What would you think of raids gaining difficulty past heroic?

[TheMeat420]

What would be everyones thoughts on raids gaining difficulty levels passed heroic? So perhaps heroic, followed by heroic 2, heroic 3 and so on? This may give the high end guilds something further to work on and also add something more to achieve so that once progression into heroics is done those top end guilds (and everyone for that matter) have something more to shoot for. It could be as simple as a 2-5% buff to mobs or a 2-5% debuff to damage/healing. I personally think the buff to mobs health and damage done would be the wiser approach.

What is everyone elses opinion on this? Is it stupid or perhaps something others would like to see incorporated?

[Aquamonkey]

The game needs more versions of the same content.

[khatsoo]

Without mechanics changing, a % buff would only mean gathering a bit more items for the whole raid.
I wouldn't find it logical in any way.

[Noorri]

Heroic is already plenty hard. The people who clear it usually spend several 100 hours doing the raid before they clear it, and the amount of people who do heroic is already so low that it is barely worth it to make content for them.

[Murderdoll]

No.

Just no. Terrible idea.

Why is there a sudden fascination with so many difficulties? We have far to many as it is. Heroic should be a nice curve in difficulty, as it stands now the curve is pretty poor - Blizzard need to fix that first and foremost, then, If we wanted to make it harder, id like to see Heroic Achievements or something where you need to do something harder within the fight.

[DrSteveBrule]

The game needs more versions of the same content.

It worked soooooo well for D3.

[jazzyy]

The game needs more versions of the same content.

this. is it not enough that you will have lfr flex normal and heroic now?

[mistahwilshire]

Bring it on.

Complaining about variety is insanely stupid. How dare you offer me more options Blizzard, shame on you.

[Libertarian]

I think the best answer is to add Elite mode and just make some of the fights so hard they're almost impossible. Or just add mimiron fire to every single boss via hidden button.

[TheMeat420]

I see what you all mean. I guess I was just trying to come up with a quick fix to perhaps help alleviate burnout slightly without adding much work on Blizzards end

[MoanaLisa]

I see what you all mean. I guess I was just trying to come up with a quick fix to perhaps help alleviate burnout slightly without adding much work on Blizzards end

Running the same content at two or more additional ever-increasing levels of difficulty is hardly the way to alleviate burnout which is primarily caused by doing the same stuff over and over again. 200 pulls to down a boss and then on to the next level of heroic difficulty where it might take 400 pulls? Really?

[TheMeat420]

yeah, that makes sense MoanaLisa. I guess the diablo bug just got into me for a moment there!

[nyc81991]

There are already too many raid difficulties now.

If there was to be anything "harder" than Heroic it would probably have to work kind of like Ulduar did. In other words not something you change in a tab but rather something you do slightly different to make the fight harder.

[Aqua]

My inner masochist is crying; 'me gusta!' but... my common sense is telling me no.

[Tenjen]

normal and heroic could simply have the mechanic that ulduar did with triggering a tougher and somewhat different sequence of boss events.

As a side note, achievements that ask to do the boss in a difficult manner dont quite cut the same way

[MoanaLisa]

yeah, that makes sense MoanaLisa. I guess the diablo bug just got into me for a moment there!

Actually, it's OK. It would be an interesting raid design to make a raid where there wasn't a normal/heroic divide. Just a raid that would get gradually more difficult based on the experience of the raid team. The problem with the design is that raid teams change a lot.

What might work for group content would be a settable difficulty level like MP is in D3. Call it raid difficulty (RD). First group to get to RD10 and finish would win the world race. It's not a terrible idea but you would need to remove pretty much all difficulty tiers that exist now.

Something like this layered into the quest system and other solo content might be interesting too. The 'proving grounds' thing for 5.4 has echoes of this in fact.

Challenge modes are really a form of this concept except for you trade difficulty for time and efficiency making it a race.

[Airwaves]

Heroic content is already a waste of development time because so few do them. Adding another one would make it even more of a waste of time. The only reason heroic raids didn't get scrapped in MOP was because of lfr. With flexi raids coming less and less people will bother to to raid to set times and less and less people will raid heroic modes. By the end of next expansion heroic raids will not even be worth the time it takes to balance them and be removed. Adding another level is just a waste of time.

[Rucati]

Time could be far better spent on making new raids instead of adding increased difficulties to old ones nobody is going to do. If they just add health/damage to the boss it just becomes a gear check, if they add more mechanics it becomes a clusterfuck, and if they add more mechanics while taking away old ones it isn't really that much harder, just different, at which point they might as well make a whole new raid.

[Heladys]

If it made the hardcore crew happy, then go for it.

I would be concerned about further permanent stratification of the raiding community however via further ilevel staggering... so it'd need to reward them for more difficulty with fancy titles, transmogs, or pets/mounts as opposed to simply more and more powerful gear over and above what heroic currently offers.

[Schwert]

Heroic is more than enough.