If there was a classic version of each xpac. Which one would actually be hard ?

[Ezyah]

After seeing how easily classic was cleared, if blizz decided to re-release each xpac, which one would you consider would offer some challenge ? Where would you draw the line at where we might need a few hundred pull for an average guild to clean ?

Personaly, i'd feel that appart from some very secific fight (yogg 0, maybe arthas, kt , kj ?), it was cataclysm that really brought the game in a new level of complexity. I dont see guilds getting rid of sinestra, chogall, nefa, ragnaros, etc as easily as they would dispose of the hardest challenge from previous xpansion.

Thoughts ?

[khazmodan]

If you just want difficulty then why even have a past expansion when the current content is doing it well enough. Playing Cataclysm again with the beginning of LFR and the continuation of LFD would be just a reminder of how the decline began and how soulless and mind numbing the random pug is.

[Relapses]

Can I vote for BfA? Because the answer to this question is BfA.

[aceperson]

well the main issue about how hard something is comes down to a couple things.

1. has the strategy for completion been figured out?
this is a yes for any content ever made for wow. we have all the strategies from the last decade and a half. hence, there won't be time spent developing strats.
2. how many mechanics does each raid boss have?
as the expacs go on, they tend to have more mechanics because of the skill of the player base growing. this would mean the newest content is the hardest.
3. how fast can a person get gear?
legion or wod would win for how quick it is to gear so they would be the easiest. bfa has gear, azerite farming, essences, and corruptions. so bfa wins just because of tediousness.
4. does the class design make things easier or harder?
in legion, blizz was designing encounters around immunities because of how plentiful they were so that wouldn't make things easier. it would actually be harder if someone missed one immunity because most of those mechanics were one shots. so i'd say legion had the hardest content when it came to class design. there is a reason tos was nicknamed tomb of soak-geras.

so really, the hardest stuff is most likely the newest stuff.

[Razion]

People probably have the least experience with WoD, what with the most people quitting during that expansion and people probably going back to replay this expansion the least on private servers, so meta and optimal play is probably less developed than other expansions.

[munkeyinorbit]

I think that it would be BfA without a doubt. Even though legion had KJ, that mini raid was too hard. The tears from the players that thought they were mythic quality was epic. Blizzard gave them a pretty difficult last boss in Jaina but then turnt it up to 11 for that mini raid. A raid with next to no upgrades for players that were at or pretty close to BiS. If you cleared that before EP then you knew you were mythic quality.

[Swnem]

TBC was quite hard on it's time. But, people now know how to "exploit" everything. Addons are more common now than then, WA's exist where they didn't back then.

That means that every expansion before the popularity of these addons will be trivialized. That will include Wrath, i'm sorry to say. Wrath was significantly easier than TBC, though this is relative. I remember the Sunwell being a very hard raid until the pre-patch. But with all the preparation and addons of today, i am sure it will also fall over.
So, i'd say maybe Pandaria? I remember Garrosh taking quite some effort to down.

[oplawlz]

Every raid has been beaten thousands of times at this point, there's no past expansion that's going to slow players down. Assuming Bliz kept following the same path of putting out expacs in their final neutered patch raiders would never even break their stride.

[Soon-TM]

After seeing how easily classic was cleared, if blizz decided to re-release each xpac, which one would you consider would offer some challenge ? Where would you draw the line at where we might need a few hundred pull for an average guild to clean ?

Personaly, i'd feel that appart from some very secific fight (yogg 0, maybe arthas, kt , kj ?), it was cataclysm that really brought the game in a new level of complexity. I dont see guilds getting rid of sinestra, chogall, nefa, ragnaros, etc as easily as they would dispose of the hardest challenge from previous xpansion.

Thoughts ?

Old xpacs difficulties are (were) fine. You still have retail for those intrincate, baroque, and mind numbingly tedious bosses which aren't meant to be defeated by actual players without also using a bunch of extremely broken useful addons. I know I enjoyed Black Temple alone more than all of the raids of BfA combined.

[LorDC]

But, people now know how to "exploit" everything. Addons are more common now than then, WA's exist where they didn't back then.

It's not about addons o "exploits". By modern standards TBC bosses don't differ all that much from training dummies.

[Sinaa]

It's not about addons o "exploits". By modern standards TBC bosses don't differ all that much from training dummies.

Are you basing this on actually raiding in TBC? Have you killed Archimonde, Lady Vash'j, Kaelthas in the TK, or even Magtheridon early on? Have you cleared the Sunwell? Black Temple was a lot harder than the timewalking version..
I mean sure top1000 Mythic raiding guilds won't have a hard time, but others who knows.

[Slowpoke is a Gamer]

It's an interesting question. BC raiding certainly got harder but is it hard enough to not still be a one day affair? I'm not sure. It's long, a lot of work outside of the raid for what happens in the raid, there's fewer people so mistakes are more apparent, and the fights are more complex.

Wrath maybe? Early on it was a joke but I think Ulduar and ICC are probably the first raids I can definitively say are hard.

Actually no I have the answer. Mists of Pandaria.

[GreatNameForSmurfingExTee]

Are you basing this on actually raiding in TBC? Have you killed Archimonde, Lady Vash'j, Kaelthas in the TK, or even Magtheridon early on? Have you cleared the Sunwell? Black Temple was a lot harder than the timewalking version..

Archimonde, yes
Lady Vash'j, yes
Kaelthas in the TK, yes
Magtheridon, yes
BT, yes
Sunwell, never killed KJ, nope, but I wasn't in a raidingguild at that time

To be honest, no raid until like Legion (forget Xavius please) was "hard". Each X-Pac was harder, thats true.
There were some Hardmodes yes, 0 Helper Yogg, Algalon etc comes to my mind.

Modern Day Raider, don't know how to call it, are much better than everyone else in Vanilla/TBC etc. You can easily get Guides, Macros, WA-Strings, and so on. Everything is more advanced, players and tools, so the bosses need to keep up.

Just think about playging mage @ Rag in MC and the same class @ FL Rag.

[Heathy]

as much as I liked BC, there were only a few fights (pre-sunwell) that were actually hard as in several players had to do a specific task or you wipe. mostly its just vashj - kael'thas and archimonde, t4 was relatively easy, most of t5 wasn't that bad the initial difficulty probably being hydross and getting that tank swap right. leotheras had the potential to just screw you with whirlwind bleeds. but for me it was really just getting everyone to do their task on vashj without missing multiple cores there are several stand alone moving parts to the core phase, the warlock fearing, the tank tanking adds and the hunters kiting bat things, a long with lining ppl up because you can't run with the core. I remember wiping on this fight for over a month. same with kael'thas I remember getting to the weapon phase without much issue, but there would be wipes to phoenixes and other stupid shit. archimonde was only hard because no one can die, he periodically throws ppl up in the air and you had to use that item at the right time or you still fall and die. you also have those sentient fires that randomly follow you around and had a pretty nasty dot if you did touch them. that fight was wipey because as soon as one person died he just finger of death the tank and gg. that was one of those fights were there was pretty much zero recovery and you could wipe there extremely quickly. there are a lot of fights in the game where you can sorta regain control but archimonde is like a game of dominoes as soon as 1 falls, if FoD one shots the tank its over. it was difficult at the time because having everyone survive a boss fight was pretty rare. someone was bound to fail.

[kaminaris]

BfA but I honestly think blizzard is doing difficulty wrong. I think the healthiest difficulty is around Wotlk-MoP level. Where a dedicated but mediocre guild ~1000 can clear hardest difficulty in 3-4 months. Add any more to that and it leads to severe burnouts.

If they continue to keep up the pace with turning up difficulty it will be hard to find raiders.

[ydraw]

TBC was quite hard on it's time. But, people now know how to "exploit" everything. Addons are more common now than then, WA's exist where they didn't back then.

That means that every expansion before the popularity of these addons will be trivialized. That will include Wrath, i'm sorry to say. Wrath was significantly easier than TBC, though this is relative. I remember the Sunwell being a very hard raid until the pre-patch. But with all the preparation and addons of today, i am sure it will also fall over.

This really isn't true though. With the exception of Sunwell, raid encounters in TBC were comparatively very easy, with difficulty somewhere between BFA normal and heroic modes.

The major difficulty in TBC was forming a raid with all the buffs, especially when attunements meant that you couldn't invite most of the people you wanted to invite.

The hardest pre-sunwell encounters like Lady Vashj or Kael'thas were about on par with something like heroic Jaina or heroic Aszhara. The easiest encounters like Void Reaver or Rage Winterchill were about on par with normal mode Taloc.

What was actually hard in TBC were the heroic dungeons, not the raids. The heroics were harder than most of the raids. Wrath was the opposite, the dungeons were a joke but the raids with their hard modes were significantly more challenging than any previous raid content (excepting Sunwell). Obviously not including Naxx 2.0 in that.

The major thing that will make classic TBC easier than the retail version of it is that it is very likely to launch with attunements already removed as they were in patch 2.3. This mean people will actually be able to reroll classes and you'll be able to invite the best players to your raid rather than just the players who happen to be already attuned.

[Hinastorm]

All the killer hardmodes would give *most* guilds a run for their money. Heroic Ragnaros, no buff LK, alone in the darkness, sinestra.

But, I think the tippy top guilds would still do it in a few tries since they'll know exactly what classes to stack and what to do, and how to do it.

[Overlordd]

Can I vote for BfA? Because the answer to this question is BfA.

I'd vote for cataclysm heroics before nerfs. They still seem to one shot people in timewalk, and Blizzard really chose the easiest ones.

[Koward]

Wrath was significantly easier than TBC, though this is relative.

God, WotLK was so freaking easy even back in the days. It'll really feel ten times worse this time.
At least, there will be PvP if you play paladin or death knight.

[Milfshaked]

All the killer hardmodes would give *most* guilds a run for their money. Heroic Ragnaros, no buff LK, alone in the darkness, sinestra.

But, I think the tippy top guilds would still do it in a few tries since they'll know exactly what classes to stack and what to do, and how to do it.

The problem with this is that a lot of people do not understand the importance of item level. The reason why Heroic Ragnaros took weeks was not because moving out of fire was hard. It was because it took weeks to reach the point where you had an item level that would allow you to kill him while playing perfectly.

MC could be cleared in leveling greens, but a lot of the raids that came in cataclysm and later would simply be impossible to clear without a few resets of gear. It doesnt matter how well you know the fight.