Alternate paths of progression: Why ICC and Ulduar were the best raids

[Glorious Leader]

I don’t necessarily agree with everything you’ve said, but there is a point to be made here that’s very relevant.

I’ve become increasingly worried since 5.0 that the middle ground of “normal raider” is simply going to disperse into EITHER heroic or LFR centric, but that’s the best-case scenario – people are giving up the game altogether, too. I’m not against heroic raids or LFR, in principle, but I do feel (LFR in particular) is having a hugely detrimental impact on normal raid groups. In and of itself, LFR is already pulling a huge number of potential guild-level raiders out of the pot because they can play the content without having to worry about schedules, raid leader moans or loot drama.

But the other, less obvious, impact is that if you’re not raiding to a heroic level, you’re not enticing enough to potential recruits who will simply view LFR as the simpler alternative to towing the guild line.

I’m honestly worried about this. I stopped heroic raiding because I didn’t want to invest that volume of time anymore; that said, I don’t want stuck with the cesspool of LFR.

What are my options?

And of course the response from the community to this problem is by and large plugging their ears and insisting that it isn't the raid or Blizzards fault. The problem is that my guild is bad and the players in my raid are bad. Well that response hasn't really gotten them far before and won't get them anywhere now. I'm sure even people who claim my raid struggling on horridon is bad don't want to see less people raiding normals. So why they continue to advocate for a system that only PUSHES players to raid lfr instead of normals is beyond me.

Look I'm all for hard bosses on normal. I just think their needs to be easy ones in the mix and more of them earlier on. That way you actually build up some progression, get some confidence behind you as you progress and have some options other than wipe on horridon for hours on end because Blizzard wants you to go back and farm LFR or content you already cleared.

It's possible that all these players are bad but so what. Bad players pay their 15 bucks a month to and their participation in normal content is JUST AS IMPORTANT as pro elite normal guys who think they're the best. In fact I would argue that it really isn't even that black and white and you'll see even some GOOD players get pushed out of raiding normals because their friends they liked raiding with can't cut it in this new normal atmosphere.

Raiding normals in ulduar and icc used to be a beer league where you could get together with your pals and clear a few of the easy bosses and if you guys had the will and gumption you'd do the hard ones to. It isn't that any more and it's disappointing.

[royals]

I don't usually get myself involved in these "Which is better" conversations because it is so subjective, but after reading through this post I thought I would inject one thought.

I am a little confused as to why people are unhappy with the progression required to do normals this tier. I get it, we want to kill bosses AND we want to see content. But lets look at the LFR gating as well as the length at which we will still be in this tier. If you are truly a normal mode raid team and you want to be able to finish normals by the end of the tier... then where is the hurry? I raid lead our team and I have to constantly remind them as well.

"We are going to be in ToT for a while may as well have some fun while we wipe on these bosses." - This is my current mantra. Quit looking at wowprogress if you are a normal mode raid team. Finishing the content 4 weeks in seems a little excessive doesn't it for a "Casual" or "Normal Mode" raid team? My raid is currently 8/12 normal 10 man... I feel a large sense of accomplishment every week looking back on our 6-8 hour raid schedule and seeing 1 to 2 progression bosses dying every week. The bosses get easier with gear and raid knowledge, the time it takes to kill trash goes down with gear and knowledge as well. I wanted to toss my monitor out the window on Durumu last week, the eyeball asshole almost made me want to quit.

I just think people need to take the time factor into perspective. How much time is left for ToT? Probably a few months, so lets not all worry about if we can get over half the raid done before the raid has been around for 10-20% of its "Current Content" life.

[wariofan1]

Putricide wasn't released for awhile after the first wing opened. Nobody 'one-shot' Putricide week 1.

When did I say I did it in week 1?

[shokter]

While I agree that it makes for more interesting raid design, I do think that they don't need every raid to be like that. That said, none of the t14 raids were non linear (although you could choose between them). I am hoping the next tier is non-linear, but just because it is right for one raid doesn't mean it is right for all raids.

Another question (and I'm sure they could modify the mode somewhat to make this a non-issue) is what would happen in a non-linear lfr? Who gets to determine kill order? You know that unless blizzard were to eliminate the navigation choice for that mode it would cause many headaches for players who use that mode (although here we get to the issue of designing raids around the lowest common denominator, which is a lil dangerous).

[slime]

Putricide wasn't released for awhile after the first wing opened. Nobody 'one-shot' Putricide week 1.

Good News Everybody! Heroic putricide *shudders* & *cries*.

[Anjerith]

Except there really was no "Choice" with Ulduar for most Guilds - they couldn't get past the first couple bosses and then ToC came out, so they skipped Ulduar altogether. Ulduar really offered no choices.

[Demeia]

To be honest, I do NOT know why people are finding Horridon hard -they might even all have different problems so I can't, but what I'm saying is, if you have problem with it, you will have a problem with most if not all the bosses afterwards too. The whole tier is based on executing the boss fight right, whether it's the organization on Horridon, deciding the right kill order for Megaera, organizing the adds on Dark Animus or deciding on Lei Shen's conduits... They are all 'hard' on that sense until you overgear it.

And I also understand the point on casual raiding and LFR killing it. I agree with that. If the second boss is still too difficult for most of the people to the extent that they don't want to put the effort anymore, either whole ToT normals are tuned incorrectly or there's a difference between expectations of normal mode raiders and Blizzard's.

"Putting in the effort" was 100 wipes for us. Excuse me, I think that's absolutely absurd for the 2nd boss of an instance. The other raid in our alliance, with better comp, did it in 70 or 80 (with 2 players from our raid--so people with 100+ attempts). It's a ridiculously technical fight for normal mode.

When you have a different kill order for four doors and different tasks for every player on those four doors, yes, that's going to be hard for normal mode raiders.

And the fact that it isn't going to get easier is just going to lead to a lot of raids folding and the very serious question of why blizzard is bothering with normal. Apparently we just need heroics and LFR because they can't get anywhere near "medium" difficulty.

[royals]

"Putting in the effort" was 100 wipes for us. Excuse me, I think that's absolutely absurd for the 2nd boss of an instance. The other raid in our alliance, with better comp, did it in 70 or 80 (with 2 players from our raid--so people with 100+ attempts). It's a ridiculously technical fight for normal mode.

When you have a different kill order for four doors and different tasks for every player on those four doors, yes, that's going to be hard for normal mode raiders.

And the fact that it isn't going to get easier is just going to lead to a lot of raids folding and the very serious question of why blizzard is bothering with normal. Apparently we just need heroics and LFR because they can't get anywhere near "medium" difficulty.

I agree that Horridon is a bit of a wall if you will. But I don't agree that they get harder later. If its just mechanics that are breaking your raid, I find mechanically Council, Tortos and Meg easier mechanically than Horridon. Not neccissarily easier due to dps/healing requirements but the mechanics are not quite as demanding.... Now then comes Ji'Kun and Durumu... Ji'kun is doable and Durumu is quite rough mechanically... I just think that perserverance is key. My question is if you have time for 100 wipes, what is causing people not to learn the fight. 100 wipes is a LOT of wipes. That should be sufficient for even "Normal" raiders to learn fights don't you think?

[Jakmax]

This is pretty absurd to say. Experience the progression path through normal as the design team has intended you to. Progress on heroic in whatever manner you want. I doubt it will take you til 5.4 to kill Lei Shen with the myriad gearing options available. To criticize the designers because the tier is linear on normal is just ridiculous.

This is such horseshit. I'm a normal mode raider. I've already cleared the last tier on normal multiple times. Why in the world should I have to go back, and do HEROIC mode to progress on NORMAL mode. Here's how normal mode progression has and should continue to work. Tier x normal ----> Tier x+1 normal. Not this Tier x normal ---> Tier x Heroic ---> Tier x+1 normal bullshit. If that's honestly the intent, then I see it as nothing but blizzard trying to keep people playing by making old content necessary well past when it should be.

All that being said, horridon was nerfed, after which my raid group didn't have as hard a time with it, so it seems like blizzard realized it was overtuned and fixed their mistake. Good job blizz.

[Waltzinblack]

So that means Naxx10/25 should be up there with the best right? I mean, you had 4 bosses you could be working on at almost any time.

Actually, yeah. The only issue was that these raids were so so easy there was no progression. This made it boring, because most guilds cleared it in the first week or two. Even casual ones.

Naxxramas 40 was considered one of the best, if not THE best raid until WotLK hit the shelves.

[NeverStop]

This is such horseshit. I'm a normal mode raider. I've already cleared the last tier on normal multiple times. Why in the world should I have to go back, and do HEROIC mode to progress on NORMAL mode. Here's how normal mode progression has and should continue to work. Tier x normal ----> Tier x+1 normal. Not this Tier x normal ---> Tier x Heroic ---> Tier x+1 normal bullshit. If that's honestly the intent, then I see it as nothing but blizzard trying to keep people playing by making old content necessary well past when it should be.

All that being said, horridon was nerfed, after which my raid group didn't have as hard a time with it, so it seems like blizzard realized it was overtuned and fixed their mistake. Good job blizz.

Why are you complaining about T15 when the raid is only 22 days old? Did you kill Normal Ragnaros 22 days after Firelands came out?

[Goatfish]

Since when was ICC among "the best raids". It was okayish. But most of the bosses were total letdowns (except LK (HC) who was awesome). And the floor design of the raid gives me headache-

But in terms of pathing and non-linear style you're right.

So every boss but HLK was a letdown? If you are going for just plain difficult fights I think H-Putricide and H-Sindragosa might have some words with you. As far as fights in ICC went, I enjoyed every boss aside from Lady D. and that stupid healing dragon. A few got a bit monotonous after a year of raiding it twice or more a week, but they were all pleasant and fun fights. Especially compared to the next tier where I didn't really enjoy any of the fights.

[Ehrenpanzer]

ICC became accessible, as the buffs started to apply up to 30% - that's when ICC became pug friendly.

If you can't kill Horridon, what makes you think you'll fare better on Council or Magaera? You seem to be under the impression, that Horridon is a block, when in reality it's about not having a shit setup, people knowing what to do and assuming you have around 500 ilvl. If you don't have the gear, then go back and do T14. The people clearing Normal and Heroics now, are the people who raided T14 and got gear appropriate for ToT.

"People who should be running ToT" aren't forced to go back, cause they already have the gear to get past Horridon. It's people who AREN'T supposed to do ToT due to lack of gear, who're forced to go back.

ToT didn't really come as a surprise did it? People had lots of time to gear from T14 and those who for some reason didn't, have to go back and progress through T14 like the rest of us.

Don't cry about bosses being too hard on Normal, when the solution is right in front of you. If you aren't good enough to clear ToT with your current gear, you go back and get some more gear - quite simple. But that's not a design flaw, that's the way the game works for everyone else as well. And I'm willing to bet, that if you gave my raiders the gear your raiders have, we'd still kill Horridon.

Council and Megara are very easy compared to Horridon...and with Uld and ICC, it was the ILLUSION of choice that appealed to people. Sure they all had to die, but suppose your pally healer with Val couldnt make it that night...oh..cant did Mimi, so lets do the other 3 for tonight and come back tomorrow when hes on...in ToT style its: pally with val isnt on...oh well..call it for the night...(thats a pretty basic, if exaggerated illustration, but I think you get the point)

---------- Post added 2013-03-27 at 09:35 PM ----------

Good News Everybody! Heroic putricide *shudders* & *cries*.

oh how I love professor farnsworth...I mean..putricide...

[jaymzkerten]

No it's not. It's really not. Icc was FAR more accessible than ToT. ICC had a much better difficulty curve. It had much better lore. The fights were more engaging. Throne is just wall after wall after wall designed to FORCE players who should be running ToT to go back and do previous raids in an effort to further gate ToT and make sure it lasts as long as possible. Gear check after gear check boss.

Last I checked when ICC came out:
1) It was very gated, so I'd call that more of a wall than anything
2) I seem to recall needing to continue to do ToC *and* ToGC every week, at LEAST all the way up until we killed LK
3) the only thing that made ICC accessible was the 30% buff; it was around that time that people started to do GDKP runs, and even then most of them fell apart after Rotface/Festergut
4) the only lore you had going into ICC was Saurfang, BQL if you did the battered hilt quest, Sindragosa, and everything involving LK

And to everyone saying Horridon is so overtuned -- the top guild on my server runs a weekly alt run on Saturdays and they pug a lot of people from other guilds for it. First week we went into ToT we 1 shot Horridon.

[Glorious Leader]

Last I checked when ICC came out:
1) It was very gated, so I'd call that more of a wall than anything
2) I seem to recall needing to continue to do ToC *and* ToGC every week, at LEAST all the way up until we killed LK
3) the only thing that made ICC accessible was the 30% buff; it was around that time that people started to do GDKP runs, and even then most of them fell apart after Rotface/Festergut
4) the only lore you had going into ICC was Saurfang, BQL if you did the battered hilt quest, Sindragosa, and everything involving LK

And to everyone saying Horridon is so overtuned -- the top guild on my server runs a weekly alt run on Saturdays and they pug a lot of people from other guilds for it. First week we went into ToT we 1 shot Horridon.

1) Physical gating is pretty gay I agree but I'd much rather have just a physical gate than a gear check for a wall which is more or less what we have now. Furthermore that still entirely misses the point that the bosses themselves had a much better difficulty curve.
2) Really? I sure as hell didn't touch TOC when Icc came out.
3) I was clearing the first wing in 25 man pugs far before the buff came out. I agree the buff helped and did it make it more accessible but the bosses themselves weren't also terrible gear checks or loaded with mechanics. Fights in ToT are usually either of those two.
4) Okay and this is a bad thing because? The LK lore was great and more importantly the overall theme and feel of the raid is vastly better than ToT.

Horridon is over tuned. You will continue to see threads with frustrated guilds and frustrated players going on rants about how shitty that boss is. Instead of having a proper difficulty curve, they just decided to rip the knob off and call it a day. Well it's getting harder and harder to make a normal raid and start a new guild and even just recruit new players. If they continue to make raids as difficult as ToT without proper ramp up then your just gonna see more and more players quit dealing with that hassle and run into lfr. Or even leave the game.

---------- Post added 2013-03-27 at 10:02 PM ----------

"Putting in the effort" was 100 wipes for us. Excuse me, I think that's absolutely absurd for the 2nd boss of an instance. The other raid in our alliance, with better comp, did it in 70 or 80 (with 2 players from our raid--so people with 100+ attempts). It's a ridiculously technical fight for normal mode.

When you have a different kill order for four doors and different tasks for every player on those four doors, yes, that's going to be hard for normal mode raiders.

And the fact that it isn't going to get easier is just going to lead to a lot of raids folding and the very serious question of why blizzard is bothering with normal. Apparently we just need heroics and LFR because they can't get anywhere near "medium" difficulty.

Yuup. Normal is heroic and heroic is so far out of left fucking field now. It's okay though nothing to get worked up about. Eventually particpation rates will become SO LOW that the developers will just look to making normal mode more appealing for a larger group of players or they will simple get rid of normal modes entirely. Nobody want's the later I think, so I find it hard to believe people are arguign against the former by insisting on this level of difficulty and defending any lack of real difficulty curve. In other words. PROGRESSION.

[clevin]

And of course the response from the community to this problem is by and large plugging their ears and insisting that it isn't the raid or Blizzards fault. The problem is that my guild is bad and the players in my raid are bad. Well that response hasn't really gotten them far before and won't get them anywhere now. I'm sure even people who claim my raid struggling on horridon is bad don't want to see less people raiding normals. So why they continue to advocate for a system that only PUSHES players to raid lfr instead of normals is beyond me.
.

I don't advocate for people to give up. I advocate for them to TRY HARDER and that if they won't bother or if they are simply bad players than Blizzad not tune normals to them. Normals should be tuned to the good but not awesome players. If the top guilds have A+ players and most heroic mode guilds are A and A- players, normals should be tuned to people in the B range. People who gear correctly, know rotations and try to do things as well as they can. Almost every raid Ive been in can kill bosses with people like that.

Don't want to try? Feel it's too much effort to figure out your stat priorities and don't really care how well you DPS, tank or heal? Don't raid or do LFR.

On topic, I do like winged instances or more gradual difficulty curves. Horridon is a bit of a pain ot only because of the raw dps needed but because there are a lot of mechanics to execute well and because of the number of gates. That boss with two gates? Meh. Four? Harder. I actually think that there are raids which struggle with him could kill Council and maybe Tortos. getting stuck on bosses happens but it shouldn't happen on the 2nd boss in a raid.

[NeverStop]

I don't advocate for people to give up. I advocate for them to TRY HARDER and that if they won't bother or if they are simply bad players than Blizzad not tune normals to them. Normals should be tuned to the good but not awesome players. If the top guilds have A+ players and most heroic mode guilds are A and A- players, normals should be tuned to people in the B range. People who gear correctly, know rotations and try to do things as well as they can. Almost every raid Ive been in can kill bosses with people like that.

Don't want to try? Feel it's too much effort to figure out your stat priorities and don't really care how well you DPS, tank or heal? Don't raid or do LFR.

On topic, I do like winged instances or more gradual difficulty curves. Horridon is a bit of a pain ot only because of the raw dps needed but because there are a lot of mechanics to execute well and because of the number of gates. That boss with two gates? Meh. Four? Harder. I actually think that there are raids which struggle with him could kill Council and maybe Tortos. getting stuck on bosses happens but it shouldn't happen on the 2nd boss in a raid.

Wowprogress says 10697 guilds have killed Normal Horridon in the EU and US. If you can't down Horridon, ask why your guild can't be one of the 10,000 guilds that have killed him. Hint: the boss, especially after nerfs, is not overtuned.

[Glorious Leader]

I don't advocate for people to give up. I advocate for them to TRY HARDER and that if they won't bother or if they are simply bad players than Blizzad not tune normals to them. Normals should be tuned to the good but not awesome players. If the top guilds have A+ players and most heroic mode guilds are A and A- players, normals should be tuned to people in the B range. People who gear correctly, know rotations and try to do things as well as they can. Almost every raid Ive been in can kill bosses with people like that.

Don't want to try? Feel it's too much effort to figure out your stat priorities and don't really care how well you DPS, tank or heal? Don't raid or do LFR.

On topic, I do like winged instances or more gradual difficulty curves. Horridon is a bit of a pain ot only because of the raw dps needed but because there are a lot of mechanics to execute well and because of the number of gates. That boss with two gates? Meh. Four? Harder. I actually think that there are raids which struggle with him could kill Council and maybe Tortos. getting stuck on bosses happens but it shouldn't happen on the 2nd boss in a raid.

Alright man, whatever you want to call it has been and will continue to lead players to leave normals. It's a snowballing effect. Let say a player is only a C player but his friends are B or even A well that one C player made their raid really enjoyable and he left. Now the B players aren't having as much fun and are trying hard but getting frustrated and see their C player buddy leaving for LFR.

By defending Blizzards normal raid tuning you are effectively advocating people to run LFR. Instead of saying hey blizzard maybe consider some retuning and some other measures to offset the difficulty for the C type player and the B type player, you'd rather defend the tuning as it exists and shove more and mroe players into running lfr. You may not think of it in those terms but that's exactly whats happening and it's happening in part because you cheer the developers and many of you still call this the best raid since uldular which to be blunt is a fucking joke.

I'm all for some challenging bosses but we agree that the second boss shouldn't be this way. In fact I don't think the 3rd or 4th should. I think the last boss of that particular "wing" or however they divide it up in LFR should be about Horridon difficulty maybe slightly less but definetly the hardest of that part of the instance.

[Malderon]

ICC was by FAR not the best raid, if any good. Limited attempts were just lame and unmotivation to play. And lorewise it was just a huge let down for me...

Throne of Thunder is a much better raid than ICC ever was

Sign on that.

[Glorious Leader]

Wowprogress says 10697 guilds have killed Normal Horridon in the EU and US. If you can't down Horridon, ask why your guild can't be one of the 10,000 guilds that have killed him. Hint: the boss, especially after nerfs, is not overtuned.

Didn't realize it was that low. That's fine continue to advocate this position. Next tier can be just as insanely stupid and we'll have sub 10k guilds clearing bosses with less and less players raiding normals and then eventually maybe good bye normals? Certainly good bye a bunch of decent guilds with players from a mixed range of skills. It's the middle class of raiding. Being crushed or shoved into LFR.

When we start to see sub 10k participation for these bosses and raids and it's all because of their tuning will you tell me that ToT was still the best raid since ulduar? Best for whom? well apparently the tiny minority of players who run it. The same minority that dwindles in numbers more and more each tier.