Is ToT too challenging causing the guild break ups?

[Stormspellz]

Don't feel its to hard, our hardest boss is the attendance boss. I think it "looks" harder due to LFR being there.

[Shampro]

Blizzard will Never do a % based overall nerf to Raids by the way. It felt shitty in Dragon Soul. They know that. They will tune down certain abilities if they have to, but % based like DS and even Firelands will not happpen again. Crying for nerfs is just not the way to handle things.

[dd614]

ToT is a great raid but people are tired of LFR + Normal + the Heroic grind. I can imagine if LFR around back in Ulduar people would hate that raid too.

[Hanto]

Hearing that it's actually challenging makes me want to get back into raiding; unfortunately I don't see that happening due to my schedule. I doubt the difficulty is why those top groups like you mentioned fell apart; but the lower-end ones that may have gone by the way-side due to difficulty have just become accustomed to how easy some raids in the past have been. I feel it should take some struggling to get a boss down in a raid, heroic more than normal of course.

Like Hyve said, if it's anything, it's a combination of things. Difficulty may be a part of it, but only a small part of the equation. There's a lot of new things they're doing this expansion with the effort that it takes to raid or get anywhere PvE wise (which is especially challenging for people who want to/need to gear an alt). That's why I've opted to focus on PvP this expansion (something new, casual friendly, etc).

[melodramocracy]

They could make normal mode 5% harder than LFR, and guild attempts would still be down.

[Dazs]

Definitely true. it isnt just difficulty that is making guilds fall apart. but I believe its adding that stress.

Fatboss video weekly discussed how they were calling it quits. and it feels due to having a hard time finding that real hardcore raider. exodus claimed the same thing. the real hardcore raider is dieing.

now thier definition of a hardcore raider is - One which is skilled, dedicated, is able to take constructive critism and not make a mistake that once occured. (granted this in my eyes is what they mean)

The new hardcore raider - Decently skilled, Dedicated (in a sense that they will do anything it take no matter the number of attempts until its dead), takes constructive critism (Now will take that feedback but isnt sure how to fix the problem. weither its dps, hps, moving in time)

when your racing for first. what kind of raider do you seek. most would prefer the first one. but realisticly how many of those are willing to work to gain the skill to be out there? as content gets harder. does it mean more time, or more skill. and thats what I feel is crushing a few top end guilds. and lower guilds.

[fangless]

Raids will ALWAYS get easier over time, due to gear levels going up.

Why would you plan to make your raids easier from the get go?

[eldritchforeshadow]

I think to blame entirely the difficultly of Throne of Thunder as a reason for guild breakups isn't quite right, but I think it is part of the calculation.

Combined with the disappointing Legendary Series, Daily Quests, Reputation Gating, and many other issues, are some of the reasons I left. Throne of Thunder is a good difficulty level I think, but combined with the rest of the expansion, it might be a little too much.

Agreed because it is the reason why many of my guild mates have no desire to log back in and play.

[Deleted]

Speaking from my guilds perspective, we haven't disbanded but a lot of us are being forced to move. Low server population means it's hard to find decent backups. The amount of repetitive grinding for end game gear just doesn't seem rewarding enough for many people who are not in raiding guilds and most of our new recruits are near 30+ ilvl lower than the main raid team. The margin of error becomes tighter in the raids and progression suffers. Then we are carrying players through msv/hof/toes to get them some gear for ToT, some of them just disappear after a few weeks. Then the problem of having generally 1 or 2 bad players in the main raid team and being unable to replace them yet because of the gear gap. In comparison to other guilds on our server were doing pretty decent progression especially considering the difficulties sustaining players interested and dedicated to progression. ToT isn't too difficult, most of the fights can be cheesed someway or another. Low server population has seen many of the big guilds on my server disband.

[Deleted]

I just think that the community is shifting away from organized raiding with set schedules and stuff like that.
A harder raid like ToT make things only worse. The problem is that, atm, tools for effective substitutes to traditional guild raids are not there yet, like a TBC style tool that makes you see who is interested in pugging a particular raid, for example.

[Kalcheus]

Blizzard will Never do a % based overall nerf to Raids by the way. It felt shitty in Dragon Soul. They know that. They will tune down certain abilities if they have to, but % based like DS and even Firelands will not happpen again. Crying for nerfs is just not the way to handle things.

They nerfed all 5.0 raids by 10% when 5.2 landed.

The biggest problem with ToT normal is that the difficulty increase isn't linear. Horridon - already a complex fight to begin with - became a significant gear check until the nerf. That's fine for boss 6, but boss 2? Casual guilds want a challenge, but when the challenge comes so early in the tier it becomes very frustrating because one boss on farm and the other a wall makes for boring and stressful raid nights. (Plus, the gearing to meet the dps check is impeded by the fact you're only downing one boss) There's always going back to the previous tier, but that's when attendance starts to falter.

[Ebonheart]

We have all seen alot of changes come with throne of thunder. In all honesty I think they are all for the better. But I wanted to bring to everyones attention the difficulty of this tier. this isnt to QQ about how it is too hard. because TOT is the best raid we have had since Ulduar. but to point out the stress it has been causing alot of guild and I wonder if it is the reason guilds are falling apart.

Becuase of the difficulty can this be the reason we see fatboss fall. and see Exodus fall apart. or is it simply becuase the content is rolling out too quickly and we arent given a chance to breathe or take a break between races for top tier progression.

All in all. whatever the cause be. I wanted to see what the community thought. I know guilds rise. guilds fall. but this patch. not becuase content is bad. I believe the difficulty is causing strain and what wouldnt seem like faults in a raid team are now becoming very apparent. I just reflect and see alot of it happening.

Well I wouldn't really say its the difficulty, but raids these days are so complicated to what they were as recent as WTLK. I mean WTLK was the expansion I got into serious raiding and fights this expansion and even last are just so complicated. There are so many things going on and so many things to keep track of. It gets a bit dull after that.

Even last tier guilds just gave up cause some of the fights were just too complex, not difficult. Its hard on casual guilds when you keep repeatedly wiping on something silly.

Every boss has so many abilities and countless phases with tons of adds and AoE shit going on at the same time. Its simply complex.

[Dazs]

I just think that the community is shifting away from organized raiding with set schedules and stuff like that.
A harder raid like ToT get things only worse. The problem is that, atm, tools for effective substitutes to traditional guild raids are not there yet, like a TBC style tool that makes you see who is interested in pugging a particular raid, for example.

I didnt exactly raid TBC. but is this pretty much like openraid online? I mean I come from stormrage. and it seems like alot are having a constant struggle ot keeping alive through this tier. and there are tons and tons of players on that realm. or maybe like you said. the community has changed. it is shifting to wanting a easier more casual approach. and no one wants set raid times.

[ReleaseDay]

Bosses have too much hp.

[jdfrost]

I don't think ToT is to hard, it is tuned very tight though compare to other raids in the past. But that's because it was dumb down a lot in the past and now they make a raid equal to TBC and Ulduar and people are not adapting to the big change!

I for one love ToT, it requires people pay attention(fire can not be healed thru). One mistake on your part and you may cause the kill. It's time WoW started improving people's gameplay.

Alot of guild are breaking apart for this reason, A lot of people are switching to LFR raiding. For most people if given the choice between Easy mode and Normal/Hard mode, they will pick Easy hands down.

I like the Legendary Quest line, gives everyone the chance at it, I played a mage/rogue in Cata and had both weapons. Now everyone can work on their final legendary in SoO(believe a blue posted about weapons coming).

As for the daily's, I don't do them unless i need to catch up a alt. If your a heroic progression guild then yes grind away for the extra chance roll. But for a LFR/Normal person a 1% extra roll is not worth it in my opinion. Be like buying a Loto ticket planing on winning when the odd's are stacked against you.

IMO

[underdogba]

All the defending of the difficulty level I see is hilarious considering that they have more or less officially admitted that they have problems tuning 10 man normal modes due to the demographic of testers they get on the PTR.

The entirety of MoP has been fraught with difficulty issues. The main being that Heart of Fear normal was simply too hard compared to Terrace normal. In reality I think that's what broke up a lot of middle-of-the-road guilds anyway, and ToT was just the straw that broke the camel's back, because it's too much for any guild with maybe 2-3 raid nights a week to be stuck on 1/12 because Horridon was launched massively overtuned and balanced against the assumption that people would at least be in all 496+8 gear.

The sad thing is that on normal mode, once you get past about Ji-Kun, everything is easy.

We know for a fact that they have messed with tuning beyond all reason, it is not a matter of opinion. Historically in WoW (and this has held true universally from the very beginning), the approximate appropriate gear level to start working on a tier of content has been half of your pieces from the previous tier and half the tier before that.

For ToT, this would be (496 + 463) /2 = 479.5. From that we immediately know they messed up. I'm not even talking about some bullcrap trade pug, because we all know that if you were starting progression with a group on ToT, you would never take somebody who's ilvl 480. But following the precedent of how gear scaling / progression has always worked in this game, that should've been appropriate this go-around.

[Poppincaps]

I think one issue is that some of the fights are just too long. Other than Jin'rokh which is like a 2 minute fight, most fights are 5 minutes or more with several fights being 8-10 minute fights. Honestly, I don't think it's that hard, but I've been playing for a very long time. I've seen pretty much everything Blizzard could throw at me, so I can easily perform at a high level while avoiding the mechanics, but many people don't have my raid experience, so either their performance takes a dive or they die to the mechanics of the fight.

[Deleted]

I didnt exactly raid TBC. but is this pretty much like openraid online? I mean I come from stormrage. and it seems like alot are having a constant struggle ot keeping alive through this tier. and there are tons and tons of players on that realm. or maybe like you said. the community has changed. it is shifting to wanting a easier more casual approach. and no one wants set raid times.

Yeah, probably I'm thinking about OpenRaid in-game. TBC had a LFG tool where you could see a list of players interested in a certain instance. So you could check them on the Armory and then invite them to form a group. It was quite unpolished, but IMO it had potential for PUGs with a better implementation.

[Dazs]

I don't think ToT is to hard, it is tuned very tight though compare to other raids in the past. But that's because it was dumb down a lot in the past and now they make a raid equal to TBC and Ulduar and people are not adapting to the big change!

I for one love ToT, it requires people pay attention(fire can not be healed thru). One mistake on your part and you may cause the kill. It's time WoW started improving people's gameplay.

Alot of guild are breaking apart for this reason, A lot of people are switching to LFR raiding. For most people if given the choice between Easy mode and Normal/Hard mode, they will pick Easy hands down.

I like the Legendary Quest line, gives everyone the chance at it, I played a mage/rogue in Cata and had both weapons. Now everyone can work on their final legendary in SoO(believe a blue posted about weapons coming).

As for the daily's, I don't do them unless i need to catch up a alt. If your a heroic progression guild then yes grind away for the extra chance roll. But for a LFR/Normal person a 1% extra roll is not worth it in my opinion. Be like buying a Loto ticket planing on winning when the odd's are stacked against you.

IMO

This is perfect. this helps so much with the type of raider and person I mean. the new type of raider coming back to wow that exodus feels is missing. and I definitely agree with 100% with. thats why I feel like alot of guilds are having to shift new people in and or are falling thin is becuase its taking time for the community to adjust to this big new change.

[Soisoisoi]

11/12 normal and I don't think it's hard at all - just long (in comparison to the 3 short raids we got in 5.0).