GC Quotes of 2008 on Heroic Dungeons

[Kainara]

I lol'd.

I must have imagined all those times we had to:

Move the trash near Auriaya away from each other
Banish and hibernate things in Freya's room.
CC trash in front of General
Use our brains near Mimiron's trash.

[Simca]

I must have imagined all those times we had to:

Move the trash near Auriaya away from each other
Banish and hibernate things in Freya's room.
CC trash in front of General
Use our brains near Mimiron's trash.

I think the ICC part was the hilarious part. Ulduar trash was definitely NOT an AoE fest, especially when it was current content. We always used CC on the multiple mob pulls near General, focus fire near Mimiron, have ranged burst bombs, etc.

But ICC was a complete joke. You could pull multiple groups in Plague and just AoE it all even with the 0% buff. Blood's trash was just stupidly annoying. There was no clever mechanic, just SAPTANK, GIBDPS, TROLOLOL.

So yeah, ICC trash was pretty disappointing.

[Hoticehunter]

I don't see the point you're trying to make because in Beta, RIGHT NOW, CC is absolutely required on a lot of pulls.

That was never true in Wrath.

The difference was that GC made a bunch of "promises" in Wrath and didn't fulfill them. They have fulfilled them so far for Cataclysm.

For the first month or so while people were still in T6 gear or lower with a couple quest blues, CC was very helpful in Wrath heroics. Once people started getting gear though, people quickly outgrew the need to CC.

[Drmorte]

GC burst onto the scene in 2008 during the WOTLK beta and immediately amazed everyone with his grasp of the game and incredible foresight on how to design. One of his biggest concerns was CC not taking a backseat to AOE in dungeons (sound familiar?) Here are some of the choice quotes before, during and after the release of WOTLK covering a 1 month period from October to November 2008.

---

"The only think we're slightly concerned about is we don't want to see PvE CC just go away. Several classes are designed around their ability to CC, and we don't want that to be neglected. In an ideal world, this would be less of an issue of threat management and more of an issue that if the tank tries to tank 4 and 5 pulls without CC that the incoming damage is too great."

- GC, 10/28/2008

"A lot of groups are AE tanking and burning down groups. It's fun, but at higher levels the risk you're going to take is that those groups kill you."

- GC, 10/31/2008

"You will not be able to AE tank and AE burn down every encounter in Lich King like we're all doing now in Hyjal and Sunwell."

- GC, 11/3/2008

"We don't inflate the value of deeper talents. If the bottom talents were always the best there would never be any reason to take less than 51 points in a tree."

- GC, 11/3/2008

"Let's see what happens when more players are running heroics. They seem to be providing much more of the challenge you're looking for."
(in response to dungeons being too easy)

- GC, 11/17/2008

"By most account so far, you can't really AE your way through the heroic 5-player dungeons, so we'd like to see more people get to 80 and try those first. It is not our intent that CC and single-target dps are just a thing of the past."

- GC, 11/17/2008

"There is definitely a lot of AE (area effect damage) going on in World of Warcraft dungeon runs at the moment. We’re not too worried about it for now ... If we find that AE tank + AE damage strategy (with no sheeping, sapping or other crowd control) is the only way people are running heroics and raids, then we’ll probably make some changes, but for now we’re content to just see what happens."
(he goes on to list upcoming buffs to AOE for 3 classes)

- GC, 11/24/2008

"Our goal is not to make every spec in the game awesome at AE damage."

- GC, 11/24/2008

"I would not expect the strategy in Ulduar and Icecrown to be: I'll Swipe while you guys Blizzard. Volley and Hurricane down all the trash."

- GC, 11/24/2008

Actually, I spent less time thinking about you calling GC a liar... and more time considering how creepy it was you took the time to put all those quotes together.

Don't bump his living room window too loud while you're staring in.

Heroics did have some challenge initially. The issues is that they don't scale at all (outside of a few mobs that do % damage, yay spellflingers) and gear running amuck. However, in Naxx gear and below they actually did present some challenge.

I'm not particularily sure that the same issue won't happen in cata when end game tanks are running heroics with twice the HP of the current beta groups... and DPS is hitting several times harder.

At some point in time, the issue becomes that heroics just aren't made to entertain end game raiders. Yeah, they were a kick in the balls in BC - but honestly, the original model was flawed (and corrected).

I guess my point is... perhaps people shouldn't expect heroics from an expansion release to present a challenge a year or two after they come out. Just like t1 content wasn't supposed to drop kick guilds geared wiht t3. and t7 content isn't supposed to destroy groups in t10.

WotLK dungeons could have been tuned a bit better I suppose... and hit a little harder. But, even with that, we'd still be destroying them today.

[Deleted]

They don't even have to be nerfed...it's called overgearing, and it's one of the reasons Wrath heroics seem so easy today.

Can we just get off this myth and start looking at reality?
I will by no means call the raids in proper gear faceroll - Ulduar was a good challenge - but the 5-mans WERE, from square one. There was no challenge to be had in the first place, even before you outgeared squat.

This coming from someone who never completed a heroic in TBC, by the way. I was too bad in TBC, and a few months into Wrath (just that in wrath it didn't matter). I'm NOT looking through rose tinted glasses, and I loved wrath for so many other reasons - but the 5-man heroics were a joke from square one.

[Stanton Biston]

At some point I'll sit down and math out ilvl, but I really want to emphasize that ilvl on gear is not a linear progression of power. Two tiers is a pretty massive gap, but the original WotLK heroics are tuned for players wearing ilvl 186 and below gear. If we take previous statements that each tier is 13 ilvls, We're like 4-6 tiers past.

They have said that there will be rating adjustments with each new tier of content, so that will buff heroics a little, but without something else, AOE is inevitable because overgear is inevitable.

[Rivin]

Can we just get off this myth and start looking at reality?
I will by no means call the raids in proper gear faceroll - Ulduar was a good challenge - but the 5-mans WERE, from square one. There was no challenge to be had in the first place, even before you outgeared squat.

This coming from someone who never completed a heroic in TBC, by the way. I was too bad in TBC, and a few months into Wrath (just that in wrath it didn't matter). I'm NOT looking through rose tinted glasses, and I loved wrath for so many other reasons - but the 5-man heroics were a joke from square one.

They were less challenging than BC heroics, yes, but not easy. If you came into Wrath in Sunwell gear, yeah, it was going to be easy...that's why Cataclysm gear is scaling up so wildly between 80 and 85, so you can't faceroll through 85 content in 80 raid gear. If you started heroics in questing greens and blues, like they were tuned for (and neither the tank or healer of the group overgeared it), they were challenging.

[ComputerNerd]

Yes they made mistakes, they have admitted that so repeating quotes made back in 2008 are achieving nothing really.
The intent did not match the results and we know that.
Judge by how cataclysm turns out, and judge the entire team, not just the one individual brave enough to stand up and face the customers.
He stood up with the intent to share the insights and thinking behind changes yet being only one man on a team.
That is quickly forgotton by most blaming him directly for what goes wrong.

[ryuke09]

They were less challenging than BC heroics, yes, but not easy. If you came into Wrath in Sunwell gear, yeah, it was going to be easy...that's why Cataclysm gear is scaling up so wildly between 80 and 85, so you can't faceroll through 85 content in 80 raid gear. If you started heroics in questing greens and blues, like they were tuned for (and neither the tank or healer of the group overgeared it), they were challenging.

no, no they were not challenging from day 1 of wrath with the possible exception of Loken and Oculus. i know because i finished all of them on my freshly made 80 DK from the day i leveled 80 and steamrolled through every single heroic first run-through with only the occasional wipe due to screw-up or a single boss wipe because he had some odd mechanic. i even TANKED UK and nexus heroic in questing green and blues with LITERAL 2 PIECES of tank gear successfully. yes early DK had some somewhat OP CDs at the time but in proper heroics i should have gotten smashed to the ground by the trash let alone bosses.

my armory to prove i am not talking out of my ass..remember wrath launched Nov 13 i believe.
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-a...s+in+Brutality

it was only 2 years ago people lets not try to pass revisionist history please

[Rivin]

no, no they were not challenging from day 1 of wrath with the possible exception of Loken and Oculus. i know because i finished all of them on my freshly made 80 DK from the day i leveled 80 and steamrolled through every single heroic first run-through with only the occasional wipe due to screw-up or a single boss wipe because he had some odd mechanic. i even TANKED UK and nexus heroic in questing green and blues with LITERAL 2 PIECES of tank gear successfully. yes early DK had some somewhat OP CDs at the time but in proper heroics i should have gotten smashed to the ground by the trash let alone bosses.

my armory to prove i am not talking out of my ass..remember wrath launched Nov 13 i believe.
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-a...s+in+Brutality

it was only 2 years ago people lets not try to pass revisionist history please

Revisionist history? How about trying to pass off your own personal experiences as fact?

FACT: How easy they were depended greatly on your group.
NOT FACT: They were faceroll lulz!
NOT FACT: They were stupid hard OMG!

Note that nowhere in your post did you mention the quality of the groups, only yourself.

Also note that I'm slightly contradicting my previous posts because I didn't word them very clearly. Go me! :D

[fizikz]

Er...so? Yeah, they didn't really end up doing that in Wrath (although the unexpected gear inflation didn't help), but that was two years ago. It's irrelevant.

yeah I'm not really sure why he thinks wotlk = cata...because clearly, things are different. we've all (or most of us) have seen the videos.

[ryuke09]

Revisionist history? How about trying to pass off your own personal experiences as fact?

FACT: How easy they were depended greatly on your group.
NOT FACT: They were faceroll lulz!
NOT FACT: They were stupid hard OMG!

Note that nowhere in your post did you mention the quality of the groups, only yourself.

Also note that I'm slightly contradicting my previous posts because I didn't word them very clearly. Go me! :D

i never said they were faceroll i said they weren't challenging...yes NOW they are faceroll but even at the beginning of wrath they were not very challenging.

yes a lot of my groups back then were guild groups but we were still all fresh 80s going into heroics for the first time (some of us not even going into the normal versions) there's no reason that we shouldn't have some level of difficulty in doing them, we did not.

and my guild at the time wasn't any high-end server guild, we only killed a couple bosses in BT/Hyjal in TBC, we were an average run of the mill raiding guild. i am and average raider.

i have also said before that just because something is very easy doesn't mean you should go to the OTHER extreme. however heroics should be difficult for the majority of players and require them to learn and get better. wrath heroics did not do that.

[dmbrandon]

Everyone trashing the OP is a bad kid, trying to hate on skill being put back into the game. Fact is, you only needed to actually control about 5 groups of trash in the entire expansion.

[Gilian]

They actually did accomplish the "not-so-faceroll trash" in Ulduar and Icecrown.
When you outgear the content, you outgear the content. And when you get a +30% buff, then well, that tends to make things easier, you see.


You should consider a group geared mostly from Naxx 10/25 when you assess Ulduar 10/25, for example. Then consider pulling all the robots before XT, or not CC'ing the mobs before Freya, or if you can faceroll your way with the giant twin near Auriaya, etc.

I never did ulduar from the start but I heard there was only 1 trashpack that needed CC.

And ICC, really, where did you use CC in ICC? If you only raided ICC with 30% buff then don't come here acting like you know how it was without.

[Rivin]

i never said they were faceroll i said they weren't challenging...yes NOW they are faceroll but even at the beginning of wrath they were not very challenging.

yes a lot of my groups back then were guild groups but we were still all fresh 80s going into heroics for the first time (some of us not even going into the normal versions) there's no reason that we shouldn't have some level of difficulty in doing them, we did not.

and my guild at the time wasn't any high-end server guild, we only killed a couple bosses in BT/Hyjal in TBC, we were an average run of the mill raiding guild. i am and average raider.

i have also said before that just because something is very easy doesn't mean you should go to the OTHER extreme. however heroics should be difficult for the majority of players and require them to learn and get better. wrath heroics did not do that.

Nor did anyone say they were stupid hard. I was using the extremes on purpose. :U

They weren't challenging for you. Fine. But that doesn't mean they were easy for everyone. I would say that guild runs, even if you were "only" casual raiders, are still far and above the capability of normal groups.

In any case, as I said initially, it's irrelevant anyway. This is two-years-old nonsense.

[Rizendragon]

@ The OP:

I'm thinking another reason that they were so easy all the way through wrath (with very few exceptions OK prenerf being one of them) is that:

#1 there was no gear resetfor the most part. ya'll just marched into Naxx with most if not all of your T6 gear on and started clearing it away.

#2 none of the boss/mob abilities were designed to scale with gear. the only ability that comes to mind that does is the OK Spellflinger's shadow blast that hits for 80% of the target's max health.

#3 there were 0 healing mobs in Wrath that healed for any significant amount

they've fixed all the things i listed above.

---------- Post added 2010-10-04 at 07:05 AM ----------

I never did ulduar from the start but I heard there was only 1 trashpack that needed CC.

And ICC, really, where did you use CC in ICC? If you only raided ICC with 30% buff then don't come here acting like you know how it was without.

the Blood Wing trash required a priest to shackle a few mobs there other wise your tank got insta-killed with a sap/huge melee hit combo before the 5% buff went in.

[Blur4stuff]

because GC is the overlord of blizzard and anything that happens in the game doesn't take place unless it's 100% to his specifications

[ryuke09]

Nor did anyone say they were stupid hard. I was using the extremes on purpose. :U

They weren't challenging for you. Fine. But that doesn't mean they were easy for everyone. I would say that guild runs, even if you were "only" casual raiders, are still far and above the capability of normal groups.

In any case, as I said initially, it's irrelevant anyway. This is two-years-old nonsense.

no argument there, i just think the overall player-base was still skilled enough to get more challenging heroics than that in order to go into what should have been harder raiding, but at this point its pretty damn irrelevant now.

[Gilian]

They were less challenging than BC heroics, yes, but not easy. If you came into Wrath in Sunwell gear, yeah, it was going to be easy...that's why Cataclysm gear is scaling up so wildly between 80 and 85, so you can't faceroll through 85 content in 80 raid gear. If you started heroics in questing greens and blues, like they were tuned for (and neither the tank or healer of the group overgeared it), they were challenging.

Damn, are you serious? Did you not read what you quoted?

And are you seriously saying that level 70 gear is overgearing for level 80 heroics? Tanks with BT/MH/Sunwell gear still had to gem for defense to become crit immune, overgearing my ass. Kil'jaeden drops ilvl 164 gear and wotlk heroics drop ilvl 200 gear, overgeared?

Also for all the wotlk newbies questing greens and blues are not for HEROIC dungeons. Blue items from normal level 80 dungeons were for heroic level 80 dungeons.


I really don't understand how Blizzard, king of MMO's and the company that made so many other succesfull games, made such a huge mistake while people on beta said that the dungeons weren't tuned right. They could have always nerfed them after. You can't start with easy dungeons and then make them harder after people already cleared them on live realms. Reading these quotes from GC you see they already knew that things were wrong when 3.0 hit and everyone started AoEing everything in BT and Sunwell.
And then later on they still can't tune trash in ulduar and icc properly. I have never seen any CC in ICC. SSC, that were good trashpacks. Maybe too much trash but they were at least tuned right.

---------- Post added 2010-10-04 at 08:37 AM ----------

the Blood Wing trash required a priest to shackle a few mobs there other wise your tank got insta-killed with a sap/huge melee hit combo before the 5% buff went in.

I guess your raid did something wrong. We never CCed those mobs, not even without buff.

[Rivin]

Damn, are you serious? Did you not read what you quoted?

And are you seriously saying that level 70 gear is overgearing for level 80 heroics? Tanks with BT/MH/Sunwell gear still had to gem for defense to become crit immune, overgearing my ass. Kil'jaeden drops ilvl 164 gear and wotlk heroics drop ilvl 200 gear, overgeared?

Also for all the wotlk newbies questing greens and blues are not for HEROIC dungeons. Blue items from normal level 80 dungeons were for heroic level 80 dungeons.

Heroics were tuned for 174-187 gear. Obviously that was a mistake and they should've tuned it for 187-200, but too late now.

And I never said that Sunwell gear was overgearing.