Blizzard never makes small proper raids with 1-2 bosses anymore

[Servasus]

Small boss raids are never good. Sorry, but it's the truth. They stopped making them because they got tons of backlash for it back in cataclsym when literally no raid in the entire expansion had more than 8 bosses. It doesn't work well when you're trying to go for this whole "actually making places feel like you're raiding them rather than walking into a tiny room and killing some poorly guarded generals/bad guys."

Also, small raids don't play well over long periods of time. The longer the time between patches, the more time people have to wait for the next new thing, and the fewer the bosses, the less there is to tide them over till then, progression wise.

It's true that patches are far faster to come out now, so smaller sizes could come back in that regard, but I still don't think they should. Small raids fell unepic. They feel like a waste. Look at Emerald Dream. I'm sorry, but that raid sucked. It was tiny, the bosses were a joke and the whole concept felt uninspired. Then look at both Nighthold and Antorus, both larger raids with more bosses and with arguably much better content in them.

Size matters. Small raids are meh. You want to feel like you're RAIDING a fortress, not running drunk into an nearly empty restaurant and punching the lights out of the bartender, his host and their chef in the kitchen.

[TheRainman]

What makes a small raid proper?

[Deleted]

Did you miss tov dude?

Get away with that overtuned excuse of a raid.

[Ielenia]

I'm just laughing at the people who, when presented with Trial of Valor as a 'small raid', unabashedly go into moving the goal posts to disqualify that raid with stuff like "overtuned" or "rehashed"...

Dude, what's the problem of admitting that Trial of Valor was indeed a "short raid" and fits the criteria established by the OP?

[hollafame]

Now that tier gear is gone, I'd look forward to smaller raid sizes but I'd also expect a hell of a lot more out of the fights in terms of visual and gameplay elements.

[Laqweeta]

I really enjoyed Gruul's, Onyxia, and EoE

[Heladys]

WTF makes a 1-2 boss raid "proper"?

[Spiffums]

How can that be a rehash and EoE isn't? You know, EoE which assets was already within the open world before you even decided to punch Malygos?

I agree that is kinda the whole purpose of the smaller "in the world" raids. Using what is there and staging the fight in the world.

[ls-]

Yup, this. People complained that single-boss raids were lazy and that they wanted more bosses.

Ruby Sanctum was a great raid imo.

Heck, people are complaining about Uldir having only 6-8 bosses >_>

Few years ago there's a poll here on MMOC about the preferred number of bosses, surprisingly for OP who liked smaller raids, significant majority of people voted for 12+ boss raids.

[ls-]

They think they want them, but they don't!

I think that preference might reflect that people want more content. I'm not sure that if you gave them the same options, but said, "We only have the resources to make 24 bosses. Would you prefer 2 12 boss raids, or 3 8 boss raids" you'd see the same preferences listed.

Wanting a smaller raid size <> wanting less content.

I prefer 10+ boss raids, and I wouldn't want to have 2 5 boss raids instead. So in your scenario I'd go w/ 2 12 boss raids.

[Lochton]

I agree that is kinda the whole purpose of the smaller "in the world" raids. Using what is there and staging the fight in the world.

I actually like when the smaller raids has more connection to where they are, than just being a whole on its own. TB, VoA, EoE, they are all connected and weaved with the zone around it.

[Ophenia]

I would've liked a 1-boss or 2-boss raid inside the Sword of Sargeras, that would've been a good way to actually drain his power from inside instead of a bland cinematic where we raise our weapons in the air.

Smaller raids are always nice for small specific lore details.

[Rotted]

I think they avoid them a bit due to backlash from idiots in the community.

Literally everytime they've released a low number boss raid you always see idiots complain that "OMG THEY ARE SO LAZY, ONLY 3 BOSSES WTF BLIZZARD!".

Ironically the same people that complain that high number Boss Raids take "too long" for them.

In 10 years of lurking this forum I've never seen anyone complain about low number boss raids,

With the exception of Trial of the Crusader and the hate on that was deserved. That's why we've never ever had anything similar to that place again.

[Deleted]

Since we have world bosses, there is not really a need in 1-2 boss raids anymore, especially with the current constellation of up to 3 world bosses per week, even though 2 of them have sub-par loot now (but they still can drop legendaries).

I am fine with 8-14 bosses per raid tier in one dungeon, and puggable world bosses. And I play since Classic.

But we did not have a proper troll raid for 2 expansions now, that's a shame!

[Super Kami Dende]

In 10 years of lurking this forum I've never seen anyone complain about low number boss raids,

With the exception of Trial of the Crusader and the hate on that was deserved. That's why we've never ever had anything similar to that place again.

Did you miss the constant whinging when ToV was announced then? Because I surely did not.

[Sparklelord]

I just want some encounters/raids with 3-5 tanks in mind.

[kary]

People always love whatever isn't available.
I remember how many people complained about Ulduar trash, only for them to now act like the raid was perfect w/o fault. zzzzz

[Marrilaife]

I just want some encounters/raids with 3-5 tanks in mind.

Gosh, I hope we never get back to stupid amounts of tanks like vanilla 4 horsemen. It's already annoying to keep up a roster when the difference between max number of tanks and healers needed vastly differs between bosses. My guild was already forced to upkeep 3 tank roster due to mythic KJ and then mythic Aggramar and Argus. Especially mythic KJ was horrible in the department many guilds took in extra 3rd tank for that boss progress only to ditch him afterwards as he was no longer needed. Sucks.

Pugging would look no better if you had some bosses require 2 tanks and some 5. Oh hey, we came to boss that requires 5 tanks, time to list in queue for 3 extra tanks... oh hey no one is queuing because all tanks want loot from other bosses too so they want fresh run and not one where they'll be redundant and kicked after a single 5-tank boss.

[Fritters154]

I just want some encounters/raids with 3-5 tanks in mind.

That is highly unlikely to happen outside of maybe a mythic boss.

Normal and Heroic need to be flexible enough that you don't need to be adjusting the raid composition wildly throughout the entire run (one boss takes 2 tanks then the next one needs 4 so either hope your PUG members can hop between dps and tank or re-list the group every 10 minutes).

Additionally, LFR is entirely fixed to the current setup and limited by role distributions/queue times. They won't change the group composition model for it, which ultimately impacts higher difficulties by making Blizz choose between designing one encounter requiring 2 tanks or effectively two separate encounters (3+ tank mechanics would drastically change the way the fight plays out, far more than just adding in additional mechanics to deal with).