If Heroic Jin'rokh was a 40 man raid boss in Vanilla

[Deleted]

I've read through the thread, and while many of the posters mentions the fact that raids consisted of 40 players, as well as the poor addons, poor gear and talents, lack of information and good communication tools, I'm still going to put up the fact that the poor computers back then also caused a big part of the lack of performance from most players. Especially since boss fights were 40man.

Your turn, name a mechanic of any vanilla boss that will make any actual normal/heroic guild struggle. k tks.

Any normal mode guild and mediocre heroic mode guild would struggle with the following:

- Add control (with vanilla mechanics) on the first boss in BWL
- Not fucking up on Thaddius
- Manage to reset your debuffs on 4 horsemen
- Not dying on Heigan (the fight lasted forever in Vanilla)
- Managing threat resets on stuff like mind control etc with the threat mechanics back then
- Killing Vanilla Kel'thuzad
- Killing Vanilla Sapphiron
- Tanking Razovious
- Coordinating Grand widow Faerlina
- Positioning on Grobbulus
- Kiting on Gluth and Anub'Rekhan

Sadly I cannot remember many boss fights from AQ40 and AQ20, but C'thun and Twins would definitely cause many problems for heroic mode raiding guilds.
I stopped doing PvE at the end of 2012, but I still managed to do something like 8 or 9 heroic bosses in tier 14. And trust me, if all the normal mode players had issues with Garalon and Elegon on normal mode as they did back then, they wouldn't have made it through AQ40. Or if heroic mode guilds couldn't kill bosses such as Spirit Kings heroic (post-fix), Blade lord heroic or Wind lord heroic in tier 14, coordinating 40 players through Naxx or AQ40 would definitely not have been doable in only a couple of week's time (even if they had the gear avialable), considering the limitations back then.
You are severely overrating the abilities of normal mode raiders. I raided with heroic mode raiders throughout Wotlk, Cata and start of MoP, and many heroic mode players (just like in vanilla) are simply carried by nerfs, gear upgrades, time consument or guild mates.

[CptAwesome]

You are severely overrating the abilities of normal mode raiders. I raided with heroic mode raiders throughout Wotlk, Cata and start of MoP, and many heroic mode players (just like in vanilla) are simply carried by nerfs, gear upgrades, time consument or guild mates.

It's so dumb to act like vanilla raiders were playing on SUPER HARD MODE and would faceroll current stuff. The skillsets are completely different and the two scenarios you are comparing are so different that any evaluation is just pointless and irrelevant. All the stuff you listed is stuff that vanilla players learned to do as they played, so ofc they could handle it. Today, we have a different set of skills so neither group would do very well taking on the other's content.

Example; if you brought out a boss like Sapphiron today, people would be disgusted at the idea of having to go and farm frost resistance gear for one single fight. They would also be disgusted at the idea of having to bring frost mages for that one single encounter despite the fact that frost mages are compete shit for every other boss in the instance, they're also complete shit for this fight, but you need one single ability from them to beat it and unless you have been farming it for a long time, they will also need to go and respec again for you to kill Kel'Thuzad. This is not a matter of player skill, this is just purely tedious design and an unnecessary pain in the ass.

By contrast, if you brought out Protectors Heroic back in vanilla, no one had focus interrupt macros so it would be very tough. Until people learned and adapted, the macros started popping up on thottbot's forums or alakhazam's, people would make them and start to use them and BAM the playerbase has developed a new skill. That's how we improve, and similarly, skills that we needed in vanilla like threat management or safety dancing have been lost because we don't need them anymore.

You must be pretty dumb to suggest that all vanilla guilds just walked in and starting busting faces in Naxx, they learnt the skills by wiping on the bosses, just as today's raiders would if they faced the same encounters.

[Akylios]

It's so dumb to act like vanilla raiders were playing on SUPER HARD MODE and would faceroll current stuff.

I don't think many classic raiders are claiming this. I'm from a Naxx clearing guild back in classic that has just got back together again for MOP (10m guild now though). Almost all of us quit the game back in classic, so we pretty much just entered MOP with no idea what to expect from raiding. To us there are plenty of challenging fights on heroic mode, just as there are plenty of easy fights on heroic as well. It actually seems to be remarkably similar difficulty wise to classic raiding, except we don't have to deal with as many broken or clearly overtuned encounters and we don't have to deal with 40 man raiding teams. This is a good thing. (My only gripe is that today we can skip heroic mode bosses and just start out by killing all the easy ones.)

So no, I don't think many of us are claiming things are easy today, but we sure as fuck try to correct people who are claiming normal mode raiding is harder than classic raiding.

Normal mode raiding is quite frankly ridiculously easy and can only be compared to Molten Core back in classic. If anyone today is having a hard time clearing normal mode dungeons, they would also have had one hell of a time trying to clear both Zul'Gurub and Blackwing Lair while they were still current content. There's also no way they'd have cleared either AQ40 or Naxxramas prior to TBC's release.

So people should please stop comparing normal modes to anything but Molten Core from back in classic. :|

[Fojos]

If the boss was tuned as it is now? About the same amount of time. If it was tuned by vanilla standards, awhile.

Tuned by vanilla standards... You mean extremely forgiving standards?

[Deleted]

It doesn't make sense to compare normal mode raiding to classic in any case. Classic raiding was done by a minority of the population, the same way heroics are today. If you're gonna compare then compare today's heroic raids, especially 25m heroic to vanilla 40m raids.

Today's normal modes are more akin to vanilla 20m guilds that did ZG even after AQ40 was out or to vanilla 45min Baron runs.

[RoKPaNda]

Tuned by vanilla standards... You mean extremely forgiving standards?

The majority of the Vanilla population has absolutely no idea how the bosses were tuned because they never did the content. Sadly I did the content and there were a lot of things in BWL, AQ40, and Naxx that were extremely unforgiving. If your only vanilla raid experience was something like Onyxia or MC then yes Vanilla was extremely forgiving, absolutely.

Before you go all rose tinted glasses on me, I don't think that Vanilla raiding was better by any means, but since mid-TBC there hasn't really been anything close. Definitely nothing close to Naxx-40, some of the boss fights in there were absolutely brutal.

[Sarevokcz]

I'm sorry, but if you ever had a problem with Durumu's maze, then you wouldn't have been anywhere near being an above average gamer back at WoW's release, let alone in the 90s. Bullet hell games, Arcade games, Arena style Shooters. All of the above are examples of genres which required you to have way better reflexes than what is required to dodge the purple fog in the Durumu encounter, and unlike Durumu you'd often just straight up die if you failed a single dodge in those games.

There was absolutely no reason to nerf his maze, because it was ridiculously easy to deal with. It was a flavour mechanic, nothing more. An intermission. Just don't stand in the purple shit, that's it. It was clear as day where you needed to go, even when the clear spots appeared right under him (which were without a doubt the hardest spots to actually spot, although in those cases it was abundantly obvious they must have had spawned under him).

Post nerf, Durumu's maze might as well not even be a mechanic anymore. Note that this is coming from a 38 year old father of three, whose glory days of gaming are long, long past him. I'm a rubbish gamer today compared to back in my heyday, yet the maze was 'not a thing' to me, as incredibly average as I am today.

But you do have a point. With 40 people, only the very top guilds would constantly get everyone through alive. Even very good guilds were forced to carry bad players to fill spots, at least until they finally added server transfers (which I believe wasn't until around the time Naxxramas was released). You'd no doubt have to tune Durumu with that in mind. Thing is, back in classic they actually wouldn't, and they wouldn't have cared if the majority of guilds wiped to an overtuned boss for months on end.

Please, people had tons of troubles with for example heigan dance or cthun beam etc and those were slower paced and/or in predefined pattern and with only one mechanic. Durumu maze is alot faster paced and equally if not more lethal, with several mechanics - maze itself, beam, void zones in the way, HC with walls. If you really believe average vanilla folk would have not much trouble with such a boss, you havent played in average vanilla guild. Most people were absolutely horrible in vanilla and couldnt handle even simple mechanics. Hell, even stone guards would have been cock block for alot of vanilla guilds, simply because people in vanilla were bad in not standing in stuff, not to mention fire chains and proper tank switches on adds. Oh god, the horrors, where tanks were incapable of doing simple stuff like taunting shazzrah and running with him from the group before he could AE them after the teleport, people who were incapable of running away from raid with Geddon bomb or those, who couldnt resheep their target on Domo even after several warnings on vent.

[Deleted]

This entire thread feels something like:

Side A: Vanilla was hard, here's an example: Naxx
Side B: Please, vanilla was a joke here's an example: MC
Side A: You idiot, it was not that easy, you really think fights like <Naxx example> were easy!? Way harder than <normal mode example>!
Side B: YOU'RE the idiot, vanilla was clearly easy, just look at <MC example>! Its nowhere near as hard as <difficult heroic boss example>!

[slime]

Are bugs still considered tuning? like in vanilla and bc?

[fangless]

This entire thread feels something like:

Side A: Vanilla was hard, here's an example: Naxx
Side B: Please, vanilla was a joke here's an example: MC
Side A: You idiot, it was not that easy, you really think fights like <Naxx example> were easy!? Way harder than <normal mode example>!
Side B: YOU'RE the idiot, vanilla was clearly easy, just look at <MC example>! Its nowhere near as hard as <difficult heroic boss example>!

Because the average player's experience of Vanilla raiding WAS molten core.

So many people speak about Vanilla anything when they likely made an account long afterwards.

[Arkamedis]

more than 50 attempts, 1/4 of vanilla players were terrible in Vanilla.

Fixed that for ya buddy!

[Posokhov]

The majority of the Vanilla population has absolutely no idea how the bosses were tuned because they never did the content. Sadly I did the content and there were a lot of things in BWL, AQ40, and Naxx that were extremely unforgiving. If your only vanilla raid experience was something like Onyxia or MC then yes Vanilla was extremely forgiving, absolutely.

Before you go all rose tinted glasses on me, I don't think that Vanilla raiding was better by any means, but since mid-TBC there hasn't really been anything close. Definitely nothing close to Naxx-40, some of the boss fights in there were absolutely brutal.

There have been tons of raids worlds harder than Naxxramas. If your guild struggled to mechanics that weren't taunt resists on 4 Horsemen, your guild was bad. The fights were undertuned and extremely forgiving. If Blizzard added a fight of Naxx-40's difficulty to WOW as the next tier, it would be cleared by the end of day 1. Nobody would be stuck on a boss for more than 20 attempts.

4 Horsemen was the only fight in vanilla to last longer than 6 days without being unkillably bugged. That's pathetic. Every single fight in vanilla got steam rolled by the top guilds. This wasn't a matter of only the best doing it.

Because the average player's experience of Vanilla raiding WAS molten core.

So many people speak about Vanilla anything when they likely made an account long afterwards.

And a lot of the people who ramble about vanilla raiding being the best only raided in vanilla, or only raided in normal modes after vanilla.

More guilds cleared Naxx-40 before TBC came out than Yogg-0 before TOGC came out.
More guilds cleared Naxx-40 before TBC came out than heroic Ragnaros before they nerfed it by 30% (and after the nerf, heroic Ragnaros was barely killed more by next tier).

I'm sorry, but if you ever had a problem with Durumu's maze, then you wouldn't have been anywhere near being an above average gamer back at WoW's release, let alone in the 90s. Bullet hell games, Arcade games, Arena style Shooters. All of the above are examples of genres which required you to have way better reflexes than what is required to dodge the purple fog in the Durumu encounter, and unlike Durumu you'd often just straight up die if you failed a single dodge in those games.

Except Heigan's dance was a far easier, far simpler, and far more forgiving version. Yet vanilla players struggled with it mightily.

There was absolutely no reason to nerf his maze, because it was ridiculously easy to deal with. It was a flavour mechanic, nothing more. An intermission. Just don't stand in the purple shit, that's it. It was clear as day where you needed to go, even when the clear spots appeared right under him (which were without a doubt the hardest spots to actually spot, although in those cases it was abundantly obvious they must have had spawned under him).

That's about what 90% of the mechanics in Naxx 40 were as well. Ridiculously easy mechanics that served no purpose other than to weed out the absolute worst players...

Except you're calling Naxx-40 hard and TOT easy, but these are vanilla-style mechanics that you're now complaining about.

Post nerf, Durumu's maze might as well not even be a mechanic anymore. Note that this is coming from a 38 year old father of three, whose glory days of gaming are long, long past him. I'm a rubbish gamer today compared to back in my heyday, yet the maze was 'not a thing' to me, as incredibly average as I am today.

Yet if you struggled on mechanics in Naxx-40, you were incredibly average then as well.

But you do have a point. With 40 people, only the very top guilds would constantly get everyone through alive. Even very good guilds were forced to carry bad players to fill spots, at least until they finally added server transfers (which I believe wasn't until around the time Naxxramas was released). You'd no doubt have to tune Durumu with that in mind. Thing is, back in classic they actually wouldn't, and they wouldn't have cared if the majority of guilds wiped to an overtuned boss for months on end.

Most bosses were undertuned in vanilla. That's why when an actual good guild entered an instance, they would steamroll the place. The exceptions being 4 Horsemen. Most bosses would die the first day the top world guilds got on him.

But this again defeats your original statement about raiding today being harder, because today there is absolutely no excuse for good guilds to carry up to 10 baddies. If they had to, then they wouldn't be good guilds. Take the 10 best players from my 50 man classic guild though, put them into a 10 man raid, and we'd eat ToT normal mode alive... which is actually exactly what happened.

Take the 40 best players from Method and Envy and put them in Naxx-40, and you have a cleared Naxx-40 by the end of day 1.

TL;DR: Durumu's maze is not an example of a mechanic that an above average 90s gamer would even break a sweat over. It really was quite simple pre-nerf. Post-nerf it's not even a thing.

Neither was anything in Naxx-40.

Just to put things into perspective, having killed 5 HC bosses so far in ToT, none of them was as hard as Razorgore and Vaelastrazs at release and in appropriate gear level, even though every single one of them is mechanically more complex than Razor + Vael combined. (this is just my opinion, it's not some almighty fact)

I did most of Naxx-40 before my guild collapsed right before TBC launched because the officer core was unable to decide on how we'd do the 40 -> 25 man raid transition. The hardest part about vanilla was grinding the gear. The fights were simple, forgiving, with the occasional resist check thrown in. 4 Horsemen

[Applenazi]

You mean vanilla players didn't have the half the addons and handholding through PTR raid testing and datamining websites as today?

Man, if only we had an addon in vanilla that told us how to spam our single button for the full duration of every cookie cutter tank and spank fight. People who say shit like this either never raided vanilla, or have some kind of learning disorder.

[Fojos]

The majority of the Vanilla population has absolutely no idea how the bosses were tuned because they never did the content. Sadly I did the content and there were a lot of things in BWL, AQ40, and Naxx that were extremely unforgiving. If your only vanilla raid experience was something like Onyxia or MC then yes Vanilla was extremely forgiving, absolutely.

Before you go all rose tinted glasses on me, I don't think that Vanilla raiding was better by any means, but since mid-TBC there hasn't really been anything close. Definitely nothing close to Naxx-40, some of the boss fights in there were absolutely brutal.

I played up to Kel in vanilla. No, they were not unforgiving (well, they were, in terms of farming and class stacking, but not in the actual encounters).

I don't think people realise just how easily the hardest bosses at 60 would be killed by the top players today, the skill/knowledge difference is tremendous.

[Fountaiin]

Not more than 1 attempt, vanilla players were way more skilled.

rofl. <3 xoxo

[Simplexity]

Quote from Ghostcrawler himself about difficulty from vanilla encounters compared to now.
http://wow.joystiq.com/2013/05/20/pa...-ghostcrawler/

There's been a lot of discussion on the ramp-up of difficulty in raid encounters over the years -- encounters are far more complex now than they've ever been before. How does this affect balancing for LFR?

I mean overall, when you look at the encounters, particularly back in Molten Core -- there just wasn't much going on. The community of players was so unsophisticated, compared to what they have now. A 40 player raiding guild was like ... people with a pulse, you know? Nobody knew what the right rotation for a warlock was, because there certainly weren't things like AskMrRobot or even a WorldofLogs -- it was really hard to figure out even how to play your character.

You had the 15 really good people, and the rest were mostly filler.

Yeah! Or even if you had like, one really good raid leader who kind of knew, "Look, you have to dispel on Lucifron, that is the key to this fight. Dispel dispel dispel." I mean nowadays, if we made a fight that was, that the entire key was to remember to dispel? It would be trivial. Like ... people could five man it. So as players have become more sophisticated, and to some extent as we've given characters more tools, we've had to add more mechanics to encounters to kind of keep them at a certain difficulty level.

Because at some point -- encounters can be difficult because of number tuning or because of mechanics. And with the numbers tuning, at some point you just can't physically win the fight unless every single hit is a crit or something astronomically impossible like that. So I think it's totally fair that we've increased mechanics over time. Now, I know that there's an argument out there that raid finder should just have fewer mechanics overall because people can't handle it.

Basically he agrees with the notion that encounters are much more complex and difficult now. The playerbase has evolved (proof? amount of players that used keybindings now and back in Vanilla) and become better and there are better tools like DBM and WoL for analysis.

[Zooch]

You can't cross compare bosses from different eras. That's like me asking you who would in a 1 on 1 match, wilt chamberlain or kobe bryant? It's just a ridiculous comparison.

EDIT: I do remember one time on these forums there was a post where someone listed like 15 WoW bosses throughout each expansion and the time it took for a guild to kill them. The most difficult was Cthun, which took like 80 something days followed by Muru and then Lich king I think. If someone knows what I'm talking about, they should like that thread.

[Deleted]

Funniest comment ever!!!!
And so wrong. Todays fight are 10000000000000 times harder then the vanilla fights.

Guess that guy from Method is thankful that you clarify these things.

[Deleted]

You can't cross compare bosses from different eras. That's like me asking you who would in a 1 on 1 match, wilt chamberlain or kobe bryant? It's just a ridiculous comparison.

EDIT: I do remember one time on these forums there was a post where someone listed like 15 WoW bosses throughout each expansion and the time it took for a guild to kill them. The most difficult was Cthun, which took like 80 something days followed by Muru and then Lich king I think. If someone knows what I'm talking about, they should like that thread.

it's not like C'thun died on the first day it was actually killable... no that can't be. In fact... all of the vanilla bosses that lived so long were incredibly bugged and lolresistgear.
Followed by Muru? Didn't that boss die in like 4 days?
And Lich King --> Limited attempts

[IdTheDemon]

Mechanic wise, it would be a pain assuming there are only Vanilla abilities. The quality of life back in Vanilla was terrible compared to today. Classes today have self heals, absorbs and damage reductions that they did not have in Vanilla so that would be an immediate factor.

What made Vanilla hard was the gear acquisition and a quarter of the raid being carried/lazy/bad. Most bosses dropped 2-3 pieces of gear and Tier 1 and 2 were actually drops, not tokens. During AQ40 progression, we had so many people in 6/8 to 7/8 tier 2 because the drops were so shitty (double Stormrage chests 2 weeks in a row made me rage).