How would you make ICC harder?

[Reynard]

I'm just a bit curious how people would beef up certain fights declared 'too easy' for ICC, though mostly what I'd like to see is common pug 'cheese' strategies rendered useless.

Marrowgar: That thing where everybody but the tanks (and hunters) sit under him to avoid coldflame? Let's nip that one in the bud. Two ideas - my first was to make Bone Spike chain to everyone within 5 yards of the initial target, adding an increased incentive to avoid being herded into groups by coldflame lines, but that wouldn't be fair to the melee. Better idea: Whenever Marrowgar isn't Bone Storming, coldflame burns underneath him. Don't stand in it.

Deathwhisper: No changes, there's no surefire way to cut situational awareness out of this fight. Maybe spawn more ghosts in phase 2.

Gunship: I rather like Gunship, if only because it's practically stress free. It's a fun fight that I look forward to every time; I say let it remain the Lootship. If I really had to, it would be interesting if the boarding party actually had to descend into the bowels of the other faction's ship to ice the mage, preventing healers from healing the tank while staying on board their own ship.

Saurfang: Needs a big buff. Preferably something to knock the melee out of their rotation - perhaps a delayed Blood Nova. Hits a melee target that's not first or second on threat - that melee then has to run out of the group and find a place to let the Nova go within 5-10 seconds, or end up hitting everyone in the knot around Saurfang. Even more cruel might be to give the delayed Blood Nova a root effect too, so instead the tanks actually have to kite him counter/clockwise around the balcony and force everyone to shift positions, so the whole knot of melee isn't hit by the Nova.

Festergut: He's a gearcheck and does his job acceptably. Even hiding everyone but the requisite 3 or 6 ranged from Vile Gas in melee range doesn't feel like it appreciably softens the encounter. If anything, I would say to speed up his inhales and spores so that he's guaranteed to get out two Pungent Blights (and thus two 3-inhale phases, albeit shorter ones), with a third hitting just at the enrage. Having good dps shouldn't exempt the tank who isn't tasked with enduring three inhales from the gearcheck exam.

Rotface: Always nicely chaotic at the end. I'd actually like to see Slime Spray's range toned down so that it interferes less with slime dropoffs. It's harrowing to be running towards the kiting tank only to realize Rotface is lobbing slime at your back suddenly. Perhaps have Putricide say more voice clips in the fight to drive raiders to distraction.

Putricide: Give the green slime explosion a minimum damage after which it can't be diluted any further. Like a 14k minimum damage, so that stacking everyone on the green slime spawn means everyone in the raid takes 14k damage. More than that, have it apply a debuff that will kill you if you take two explosions from the same slime in a row, if you're not a tank - gives the next explosion within 20 seconds double damage to you. Do it properly. Phases 1 and 2 aren't the annoying part of the fight anyway.

Blood Princes: Don't let pets keep Kinetic Orbs afloat. Maybe give Kelseth something more to do against the entire raid rather than beat on the orb tank; maybe set Shadow Mines to restrict movement, but that's already kind of Valanar's gig with the Shock Vortexes.

Lana'thel: She's annoying enough with the timing of her second air phase. Not challenging, just annoying. No bright ideas here.

Frost Wing: Still working on getting these fights down and on farm, so I don't have any good suggestions here.

[Kalix]

Before we "beef" up the bosses cause they are "too easy". Messeage to those who think ICC is easy: Downed all bosses in 25man HC? If so, grats you're good and I expected more of a serious and drilled player than "omgniz it's too easy blizzard". If not, go do it and come back when you've done it and tell me just how easy it was.

Majority of players havnt even downed LK in normal mode 10 or 25 and yet they complain about how ICC is easy. Same way the complained about Ulduar being easy, cleared it 25man? It was easy? Ok it was, cleared all 25bosses with ultimate hardmodes? Yogg+0 etc. Yes? (Read above about skilled players)

Not saying OP is doing anything wrong, im falming those who lead him to post this. The fights doesnt need a beef. Remove the 5% buff, clear it in Heroic mode. It aint easy.

[Reynard]

"Harder" might not have been the right choice of words; the above poster is right, if you want harder go heroic. "More interesting" would have been a better way to say it. Changes to prevent people from cutting out or shortchanging certain mechanics of the encounters.

[kraitos]

Before we "beef" up the bosses cause they are "too easy". Messeage to those who think ICC is easy: Downed all bosses in 25man HC? If so, grats you're good and I expected more of a serious and drilled player than "omgniz it's too easy blizzard". If not, go do it and come back when you've done it and tell me just how easy it was.

Majority of players havnt even downed LK in normal mode 10 or 25 and yet they complain about how ICC is easy. Same way the complained about Ulduar being easy, cleared it 25man? It was easy? Ok it was, cleared all 25bosses with ultimate hardmodes? Yogg+0 etc. Yes? (Read above about skilled players)

Not saying OP is doing anything wrong, im falming those who lead him to post this. The fights doesnt need a beef. Remove the 5% buff, clear it in Heroic mode. It aint easy.

agree with everything you have said my friend,and tbh imo you have a right to flame everyone who says ANY raid instance is "too easy" if you havent cleared it normal or hc then they have no right to say the raid is easy,yes some bosses maybe alot easier than others but that doesnt give you the right to call the whole of the raid instance "easy"

[Quibble]

Invite noobs. unlearn talents, take of part of your gear.
Don't use flasks or food buff.

[Gxz]

I heard no one has killed heroic LK yet...so ttyl.

[Cadamon]

i don't think ICC needs an overhaul. just get rid of the wrynn/hellscream buff. rest is really fine.

some down LK, some not. some are doing HMs, some not.

and lichking hero is not down yet. so even the hardcore raiders got stuff to do. looks fine for me

[Seregon]

"Harder" might not have been the right choice of words; the above poster is right, if you want harder go heroic. "More interesting" would have been a better way to say it. Changes to prevent people from cutting out or shortchanging certain mechanics of the encounters.

QFT. If you want the stuff to be harder there's nothing standing in your way. I'd like to see some new mechanics though, not just ripoffs from old content.

[buga]

well theres no point in making icc harder just go icc heroic

[Cadamon]

QFT. If you want the stuff to be harder there's nothing standing in your way. I'd like to see some new mechanics though, not just ripoffs from old content.

well you know, after 5 years, you might run into some repeatitions (<-- is that a word? i'm not a native speaker). i would guess you won't be able to think up a bossfight, or a bossfights mechanic, which has not yet been used.

[Gobber]

The OPs main point is if ICC was BT...i.e theres no retarded hard mode/normal mode system. A boss is a boss and has abilities that make it tough to kill.

I like some of the OPs ideas, frostwing halls could be:

Dreamwalker:

This fight is actually quite well tuned in general, I'd like to see a situation where all 5 types of add spawn at once in waves, then co-ordination and prioritisation would really be tested.

Sindragosa:

Quite well designed aswell, I'd like to see the removal of unchained magic as its a retarded debuff that means you just spend time doing nothing. I'd also like to see asphyxiation do more damage but allow people in blocks to recieve healing.


Lich king:

Generally the encounter is well designed. IMO the transition phase orbs should have more health and the raging spirits less so that dps have to be more thoughtful in their split. The harvest soul ability should be used in all 3 main phases, not just the last.

[davesurfer]

PUG

[sh0k]

i have done 11/12 in 10H and 9/12 in 25H, and all i really would like is non recycled graphics. pretty stupid that the same skins show on 10n, 10h, 25n, and 25h. youd think at the very least the lk would get unique looking weapons, but its just more of the same.

what currently makes hard modes hard is more damage and less forgiving margins of error. only a few fights have really different mechanics, which i find a bit disappointing since youre really just getting gearchecked, but then again, i wouldnt expect totally new boss encounters on hard modes anyway. relatively fine as is (outside of a few tricks like marrowgar fire).

i also think a 30% raid buff is just stupid. at most id say 15% (right before cat).

[Hendrixstorm]

I would add some kind of mode...The bosses would hit harder, gain some new abilities, and have more health.... Maybe..hard mode...or "Heroic" version.. Just my 2 cents.

[Yukari]

Agreed with some of the earlier posters. If you think ICC is hard, run hard modes. While there's not much in terms of 'new mechanics', there are some interesting changes that make the encounters rather difficult on top of extra damage and larger health pools.

[Sanisbad]

Interesting......

My understanding is that you stack on marrowgar to keep bonespikes close together, allowing all your dps (melee especially) to swap quickly, maximizing time on target. I wasn't aware it "cheesed" coldflame. News to me.

Commenting on the situational awareness for Deathwhisper, but then saying that the situational awareness needed to move slimes to your offtank while slime sprays are happening should be removed seems a little odd to me.

Changing slimes doesn't seem worthwhile because if you lack the dps to kill them before all this craziness you're proposing happens, you probably dont have the dps to burn putricide down in phase 3.

You don't have frostwing down/on farm yet, but everything else you did manage to kill was too easy. <<

Your ideas just strike me a really really bizarre. I think it also creates a bad situation between people of different progression levels, cause what if your proposed changes makes it near impossible for someone not as far as you to catch up to where you are? On the other hand too, what if someone who has already killed Sindragosa and Lich King decide its too easy and then wants to buff it to the point where you have an impossible time killing it. Its a tricky situation, making fights "harder".

P.S. Unchained Magic is nice way of checking raid coordination I feel. It essentially neutralizes members of your raid, which then requires the other healers/dps (healers especially) to pick up the lost damage/healing. I think its a nice way of getting your raid to really work closely, and testing team work.

[Deleted]

Don't care much for normal ICC, it's piss easy for most raiding guilds and hard enough for pugs not to get down over 5-6 bosses. If however the changes you suggested would be implemented to hard modes then many fights (putricide, deathbringer) would become near impossible with the gear level they are intended to be done. Gilds would just skip over them like for example many guilds who are capable of doing blood and plague wings are doing to deathwhisper atm. ICC difficulty is fine as it is. There are some easier fights, some harder fights, a free loot fight and the superepic final boss. Perhaps the only thing I would like changed is the fact that there is a normal mode for LK. If there wasn't one guilds could still see it and try it, but killing him would be way more epic.

[Bigjay]

i have done 11/12 in 10H and 9/12 in 25H, and all i really would like is non recycled graphics. pretty stupid that the same skins show on 10n, 10h, 25n, and 25h. youd think at the very least the lk would get unique looking weapons, but its just more of the same.

Was going to comment on the OP but first wanted to comment on the bold. I really really hope you’re talking about the weapons he drops and not the weapon he’s wielding, cause his weapon is kind of uber famous.

Quick answer: to OP: solution to making ICC harder. Instead of just go run hardmode like people have posted, which OP can’t cause he hasn’t reached LK. I say remove easy mode and all loot that drops from there. So then everyone would have gotten to do the new ICC with toc gear and no experience, then we could have really seen who started complaining about what.

LONG answer: More in general I find your most countering itself, you want harder but love lootship the most cause it’s stressfree. It’s stressfree cause it’s super easy. You want rotface not to spray far to make it easier. But want others harder. In general regular is supposed to be easier and with less things going on, so when hardmode hits it’s harder and they can add more things without making it impossible.

Such as they added the movement shadow effect to princes, you might like that?. Rotface you’re going to hate cause range have to stand out and spread.

I don’t disagree with your entire post though. The cold flame for morrowgar while he’s not bone storming is rendered pretty ineffective. You can’t just have him drop it in melee though. It’d either have to be really weak so melee can stand in it and thus ineffective, or the melee would have to stand out I guess attacking spikes, so he’d have to spike much more. But to balance the spikes to entertain a top guild versus a pug on the first boss of an instance is completely impossible. One will either be uber bored or one could never kill it. You could do the typical thing of requiring 7ish range to be at range or else he drops right on melees faces and burns them up. This would be a very common mechanic but would make the fight more interesting and harder as ranged would have their spikes and melee would have theirs to deal with (hypothetically speaking).

If you’d done LDW HM 25, kind of even HM 10, then the last thing that would ever cross your lips is let’s have more ghosts spawn. If you wanted to add a little twist, maybe make some mobs come out already empowered, deformed w/e so the tank instead of hitting the same buttons to pick them up before then pawn people has to react quickly to deal with each mob based on what it is as will the dps.

Gunship, going inside kind of interesting. If you wanted another strange twist, each time an add dies the ones near it gain a rank up (if you do not know what this is do not attacked them for awhile next time and see what happens by the end). So instead of just randomly killing things off as they spawn you try to kill in a certain order or handle in some way to avoid lots of super elite mobs over there blasting away at you and your ship.

Festergut is a very tough balancing act between guilds, you can either have him stop more or really easily let some people through, you could come up with some crazy little thing to make people move here or there, but I’m perfectly fine with some fights just being lets see how high we can push our numbers. I don’t want every fight to be a patchwerk fight but I kind of like occasional ones.

Anyways there will always be tons of tweaks you can do in tons of different ways, and not just from implementation but also your guilds execution. Such as phase 3 PP shouldn’t be the hard phase for ranged dps at least it’s the easiest and I think that’s what the OP is.

[Izenhart]

I thought the way to make ICC harder was to do it with HARDMODES?


What's the meaning of the topic really. All bosses are fine already.

[Garil]

Well, the title says 'How would you make ICC harder?" then I see this slipped in at the very end.

Frost Wing: Still working on getting these fights down and on farm, so I don't have any good suggestions here.

So you've only downed 3/4 of the content, even with a 5% buff, and you're talking about making it harder. Ok, so you clarified that you would like changes to prevent 'cheese tactics', or mechanics avoidance, but frankly, I can't even think about what these are. Avoiding coldflame entirely by standing under the boss is the only possibile example I can think of. Saurfang and Deathwhisper are the only bosses I can ever imagine being zergable, but they are certainly not at the moment. None of the ICC fights are like a 25 man 3D Sarth, where you can ignore the most dangerous of the mechanics.