Which classic expansion would not have easy raids?

[Marakesh]

The last time I played retail WoW in late Legion there were pug groups doing mythic for earlier tiers. Usually you would get a couple bosses down. I know, you have a bit better gear, but its not a whole new expansion worth of +level and gear, and its the most random of pugs, whoever was in lfg at that moment.

If you came to these forums at that time, Nost being closed and Blizz announcing Classic dominated the discussion. I remember all these arguments about how much more difficult the game is for "modern gamers" (whatever that means) and how easy vanilla WoW raids were. Still don't get it. Granted I haven't seriously raided in a decade but I have bounced into the game casually a couple times. I don't see any real evidence the game has entered some totally different stratosphere.

The truth is there is nothing that that difficult about WoW raiding. Its not LoL, its not CS, or any of the many fps games that draw a huge competitive audience. Its designed so the few thousand or so raiders that actually put in all the out of raid work required can complete it within a few months. Which regularly happens like clockwork these days. When was the last time the whole of the raiding community was stuck on an encounter like it was with alone in the dark? That tells you Blizz really hasn't pushed difficulty like they used to.

[Heathy]

well the truth is the hardest fights just aren't fun, they end up being a check list rather than a fun encounter. it reaches a point where you have to press a certain combination of buttons in order and minor fails, basically any fail results in a wipe or a death. most of the recovery rolls down hill to the healing so how hard healing is, is entirely dependant on how often ppl fail but in the hardest difficulties, if you fail you simply die. and thats alright but then it just becomes a matter of wiping endlessly until the stars align. I never really enjoyed mythic encounters that much healing them was kinda shit since you can't save ppl like you can in heroic even in heroic if you fail you will potentially die still, but mythic encounters, its like they reach a point where the fun has been tuned out of the encounter. there are too many variables and too much varying skill levels for mythic to be enjoyable by just about any group of 20 ppl.

[Echo of Soul]

First this is not a post about Classic WoW being more difficult to retail or vice versa.

Been reading the arguments in the thread about vanilla/TBC raid difficulty vs Wrath ICC25M Heroic. I noticed an interesting thing. Even Wrath, the so often praised expansion with its Ulduar hardmodes and heroic ICC with The Lich King who didn't fall before being nerfed, is labeled “easy” by many people.

So, in your opinion which WoW expansion would not have “easy” raid content if it were to be released as Classic but first…

Let us think what does “easy” mean? I think many people associate the difficulty of the raid with the time that it takes for the boss to get killed from launch (aka race to world first)

But I think we can all agree that the top guilds don’t tell much about the overall difficulty for the whole playerbase. Blizzard has trouble even today to come up with challenging enough bosses without crossing the mathematically impossible threshold and yet it never really takes all that long for even current bosses to fall.

So race to world first != how easy the raid is for your average Joe.

Now let’s get to some usual arguments about Classic X raids being easy.

Like riding a bike.

But how many actually downed the raid at the highest difficulty when it was still current?

The content is OLD. It was beaten X years ago. It will be a cakewalk because everyone knows exactly what to do and what classes to stack etc.

There are guides for Mythic Sire Denathrius. There are videos. Everything you need to know about downing Mythic Denathrius is out there . Yet that doesn’t make him “easy” does it? Almost like you still need to have some skills not just a guide and a video to tell you the tactics.

It has been played for X years on a p-server.

Sure, but p-server players are a minority and they would fall to the “world first“ guys anyways. If private server players storm the content they’ve perfected for X years before why would it make it easy for your average Joe?

Also sidenote that no p-server is 1:1 perfect with retail ever. And their own guides are based on the situation and balance on that particular server.

The game is based on patch X.X.X so we know exactly how the classes and specs will play out

Now I thought of this argument my self actually and would like some thoughts about this. Most likely the last boss of the expansion would be the least affected because it would be the closest to the actual scenario but it could have interesting impact for the earlier raid tiers.

Let’s get some more arguments coming!

WOD. Mythic raids are too hard in my opinion.

[stevenho]

The truth is there is nothing that that difficult about WoW raiding. Its not LoL, its not CS

What do you mean?
LOL or CS is "hard"?
Just press buttons on keyboard lol what is hard about that?

[arucado3]

Cata was a very hard pve expansion and it would still be today with pre-nerf content. And when i say pre-nerf content, only hardcore guilds would actually clear it.

[Asrialol]

No? As someone who's been playing on wrath private servers for now a decade (and I still am), I think I know what I am talking about.
If you think I am wrong, then reply at least with some arguments. Being toxic and saying nothing is pointless for everyone, but I am glad I wasted your time.

If you've played it on for that long, surely you realize it's not authentic.

[Gimlix]

25 HC Lich King would be a start. Cata is basically almost modern territory (in many aspects), from that point changes between expacs are rather minor.

But remember that any raid will be cleared in less than 24 hours by any skilled and organized guild. People just have access to tactics, hell tryhards can even try fight on some pri*ate.. places.

False. Pretty sure MoP and beyond was where raiding got good.
4.3 is considered one of the worst raids in history.

[RobertMugabe]

Private servers got many things wrong though and they can't be considered a 1:1 experience to the retail version. We saw that with Nostalrius which was said to be really accurate and "Blizzlike" but turned out it had many things wrong. Now Wrath is probably the most playable and accurate of all of the expansions in that scene but still at the end of the day they're just emulating the real thing.

Yeah I know that (I've played retail since launch as well) and that's why I've specifically mentioned that on wrath private servers the content nowadays is much harder, because they tune it this way. They of course aren't a 100% emulation of the real thing, but they're very close... close enough at least that what is generally true in private servers is gonna be also generally true for retail. It's definitely not gonna be the case where raids in retail are suddenly going to be much harder, if anything, they will be just easier. Thus, I have no doubts that any wrath raid on any difficulty will be cleared not only very quickly, but that also many semi-hardcore guilds will clear everything within a rather short amount of time.

Nostalrius is a good example of a private server too, because it indeed wasn't accurate in many places, but ironically it's inaccuracy meant that a lot of the content was actually much harder (including all raids) than it ended up being in Classic. They've also intentionally nerfed many farming spots, which made gold making much harder and their massive population meant that ressources were expensive and hard to get (they had dynamic respawns, but it was broken all the way and was only fixed by its successor). I very well remember the discussions when classic was announced for the first time, how private servers got it wrong and how real classic will be much harder, especially how much longer it'll take to level to 60, clear MC, how much fire res you will truly need etc etc. (and how all of that was proven wrong just days after launch).

I also see that times have changed since Classic was released. Before that, Wrath raids were regarded as a joke in terms of difficulty and that every casual could do them and how much harder Classic/TBC were and now that classic turned out to be easy, people are starting to call wrath raids hard? Again: Without any doubt, ALL wrath raids of all difficulties will be quickly cleared by the top guilds and just a few months or so after their releases, they'll be regarded as easy enough that you will see pugs doing them all the time.

[Marakesh]

What do you mean?
LOL or CS is "hard"?
Just press buttons on keyboard lol what is hard about that?

Other players are always increasing their skill and strategy. Competition insures difficulty scales, limited only by human ability. With a higher pool of players and enough reward in recognition and/or money, the difficulty level will eventually approach this.

Against a set piece encounter like raiding offers, Blizzard could keep pushing difficulty higher. However, they have several obstacles. A smaller playerbase for mythic or even including heroic raids. A limited amount of time these raids have to be completed. The fact that mythic completition seems to be the same every tier now and rarely do top guilds get stuck for long suggests further increases in difficulty are not happening. The fact I could pug lower tier mythic bosses with virtually no knowledge of the encounters also suggests it is not as hard as people here are selling it to be.

Most of these threads seem to devolve into ego sniping about whose raids are the hardest. Fact is, this isn't that type of game. It does not and has never fit the esport model no matter how hard Blizzard has tried. Raiding originally was more about logistics and social organization inside an mmorpg. As a stand alone video game based almost entirely around 'skillz' it lacks appeal. These threads, which seem to dominate the forums at times, are missing the point.

[Not A Cat]

[B]Been reading the arguments in the thread about vanilla/TBC raid difficulty vs Wrath ICC25M Heroic. I noticed an interesting thing. Even Wrath, the so often praised expansion with its Ulduar hardmodes and heroic ICC with The Lich King who didn't fall before being nerfed, is labeled “easy” by many people.

To be fair, it was labeled the "easy" expansion because Blizz made it easier for more casual players to level up and take part in end game content. Questing alone was a lot easier in Wrath than in vanilla/TBC. Heroic dungeons were MUCH easier than they were in TBC. And the raids being both 10man and 25man made getting a raid group a lot easier. Also death knights were unbelievably broken for the first few months and trivialized a lot of things.

Mechanically speaking, Wrath raids (other than Naxx reboot) were far more complex than its predecessors. But Wrath basically dismantled the barrier for entry that existed in vanilla/TBC. The only attunement of any kind was one player in your raid had to have the focusing iris for Malygos which dropped from Saphirron. You could run heroics as soon as you hit 70, and the badge system made gearing up to run current content much easier.

With all of that being said, wrath is probably the classic expansion where people will struggle to clear everything. One, because there's just more stuff to clear with different difficulties being added. And two, because the hard modes/heroic raids couldn't just be rolled with good gear. Well actually most could, but things like Sartharion 3 Drakes, Yogg+0, Mimiron HM, H Anub'arak, and H Lich King are certainly going to pose challenges even for seasoned raiders.

[Erleichda]

things like Sartharion 3 Drakes, Yogg+0, Mimiron HM, H Anub'arak, and H Lich King are certainly going to pose challenges even for seasoned raiders.

FWIW, Sarth 3 drakes was not even in the same ballpark as those other things difficulty-wise. It was tough compared to that tier, I guess, but that ain't saying much and the just burn it strat will be widely known.


I think sunwell is gonna catch a lot of people napping, especially since BT is so easy. I has a lot of the mechanics you see in modern raids while requiring high throughput, just not the insane combinations and constant barrage of them you see today. It's not the "modern" era, but I think it's the first raid of the second era which includes wrath hard modes. There also seems to be quite a lot of resistance to optimizations that were fairly widely known and used back in the day within the (small) group that actually cleared that stuff in time.

I think late Fireland's was when we saw the next big jump to "hey, let's have 10 different timers overlapping in weird ways" but it took a while to become as ubiquitous as it seems to be today.

[crakerjack]

They’re all easy. Once someone has done it and the guides are publicly available, it’s just a matter of copying the strategy. That being said, what will determine a raid being “hard” is the gear requirement.

[shadowroguetbc]

What do you mean?
LOL or CS is "hard"?
Just press buttons on keyboard lol what is hard about that?

The fact that you’re directly competing against someone else and their skill. In wow you’re fighting against scripted content, that 9/10 times just becomes autopiloting after doing it for a month or so.

[Echocho]

The fact that you’re directly competing against someone else and their skill. In wow you’re fighting against scripted content, that 9/10 times just becomes autopiloting after doing it for a month or so.

So you're saying that a computer can never be as good as a human?

[cuafpr]

WotLK but even then strats are known so won't be like before.

[shadowroguetbc]

So you're saying that a computer can never be as good as a human?

Is that really what you took away from this? Of course people can make computers to be better than humans. They can make the raids hit for 100% of your health and be unbeatable, but we are talking about wow.

Wow is obviously made to be beaten. The fights just need to be learned and you just need to farm up gear and down the boss, it’s literally made to fail. That’s the point in the game.

LoL and CS obviously isn’t built like this. You will only ever go as far as your skill takes you, that’s not what wow is. I can literally be one of the worst wow players in the world in a game like classic or tbc. Clicking my abilities, dying every fight, as long as I continue to be there every week and increase my gear the game gets easier and I can ‘beat’ it in terms of raids.

A multiplayer game, you don’t just win off being there, you have to be better than the other person you’re playing against to win.

[KOUNTERPARTS]

False. Pretty sure MoP and beyond was where raiding got good.
4.3 is considered one of the worst raids in history.

Hmmm...

False. Pretty sure MoP and beyond was where raiding got good.
4.3 is considered one of the worst raids in history.

False. Pretty sure MoP and beyond was where raiding got good.
4.3 is considered one of the worst raids in history.

Wrong. Try again.

[Mightytasty]

From my understanding, Sunwell is where it really started getting hard. I do not think it will be puggable.

Sunwell and onwards, minus Naxx 25, will be equivalent to current endboss Heroic / early boss Mythic.

I believe Firelands heroic Rag (pre-nerf) is the first boss equivalent in difficulty to Sire Mythic, maybe even harder.

[ifrah]

Since it's almost infinitely easier to follow an already developed technique rather than developing one by yourself, Sunwell, too, won't be much to write home about. You no longer have to discover and learn all those stuff that's going on. During the relevant progression, there wasn't much of detailed information readily available on the bosses back then.
Consider also that even semi-hc guilds didn't struggle to keep up with the gating until M'uru, I'd say people have way too high expectations on the content difficulty once again.

[Stardrift]

Cata was a very hard pve expansion and it would still be today with pre-nerf content. And when i say pre-nerf content, only hardcore guilds would actually clear it.

I really miss the difficulty of the cata dungeons. I miss having one top difficulty..