Molten Core, honest predictions.

[Akka]

So for sake of argument, let's assume no World Buffs of any kind is reliably feasible during Phase 1 of Classic, no one is likely to flask out side of very specific roles. How hard is early MC actually going to be for most of us?

Not hard at all. MC was already considered very easy at the time, a time were many people had no experience of the game, little experience of playing, flasking was unheard of (it only became a thing later in the game, and only for competitive guilds) and gearing was all over the place.

Even then, it was piss easy. The first time our guild played in MC, we were only 25 people (the hardest part of MC always was to bring enough bodies) and we killed the first three boss. A number of us had experience (they partnered with another guild to help them fill their raid while most of our guild was leveling and getting dungeon gear) so it wasn't the "surprise, motherfucker" that you'd see on many first-timer that were slaughtered by the first giants, but we still killed several boss while being at basically half-strength, and half of us having a mix of blue and green.

MC was tuned for inexperienced people in leveling gear. Being in full blue was good enough to be considered a good catch for a pick-up raid. With the mindset of "let's optimize" that many people got nowadays and the obsession of "BiS", you'll end up with people that functionally outgear the content, while already knowing the tactics and having years of experience under their belt.

People from current WoW will get a few nasty surprises due to the bad habits they got there, but once they adjust, MC is going to be facerolled hard.

[Heph47]

How is it an opinion if its glaringly obvious to me, wouldn't that now be a problem on your end? Again this topic is about molten core, which will be available at launch. Considering how insanely popular we all expect classic to be and its far reaching audience, i dont see how any of you can disagree with my sentiment here.

1-2 years down the road PS playerbase will reach higher %'s, but at launch they will be dwarfed by the influx of returning/new players.

Fascinate, you need to rest your head on something soft for a while. You're getting schooled here and are blind to it.

[Charge me Doctor]

Viable in the same way that Paladin tanks, Elemental Shamans, or Hunters (post-BWL) are viable in endgame? Yes. Nothing more though.

Viable in a way that you don't need to do much in the game, and extra apm won't do anything valuable. So yeah, you could bind your shield wall to something, but you'll use it once per couple of hours, so why bother. Or you could tap 1 on your keyboard for frostbolt, or you could click it for the same result, it's not like you are going to move anywhere in next 2 minutes.

As i've said before, the game was slow, and having more apm didn't matter.

[alturic]

Given the info we've been privy to thus far for Classic, Molten Core seems like it could be rather tough for any Average Joe guild that isn't filled with a certain crowd of players.

(Example, not coordinating stacking World buffs as that's been confirmed to be near impossible since Onyxia buff will be only once per 12 hours, not enough Tranq shots for a perfect rotation etc)

So for sake of argument, let's assume no World Buffs of any kind is reliably feasible during Phase 1 of Classic, no one is likely to flask out side of very specific roles. How hard is early MC actually going to be for most of us?

I'd love to hear your predictions and reasons, I don't see it being as faceroll as a lot of memes make it out to be. I personally think the very early stages of Classic will be akin to Diablo 2. Yeah we know the strats, but is Duriel really that easy as a fresh level 20 Barbarian in self found blues/yellows?

Cheers!

Average Joe guild will have the same difficulty that players had back in classic. People who understand how to play will have a much easier time. People who actively clear mythic difficulty now will have no problems.

[Segus1992]

Viable in a way that you don't need to do much in the game, and extra apm won't do anything valuable. So yeah, you could bind your shield wall to something, but you'll use it once per couple of hours, so why bother. Or you could tap 1 on your keyboard for frostbolt, or you could click it for the same result, it's not like you are going to move anywhere in next 2 minutes.

As i've said before, the game was slow, and having more apm didn't matter.

The game was slowER, but it wasn't slow enough that you never had to turn while using attacks. Clicking is, and has always been, for noobs.

[Charge me Doctor]

The game was slowER, but it wasn't slow enough that you never had to turn while using attacks. Clicking is, and has always been, for noobs.

It was very slow, so clicking was always a viable option to play and you would have same results as a non-clicker, especially in molten core, where encounters didn't had much to do

[Segus1992]

It was very slow, so clicking was always a viable option to play and you would have same results as a non-clicker, especially in molten core, where encounters didn't had much to do

Well you're wrong, but you're free to believe what you want. Yes an average nobody chucking Frostbolts at a mob won't become much better by not clicking in MC in particular, but a raid full of people who use keybinds is going to be better than a raid that clicks, 9 times out of 10.

[collax]

Really dont know how pple think MC will be cleared in 10 days after launch.

The average time to lvl 1-60 is around 250 hours played (taken from an %$&% private server info with 140.000 lvl 60 characters).


So, even if u are faster than average (i doubt it cause we dont have mains to help alters to lvl with gold, items, summons, rushes, etc) lets say u can lvl 1-60 in 200h played. 200h/10days = 20hplaying/daily. So, unless u can play 20 hours daily the first 10 days u wont be lvl 60. And even if u are lvl 60, u need 39 more lvl 60 characters, and u have to gear them so you can clean MC.

So: No, MC will not be cleared in 10-15 days after Classic launch.

The thing is you take the average play time of average players. But hardcore players with optimised levelling route (and no contest once they are ahead) can do it twice faster. You shouldn't look at the average but at the world record which is less than 5 day played. That's about how fast the top players will level.

As for gear, a few dungeon blue and green will be enough. Remember we are talking about players that have practiced all this thing on multiple fresh private servers and got server first each time faster than the last time they did it.

[Djuntas]

This hole thread is why vanilla is pointless, and kinda all private servers. I get its fun for thoes who never played back in vanilla (I did - Trust me, you aint missing much, game only got better up to like start of WOTLK, but especially TBC), but if you already know everything you will do....Like...meeeh

[LionSinMaikeru]

its gonna get melted, everyone knows the strats, everyone knows where to get the gear

You know, you can say that all you want, but even during the time when everyone knew the strats and where to get the gear, only a small % ever completed raids because they took really good coordination.

Not to mention for the 15th(?) anniversary of WoW, they brought back Molten Core up to scale and had to nerf it because people complained it was too difficult.

[Dahij]

You know, you can say that all you want, but even during the time when everyone knew the strats and where to get the gear, only a small % ever completed raids because they took really good coordination.

Not to mention for the 15th(?) anniversary of WoW, they brought back Molten Core up to scale and had to nerf it because people complained it was too difficult.

MC doesn't require much coordination. 10th anniversary MC was overtuned and you were thrown in with 39 random people who still managed to finish it in a couple hours.

[Sarnaxxx]

Given the info we've been privy to thus far for Classic, Molten Core seems like it could be rather tough for any Average Joe guild that isn't filled with a certain crowd of players.

(Example, not coordinating stacking World buffs as that's been confirmed to be near impossible since Onyxia buff will be only once per 12 hours, not enough Tranq shots for a perfect rotation etc)

So for sake of argument, let's assume no World Buffs of any kind is reliably feasible during Phase 1 of Classic, no one is likely to flask out side of very specific roles. How hard is early MC actually going to be for most of us?

I'd love to hear your predictions and reasons, I don't see it being as faceroll as a lot of memes make it out to be. I personally think the very early stages of Classic will be akin to Diablo 2. Yeah we know the strats, but is Duriel really that easy as a fresh level 20 Barbarian in self found blues/yellows?

Cheers!

I am curious. I remember at some point the addons for dispelling got changed. I don't remember which way it was changed.. at one point you had to target each person to dispel ... at another point you could pretty much spam the hotkey to dispel around you.

[Gorsameth]

I am curious. I remember at some point the addons for dispelling got changed. I don't remember which way it was changed.. at one point you had to target each person to dispel ... at another point you could pretty much spam the hotkey to dispel around you.

Yes on release addons could auto target people to dispel so you just spammed 1 button without having to think at all.
This was changed so you had to target yourself but the addons just moved to giving you a sorted list of people that needed dispelling that you then clicked through.

You could do some stupid shit with addons back in the days.

[seleri]

To answer the actual question in the op, Molten Core itself won't be "hard" for a normal, or even below-average, player.

The hard part(which is really more tedious than difficult) for a normal player is leveling, finding a group to go with, and getting enough fire resistance for certain bosses (which isn't actually hard to do for MC but it's still another layer of rng and grinding).

[Trend]

Fastest 1-60 was done in 2-3 days in Vanila if my memory serves right.
Very fast was done in 4days.
Typical fast run was done in 7. You just need to know which zones to avoid, skip and sometimes its better to grind mobs like ungoro fire vurnuable mobs for fire mage.

The widely regarded record was 4 days 20 hours by Joana. After other expansions came out it got shorter and shorter. The 2-3 day runs you are referencing did not happen during Vanilla.

And the record wasn't on a brand new server and it was the best result after many attempts. When Classic launches you cannot have anything lined up except for knowledge. No friends, no gear, no consumables, no stuff in the AH you can even buy that would be useful (since by definition the person going fastest is ahead of everyone else.)

I don't remember if Joana used friends, gear, consumables, etc, so let's say every decent player can hit 60 in 5 days /played. Realistically there are people who will do that through 7 actual days if they're playing WoW at least 17.15 hours a day. That sounds awful but I'm guessing at least a few people not banned for account sharing will hit 60 in the first week.

As far as taking MC down, the thing I am most curious about is whether or not the server side calculations based on tank defense and fire resist gear were very accurate on the pirate servers. Admittedly I did not originally do MC with a very good crew in Vanilla, but if a tank is getting 1-shot I am not sure that is a skill issue. It was a long time ago, but if I remember right it certainly seemed impossible to get past certain blocks without having at least some of the crafted gear, for which you had to kill the earlier stuff at least a few times. Certainly a better group would need fewer iterations, but my question is whether or not skill can overcome not having any of those upgrades. It will be interesting.

[arkanon]

Really dont know how pple think MC will be cleared in 10 days after launch.

The average time to lvl 1-60 is around 250 hours played (taken from an %$&% private server info with 140.000 lvl 60 characters).


So, even if u are faster than average (i doubt it cause we dont have mains to help alters to lvl with gold, items, summons, rushes, etc) lets say u can lvl 1-60 in 200h played. 200h/10days = 20hplaying/daily. So, unless u can play 20 hours daily the first 10 days u wont be lvl 60. And even if u are lvl 60, u need 39 more lvl 60 characters, and u have to gear them so you can clean MC.

So: No, MC will not be cleared in 10-15 days after Classic launch.

hahahahahaha "averages, how do they work?" You cant be this stupid, can you? REALLY?

[xpose]

if we're talking about racing to 60 and then racing to clear MC we're not talking about average players, so using averages for them is pointless. also your "average player" leveling in classic gets stuck doing 50 different things or pvping in a certain bracket for a few weeks so averages don't mean much. the hardcore private guys i know tell me it will be possible to hit 60 in the first week if you play 18-20 hours a day for the entire week and i know some guilds are going for an MC clear week 1, im skeptical of that because it's not about getting to 60 and having time to spare, it's about 30+ people getting there with time to spare and hoping it's easy enough to roll through with less than 40 people in mostly garbage gear.

i plan on being one of the people racing like this, and i can tell you without question MC will be cleared in week 2 by more than a handful of guilds, week 1 clear is the real question. i can't wait to see how it pans out.

I hit 60 on my rogue in four days /played not even fully leveling the entire time. I entirely expect people to hit 60 within the first half of the week its released

[Stormspellz]

You know, you can say that all you want, but even during the time when everyone knew the strats and where to get the gear, only a small % ever completed raids because they took really good coordination.

Not to mention for the 15th(?) anniversary of WoW, they brought back Molten Core up to scale and had to nerf it because people complained it was too difficult.

10 anniversary also had half the raid afk cause its molten chore and they don't take cordination

1st boss can your decurse?
2nd can mitiagate the fear?
3rd boss do you have enough tanks?
4th boss can your melee run out of the hellfire and can your range not blow up on the group?

these are the level of mechanics we are dealing with, like I said before trade chats pugs may take a while to brute force it, but actual guilds on top of end of classic class patch will shred MC

[garicasha]

I believe Joana’s record was on a fresh server Blizz had specifically for a speed leveling contest.

I think people underestimate just how hard people are willing to nolife it. If you do the math on how many attempts world first guilds put in during the first week it works out to raiding like 20 hours/day. I forget the wxact numbers, but for Tomb of Sargeras it was like couple hundred attempts for Sassz’ine and Maiden and everything pre-Avatar, then a couple hundred more for Fallen Avatar and 350-450 more for Kil’Jaeden. This was all done in about 10 days or some absurdly short time span. And there’s no way the average pull took less than 6-10 minutes, world-first guilds don’t wipe in P1 for very long.

So yes I think MC will be cleared first reset if server stability allows. But it will be very very tight because they won’t have much time left to farm consumables or Hydraxian rep.

One thing is that in their favor, once they hit level 50ish they can start grinding out BRD gear. Some of the gear farm + leveling can be done simultaneously. But even with extremely intense team play it’s gonna be hard to get all the things they’d want (like the key to UBRS) so quickly.

[Millyraynge]

tanks must be crit immune which takes ages for the first wave of level 60s characters. Nearly no one really knows what it means to join mc the first time with a complete green/blue equiped raid group. It's a pain in the xyz. Most groups even never tried it this way. farming nearly pre raid best in slot for all raid members takes also some time...