How many hybrids would you raid with if you wanted to clear Naxx in a month or two?

[Synbios]

Vanilla = Balanced spec'd Druid running around healing in Naxx with Agi gear talking about how great the item is they just got because of the high armor count.

Was it a high end guild? I dunno. They got into Naxx. So...? /shrug
My experience was that outside of the top guilds, like regional top 5 or top 10, the rest were bringing warm bodies to fill out the last 10-15 spots on the roster.

Well, the first few bosses in Naxxramas (spider wing, Razuvious, Noth) were not that hard, to the point that scrub guilds that never beat C'thun would farm those encounters after a few months, so I suppose it's possible, but even those guilds were fairly serious about raiding, so I find it very hard to believe that they'd tolerate even one moonkin healing. And they certainly never got past Patchwerk if it was the case.

[Ragedaug]

Well, the first few bosses in Naxxramas (spider wing, Razuvious, Noth) were not that hard, to the point that scrub guilds that never beat C'thun would farm those encounters, so I suppose it's possible, but they probably never got past Patchwerk if they had players like that.

BC launched before they were able to get past Patchwerk, but they had AQ40 on farm. I've run with low and mid-level (feeder) guilds that could never get to Naxx or Sunwell before the next Xpac dropped, so to me I viewed guilds who could at least get to the final raid as high-end, even if they weren't the highest-end raiders.

[Tojara]

Just look at the difference in how you can improve your character with enchants and alchemy on live, compared to what you can do in classic WoW. The difference is absolutely immense and that's not even considering world buffs, or playing party buff Jenga (especially if you play Horde).

None of the content is difficult, but if you go out of your way to get pretty much everything I listed above before a raid, you're going to absolutely stomp the content. Fully enchanted, nearly every consumable, and a plethora of world buffs (these make a huge difference) improves the state of your character drastically beyond what you can probably even accomplish from gear alone.

I think they stated that Rallying Cry doesn't work the same on live servers compared to private servers. Essentially on live servers there was an ICD on how often the buff could go out when turned in, where on private servers every single time you turn a head in, the buff would be re-applied. This not happening on the live version of the game, will mean that it's way more difficult to actually time turning a head in with the start of your raid group.

Assuming you organize your group 15 minutes prior to raid, have mages, Diremaul north instance cleared and hearthstones setup in the exact same place you can reasonably get the following:

DM North: 200 AP, 3% spell crit, +15% stamina
Spirit of Zandalar: 15% to all stats, +10% movement speed
Rallying Cry: 10% spell crit, 5% melee crit, 140 AP
Warchief's Blessing: 300 health, 15% attack speed, 10 MP/5 (this one's not really reasonable, giant ICD, only lasts an hour and loads of people turning this in, also Horde only)
Songflower Serenade: +15 to all stats, +5% crit

That's only a few of them too. There's a mob you can MC outside of UBRS for Fire Resistance, DMF has a buff once a month, and Silithus and EPL offer short duration % damage buffs as well (although these are late into the phase cycle, and a bit too short to take advantage of.

Regardless, any mixture of the above puts your raid at an extreme advantage and some of these are incredibly easy to get or setup too. When I was playing Vanilla 15 years ago, it never really dawned on my raid group to abuse any of these until we got to Loatheb in Naxxaramas. Even for the top guilds in the world, I don't think it was something people abused back then until Naxxaramas.

[Synbios]

BC launched before they were able to get past Patchwerk, but they had AQ40 on farm. I've run with low and mid-level (feeder) guilds that could never get to Naxx or Sunwell before the next Xpac dropped, so to me I viewed guilds who could at least get to the final raid as high-end, even if they weren't the highest-end raiders.

Depends on your definition I guess, we happened to be elitist assholes.

- - - Updated - - -

Regardless, any mixture of the above puts your raid at an extreme advantage and some of these are incredibly easy to get or setup too. When I was playing Vanilla 15 years ago, it never really dawned on my raid group to abuse any of these until we got to Loatheb in Naxxaramas. Even for the top guilds in the world, I don't think it was something people abused back then until Naxxaramas.

Probably because getting those buffs is a GIGANTIC pain in the ass and you lose most (all?) of them on death. You first needed to clear trash (because people died on trash), portal to get the buff, wait for 40 people to get back to the instance (there are people bound to go AFK or wait for a summon and waste your time), then hope you kill the boss on that pull. For the record, you just wasted 30 minutes out of your 2 hours trash respawn timer for one pull. It was only really viable for the most savage gear checks (Loatheb, Sapphiron, Kel'thuzad) after you had mastered their mechanics, in my experience.

[Nitros14]

I don't recall their being any extra complexity for most of the boss fights over what we saw for Naxx 80. So the "mythic" level difficulty will likely just be gear checks. Can your tank survive without getting one-shot? Can you kill the boss before your healers run out of mana or you hit the enrage timer.

Like 4 horsemen for example. You are just running around the room, one corner at a time, when the RL says "go". The only complexity is having 8 geared Prot Warriors to do the tanking for that fight, and getting all 40 people to show up on time and sober.

That's not really the case. The main strategy for Four Horsemen at 80 was to zerg one of the Horsemen down so you didn't have to actually do any rotations. And you could take 6-7 marks without dying, while at 60 four marks is probably death. In addition to that, the marks last three times as long (300% longer!) at 60.

At 60 the Horsemen go near immune to damage for 20 seconds at 50% and 20% so you cannot zerg, so the whole raid has to do the rotations and keep the rotation up for 15-20 minutes (and it's not everyone at once, different people have to remember their own group's rotation. If everyone goes at once tanks are going to die.) Actually having to do the fight is a big complexity increase.

On a case by case basis

Anub'Rekhan: At 80 the tactic is to heal the tank through Locust Swarm and never kite the boss. At 60 if the tank doesn't have a hunter help him kite the boss or is a bit slow he's absolutely dead no matter what. At 60 mages have to control the beetles from the adds' corpses with frost nova or they'll go murder healers and if anyone dies it's another wave of beetles which can cascade into a wipe. At 80 the beetles don't even matter. Also he's immune to taunt, so a tank death is a wipe.

Faerlina: Easy boss either way, but the 60 version does a lot more damage relative to health pools. Also is immune to taunt, so a tank death is a wipe.

Maexxna: At 60 the web spray lasts 8 seconds and you can only have one of each HoT on the tank, so you'll need to coordinate which healers are applying hots when. And the little spiders have to be controlled or they kill healers during the 8 second stun. None of which matters in the 80 version. Also she's immune to taunt at 60 so a tank death is a wipe.

Noth: Fights like this are more challenging just because aoe threat and taunt are much more limited in vanilla and you have no misdirect. When Noth blinks away and resets threat at 60 you can't just taunt him from 30 yards away, so if ranged are dumb they'll just get one shot. Like most Naxxramas 60 bosses he's immune to taunt. Not that it mattered back in the day with decursive, but a lot higher percentage of the raid was cursed and one miss is a wipe.

Heigan: This fight actually adds a mechanic that doesn't exist at all in the 80 version. Groups of five people get teleported into the maggot/eye stalk hallway ahead and have to run back while interrupting and not taking any melee's from the maggots. Also the dance is about 50% faster and kills you instantly on a mistake.

Loatheb: This fight was redesigned at 80, where you get a window to heal every 20 seconds. At 60 all beneficial/healing spells have a 60 second shared cooldown so all healing spells have to be used on the tank. This means it's a tight soft enrage to kill the boss before the raid runs out of healthstones/potions/bandages. He is, of course, immune to taunt at 60: tank death is a wipe.

Patchwerk: The fight is designed around 4 tanks instead of 3 at 60, but otherwise roughly the same as the 80 version just hits harder.

Grobbulus: The same at 60 and 80. This was the easiest boss in the instance at 60, but most people thought it was one of the toughest at 80 which is telling.

Gluth: The enrage timer is 5m30s at 60 instead of 9 minutes, so errors in kiting chow are unforgiving. Also, he's immune to taunt so tanks have to swap using his fear by having one tank stance dance and immune it.

Thaddius: The polarity shifts take effect faster at 60 and feugen (or possibly stalagg? I forget) has a mana burn aura, but otherwise mainly different because of tuning. Thaddius was actually tauntable at 60.

Razuvious: Easy boss either way, but ranged do need to LoS the boss every 25 seconds for shout or they get one shot. Plus there's priest spell hit nonsense to sort out.

Gothik: Despite few apparent changes, this boss was one of the absolute hardest level 60 bosses and one of the easiest level 80 bosses. The changes to taunt and threat and the fight being not tuned at all made it completely different. If you don't use a ton of CC (polymorph/shackle undead) in this fight at 60 you'll get overrun.

Four Horsemen: Discussed above.

Sapphiron: Roughly similar. Tuning is the difference, the aura did twice as much damage at 80 but players had 500% more HP and way more options for AoE healing. At 60 your aoe healing was an expensive and bad prayer of healing. Also, is taunt immune.

Kel'Thuzad: Actually pretty different. Phase 1 is two minutes longer and the last two minutes have much more frequent spawns than the 80 version. If a skeleton reaches the raid it hits for about 40-50% of the raid's HP.

The main difference in phase 2 is that his spell cooldowns are about half as long at 60 and you have to fit 40 people into the same size room. Frost Blast has an extra tick and also chains infinitely instead of once. Shadow Fissure ticks a bit faster. Mana detonation burns 50% of your current mana. Frostbolt can one shot the tank and isn't resistable. Frostbolt volley hits for 3.5k on people with 5,000 hp instead of 5k on people with 25,000 hp.

Chains of Kel'Thuzad always targets his current tank and wipes threat, and he's immune to taunt. So you need a dps stop when mind control is coming up or random DPS get one shot.

The Guardians of Icecrown don't just gain blood tap over time, they also gain it on switching targets or when any player dies. Also they hit much harder but you can CC three of them, which leaves two up. If you accidentally CC more than three Kel'Thuzad dispels all CC on the guardians.

So yeah there's a surprising amount different at 60 than 80. Not counting the obvious: the instance is tuned far more tightly.

[Ragedaug]

That's not really the case. The main strategy for Four Horsemen at 80 was to zerg one of the Horsemen down so you didn't have to actually do any rotations. And you could take 6-7 marks without dying, while at 60 four marks is probably death. In addition to that, the marks last three times as long (300% longer!) at 60.

At 60 the Horsemen go near immune to damage for 20 seconds at 50% and 25% so you cannot zerg, so the whole raid has to do the rotations and keep the rotation up for 15-20 minutes (and it's not everyone at once, different people have to remember their own group's rotation. If everyone goes at once tanks are going to die.) Actually having to do the fight is a big complexity increase.

Nobody zerged the 4 horsemen at 80 before they had them on farm. The first time any group of fresh level 80's killed the 4 horsemen was following the strategy of taking down the front two at as close to the same time as possible, then turning to the back two and trying to do the same.

Level 60 seemed to be, at 3 stacks, four of the tanks run to the next corner and get aggro. Once they have the boss, the other tanks run to their next corners. Healers and DPS rotate when they are told. The marks could last longer because you were rotating around all 4 bosses, not just rotating between two at a time.

I'm not trying to say which is more complex or easier, just making the point that the strategy to L60 Horsemen seems very basic to the current WoW raiding community. I think everyone will have the mechanics down either before or during the first encounters for almost all the bosses. I think the only check to progress for most bosses will be gear related. The only exceptions would seem to be bosses that require kiting as people are going to need to learn how to do that again. But even then, I don't think that will take long to pick up.

[Nitros14]

Nobody zerged the 4 horsemen at 80 before they had them on farm. The first time any group of fresh level 80's killed the 4 horsemen was following the strategy of taking down the front two at as close to the same time as possible, then turning to the back two and trying to do the same.

Level 60 seemed to be, at 3 stacks, four of the tanks run to the next corner and get aggro. Once they have the boss, the other tanks run to their next corners. Healers and DPS rotate when they are told. The marks could last longer because you were rotating around all 4 bosses, not just rotating between two at a time.

I'm not trying to say which is more complex or easier, just making the point that the strategy to L60 Horsemen seems very basic to the current WoW raiding community. I think everyone will have the mechanics down either before or during the first encounters for almost all the bosses. I think the only check to progress for most bosses will be gear related. The only exceptions would seem to be bosses that require kiting as people are going to need to learn how to do that again. But even then, I don't think that will take long to pick up.

Shrug, I remember our first 80ramas raid and we just hit bloodlust and zerged down Kor'Thazz. The Horsemen even run themselves to their corners at 80, kind of hilarious.

You're not rotating through all four bosses. Four tanks and four healers rotate on the back two, while four tanks, eight healers and all the dps rotate on the front ones until they die. Mograine does tons more damage on the tank than the other three bosses so you need more tank healing up front.

There's a tiny safe zone in the middle of the room you use to reset stacks.

Like this, you shift every three meteors (~12 second cooldown same as marks) so no one eats a meteor to the face alone.

0:00
Group 1: Korthazz
Group 2: Safe
Group 3: Safe
Group 4: Mograine

0:12 Second healer group rotates.

0:36
1: Safe
2: Korthazz
3: Mograine
4: Safe

0:48 Second healer group rotates.

1:12
1: Mograine
2: Safe
3: Safe
4: Korthazz

1:24 Second healer group rotates.

1:48
1: Safe
2: Mograine
3: Korthazz
4: Safe

2:00 Second healer group rotates.

2:24
1: Korthazz
2: Safe
3: Safe
4: Mograine

Tanks do their own rotation, because a tank can't leave until the next tank has aggro.

It's harder to do in practice than you might think. At 80 the mechanics just didn't matter. You just had a healer and a ranged on the back two who swapped positions every so often. It has to be precise and kept up for a very long time at 60. If any tank or healer dies you're kind of boned. Worldoflogs says the average fight duration for 25-man Four Horsemen at 80 is about four minutes. At 60 Four Horsemen was a 20-minute fight.

[Dergiab]

Not at all. Been around since the start and cleared every raid in a timely manner.
Well, exept for the current expansion but thats due to IRL getting in the way mostly.

No lies plz.

[willemh]

That would be swords.

Or in other words sub optimal.

You said you shouldn't be play if not optimal, and yet you where exposed for not knowing what the hell you're talking about.

The key word is "available". Read my post again and then rethink your response.

[tratra]

I lol at those people saying 0 or 1-2. Clearly no idea of the game.

This is not bfa, you can bring as many hybrids as you like, you can also take your time with raids. Statistically yes if you have 20 furry warriors in your raid, its going to go faster, gl though to anyone thinking they will have 20 geared furry warriors in their raid rofl. Gearing is whats hard about this game and gearing a specific class when in mass is impossible.

As for the difficulty of the raids, its all gonna be down by up to mediocore guilds. Any guild actually that is able to put together 40 people is gonna clear up to 4hm and most likely give it time they gonna clear the whole thing.

So we can't really say high end raiding since its for the masses.

[Aggrophobic]

No lies plz.

What are you like, 5? You're litteraly following me around tossing out chidlish crap like this.

[garicasha]

Couple related questions:

Was the safe zone on 4 Horsemen an intended design?
How much will say, a rogue's DPS go up from AQ40 after getting 4-5 pieces from Naxx?

[Nitros14]

Couple related questions:

Was the safe zone on 4 Horsemen an intended design?

Safe to say it's intended. Guilds were stuck on Four Horsemen for 56 days before the world first kill because they didn't realize a safe zone existed and were trying strategies rotating through all four Horsemen. Death and Taxes said they got it not long after realizing there's a tiny safe zone if you position the bosses right.

[Echocho]

It would be pretty difficult to raid without warriors, druids, priests and shamans/paladins so I expect to bring a lot of them.

[Stocksy]

0. If you're not willing to play an optimal spec you're not suitable for high end raiding.

Let us all know what server you plan on being on so when the servers drop so we can all avoid you

- - - Updated - - -

I lol at those people saying 0 or 1-2. Clearly no idea of the game.

This is not bfa, you can bring as many hybrids as you like, you can also take your time with raids. Statistically yes if you have 20 furry warriors in your raid, its going to go faster, gl though to anyone thinking they will have 20 geared furry warriors in their raid rofl. Gearing is whats hard about this game and gearing a specific class when in mass is impossible.

As for the difficulty of the raids, its all gonna be down by up to mediocore guilds. Any guild actually that is able to put together 40 people is gonna clear up to 4hm and most likely give it time they gonna clear the whole thing.

Exactly this.

[Super Kami Dende]

Naxx says hi. (overtuned shitty mechanics still require high end raiding)

Naxx hardly says "hi" My Guild was hardly a "Hardcore guild" and we got up to 4 Horsemen before we got bored. And I was a Ret Pally.

[Zulatomten]

We're obviously not living in the same reality if you're comparing this:

- snip -

I just find it funny how you compare one of the easest fights of the several most recent raids, on heroic(not mythic) with the one the harder encounters in all of Classic.

Make a fair comparrison is all i say.

[Zensunni]

Classic just isn't that hard man. That attitude is more suited to mythic progression on retail.

I'm calling it now- Naxx will be cleared in a matter of hours after attunement.

- - - Updated - - -

I don't know that the poll is written out very well.

Hybrids in Vanilla are Warriors and the Healers. Outside of novelty and those being carried, just 'cause you can't find 40 otherwise, if you aren't a warrior or a Pure DPS, you healed. Even if you were spec'd as DPS or buff spec, you healed.

My hardcore raiding guild in vanilla had, at one point, a feral, a boomie, and an enhance, all of whom had excellent gear and who did acceptable DPS. We were a successful guild, and probably would have finished clearing Naxx if not for the eternal, endless, recruitment / poaching issues that plagued vanilla raiding. If you think hybrids weren't present in high-end raiding in Vanilla, you just weren't there. They were rare, but hardly unheard of.

[Nitros14]

I just find it funny how you compare one of the easest fights of the several most recent raids, on heroic(not mythic) with the one the harder encounters in all of Classic.

Make a fair comparrison is all i say.

I didn't start that comparison. The guy in question said that ANY fight on normal is way harder than ANY fight in classic.

[nyc81991]

0. If you're not willing to play an optimal spec you're not suitable for high end raiding.

That's a ridiculous statement. Nothing in Vanilla was hard mechanically, the average player playing even low ends specs will out perform most people back in the day.

There is no reason to have the "perfect" comp for raiding in Vanilla outside of over doing it.