Which classic expansion would not have easy raids?

[Spicymemer]

Cata is the first era of wow where most of the raid content could seamlessly be considered mythic difficulty.
Prior to Cataclysm this 'mythic difficulty' were sparse.

[Super Kami Dende]

It's pretty easy to compare difficulties of raids in WoW. Since the easiest way to lay it out is whatever came in a new expansion was harder than the previous.

I.e. Vanilla is easier than TBC, which is easier than Wrath, which is easier than Cata. So on and so forth.

[TJ]

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

CS is waaay harder than anything in WoW. Top level PvP is the most challenging thing in WoW, imo, and CS is levels above that.

[Woobels]

Still pretty convinced 0% HC LK would be hard for the 95% of guilds. Alone in the Darkness too, before nerfs.

Sunwell on the other hand will still be relatively easy for most guilds as you can outcomp it pretty badly (and yes I know you can kind of do the same thing with LK with warlocks etc), I think it'll get pugged.

[Viikkis]

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.

So by that logic Mythic Sire Denathrius is also easy. Just copy the strategy. I don't agree with that. I believe there is some amount of skill required beyond just having the gear and reading tactics. Give 20 LFR players good enough gear to down Mythic Denathrius and have them read a guide for tactics and see how well they'll do.

I'm just curious where people draw the line of WoW becoming mechanically difficult enough not to be considered "easy" or is WoW just an easy game to beat no matter the expansion (even Shadowlands).

[Stormdash]

In my opinion WOTLK is the first time I would say the mechanics pose any challenge for someone who has mythic raided sometime in the 'current' game.

Wrath is when the mechanical shift was made to where players individually had to be trusted with split second decisions (by comparison, being the Bomb is not a split second decision, the debuff lasts as long as an election) - like the Valks vs. Defile tension. Prior to that, most mechanics were really about detailed planning - like tainted cores on Vashj. Raids started to become more "video-gamey" in the back half of Wrath.

[ifrah]

So by that logic Mythic Sire Denathrius is also easy. Just copy the strategy. I don't agree with that. I believe there is some amount of skill required beyond just having the gear and reading tactics. Give 20 LFR players good enough gear to down Mythic Denathrius and have them read a guide for tactics and see how well they'll do.

I'm just curious where people draw the line of WoW becoming mechanically difficult enough not to be considered "easy" or is WoW just an easy game to beat no matter the expansion (even Shadowlands).

True to certain degree. However, the of baseline skill of a player has evolved quite a bit over the years. When is it going to cap exactly, or are we already there, cannot say. The amount of movement, dodging, kiting, kicking/dispeling/cc'ing (although the latter ones are not necessarily a direct part of most bosses for most roles, but frequently/constantly doing such does reduce your tendency to tunnel dps rotation quite a bit) in current 5mans, be it "stupidly low level +keys" is on a totally different level than anything in the TBC context. Does this make players mythic denathrius ready sans the gear? Of course not. But it does give a different level of skills and playstyles (also alleviated through the vastly more mobile ranged classes of today) making a lion's share of the old raid content, including the glorified Sunwell, look like a set of bosses where you spend most of your time just turreting the 1-3 button rotation with an occasional sidestep every minute or so.

[Greyvax]

In the earlier expansions (and most early MMO's) difficulty was based on gear level. Almost all raids were just a gear check. With min/maxing, world buffs, infinite information/tactics/optimization, they become trivial.

It was only towards the last few expansions where bosses had a laundry list of mechanics you had to follow or fail the fight.

[Recovery]

Define easy. Is naxx in classic considered easy? Sow would then anything harder than classic naxx be considered hard? or is the bar higher?

I think that all bosses from any expansions be4 somewhat advanced dps rotations became a thing will inevitably become easy. Like, lets look at m'uru. As a mage, i press fireball, and fireball, and fireball... theres no skill in it, some target swapping, some spreading with a /range addon, but theres very little for me to look out for. Sure other classes have more stuff to do, but many simply doesnt have that much to do. Its a step up from naxx for sure, but not an enormous one. Will sunwell classic be considered easy or hard? who can say. its up to the audience to decide.

Doing mechanics isnt hard, doing mechanics while also optimizing your dps rotation is where the difficulty is. And im not sure even cata bosses tick the box for having advanced enough dps/healing rotations to qualify, many specs still had very few procs or short time cds to micromanage and adapt to.

Might have to step into mop or even wod territory be4 the number of abilities to handle starts approaching any level of stress.

All I know is that during ICC I could SOLO heal several fights on my Hpal, WHILE THE CONTENT WAS RELEVANT. In Dragon soul, I could SOLO heal several fights on disc priest while the content was relevant. I didnt find either expansion particularly difficult outside of the first 2 weeks of learning the fights.

I walk into modern raids and im like.... WTF is going on? lol


However, I think people do forget about some of the fights that had mechanics / gear checks in which casuals / lazy players just couldnt overcome. A few come to mind in both wrath and cata.

Icc was covered in them. council, blood queen, deathwhisper, sindragosa, LK.

Ulduar broke most raiders mentally for months. lol

I seen Yorsahj break almost every pug that attempted it for a long time and even some guilds.

Hagara was lol for a while.

Healers were complaining about ultraxion in this pug I was in one time so I told them all to go dps and /flexed as i solo healed it on Disc priest. (POH was insane during that time, especially with the buffs you could get during the fight. Alot of people just didnt know how to take advantage of this until later)

[Kaver]

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.

lol not at all.

Even in Wrath the players sucked.

The skill level of a top 10 guild in Wrath would probably equal to that of a top 1000 guild today.

[Recovery]

lol not at all.

Even in Wrath the players sucked.

The skill level of a top 10 guild in Wrath would probably equal to that of a top 1000 guild today.

Idk about this.

Take any top 10 guild from today, throw them into Alone in the Darkness with relevant gear and very little fight info... I believe you get the same result that you got back then.

There were so many guilds that didnt down heroic 25 LK UNTIL the raid wide nerf. Even then, there was an insane amount of guilds that STILL didnt down it until classes became extremely overpowered in the cata pre patch.

[Icelin]

I agree with some others here.It was Cataclysm that dropped down the hammer.

End of TBC lots of pugs easy peezy. WOTLK I was in a dedicated raid group, so I wouldn't know but seemed easy enough. Wait! I did do some random pugs too, like Eye of Eternity and the lava dragon mechanic boss in The Obsidian Sanctum. Easy with pugs.. It was Cataclysm that put the raiding damper on me. I remember conflicting with the other healer.. which isn't a good thing. There was only so many of us and he kept wanting to bring in new pugs every week and this made me frustrated as I remember the raid being practically unpuggable at that point.. why was it? I don't remember but eventually I gave up. This was Blackwing Descent in particular. Couple of other Cata raids were not as bad but still.. I came back to that expansion at a much later time.

[Viikkis]

lol not at all.

Even in Wrath the players sucked.

The skill level of a top 10 guild in Wrath would probably equal to that of a top 1000 guild today.

I doubt the players "sucked". The top players were always min maxing every aspect of the game scrutinizing every last detail. Wasn't Mr. Ion Hazzikostas the dude who did the math to prove that some fight in vanilla was mathematically impossible? Also created that forum Elitist Jerks along with the guild. They knew what they were doing. The general playerbase is a whole other thing but to claim that the top players sucked is ridiculous.

[VinceVega]

Still none. Every raid stands and falls with the knowledge and training of the mechanics and what you know about your class.

Classes ares still really trivial. They have not been back then for us.

Mechanics (while definetly miles aboov MC and BWL) are still really simple. The big problem from vashj was the weird throw the ball mechanic which was rather new and the tanking of the striders. Now nearly everyone knows that both parts are quite trivial....
KT maybe more so... but his difficulty back than was with killing the weapons/advisors before the timer for the next phase. Which now with way higher DPS from everyone will be definitly trivial.
Sunwell... well Muru was... annoying. But i can just talk what other people said for Sunwell as i only ever killed the fiorst two or three bosses back then.
BT has nothing difficult either.

[Beowolf]

Honestly think LK is where the first real brickwalls for groups will show up, people have a really hard time with timewalking Ulduar. Dont forget Herald of the titans is still in the game and obtainable, and not easy.

[TJ]

lol not at all.

Even in Wrath the players sucked.

The skill level of a top 10 guild in Wrath would probably equal to that of a top 1000 guild today.

I like how you say this like it's fact when it's just complete hyperbole.

[LordVargK]

The one that introduced mythic difficulty. Because replacing 10/25 man system meant that you could design the encounter without having to worry about group size limitations, making more mechanics possible.

[Recovery]

I like how you say this like it's fact when it's just complete hyperbole.

LOL I know, right?

Especially since the guy is obviously not realizing that a large portion of the top 10 guilds from wrath are the same top 10 guilds today.

[Fitsu]

If your question is just a general "hard" I would say Wrath was the start of the "hard raid content". The raid had some jokes in it like Naxx but 3D sarth wasn't a push over, likewise neither was Hard Mode Ulduar, the majority of ICC was pretty easy but LK was a fairly challenging boss.

Now with that said it was still nowhere near current mythic content, Cata had one boss on that level which was Raggy Heroic in Firelands and then after that MoP really got the ball rolling. That's when they really started to layer in these challenging, interactive and most importantly overlapping mechanics. Before MoP it was usually just dealing with one mechanic at a time but then they started having you soak while kiting the adds while focusing down the off target and these overlaps are what turned a some what difficult encounter until a real challenge.

[crakerjack]

So by that logic Mythic Sire Denathrius is also easy. Just copy the strategy. I don't agree with that. I believe there is some amount of skill required beyond just having the gear and reading tactics. Give 20 LFR players good enough gear to down Mythic Denathrius and have them read a guide for tactics and see how well they'll do.

I'm just curious where people draw the line of WoW becoming mechanically difficult enough not to be considered "easy" or is WoW just an easy game to beat no matter the expansion (even Shadowlands).

I don't think any of the mythic bosses in CN are hard, but I can't go clone myself 19 times and clear mythic CN. In the end, how hard we feel WoW is, is perceptual. Having access to DBM/WA makes PvE significantly easier IMO. It's just my opinion that PvE is easy once you know the strat. Obviously if someone isn't mechanically adept or can't parse 80% or higher for their ilvl, they won't be downing much more than the first 2 bosses.