling of content by making things difficult using Diablo 3 type affixes.

I would rather go back to Cata's style of "1 or 2" CCs every pull then this headache-inducing experience that is high mythic+ now.

[Alvito]

Also, TBC raids took months to be fully cleared by a single guild. Why was it that Lady Vash took so much longer than Mythic Kil'jaedin to clear? Was he really that much easier than her? I assume she was so bugged that it was impossible.

You couldn't extend lock outs back then. You had to reclear everything week to week. People also had to be attuned to the raids so you couldn't run alt/split runs to practice like people do now.

[kaganpwnz]

the game has evolevd, back then during TBC and early cata dungeons you actually had to form a group, and it wasnt the holy trinity.

tank
dps
cc
heal
dps that can OT

this group config would succeed. its why mages rogues hunters and locks were actually more viable then some of the hybrid classes. while group comp does matter in high level mythic+ the game itself is different, in TBC/cata if the tank had aggro on 2 big dungeon mobs he would usually die. they would need to be pulled correctly with finesse or cced correctly.

now its just a big dick fest, smashing ur dick everywhere trying to get a good time on a chest.

sometimes i do miss the tediousness of tbc/cata, but i dont think that kind of tediousness would survive in a game in 2017.

however the same rule applies to m20, tbc dungeons, a group of high level players with voice chat and good synergy will always smash them. did it back then and doing it now.

[Deleted]

Difficulty wise?
Imagine having skittish at all times, actually a buffed skittish since a tank had more trouble back then than it could have nowdays with skittish.
The damage you took from adds/bosses wasnt that bad, maby like a normal mythic dungeon now? which is not hard but keep in mind people were not geared at the start of the expansion, so imagine doing a normal mythic with 800-820ilvl ish gear now, which again is not that bad.

[Einsz]

The amount of misinformation in this thread....nope they weren't as hard as people here glorify them to be, there were even zerging groups forming in trade chat that blasted through them for badges. Also keep in mind nobody checked your experience back in the days most groups just invited anyone who whispered them including the most retarded people the game has ever seen.

[Narveid]

Difficulty wise?
Imagine having skittish at all times, actually a buffed skittish since a tank had more trouble back then than it could have nowdays with skittish.
The damage you took from adds/bosses wasnt that bad, maby like a normal mythic dungeon now? which is not hard but keep in mind people were not geared at the start of the expansion, so imagine doing a normal mythic with 800-820ilvl ish gear now, which again is not that bad.

The damage was definitely worse, and I say that as someone who was geared back then. The damage was badly overtuned, with some mobs being unable to be cc'ed and practically two shotting tanks. Sethekk Halls is a great example. It throws two of them at you, and you just have to deal.

[Zyky]

Don't confuse most of legion mythic encounters with this. WoD and Mista had some brutally hard fights
That weren't just "let's add a one shot mechanic!". ToS is definitely a terrible mythic raid (i've stopped raiding completely thanks to M sassypants) but WoD raids were amazing.

I mean I raided every tier at a high level since Vanilla, WoD and Mists did not have brutally hard fights, outside of Heroic Ragnaros. Heroic Spine required burst class stacking, not hard. Heroic Lei-Shen required class stacking, not a mechanically hard encounter. WoD raids were just as bad as ToS, you had garbage like Mythic Blast Furnace that just destroyed you for screwing up even once, or Mythic Iron Maidens that literally had the ability to target the same person with 4 different mechanics at the same time that all required you to do something different with each one. WoD and 20 man Mythic started this problem of "if one person dies you might as well wipe it" and that's a pretty shitty way to design raid encounters.

[Soeroah]

Cata heroics were tough, but TBC heroics were fairly difficult. Not enough that I couldn't tank them, but I will never forget the one Steamvaults run I did that took 5 hours due to a combination of moronic DPS, leavers and the lack of a dungeon finder meaning every time someone left we had to hike back to Shattrath, get someone with the right CC to join, bring them back and continue on, and any wipe would cause more people to leave.

God I'm glad that's not a thing anymore. I know that was an outlier, but still.

[Manabomb]

lol fucking no they weren't. the longest was about 30mins and that was Slabs.

TBC heroics were relatively easy. Most people just think they were hard because they were Bad players at that time in the early years of WoW and remember it being difficult for themselves.

Mechanics were mostly braindead,

Ahahahahahahaha, ahahahahahhahahahahaha. No.

Talk to me when you healed as a holy paladin in heroic shattered halls timer run pre black temple and go fuck yourself, because nobody fucking did that.

And slabs might have been 30 minutes if the comp was flawless. Even the quickest random slabs were 45 minutes+ even after BoJ gear became available from IoQD. Speaking of IoQD, I raise you Magister's Terrace, aka "lol spriest has no cc, LF mage".

[Deleted]

Also, TBC raids took months to be fully cleared by a single guild. Why was it that Lady Vash took so much longer than Mythic Kil'jaedin to clear? Was he really that much easier than her? I assume she was so bugged that it was impossible.

There were less paths to the gear levels required for end of raid bosses in vanilla and TBC. Even with some of the badge gear, you'd have to take multiple kills to gear people, and the idea of "split raids" and having alts for that purpose was not a thing due to the time investment required in having a character at that level, attuned, rep'd up, and geared.

I'm not *praising* how long it took, just explaining why. Nowadays, you can have an alt at 110, geared for raiding, and taking part in a mythic attempt in a short space of time, as long as RNG is with you for legendaries on some specs.

[Manabomb]

I mean I raided every tier at a high level since Vanilla, WoD and Mists did not have brutally hard fights, outside of Heroic Ragnaros. Heroic Spine required burst class stacking, not hard. Heroic Lei-Shen required class stacking, not a mechanically hard encounter. WoD raids were just as bad as ToS, you had garbage like Mythic Blast Furnace that just destroyed you for screwing up even once, or Mythic Iron Maidens that literally had the ability to target the same person with 4 different mechanics at the same time that all required you to do something different with each one. WoD and 20 man Mythic started this problem of "if one person dies you might as well wipe it" and that's a pretty shitty way to design raid encounters.

Yeah, but mythic blackfuse, mythic thok and mythic spoils were all fun yet challenging boss fights. Granted, you could holy priest solo heal mythic garrosh after a week or two of gearing, but at the time they held some difficulty. Nobody expected how dumb SoO would get with those trinkets+orange cloak for everyone.

[Deleted]

Difficulty of dungeons could be understood in two ways atleast. One could simply measure the amount of wipes you have experienced in old dungeons compared to current ones, and it can give you some answer. But I guess the point people have been making is that dungeon design itself should mostly consider the difficulty in terms of how interesting the gameplay is and how much variety there is.

In this regard I would just like to point out one thing and that is that you should never ask the opinion of the tanks. Compared to the differences in experience that dpssers can have, in the old WoW, tanks have never done but one and the same thing, which is to control the mobs and their incoming damage at the same time. Now in TBC for example, when a dungeon became too hard for one tank, the other players had to step in to do part of the job that tanks also do. It did not have to involve only long lasting cc abilities but could extend to more tank-like methods, such as kiting. In theory there is no limit to how much of the responsibility could be shifted away from the tank, and from the tank's perspective, having only one or even zero mobs to deal with is perhaps making things easier. If they ever say that there is no responsibility, or in fact a response to something, they are only considering themselves and not the group's experience as a whole.

Today's dungeon instead has no limit on how much one tank can push himself further with the same old methods, by pulling more and more packs. This is supposedly increasing the challenge for him, but atleast if everything is handled with an aoe ability, then the experience intensifies only numberwise and is actually the same experience as he always had with less gear etc.

[Deleted]

Only people with tainted glasses belive that tbc dungeons where hard. the hardest part was that hc dungeons were gated behind rep (ah the good ol days )