Its official -- Sunwell Plateau is the real deal.

[kranur]

Calling it hard is a joke, considering 99% of the people on classic atm are the ones who could not handle retail raid difficulty so they swapped to an easier version.

Pretty sure that people didn't swap because of the difficulty but because they didn't enjoy the bullshit designs.

[Kralljin]

Raid fell over in an under an hour. It's not a difficult instance in any measure.

...to guilds that have practiced SWP on the PTR multipe times.

It's not hard, but stating that makes it seem like a raid can just walk into SWP without prep and expect to be out there before dinner, which isn't true.

Success rate on Kil'jaeden on warcraftlogs is 3.6%, and that's only guilds that have killed M'uru of course. Only boss that is lower is M'uru at 2.1%. Kil'jaeden is clearly at the least the second hardest boss.

At least from personal experience, i absolutely cannot verify that.

KJ is arguably the one fight in SWP where you lose half of your raid pretty early into the fight and still land a kill, because the healing / dps requirements on the boss are a complete joke.
All you have to do is to push each phase before you run out of dragon orbs, which is not extremely hard.

[Nitros14]

...to guilds that have practiced SWP on the PTR multipe times.

It's not hard, but stating that makes it seem like a raid can just walk into SWP without prep and expect to be out there before dinner, which isn't true.

At least from personal experience, i absolutely cannot verify that.

KJ is arguably the one fight in SWP where you lose half of your raid pretty early into the fight and still land a kill, because the healing / dps requirements on the boss are a complete joke.
All you have to do is to push each phase before you run out of dragon orbs, which is not extremely hard.

Shrug, the numbers are right there. People wipe on Kil'jaeden a lot. 28 wipes for every 1 kill.

It's not generally the throughput check killing people, but it's 143 seconds to push the boss 30% twice right? So 4 million damage. 28,006 raid dps one of them without lusts. That's not outrageous but it's at least as hard as any throughput check in the instance. Brutallus is 29,000 and has a lot less movement and no adds to kill. You do get a haste buff but you also have the whole raid running across the room and back to get it.

There's M'uru kills on logs with 23,000 raid dps so.

And logs like this https://classic.warcraftlogs.com/rep...9CapxMJRQzP1BY

During phase 4 Kil'jaeden the typical raid damage taken is 11,000 per second. It's not as high as Eredar Twins but about the same as M'uru and more healing than 3 out of 5 other bosses.

[exsanguinate]

I hate those "It's official" threads. nothing is official

[Vorkreist]

Calling it hard is a joke, considering 99% of the people on classic atm are the ones who could not handle retail raid difficulty so they swapped to an easier version.

This is totally the reason why everyone plays classic. Retailoids can't breathe 5 mins without coming here to troll.

[8bithamster]

I hate those "It's official" threads. nothing is official

No worries, it's the usual Classic Defense Force "omg classic is harder than retail omgwtfbbq STOP HAVING FUN" people. They still need to learn different people like different things. These topics happen every raid release.

- - - Updated - - -

This is totally the reason why everyone plays classic. Retailoids can't breathe 5 mins without coming here to troll.

Yet 2 other prime examples. The person Vorkreist quoted, and Vorkreist.

[Speedlance]

Its very easy, but most people that play classic are not good players. Those that try hard and place high would struggle with the first boss on a myhtic raid from retail. Swp is just the first raid where more then 5 people need to do shit.

[Vorkreist]

Its very easy, but most people that play classic are not good players.

I'm sure the retail transmog & mount collectors that don't do shit in retail either but come to troll here 24/7 are sOo00per skilled.

[Akka]

I'd say 1 kill every ten attempts means this is incredibly easy.

1 kill every 10 attempts when everything to know has been known for 10 years, people have been able to prepare in advance, PTR have been training ground and most people attempting are relatively hardcore, is actually pretty hard.

[Kralljin]

It's not generally the throughput check killing people, but it's 143 seconds to push the boss 30% twice right?

It's like 1,8k dps on 16 dps, assuming 7 healers and completely disregards any tank dps.
That's very much manageable, ranged dps have to move once for Shield but should get a Haste buff in return.

With the Regen breath, Mana is also far less of an issue for both dps and healers.

And logs like this https://classic.warcraftlogs.com/rep...9CapxMJRQzP1BY

Not going to analyze every wipe, but holy shit, losing that many people to fire blooms and shadowbolts means that people are either stacking like hell or healers just aren't healing people.

During phase 4 Kil'jaeden the typical raid damage taken is 11,000 per second. It's not as high as Eredar Twins but about the same as M'uru and more healing than 3 out of 5 other bosses.

If people spread with Flame blossom, the raid damage next is to 0.

11k dps on the entire raid is barely healable unless people stack up, which they shouldn't on KJ.
With that incoming damage and assuming 6 healers, each one must pull almost 2k Hps, that's not going to happen if you stacked Resto Shaman (which every raid does).

I played this fight as a healer with half of the raid dead, even in phase 5, there's just nothing happening, even logs for the last phase rank healers from 1,6k to 800 hps.
And two healers were dead, (5 left) i might add.

I'm going to take a wild guess that you simply added Shield of the Blue (which is not healable because the dragon can't be healed) and Darkness of a Thousand souls damage (which is a one shot) into that number.
Once you take them out, the raid damage in P5 looks very much manageable on paper.

[cparle87]

What 3k?
It is on 1,7k now... and you made your post before weekly reset.



Comparing:
1. 15 yo content that were farmed milions of times in original TBC, private servers with hours of videos/guides, crazy BiS lists and weird things like thronlings etc
2. with content made for 0.1% retail playerbase that required several thousand of dollars equivalent of gold in BoE items, multiple +15hrs raid days, no PTRs, extremely unbalanced/bugged, and after that nerfed multiple times, people having programists to make weak auras totally avoiding many mechanics after time and many more
Truly makes sense - yes.

2. You mean things made for 0.1% of the retail player base, BoEs were still a thing, WF guys did insanely long raid times then too, unbalanced do you remember M'uru?, they were all nerfed multiple times, addons were stronger then and could automate way more than now, and let's not forget timegating the raid so even if you WERE good enough to down the bosses you only had 3 of the raid for the first several weeks, then a few more. The current WF race was longer than most and even it was done before the WF guys back then even had the last bosses available. I wonder how that would fly now.

[Feanoro]

1 kill every 10 attempts when everything to know has been known for 10 years, people have been able to prepare in advance, PTR have been training ground and most people attempting are relatively hardcore, is actually pretty hard.

Don't you love the dishonesty that pervades the "classic is easy" posts by ignoring all those factors?

You never get a coherent definition of this supposedly hard "modern" raiding either. Usually it depends on when the Retail Defender joined, so typically the earliest "modern" raids are MoP.

Can't wait for classic MoP, which will have the exact same advantages over the original run (everything known/solved, etc). Will the Retail Defenders still shriek "easy" or will they acknowledge the only real difficulty comes from not knowing new content inside and out?

[God Save The King]

It's not hard, but stating that makes it seem like a raid can just walk into SWP without prep and expect to be out there before dinner, which isn't true.

That is exactly what my guild did if you bothered reading my post instead of cherrypicking the first line. We had our first trash engagement at 5:58pm and KJ died at 10:13pm. We had no formal prep on PTR. Some of our raiders logged in and pugged it (myself included - I did it once full clear). The majority of our raiders did not. We just had gear, watched the strats, and went with our game face on.

[Aydinx2]

KJ however, is arguably the easiest boss in the raid ironically, despite the fact that he's technically the one with the most mechanics.

I don't mind a Dark Souls style raid where the last boss is actually the easiest, and he's just symbolic. But getting to him is incredibly hard and when you beat him you get loot that makes everything else a bit easier.

It would allow Blizz to design a final boss with more freedom since it doesn't "need" all the hard mechanics that end-bosses get these days.

[Kralljin]

Can't wait for classic MoP, which will have the exact same advantages over the original run (everything known/solved, etc). Will the Retail Defenders still shriek "easy" or will they acknowledge the only real difficulty comes from not knowing new content inside and out?

Eh, i feel like you're ignoring quite a bit.

Of course, knowing content beforehand makes it much, much easier but at the same time, it's also not like you just handwave anything aside.
The difficulty simply increased incrementally over the years, in the same fashion as some people who previously breezed through MC will now struggle in SWP, people that will breeze through SWP will then struggle in ToT HC.

Having a better understanding of the class Meta and fights makes it easier, but at the end of the day, mechanical challenges are a do or die thing unless you can nummerically overpower them.
And i don't think you'll be able to overpower heroics fights in MoP by sheer numbers as the level of sophistication of theorycrafting was in MoP already pretty high.

You can't even overpower certain mechanics in SWP already, without assignments or some semblance of a strategy, Kalecgos isn't going to fall over simply because you're min/maxing, unlike say Classic where you could waltz through some bossfights (looking at 4HM) by simply abusing World buffs and ignoring mechanics.

More people will clear raids than when an expansion was current content, but it's also a no brainer that the number of people (at least %) will clear the raids also decline as we go on, because they get more challenging.

That is exactly what my guild did if you bothered reading my post instead of cherrypicking the first line. We had our first trash engagement at 5:58pm and KJ died at 10:13pm. We had no formal prep on PTR. Some of our raiders logged in and pugged it (myself included - I did it once full clear). The majority of our raiders did not. We just had gear, watched the strats, and went with our game face on.

I say reading up guides and possibly making assignments counts as preparation.

I don't mind a Dark Souls style raid where the last boss is actually the easiest, and he's just symbolic. But getting to him is incredibly hard and when you beat him you get loot that makes everything else a bit easier.

It would allow Blizz to design a final boss with more freedom since it doesn't "need" all the hard mechanics that end-bosses get these days.

It's a offtopic debate but i think it's very anticlimatic, especially considering that Kil'jaeden was, at least at time, the only boss in SWP that had some significant background.

I think that flies in a case like Ra-den in ToT, where Ra-den is much easier than Lei Shen but is effectively treated as the "bonus stage" of ToT.

[Mendzia]

2. You mean things made for 0.1% of the retail player base, BoEs were still a thing,

Show me SINGLE BoE-raid item that is BiS in Sunwell.
Retail WF requires ALL players having these as it is not possible to progress.

WF guys did insanely long raid times then too,

They did not raid +15 hrs/day for 2-3 weeks everyday.
It was not a job for them back then.

unbalanced do you remember M'uru?,

I do not need to rememeber him.
I can do it soon with my guild as he is at the same state.
There is nothing unbalanced here but rather highly tuned as many guilds killed him already.

they were all nerfed multiple times,

Sunwell was nerfed once (or twice if you count WotLK prepatch as another one).

addons were stronger then and could automate way more than now,

If there were any broken addons... they were banned almost immedietely.
I recall more of these in rather later states of WoW like WotLKs AVR or this thing from Archimonde in WoD.
I do not remember single 'stronger then and could automate way more than now' addon in TBC.
Show me please nihilum or vodka team that were only here programming WA's - i'll wait...

and let's not forget timegating the raid so even if you WERE good enough to down the bosses you only had 3 of the raid for the first several weeks,

Yeah... because retail raids are totally not timegated...

then a few more.

Which ones?

The current WF race was longer than most

Almost all WF raiders hated the longevity of WF Sepulcher sooo much.

and even it was done before the WF guys back then even had the last bosses available. I wonder how that would fly now.

???

[hzjf]

Show me SINGLE BoE-raid item that is BiS in Sunwell.
Retail WF requires ALL players having these as it is not possible to progress.



They did not raid +15 hrs/day for 2-3 weeks everyday.
It was not a job for them back then.



I do not need to rememeber him.
I can do it soon with my guild as he is at the same state.
There is nothing unbalanced here but rather highly tuned as many guilds killed him already.



Sunwell was nerfed once (or twice if you count WotLK prepatch as another one).



If there were any broken addons... they were banned almost immedietely.
I recall more of these in rather later states of WoW like WotLKs AVR or this thing from Archimonde in WoD.
I do not remember single 'stronger then and could automate way more than now' addon in TBC.
Show me please nihilum or vodka team that were only here programming WA's - i'll wait...



Yeah... because retail raids are totally not timegated...



Which ones?



Almost all WF raiders hated the longevity of WF Sepulcher sooo much.



???

oh no. they dared to release the last 3 bosses of the last Raid of Shadowlands by 1 Week. QUICK GUYS RETAIL IS TIME GATED

[rogoth]

A lot of memes since the start of classic have emphasized how 'easy' classic is. Part of this is because game challenge has improved over years alongside player skill; addons have gotten better; more youtube, data analysis; DPS and HPS simulators. Logging and analysis is a daily routine, the crowdsourced MMO crowd can outwit and outthink a team of 30-50 developers by sheer numbers.

Vanilla was, for the most part, easy. The hardest part was the roster boss and getting optimal class balance in 40 man raids. Naxx 40 was harder than Naxx 25 in Wrath, but it was relatively easy compared to even heroic raid difficulty in retail nowadays.

TBC was a step up in difficulty, but not tremendously so. Magtheridon was hard in 2008, he was a speedbump in 2021. SSC and TK were a step up in difficulty, Kael Thas and particularly Vashj separating the casual raiders from committed players; again not too hard.

Tier 6 was the 2.3+ nerfed versions, and aside from Illidari Council, Illidan, and Archimonde most of the bosses were speedbumps. Easier than T5 raiding for the most part (if you had the gear).

And now...Sunwell. Well, now we're into the meat of classic raiding and it DEFINITELY is harder.

Looking at the logs after 2 weeks, we see a ridiculously small number of guilds actively clearing Sunwell at launch. Only ~11% of attempts on Kalecgos actually succeed, and he's the easiest boss in the instance as a warmup.

https://classic.warcraftlogs.com/zon...ric=fightwipes

(As of May 17th, 2022)

10.8% of Kalec attempts result in a kill.
6.1% of Brutallus
9.8% of Felmyst
6.9% on Twins

If you've survived those filters, you get the opportunity to attempt to kill M'uru. His (it's?) legacy as the guild killer is maintained, with a 2% clear rate for guilds that can make it that far!

Sunwell is the real deal. Bring your mains, make sure you have best in slot, watch every guide and use every addon you can leverage because you'll need it.

the thing that made sunwell hard was the number tuning, it wasn't mechanically a hard raid instance, give it a few weeks and get people some kind of upgrades so they are appropriately geared for the content and it will fall over.

[Feanoro]

Of course, knowing content beforehand makes it much, much easier but at the same time, it's also not like you just handwave anything aside.

True, knowing and executing are two different things. Even so, the attempts to discount/ignore that knowledge to sneer at content as easy are fundamentally dishonest.

nummerically overpower them

abusing World buffs

Can't say I follow the mentality that overpowering fights via gear, potions, enchants, and so on is fine, but using world buffs is somehow wrong.

You can't even overpower certain mechanics in SWP already, without assignments or some semblance of a strategy, Kalecgos isn't going to fall over simply because you're min/maxing

They stated they would never make anything as hard as Sunwell again. True, you have more mechanics as things go along, but those are not nearly so tightly tuned as people like to pretend.

For example, it's always ignored that a great deal of those mechanics exist solely to force players to use up spells like Divine Shield, Turtle Aspect, and so on. "Run into the Owie Beam, pop immunity" is a response to ridiculous player power. In most cases, it becomes trivial with knowledge and positioning. This is just one example of the supposed difficulty brought on by mechanics being overstated.

You say it got harder, I say the challenge simply shifted in another direction.

[loras]

A lot of memes since the start of classic have emphasized how 'easy' classic is. Part of this is because game challenge has improved over years alongside player skill; addons have gotten better; more youtube, data analysis; DPS and HPS simulators. Logging and analysis is a daily routine, the crowdsourced MMO crowd can outwit and outthink a team of 30-50 developers by sheer numbers.

Vanilla was, for the most part, easy. The hardest part was the roster boss and getting optimal class balance in 40 man raids. Naxx 40 was harder than Naxx 25 in Wrath, but it was relatively easy compared to even heroic raid difficulty in retail nowadays.

TBC was a step up in difficulty, but not tremendously so. Magtheridon was hard in 2008, he was a speedbump in 2021. SSC and TK were a step up in difficulty, Kael Thas and particularly Vashj separating the casual raiders from committed players; again not too hard.

Tier 6 was the 2.3+ nerfed versions, and aside from Illidari Council, Illidan, and Archimonde most of the bosses were speedbumps. Easier than T5 raiding for the most part (if you had the gear).

And now...Sunwell. Well, now we're into the meat of classic raiding and it DEFINITELY is harder.

Looking at the logs after 2 weeks, we see a ridiculously small number of guilds actively clearing Sunwell at launch. Only ~11% of attempts on Kalecgos actually succeed, and he's the easiest boss in the instance as a warmup.

https://classic.warcraftlogs.com/zon...ric=fightwipes

(As of May 17th, 2022)

10.8% of Kalec attempts result in a kill.
6.1% of Brutallus
9.8% of Felmyst
6.9% on Twins

If you've survived those filters, you get the opportunity to attempt to kill M'uru. His (it's?) legacy as the guild killer is maintained, with a 2% clear rate for guilds that can make it that far!

Sunwell is the real deal. Bring your mains, make sure you have best in slot, watch every guide and use every addon you can leverage because you'll need it.

While you overstate the difficulty of all that came before, Sunwell is indeed where skillwise difficulty in raiding started. It's why WotLK's Naxxramas was so poorly received, and Sartharion 3 drakes was played to death.

Now Ulduar, that is where these classic raiders will truly be Alone in the Dark for the first time.