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

[Celista]

I don't get what's happened to raiding over the last few years, a challenge used to be welcomed by the community and people would be upset that it wasn't challenging enough, these days people get upset that normal is harder than LFR and that they might actually have to understand how to adapt to mechanics / play their class / interrupt / switch targets and move. LFR was designed for people who don't want to have to bother so much with mechanics, if you want to do normals and progress people need to expect to have to do a bit more and then for heroics people must expect to have to be able to raid properly without error. That's the reason for the difficulties, if you can't raid at a certain level why should you expect the gear that the level brings? People will only cry if the bosses become Piñatas again like in DS, you should get what you put in like with any game, unfortunately the younger generation doesn't understand this and expect shinys for nothing.

Few years? People have been complaining about things being too hard since BC...the only tiers I don't remember people complaining about were Naxx, Kara, ICC, and DS.

I agree that people should want to rise to the challenge/improve their gameplay but oh well.

I only read the OP + 3 replies but why is there no support for this opinion? Is it truly that bad to let people progress through the instance how they please? If you can't clear the raid then there is a problem. But if one boss is acting like a wall, then why not let people skip that boss and come back if they please? I don't see how this hurts anyone. Stopping people from doing a whole raid and making them wait on nerfs is the stupid path of progression IMO.

There is a lot of support for that opinion but in MY personal opinion, if you're having issues w/Horridon you won't progress past Council.

[Glorious Leader]

I never said you did say that. I was actually assuming you didn't want that, but if you do not want that, there has to be some lower bound that blizzard can't reduce it below regardless of participation because if there isn't, that is what will happen.

You do have variety and accessibility. What you have to understand is that ToT should not be looked at in a vacuum as if JinRokh is the starting point. Blizzard has clearly told everyone that is not the intention and that is why they are buffing old LFR drop rates and nerfed T14 significantly. This isn't wotlk or cata where they handed you catch up gear and expected people to skip to the newest raid.

The wall is only at the 2nd boss if you look at it in a vacuum. That is the 18th boss this expansion and if you have killed the first 17 on normal, you have the gear and the tools to kill Horridron after the nerf if you put some time and effort in.

Normal mode currently is that medium difficulty. What do you suppose they do exactly? You dumb down normal mode mechanics to where the simple things people are unable to handle don't matter (getting off the boss to interrupt something with a reasonable cast time) and you end up at LFR. There are no brutal throughput checks on normal. Normal also does not require some crazy strategy or creative use of mechanics. Normal isn't even asking for a flawless execution of those mechanics.

No see normal mode is not medium and I feel the raid participation numbers will bear this out. The first tier wasn't "medium" either. Their is no CURVE between jin rokh and horridon, their is only a spike. Looking at it as a whole is irellevant to the raid that has hit the WALL ON THE SECOND BOSS. I agree that the have to provide some challenge but they also need to provide a curve. That's where alternative raid paths come in. You guys are stuck on Horridon? well go kill these other bosses that are optional but also (in difficulty terms) between horridon and jin rokh. THATS MEDIUM. The current raid is not medium.

[Sesshou]

That's not entirely true. With just 4 weeks of clearing normals, everyone needs at least some kind of normal mode gear. There are couple of cock block bosses that can take few attempts (read: half of raid night) even if you have killed them already - for example twins appear to be pain in the arse for us. If you want to progress, lets say, Horridon, you have to think well how much time you are going to devote to heroic progression to ensure you have enough time to clear rest of the place on normal to collect upgrades.
Last tier was pretty good for middle of the pack progression guild with 3 bosses open at any given time

Um, that has nothing to do with not having a choice of which boss to work on. That is just you not being sure how much time in the week it will take to clear the rest on normal and therefore not sure how much to spend on progression.

[Daymanmb]

So in otherwords NO PROOF AT ALL. See my generalization was just PURE SARCASM, it was meant to point out how ignorant the statement about ICC was and was in no way shape or form meant to be taken seriously.

You however are quite serious about the statement that ICC wasn't well received which you can't back up with a single fact. In other words IGNORANCE HAS FUELED ANOTHER GENERALIZATION look at that.

Okay, with that logic I'd be ignorant in generalizing about the same thing with DS without empirical data to back it up, knowing full well that it was generally not perceived as a great raid..

[klaps_05]

from a design pov, ICC was subpar at best.

ulduar was mostly good because of good encounter designs, not progression paths.

[st1r2]

No see normal mode is not medium and I feel the raid participation numbers will bear this out. The first tier wasn't "medium" either. Their is no CURVE between jin rokh and horridon, their is only a spike. Looking at it as a whole is irellevant to the raid that has hit the WALL ON THE SECOND BOSS. I agree that the have to provide some challenge but they also need to provide a curve. That's where alternative raid paths come in. You guys are stuck on Horridon? well go kill these other bosses that are optional but also (in difficulty terms) between horridon and jin rokh. THATS MEDIUM. The current raid is not medium.

Maybe you want to look into the reason your guild is hitting the wall? I'm guessing logs would show it quite well and most likely be the fact that your not executing the mechanics as intended, either that or you are serverly under geared or have players in the team that don't know their class.

Bosses shouldn't be nerfed just because their is a lot more to think about and carry out then the boss before.

[Wildtree]

Quite interesting development..... I remember all too well how ICC was dissed as the worst raid ever..
Some bitched it was way too easy, some bitched it was way too hard.. And no one was really happy...

Anyhow, my favs were still Kara, Naxx, ZA, Ulduar.... In that order.
The raid I like the very least is HoF...... Gosh... I so hate those damn bugs..

[Glorious Leader]

Okay, with that logic I'd be ignorant in generalizing about the same thing with DS without empirical data to back it up, knowing full well that it was generally not perceived as a great raid..

Frankly I don't care what you believe or "know". The only thing I'm interested in is proof or at least educated and informed opinions.

---------- Post added 2013-03-29 at 11:31 PM ----------

Maybe you want to look into the reason your guild is hitting the wall? I'm guessing logs would show it quite well and most likely be the fact that your not executing the mechanics as intended, either that or you are serverly under geared or have players in the team that don't know their class.

Bosses shouldn't be nerfed just because their is a lot more to think about and carry out then the boss before.

OKay just keep arguing this guys. You'll push more and more people into lfr and less and less into normal raiding. It's becoming harder and harder to build a normal raid and recruit for a second group. My guild cleared horridon already but raiding with friends is not possible any longer because my friends alll vary in skill and ability. They all do lfr now and I"m starting to ask my self why bother doing normals when their just a wall of frustration?

If you LIKE normal raiding and want to see it more popular and see participation rates rise then you should calling for the developers to have more variety in terms of boss difficulty, more alternatives paths in the raid, and overall a much better difficulty curve. If you want normal raiding to become an even bigger niche and make it harder for people to start normal raids or replace players from their normal raids then keep advocating this path.

[Sesshou]

No see normal mode is not medium and I feel the raid participation numbers will bear this out. The first tier wasn't "medium" either. Their is no CURVE between jin rokh and horridon, their is only a spike. Looking at it as a whole is irellevant to the raid that has hit the WALL ON THE SECOND BOSS. I agree that the have to provide some challenge but they also need to provide a curve. That's where alternative raid paths come in. You guys are stuck on Horridon? well go kill these other bosses that are optional but also (in difficulty terms) between horridon and jin rokh. THATS MEDIUM. The current raid is not medium.

I do agree about the curve part, but the problem is Jin Rokh being too easy and not in line with the rest. There actually is a curve for the most part after Horridron (except DA and twins being stupidly easy compared to the other 2nd half bosses). The spike is only because blizzard is giving out one freebie. He should be tuned to be slightly easier than Horridron which would fix a lot of the problem (the big jump in difficulty making people think they should be in there when they should be back doing t14). Horridron is a pretty big spike over Jin Rokh, but it isn't that big of a spike above Empress or Sha from t14 normal.

I disagree that the lack of a curve between the first and second boss is relevant to it being "medium." Either horridron himself is too difficult to be "medium" or he isn't. Blizzard putting more easier bosses in front of Horridron doesn't make him easier. And in case you were going to say that the gear from the additional bosses does make him easier, you can go get better gear in T14 as it is if that is really your problem (which it probably isn't as horridon is not a gear check at all).

[crakerjack]

I have no preference when it comes to raid layouts... Whether I have to fight the first boss and then be able to choose the next or kill them all in a linear pattern, it's all the same to me. But people think ICC was fun?? Maybe for a little bit, but I wouldn't rate it as an amazing raid, atleast comparable to Ulduar.

[Sesshou]

from a design pov, ICC was subpar at best.

ulduar was mostly good because of good encounter designs, not progression paths.

Very true. Ulduar has great lore, you got involved with quite a few bosses during leveling quests, had an interesting and varied design, had interesting and unique encounters, and introduced a creative way to increase the difficulty for better loot (well that one boss in SWP did it, but it wasn't on a near raid wide scale). To me, the fact that you could pick and choose your order in normal mode has nothing to do with my fondness of the raid.

[Daymanmb]

Frankly I don't care what you believe or "know". The only thing I'm interested in is proof or at least educated and informed opinions.

---------- Post added 2013-03-29 at 11:31 PM ----------



OKay just keep arguing this guys. You'll push more and more people into lfr and less and less into normal raiding. It's becoming harder and harder to build a normal raid and recruit for a second group. My guild cleared horridon already but raiding with friends is not possible any longer because my friends alll vary in skill and ability. They all do lfr now and I"m starting to ask my self why bother doing normals when their just a wall of frustration?

Really? Educated, informed opinion? What is that as it pertains to WoW? I can find hundreds of opinions saying they didn't like ICC or didnt think it was "great" if I were so inclined, but how is that proof? There is no proof, but that doesnt make it not true....

[Glorious Leader]

I do agree about the curve part, but the problem is Jin Rokh being too easy and not in line with the rest. There actually is a curve for the most part after Horridron (except DA and twins being stupidly easy compared to the other 2nd half bosses). The spike is only because blizzard is giving out one freebie. He should be tuned to be slightly easier than Horridron which would fix a lot of the problem (the big jump in difficulty making people think they should be in there when they should be back doing t14). Horridron is a pretty big spike over Jin Rokh, but it isn't that big of a spike above Empress or Sha from t14 normal.

I disagree that the lack of a curve between the first and second boss is relevant to it being "medium." Either horridron himself is too difficult to be "medium" or he isn't. Blizzard putting more easier bosses in front of Horridron doesn't make him easier. And in case you were going to say that the gear from the additional bosses does make him easier, you can go get better gear in T14 as it is if that is really your problem (which it probably isn't as horridon is not a gear check at all).

Blizzard putting more bosses in front of Horridon does make Horridon easier though. It gives out more CURRENT ILVL gear. That's the key. Going back to farm old content you already cleared for gear you potentially already have is shitty and will also cause players to leave normal raids.

[Sesshou]

OKay just keep arguing this guys. You'll push more and more people into lfr and less and less into normal raiding. It's becoming harder and harder to build a normal raid and recruit for a second group. My guild cleared horridon already but raiding with friends is not possible any longer because my friends alll vary in skill and ability. They all do lfr now and I"m starting to ask my self why bother doing normals when their just a wall of frustration?

I could just as easily argue that you will push more and more people into normal mode raiding when the experience that offers is not what they actually want. If your friends aren't very good and you want to experience the content with them, that is exactly what LFR is for. Why are you so intent on pushing them to do something they aren't that good at and don't really enjoy?

Normal mode isn't for every WoW player and neither is heroic. That is perfectly fine. LFR was created precisely for that so that people could see the content without having to put forth as much effort as they would to see it on normal, and because of LFR they can now bring normal mode back up to where it should be as it is not the easiest way to see the content anymore.

[Glorious Leader]

Really? Educated, informed opinion? What is that as it pertains to WoW? I can find hundreds of opinions saying they didn't like ICC or didnt think it was "great" if I were so inclined, but how is that proof? There is no proof, but that doesnt make it not true....

Facts would make you educated and make your opinion informed. You have none. I sincerely doubt you could can find hundreds of posts but even if you could I don't accept that as evidence. Every time I have some critcism of something (say daily quests) I always get told that I'm really a minority and the forums in general are a minority and that they don't count overall.

I find it hard to swallow forums as evidence or information when it's ROUTINELY denied as such.

---------- Post added 2013-03-29 at 11:43 PM ----------

I could just as easily argue that you will push more and more people into normal mode raiding when the experience that offers is not what they actually want. If your friends aren't very good and you want to experience the content with them, that is exactly what LFR is for. Why are you so intent on pushing them to do something they aren't that good at and don't really enjoy?

Normal mode isn't for every WoW player and neither is heroic. That is perfectly fine. LFR was created precisely for that so that people could see the content without having to put forth as much effort as they would to see it on normal, and because of LFR they can now bring normal mode back up to where it should be as it is not the easiest way to see the content anymore.

NOrmal mode is for less and less players. That's the point. Their numbers aren't growing. You could argue that but I don't see players returning to normal mode en masse or even more than a handful. The trend is more likely that Normal mode will suffer more and more attrition.

[Sesshou]

Blizzard putting more bosses in front of Horridon does make Horridon easier though. It gives out more CURRENT ILVL gear. That's the key. Going back to farm old content you already cleared for gear you potentially already have is shitty and will also cause players to leave normal raids.

But if you need gear you can still get it. If you don't want to bother, don't complain. Don't expect a free lunch. Besides, you are ignoring the simple fact that gear isn't the problem. If you don't interrupt, you will still die at 500 ilvl. If you handle the mechanics, you can kill him at 490 ilvl easily.

What you are suggesting is that you should be able to get enough gear to trivialize the mechanics, and no you shouldn't. That is just another way of looking for them to make it so you can ignore the mechanics... go do LFR, that is what it is therefore. The design intent should never be that you farm up enough gear on previous bosses to allow you to trivialize the mechanics of the next boss to where you don't need to deal with them properly.

---------- Post added 2013-03-29 at 11:49 PM ----------

NOrmal mode is for less and less players. That's the point. Their numbers aren't growing. You could argue that but I don't see players returning to normal mode en masse or even more than a handful. The trend is more likely that Normal mode will suffer more and more attrition.

Thats true, but why is it a problem? LFR was never going to detract from the heroic raiders... Lots of people doing normal mode raiding before LFR wanted to do it casually to see the content without having to put as much time (and effort) into it to learn strats and mechanics, so yeah those people will likely gradually drop normal mode for LFR. Whether or not the normal mode raiders are shrinking doesn't matter though. That is not an excuse to try to force people whose goals and effort coincide with LFR into doing normal mode.

[Audax]

I'm going to make maybe a couple of more posts and then leave this thread alone; it seems people can't look past their own experiences.



People on the Internet lie. Wowprogress said differently. In that first week, practically nobody with gear below item level 503 defeated Horridon on 10-man.

[...]

I'm telling you that according to wowprogress, an absolutely tiny number of guilds killed Horridon in the mid to high 490's; close to none. My raid leader went through nigh on every kill when we started work on it to see if we were just being poor or there was another problem.

The figures on wowprogress are not accurate since they didn't start recording item levels the first week. My guild shows on wowprogress as having killed Horridon the first week (pre-nerf) with 499.36 ilvl but wowprogress shows us as having the exact same ilvls up to Tortos (in the second week) because they didn't record the item levels until that point. So that's our item level after killing Horridon + 4 additional ToT boss kills, not what we killed Horridon with. There's a potential issue going the other way of course with people logging out in offspecs, in our case our prot paladin logged out as ret it seems, but that should be a relatively small ilvl difference in our case.

[Glorious Leader]

But if you need gear you can still get it. If you don't want to bother, don't complain. Don't expect a free lunch. Besides, you are ignoring the simple fact that gear isn't the problem. If you don't interrupt, you will still die at 500 ilvl. If you handle the mechanics, you can kill him at 490 ilvl easily.

What you are suggesting is that you should be able to get enough gear to trivialize the mechanics, and no you shouldn't. That is just another way of looking for them to make it so you can ignore the mechanics... go do LFR, that is what it is therefore. The design intent should never be that you farm up enough gear on previous bosses to allow you to trivialize the mechanics of the next boss to where you don't need to deal with them properly.

---------- Post added 2013-03-29 at 11:49 PM ----------



Thats true, but why is it a problem? LFR was never going to detract from the heroic raiders... Lots of people doing normal mode raiding before LFR wanted to do it casually to see the content without having to put as much time (and effort) into it to learn strats and mechanics, so yeah those people will likely gradually drop normal mode for LFR. Whether or not the normal mode raiders are shrinking doesn't matter though. That is not an excuse to try to force people whose goals and effort coincide with LFR into doing normal mode.

Because at some point the developers will look at the amount of players running normal raids and ask wether or not it's worth to keep making them. It also makes it that much harder to start up a normal raid or replace players you've lost to attrition. It just snow balls and makes normal and even heroic raiding a pain in the ass. It makes PROGRESSION a pain in the ass and not a reality.

[Sesshou]

Because at some point the developers will look at the amount of players running normal raids and ask wether or not it's worth to keep making them. It also makes it that much harder to start up a normal raid or replace players you've lost to attrition. It just snow balls and makes normal and even heroic raiding a pain in the ass. It makes PROGRESSION a pain in the ass and not a reality.

Normal modes are still important to bridge the gap. Having raiding either be stupidly easy LFR style or brutal wouldn't be a good idea except for the top end of the heroic guilds. The ramp up from normal to heroic is really good for the guilds that will end up doing heroics but only half or less before the next tier (going back to that difficulty curve you mentioned).

[st1r2]

Facts would make you educated and make your opinion informed. You have none. I sincerely doubt you could can find hundreds of posts but even if you could I don't accept that as evidence. Every time I have some critcism of something (say daily quests) I always get told that I'm really a minority and the forums in general are a minority and that they don't count overall.

I find it hard to swallow forums as evidence or information when it's ROUTINELY denied as such.

---------- Post added 2013-03-29 at 11:43 PM ----------



NOrmal mode is for less and less players. That's the point. Their numbers aren't growing. You could argue that but I don't see players returning to normal mode en masse or even more than a handful. The trend is more likely that Normal mode will suffer more and more attrition.

To me the part where you admit to always being told your a minority says that you sir are most likely a forum troll that just likes to annoy and bug people for fun, if the content is to hard and you can't be bothered to get the gear to make you competitive just because its the previous tier play LFR or just stop altogether, I'm sure you won't be missed.

The expansion isn't an insta catch up one as has been states many times, I for one welcome it, if you want to see the bosses put the effort in, it's akin to picking up a game like final fantasy 7 and expecting to be able to just start from the last disk. If you haven't put in the effort previously blizzard has put in mechanics to help catch up including increased till chance and LFR drops from the previous tier. If you can't be bothered to make the effort most others have to see and clear the content I have no sympathy and doubt anyone else has either.