Alternate paths of progression: Why ICC and Ulduar were the best raids

[Celista]

No, I wasn't trolling at all. ICC is horrible in my book. Lots of fights were just badly designed, gating was horrible, most bosses felt out of place (actually, only Marrowgar-Deathwhisper-Saurfang-Sindragosa and LK felt okay-ish for me, I had no idea why others were there).

Sindragosa annoyed me because the encounter looked and felt too similar to Sapphiron....

The one very obvious thing Blizzard needs to do is stop revamping old raid encounters, etc unless there is at least a couple of expansions between said encounters. Naxx 2 should have been done better or not done at all. Zoning into ToT for the first time, I saw the trolls and just sighed and was like, "again...?!" I'm tired of trolls like I am tired of Onyxia coming back every other expansion, and having said trolls spew out Game of Thrones memes during raid encounters just makes said raid encounter that much less enjoyable. People are entitled to their opinion but ToT doesn't feel epic at all to me, just very random and rehashed and old.

My favorite raids: ICC (Arthas), Ulduar (titan-themed, Algalon), Firelands, Sunwell, Kara, AQ 20/40, TotFW, T14, Onyxia (the first time), RS, ToGC, Tempest Keep, Naxx 40...yeah >.< When the raid tier is bad though, it is horrible, and one boss encounter can make or break my perception of an entire expansion *cough* Madness *cough*

[Pannonian]

1) Physical gating is pretty gay I agree but I'd much rather have just a physical gate than a gear check for a wall which is more or less what we have now. Furthermore that still entirely misses the point that the bosses themselves had a much better difficulty curve.
2) Really? I sure as hell didn't touch TOC when Icc came out.

You must have had a very different raid experience. I still can remember "Saurfang is dead, we still have 3 hours raid - lets go pdok" - it sucked.

Also: 100 pulls on Horridon? Seriously? Its just, i cannot imagine that. Our raid only did 1 hardmode in T14 as we now raid about 4-5 hours a week, so not much time, and to be honest not much enthusiasm for HM. And sure, we also had a bit of a struggle with Horridon. But after 15 wipes for us it became quite clear what we had to do... I don't think he is overtuned, because i cannot really say the following bosses get easier. Heck we even wiped more at Tortos... If you want to change something about the difficulty, i would buff Jin'rokh instead of nerfing Horrdion, otherwise people will bitch about council til it gets nerfed, and so on...

[Deleted]

I don't think that's a correct assumption and the data doesn't bear that out anyway. Fewer and fewer guilds are clearing these bosses and raids on normal, and more and more people are being shoved into lfr. The guilds are disbanding and those players AREN'T by and large finding other guilds. Their either leaving the game or just running lfr. It is PRECISELY because the raid is overtuned and lacks any sort of ramp up time. You can call it a choice but it's not a really good one, in fact it ends up being a choice about why should I bother playing this game anymore if I can't play it with my friends?

The decent guilds can't recruit other players because THEIR ALL IN LFR or their all condensed in a handful of servers and simple don't want to deal with the hassle of getting back into raiding when it's just a nightmare at this difficulty level. If they disband it doesn't mean that the few good raiders will simple find another guild. It means that many will either stop playing entirely or only fun lfr.

---------- Post added 2013-03-28 at 12:42 AM ----------



Alright man, I'll see you at under 10k in the next raiding tier. And then lower and lower and lower. How low can it go before you people get it through your thick skulls that the current tuning is driving players away from normals? I'm so tired of arguing with people over this when it's right there in fucking black in white. Whatever when they stop making normal raids due to lack of participation and your stuck with LFR and Heroic then you can come and tell me about how awesome ToT was.

I never said that I could back my thoughts up with valid proof but you aren't exactly doing that either though. I mean, how do you know, what happens to the good players, when casual guilds break up? None of us actually know, I was just pointing out another possibly outcome for those few good people.

And the "why bother playing, if I can't play with my friends" isn't valid tbh. That's a very casual approach at least. Cause everyone knows, that playing with your friends is rarely compatible with progression raiding. If you truly wanna raid with your friends, then you have to accept, that you won't be clearing current content - in your case for instance.

I have several friends whom I had to leave behind, cause they couldn't keep up. Does that mean, that we're no longer friends? No ofc not, it just means that I prefer progression over raiding with friends. I can do alt runs with friends and I can still be social with them. But ultimately, that's a choice we must all make.

[edlike]

What’s ridiculous is your choice to criticise my view as “pretty absurd”, when you don’t bother to add the context of that view that was provided in the very post you quoted. Clearly, it’s simpler to just disagree and personally slight someone after forming a straw-man argument from their commentary?

I'm saying it's absurd of you to criticize the talent of the design team because you don't like the linear nature of the raid. Nothing more, nothing less. I'm not attacking you personally, and reading between the lines for an attack that isn't there in an effort to be more combative isn't helping anyone.

[Candiman]

Absolutely. IF the C player refuses to try, they don't belong in normals and I don't care if they leave normals to go to LFR. That's fine. You shouldn't tune normal around C players. Somewhat by definition, raids are harder group content. I firmly believe, having raided off and on for 7 years, that any normal person can learn to be a B level player by which I mean someone who knows how to setup gear (including gems and enchants) and who can learn and execute their rotation well. The only exceptions to that that I've run across are people with physical limits (for example, I know someone with nerve damage in their hand and it makes complex rotations very hard). Frankly, it's insulting to assume that people of normal intelligence CAN'T do this.

TL;DR? You want normals to cater to people who refuse to bother trying. I want them to reward people who do try.

Oh and to the person who noted 10k raids have killed Horridon... yeah. We started in ToT vastly undergeared (high 480s) and are just now getting to where we should be, around 500. We've also had new people swap in so there's some learning. It's not that Horridon is vastly hard, it's that I think he's a bit too much of a cockblock *for the second boss*.

In the sense that ToT assumes you've farmed gear to the 495-500 level it assumes you have cleared T14 and/or have gotten some crafted or VP gear. There's little allowance for people who didn't farm T14 (and I do mean farm for some time, not just "woo hoo, we got a Sha kill, let's go T15!"). That's fine... it just means guilds like mine who started late have some catch up to do.

I've bolded the part of that that I find very strange. You just said that normal raids shouldn't be balanced around an average player. To my mind that's exactly who they should be balanced for.

[Sesshou]

I don't get the issue. Unless you are stuck on normal or cutting edge heroic progression where you can't skip anything because you need to do everything in one lockout, you do have paths of progression. But if you are stuck on normal, it doesn't really matter because the only bosses in ToT on normal that are substantially easier/harder than the rest are JinRokh, Dark Animus, and Twins (all of which are far easier than the bosses next to them). Horridron through Durumu is pretty much a gradual increase in difficulty so if your guild fails massively on horridron or something, I don't see you doing so hot if you could just skip him... unless you mean skip him and go to the 9th boss (and Dark Animus probably wouldn't be that easy if you can't do horridron, I just think he is a good bit easier than Du, Prim, and Qon). In neither Ulduar nor ICC could you skip from boss 2/3 to boss 9 without doing stuff in the middle.

If you are doing heroics but not cutting edge, you do have alternate paths of progression. Look at T14 or DS and you can see not everyone kills things in the exact same order.

I've bolded the part of that that I find very strange. You just said that normal raids shouldn't be balanced around an average player. To my mind that's exactly who they should be balanced for.

Pretty sure he defined C players as players who don't try. You want to tune normal for people who don't try? What is the point in separating it from LFR then? Normal should be tuned for people who put effort in but are average range in skill.

[clevin]

Naxx WAS a good raid. It was just rehashed and people never praise a rehash.

It was a rehash for a VERY small number of people. Most raiders never saw Naxx 40. Me for example. I started a couple of months before TBC so I never even raided vanilla. Let's not retcon reality and pretend that most people who played vanilla (or even most people who raided in vanila) raided Naxx 40

---------- Post added 2013-03-28 at 12:54 PM ----------

I've bolded the part of that that I find very strange. You just said that normal raids shouldn't be balanced around an average player. To my mind that's exactly who they should be balanced for.

Mmm selective reading (and quoting!). Try again.

I don't want to balance normals around people who don't try. Around people who find 5 mans hard. Around people who wear a mix of armor types because they don't understand how to gear or who won't bother to enchant or gem gear because 'why bother?'

Raiding is a step up in terms of PVE difficulty - you need to try a bit more, not just slack. As I also said (and you ignored) "...it's insulting to assume that people of normal intelligence CAN'T do this [be good enough for normals]".. In my experience virtually anyone who wants to and isn't encumbered by physical disabilities can learn about their class and play it well enough to do normals as they're now tuned. If they won't make the effort that's on them.

---------- Post added 2013-03-28 at 01:03 PM ----------

Raid instances shouldn't have difficulty curves. You need checks at the beginning of the instance so that people know what's needed to progress further on. You can complain about Horridon being too rough in the beginning, but if you can't down him, how are you going to down some of the harder fights later on? If ToT was built your way, then fights like Jin'rokh, Tortos, and Ji-Kun would all be near the beginning and then you'd be stuck on Megaera, Elder Council, etc all back-to-back-to-back. I know, especially for my guild, that we enjoy the little breaks between hard bosses so that we know "Hey if we can get this boss down, the next will be a piece of cake, etc."

Plus Jin'rokh is the gear check while Horridon is the coordination check. All instances since the beginning of WoW have had checks at the start. SSC had Hydros which was a HARSH gear check, Black Temple had Naj'entus which was a skill / gear check, MSV had Stone Guards, and so on.

The problem is that if you block people too harshly too early they can't get gear. Jin isn't hard. Our 48x raid killed him the first week he was out and we undergeared TOT by 15-20 ilevels.

My issue with Horridon is similar to my issue with Tortos - I hate fights where it's "Spend much time killing/controlling adds, then you can deal with the boss". It's like "ok, you've cleared trash to get to the boss and spend a significant part of the fight killing more trash, er, I mean adds." That's more of a style thing than difficulty though. The linear style means that we CAN'T try Council if we're stuck on Horridon. Whether Council is easier or not is debatable but we've all been in raids where for some reason the raid just can't get Boss X but kicks ass on Boss Y who's really just as hard but whose mechanics for some reason are easier for that raid to do. Imagine we could choose either Horridon or Council. Have to kill them both to get to Tortos, but you can go either Jinrokh > Horridon > Council or Jinrokh > Council >Horridon. If, for some reason, a raid found one of the two bosses after Jin easier than t he other they'd have a couple of bosses to farm while figuring out the next one.

[Kunta]

Kara was the best layout period.

[Kazgrel]

I don't want to balance normals around people who don't try. Around people who find 5 mans hard. Around people who wear a mix of armor types because they don't understand how to gear or who won't bother to enchant or gem gear because 'why bother?'

If you're going by the old grade school system, where C is average...what you described there would be a D at best, but more likely a F...and yep, that would be F as in fail, heh.

My viewpoint of what average is could be horribly optimistic, though.

[Mukki]

No it's not. It's really not. Icc was FAR more accessible than ToT. ICC had a much better difficulty curve. It had much better lore. The fights were more engaging. Throne is just wall after wall after wall designed to FORCE players who should be running ToT to go back and do previous raids in an effort to further gate ToT and make sure it lasts as long as possible. Gear check after gear check boss.

There's something to be said about someone who's bothered by a differing opinion to the point where he has to tell someone else their opinion is wrong. Get over yourself, a lot of people like ToT better than ICC.

[Glorious Leader]

There's something to be said about someone who's bothered by a differing opinion to the point where he has to tell someone else their opinion is wrong. Get over yourself, a lot of people like ToT better than ICC.

The irony and downright hypocrisy in your statement should be obvious even to you.

Theirs something to be said about someone who's bothered by a differing opinion to the point where he has to tell someone else that their opinion is wrong. Get over yourself, few people consider ToT better than ICC or Ulduar.

[eschatological]

Again, here's my question which no one on the "Horridon is overtuned" side seems to want to answer: Is asking a raid group of 10 people to interrupt on maybe 2 adds, 3 if you're really slow on 2nd door, dispel smartly, and target switch too much to expect of normal-mode raiders?

Because to me, it's mind-boggling to suggest keeping two venom priests from casting a spell on like a 25s CD is unreasonable. I play a hunter, and I can get EVERY volley for whichever add I'm assigned to, and Silencing Shot has a 24s CD. All melee have about a 15s CD. Mages and spriests have a 20s CD on interrupt. Shamans have something absurdly low for interrupts.

The point is, you keep talking about "bad comps," without acknowledging that every dps spec besides hunters have an interrupt, baseline.

[Deleted]

Again, here's my question which no one on the "Horridon is overtuned" side seems to want to answer: Is asking a raid group of 10 people to interrupt on maybe 2 adds, 3 if you're really slow on 2nd door, dispel smartly, and target switch too much to expect of normal-mode raiders?

Because to me, it's mind-boggling to suggest keeping two venom priests from casting a spell on like a 25s CD is unreasonable. I play a hunter, and I can get EVERY volley for whichever add I'm assigned to, and Silencing Shot has a 24s CD. All melee have about a 15s CD. Mages and spriests have a 20s CD on interrupt. Shamans have something absurdly low for interrupts.

The point is, you keep talking about "bad comps," without acknowledging that every dps spec besides hunters have an interrupt, baseline.

My guess is, that a lot of people just can't focus enough to not miss their interrupt and then things starts to go apeshit. Healers have to dispel, cause dps are r-tards. Then healers go oom and people start dying left and right. Or the tanks don't know how to play their class and are getting pwned by the boss. Or the dps sucks and can't kill the adds fast enough.

All of these things are L2P issues and not tuning issues imo.

[Libertarian]

My guess is, that a lot of people just can't focus enough to not miss their interrupt and then things starts to go apeshit. Healers have to dispel, cause dps are r-tards. Then healers go oom and people start dying left and right. Or the tanks don't know how to play their class and are getting pwned by the boss. Or the dps sucks and can't kill the adds fast enough.

All of these things are L2P issues and not tuning issues imo.

The hard part of 2nd gate is not the interrupting, but preventing effusions from spawning and a lot of people don't realize this in normal/heroic. If it were only 3 venom priests we could sit there and interrupt all day no problem. The hard part is interrupting, avoiding pools, pushing dino, horridon charge, AND doing your rotation to kill priests effectively.

And saying DPS sucks is a pretty one sided argument. The fight is demanding in p1 and p2 both requiring a group of around 515+ average item level. Most of the guilds who have downed horridon, downed sha, and the other 1000 guilds stuck on heroic horridon were 15/16 or so. More gear = horridon much easier. The mechanics are the exact same as normal mode with a dinosaur.

When these guilds are 517 or so you will see the boss fall over. Last week to this week we had an extra 5s or so on doors before the next ones.

[Deleted]

The hard part of 2nd gate is not the interrupting, but preventing effusions from spawning and a lot of people don't realize this in normal/heroic. If it were only 3 venom priests we could sit there and interrupt all day no problem. The hard part is interrupting, avoiding pools, pushing dino, horridon charge, AND doing your rotation to kill priests effectively.

And saying DPS sucks is a pretty one sided argument. The fight is demanding in p1 and p2 both requiring a group of around 515+ average item level. Most of the guilds who have downed horridon, downed sha, and the other 1000 guilds stuck on heroic horridon were 15/16 or so. More gear = horridon much easier. The mechanics are the exact same as normal mode with a dinosaur.

When these guilds are 517 or so you will see the boss fall over. Last week to this week we had an extra 5s or so on doors before the next ones.

Are you actually saying, that in order to kill Normal Horridon, you need an average of 515 ilvl as a raid team? That's so far out, that I don't even know what to say.

If you're having issues with the pools, you aren't moving accordingly. Interrupting hardly affects your rotation to the point where your dps will drop by miles. What you list as issues, is more about awareness and the ability to swap targets at the right time. On top of that, you're AoE'ing most of the time - again hardly any hard rotations involved in that.

Also, if you couldn't kill Normal Sha in T14, then why do you expect to be able to kill ToT bosses? That makes no sense imo.

[eschatological]

We're talking normal mode progression and Horridon being an "early wall." Effusions can both be interrupted and burned fairly easily. You have at least 6 available interrupts in your group (1 tank + 5 DPS) in normal mode. That's a matter of switching targets.

So, again, the question is: is that asking too much of normal raiders?

[Deleted]

I have to add, that if you're struggling with Horridon, I honestly doubt you'd be able to kill that many other bosses. Maybe something like Primodius or Dark Animus - assuming you'd get pass the trash and not think that's a wall as well^^.

[Libertarian]

Are you actually saying, that in order to kill Normal Horridon, you need an average of 515 ilvl as a raid team? That's so far out, that I don't even know what to say.

If you're having issues with the pools, you aren't moving accordingly. Interrupting hardly affects your rotation to the point where your dps will drop by miles. What you list as issues, is more about awareness and the ability to swap targets at the right time. On top of that, you're AoE'ing most of the time - again hardly any hard rotations involved in that.

Also, if you couldn't kill Normal Sha in T14, then why do you expect to be able to kill ToT bosses? That makes no sense imo.

I was talking about heroic

[Deleted]

I was talking about heroic

And this whole thread is about people thinking NORMAL Horridon is a wall.......

[Celista]

We're talking normal mode progression and Horridon being an "early wall." Effusions can both be interrupted and burned fairly easily. You have at least 6 available interrupts in your group (1 tank + 5 DPS) in normal mode. That's a matter of switching targets.

So, again, the question is: is that asking too much of normal raiders?

I've noticed among more casual raiders that asking dps to do anything other than stay out of fire and dps is asking for trouble. They almost always have issues with interrupts/hitting certain buttons at the right time/movement-intensive fights, etc. I'm not saying that tanks and healers are blameless, or that casual dpsers always suck, or that dps is necessarily always easier than a tanking/healing role...I just noticed that, when you have to start assigning things like cleanses/interrupts to DPS, things tend to not go so well. It separates the raid teams hitting their head on the same wall over and over again from the teams that clear content efficiently...these players who are hitting walls are also less likely to do things like use their cds on other players when necessary, such as innervate/hymn for healers or hand of sacing a tank, or using lay on hands, or whatever...things that matter beyond simple dmg/healing output.

I don't think anyone here will argue that asking players to interrupt is asking too much. For players where such normal mode mechanics are too challenging for them, there is always LFR.