Has the game become harder than TBC?

[Durandro]

Raiding these days is much harder than in TBC. Back then most bosses had only a few abilities and as a DPS you'd often just DPS and maybe have 1 ability to watch for (think Norushen without going inside), even LFR is comparable to the easier raids in vanilla/TBC in terms of difficulty.

Just compare Malkorok to a fight like Brutalus. One was considered a hard gear check, the other is basically a tank and spank.

And the tank and spank by today's standard is the more complex fight. Which is just bizzare.

Only a few bosses during TBC were close to the complexity of any modern boss fight. Usually end bosses.

[Durandro]

In killing NPCs in the world, MOP also fails because there is no danger of death and it's all about faceroll aoe.

Were you playing during the first month of MoP? Those rares were so tough there was massive qq on forums. Only reason they are 'easy' now is because of increased gear.

I remember being one shot by a lot of their abilities (or burst down quickly in the case of AoE rares) while in blues and greens. I also remember Pandaren mobs being essentially unkillable for classes unable to interupt or stun regularly, namely for my Warlock and being pissed off that fears didn't even work.

[arcaneshot]

Just compare Malkorok to a fight like Brutalus. One was considered a hard gear check, the other is basically a tank and spank.

And the tank and spank by today's standard is the more complex fight. Which is just bizzare.

Only a few bosses during TBC were close to the complexity of any modern boss fight. Usually end bosses.

The funny thing is these days I would consider something like Blackfuse an "Old God-style" fight. C'thun was well-known to be a fight where everyone had to do their little jobs to get him down... and now the same is true on Blackfuse.

>tbc
>no boss mods

Another person who played post cataclysm that says he was there during BC.

Boss mods existed since Vanilla, except people were using CT mods. I don't remember what exactly it was called, it was probably "CT Raid Assist" or something similar.

[Kaynot]

TBC was harder and more challenging.Be it preparation,attunements,raid composition or teamwork.
In MoP everyone and his grandma has some sort of rezz or "oh shit"-ability, there is no need to farm/buy buff-food,pots etc.
And lets not forget that it took almost 3 months for world first Kaelthas kill.
Also if we are going to dive into "heroic is harder than anything" arguments, then lets take a look at the hardest TBC bossfights, like Nightbane with T4-gear,Kael and Vashj with T5, Amani-bear time run,Teron Gorefiend, Muru.Anyone who has done those fights during TBC,would have no issues whatsoever with beating the current heroic content.Amusing enough if you would take things another way around,the people who are all high and mighty about their heroic progression would be stuck on those TBC encounters for several raid IDs.
And if you take your usual LFR-raiders and would pit them against Moroes on TBC terms, they would rather quit than try to beat him.

Also : tight enrage-timers.

[Trickname]

Whilst people have gotten better the game (well raiding) has gotten harder, mechanics and boss abilities have became far more in depth.

[h4rr0d]

>tbc
>no boss mods

Another person who played post cataclysm that says he was there during BC.

I've just checked my old video from tbc and yes, there were deadly boss mods back then.

- - - Updated - - -

The world and 5-mans were harder. Although there are outdoor rares/events that match TBC difficulty, and if you want BC style heroic, go challenge modes. I know challenge modes lacks a proper reward after you complete gold once, and that's main problem for them.

Challenge modes are different difficult than any other content in the game. Even though they are difficult, I can tell you the are nowhere near as difficult as BC heroics.
While the tuning might be similar, everyone is better equipped to fight the difficulty - everyone has crapton of AOE, tanks have cooldowns they can pop for every pull and trash is harder than bosses on challenge mode. As far as I remember, you pretty much needed KZ gear for some of the original (prenerf) heroics and you needed heroic gear for KZ. Things like Nexus Prince Shaffar, half of Arcatraz, getting 1shot on last boss in Sethekk halls will stay burned in my memory as pinacle of 5man content.

[Deleted]

The game is much harder now in terms of difficulty BUT TBC was "harder" due to grinding and farming specific resistances for fights. The fights themselves were LFR in complexity by HC Garrosh/ Ragg and Lei Shen standards.

You never raided in TBC, right?

[miffy23]

TBC was harder and more challenging.Be it preparation,attunements,raid composition or teamwork.
In MoP everyone and his grandma has some sort of rezz or "oh shit"-ability, there is no need to farm/buy buff-food,pots etc.
And lets not forget that it took almost 3 months for world first Kaelthas kill.
Also if we are going to dive into "heroic is harder than anything" arguments, then lets take a look at the hardest TBC bossfights, like Nightbane with T4-gear,Kael and Vashj with T5, Amani-bear time run,Teron Gorefiend, Muru.Anyone who has done those fights during TBC,would have no issues whatsoever with beating the current heroic content.Amusing enough if you would take things another way around,the people who are all high and mighty about their heroic progression would be stuck on those TBC encounters for several raid IDs.
And if you take your usual LFR-raiders and would pit them against Moroes on TBC terms, they would rather quit than try to beat him.

Also : tight enrage-timers.

Clueless nostalgia post is clueless.

Heroic progress guilds today would get bored to death in TBC content, not the other way around. The fact that everyone else outgears raid content when they get to it is due to the fact that these are the worse players/raids, and I include myself in that definition. The top guilds today are doing the heroic content at a comparable gear level of TBC progress, with FAR harder encounters to deal with. However, professionalism has gone to silly extremes in raiding since TBC, also it is standard now to beta-test bosses to death before live progression. Doesn't change the fact that encounters today are FAR more challenging than they have been previously.

Are there more "oh shit" abilities and options? Yes, and I would argue that now they are actually NECESSARY. Without personal CDs a lot of progress fights wouldn't even be doable for a long time, plus I would argue it actually makes the game more challenging than during TBC, by a wide margin. While you had bloated talent trees and more abilities on most classes, you only effectively used maybe...3? 4? per class. Nowadays ur considered a failure as a raider if you don't use half your spellbook at a moment's notice, this applies to pretty much all specs and roles.

Tight enrage timers? So those don't exist today? Lol...
And LFR raiders have NOTHING to do with progress guilds. In fact the vaaaast majority of raiders in TBC never got past content like Kara, or cleared T5 or even got into BT. That's the kind of crowd in LFR these days, so you effectively made no point at all there.

OH and yes, let's please look at these fights =)
Nightbane: adds. Oh look fire!. Adds. Heal dat autohit damage!
Vashj: adds. Oh look poison!. Adds. Heal dat autohit damage!
Teron: adds. Oh look minigame! Adds. Heal dat autohit damage!
Muru: adds. Oh look this isn't even my final form! Adds. Heal dat autohit damage!

Yes they were all awesome encounters, yet they were laughably simple compared to today's standard, or even later bosses still considered the pinnacle of difficulty today, such as Raggy HC or LK HC.

Notable exceptions would be Archimonde, Kael and KJ in progress, these would still hold up by today's standards i feel, with some tweaks.However they were endbosses and endbosses always had more complex mechanics and were a level above the rest, as they should be. Has been the case since Classic, from simple beginnings with Raggy and Nef to already quite complex fights with C'thun and especially Kel'thuzad.

Now, sit down please.

[Kuniku]

I think its difficult to compare, players have gotten better and the tools available to them have also got better.

Yes the raids now are far more complex, but that is because the players are better than they were so it needs to be harder to remain a challenge.

PLayers back in TBC would be unable to kill many of todays bosses. But the TBC bosses only seem trivial now due to hindsight, at the time they WERE hard (I'm talking more specifically latter bosses - illidan, SWP etc) Many of the then new boss abilities etc are now things that are standard in many fights etc which would trivialise them in comparison to what they were then.

I do think individual roles in raids are more emphasised now though, back then generally it was only really the tank doing something drasitcally wrong that would fuck things up (not counting players dying, but even then was often recoverable) where as now in one fight at the same time you might have more in the way of off tanking AND kiting or what not.

[Deleted]

players have gotten better

Not really. There were always veteran players who played vanilla for several years and other MMO games before that. Now there are many players who joined in Cataclysm or MoP.

and the tools available to them have also got better.

Not true. Boss mods, auras, raid frames, etc... all tools you have now existed in TBC.

Classes have completely changed, all roles now have different responsibilities. Its a different game that is focused more on individual game play rather than group.

[FuxieDK]

TBC had a major issue - a lack of tanks.

Opposed to now?!?!?!?!?

[Kuniku]

Not really. There were always veteran players who played vanilla for several years and other MMO games before that. Now there are many players who joined in Cataclysm or MoP.


Not true. Boss mods, auras, raid frames, etc... all tools you have now existed in TBC.

Classes have completely changed, all roles now have different responsibilities. Its a different game that is focused more on individual game play rather than group.

I disagree, aspects of the harder boss fights that were new and challenging then are often trivial aspects to a fight now that are more of an annoyance than anything difficult. This can only be due to the players being better now than they were then.

I meant more out of game tools, sure many of the mods we used then are still around, some have gotten better, but they largely do the same job. But the resources out of game have improved, back then at best we only really had a written run down of a vauge strategy for the boss, now you have narrated and animated kill videos that make learning the fights that much easier [obviously not talking about world first progression raiding here =p] There seem to be far more sites out there now to help improve your game one way or another, back then I only really remember this site, thott bot and wow head =p

[Kaynot]

OH and yes, let's please look at these fights =)
Nightbane: adds. Oh look fire!. Adds. Heal dat autohit damage!
Vashj: adds. Oh look poison!. Adds. Heal dat autohit damage!
Teron: adds. Oh look minigame! Adds. Heal dat autohit damage!
Muru: adds. Oh look this isn't even my final form! Adds. Heal dat autohit damage!

Now, sit down please.

If you have never raided during TBC, would you not reply at all?
Lets start with a few facts here,shall we? ICC was a puggable raid.Ok.If your memory is not working properly, i suggest to remember a thing called Gearscore.
The whole ICC heroic was a bad joke.The only reason it took so long to progress through were limited attempts.And from perspective of a guy who raided through TBC up to Brutallus it was a boring farmfest,which made me quit organized raiding.

Actual Nightbane abilities from the wow wiki :

Abilities on the ground

Bellowing Roar – Typical dragon fear with a 2.5-second cast time, short duration, and 30-second cooldown. Of moderate range, healers and ranged DPS at max range will be just outside its reach. Resistible with Berserker Rage, Fear Ward, Will of the Forsaken or a PvP trinket. Tremor Totem will also break the fear on pulse. He casts this once every 45 seconds to 1 minute.
Charred Earth – Chars the ground beneath a random player. All players standing inside the affected area (approximately 5 yard radius, visually indicated by smoke on the ground, very difficult to spot if your spell effect detail slider in video options is below half way) receive a DoT that deals up to 3,000 fire damage per second. Cannot be dispelled, but disappears by itself once the player leaves the affected zone. The zones remain for 30 seconds and several of them can be present at the same time. (I'm not sure, but it seems the effect is slightly larger than the mark on the ground, someone please confirm or deny this)
Cleave – Typical dragon cleave, frontal arc. Hits for approximately 6,000 on plate, 11,000 on cloth.
Distracting Ash – Reduces chance to hit with melee and spells by 30% for 40 seconds. Can be dispelled.
Smoldering Breath – Inflicts 5k to 6k fire damage to enemies in a frontal cone. Deals 1,688 to 1,912 damage every 3 seconds for 15 seconds.
Tail Sweep – Inflicts 450 fire damage on enemies in a cone behind the boss, knocking them back. Deals 450 fire damage every 3 seconds for 25 seconds.

Abilities in the air

Casts Rain of Bones on one random player/pet:
Bombards the area the targeted person was standing at the initial cast with bone fragments, which deal 352-408 physical damage in a 6-yard radius.
Summons five Restless Skeletons. Each has the following attributes:
Hits for approximately 1,300 on cloth, 450 on plate
Has roughly 13,500 health
Shoots powerful Smoking Blast every second for approximately 15 seconds. Deals 1,850 to 2,150 physical damage (can be mitigated by armor, approximately 750 on plate) to the target and 3,000 fire damage over 18 seconds. The fire damage-over-time debuff can be dispelled. Targeting for this ability is determined by the individual with the highest threat on Nightbane after he goes into the air. The target is usually a healer because damage-dealers typically hit the skeletons during this phase.
Fireball Barrage: If any member of the raid is too far away from Nightbane while he is in flight, he pelts the raid with fireballs, each doing about 3,000-3,500 damage, casting 1 per second until all members are within range. This ability exists to prevent exploiting and is not something you will notice if you do things correctly.

So what we got is : Fear ability,which could only be dealt with 1. Undead racial, 2. warriors Berserker Rage,3.priests Fear Ward(3 MIN cd), 4.Tremor Totem (replaces any earth totem) and 5.pvp trinket.Now go ahead and try to count how many fear counters we have nowadays and what sort of cds they have.
Next one is AoE that would instantly kill you if you wouldnt move out for 2 secs.
Cleave.Breath.Tail sweep.
Debuff that reduces hit chance by 30% - requires dispell.
Air phase : AoE,adds,strong DoT.

As you can clearly see watching out for fire and dpsing would lead only to wipes.Oh,whats it ? No shaman or pvp trinkets in your raid? Sorry guys, no Nightbane this time.Or maybe lets give it a try? 1 min after pull everyone dies because of fear+cleave/fire combo.
And now imagine trying to LFR that guy.

Maybe now try to name just one boss who was a 100% wipe without shaman/pvp trinket on heroic difficulty.

[Salystra]

Go into any boss encounter these days and straight away you will compare to how its been done before.

O look drills that come up from the floor in a sequence hmmm, thats heigan, thats ragnaros etc etc

People have become better the challenges however pretty much the same its all down to the tighter control over boss health/estimated dps & healing levels to kill said boss in some previous expansions this was the key issues you just didn't have and couldn't get the output you needed to.

[Seriss]

I was such a horrible noob in BC, and still I considered myself a good player back then. Heck, we cleared Sunwell before the patch-that-nerfed-them-all. But still, when I look at those old videos, I see how horrible of a player I actually was. I've improved loads since then, and I still have a lot of room to improve.

Every time a new tier comes out, I'm astounded at how complicated things are getting compared to what we used to know back when raiding was still a very exclusive thing. BC's raids can hardly compare to the complexity that we're facing today. Perhaps Kael and Vashj get somewhat closer to the likes of Blackfuse, Klaxxi and Garrosh than any other bosses from back then.

And don't forget that a large part of BC's difficulty lived from the necessity of stacking warlocks (shadowboltspaminc!) and resto shamans for group buffs, mana tides and chain-heroism/lust for your highest dps group.

[Raiju]

And don't forget that a large part of BC's difficulty lived from the necessity of stacking warlocks (shadowboltspaminc!) and resto shamans for group buffs, mana tides and chain-heroism/lust for your highest dps group.

Strategy vs tactics

[miffy23]

If you have never raided during TBC, would you not reply at all?
Lets start with a few facts here,shall we? ICC was a puggable raid.Ok.If your memory is not working properly, i suggest to remember a thing called Gearscore.
The whole ICC heroic was a bad joke.The only reason it took so long to progress through were limited attempts.And from perspective of a guy who raided through TBC up to Brutallus it was a boring farmfest,which made me quit organized raiding.

Actual Nightbane abilities from the wow wiki :

Abilities on the ground

Bellowing Roar – Typical dragon fear with a 2.5-second cast time, short duration, and 30-second cooldown. Of moderate range, healers and ranged DPS at max range will be just outside its reach. Resistible with Berserker Rage, Fear Ward, Will of the Forsaken or a PvP trinket. Tremor Totem will also break the fear on pulse. He casts this once every 45 seconds to 1 minute.
Charred Earth – Chars the ground beneath a random player. All players standing inside the affected area (approximately 5 yard radius, visually indicated by smoke on the ground, very difficult to spot if your spell effect detail slider in video options is below half way) receive a DoT that deals up to 3,000 fire damage per second. Cannot be dispelled, but disappears by itself once the player leaves the affected zone. The zones remain for 30 seconds and several of them can be present at the same time. (I'm not sure, but it seems the effect is slightly larger than the mark on the ground, someone please confirm or deny this)
Cleave – Typical dragon cleave, frontal arc. Hits for approximately 6,000 on plate, 11,000 on cloth.
Distracting Ash – Reduces chance to hit with melee and spells by 30% for 40 seconds. Can be dispelled.
Smoldering Breath – Inflicts 5k to 6k fire damage to enemies in a frontal cone. Deals 1,688 to 1,912 damage every 3 seconds for 15 seconds.
Tail Sweep – Inflicts 450 fire damage on enemies in a cone behind the boss, knocking them back. Deals 450 fire damage every 3 seconds for 25 seconds.

Abilities in the air

Casts Rain of Bones on one random player/pet:
Bombards the area the targeted person was standing at the initial cast with bone fragments, which deal 352-408 physical damage in a 6-yard radius.
Summons five Restless Skeletons. Each has the following attributes:
Hits for approximately 1,300 on cloth, 450 on plate
Has roughly 13,500 health
Shoots powerful Smoking Blast every second for approximately 15 seconds. Deals 1,850 to 2,150 physical damage (can be mitigated by armor, approximately 750 on plate) to the target and 3,000 fire damage over 18 seconds. The fire damage-over-time debuff can be dispelled. Targeting for this ability is determined by the individual with the highest threat on Nightbane after he goes into the air. The target is usually a healer because damage-dealers typically hit the skeletons during this phase.
Fireball Barrage: If any member of the raid is too far away from Nightbane while he is in flight, he pelts the raid with fireballs, each doing about 3,000-3,500 damage, casting 1 per second until all members are within range. This ability exists to prevent exploiting and is not something you will notice if you do things correctly.

So what we got is : Fear ability,which could only be dealt with 1. Undead racial, 2. warriors Berserker Rage,3.priests Fear Ward(3 MIN cd), 4.Tremor Totem (replaces any earth totem) and 5.pvp trinket.Now go ahead and try to count how many fear counters we have nowadays and what sort of cds they have.
Next one is AoE that would instantly kill you if you wouldnt move out for 2 secs.
Cleave.Breath.Tail sweep.
Debuff that reduces hit chance by 30% - requires dispell.
Air phase : AoE,adds,strong DoT.

As you can clearly see watching out for fire and dpsing would lead only to wipes.Oh,whats it ? No shaman or pvp trinkets in your raid? Sorry guys, no Nightbane this time.Or maybe lets give it a try? 1 min after pull everyone dies because of fear+cleave/fire combo.
And now imagine trying to LFR that guy.

Maybe now try to name just one boss who was a 100% wipe without shaman/pvp trinket on heroic difficulty.

I was there, I raided in TBC and i downed Nightbane It was by no stretch of the imagination a nightmarish fight. It was rather simple and straightforward, what made it hard in your mind is the necessity for class stacking, which is one of the only features of TBC that made it "harder" - the badly designed class balance. That does not make an encounter "hard", just annoying

And again, you throw in LFR for some reason, which has NOTHING to do with actual raiding guilds, yet alone heroic/world top 100 progress. Yes, 90% of LFR players are bad, we get it. Guess what? 90% of players in TBC were bad too, in fact most were worse because the game didn't actually force that much individual responsibility on you. I see people now all the time that were raiding in TBC and before that came back in Cata/MoP and fail HORRIBLY because they are not used to fast reflex individual skillchecks. In fact it severely demotivates them. If you haven't gone with raiding organically over the years, older players get quite a shock when they come back to it today.

The fact that you call out today's heroic fights for not having to class stack/ use pvp trinkets because their design was flawed just goes to prove how much better designed they are. In fact, on normal difficulty you can go in with pretty much any class combo as long as u fulfill all roles - it comes down to player ability, not your class makeup. If you think that kind of a design flaw makes for more challenging/tough fights then you are not seeing things objectively.

A group that could comfortably kill Nightbane on progress would have a nightmare of a time even attempting most heroic bosses on progress these days, or even many of the bosses in the last few expansions after TBC for that matter.

[yjmark]

The game is both easier and harder. There are so many aspects that you can't just claim one subjective overall "feeling".

Heroic raids today are far more difficult (on average) when compared to TBC raids. And the flip side is that easier mode raids are quite a bit easier (on average) than TBC.

IMHO - the real difference is that now you can choose your level of difficulty. You can choose content that is harder than TBC. you can choose content that is easier than TBC. In TBC - there was no choice.

[Kaynot]

The fact that you call out today's heroic fights for not having to class stack/ use pvp trinkets because their design was flawed just goes to prove how much better designed they are. In fact, on normal difficulty you can go in with pretty much any class combo as long as u fulfill all roles - it comes down to player ability, not your class makeup. If you think that kind of a design flaw makes for more challenging/tough fights then you are not seeing things objectively.

From my prespective difficult raids are defined by amount of teamwork,preparation (raid composition,special items like nets and pvp trinkets incl.), longer crucial CDs which required proper timing. and amount of allowed mistakes during the fight.
What we have nowadays are RNG based fights,there teamwork is replaced by individual skills, and there even if you die you stil are rezz ready.
A boss fight can be infinite complex but if it is still forgiving, its not hard.

[Deleted]

The game is both easier and harder. There are so many aspects that you can't just claim one subjective overall "feeling".

IMHO - the real difference is that now you can choose your level of difficulty. You can choose content that is harder than TBC. you can choose content that is easier than TBC. In TBC - there was no choice.

^ You pretty much summed it up.