Antorus Progression Thread

[rda]

lol 10 of 11 bosses down day one for two guilds

Great game ya got Blizz

Would you think it is better if they, say, increased raid-wide damage 1.2x extending the number of expected tries to kill tenfold?

Knowing how these things are getting balanced (you set up rough proportions -> test -> take care of obvious outliers -> do some math and alter a single common multiplier), it's just so weird to be reading "assessments" like "if it takes two days to kill bosses, that's obviously worse than if it takes two weeks".

[Toogoodman]

That's comparing incomparable.

1) The target ilvl tuning. Most top guild raiders started off in about 952-960 average item level, no Argus trinkets on the complete majority or otherwise bis trinkets. Average Joe mythic raider will have about 960-965 gear, likely with Argus trinket, likely upgraded 3-4 times.

2) Preparation. You don't need any preparation until Imonar. Kin'garoth requires some preparation, but even with little, as we have seen from Future, it can go down quite fast. Varimathras - lol. Coven does heavily favor all ranged comp, but with ironed out play, melee will be seen on the fight soon. Aggramar will get significantly easier once videos are available, but many guilds will probably struggle to find the right comp. Argus remains unknown.

3) Personal play. Of course it will take average guilds longer to clear the place when they have players that cause wipes due to dying to stupid shit. Dying to falling behind on something or improper healing cooldown usage is fine, dying to being stupid is not. Videos help here a great deal too, because you already know where the cooldowns are needed.

So yeah, you are comparing apples to oranges.

This is the type of outlook that always bothered me right, saying that "oh it will take the pleb so much longer to clear", when the reality of the situation is that guilds like Method, and Exorsus, raid 18+ hours the first few days? and continue to day raid until the boss dies? Their first raid week, is as much time spent in the raid as most guilds will raid in the next 6 weeks, so obviously theyre going to get kills.

Its funny, I play in a top 100 US guild, and we raid 2 nights a week, yet we killed KJ in mid October. Sound shitty right? Well thats with 430 wipes (which is below average), and when this guild was 3 days a week we were top 25 US (top 100 world). I am almost positive, if we were to day raid, we could clear Antorus at a fairly competitive rate, I mean look at Nihilum from the beginning of this xpac, they were fucking AWFUL and were still getting top 20 world kills because they day raided. Its all about perspective, am I saying Method and Exorsus suck? nope, they're easily some of the best players in the world, but here in the US for example, we don't have the very generous social safety net to let us play a video game for 3 years without a job or school, and just live off the state, we have full time jobs.

What would make the "race to world first" more interesting would be if there were a prize pool for the top 5 guilds, but considering none of the guilds stream progress who would be getting those ranks, that will never happen. Also, if there were a million dollars for first place, you would see a lot better players stepping up to the plate to smash through day raiding, currently, besides jerking off rights, there is literally no incentive.

[Emaias]

There's nothing about getting better at the game when you're relying on 19 other people AND having to pick the correct classes, for example of the 60 players who have killed Mythic Coven, only 2 melee have the kill. That's a terrible and unacceptable design flaw. Or how you needed AT LEAST 4 rogues to kill Mythic Avatar for MONTHS last tier.

I read through the entire thread after my original comment and this was the only thing worth commenting on, because it seems like everyone else glazed over it. Let me ask you this, on a boss fight where you have three bosses of shared health pool, why would you NOT bring every geared multi-dot class you possibly had? The fight was designed around that playstyle. It’s a race too, so could those guilds have killed it with just a normal comp, probably, but during the race why not do it the faster way?

Use your brain, if you bring 4 Boomkins, 3 Afflic Warlocks and 3 Spriests you are essentially bringing 30 DPS to the fight. (10x3bosses). You’re saying it’s such bad design but these top guilds are doing what is best for the race. I can also assure you that those players don’t give a rats ass what they have to play if the content goes down.

Don’t just assume because no melee were brought doesn’t mean that melee cannot kill it.

[Deleted]

I'm not getting into a vanilla TBC vrs now with 4 levels of difficulty, bonus rolls, trading gear and tiny raid size, or the one edge might be buying gold to get elixers/pots/resist gear for 40 raiders.

different game, that and the fights have already been figured out for them. different world. different game.

I'm more curious how those front page topish guilds without lots of accounts alts and not doing 6+ split runs will fair.

The biggest thing that has changed imo generally over all these years is just player skill and player knowledge. Even in top top progression guilds in vanilla there were players who didn't use keybindings. People with 1 spell rotations and used to punishing but mechanically easy bosses would be completely lost even in LFR. So I really think any mythic raid team will completely stomp every single raid in classic as soon as they got the gear to do it. Gonna be interesting to see if I'm right or wrong come Classic.

[Warriorsarri]

Alpha just went up to 8/11, Asia #1, World #6.

[Deleted]

They get so much info from that ONE HOUR or less from testing an boss, immense edge over other guilds, cant even quantify the amount of edge mythic PTR testing gives.

I think you underestimate the amount of information the guilds today just got from the PTR and the datamining of the dungeon journal.

Before this, the guilds just ran into the bosses and "wasted" hours and hours with checking combat logs or working on a fine strategy.

The world first guilds today are working on way to kill those bosses weeks before the new raid launches.

[Toogoodman]

Remember when we look back at bosses lasting 30,58,74, and 87 days...

There has not been the amount of alt accounts/toons and split runs in the past. I'm long since retired from hardcore raiding but we sure as hell didn't have multiple accounts purchased and a bench as deep as these "top guilds" have now. Heck back then my priest alone was valued at +$1,000 USD. ( I looked back in the day, and that was lowish)

Let's see how guilds that have 20-30 toons at 74-75 traits are fairing a week from now.

You are aware that bosses "back then" took so long not because of "skill required to kill them" but because of the absolute stupidest shit right?

Lets take a quick dive into this:
Rag: took so long because he was released with the game, he was nearly killed instantly when people finally hit 60 and got into MC.
Nef: Took so long because, at the time, there were still nearly no geared players at 60, making guilds suffer waiting for gear.
Cthun: He was literally bugged, and impossible to kill
4hm: Once again, you needed gear to drop, or poach other tanks, still didnt take that long
Vashj: Bugged
Kealthas: Bugged AF
MH: released with the game, but required you to kill two bugged bosses to get in
Illidan: fucking lulz, dead in days (like this raid)
Sunwell Bosses: Nearly every single boss was dead the day it was released, but you had to get through artificial time gating to access the last 3 bosses

I hope that helps you with the "extreme difficulty". If lets say, Sunwell was all released on day 1, it would have likely not lasted a week (felmyst was dead on the second day).

[Ophenia]

I read through the entire thread after my original comment and this was the only thing worth commenting on, because it seems like everyone else glazed over it. Let me ask you this, on a boss fight where you have three bosses of shared health pool, why would you NOT bring every geared multi-dot class you possibly had? The fight was designed around that playstyle. It’s a race too, so could those guilds have killed it with just a normal comp, probably, but during the race why not do it the faster way?

Use your brain, if you bring 4 Boomkins, 3 Afflic Warlocks and 3 Spriests you are essentially bringing 30 DPS to the fight. (10x3bosses). You’re saying it’s such bad design but these top guilds are doing what is best for the race. I can also assure you that those players don’t give a rats ass what they have to play if the content goes down.

Don’t just assume because no melee were brought doesn’t mean that melee cannot kill it.

That's a shitty design because they could just add one or 2 mechanics requiring interrupts, or removing the mechanic requiring the boss to be spread out, or whatever mechanic hitting the tank with the needs to soak it with him, and bam, melees would've been helpful.

That's bad design because Melees don't bring anything in this fight. Only annoyance.

There have been tons of Council-like bosses (probably atleast once per raid), and I don't know if we ever had this "caster only" setup.

[rda]

I read through the entire thread after my original comment and this was the only thing worth commenting on, because it seems like everyone else glazed over it. Let me ask you this, on a boss fight where you have three bosses of shared health pool, why would you NOT bring every geared multi-dot class you possibly had? The fight was designed around that playstyle. It’s a race too, so could those guilds have killed it with just a normal comp, probably, but during the race why not do it the faster way?

Use your brain, if you bring 4 Boomkins, 3 Afflic Warlocks and 3 Spriests you are essentially bringing 30 DPS to the fight. (10x3bosses). You’re saying it’s such bad design but these top guilds are doing what is best for the race. I can also assure you that those players don’t give a rats ass what they have to play if the content goes down.

Don’t just assume because no melee were brought doesn’t mean that melee cannot kill it.

His point is that if the encounters are that vulnerable to optimization by stacking specs, that's bad design.

I would actually agree with him.

We are looking at a final raid. The encounters have to be more sophisticated than that. Overcoming them by simply stacking specs and then throwing yourself at the wall enough (hundreds of) times is surely tedious and while it still surely takes skill (and absolutely dedication and preparation), it just isn't all that interesting. I mean, OK, you got 6 geared shadow priests and 7 geared warlocks (or whoever), GG, whatever.

(Still, I am interested enough to monitor who's going to be first. But not beyond that.)

[Dsc]

You are aware that bosses "back then" took so long not because of "skill required to kill them" but because of the absolute stupidest shit right?

IMO it's not much different now. move out of /soak the bad, interrupt/kill adds.

Same.

The point I was making is that what they do now is still "the stupidest shit" run 6+ split raids, with lots of borrowed/biought alts to keep a deep bench, trade gear and stack classes when applicable. sure they aren't "clicking" but they do have a massive eager welfare supported playerbase to recruit from, all happy to hit that button.

same stuff. different flavor.

I'm again going to measure the difficulty either if I bother to raid it, or moreso by looking at those who have solid teams but are doing it 2-3 nights a week with 20-30 mains on the team, not 6 druids, 3 warlocks, and 3 shadowpriests. all decked out in teir from split runs off the shelf for any given encounter.

[Deleted]

lol 10 of 11 bosses down day one for two guilds

Great game ya got Blizz

lmao the literal toppest of the top players in the world who play professionally and autistically prepare for raids for months defeated most of it in 24 hours such easy game literally zero challenge xD xD

[Deleted]

Man I would like to see if Method is capable to clear Naxx 40 in Classic WoW.

Method has been clearing content since vanilla.

[Ningjinq]

I want to see just how many are able to kill Coven without class stacking to the extent of the top 3. That I think will say a lot more than anything else.

[~Valen~]

lol 10 of 11 bosses down day one for two guilds

Great game ya got Blizz

Have you got 10/11 down?

[Kalcheus]

Have you got 10/11 down?

I'm sure they're one of the elite 12/11 mmo-champ raiders

[Kazuchika]

I'm sure they're one of the elite 12/11 mmo-champ raiders

And probably still a better player than you.

It's okay we can't all be winners.

[Kalcheus]

And probably still a better player than you.

It's okay we can't all be winners.

I'm pretty sure the fact that I don't base video game playing as a criteria for being a winner in life automatically means I'm the winner in this argument.

[Jimson]

And probably still a better player than you.

It's okay we can't all be winners.

Obviously you're better, he's not saying the raid is too easy because 2 guilds went 10/11 in a day. I can only assume you're on that same level and thus better than 99% of us.

[Daevied]

I bet Russia doesnt have those "social security" the US ppl like to think in order to dont feel bad about not day raiding (And most of other European Countries) xD

[seraknis]

Millions of people play World of Warcraft - less than 2500 people will kill the final boss on the hardest difficulty within the first 2 weeks of the boss being available.

Of the logs reported to Warcraft Logs KJ was only killed 1,599 times, about 2% of the 80,275 parses as of this post. I'm really confused by all the talk of how easy WoW is.

I've killed KJ in LFR after falling off from the platform, so I can say that since Method killed him in less than 2 weeks ToS was piss easy. /s