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

[MoanaLisa]

I'd like to see us move away from "dance" fights, IE those with a million things to remember, and move back towards ones that are just gear/skill dependent. Know your class, get geared appropriately, and you will do fine.

I don't like having to study for fights like a godamn physics final. I hear about fights being gearchecks. All fights should be gear checks. There shouldn't be fights where your gear/skill in your class doesn't matter, only that you studied your homework correctly. I hate that. If I'm good at my class, interrupt appropriately, conserve mana, or whatever, I should be able to raid whatever I want assuming I have put in the requisite time to acquire appropriate gear.

I can relate to this sentiment. Either through the design or the player culture--or some parasitic combination of the two--doing homework to be qualified to enter a fight seems to be the norm now. It's just another thing in the game that is anti-fun so that you can have fun. Raid homework = the new attunement in some ways.

[Bigbazz]

Sunwell had one difficulty, which was comparable to heroic modes today. So in that sense it was harder, since only heroic mode guilds (as we know them today) even stood a chance.

[Deleted]

I can relate to this sentiment. Either through the design or the player culture--or some parasitic combination of the two--doing homework to be qualified to enter a fight seems to be the norm now. It's just another thing in the game that is anti-fun so that you can have fun. Raid homework = the new attunement in some ways.

I dont know, I never research fights really. Neither to I test bosses on PTR. I prefer finding and figuring out mechanics on my own. Sometimes I can a quick basic check, but if I am preparing myself for a fight I do a quick skip through a quick guide, basically check what I need to tank, nothing else. I went in garrosh normal completely blind. The only thing I knew about garrosh normal was that there will be adds and there will be a giant ball of death. I had also heard that the tank damage was high. Other than that I went in completely blind and I was by no means holding back the raid team. I actually went in blind on almost every normal mode fight, and on no fight did I actually study tactics. A quick check in the DJ or the TLDR on some quick guide was the most I did.

Same goes now that I switched guild from a guild that was still in normals to a guild that are in heroics, I was called in late to Thok Heroic as they wanted to two tank it instead of one tank it. I got into the group. I had briefly checked heroic mode changes for all the "farm" bosses as I did not wish to wipe the raid on farm, but I had not checked Thok at all. It was my guilds first night on Thok (they had been there like 1 hour before me max). I got in and basically asked, what do I do? They just told me, stand on this marker and pick up the bats.

My response was of course "Okay!" as it was the first time I raided in the guild.
In my mind I though "Huh? There are bats!?!?!?!?!!?!"
Quickly I had to browse to the dungeon journal and noticed that the same bats (and the yeti) that are during the trash also spawns during the encounter. After that I felt kinda confident. I did my tanking, only did 5 pulls before calling it but got it down to 40% and looked fairly simple. Now, I did not really jump in completely blind, I knew the normal tactics, but in the same way you can learn tactics in LFR for flex, and in flex for normal.

I feel like the need to do homework and really study tactics is fabricated by many players. The only time I really read up tactics is when I am going to kill a boss that the rest of the raid already killed, since wiping other people on bosses they consider "farm" is usually bad. But if you are going to progress a new fight with your guild, you do not need to know 100% what to do. Reading up the basics, and by that I really mean the basics, of a fight is completely fine. Heck, going in completely blind is fine aswell. A quick 2 minute check in the dungeon journal is fine for most fights. When I did paragons of the klaxxi the first time I actually opened a video guide, I closed it after 10 seconds, it was to long. Instead I opened to dungeon journal and checked every mechanic flagged for "Tank warning!" as I am a tank.
The only abilities I cared about those was the injection, which bosses give eachother a damage amplifcation and korvens stun. With that knowledge (keep AM for for injection, X and Y bosses need to be on different tanks and korven hurts the tank), I performed my role without any major flaw. That was all I needed to know about the fight from my tank PoV. The rest was the details which was figured out during the first and second pull.

That is why I feel like this "need" to study fights is just made up by players that have a long learning curve and/or can not adapt to fights. The "need" to study fights is only there if you are slow on learning new mechanics when actually doing the fights.

[cFortyfive]

Or Nazgrim, I get that he's a Warrior mob and should do Warrior-like things, but does he need the adds?

Holy crap seriously Nazgrim ? Without the adds the whole encounter would be patchwerk with probably an even easier tanking mechanic than the original.

I feel like the need to do homework and really study tactics is fabricated by many players.

Pretty much agree. There may be a handful of exceptions but it is a very limited amount of encounters at the end of the day.

[Deleted]

I feel like the need to do homework and really study tactics is fabricated by many players. The only time I really read up tactics is when I am going to kill a boss that the rest of the raid already killed, since wiping other people on bosses they consider "farm" is usually bad. But if you are going to progress a new fight with your guild, you do not need to know 100% what to do. Reading up the basics, and by that I really mean the basics, of a fight is completely fine.

Yes, but this "OMG, I have to read tactics!!!" has already been around in TBC. It was all over the forums and one of the standard arguments why raiding is only reserved for the hardcore and people without rl. :P
But in the end has nothing changed, the raid leader needs to spend some more time with tactics, the rest just should know what's more or less going to happen and then you're ready to try a new boss. It's anyway weird to expect, that the same tactics work for all guilds. Some have better healers, other tanks ...

But I also have to agree that I miss the gear checks (at least on normal and heroic mode). They have been quite fun and it was never ever about: "You need 3 more items before beeing able to do that". If you had very good players you were always able to kill gear-checks without many issues and hitting a wall. But the less skill in you raid, the better gear you needed and that's what I liked (never beeing in a hardcore guild myself) and it gave you actually a reason to get new gear. If all is about "skill" (I still don't get what it's about skill if you have to follow the order "don't stand in colored stuff unless told otherwise), then why bother farming gear anyways?

[badgersmashr]

I feel like raiding in it's current form is actually very fun and polished, of course there is occasionally a gamebreaking glitch that really sucks to deal with, or renders a fight impossible (im looking at you heroic galakras ><). But other than that, i find it very enjoyable.

[Floopa]

Paragons of the Klaxxi is more a gear check than anything else. It's important to know that on Paragons you're actually only dealing with maybe 5-6 abilities at any given time. You can ignore, as DPS/Healers, any of the "tank specific" stuff and as tanks you can ignore pretty much all of the "dps/healer" specific stuff. In reality let's say you've got the Hisek, Rik'kal, Skeer combo - as a raid member this is what you need to worry about (normal mode only):

Hisek:
- Multi Shot: ignore it, it's going to happen, goes through LOS and you can't do anything about it.
- Aim: need to stack / use personals to survive (Deterrence, Dispersion, etc), can ignore as tank pretty much.

Rik'kal:
- Genetic Alteration: stacking debuff to prevent solo tanking, ignore it
- Injection: tank mechanic, ignore if DPS/healers
- Mutate Amber Scorption: DPS mechanic, ignore if tanks. Healers need to be aware to heal this person.

Skeer:
- Hewn: stacking debuff to prevent solo tanking, ignore it
- Bloodletting: general can ignore adds and just kill boss before they reach boss (if necessary you only need to kill the 1 which goes for the Paragon you're killing). Tanks/healers can ignore this.

So in this combo tanks have to be wary of 1 mechanic (Injection), healers need to be wary of 2 skills (Aim/Mutate Amber Scorpion) and DPS need to be wary of 2 or 3 skills (Mutate Amber Scorpion, Aim, Bloodletting [if you're bothering to kill bloods]).

Explain to me how this is even remotely difficult? It's nothing but a gear check.

[Racthoh]

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

it's pretty much this. council fights always seem overwhelming but once you get used to them they are nothing special.

[Rumred]

From what i remember from raiding in Vanilla and BC it wasn't so much boss mechanics as you needed good enough dps and healing+tanks that can hold aggro. Back in those days pumping out even average dps and healing wasn't easy. Mana issues were a big deal and so it wasnt very uncommon for some dps to be told "If you take damage you wont be healed so bandage". The simple fact is Aggro,Survivability,Healing,Mana Management (whats left of it) and DPS have become so much easier that blizzard has to make bosses far more complex then they used to or it would be a face roll for the elites. Remember when BT came out? It got cleared in a few days some of it was they had been on the ptr but imo it was also a key turning point when our characters were too powerful for simple fights.

[Temp name]

You chose one of the simplest bosses of the tier and compared it to the most complex boss in a tier.. Of course there'll be a huge difference. There's 9 bosses with 3 mechanics each, some of them behaving differently in 10, 25, normal, heroic and flex, so that adds even more "complexity" to the fight.

[Uoyredrum]

I guarantee, if you took Method and 15 players from Blood Legion, put them on a private server, and told them you'd give them a million dollars each for clearing Naxx 40, or Sunwell, or AQ 40, or whatever the fuck your raid of choice is, they'd kill all those bosses so fast it would make your head spin and the time actually spent on bosses would be so little it would utterly shatter the original world first records. People are better at the game than they used to be, deal with it.

And yes, I'm obviously talking about servers where the raid they'd be doing was being ran on the patch that it was released on.

Well I would hope that the same people who were getting world first back then, and are now years more experienced would do better doing the same content they already did. That's like saying "if you took gladiators from now and put them back then they would get r1 so easy lol". Obviously.

That doesn't say anything about the encounters because obviously if you take sunwell raiders, give them 5+ years more experience with the same game, and then let them re-do the same content, they're going to do better. Like I said, you can make that comparison with anything and it would still be true.

- - - Updated - - -

I'd barely argue that being a true statement for BC, at best, but really? Vanilla raids were "unforgiving"?

Did you do any raids in vanilla? Half your raid team was carrying the other half, and that second half wasn't really that great, either.

I mostly agree. Sunwell was completely unforgiving, but pretty much everything else up to that point was (except for a few things like Vashj, Kael and pre-nerf Gruul/Mag.

[Deleted]

Back then (Before PTR) most guilds who got the world 1st got it by doing things that would lose you to kill today.

I can't remember the last time an important boss in TBC was killed in a legit way because the fight was to hard to do it the normal way.

Al'ar was killed in a way would cheese any fight.
Kael got nerfed to shit twice before he was killed
Vashj bugged out and was a free kill due to a bug
KJ was killed by mages being smart to ignore an important part of the fight

The list goes on even into Wrath and Cata. People knew what bosses did, but they just dumbed it down,

Now with the DJ you can see EVERYTHING.

[Deleted]

I listened to a podcast for Druids (TeamWaffle Podcast) recently and the Resto Druid actually brought this subject up. She said how she's working all day, then comes home right in time for the raid more or less. And that with the increased amount of complex abilities and things to watch out for/monitor, she feels she no longer have the mental bandwidth to actually keep up.

And I have to say, that progressing through Heroics now compared to TBC and Wrath does require a lot more concentration imo. If you're tired, it gets hard not to make mistakes that can kill you.

I know Blizz has said, that they want fights to be more about individual responsibility rather than a patchwork fight. I don't mind that, cause it promote skills and awareness over gear. But this is also the reason that a lot of casual/Normal mode players are struggling on fights that are supposed to be somewhat easy. They lack the ability to manage their rotation, watch out for stuff on the ground while also attacking the right target, interrupting, dispelling and moving at the same time.

As I said, I like that skill>gear matters more but I think there has to be a limit. Horridon, Megaera, Durumu and Lei Shen in LFR - remember how many people would just fuck up and die? I think Blizz have to be careful not pushing the whole "we want complex mechanics" too much - or at least leave some of them to the Heroics, where people are expected to be able to handle it.

[Deleted]

it's pretty much this. council fights always seem overwhelming but once you get used to them they are nothing special.

and the fact that tanks generally get the easiest time in the game, no need to worry about threat, just your rotation and any adds popping up, oh and hitting taunt buttons every few stacks. In normal mode, use of cooldowns is mute because the mode is extremely easy anyway. Heroics, you know from normal which to pop cooldowns on. Not to "insult" tanks, but yeah, their job is very comfortable in the game, especially since vengence. I think, the only real "difficult" tank fight is Garrosh really.

DPS/Healers have much less health and usually much more to look out for.

Usually, when you put a tank into a DPS position (off-spec, alt), they tend to die...oops!

[Tekkommo]

Wasn't Brutallus a gear check boss?

Yeah, simple fight, but if you didn't have a certain level of DPS you weren't gonna make it. If I remember correctly your raid needed to be decked out in BT gear, having some shit dps'ers in your raid didn't make it any easier.

I actually miss simple DPS check fights.

[Tsuna]

Wall of text crits for TONS OF DAMAGE!

[Deleted]

Yeah, simple fight, but if you didn't have a certain level of DPS you weren't gonna make it. If I remember correctly your raid needed to be decked out in BT gear, having some shit dps'ers in your raid didn't make it any easier.

That or just have 5 shamans in your raid and give your rogue / Warrior group round the clock Bloodlust as you never got the debuff.

[Toxigen]

Wall of text crits for TONS OF DAMAGE!

The inner Phreak is strong with this one.

v1.0 Brutallus was a good DPS check. Required a little over 29k raid DPS over 6 minutes (if I remember correctly).

Without multiple sets of Warglaives, it required DPS groups to have Drum rotations and 4 DPS pots (I remember bringing 60+ destro pots per raid) for progression kills.

With a couple weeks worth of Kalec through Felmyst kills, it became much easier, with Locks and Rogues carrying doing 2.2k+ DPS.

Even in its simplicity, I really enjoyed the fight. I still remember our first kill...7 people alive with everyone spreading out as far as possible with dots ticking as he ran around one shotting everyone. Doesn't touch the pre-nerf M'uru kill, but still fun.

[Whiskra]

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.

This post can't be serious.

[Anjerith]

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.

Please note that while boss mechanics have become more complex, so has character power. This includes the removal of resistance, creation of diminished returns, implementation of all classes for both factions and the homogenization which makes it viable to bring any class to a raid - rather than 3 or 4, oh and the maassive stamina buff in Cata. AND, don't forget we had thottbot and allakhazam back then. That was it. We didn't have wowhead or tankspot or icyveins or anything like that. We did have kill videos, but it was like "Sometimes this boss does this... not sure why.. but watch out for it.".

While the older content seems easier from a list of abilities, and while it is true that it is much easier to deal with when you look at it from the perspective of todays player characters, the strict limitations imposed on players back then made that content just as hard.