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

[Kortiah]

He meant it for aggro switching. When the tank not hitting the Revenge had to stick close enough to the MT in order to get the aggro in a matter of seconds when needed. Taunting didn't do shit.

[Fluttershy]

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

100% of pvers knew about waiting a few seconds for tank to get threat, ignoring that is intentional stupidity, you would be kicked before you even reached the first boss of strat/shadowlabs because mobs could 1-2 shot dps and taunts were 5 yards and mostly immune so you're dead anyway.

[Deleted]

b) Disable any Boss Mod you use

Why? Boss mods have been around since Vanilla, before DBM(which was originally called La Vendetta Boss Mods in Vanilla) there was Ct raid, I remember people with Living Bomb getting spammed by whispers saying "You are the bomb".

[Deleted]

i must say, looking at the dungeon journal makes certain fights look a lot more complicated then they actually are.

paragons is very good example of that (atleast on normal), 9 bosses with each their own skill set.
but you only deal with 3 at a time, making it very trifle as long you know what to do for their big damage dealers.
spread/stack/stand in a line/etc, and its down.

same goes for most other fights with lots of abilities. looks complicated, but hardly ever really is.

[Marston]

I like how the first boss of an instance, which happens to be a gear check, is compared to the second to last boss, which is not a gear check.

Why haven't you compared M'uru with Paragons? Or Brutallus with Immerseus, who is the first boss of the raid, or at least with Malkorok, who is also a gear check?

[Deleted]

100% of pvers knew about waiting a few seconds for tank to get threat, ignoring that is intentional stupidity, you would be kicked before you even reached the first boss of strat/shadowlabs because mobs could 1-2 shot dps and taunts were 5 yards and mostly immune so you're dead anyway.

You really didn't raid, did you? Try to get 40 people to follow orders ... I just imagine something like that in LFR nowadays, do you really want to tell me, that you could kill a single boss there, if you wipe as soon as someone starts DPS or healing to early?
I've always been a healer and I still remember our first Onyxia tries, when it was so disheartening to see your tanks health drop and you had to evaluate if you want to risk a heal and maybe wipe or not heal an maybe still wipe.

He meant it for aggro switching. When the tank not hitting the Revenge had to stick close enough to the MT in order to get the aggro in a matter of seconds when needed. Taunting didn't do shit.

For example - but it's "she" ... there are also female Gamers you know

Why? Boss mods have been around since Vanilla, before DBM(which was originally called La Vendetta Boss Mods in Vanilla) there was Ct raid, I remember people with Living Bomb getting spammed by whispers saying "You are the bomb".

Yes, but they didn't tell you as many things as they do now and often didn't really work, at least in Vanilla.

More than half of those are intentional acts of stupidity, seriously now.

HEY TANK, DONT USE ANY ABILITIES, DO NOT GO IN DEFENSIVE STANCE. SEE VANILLA IS HARD WHEN YOUR TANK IS LITERALLY BRAIN DEAD.

Haha, thanks for showing that you have no idea about raiding in the old days. I wrote what you'd have to do today to get a feeling for the old raids.
Tanks didn't do much threat in those days. Even healers would have to be careful to not get aggro. You could not just go all out. I can't tell how often we wiped because someone got aggro.
There haven't been any reliable threat meters during Vanilla - the first good ones came up in TBC - but still did tanks not generate much threat and Pallies had for example the problem that they'd run out of mana if they don't get damage and so could not continue to produce threat. In the end of TBC I went with my Pally tank (alt) half naked into heroics, so I can keep up with threat and even tanked some parts of Hyjal without full gear.

Healers had serious mana issues back in those days (Vanilla). We had on most fights a healer rotation (only on progress content), because no healer could last a whole fight. It required a lot of communication.
Same with healing cooldowns. They were limited with long cooldowns and they were required to be used, so you had to set up a rotation.
We usually prepared a macro connected with the spell that would whisper the next, that it's up to him/her to take over.

And in TBC did we healer use different ranks of our spells, so we would produce almost no overheal or we would be oom too fast.
Required quite some thinking and testing, getting used to your tank, until you knew which spells to pick.

[Tekkommo]

Smart heals, every class being able to aoe heal/dps, every healers being able to single target heal, all raid buffs easily obtained, loads more viable dps specs, every class having oh shit buttons, mana being less of an issue for healers, threat not mattering at all (unless you got some bad tanks yo), epic loot being far easier to obtain.

These are just some reasons why vanilla/TBC could be classed as harder.

I agree that mechanics these days are harder than before, but in the old days, fights were less forgiving and classes were a lot more limited on what they can do these days.

[Nekovivie]

In this topic: OP chooses one of the most simplest TBC encounters, and one of the most difficult MoP encounters.

Talk about rigging the discussion.

[Hulkovius]

Raiding Hardcore ever since Ulduar Hardmodes has become much more complicated. Min/max and every second, inch counts. One single fail more or less results in a wipe and u have to start over.

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.

I'd say they were equally difficult but on different terms.

[Xarkan]

100% of pvers knew about waiting a few seconds for tank to get threat, ignoring that is intentional stupidity, you would be kicked before you even reached the first boss of strat/shadowlabs because mobs could 1-2 shot dps and taunts were 5 yards and mostly immune so you're dead anyway.

Your recollection of strat does not match my recollection of strat. Nor does your belief that pve'ers knew what they were doing match my memory of dps taking aggro all over the place in that place. One of us probably remembers wrong and it could be me. I just remember keeping dps'ers alive despite their incompetence. As a healer obviously because tanks were no price either in those places.

[Deleted]

In this topic: OP chooses one of the most simplest TBC encounters, and one of the most difficult MoP encounters.

Talk about rigging the discussion.

True, but I don't think that you can in general compare mechanics back then with them nowaydays.

In Vanilla was a fear really a problem. Totems lasted only for a short time (was it 15 seconds on Tremor?), affected only the group the shaman was in (so now raid wide buffs) and were for horde players usually the only way to break fears (besides stance dancing, but did this even work in Vanilla or was it TBC?).
Shamans were usually only healers because they had no viable DPS spec (maybe enhancement with the legendary).
So you placed a Shaman in the tabk group and he/she had besides the healing to always run to the tanks (short range of the totems) and place it there - remember they lasted only a short time. Same with the healers - they had their own shaman.
Now if the shaman in the tank group died, did it often mean a wipe, if the raid leader did not react fast enough to place another shaman into the group and the shaman beeing fast enough to place the totem in time.
Beeing always short on Mana was it also an important task for the Shaman to always keep some to be able to cast the required totems and this led to some really difficult decisions, if you should risk healing this tank, that is dropping or saving your mana so you can cast the totem.
Back in those days we still had the 5-second-rule. Meaning that you would start to regenerate mana as soon as you stop casting for 5 seconds. The regeneration during combat was almost not existant or only to be gained with gear.

So, while we might laugh today about a simple fear, was it in Vanilla not an easy ability (still manageable ofc).

[Xarkan]

In Vanilla was a fear really a problem. Totems lasted only short time and were for horde players usually the only way to break fears (besides stance dancing, but did this even work in Vanilla or was it TBC?).

Stance dancing worked on onyxia.. so yes it worked in vanilla

[l33t]

And in TBC did we healer use different ranks of our spells, so we would produce almost no overheal or we would be oom too fast.
Required quite some thinking and testing, getting used to your tank, until you knew which spells to pick.

Yeah, agree with that.
Homogenization, oversimplification and Cataclysm's rehash of healer classes are the worst things happened to WoW in terms of gameplay/fun.

[Deleted]

2 monstrous quest chains had to be completed for Black Temple/Mount Hyjal attunement:

http://www.ajs.com/ajsw/images/7/76/101Steps03-18.gif and http://www.wowwiki.com/Black_Temple_attunement

Then both of these had to be cleared in order for progress to be made in SWP (At least it was highly recommended)

Any Joe will be able to wait a few weeks and down a completely lol version of Paragons (LFR) or a slightly less lol but still 'puggable' Flex version.

Obv Brutallus only had 1 mode whereas Paragons has 6. Only the Normal and Heroic modes can be remotely compared to SWP:

Paragons Normal (25) <<<<<<<<< Brutallus (25) < Paragons Heroic (25) I am guessing.

I've cleared Paragons, Brut was the extent of my progression in SWP and obviously haven't reached Paragons Hc, but it looks rough.

[Deleted]

Your recollection of strat does not match my recollection of strat. Nor does your belief that pve'ers knew what they were doing match my memory of dps taking aggro all over the place in that place. One of us probably remembers wrong and it could be me. I just remember keeping dps'ers alive despite their incompetence. As a healer obviously because tanks were no price either in those places.

I don't think you are wrong, I got to kill most of Naxx40 and I don't remember having to wait several seconds and dps overaggroing, maybe if the tanks were terrible but a good tank could keep his threat, just because you had to work a lil for the threat doesn't mean that you needed to delay all healing and dps by that large amount of time

[Deleted]

I don't remember having to wait several seconds and dps overaggroing, maybe if the tanks were terrible but a good tank could keep his threat, just because you had to work a lil for the threat doesn't mean that you needed to delay all healing and dps by that large amount of time

Yes, maybe in a hardcore guild and with the gear you had at this level - especially with tanks having the legendary, you could start with dps, but til then was it normal to wait a few seconds, especially in the beginning when there was still a huge difference in gear. You should not forget that it was normal to be in BWL with half the guild still wearing some blue and green items.
And don't forget the resistance gear that was not really helpful when it came to tank gearing

But we for sure wiped a lot because because someone got agro ... still hear our raid leader say on Vent: "Slowly start DPS" and then someone screemig "Fuck, crit!" and then chaos and often a wipe.
I wiped my guild also because of a crit (as a healer!) - especially during tank switches when a rotation was needed, could it easily happen.

[Linneth]

The hardest boss in BC was getting your Main Tank/Healer stolen by a Sunwell guild when you were trying to progress in BT.

[h4rr0d]

Imo they should create a tl;dr; version of the dungeon journal, because more often than not, the boss fight can be summarized to few very simple paragraphs as someone mentioned...

1) bring 2 tanks, let one of them get a debuff/, have the other taunt the boss, once first one gets rid of the debuff, taunt again (this actually wouldn't have to be mentioned, because this is the norm for most fights in MoP)

2) unless stated otherwise, stand only in things your raid produced

3) every x seconds, the raid (or a portion of it) will take y damage (over z seconds)

4) unless stated otherwise, dispel on cooldown

5) if you can, interrupt

For anything less than Heroic, I find the dungeon journal useless and watching a short movie with the fight is usually more useful.

The hardest boss in BC was getting your Main Tank/Healer stolen by a Sunwell guild when you were trying to progress in BT.

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

[Otimus]

The problem, or "problem", depending on your perspective or what have you, is that it's not getting too complex, mostly for raiders, raiders who have been raiding for a long time. It's why they keep making it harder and harder.

The PROBLEM comes from the fact that almost no one is raiding, population wise, and the pool of raiders is dwindling day by day, and very few new people are getting into it.

I think Blizzard has an over-blown desire to keep historic raiders happy at the expense of most anything else, to the extreme detriment of the health of the game.

[Linneth]

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 anymore

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.