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

[Glorious Leader]

Honestly theirs really nothing more that needs to be said. We'll see what participation rates look like and we'll see how long Blizzard keeps making content that caters to a minority that becomes fewer and fewer every day. I expect the last tier will be much easier. Or at least have a wider range of bosses in terms of difficulty and have a much better curve.

[aarro]

I still think ICC was the best raid too

[Sesshou]

Honestly theirs really nothing more that needs to be said. We'll see what participation rates look like and we'll see how long Blizzard keeps making content that caters to a minority that becomes fewer and fewer every day. I expect the last tier will be much easier. Or at least have a wider range of bosses in terms of difficulty and have a much better curve.

I obviously have no idea how blizzard will do T16, but do you seriously think its a good idea for them to have massively dumbed down fights? If you simplify them, they all end up feeling the same. For example, yeah council in ToT has a bunch of mechanics going on that are important, but if it didn't, it would feel just like they recycled all the other council fights.

And again, the only real difference between normal and LFR is that normal has important mechanics that you need to handle. If you make those mechanics trivial like people are suggesting in this thread with horridron, why bother with 3 difficulties at all? They might as well just make LFR and heroic and do away with normal raiding like they did away with normal level 90 dungeons.

[This name sucks]

ICC was not the best raid. Nobody who did it will ever tell you that.


It was not fun to read BOOOOOONNEEEESTOOOORRRMMM for 51 weeks in a row

[Glorious Leader]

I obviously have no idea how blizzard will do T16, but do you seriously think its a good idea for them to have massively dumbed down fights? If you simplify them, they all end up feeling the same. For example, yeah council in ToT has a bunch of mechanics going on that are important, but if it didn't, it would feel just like they recycled all the other council fights.

And again, the only real difference between normal and LFR is that normal has important mechanics that you need to handle. If you make those mechanics trivial like people are suggesting in this thread with horridron, why bother with 3 difficulties at all? They might as well just make LFR and heroic and do away with normal raiding like they did away with normal level 90 dungeons.

Where did I say massively dumb down the fights? Honestly have you read anything I posted. If you keep making every fight a massive fucking wall after wall without any fucking curve then you will get the situation you describe. Not enough players to bother support making normal content. Might as well just make lfr and heroic. You and the developers have to understand that offering VARIETY in a raid (both in terms of accessibility and in terms of the path you can take in the raid) is what makes a raid GOOD. IT's not raw difficulty. It's not beating your fuckign head against a wall over and over again. IT'S PROGRESSION. Progression involves you having kill a few bosses before you hit the fuckign wall. Currently the wall is LITERALLY THE SECOND BOSS IN THE RAID.

No I don't want them to dumb everything down and your hyperbole is ridiculous. I want them to understand what medium difficulty is ffs. I want them to understand progression.

[Daymanmb]

ICC was no where near one of the best raids nor close at all to how good Ulduar was...

Edit: Some of the heroics did make ICC more compelling imo.

[Glorious Leader]

ICC was not the best raid. Nobody who did it will ever tell you that.


It was not fun to read BOOOOOONNEEEESTOOOORRRMMM for 51 weeks in a row

I did it for almost a full year. I loved it. One of the best raids they ever made. So much for "nobody"

On the other hand "nobody" who's currently doing ToT will tell you its the best raid.

[Daymanmb]

I did it for almost a full year. I loved it. One of the best raids they ever made. So much for "nobody"

It's called a generalization for a reason. Most people dont like eating shit but I bet if you tried you could find someone who does...

[Glorious Leader]

It's called a generalization for a reason. Most people dont like eating shit but I bet if you tried you could find someone who does...

OH? Thank you I was not aware. Please do tell me more oh wise seer.....

If theirs one thing this forum could use less of it's generalization. Especially since I keep being told how little this forum or any forum for that matter represents the actal wants and wishes and opinions of the player base.


Most people don't like doing ToT (because it's a pile of shit) but I bet if you tried you could find someone who does...

[Zhaveros]

I only read the OP + 3 replies but why is there no support for this opinion? Is it truly that bad to let people progress through the instance how they please? If you can't clear the raid then there is a problem. But if one boss is acting like a wall, then why not let people skip that boss and come back if they please? I don't see how this hurts anyone. Stopping people from doing a whole raid and making them wait on nerfs is the stupid path of progression IMO.

[Daymanmb]

OH? Thank you I was not aware. Please do tell me more oh wise seer.....

If theirs one thing this forum could use less of it's generalization. Especially since I keep being told how little this forum or any forum for that matter represents the actal wants and wishes and opinions of the player base.


Most people don't like doing ToT (because it's a pile of shit) but I bet if you tried you could find someone who does...

These forums could also benefit greatly from less sarcasm and illiterate posters. Generalizations are fuelled by public opinion, what else is there to go on?

[Glorious Leader]

These forums could also benefit greatly from less sarcasm and illiterate posters. Generalizations are fuelled by public opinion, what else is there to go on?

No they aren't. Generalizations are fueled by ignorance. Don't mistake the two, although they do often ride together.

[Daymanmb]

Stopping people from doing a whole raid and making them wait on nerfs is the stupid path of progression IMO.

Is this the ONLY way of going about it? To stop and wait? I recall hitting a monster road block with Vaelstrazz in BWL. There were no other options and we had to get our shit right to move on. We spent weeks on him! I cannot remember a more rewarding kill in my WoW career than Vael.

---------- Post added 2013-03-29 at 11:08 PM ----------

No they aren't. Generalizations are fueled by ignorance. Don't mistake the two, although they do often ride together.

Dumb people can generalize about anything, that doesn't make generalizations in their totality based on ignorance. ICC generally was not that well received... people loathed the gating for instance, they also disliked the ramping 30% buff..

[st1r2]

I don't get what's happened to raiding over the last few years, a challenge used to be welcomed by the community and people would be upset that it wasn't challenging enough, these days people get upset that normal is harder than LFR and that they might actually have to understand how to adapt to mechanics / play their class / interrupt / switch targets and move. LFR was designed for people who don't want to have to bother so much with mechanics, if you want to do normals and progress people need to expect to have to do a bit more and then for heroics people must expect to have to be able to raid properly without error. That's the reason for the difficulties, if you can't raid at a certain level why should you expect the gear that the level brings? People will only cry if the bosses become Piñatas again like in DS, you should get what you put in like with any game, unfortunately the younger generation doesn't understand this and expect shinys for nothing.

[Glorious Leader]

Dumb people can generalize about anything, that doesn't make generalizations in their totality based on ignorance. ICC generally was not that well received... people loathed the gating for instance, they also disliked the ramping 30% buff..

I await the "evidence" or "proof" behind this statement. Otherwise it is itself proof positive that IGNORANCE has fueled yet another generalization.

[Zhaveros]

ICC was not the best raid. Nobody who did it will ever tell you that.


It was not fun to read BOOOOOONNEEEESTOOOORRRMMM for 51 weeks in a row

The raid itself, in my opinion, was fun. But like Dragon Soul, it was out for far too long. Disclaimer: DS sucked. I do not think it's a good instance. We'll see if Blizzard makes the same mistake with the final tier of MoP.

[Daymanmb]

I await the "evidence" or "proof" behind this statement. Otherwise it is itself proof positive that IGNORANCE has fueled yet another generalization.

Lol really? Unless you or anyone else at that time took a poll, which you and no one else did, there is no proof beyond what people were saying at the time. Likewise you cannot support your generalization of everyone not liking ToT, nor, being a reasonable person, would I request such evidence knowing full well that there isn't any..

[Sesshou]

Where did I say massively dumb down the fights? Honestly have you read anything I posted. If you keep making every fight a massive fucking wall after wall without any fucking curve then you will get the situation you describe. Not enough players to bother support making normal content. Might as well just make lfr and heroic. You and the developers have to understand that offering VARIETY in a raid (both in terms of accessibility and in terms of the path you can take in the raid) is what makes a raid GOOD. IT's not raw difficulty. It's not beating your fuckign head against a wall over and over again. IT'S PROGRESSION. Progression involves you having kill a few bosses before you hit the fuckign wall. Currently the wall is LITERALLY THE SECOND BOSS IN THE RAID.

No I don't want them to dumb everything down and your hyperbole is ridiculous. I want them to understand what medium difficulty is ffs. I want them to understand progression.

I never said you did say that. I was actually assuming you didn't want that, but if you do not want that, there has to be some lower bound that blizzard can't reduce it below regardless of participation because if there isn't, that is what will happen.

You do have variety and accessibility. What you have to understand is that ToT should not be looked at in a vacuum as if JinRokh is the starting point. Blizzard has clearly told everyone that is not the intention and that is why they are buffing old LFR drop rates and nerfed T14 significantly. This isn't wotlk or cata where they handed you catch up gear and expected people to skip to the newest raid.

The wall is only at the 2nd boss if you look at it in a vacuum. That is the 18th boss this expansion and if you have killed the first 17 on normal, you have the gear and the tools to kill Horridron after the nerf if you put some time and effort in.

Normal mode currently is that medium difficulty. What do you suppose they do exactly? You dumb down normal mode mechanics to where the simple things people are unable to handle don't matter (getting off the boss to interrupt something with a reasonable cast time) and you end up at LFR. There are no brutal throughput checks on normal. Normal also does not require some crazy strategy or creative use of mechanics. Normal isn't even asking for a flawless execution of those mechanics.

[Glorious Leader]

Lol really? Unless you or anyone else at that time took a poll, which you and no one else did, there is no proof beyond what people were saying at the time. Likewise you cannot support your generalization of everyone not liking ToT, nor, being a reasonable person, would I request such evidence knowing full well that there isn't any..

So in otherwords NO PROOF AT ALL. See my generalization was just PURE SARCASM, it was meant to point out how ignorant the statement about ICC was and was in no way shape or form meant to be taken seriously.

You however are quite serious about the statement that ICC wasn't well received which you can't back up with a single fact. In other words IGNORANCE HAS FUELED ANOTHER GENERALIZATION look at that.

[h4rr0d]

Well, this is a problem only for normal modes. after that you chose which boss you want to progress on.

That's not entirely true. With just 4 weeks of clearing normals, everyone needs at least some kind of normal mode gear. There are couple of cock block bosses that can take few attempts (read: half of raid night) even if you have killed them already - for example twins appear to be pain in the arse for us. If you want to progress, lets say, Horridon, you have to think well how much time you are going to devote to heroic progression to ensure you have enough time to clear rest of the place on normal to collect upgrades.
Last tier was pretty good for middle of the pack progression guild with 3 bosses open at any given time