"Vanilla rotation was only 1-2 buttons"

[Grimreaper]

Yeah boys, skills! Thinking ahead is skills!

Apparently it's so easy that it's still the same people who top parses and continue to do so, damn all those other 99% parses for not mastering those 5-7 button combos, if only we could somehow tell them to just do it in a correct order! That's the key to top dps afterall!

Yeah man, just like the raids!
Mythic hard? Not a chance!
Farming multiple reputations to enter a raid, farming mats and consumables just to raid, having an artificial minimum of resistance gear for shits and giggles? Now that's thinking ahead! Everytime i dig out that Lotus i'm just overwhelmed with skill of how my peers in raids will bow down in awe of my "Thinking ahead" and "Management of resources"

Tanking a regular 5man in vanilla required more skill than any activity you can possibly do in todays WoW. Fact.

[blehmeh]

It was 3 right?

Fail.

There were 3 stances ALONE, not even counting abilities. You had to stance dance to maximize dps.

Show me more how little you know vanilla.

[Zyky]

While in Vanilla and TBC! You had to think ahead and manage your resources –that is what actually takes skill– and doing that would take months
you would have the illusion that you've mastered your class, but you didn't.

You're joking right lol? Going back to BC the top dps was a Warlock spec that only spam casted Shadow Bolt and life tapped as needed. In Vanilla you watched a threat meter and if you were too high you afk'd for a few seconds and went back to doing a simple rotation. There was no management of resources, you expended them as fast as you could without tearing threat off the Prot Warrior. When you went oom most specs had a solution for that, from evocation, life tap, wanding, increased regen from talent trees...there was less skill in Vanilla or BC than current WoW. The difference between old WoW and current WoW is that players can be as stupid as they want because they'll almost never rip threat off a tank, they'll never have to wait for a tank to build up threat, they'll have a rotation and they'll have to not stand in bad.

[Queen of Hamsters]

Tanking a regular 5man in vanilla required more skill than any activity you can possibly do in todays WoW. Fact.

Hahaha, the level of delusion is through the roof in here!

Content back then challenged new players. Bad players, kept feeling challenged since they didn't learn from their experiences. Content meant to be challenging today, ranging from solo challenges to 5-mans to 20-man raiding, challenge even the best players in the community.

[solarfallz]

Vanilla combat was the stalest thing in the world. Your goal was to expend all of your mana in a raid fight then drop combat and eat mana food while your teammates did the same. There weren't many mechanics and you stared at your mana bar more than anything else. Vanilla's rotation was bad and it's much better now than it was. TBC had more mechanics and got rid of some of the stupid out of combat eating, so it was a bit better. So no, there was no skill involved in playing the game at this time.

"Drop combat and eat mana food"? Literally the ONLY mana-user that could POSSIBLY drop combat was hunter (feign death) and it was a DPS loss to do that, because autoshot + regular mana regen was higher DPS in any situation.

Then you end with "there was no skill involved", and yet somehow, the good players always manage to crush the worse players on DPS. I wonder why that is?

Why do you even comment on something you obviously have no clue about? Why does ANYONE do this?

[Echocho]

Fail.

There were 3 stances ALONE, not even counting abilities. You had to stance dance to maximize dps.

Show me more how little you know vanilla.

Oh that's right overpower right? I never played a warrior in vanilla and we didn't use them for damage since they were utter crap until late AQ or something, never bothered to learn anything about such a crappy spec.

[Prime92]

What insult? If you have vanilla on a pedestal, surely you should know just how famous they were? Not to mention, i told him what guild AND what fight.

So since you're so focused on Nihilum, why don't you take a look at their leaders oppinion about WoW PvE these days compared to Vanilla/BC/WotLK? Kungen has stated at the early-mid WoD that PvEing atm is nothing compared to what it used to be. It's way easier, progressing through content is way more linear, doesn't require much thinking like it used to. Now blizzard provides basically everything you need to know about each boss on each difficulty tier, bosses have been tested to suit an average guild roster, get nerfed constantly to allow more people to get the kill. Gearing people is way simpler, consumables are readily available. There are bascially no resources you need to pay attention to and whenever something pops up like early-legion arms warrior, it quickly gets scrapped cause retards start crying all over the forums. Threat - nonexistant, mana issues-nonexistant, rage starvation - basically doesn't happen anymore, energy - no idea, i dispise leather classes. All you do now is push whatever lights up and you're good to go to mythic as long as you're not braindead moron who can't avoid a single lethal thing most bosses have. You want to gearup an alt? You queue LFR, move from boss to boss and afk for 5 minutes. Wanna do current HC raid? Queue up with a group of random people and ez pz, you've got it+you can get better gear than mythic rewards...
Now, I'm not saying vanilla was perfect, it was far from it. Many things were too tidious, moving around the world sucked, class balance issues and so on, BUT everything that defines an MMO was way better at that time. You actually felt like an adventourer, leveling made sense, every level brought something new to the character, most if not all of the things mattered when you got them, including reps, crafted gear, etc. Now it's just another tick on your list. Pseudo-chellenges that should've been scrapped the moment next tier appeared, every tier of raiding LFR-hc makes no sense, RNG everywhere including in gearing up, free gold for logging in, tidious shit like world quests and mounts from repeated exalted reps (random of course, still trying to loot 3 of them, fml), basically all of the flavour abilities are gone, warr is down to less than 2 spellbook pages including passives and all the shit like that. This game has become a solo-play type of some RNG-driven pseudo-mmo where in essence you buy everything for logging-in and doing repetitive, easy stuff over and over again counting on luck and nothing more. Even progression for most guilds means farming all raid tiers avaiable week after week hoping for fucked up titanforged gear in order to progress further, cheesing some mechanics with overinflated gear,which is silly.

[blehmeh]

Oh that's right overpower right? I never played a warrior in vanilla and we didn't use them for damage since they were utter crap until late AQ or something, never bothered to learn anything about such a crappy spec.

Fury was fine after MC gear, shit til then. You just needed high crit and skill to execute. Also rend was pretty important, also attached to battle stance. Managing aggro was super important as Heroic Strike was easy to spam and high aggro. If you did everything right, dps was great.

You could off tank somewhat competently too with the spec, just needed gear and skill.

They were one of the best dps specs in the game, nothing crappy about them unless you're bad. This is why they normalized rage and dumbed the class down so much, because normies couldn't hang with the skill floor required to pull decent dps.

[Acidz]

Rotations might have been bogus for most of the classes, yet the game was much more engaging. Go figure.

[unbound]

I have literally seen people recording raid bosses just standing around doing nothing. Go watch nihilum do kelthuzad.

rofl...stand around doing nothing...

Kel'Thuzad
25-man strategy
You will need one main tank and two to three Guardian-of-Icecrown offtanks for this encounter. It is worth noting that none of the abilities in this encounter can be removed by PvP trinkets or Ice Block/Divine Shield/Cloak of Shadows.

During phase one, the raid will stack in the centre of Kel'Thuzad's room. Melee will engage and kill Unstoppable Abominations while ranged will kill Soldiers of the Frozen Wastes and Soul Weavers before they reach the raid. 15 seconds after Kel'Thuzad's aggro emote, he will become active; it is essential that the entire raid spread out efficiently around the room before this occurs in order to mitigate the effects of the Mana Detonation and Frost Blast abilities. Mana Detonation will come approximately every 20 to 25 seconds, Shadow Fissure approximately every 15 to 20 seconds, Chains of Kel'Thuzad every 90 to 120 seconds, and Frost Blast every 45 to 60 seconds.

For phase two, the main tank should drag Kel'Thuzad to the center of the room, and melee classes should stack in the three cardinal points around Kel'Thuzad's hitbox not occupied by the main tank (a bit more than 10 yards from each other). It is critical that they be at max range and spread out so that Frost Blast will only hit as few as possible. This is a diamond-shaped formation. If this positioning is not perfected, multiple melee will be frozen by Frost Blast which tends to result in the death of most of them. If it chains to the tank, it usually results in a wipe.

An interrupt rotation on Kel'Thuzad's Frost Bolt should be established to reduce damage taken by the tank (30k damage per bolt without resistance). If/when Shadow Fissure is cast on the tank, the melee MUST reposition with the tank. The ranged DPS and healers should spread out in a circle around Kel'Thuzad with a space left for mana-based melee to run to should they be afflicted by Mana Detonation. Melee will need to move for Shadow Fissure but should move back to their original position afterward. The Guardian-of-Icecrown offtanks don't need to do anything until phase 3 begins and can stay in the alcoves where the adds spawned in phase one to avoid spreading Frost Blast.

Usually at least once before phase 3 begins, Kel'Thuzad will cast Chains of Kel'Thuzad. All DPS must stop until the tank has reestablished threat on Kel'Thuzad. Interrupts need to continue. It is important that Mages polymorph and other classes CC the affected players very quickly as they will do extremely high damage (two-shotting raid members) and cast extremely large heals on Kel'Thuzad. It is also possible for Kel'Thuzad to be Bloodlusted and Hand of Protectioned, as well as any other buffs you can think of. When Chains of Kel'Thuzad ends, the affected players should return to their positions.

At 45% HP, the Lich King will send four Guardians of Icecrown to attack the raid. These appear one at a time. The Guardian offtanks will need to pick up the rest and offtank them in the alcoves for the rest of the encounter. All of Kel'Thuzad's phase-2 abilities continue in this phase. Note that it is possible and probable that one of your Guardian offtanks will be mind controlled at some point, so it is advisable that the Guardians are tanked relatively close together so that the other offtanks can taunt the Guardians when they become loose. Guardians hit very hard and their melee hits will increase the longer you take to kill Kel'thuzad.

It is advisable to save DPS cooldowns and Bloodlust for phase 3 as the Guardians will become untankable if you take too long to finish the encounter.

[Whiskra]

it still wasn't bad as long as you knew that fast weapons were way better at generating threat compared to slow ones.

Not necessarily. This is a common private server misconception, where one of the most common bugs is the way rage is generated, causing fast weapons to be much better than slow ones because more rage equals more heroic strikes which equals more threat with a faster weapon. But if rage is "normalized", then weapons with a slower swing time is more optimal because you gain more threat and rage by the damage slower weapons cause by each swing. For Horde this is even better because of Windfury Totem.

Regardless, nothing beats Thunderfury except maybe weapons from Kel'thuzad, and that's only a big maybe. You want to use the fastest weapon you can find for Vaelastrasz though because the fight itself gives you unlimited rage.

[Video Games]

rofl...stand around doing nothing...

Kel'Thuzad
25-man strategy
You will need one main tank and two to three Guardian-of-Icecrown offtanks for this encounter. It is worth noting that none of the abilities in this encounter can be removed by PvP trinkets or Ice Block/Divine Shield/Cloak of Shadows.

During phase one, the raid will stack in the centre of Kel'Thuzad's room. Melee will engage and kill Unstoppable Abominations while ranged will kill Soldiers of the Frozen Wastes and Soul Weavers before they reach the raid. 15 seconds after Kel'Thuzad's aggro emote, he will become active; it is essential that the entire raid spread out efficiently around the room before this occurs in order to mitigate the effects of the Mana Detonation and Frost Blast abilities. Mana Detonation will come approximately every 20 to 25 seconds, Shadow Fissure approximately every 15 to 20 seconds, Chains of Kel'Thuzad every 90 to 120 seconds, and Frost Blast every 45 to 60 seconds.

For phase two, the main tank should drag Kel'Thuzad to the center of the room, and melee classes should stack in the three cardinal points around Kel'Thuzad's hitbox not occupied by the main tank (a bit more than 10 yards from each other). It is critical that they be at max range and spread out so that Frost Blast will only hit as few as possible. This is a diamond-shaped formation. If this positioning is not perfected, multiple melee will be frozen by Frost Blast which tends to result in the death of most of them. If it chains to the tank, it usually results in a wipe.

An interrupt rotation on Kel'Thuzad's Frost Bolt should be established to reduce damage taken by the tank (30k damage per bolt without resistance). If/when Shadow Fissure is cast on the tank, the melee MUST reposition with the tank. The ranged DPS and healers should spread out in a circle around Kel'Thuzad with a space left for mana-based melee to run to should they be afflicted by Mana Detonation. Melee will need to move for Shadow Fissure but should move back to their original position afterward. The Guardian-of-Icecrown offtanks don't need to do anything until phase 3 begins and can stay in the alcoves where the adds spawned in phase one to avoid spreading Frost Blast.

Usually at least once before phase 3 begins, Kel'Thuzad will cast Chains of Kel'Thuzad. All DPS must stop until the tank has reestablished threat on Kel'Thuzad. Interrupts need to continue. It is important that Mages polymorph and other classes CC the affected players very quickly as they will do extremely high damage (two-shotting raid members) and cast extremely large heals on Kel'Thuzad. It is also possible for Kel'Thuzad to be Bloodlusted and Hand of Protectioned, as well as any other buffs you can think of. When Chains of Kel'Thuzad ends, the affected players should return to their positions.

At 45% HP, the Lich King will send four Guardians of Icecrown to attack the raid. These appear one at a time. The Guardian offtanks will need to pick up the rest and offtank them in the alcoves for the rest of the encounter. All of Kel'Thuzad's phase-2 abilities continue in this phase. Note that it is possible and probable that one of your Guardian offtanks will be mind controlled at some point, so it is advisable that the Guardians are tanked relatively close together so that the other offtanks can taunt the Guardians when they become loose. Guardians hit very hard and their melee hits will increase the longer you take to kill Kel'thuzad.

It is advisable to save DPS cooldowns and Bloodlust for phase 3 as the Guardians will become untankable if you take too long to finish the encounter.

Hi! Did you know we were talking about vanilla and watched the video linked on the front page? Get back to me when you do!

[lloran]

So since you're so focused on Nihilum, why don't you take a look at their leaders oppinion about WoW PvE these days compared to Vanilla/BC/WotLK? Kungen has stated at the early-mid WoD that PvEing atm is nothing compared to what it used to be. It's way easier, progressing through content is way more linear, doesn't require much thinking like it used to. Now blizzard provides basically everything you need to know about each boss on each difficulty tier, bosses have been tested to suit an average guild roster, get nerfed constantly to allow more people to get the kill. Gearing people is way simpler, consumables are readily available. There are bascially no resources you need to pay attention to and whenever something pops up like early-legion arms warrior, it quickly gets scrapped cause retards start crying all over the forums. Threat - nonexistant, mana issues-nonexistant, rage starvation - basically doesn't happen anymore, energy - no idea, i dispise leather classes. All you do now is push whatever lights up and you're good to go to mythic as long as you're not braindead moron who can't avoid a single lethal thing most bosses have. You want to gearup an alt? You queue LFR, move from boss to boss and afk for 5 minutes. Wanna do current HC raid? Queue up with a group of random people and ez pz, you've got it+you can get better gear than mythic rewards...
Now, I'm not saying vanilla was perfect, it was far from it. Many things were too tidious, moving around the world sucked, class balance issues and so on, BUT everything that defines an MMO was way better at that time. You actually felt like an adventourer, leveling made sense, every level brought something new to the character, most if not all of the things mattered when you got them, including reps, crafted gear, etc. Now it's just another tick on your list. Pseudo-chellenges that should've been scrapped the moment next tier appeared, every tier of raiding LFR-hc makes no sense, RNG everywhere including in gearing up, free gold for logging in, tidious shit like world quests and mounts from repeated exalted reps (random of course, still trying to loot 3 of them, fml), basically all of the flavour abilities are gone, warr is down to less than 2 spellbook pages including passives and all the shit like that. This game has become a solo-play type of some RNG-driven pseudo-mmo where in essence you buy everything for logging-in and doing repetitive, easy stuff over and over again counting on luck and nothing more. Even progression for most guilds means farming all raid tiers avaiable week after week hoping for fucked up titanforged gear in order to progress further, cheesing some mechanics with overinflated gear,which is silly.

Kungen didn't kill any mythic raid bosses.
Kungen was trying mad hard to be relevant past his twilight.

A better person to even take opinion from, would be Sco, or any raid lead that raided from vanilla > now (there are a lot)

[McFuu]

"Vanilla rotation was only 1-2 buttons" – and!?


You think memorizing a 5-7 button rotations is hard? Not It's not and most people do it while leveling…
there is nothing hard or impressive about memorizing a 5-7 button rotation.
This is dumbest thing I've ever heard; It literally takes 5 hours to master it.

While in Vanilla and TBC! You had to think ahead and manage your resources –that is what actually takes skill– and doing that would take months
you would have the illusion that you've mastered your class, but you didn't.


Key things that you are missing when you think about vanilla
– Resource management
– Timing
– Thinking ahead
Which are not vital to game right now at all or not present altogether…

Vanilla & TBC gameplay was more strategy and RPG like, while modern wow is flat out action game.

There was no timing or "resource" management any different than we have today.

Classic- priority dps required, save mana.
Today - save /delay cool downs

Classic was essentially white damage, get over it.

[Tsulong]

Just to tag along with the post that people are quoting talking about KT fight... Bloodlust didnt exist until BC.. >.>

[Yunero]

"Vanilla rotation was only 1-2 buttons" – and!?


You think memorizing a 5-7 button rotations is hard? Not It's not and most people do it while leveling…
there is nothing hard or impressive about memorizing a 5-7 button rotation.
This is dumbest thing I've ever heard; It literally takes 5 hours to master it.

While in Vanilla and TBC! You had to think ahead and manage your resources –that is what actually takes skill– and doing that would take months
you would have the illusion that you've mastered your class, but you didn't.


Key things that you are missing when you think about vanilla
– Resource management
– Timing
– Thinking ahead
Which are not vital to game right now at all or not present altogether…

Vanilla & TBC gameplay was more strategy and RPG like, while modern wow is flat out action game.

The only people that use that statement are the people who like to defend the horrible Legion and BfA class design.


You see - they know Legion/BfA can't hold up against Wotlk--->MoP class design so they pick the 14 year old design as a comparison.

[lloran]

The only people that use that statement are the people who like to defend the horrible Legion and BfA class design.


You see - they know Legion/BfA can't hold up against Wotlk--->MoP class design so they pick the 14 year old design as a comparison.

yes because since people don't live in the past, they compare it to current content.
not everyone is a pirate/thief

[BetrayedOf52]

Or when people say the static talent tree you never changed was awesome. Oh yes! 5% wand damage this is amazing. Mean while I'm switching talents per fight now of days. Unless you were a shockadin the one exception everyone brings up. The old talent trees were bland and everyone followed cookie cutter specs. They only miss it because it was a tree.

[Yunero]

yes because since people don't live in the past, they compare it to current content.
not everyone is a pirate/thief

I am specifically talking about people who defend the lacklustre BfA class design. For some reason they always compare it to Vanilla, which is 14 years old. Instead of comparing it to something more recent like MoP.

[bmjclark]

I always love when people pull random things like "timing" and "thinking ahead" out of their asses to try to make vanilla rotations seem harder. Kind of like when people list "debuff management" as something that added complexity to classes.