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  1. #181
    I think misconception here is that most people are comparing Wrath 10mans to current 10mans. 10mans back in wrath was easy mode and the rewards were different. If you want to compare difficulty, compare 25mans wrath to 10 and 25mans now. If you blew through the first 4 bosses in ICC 25man on patch day then, your guild was 4/5Heroic TOC. If you don't have the dps on Saurfang you will be overwhelmed by Mark of the the fallen champion. Despite the instance been gated, most guild still cut down on healers to meet Festergut dps requirement. PP was a different level, I remember guilds been reluctant to pull the boss with the rumor that the encounter was bugged. Not until when Paragon killed it the next day then other kills started coming in. My guild couldn't even kill it on first week, we got Blood Queen before PP. We didn't have the dps for the last phase. Sindragosa was annoying and painful. If your guild couldn't kill Anub'arak on Normal, there is no way you are facerolling ICC. The same thing applies here, if your guild cleared some heroic in T14, TOT will be a good challenge. If you couldn't down Garalon normal, just wait for LFR gear. ICC wasn't that simple, Ulduar wasn't easy either. How many guilds saw Yogg on 25man normal when the content mattered? IMO nothing is wrong with TOT difficulty.

  2. #182
    In this tier you have 12 bosses you need to kill in order then you can pick the next 11 in any order with only the last 2 needing to be killed in order.

    if you are just a normal guild that is 16/16 then i do not see why you think any boss in the 12/12 is way over tuned if you are not 16/16 normal it is because you are skipping bosses just like you seem to say is needed a few of the t14 hm are harder then most of the t15 normal.

  3. #183
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    Quote Originally Posted by Delhunt View Post
    I think misconception here is that most people are comparing Wrath 10mans to current 10mans. 10mans back in wrath was easy mode and the rewards were different. If you want to compare difficulty, compare 25mans wrath to 10 and 25mans now. If you blew through the first 4 bosses in ICC 25man on patch day then, your guild was 4/5Heroic TOC. If you don't have the dps on Saurfang you will be overwhelmed by Mark of the the fallen champion. Despite the instance been gated, most guild still cut down on healers to meet Festergut dps requirement. PP was a different level, I remember guilds been reluctant to pull the boss with the rumor that the encounter was bugged. Not until when Paragon killed it the next day then other kills started coming in. My guild couldn't even kill it on first week, we got Blood Queen before PP. We didn't have the dps for the last phase. Sindragosa was annoying and painful. If your guild couldn't kill Anub'arak on Normal, there is no way you are facerolling ICC. The same thing applies here, if your guild cleared some heroic in T14, TOT will be a good challenge. If you couldn't down Garalon normal, just wait for LFR gear. ICC wasn't that simple, Ulduar wasn't easy either. How many guilds saw Yogg on 25man normal when the content mattered? IMO nothing is wrong with TOT difficulty.
    This is exactly what I've been thinking and saying a few posts ago as well. ICC 25 pre nerf: Blood Queen was a freaking mess.

  4. #184
    Quote Originally Posted by Danishgirl View Post
    This is exactly what I've been thinking and saying a few posts ago as well. ICC 25 pre nerf: Blood Queen was a freaking mess.
    Especially as raid leader when I didn't know the bite addon existed

    Also when there were members that had similar names >.<


    The requirement of spreading out and getting back in position after the AOE fear (air phase) was daunting for some people, that resulted in them killing other members. If it were just the less skilled raiders that got killed, it would have been better. But their mistake caused others to die, and that caused a LOT of wipes

    In the end we got her because people EVENTUALLY understood (I had to make MS paint picture with everyone's name on it ) WTF they were supposed to do.


    I think even in TotC the twin valkyr / faction champion and even anubarak fights were still a challenge for our 25 man. (because a few people not understanding mechanics could lead to a wipe... GET ON THE ICE PATCH).





    In the end, for normal mode raiders (a VERY broad term, I know) normal mode raids is all they have and I think its important to have challenges that they can overcome.

    You get better in time and later on as you gain experience in dealing with the different kind of mechanics that raid bosses have (a LOT are similar).


    Even if you only raid 3 hours a week, eventually with more gear and experience you will be able to clear more and more bosses. Some bosses later on may feel like walkovers because A) they are easier mechanically and B)you became 'better' raiders by overcoming the hardship. Eventually you may be able to full clear the raid in the 3 hour raid time you have.



    The option to skip a hard boss to an easier one seems better imo, but blizzard decided to go for a linear experience this raid, and thats what we have. (theres no changing it. MAybe T15 will have multiple wings/alternate progression paths)



    I hope everyone good luck with the raid (who are stuck on early bosses), and I hope you guys enjoy overcoming challenges as much as I do. Constant wipes are always painful, even if you just laugh some mistakes off. But for me, all of that leads to an epic feeling of victory and accomplishment.

  5. #185
    Quote Originally Posted by WeaponXAnimosity View Post
    I just loved the lore of ICC and Ulduar. Don't know what it is but both raids simply felt epic every time I run them. The new raids in Pandaria just feel boring. Get in, kill boss, loot, get out. IMO, Pandaren raids just feel like they were pulled out of thin air for the sake of a new expansion.
    I think this guy is on to something

    Try to keep your posts constructive please (by Sonnillon).
    Last edited by Sonnillon; 2013-03-31 at 12:31 PM.

  6. #186
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    Quote Originally Posted by Danishgirl View Post
    @ Thyclane: I agree that there's a lot to deal with on Horridon but again I have to ask, if you can't handle the mechanics on Horridon (mechanics not all happening at the same time), what makes you think other bosses will be much easier to handle? Mageara pre nerf would most likely have been a wall for many guilds as well, I imagine Council have cause many people issues too.
    Personally, I found the Council of Elders much easier going than Horridon and the small amount of work done on Tortos so far (back tonight) makes it look more forgiving, too. But this is just personal opinion, there's no legitimate "facts" that back up what I'm saying. With that borne in mind, however, it IS a fact that different raid groups, with different strengths, struggle on different bosses... And have done since time immemorial.

    Let's say, however, that you're absolutely, 100% correct and that the bosses just get harder as you move on (a plausible argument, at least). There's still the fact that the ability to skip a boss, or have an easier couple before hitting the harder ones, would let people feel that they're progressing more in current content rather than being essentially forced back into stuff they've already done. I think the point about having a few easy ones and then a string of hard ones is less preferable than a few "gimmes" interspersed throughout a raid, is perfectly valid; but it could only ever be preference-related.

    Wow, what an ugly sentence.

    Quote Originally Posted by Danishgirl View Post
    The people claiming that T15 is worse than ICC due to gating (I'll refrain from saying you people), forget that the second boss was brutal to pugs as well. Tanks having to pick up adds fast, MC'd people had to be cc'd before they went rampage and there was so many things going on from the very beginning. If you didn't manage to kill all adds every time, each wave became harder and harder and in the end wiped the whole raid.

    So, would be it possible to think, that some of the people who are now experiencing Horrdion as a wall, arguing that ICC was better in terms of gating, that they were actually raiding 10 man back in Wrath and not 25? Cause if that's the case, I can surely understand why ToT seems harder.
    I've been working on the understanding that this thread concentrates more on 10-man than 25, and that would extend to the Icecrown comparisons. Anyone arguing that Throne of Thunder 10-man is just as easy as Icecrown 10-man would have some... Convincing to do.

    Quote Originally Posted by Danishgirl View Post
    In the end it all comes down to 1 thing: Are your raiders skilled enough to kill Horridon with whatever gear they have or not? If 502 is the intended ilvl and you walk in there with ilvl 496 as an average Normal mode guild, are you really surprised about the difficulty of this boss? And if you are, is that really fair?
    The second part of this quotation is my problem; why is Horridon tuned to item level 502? Your point is valid (inasmuch as saying anyone less should struggle), but it's not answering why he's tuned for a gear level that the average normal-clearing guild from T14 won't have.

    Quote Originally Posted by Sesshou View Post
    They didn't track ilvl the first week. Other people in this thread have already provided examples showing that. If you went in at 496 the first week and killed 3 bosses plus another 1k vp worth of items, you are going to be a decent bit above that the next week because of the 26 ilvl difference in gear.
    I checked the guilds that had killed Horridon on 10-man, and the average item level was on all of these guilds. You're right in saying that the second week would have seen a significant jump, but the first week saw nobody (from my research) in gear lower than 503 killing him.

    Quote Originally Posted by Sesshou View Post
    I sort of see your point. If you had been clearing 16/16 normal for over a month, that should be plenty and you should be able to start the next tier with that. However, I know there were some guilds that were stuck on Horridron in that other thread that did not full clear normal modes. I see absolutely no issue with keeping old content relevant by not designing the next tier so that you can skip straight to it. And like I have said plenty of times, Horridron is not a gear check.
    I am 100%, totally, completely and unequivocally in agreement with you. If you haven't cleared the previous tier, you shouldn't expect to jump straight into the next; all that does, as we found out in Cataclysm, is make content redundant at far too quickly a rate for the developers to keep up. You may have already guessed that I've always been comfortable with raid "attunements" (like killing Sapphiron before moving to Malygos, or killing Shek'zeer before moving to the Terrace).

    As for Horridon being a gear check, I don't think he's a conventional one, no. My argument is purely that if an encounter is tuned for a certain level of gear, that's the developers saying "in the right gear, this mechanic won't be too dangerous". It's a gear check of sorts, if you catch my meaning.

    Quote Originally Posted by Sesshou View Post
    This whole (and it might not have been you that said it) lets put 2-3 more easy bosses in so you can get a bunch of 522 gear to trivialize it is just a silly way of approaching the problem. You don't need that just like if you are at 496 ilvl (which for a full normal mode clearing guild with the upgrade system for t14 gear and 522 vp items is pretty reasonable) you don't really need to go back to t14 for gear.
    I support the idea of a few simpler bosses near the start of an instance, so that raid groups can feel like they're getting somewhere. My problem, specifically, with the Throne of Thunder is that the jump is far too high - going from 496 to 522 is... Ridiculous, frankly.

    Quote Originally Posted by Sesshou View Post
    The fights as a whole? Yeah, they are nothing alike. I'm referring specifically to your claim that grabbing the bears and facing them away was not trivially easy like it sounded and that their cleave is overtuned because it does too much damage.
    I was more arguing that the cleave, on top of the other things going on, make the fight more convoluted than you were presenting it. Arguing that "this is easy" and "that is easy" doesn't really tell the whole truth. I sincerely hope you're not going to argue that Onyxia had as much going on as Horridon.

    Quote Originally Posted by Sesshou View Post
    See thats not really a fair question. Likely because they realized the people not up for it have LFR now, MoP bosses have had increasingly more mechanics, especially ToT.
    This is something I've mentioned a few times regarding the talent of the current design team; during WotLK, the difficulty curve was far better while still managing to cater to almost everyone without the need for heroic raiding or an LFR queue; from the PuG communities running 25-man Naxxramas, to the hardcore guilds working on The Twilight Zone, everyone was included. Personally, I think Cataclysm was what changed this when brutally punishing content started to go in and alienate the excellent PuG communities that Wrath built.

    My belief is why I can never figure out the arguments that go like this:

    "So, guys, who agrees this game just gets dumbed down more and more and it's for four-year-olds?"

    I'm sure you know the ones. At the top end, WoW has never been more challenging than it is now and its players at the top have never been better.

    Quote Originally Posted by Sesshou View Post
    Also, as I explained (as have blizzard) they do not expect you to start with ToT. Is Horridron really more complex than Empress? Now it might have more in number, but things you dispel and things you stand in with different names and different graphics are still dealt with the same. Now you may (probably will) disagree that it is fair for the 2nd fight to be near one of the final ones last tier, but so long as the intentional design is that you do not skip to ToT and you use the other raids to climb up to ToT, I think thats just fine.
    In principle, I find your point agreeable. Unfortunately, the item level jump is too significant for this to be fair and it's buggered up the normal raider progression curve; hence my argument that Horridon is "overtuned".

    Quote Originally Posted by Sesshou View Post
    This is probably getting pretty far away from the topic at hand but whatever... Refresh my memory, was there any reason a melee couldn't go and hit them? I'm pretty sure rogues, dk's, druids, mages, locks, ele shaman, and hunters could all do 5k. I honestly don't remember what the top specs were in ulduar, but you had dual spec so having some one carry an OS just for that isn't too big of a deal (and overall dps for Ignus was trivial).
    At that point, there was close to nothing that hit for 5k non-critical strike - so you pretty much needed to be able to guarantee you could land a critical strike on the mobs before they returned to normal, else you just got overrun. There weren't that many specs that could do it. Unfortunately, because the damage requirement wasn't cumulative (and you had to shatter them in a single hit), this could have been extremely punishing on groups that didn't have the on-demand nuke.

    Quote Originally Posted by Sesshou View Post
    I think the point of normal mode is to be there for (1) those that want to be challenged by engaging mechanics but also want to be able to clear content eventually but are either casual in their raiding time or are playing with people who are not all that good and (2) those guilds who plan to eventually work on heroics but do not have the expectation to be able to clear all of the heroics so that they have a non trivial progression through the content (as opposed to LFR which would be a trivial steam roll through the content).
    The problem is that the developers themselves aren't making this clear. Draztal, the EU community manager who's done a lot of posting, doesn't help; largely because he's an arrogant and dismissive idiot, but mainly because he can't distinguish between the extremes of "hardcore" and "ultra-casual". If he's symptomatic of the wider Blizzard view, we have a very definite problem because I'd argue that the vast majority of players fall into neither category.

    A casual player isn't necessarily "bad", just as a hardcore player isn't necessarily "good". For those in the top 100, I think Blizzard should stop catering to them as heavily as they do - they're too good to be legitimately challenged. They've fundamentally reached the stage where no mechanic is too complicated, and they're held up either solely by gear (which puts progression in the lap of the gods), broken encounters or by gating. For those at the bottom, Blizzard are dismissing them by saying "you have LFR to see some content and gear up a bit, you're sorted".

    Alas, then we come to the crunch; who is going to play in a normal-mode guild?

    Who the content is aimed at is less important than who wants to put the time into completing it. I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you, I'm simply pointing out that recruiting a "normal" raider is notoriously difficult because you're asking people to commit to a schedule that they may decide (as many are) simply isn't worth their commitment. This is causing the good players to fire toward heroic guilds, while the not-so-good just forget about it and stick with LFR while they level pets. Hell, look at the official forums; half the players there are looking for heroic progression when they've barely killed a boss on normal.

    Bleh, this is moving off-topic. x_X

  7. #187
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    But Thy, if people here are arguing under the assumption we're talking 10 man and then compare it to 10 man ICC, don't you agree that there's a huge difference? I mean, 10 man ICC was faceroll, while 25 man offered the real challenge.

    Ofc different raid groups struggle with different things and based on that, I guess Blizz could have made the path of progression different. But keep in mind, that when this whole discussion suddenly went from "gated progression path" to "Horridon is a wall", it's cause the OP opened the gate himself. And I think that's why myself and others reacted to it.

    But lets talk about the ilvl Horridon was meant for; 502 right. If your guild cleared Normal Sha last Tier and basically cleared T14 every week, they should be sitting at 496 ihs. If they were smart, they were capped on VP, when the patch came out. That means they could buy 2 ilvl 522 items the very first reset. Now, I'm not good at math but shouldn't that get us rather close to the 502 ilvl? On top of that, you could have gone into LFR and used a coin.

    Personally, I don't think Horridon is hard but I can accept that others are struggling. The question that really should be discussed though, is why does it offer so much difficulty for the more "casual" (not bad by default) guilds?

    A) Because the boss requires more than you can/should expect from the average casual guild mechanics wise?

    B) Because the output requirements are too high on top of the mechanics?

    C) Because you can't afford bringing people who barely know how to play their own class and have no awareness?

    You probably know what I personally think. But my point is, we probably won't come to an agreement about this. So all there's left, is for people to try to improve their gameplay, look at their setup, ask for help and in the end, go back and grind T14 Heroic for some more pre T15 BiS items.

  8. #188
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    Quote Originally Posted by Danishgirl View Post
    But Thy, if people here are arguing under the assumption we're talking 10 man and then compare it to 10 man ICC, don't you agree that there's a huge difference? I mean, 10 man ICC was faceroll, while 25 man offered the real challenge.
    I think there's a lot to be said for this view. Blizzard deliberately made 10-man raiding easier in WotLK (outside of specific fights like The Twilight Zone), then jettisoned that in Cataclysm to make 10-man "as hard as 25". Without trying to start a different argument, I'd imagine there are some departmental heads at Blizzard who regret that choice now.

    I'd be more inclined to compare the Throne of Thunder with Ulduar, both 10-man, particularly pre-nerf.

    Quote Originally Posted by Danishgirl View Post
    Ofc different raid groups struggle with different things and based on that, I guess Blizz could have made the path of progression different. But keep in mind, that when this whole discussion suddenly went from "gated progression path" to "Horridon is a wall", it's cause the OP opened the gate himself. And I think that's why myself and others reacted to it.
    Personally, I have no problem with how the discussion went. Other than my discussion about Ignis, it's all on topic as far as I'm concerned.

    Quote Originally Posted by Danishgirl View Post
    But lets talk about the ilvl Horridon was meant for; 502 right. If your guild cleared Normal Sha last Tier and basically cleared T14 every week, they should be sitting at 496 ihs. If they were smart, they were capped on VP, when the patch came out. That means they could buy 2 ilvl 522 items the very first reset. Now, I'm not good at math but shouldn't that get us rather close to the 502 ilvl? On top of that, you could have gone into LFR and used a coin.
    That sounds like a lot of foresight for a relatively casual guild that raids 2/3 nights a week (I'm not saying it didn't happen). Personally, my guild had a nightmare in tier 14 because we started on Argent Dawn where there's a criminally short number of decent raiders. After moving to Twisting Nether, we were having to recruit from a pool of people that could have chosen guilds far better progressed than us.

    This isn't a complaint, I'm just highlighting that approaching the Throne of Thunder was very difficult for us given the way the previous tier worked out. That said, you could argue that if someone had been clearing tier 14 for a while, the Valor upgrades might have shoved them over the hump.

    But just to give you an idea; we have a DK tank now who's a good guy, does the right things, but has an item level of 490 and a blue weapon with no upgrades on it. We took him on knowing that we'd have to gear him up a bit, and that's fine, but it's against the previous Blizzard stance (since Wrath) where you wouldn't have to farm old content too intensely to catch people up.

    Quote Originally Posted by Danishgirl View Post
    Personally, I don't think Horridon is hard but I can accept that others are struggling. The question that really should be discussed though, is why does it offer so much difficulty for the more "casual" (not bad by default) guilds?

    A) Because the boss requires more than you can/should expect from the average casual guild mechanics wise?

    B) Because the output requirements are too high on top of the mechanics?

    C) Because you can't afford bringing people who barely know how to play their own class and have no awareness?
    I think A and B are valid complaints from an unavoidable second boss in a normal raiding tier. C isn't valid because you can't pin that on the developers and, as has rightly been stated already, that's the players that really are destined for LFR. I'd also add:

    D) Because some classes are now more complicated to play well than ever before.

    You can argue that playing a class well is faceroll, but the difference is night and day from the Shadow Bolt or Fireball spam of the past.

  9. #189
    Quote Originally Posted by Thylacine View Post
    I think there's a lot to be said for this view. Blizzard deliberately made 10-man raiding easier in WotLK (outside of specific fights like The Twilight Zone), then jettisoned that in Cataclysm to make 10-man "as hard as 25". Without trying to start a different argument, I'd imagine there are some departmental heads at Blizzard who regret that choice now.

    I'd be more inclined to compare the Throne of Thunder with Ulduar, both 10-man, particularly pre-nerf.
    You are wrong here my friend. ALL wrath 10mans were faceroll again it was intended which explains the lower item level. Ulduar 10man gear was less ilvl to Hard mode Sartharion 25man I did all of them and i know what am talking about.

  10. #190
    Quote Originally Posted by Delhunt View Post
    You are wrong here my friend. ALL wrath 10mans were faceroll again it was intended which explains the lower item level. Ulduar 10man gear was less ilvl to Hard mode Sartharion 25man I did all of them and i know what am talking about.
    OS10 3drake was much harder than its 25man version. the 'normal' mode was much easier on 10, but the 3 drake fight in 10 man was probably the hardest fight (including all 25 encounters) of tier 7.
    It could have been intended to be an easier fight, but it didn't turn out that way. That was an exception, as most 10man fights were easier than 25man for the entire expansion. (not gonna debate 10vs 25 since cata)

  11. #191
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    Quote Originally Posted by Delhunt View Post
    You are wrong here my friend. ALL wrath 10mans were faceroll again it was intended which explains the lower item level. Ulduar 10man gear was less ilvl to Hard mode Sartharion 25man I did all of them and i know what am talking about.
    According to Blizzard, The Twilight Zone ended up harder in 10-man, but they did state that it was a mistake; it wasn't meant to be harder, but the lower number of players made it so because you had to double up (or use a Voidwalker to tank Sartharion).

    There were a few other examples in WotLK where this happened, but it wasn't intended. 10-man, as you say, was meant to be easier.

    It just wasn't always.

  12. #192
    Quote Originally Posted by Xeraxis View Post
    If casual guilds need to progress past a difficult boss they can wait the 1-2 months till upgrades are available again or gear up from LFR and the previous raid tiers till they have an ilevel high enough to get past the difficult boss.
    Normally I'd agree with this. But I can see it being a little discouraging if you're in a semi-casual guild and you're stuck for 1-2 months on a single boss or two for progression. At least the OPs idea offers choices that in the end are still progress.

  13. #193
    Quote Originally Posted by Thylacine View Post
    I checked the guilds that had killed Horridon on 10-man, and the average item level was on all of these guilds. You're right in saying that the second week would have seen a significant jump, but the first week saw nobody (from my research) in gear lower than 503 killing him.
    I never paid too much attention to it, but if I've understood correctly then WoWProgress did not track the item levels during the first week and the numbers shown are actually from the second week. It is also reasonable to expect that the guilds that did clear Horridon also on average cleared a number of additional bosses, bumping their item levels even further. The lack of actual data is somewhat of a shame since it would be interesting to see.

    I'm personally also leaning towards the camp that thinks Horridon is fine but the gap between the two first bosses is unusually big. A more gradual increase in difficulty or an alternative path of progression would likely end up being a more welcoming design.

    As far as the reasoning for ilvl 502 goes, it was confirmed that ToT is designed with the valor upgrades in mind. On top of them you have LFR and few other pieces that you can get outside of the raid instance. Whether that is a reasonable way to determine the supposed ilvl, that I can not tell. Frankly, I have no idea what ilvl the average normal mode guild is at, or whether they've even been intended to kill Horridon on the first week or two.

  14. #194
    Quote Originally Posted by Keoren View Post
    I never paid too much attention to it, but if I've understood correctly then WoWProgress did not track the item levels during the first week and the numbers shown are actually from the second week.
    I think you're right on that.

    WoWProgress seems to think I had 508.13ilvl when we killed Horridon, yet I was at 505.x with the VP upgrades. And 508 does fit the gear I had second week (still have the old gear so I was able to check). Checking the other players, I know that their ilvl were lower than that; usually 2-3 ilvls lower. If I remember correctly we were ~499 because two of our players came back to WoW very recently (and we took the last tier pretty casually), but it says 502.76...

  15. #195
    I don't think these raids truly had alternate progression paths. Sure you could have done the bosses in any order but gear requirements was really what dictated the order that you killed the bosses in ICC and Ulduar, even Naxx for that matter.

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