Guilds of today would clear BC's SWP (non-gated) in the first reset

[Mowg]

Yes or no?

[Definition]

yes, the top guilds are filled with extremely skilled players and when you top that off with the amount of time that they spend on heroic progress , barely anything will last a reset now.

[Belloc]

Non-gated, possibly. Gating allowed for people to gear up, though, so the question can't be accurately answered.

[freernnur5]

We talking pre-nerf Muru or no? Because that possibly changes my answer. Post-nerf, then yes.

[Socialhealer]

We talking pre-nerf Muru or no? Because that possibly changes my answer. Post-nerf, then yes.

paragon would down that shit in 1 day, the guilds back then are just pure shit compared to the time/skill of today's guilds.

[jsz]

No question.

[Mowg]

We talking pre-nerf Muru or no? Because that possibly changes my answer. Post-nerf, then yes.

Pre-pre-pre-nerf (actually I forgot how many) basically vanilla Muru.

Although Pre-pre-pre-nerf Muru's difficulty has been inflated in discourse through time, a lot of people forget that he was downed in this state by SK-Gaming. It took them 45 hours spread over 5 days.

However, as SWP was gated, gear was accumulated through the previous bosses - so that's also a factor (though it can be argued that gear used to be a concern in the past but now raw skill is trumping even gear checks)

[Siluz]

paragon would down that shit in 1 day, the guilds back then are just pure shit compared to the time/skill of today's guilds.

Not sure if i agree , i remember doing transmog runs in Sunwell at 85 and people still dying to muru, his mechanics and damage output was insane for lvl 70s. i agree that guilds have come a huuuuge way but how much of that is because of all the addons and 3rd party websites and theory crafting that just wasn't available at the time

[Morden]

bear in mind that the top guilds of today spend hundreds of hours on PTR learning tactics for the new raids so essentially they've already done the practice runs that would take people time.

Top Guilds? quite possible, but I think average-good guilds would struggle just as the original people did. Raids arent usually that hard once you have learnt them. the top guilds do that before the raids are released or they would spend weeks on progression just like everyone else does.

[Obsurd]

SWP was no joke pre any nerfs. No.

[Tuffguss]

The top 25 guilds in the world? Of course they would clear BC raids in 1 reset. As much as I completely love the BC PvE progression model, it is too difficult for blizzard to tune a single mode in such a way that will appease both the world elite and the regular heroic raider.

As elite raiders from top guilds have said time and time again, many of the more recent encounters (cata) have been the most difficult ever. Many of the remaining heroic raiders need far more gear to complete the content and more still require significant nerfs to finish before the next patch.

[Socialhealer]

Not sure if i agree , i remember doing transmog runs in Sunwell at 85 and people still dying to muru, his mechanics and damage output was insane for lvl 70s. i agree that guilds have come a huuuuge way but how much of that is because of all the addons and 3rd party websites and theory crafting that just wasn't available at the time

comparing scrub 85's to paragon/method/bl?.........wow just wow. skill > level/gear/pretty transmorg hunters.

[asharia]

there's no way to know. the game was very different

[BLSTMASTER]

The gating allowed the guilds to get some extra pieces of gear, which would help IMMENSELY on muru.

Then again, the top players' understanding of the game + time investment is vastly greater at the moment.

Not sure how it would go...


All the other bosses would be 'easy' for them, but Muru could be a different beast without the gear that they were able to get in the few weeks.

Class stacking would be 'easier' for today's top guilds as they would have multiple alts that were decently geared.

[Uoyredrum]

It's hard to say. Are they starting with full BT gear for their whole raid? Are they players from now going back and hopping on their respective class/specs from back then and playing or are they comfortable with the characters? Honestly, I cleared SWP pre-3.0. If I went back into those raids as a player now and tried to play my warrior I'd probably do terribly because my class is so different and I played all 3 specs throughout t6 content depending on the fight. In terms of the overall player skill, people are better now than they were then, but that should be obvious. Anyone who gains years of experience is going to drastically improve.

Honestly the question doesn't make sense. People now going back and playing their classes from back then would be more experienced/aware but would play terribly due to class changes. In terms of gear, even if your raid started in full BT/Hyjal gear going into SWP with the best players in the world, you still probably couldn't kill some of those bosses pre-nerf. The DPS and HP/Avoidance/Mitigation requirements from gear were huge in SWP. Pre-nerf m'uru simply would not be possible in BT gear. Kil'jaeden would also be quite difficult, I don't think a lot of people remember how high his DPS requirement was. Our MT wore half dps gear and half tanking gear to have enough health but put out enough damage at the same time to help us meet that check.

In the end, even though the question doesn't make much sense if you think about it, I'm just going to go ahead and say no, they couldn't. Are they better than guilds back then were? Absolutely, but if a bad player gets hit for 110% of his health in one hit, and a good player gets hit for 110% of his health in one hit, then skill doesn't really matter now does it? Gear alone would make it nearly impossible pre-nerf.

Edit: I'm just going to go ahead and say that 4-5 resets would be reasonable for most guilds, simply to gear up. Playing at the top of their game, completely comfortable with their characters and with a little luck, they might do it in 2-3 resets depending on luck with drops.

[ruuBEN]

I want to say yes, but the only thing making me want to say no is M'uru, the m'uru I'm used to is pre-nerf. The amount of damage and healing required is just insane, and something that comes to mind is "All that gated progression allowed for a ton of gear.." LFR would help, theoretically speaking if they had access to it, but I would say two without a doubt

[Yalingo]

They would absolutely clear it in one reset if it was not gated. Sunwell by today's standards is relatively straight forward. It was extremely difficult at the time, however, after overcoming bosses like we've seen since then, even m'uru would pose minimal headaches for the world's elite raiders currently.

[Alski]

Not sure if i agree , i remember doing transmog runs in Sunwell at 85 and people still dying to muru, his mechanics and damage output was insane for lvl 70s. i agree that guilds have come a huuuuge way but how much of that is because of all the addons and 3rd party websites and theory crafting that just wasn't available at the time

You will find that those 3rd party websites (while not nearly as many of them) still existed back then along with a solid theory crafting community, they were even about in vanilla. As far as add-ons go they have got slightly better(more user friendly) but at the core they still do exactly same things that they did back then, as the game got older classes were given more spells and more utility which means to perform at the same level you needed more skill to work at the same level that you had been in the previous expansions.

As for the top guilds, most of their players were already sitting at or very close to the skill cap for their respective classes, just as they are these days. I honestly think that if they got thrown back in Sunwell as it was when it was released they wouldn't clear it in 1 week

[Akylios]

paragon would down that shit in 1 day, the guilds back then are just pure shit compared to the time/skill of today's guilds.

I'll give you the part about more time spent raiding, but it's a hard sell to say competitive raiders today are any more skilled than competitive raiders just five years ago. By saying so, you're essentially implying that competitive gamers today are better than competitive gamers 5 years ago, which makes no sense. Even back in the mid 90s you had games like Quake, which have absolutely insane skillcaps. (probably only comparable to starcraft, as far as competitive gaming goes)

So perhaps you can explain to an old fart such as myself exactly what it is that WoW has brought to gaming in the past 5 years that would baffle competitive gamers of years gone by? Because whatever it is, I just can't see it.

[Chaoslux]

Considering all bosses before the first gate died on the first day and the only bosses that took some time were M'uru (5 days / 45 hours as mentioned earlier) and KilJaeden (3 days) i would say that it would definitely go down on the first reset, before any nerfs.

The fact that it took 5 days and they spent around 45 hours on the boss would mean they raided 8 hours a day back then, while it isnt unheard of for guilds nowadays to raid 16 hours a day just to get a world first. Hell didn't Blood Legion stay up something ridiculous like 25 hours when the first week for heroic throne progression started?