Originally Posted by
Deficineiron
Well of course you can compare them, but only to measure Tedium, not Difficulty.
I will try to illustrate the prevalent thinking on this:
Mob A does 20% of your HP per hit.
Mob B tickles you for 1%.
Which mob is more difficult to kill? (Answer - neither, they are equally difficult. Mob A is more tedious).
The Tedium Principle was established definitively in the last few pages of this thread.
Now lets try this one.
Player A kills an outdoor mob in 1-2 hits, usually less than 3 seconds total.
Player B needs 6-7 hits, often around 10 seconds total at least. If he is fighting mob A above he might could even die.
Which player will find the game more difficult - you guessed it, neither.
It is the same difficulty, but player B has a more tedious game - and if he dies, it gets really tedious. If he has several mob A's in a group that pull together, that is extra-special tedium there, but it is NOT difficult..
i didn't believe it either until it was explained above.
Using this logic from our resident savants, you can prove all kinds of things.
The ICC nerfs didn't make the raids less difficult (straight % alterations).
The tbc pre-wotlk raid nerfs didn't either, even 30% was no change in difficulty.
Today's instances are no less difficult than tbc heroics.
Most raid difficulties that don't introduce new mechanics are equally difficult on LFR and other difficulties.
Yes, it may be confusing at first to convince yourself of this, but you, too, can learn to prove that nothing is difficult, just tedious.
An interesting consequence of this discovery is the possibility that blizzard may have falsely named most of their 'difficulty' settings.
Many raids and instances with multiple difficulties (from tbc heroics forward) did not introduce new mechanics, but rather just higher damage by mobs, which in fact is not difficulty at all but just an increase in tedium.
It would be more appropriate in such cases to describe it as 'Normal Tedium' or Heroic Tedium.
That said, a number of tbc heroic bosses did have new mechanics, so it is important to be careful when deciding whether there is in fact a difficulty change or just a tedium change.