Is Classic too easy?

[chrisnumbers]

No it's exactly the difficulty it always was and should be. Ya'll looking too deep for nothing.

[NineSpine]

I can't believe this argument is still happening. Retail is difficult because of complex encounter mechanics. Classic is difficult because of the necessary time investment needed. Retail is an obstacle course. Classic is an incredibly long hike. These are two totally different and incomparable models of difficulty, and this entire debate is everyone talking past each other because they aren't talking about the same thing.

This debate just refuses to die because some people can't accept that complex encounter mechanics are not the only type of difficulty in the world.

[Kaver]

I can't believe this argument is still happening. Retail is difficult because of complex encounter mechanics. Classic is difficult because of the necessary time investment needed. Retail is an obstacle course. Classic is an incredibly long hike. These are two totally different and incomparable models of difficulty, and this entire debate is everyone talking past each other because they aren't talking about the same thing.

This debate just refuses to die because some people can't accept that complex encounter mechanics are not the only type of difficulty in the world.

I think the debate keeps going on because in the past some Classic Andys (not sure how many) were arguing that the encounters themselves were mechanically difficult. So now people can’t let it go.

[Daymanmb]

Agree with this - its very much objective, but does incorporate a lot of different factors, even for each individual mechanic:

- How dangerous is the mechanic
- How easy is it to avoid
- How frequently does the mechanic occur
- How many other mechanics are happening at the same time / either side
- How tight is the enrage / tuning? This is important in the situation where you do lose a player.
- How long is the fight in general
- What tools do classes have to deal with the mechanic - this is one situation where retail offers many classes high mitigation defensives that can sometimes avoid the damage.

Im sure we could break it down even more, but thats what i think is important when looking at difficulty. Two bosses exist - both have a one shot frontal cone. In both situations, if caught in the fire, you will instantly die.

Boss one:
- This is the only mechanic the boss has - other than that it is straight up tank n spank.
- It has a 4 second cast time
- It always casts on the active tank, and the boss locks into place at the start of the cast, giving the tank 4 seconds to move to the side.
- The ability is cast once/minute
- The encounter is typically downed in 90-120 seconds.
- The enrage occurs at 8 minutes

Boss two:
- Boss has 6 core mechanics - 4 need to be dealt with by everyone, 2 are tank only, and 2 are healer only.
- Cast time is 2.5 second
- The boss targets a random player, and reacts to their movement, never locking in place. This player must find a pillar that was dropped by another player (one of the other 5 mechanics) and use it to break LOS for the breath.
- The ability is cast once every 30 seconds
- The encounter typically lasts 8-10 minutes
- The enrage is 11 minutes.

Both encounters could be described as having "a 1 shot dragon breath mechanic", but when you look at the full picture, it is extremely clear which one is objectively more difficult.

Youre right, retail isnt hard:

[erifwodahs]

Youre right, retail isnt hard:

Mages are not doing mythic and they had shitload of gear from current tier. Will naxx be hard for people with full deck of naxx gear? Shall I link a video where onyxia dies TO NAKED RAID?! You'r attempt does not hold the water.

[jba252]

Youre right, retail isnt hard:

Classic is retail.

Same sub, same playerbase mentality, bnet infrastructure

Welcome to retail.

[Daymanmb]

Mages are not doing mythic and they had shitload of gear from current tier. Will naxx be hard for people with full deck of naxx gear? Shall I link a video where onyxia dies TO NAKED RAID?! You'r attempt does not hold the water.

I didnt claim classic was hard The guy Im replying to, (not you) claims heroic is hard. You dont even need healers lmao.

[OrcsRLame]

I can't believe this argument is still happening. Retail is difficult because of complex encounter mechanics. Classic is difficult because of the necessary time investment needed. Retail is an obstacle course. Classic is an incredibly long hike. These are two totally different and incomparable models of difficulty, and this entire debate is everyone talking past each other because they aren't talking about the same thing.

This debate just refuses to die because some people can't accept that complex encounter mechanics are not the only type of difficulty in the world.

This is another part of the great lie that is classic.

Retail takes more of a time investment than classic unless you're specifically talking about pvp. This is actually why I like classic. It's so casual friendly I can just put in a few hours a week and raid all the content in the game with minimal effort. Retail is just a huge time investment to stay at a top level.

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I didnt claim classic was hard The guy Im replying to, (not you) claims heroic is hard. You dont even need healers lmao.

30 Mythic geared mages is not the norm for 99.99% of the playerbase doing heroic.

Ny'alotha is also uniquely power crept due to the corruption system, and we probably won't see anything that broken again for many many tiers. This is the patch where for the first time ever people managed to hit the damage cap in wow.

You're also looking at heroic with many months of extra gear, gear that is so strong it accounts for more ilvl than you can ever get in classic.

An equivalent comparison would be doing AQ or Naxx at level 70 with Sunwell gear. That's how much more gear people have now than when heroic first came out.

In the first 2 weeks of heroic, only about 1-5% of guilds are able to clear heroic in most tiers. That crazy level of power of mages just destroying everything in heroic is 6 months of extra gear, corruptions, cloak levels and neck levels.

In retail, in a general sense, heroic is hard enough that the vast majority of guilds can't clear it until they overgear it.

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Mages are not doing mythic and they had shitload of gear from current tier. Will naxx be hard for people with full deck of naxx gear? Shall I link a video where onyxia dies TO NAKED RAID?! You'r attempt does not hold the water.

Reminder that mythic Ny'alotha gear is not equivalent to Naxx gear. The gear from mythic Ny'alotha is so good it's much closer to doing Naxx at level 70 with full Sunwell gear.

[Whackadoodle]

Your fault for listening to people like asmongold who had a vested monetary interest in hyping classic up.

As a rule of thumb, you shouldn't really listen to anyone that makes a living almost entirely off of one game/franchise. It is exceedingly unlikely that they're going to be honest with you, even when they're telling you something is bad. If they offer up suggestions regularly that are also regularly true, chances are they knew because of contacts within the studio. It is extremely common that they have direct contact with multiple people that make the game / the studio, and are regularly brought to the studios that they make their living promoting.

[OrcsRLame]

So here's some fun facts about gear scaling in classic vs retail since people don't seem to really understand.

This is the Obsidian Edged Blade from Molten Core. It has 64.71 dps. https://classic.wowhead.com/item=188...an-edged-blade

This is Might of Menethil, the two hander off KT from Naxx 40. It has 95.26 dps. https://classic.wowhead.com/item=188...an-edged-blade

This is the original stats of Apolyon' the Soul Render, the best 2 hander in TBC. It has 148.7 dps. https://wowwiki.fandom.com/wiki/Apol...he_Soul-Render

This is Khor, Hammer of the Corrupted from LFR Uldir. It has 162.6 dps. https://www.wowhead.com/item=160679/...onus=4801:1462

This is Devastation's Hour from mythic N'zoth. It has 627.8 dps. https://www.wowhead.com/item=172187/...onus=4824:1517

Devastation's Hour is 3.86 times more dps than a 2 hander from the lowest difficulty of the first tier of BFA.

The best 2 hander in TBC is only 2.29 times more dps than a Molten Core weapon. You have to go to LK weapons, (Ulduar specifically.) before you find a 2 hander that is as good as Devastation's Hour relative to Molten Core gear.

You're talking about literally multiple expansions worth of gear that get obtained throughout one expansion in retail. So you cannot compare being overgeared in retail to being overgeared in classic.

[NineSpine]

This is another part of the great lie that is classic.

Retail takes more of a time investment than classic unless you're specifically talking about pvp. This is actually why I like classic. It's so casual friendly I can just put in a few hours a week and raid all the content in the game with minimal effort. Retail is just a huge time investment to stay at a top level.

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30 Mythic geared mages is not the norm for 99.99% of the playerbase doing heroic.

Ny'alotha is also uniquely power crept due to the corruption system, and we probably won't see anything that broken again for many many tiers. This is the patch where for the first time ever people managed to hit the damage cap in wow.

You're also looking at heroic with many months of extra gear, gear that is so strong it accounts for more ilvl than you can ever get in classic.

An equivalent comparison would be doing AQ or Naxx at level 70 with Sunwell gear. That's how much more gear people have now than when heroic first came out.

In the first 2 weeks of heroic, only about 1-5% of guilds are able to clear heroic in most tiers. That crazy level of power of mages just destroying everything in heroic is 6 months of extra gear, corruptions, cloak levels and neck levels.

In retail, in a general sense, heroic is hard enough that the vast majority of guilds can't clear it until they overgear it.

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Reminder that mythic Ny'alotha gear is not equivalent to Naxx gear. The gear from mythic Ny'alotha is so good it's much closer to doing Naxx at level 70 with full Sunwell gear.

Leveling in classic takes about three times as long as it does in retail, assuming you don’t just have a character boost which you probably do, and requires significantly more attention since the world is actually somewhat dangerous.

I played at the beginning of BFA and basically stopped at max level. I recently came back to catch up on content. In two weeks of very casual play I was done. That’s not exactly what I consider a heavy time investment.

[Musta]

It always was.

[Pohut]

I can't believe this argument is still happening. Retail is difficult because of complex encounter mechanics. Classic is difficult because of the necessary time investment needed. Retail is an obstacle course. Classic is an incredibly long hike. These are two totally different and incomparable models of difficulty, and this entire debate is everyone talking past each other because they aren't talking about the same thing.

This debate just refuses to die because some people can't accept that complex encounter mechanics are not the only type of difficulty in the world.

Tediousness =/= difficulty.

[msdos]

Classic is easier, but it doesn't include 9999999 pets, achievements and pretty cute little Pokemon-esque things to collect and play with, so your casual demographics won't touch it with a 100 meter stick, even though you'd expect them to like it because of how "easy" it is.

Also people be mad because the leveling is actually difficult after their head was filled with memes of "oh classic so e z, oh classic you blindfold do everyting and press 1 button for ur rotation, hehe, that means the whole game is easy".
Yep, that's why you have to buy gold from third party sites and boosts, because the game is so easy..

[Snuffleupagus]

30 Mythic geared mages is not the norm for 99.99% of the playerbase doing heroic.

People buffed to the tits with world buffs and consumables wasn't the norm for most players in Vanilla either, so well done on proving that point.

[NineSpine]

Tediousness =/= difficulty.

You can define it with a pejorative to make yourself feel better all you want, but if you personally find hiking tedious that doesn't change how difficult it can be.

[OrcsRLame]

Leveling in classic takes about three times as long as it does in retail, assuming you don’t just have a character boost which you probably do, and requires significantly more attention since the world is actually somewhat dangerous.

I played at the beginning of BFA and basically stopped at max level. I recently came back to catch up on content. In two weeks of very casual play I was done. That’s not exactly what I consider a heavy time investment.

Mythic raiding requires a much greater time investment. In classic, you level up, then at max level you just need to max out engi, have gold for consumables and get your world buffs to play at a top level. In the first tier of BFA, top raiders were spending 16+ hours a day every day in island expeditions to grind AP.

If you only look at leveling up, classic is a bigger but still fairly trivial grind. If you want to raid at a top level, in classic you can do that with pretty modest playtime. In retail you have to devote your life to it.

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People buffed to the tits with world buffs and consumables wasn't the norm for most players in Vanilla either, so well done on proving that point.

People had the capability to grab world buffs and consumables in original vanilla. (And often did in world first kills.) 30 Mythic geared mages with 6 months of neck/cloak levels and corruptions was not possible when Ny'alotha came out.

Furthermore, raids in classic are still easy without world buffs and consumables. Heroic without mythic gear, without corruptions, without a maxed cloak and a high ilvl neck, was very difficult initially, much more so than AQ40.

It's also worth noting that gear in retail is more powerful than gear in classic, with 3 raid tiers of gear now being equivalent to more like 8 tiers of gear + levels in the older versions of the game.

[Low Hanging Fruit]

Damn people still worry about this? Who cares which is easy and which is hard and just play what you want. I find it very strange in today's world that it's so important other people like what you like or you need to cat fight over it. Just play what you want.

[NineSpine]

Mythic raiding requires a much greater time investment. In classic, you level up, then at max level you just need to max out engi, have gold for consumables and get your world buffs to play at a top level. In the first tier of BFA, top raiders were spending 16+ hours a day every day in island expeditions to grind AP.

If you only look at leveling up, classic is a bigger but still fairly trivial grind. If you want to raid at a top level, in classic you can do that with pretty modest playtime. In retail you have to devote your life to it.

I don't care about mythic raiding, and neither do the other 98% of players that don't mythic raid. You might as well say "Pet battles can take an incredibly long time to fully complete and max out all pets" and even that might not be fair because there are certainly more pet battlers than serious mythic raiders. I don't care about some niche activity that 17 other people do.

Let me put it this way: If someone said "Well if you really want something that takes time investment, do pet battles!" would you really take that argument seriously?

[OrcsRLame]

I don't care about mythic raiding, and neither do the other 98% of players that don't mythic raid. You might as well say "Pet battles can take an incredibly long time to fully complete and max out all pets" and even that might not be fair because there are certainly more pet battlers than serious mythic raiders. I don't care about some niche activity that 17 other people do.

Let me put it this way: If someone said "Well if you really want something that takes time investment, do pet battles!" would you really take that argument seriously?

Almost 10,000 guilds have killed at least 1 mythic boss. https://www.wowprogress.com/

Your argument is nonsensical since mythic raid is a direct apples to apples comparison of AQ40 and Naxx, since both represent the pinnacle of pve raid content in their respective versions of wow. Pet battles are just a minigame. To raid at that pinnacle is a much bigger time investment in retail.