Has raiding become too overcomplicated/convoluted for it's own good?

[Alandalus]

People have too great an understanding of the game today for the simple (relative to today) raid mechanics of vanilla to be viable. Everyone would just blow through the bosses, or Blizzard would have to create some sort of artificial gear barrier to keep people from killing the bosses too quickly.

Look at it this way: A really experienced raider can look at the dungeon journal spell descriptions and instantly understand what the boss is going to call for from the player in that particular section. We all just know things about the way the game works that people didn't know in 2005.

[Deleted]

Wasn't BT nerfed to the point where it was puggable when SWP was released?

edit: hm, maybe it wasn't nerfed directly, but they removed attunement (and first couple of bosses were easier than Vashj and Kael) and it was possible to get T6 equivalent gear from badges, so the progress wasn't that serious business anymore

BT wasn't nerfed during TBC (some fixes, but no real nerf).
They first dropped the attunement for MH, so some guilds started farming the first bosses for gear.
Still remembering it, because it was at this time that the guild, that I was GM of, was half way through SSC and TK. While we still killed Vashj and Kael first, did some other guilds directly head to MH and BT. Cool thing is, that we still caught them later on, because we had trained our skills and teamwork on those bosses, so MH and BT were quite easy (besides the last bosses).

Then they released SWP with the new badge gear, so it became even easier to clear the content.

And with 3.0 were the achievements introduced and BT, MH and SWP nerfed.

I liked what they did there. First you had as a non-hardcore raider all the time new content to work on, new raids as a goal and the last weeks before the new expansion you could go to the ones you haven't seen and just see them and experience the boss fight (similar to LFR now).
In my opinion was it really perfect (besides me complaining a lot about the badge gear during TBC ... :P)

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You can change Sunwell with Hyjal/BT and BT with SSC/TK if you want an earlier expansion patch. My point was that the lack of meaningful catch-up mechanics forced your guild to stay at a certain tier, because many of the raiders you geared went to more progressed guilds, forcing you to gear more people through the initial content.

Then your guild sucked in my opinion. If a guild worked as a team, was it possible to gear a new character within 2 weeks to be ready for the current content. Especially after SWP release and the badge gear. As a GM I had to organize it several times, but it didn't stop our progress a single time.
And that's what I really miss. A guild had to be a team if you wanted to be successfull.
Also in Vanilla when the DPS had to help the healers and tanks to farm their mats. In the guilds I know was it normal that you'd be supported.

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Look at it this way: A really experienced raider can look at the dungeon journal spell descriptions and instantly understand what the boss is going to call for from the player in that particular section. We all just know things about the way the game works that people didn't know in 2005.

You had no dungeon journal ...
And mechanics might have been easy to understand, but difficult to execute ...

Same with Satharion 3D - really easy in theory, but the execution was with the skills available quite difficult.

[Huntingbear_grimbatol]

It's just made to not be a complete faceroll on addfights. Look at hyjal, endless waves of mobs with a healthpool, they did NOTHING, having fights where adds are part of the encounter instead of just an annoyance is good. While you still "ignore" 2/3 of what adds can do there's usually 1 ability you have to handle: interrupt, stuns, dps to a certain % health and so on.

If you think wall of text is confusing that's one thing, but it hardly makes encounters hard.
Look at Horridon, huge number of abilities listes and what do you do? Nuke everything and interrupt as much as you can. Dispell if you can and that's it.

[Fenixdown]

if this was to be even remotley true then why did such an small percentage of the playerbase(what was it like 6%? if not less) see naxx40?

Cause with your logic people should've been more then capable of getting enough gear to ezmode waltz through there eventually. yet that wasn't the case. weird.

Actually, people should have, and that was proven in Wrath of the Lich King. Same mechanics, same true difficulty, just more playing experience and no more "spirit on everyone's gear" itemization. Tell me, how hard was Naxx in Wrath again? I wonder...

Weird, huh. Yeah. Now shoo.

[Deleted]

Vanilla/tbc was hard due to players didnt had any knowledgment about the game and everything was new to them. The average gamer today is "skilled" and demands bigger challenges because they have been playing for a long time and got a greater knowledgebase.

The gap between a SWP and Kharazhan raider was not as wide as between an LFR and Heroic raider is now however I believe.

I've tried 2 flex raids - One in a rofl stomping guild run where the first wing was nuked pdq - That felt like stomping Kara in BT gear and a dark shaman attempt in a pug, that felt like a tricky Kara run.

Glad Flex is in, hopefully it brings back the Kara/ICC 10 level of puggable raiding.

[PetersenIII]

Lots of words -> Looks complicated
Actually -> not hard at all

The issue was never stated to be about difficulty, but about complexity. The two are distinct; just because something is over-complicated doesn't mean it's difficult, and just because something is simple doesn't mean it's easy.


EDIT:

Actually, people should have, and that was proven in Wrath of the Lich King. Same mechanics, same true difficulty, just more playing experience and no more "spirit on everyone's gear" itemization. Tell me, how hard was Naxx in Wrath again? I wonder...

Weird, huh. Yeah. Now shoo.

You're ignoring or conveniently forgetting the facts that itemization was MUCH better in WotLK than in vanilla, and also that managing 10/25 people is so, so much easier than managing 40. Also, since they had to scale down the instance, while the overall mechanics may have remained, I would be very hesitant to call the two 'equal' in mechanical difficulty (see current "10vs25 which is harder" debates).

EDIT 2:

People have too great an understanding of the game today for the simple (relative to today) raid mechanics of vanilla to be viable. Everyone would just blow through the bosses, or Blizzard would have to create some sort of artificial gear barrier to keep people from killing the bosses too quickly.

Look at it this way: A really experienced raider can look at the dungeon journal spell descriptions and instantly understand what the boss is going to call for from the player in that particular section. We all just know things about the way the game works that people didn't know in 2005.

Why is a gear barrier automatically artificial? I don't remember many people bitching about "gear check" encounters on "the old days". They were just accepted, and eventually met. The only barrier I see as artificial is not opening all wings to all difficulties from day 1. *THAT* is artificial gating. A gear-check fight is just a gear-check fight. Out gear is and it's "free" loot ever after.

[Deleted]

Actually, people should have, and that was proven in Wrath of the Lich King. Same mechanics, same true difficulty, just more playing experience and no more "spirit on everyone's gear" itemization. Tell me, how hard was Naxx in Wrath again? I wonder...

Weird, huh. Yeah. Now shoo.

Naxx in Wrath was nerfed to the ground before it was implemented - besides that executing tactics with 10 or 25 players is way easier then with 40.
And all the changs that have been made during TBC and with 3.0.
Like almost all specs beeing viable, more tank threat, better itemization, raid wide buffs, no longer several spell ranks to pick from, no longer problems with mana, change to the talent trees ...
Raiding is from the basic mechanics way more simple then in Vanilla and TBC

[Nobleshield]

I think raiding definitely has way more mechanics now than before. Every boss seems to have like 3-4 special things that everyone needs to be aware of, and for whatever reason Blizzard has said they enjoyed the "Fail and wipe the raid" personal responsibility junk from ToT. Personally I think it's getting a bit much. Does every boss need like 5 mechanics that everyone needs to be aware of? I'm not so sure.

[Lefrog]

All the bosses are starting to run together for me since Xpac. Very few of them have a different "feel" to them despite the wildly varying mechanics. I wouldn't mind a tier where not every boss has x number of group mechanics, and y individual mechanics. Nothing wrong with a boss having 1 or 2 skills and it mainly being a gear check (albeit a pretty lax one, especially on normal). Just so long as not every boss is like that.

Gimme patchwork.

Maybe I good place to be is to alternate between healers having to pay more attention, to tanks, to dps. They already kind of do this, but unfortunately there are many more individual responsibilities in each fight that can kill you or the raid that pretty much everyone has to focus these days on almost every fight.

[Eon Drache]

Hardest part about vanilla was the gating. You weren't finishing MC without everyone in fire resist. You were finishing Naxx 40 if you weren't in AQ40 gear. You weren't finishing anything unless your guild went back to the 10 man dungeons to gear that new warrior tank.

[Uoyredrum]

The gap between a SWP and Kharazhan raider was not as wide as between an LFR and Heroic raider is now however I believe.

rofl what

That's probably the worst comparison I've ever heard.

Karazhan raiders couldn't even clear sunwell trash even if they had the gear to do it most of the time. That's trash, now imagine them trying to do Kalecgos. Now imagine someone doing a fight in LFR, then going and doing the SAME FIGHT on heroic just with bigger numbers and one more ability. The difference in ability - not to mention the spike in sheer difficulty - is astronomically different. I haven't raided top tier content since BC (or wotlk really but I don't count 30% buff H ICC top tier even if it was 12/13 heroic) and I guarantee you if I joined a raid with a bunch of heroic raiders and did these same fights on heroic it would take 1...maybe 2 attempts to figure them out and I'd be good to go.

There is literally no comparison between the two things you listed, learning heroic encounters is a joke compared to learning new tier content from vanilla/BC.

[Deleted]

The hardest boss in BC was getting your Main Tank/Healer stolen by a [More advanced progression tier] guild when you were trying to progress in [Your guild's progression tier].

You can change Sunwell with Hyjal/BT and BT with SSC/TK if you want an earlier expansion patch. My point was that the lack of meaningful catch-up mechanics forced your guild to stay at a certain tier, because many of the raiders you geared went to more progressed guilds, forcing you to gear more people through the initial content.

When sunwell came out BT was hit with a damage / hp nerf (You could do Mother without shadow res gear and just burn)

as for the opening comment, I'm pretty sure KT or Vashj boss guide would pretty much match what you see now in SoO. Don't forget no one killed Kael prenerf even tho they spent weeks on him before the nerf. (he was nerfed twice before he fell) This was all before PTR came into play, I believe correct me if I'm wrong, BT was the 1st PTR with a boss in it?

[Rampant Rabbit]

Wasn't Brutallus a gear check boss?

[Amerrol]

Back then, Paragons would be an entire raid, with each one as a seperate boss.

[epLe]

With the rate bosses in SoO HC is going down, it seems quite obvious the current content is way easier than Naxx40 as an example.

[Slant]

Ehmn you do realize that "wait for x sunders" was an actual thing?

No, he doesn't. Because Vanilla was easy, see. And only what he accomplishes is hard. It's always the same argument. "I'm so skilled, because what I do is IMPOSSSIBLE for mere mortals. While everything else pales in comparison!"

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With the rate bosses in SoO HC is going down, it seems quite obvious the current content is way easier than Naxx40 as an example.

It only shows that raids got more sophisticated in dealing with raids and mechanics. The amount of analysis done on a boss is ridiculous. And seeing how all Blizzard can come up with is to throw yet more abilities at us, it's not surprising.

Also, peoplle seem to forget that we're basically still using the same dozen or so mechanics that people had to deal with in Vanilla. Just more of them simultanously. There's only so many ways you can run out of the fire or deal with meteor damage. Is it more complex? Sure. More difficult to deal with the mechanics? Not so much. Meteor damage was introduced in AQ40 and since then it hasn't changed one bit. Why the bosses are falling so quickly, you ask? Because we've known how to beat these bosses for 9 years now.

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Wasn't Brutallus a gear check boss?

Some called it a legendary check, but yeah. You got it.

[moremana]

Literally every boss up to the end of BC had 1-3 mechanics at most (except for sunwell), most vanilla bosses only did 1-2 things at most.

For pandaria you have a dungeon book with 10 mechanics just so people can keep up, the average mid-level pandarian guild can easily kill kael'thas and Vashj in 2 weeks tops if you could revert time back again.

Not with the armor, spells and mechanics of that era.

[Sarevokcz]

I've raided every tier since Vanilla so far and raiding has definitely become more complex, overall, than it used to. The complexity is derived in part from the actual encounters being more complex, but also because of the increased availability of detailed encounter information, due to the Dungeon Journal.

However, has it become TOO complex? I don't think we're at that point yet. Like Paragons, a lot of fights have a multitude of mechanics and can seem extremely daunting on paper, but in reality most mechanics can be dealt with on the fly and don't require extensive planning and practice beforehand. Obviously this might be radically different on Heroic, but so far only a handful of guilds can testament to that.

they can be dealth with on the fly because people are often used to similar mechanics from years of raiding and dont need more than a mention of the ability to never have an issue with it, something they lacked in early wow. Newer people might find current normal/hc raiding too complicated

Don't confuse complexity with difficulty though. Old encounters might have been less complex, but were often more difficult: lack of information, having to schedule 40 people and manage them at the same time, necessity of resistance gear/certain specs due to immunities or bad encounter design. Old raids weren't mechanically difficult like the current content, they logistically difficult.

The only logistical problems were "do we have 40 people for Naxx?" and "do we have enough priests (horde raiding) for dispell and druids/mages for decurse?" And maybe garr and assigning multiple warlocks on banish duty before target marks were introduced or having scrapbots for repairs instead of the insane walks to thorium outpost + occasional gear requirement (onyx cloak, ress gear), other than that, the encounters were piss easy, MC and BWL could have easily be done with way less people than intended, Our Rag kill had 28 people, Onyx 25 and we always had couple of bads with us anyway (like 90 dps warlock and similar.) There were barely actual logistical issues during encounters compared to melee/ranged spreading issues in 25mans nowadays

[Deleted]

LFR and normal are all easy as fuck, HC is only for the best anyways.

[Deleted]

It only shows that raids got more sophisticated in dealing with raids and mechanics. The amount of analysis done on a boss is ridiculous. And seeing how all Blizzard can come up with is to throw yet more abilities at us, it's not surprising.

Also, peoplle seem to forget that we're basically still using the same dozen or so mechanics that people had to deal with in Vanilla. Just more of them simultanously. There's only so many ways you can run out of the fire or deal with meteor damage. Is it more complex? Sure. More difficult to deal with the mechanics? Not so much. Meteor damage was introduced in AQ40 and since then it hasn't changed one bit. Why the bosses are falling so quickly, you ask? Because we've known how to beat these bosses for 9 years now.

True, but in my opinion is the main reason, that Blizzard made everything way more complex, but in general easier. Especially the classes. You have shitloads of cooldowns, skills ... if you want to use them all, it's already difficult to keybind them.
But you don't really need them, as long as you are not going really hardcore. It's just an option most raiders don't use.

In TBC and Vanilla did we have less spells, but different ranks and the way we had to use them, was what matters. Healing is in my opinion quite boring nowadays - not so many decisions to be made, it's rarely the case, that I have to think if I should cast this spell now or that I have the feeling that it really matters what I use. It's usually quite obvious if I have to go in an aoe-rotation or single target healing. I don't have to worry about threat, the placement of my totems, 5-second-rules, keeping something in CC during boss fight ...
It doesn't matter anymore where you place a player in the raid - buffs are raid wide anyway.
I can't be anymore a good shaman, by knowing exactly what totems to use in which kind of group or when to switch them. They are just there and I'm done.

So yes, for me beeing a casual and mainly leveling since Wrath, I feel overwhelmed by the tons of skills I have and annoyed by the fact, that I don't really need them and that eyerything is just faceroll easy. At least until you hit heroic mode, where you are required to raid at least 3 times a week, something I have never done and will never do.

I haven't tried flex raids yet, but I hope that they might bring some of the "middle class" raiding back again. I'd love to be finally a bit challenged again and not only have to decide between bored and too "difficult". It has a reason why I was never in a hardcore raid guild although many wanted me to join.