Which classic expansion would not have easy raids?

[Viikkis]

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!

[Vampyrr]

So in TBC Sunwell ofc was hard for the time but I do not think it will be as hard now. In Wrath Lich King and Anub were the hardest fights barring no lights Yogg but you didnt need to do that to kill him just farm the mount. Overall Cata had some rather tough encounters but they were more annoying then anything else but they would still be the hardest to date.

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Specifically to your Sire Denathrius comment, tuning and mechanics are leaps and bounds above what was available in TBC and Wrath. Id say even Cata didnt really have anything close. Youd need to be late MoP and onwards to start getting there. And Sire Denathrius is tuned super high even among modern fights it is like comparing technology from 1920 to 2020 you can see the foundations in the earlier stuff but it is 100% outclassed by today.

[Viikkis]

Good point. No doubt that game is getting mechanically harder as time goes by. But it is interesting to think where the line goes. I do think that time doesn't make the raid that much easier. If I can't down Denathrius now, I won't do so magically after 15 years either.

I've seen WoD thrown around in these discussions as that is where the mythic mode was introduced meaning that now there would be the ultimate hardcore (mythic) then heroic for the above average and normal for the rest and LFR well.. just LFR I guess. Because mythic takes that separation to the extreme I think thats where it all starts to go insanely hard and will probably retain the difficulty a lot more than early expansions. Not that Cata or MoP would be easy in my opinion.

[Metaslave]

It's tough to say because these servers will always play on the latest patch where classes in general are in a buffed state compared to launch.
Would heroic25 Al'akir be hard on a 4.3 server? Maybe.
We also don't just have access to the guides from back then, you can probably dig up some min-maxy way to kill him that was figured out over time.

[AeneasBK]

None, because when they started introducing "hard" fights (wherever you set your bar) they had split the difficulties already and from Vanilla onwards there have always been "easy" raids.

[ItsDarvaTV]

probably not until like cata did raids get really mechanically involved imo, but that's hindsight

[Viikkis]

they had split the difficulties already and from Vanilla onwards there have always been "easy" raids.

Talking about the hardest difficulty in each expansion.

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We also don't just have access to the guides from back then, you can probably dig up some min-maxy way to kill him that was figured out over time.

Good point but how many people would go back to re-analyze an old expansion? (unless on a private server that is)

[Metaslave]

Good point but how many people would go back to re-analyze an old expansion? (unless on a private server that is)

This community will spend countless hours preparing for anything if they can remove any kind of resistance.

[Heathy]

its just subjective though each expansion has had a mix of faceroll bosses and the occasional boss where a singular fail will wipe the raid. but what does difficulty boil down to, just logistics or just mechanics, a mix of both, are boss fights really only hard if they have a wipe mechanic. I kinda thought vashj was hard at the time, the raid seemed kinda stretched, the elementals would get missed. it seemed like one fight where communication, verbal communication was actually paramount to success. while a lot of boss fights are tank and spank. I'd be willing to bet that vashj will be a boss that pugs will struggle with, I don't think it will be easy to pug that fight at all.

[stevenho]

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.

You will always have people who say everything is easy.
"How hard is to push keyboard buttons KEKW?"

You will also always have varying degrees of skill and experience.
So only you can answer the question what is or isn't easy to you, because there is no objectively true answer.

[CaptainV]

Though Sunwell plateu at one time was considered the hardest raid, namely because its mechanics were nearly impossible to overcome, the argument id give is Wrath.

Algalon was seen by a very small minority of the player base and he was a boss within Ulduar that was considered the hardest boss in the game even 'after' the launch of the boss itself.

Also if your going for classic in the vanillia talent tree sense then Wrath, by far, because Cata did have the Firelands which is considered the hardest raid ever made period, but it wasnt the same era and the gameplay was significantly changed as was the world.

[Echo of Soul]

WOD and onwards. Mythic raids are way too hard though in my opinion, frustratingly so. Cata and MOP heroic raids was more than enough for the majority of the raiding population.

[Ehrenpanzer]

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.

The people saying that either have memory loss, or didnt do them at level. Also in that xpac is Anub the guildbreaker.

Overall I'd say TBC, specifically Sunwell. Brutal enrage timers, massive healthpools, instant kill mechanics, Muru, class stacking required/optimal group comps.

[Hctaz]

I'm not 100% sure how much of Classic was "easy" and how much of Classic was made of people who had already done the content before.

I know from my own experience that killing a boss you've already killed before is a cakewalk compared to when you were learning it.
If we get to WotLK, I will snooze on the raid fights. I could raid lead heroic 25 man ICC to this day. I did it so often.

Is that the case in all of Classic? Probably not. Classic was definitely pretty easy.

There have always been guides on how to do the fights for every fight, but it's the muscle memory and learning factor that determines success. Players are also a lot more comfortable and familiar with playing WoW than they were in the Classic era. Pretty sure the raids in Classic were made with laggy computers, keyboard turners, and people wearing whatever the fuck and speccing however the fuck.

That ideology slowly changed as more and more players began to grow accustomed to moving with the mouse, keybinding literally everything, and just overall familiarity with their class. It's hard to say for certain, but I am excited for TBC since I did not raid then.

[Bigbazz]

I think it's not a simple conversation because

1. Most raids got nerfed and often several waves of nerfs, are we talking pre nerf and if so which version?
2. Are you talking world first level guilds that have practiced bosses to death and can pre-plan minmax to perfection, or the general raiding playerbase?
3. What talents are we talking, since if you look at Legion for example classes literally got re-designed mid expansion and the artifacts got way, way, way more powerful with more and more systems added.

I mean I've seen groups wipe and disband in Ulduar Timewalking, which is effectively LFR difficulty version of Ulduar. I've also seen people say Ulduar was easy dispite that they killed Algalon in T9/T10 gear, after the several waves of nerfs made to the raid. Razorscale for example (2nd boss in there) was already nerfed after 1 day. Or you see people talking about ICC or Dragon Soul being easy despite them having done it with the raidwide scaling nerf that literally made the raids 30% easier.

Lich King Heroic25m or Yogg Saron 0 keepers at full original difficulty would crush most mythic non-clearing guilds into disbanding, just as bosses like Kromog (BRF), Krosus (NH), Gorefiend (HFC) etc did. That doesn't mean they are as hard as modern mythic bosses of course, I don't think raiders on average really got any better in the last 5-6 years, dungeon players sure did thanks to M+ though.

[Ettan]

Challanging pve raid content in wow? There is only cutting edge, mythic raids progressed when it is current content/progression.
Anything else; you might aswell just queue up for lfr in my eyes.
Even within an expansion, the previous raid; to raiders that is not "hard" anymore. After clear its all just farm, its learned, done, over, next next next.


Wrath: no, that was incredibly easy and simplistic from start to finish.

Cata? Idk I didnt play it while it was current.

Midway into Mop with ToT & Soo was when raids first began to get pretty decent in my experience.

Then we got a piss easy raid in highmaul followed by two great raids in wod.

Legion; yet again a piss easy entry raid (its almost like these are shit by design )
Followed by 3 & 1/2 great raids.

And thats where my my wow 1.0 journy comes to a definetive stop.
But I think it shows my point, every expansion will have easy raids.

1. You are bound to get the "please dont quit after hitting lvlcap" raid tiers.
2. Every raid tier, we do them by learning them, once learned it is easy. Every raid tier = easy.

-> the only hard content then is progression on new content (and for a very limited time at that).

[Nitros14]

Heroic Ragnaros 25 in appropriate gear and talents won't ever be easy.

Also Alone in the Darkness 25 is only listed as being killed by 13 guilds on wowprogress in the 4 months before it was nerfed. Most guilds would get crushed by it.

[Relapses]

Also Alone in the Darkness 25 is only listed as being killed by 13 guilds on wowprogress in the 4 months before it was nerfed. Most guilds would get crushed by it.

I don't know if I'd agree with this. The reason a lot of guilds didn't even bother with it was because of the whole "mathematically impossible" meme. Now that we know it's possible, I'd imagine a lot more guilds would attempt it. Not to say it wouldn't still be extremely challenging -- just that I'd be cautious to say "most guilds" (especially with the modern WoW mindset) would get crushed by it.

[Nitros14]

I don't know if I'd agree with this. The reason a lot of guilds didn't even bother with it was because of the whole "mathematically impossible" meme. Now that we know it's possible, I'd imagine a lot more guilds would attempt it. Not to say it wouldn't still be extremely challenging -- just that I'd be cautious to say "most guilds" (especially with the modern WoW mindset) would get crushed by it.

This was the excuse Ensidia paraded out to excuse why they got world fourth. But there was a whole month after that before the nerf where everyone knew it was killable and had nothing else to progress on, with a permanent exclusive title as a reward. I don't buy it.

https://www.wowprogress.com/achievement/3164

Actually it's 11 kills before the giant nerf on August 4th. Probably the least killed boss in WoW history after pre-nerf mythic Kil'jaeden. Certainly the least killed boss that was available for 4 months.

From my experience with the bosses in 2009 Alone in the Darkness was significantly harder than heroic Lich King.

[Thunderball]

Basically any expansion that doesnt have a dedicated private server community. Which also means that expansion will never get a Classic version.