How hard will Firelands be?

[Weightless]

Nothing suprising or scary about that. Phase 2 is horrible - worse than Al'akir P1 - since if you fail, it's instant wipe, instead of just 1 death. That, and loot sucks compared to the effort.

P2 isn't all that bad imo, as long as you aren't raiding with idiots. The reason why so few guilds have killed it is because 25man guilds usually skip it to go for Cho'gall and Sinestra, as spacing is a big issue in p3 AC.

[Entyice]

it will probaly be easier than tier 11 unless they really intensify the difficulty. the main reason tier 11 took a long time was because of gearing up... im just saying its probaly harder doing tier 11 heroic modes in ilvl 340 ish gear than it will be to do tier 12 heroics in full bis 372's/379's

[Ninurta]

Listings of how many raiding guilds have downed bosses:


H: Omnotron Defense System: 2470 (4.35%)
H: Maloriak: 6383 (11.23%)
(1.33%)

How is that even possible don't you have to kill Omnotron to get to Maloriak?

[Deleted]

How is that even possible don't you have to kill Omnotron to get to Maloriak?

Not on heroic.

[DeanyKong]

It's gonna be bad and dumb and stupid and casual and dumb and ugly and stupid and lame. I know this because I PvPed for 3 weeks in BC, back when things made sense. I logged on to the PTR once in WotLK and there was no Firelands, so I predict Blizzard is lying about it, and their 600k subscriber dip, it's more like 600 million. Their subscriber base is so low now it looped back around! I can't wait until Runescape 2, that's gonna kill WoW even though it's already dead! u mad bro?

...

...

Actually, I look forward to Firelands. I think it's going to be a really fun and challenging raid. Not to mention all the new content and lore that's going to come with it. The new quest hub alone looks like it could stand alone in a patch. Also, I'm psyched to see the new Legendary's story unfold. All in all, I think it's going to be a great patch, and the people who speak like I just did will be eating their delicious hats.

Delicious hats.

[tiandar]

My insight:
-9/12 guilds will struggle get 3-4/7 and take 4+ weeks to reach ragnaros
-Guilds that are 12/12 1-2/13 hm + will do 6/7 in 2 weeks and a another full week for ragnaros
-4 to 7 / 13 HM should reach ragnaros on the first week, but will have trouble downing it for a week
-10/13 + HM guilds should be able to clear firelands normal in their first week np

As far for hard mode goes, it would be really dull if everyone is 6/7 H, there should be 1 and maybe a second hardmode on par or a slightly less difficult to the end boss. The ideal difficulty would be having normal modes tuned like the current easy HM such magmaw, halfus and maloriak with ragnaros being something in the range of current H ODS difficulty

[Drauer]

i'm sure it will be "too easy"

[Wysmark]

Meh current tier was a disappointment. Both council fights used most of the same mechanics, all but every fights main mechanics was somethign you knew from earlier fights like the tornados on al'akir, Chimaeron was basically Brutallus all over again and so on.

Now not every boss can be a work of art like Kael in TK, Leo in SSC or Yogg-Saron which are my personal favorites, but when you more or less just backtrack to learn every fight then they are are running out of ideas....

Since Firelands patch only offers 7+1 boss (BH gets a new guy i sup) compared to 12 in the current tier it has to contain more sophisticated mechanics, because it cannot be more difficult assuming appropriate lvl of gear, cuz Blizz still want it to be clearable on normal by the casuals in terms of difficulty.

Problem with cata is a lack of stuff to do. Firelands either needs some quite exceptional boss fights or it better be a short patch...

[Teri]

I think the first non-linear bosses will be like a bit above normal nefarian difficulty, and then greatly rise with fandral and ragnaros being quite a lot harder then the others. And for hard modes, probably same thing, except hopefully ragnaros will be the pinnacle of raiding till the next raid.

Looking at the datamined sulfuras its 391 without a heroic tag, rag loot might be 391 default and probably 404 epics on heroic. The legendary staff scales from 378-391-404 as well.

I think the first 4 bosses will be cleared by the majority and the rest will feel more like end bosses of current content.

[Gronlaender]

[----|--] This hard!

[oraz]

GC said it wouldnt be crazy hard or anything and that it would be on par with BWD and BOT.

[Primernova]

Raid difficulty isn't this game's problem. The world is just dead besides the odd leveler or some bored off his/her ass person doing archaeology.

This Xpac was about the old world! Yet their's nothing in it. Raids are annoying now mainly due to RNG bosses, this is not a huge issue to fix. The fact I log in my main three days a week to raid, go do my fishing daily and then log out is.

World events, world PvP and outdoor bosses are SORELY lacking in WoW. EQ1 had "Red Sky" GM events and players loved them for loot and PvP. WAR had public quests which was about the only thing anyone liked about that game. The drunken frat boy which is photocopying it's genitals and posting it all over the internet has Rifts which draw people out into the world for fun.

Raids are the places the grizzled veterans wander back to the fun stuff from, not the only content needed in an MMO. I remember being stuck in T2 during vanilla, fighting over TM/SS or XR just counting the minutes before raids let out for the more progressed guilds. My server was 8:1 favoring alliance and we had only 1 guild that got into T3, the help those guys brought to world PvP was amazing and we all did it for fun. This is a great old story but it's just that, old and players today need a reason to do somthing other then raids and heroics for just gear.

[Runenwächter]

Even IF firelands will be hard and a challenge to experienced and well organised raid guilds in the beginning, the philosophy that every piece of content should be accesible to any player is equivalent to the promise to nerf anything a noteable numbers of players struggle with.

when blizzard promised to release major content updates faster as a result of declining account subscription recently, that would let me draw the conclusion that the new hard mode content would be on par of a little below the current one. that however is based on my personal experiences only.

also pretty much this:

Raid difficulty isn't this game's problem. The world is just dead besides the odd leveler or some bored off his/her ass person doing archaeology.

This Xpac was about the old world! Yet their's nothing in it. Raids are annoying now mainly due to RNG bosses, this is not a huge issue to fix. The fact I log in my main three days a week to raid, go do my fishing daily and then log out is.

World events, world PvP and outdoor bosses are SORELY lacking in WoW. EQ1 had "Red Sky" GM events and players loved them for loot and PvP. WAR had public quests which was about the only thing anyone liked about that game. The drunken frat boy which is photocopying it's genitals and posting it all over the internet has Rifts which draw people out into the world for fun.

Raids are the places the grizzled veterans wander back to the fun stuff from, not the only content needed in an MMO. I remember being stuck in T2 during vanilla, fighting over TM/SS or XR just counting the minutes before raids let out for the more progressed guilds. My server was 8:1 favoring alliance and we had only 1 guild that got into T3, the help those guys brought to world PvP was amazing and we all did it for fun. This is a great old story but it's just that, old and players today need a reason to do somthing other then raids and heroics for just gear.

[KaPe]

Meh current tier was a disappointment. Both council fights used most of the same mechanics, all but every fights main mechanics was somethign you knew from earlier fights like the tornados on al'akir, Chimaeron was basically Brutallus all over again and so on.

Care to explain? What does Iron Council(or maybe Illidari Council) have in common with Captain Planet or Conclave? Chimaeron compared to Brutallus? Just... how?
Sure bosses aren't filled with new mechanics, but it seems like you just randomly picked two and compared them to ones that have nothing in common.

[Sinfonia]

Ascendant council will get the nerf bat soon I imagine. It is the only fight that is not tuned to the right level (with maybe 25 man al'akir).

lol?.........

[Skelly]

Looking at the datamined sulfuras its 391 without a heroic tag, rag loot might be 391 default and probably 404 epics on heroic.

I highly doubt it.. Sulfuras will probably be a heroic-only drop (hence no heroic tag)

[Moshots]

Ascendant council will get the nerf bat soon I imagine. It is the only fight that is not tuned to the right level (with maybe 25 man al'akir).

only thing that council needs is fire spawning before ice instead of vice versa, that was our only issue during progression ever the fight is not complicated if you dont have like 5 derfs blowing up the raid everytime.

[Nyghtfall]

Sinestra drops higher item level gear than the rest of the the heroic bosses and her gear was heroic tagged despite her being a heroic only boss. Blizz has carried the tradition that the final boss of the tier has higher item levels, people just didnt notice it.

Of course 372 to 379 is not as big of a jump as 378 to 391, so maybe they just forgot the tag.

[Moshots]

It will be easy as usuall. Normal mode should be easy. Ofc, top guilds will clear full normal mode on first week or even day.
Gear difference between full 372+379 and 378 is not big enough to prevent geared players to clear everything really fast.
Blizzard policy is that instance(or at least 2-3+ first bosses) should be possible to clear in non-heroic gear from previous content by casual guilds.

Hardmodes are balanced. There are several ridiculously easy hardmodes, like halfus, but Sinestra is pretty balanced. 500 guilds should be able to kill her before nerf/next patch - considering that amount of hardcore guilds almoust doubled with cata start(and ability to kill bosses in 10man version), that looks pretty nice and balanced.

In full 378+ gear casual guilds will be able to finally kill Sinestra. But they will get no actual loot

Sinestra is honestly relatively easy compared to council/chogall Id say pre 11 mil nerf chogall>council>nerf chogall>sinestra. All you need for sinestra is a healer that can take over vent and lead the dispells when needed.

[Arrashi]

I guess 1st and will be easier than nefarian/chogall but rest will be much harder. Expecially on heroic mode.