Dungeons were really easy, players were just really misinformed. Like I was tanking those as an enhance shaman because at the character creation screen it said Shamans could tank. So we were gimped from the start and still completed the dungeons.
Alright, I am giving up. You people will never get it. Classic is tedious, current wow is hard. It's hard to say it without laughing, but if this makes you feel better, have it.
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I did that too as Shaman with couple bosses. For some time, I dreamed Shamans would become viable tanks..well, I dreamed.
I'm curious who you think "you people" might be. People with relatively accurate memories of vanilla?
You do understand that that I said I liked how Classic works right? I like how its setup, it's why I fell in love with the game so many years ago. The tedious work isn't an inherently bad thing. We just need to be accurate in how we talk about the game. Blizzard is watching and is likely going to apply lessons from Classic going forward. So lets hold ourselves to higher standard and make sure we are clear in our wording.
His wording is pretty spot on
1.xx is designed around macroeconomics, gear, consumables
I wanna say from 4.xx (ulduar really, 3.1~) the game was designed around individual player performance
Farming mats for flasks and crafted resistance gear is tedium; large amounts of easy tasks.
Outside of very few fights, vanilla difficulty was about consumables and resistances. Not running out of mana in 300+ resistance gear.
Fights like cho'gall, sinestra, etc, were about individual player performance. Same with hardmodes past ulduar.
Most people I knew didn't really do jack shit to get consumables until late into AQ40 and Naxxaramas.
This is pretty funny because Vanilla (and early TBC before batttle/defensive elixir change) was fucking chalk full of ways to augment your character, ranging from enchants on all of your gear, to a fucking metric shitload of elixirs and potions. Those that went out of their way to actually have every available consumable on (lets ignore flasks, even though they are really strong) would absolutely curb stomp everybody else on the damage meters. The difference in damage taken between those that used potions (health and resistance) and farmed tubers/NDB was absolutely immense as well, and this isn't taking into account if your healers decided to use these items in addition to farming demonic runes.
Vanilla raids were designed differently. Very few encounters would cause full group wipes until late in AQ40 or Naxxaramas if an individual played poorly, but they did exist. Most of the earlier content could be powered through, even in 'awful' gear if you had a dedicated group of people who were actually willing to farm the consumables required. It wasn't that common back in 2004-2006 to have people actually bother to get every consumables their class could use. It also wasn't necessary until Naxxaramas, but boy did it make things a lot easier if you did.
Encounters in modern WoW don't have nearly the amount of preparation needed from a consumable standpoint, and instead have rigid enrage timers (something that didn't exist until later in Vanilla) with various amounts of pass/fail checks strung throughout the encounter. Your wiggle room is generally the enrage timer and only affording you 1-3 mistakes throughout the encounter. Of course if a tank dies at a bad time in Vanilla this is usually going to cause a wipe, but that's "generally' true of any iteration of the game. It's more akin to if Vanilla had mechanic checks like Thaddius, except different ones happening frequently on every single boss. That's sort of like what modern WoW is like. Or having a boss like Heigan (which punishes individuals), but you can limp through the finish as long as people can continue to dance properly (our first kill of Heigan in Vanilla was absurdly long).
This isn't me saying that I think a more consumable approach is a bad thing, it honestly isn't. But it's not 'hard'. A consumable approach and amounts of tedium are inherently RPG in nature, and that's honestly what's missing from WoW.
Our first kill of Thaddius back in Vanilla was 37 manned as soon as we hit phase two (three people literally couldn't make the jump). We lost a couple more people pretty shortly into P2 simply because connections were dick sauce and/or they just didn't move in time. We weren't abusing world buffs but we were using full consumables, and we were still ahead of the enrage. For better or worse, modern WoW punishes you for mistakes like that, and it would be tuned in such a way that starting a phase down nearly 10% of your raid group would result in a wipe based on enrage (even if the other 35+ people did the mechanics properly forever, and healer mana was sustained).
They nerfed consumables in/around TK because having to farm thousands of pots on top of actually doing the mechanics was proving to be way too much. If you look at WF solarian, you can see that was done before the consumables change.
That's what artifact power is. People hate it just like people hated farming stupid amounts of consumables back then. People only like tedium through rose tinted gogglesA consumable approach and amounts of tedium are inherently RPG in nature, and that's honestly what's missing from WoW.
I know what artifact power is, it doesn't make it 'good' though.
It really depends on what you like. There's still an inherent difference in AP compared to consumables though. AP feels necessary during progression, but it's pretty inefficient until the artificial multiplier finishes weeks down the line. Getting AP when AK is done feels pretty good, but it also makes the work you did during that time feel largely inefficient. AP is also finite and if you want to maximize it during times of progression, you need to check in everyday (generally) and do AP quests. AP is also capped based on patch cycle to prevent people from getting too far ahead, whereas consumables are largely static, you can farm them when you want (or buy them on the AH), and yo ucan also stockpile them for future content.
I don't like AP, I don't like daily quests, and I don't like farming consumables either. Consumable farm on my rogue at the start of TBC was probably the worst thing I've ever experienced (think farming current expansions consumable requirements, in addition to a few of the previous expansions consumables, simply because the content was bugged/overtuned and there was nothing stopping you from doubling up on vanilla/TBC consumables). I'd still prefer consumables for 'progression' from a raiding standpoint though, because I can do it when I like and stockpile for the future. I'm mixed on how they are approaching consumables in 8.2 because they are for the most part obsoleting consumables from launch, in favor of more powerful ones (generally, you only see gems get stronger as an expansion goes on).
Besides epic gems in TBC, everything you got at the start of the expansion was useful through the entire expansion. Vanilla was like this too. You could make an educated guess that fire resistance potions were going to be needed upon launch, and you might not think to save nature/frost resistance potions for future raids, but now we have that knowledge and you can prepare accordingly well over a year in advance.
I'm with you that it's all largely the same (tedious tasks, meant to keep you engaged in the game), but not all tedium is the same.
Last edited by Tojara; 2019-05-28 at 07:35 PM.
I never really found them difficult TBH. They were Vanilla inspired dungeons with the occasional boss that had mechanics. But Vanilla inspired, I mean mobs had random cleaves, CC, stuns and etc. The only difference between the two is mobs actually hit incredibly hard in TBC dungeons, but they was literally the only mechanic they had. I vividly remember the hound master packs in Shattered Halls yelling "We cannot be stopped" removing and enraging both of his dogs, and the dog proceeding to run over and nearly one shot the shaman in our group.
Difficulty? Naw. When you realize mobs just do stupid amounts of damage your approach to them changes. You CC mobs and you group kite. All I remember doing in the majority of dungeons (especially Shattered Halls) was our warrior getting an baseline amount of threat, and the running away. It was popular to bring multiple mages to groups to deal with dungeons like this, but you could just kite things like we did. Our entire approach was tab targeting shiv/crippling onto everything and having the two range kite things lol.
Before M+, I think Cataclysm dungeons prior to the changes encompassed the ideal difficulty for dungeon content. Trash didn't hit stupid hard, but if you over pulled and didn't interrupt, you would die. Bosses also had mechanics that you largely couldn't ignore, and individual responsibility became pretty important. Five man content in Cataclysm literally felt like a small raid. It was literally like Vanilla/TBC with trash design, but with layers of difficulty on the bosses that you would except from raid. By comparison, normal/heroic/mythic dungeon content in Legion/BFA is fairly trivial by comparison simply because M+ can potentially drive the dungeons to that point that you can't actually beat them if you climb high enough.
Swing timers being off I could actually see. That seems like a Blizzard thing to miss in their quest for accurate numbers on hit.
I also just realized the reason we've heard tumbleweeds about this may be because it's 10 levels over the cap. Players who did exploration said high level mobs looked broken animation wise. May be past 30 is an unfinished no man's land.
Blizz's post on damage being right compared VC runs, right? Not SM.
FFXIV - Maduin (Dynamis DC)
I believe blizzard only address a couple of mobs in DM, and did not address dps, just damage per hit (meaning swing timers ignored).
At this point the best thing I can see to do is make folks interested in this topic from an accuracy viewpoint make note that the there is more than one way to numerically explain lower net mob dps vs party. a matching damage number means the frequency could be the problem.
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Having levelled several characters in vanilla - one of which very heavily through dungeons, and also a Classic beta player, I can't say I really agree with this post's premise. For starters, we're only L30 in the beta - you can't make a meaningful comparison because most people will remember max level dungeons.
Comparison to max level dungeons will also be dicey (not that we even can compare yet) as we all know Strath, Scholo and UBRS had their group size changed - I have a few memories of these places, but I couldn't tell you in which version most of them were from.
I know it's been said before, but it is worth repeating here - these low level dungeons, most people will have done them either when they were very very new to the game or someone else in the group was. When all of you have some semblance of what to do and how not to accidentally pull 4 extra packs etc. they aren't really challenging - they never were. I do really think that the average player - at least in the beta, being fairly decent does also help in this regard. I haven't really played with anyone yet that seemed to have no idea what they were doing.
Anyone who started leveling an alt in vanilla after they played the end-game realises this though right? I first rolled a priest back in vanilla and I was completely clueless. By the time we where doing BWL I rolled a warrior alt and leveled it with some friends.
I ran wailing caverns on my warrior alt we cleared it in 30 minutes. I had difficultly understanding how we had managed to spend 3 hours in there the first time around on my priest. It was the same through out the levelling process.
That said, next to the fact that we knew what we where doing we also had a stockpile of rare BOE's and plenty of funds to fill in any gaps in our gear.
Last edited by insert random number; 2019-05-29 at 08:50 AM.
What people makes think that amounth of mechanics is what determinates difficulty of boss. Thats absolute nonsense. Mechanics ate just 1 part what can make enncounters hard it is not THE main thing. Yes dmg, hp, mana managment, threat managment, cc, etc makes boss hard just like any type of mechanic.
When I played Vanilla, I was a keyboard turning, backpedaling, ability clicker. I've done those dungeons to death in various stages of the game. I remember them being challenging in certain aspects, but never 'hard'.
I've done a few low level dungeons on beta, and sure - they were pretty easy with the groups I had. That's to be expected now. People always said Vanilla dungeons and raiding was hard. It was only hard due to being complete noobs at the genre. Anyone who has raided more recently will find classic raiding a snorefest.
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classic is on patch 1.12, everything was easy as shit in that patch, not that it was particularily harder before.