Is Sepulcher the most difficult raid tier ever?

[rogoth]

Wait so Hall of Fame is top 100 worldwide? Thought it was by region.

Dude only 32 US guilds have gotten Mythic Jailer by May 17 (gratz Elusive of Zul'Jin), mythic was available March 8. That seems super low for the beginning of week 11.

There's also just under US 1000 ...guilds or kills or Heroic Jailer, although pugs might not count.

What screen on wowprogress did you go to see normal clears?



...and if Dragonlands isn't coming until Q1 2023...well let's just say the next eight months are gonna be a bad time to be a recruitment officer.

yes, it always was from the moment it was introduced, and as of writing this comment only 7 guilds in the WORLD on alliance side have managed to kill mythic jailer, while the horde side is already full, extrapolating out gives horde a 95% (allowing a +/- of 2% for errors) population dominance over alliance at the high end.

as to the question posed in the title of the thread, no, it's not the hardest raid tier ever, it is however the hardest raid tier for the current player population to participate in, of which there is a staggeringly small number of players left who actively raid:

using wowprogress as the measuring stick here, and assuming that the rate of number of kills stays the same between now and the 3 month mark post mythic becoming available, it's possible to get a world top 2k rank for your guild by only killing 5/11 mythic bosses, that's less than half the raid done while achieving such a 'high' world rank, to get the same ranking at the height of the games popularity you needed to have cleared 90% of the bosses in a raid on the hardest difficulty within a month of that content being available to you.

at this point in time i wouldn't be surprised if WoW had less than 1 million players globally (not counting china), and of that total playerbase less than a third are actively raiding, and of that ~300k (assumed) less than 20% of that raiding playerbase actually engages with the hardest difficulty mode 'Mythic', which means that these nerfs that blizzard are pushing out are not because the content is too hard, it's too hard for the players that are left to actually engage with it and they are nerfing it to allow actual progress to be made by the utterly tiny population left that engages with it.

[deenman]

Yeah the loot on Jailer is the biggest "error" by Blizzard in Shadowlands.

I also believe they had some world first blood DKs stream with the Jailer mace to encourage people to actually bother killing him on heroic. Possibly even ninja-buffed it.

wile i think the last boss should have better loot,people did complaing heavily in the past when the last boss had better stuff,they will never satisfy everyone

[Alduin]

wile i think the last boss should have better loot,people did complaing heavily in the past when the last boss had better stuff,they will never satisfy everyone

I can't remember any time people ever complained about high ilvl loot from the last boss. Also that topic started back in Vanilla Naxx ... Most complains where that a) the last boss did not drop anything "special" or even a tier token (see original Blackhand in WOD where they fixed it with a quest item) b) those items being no severe upgrade and sometime even a downgrade from other items due to stat distribution c) that those items could be part of the vault which all together caused people to simply avoid an extremely hard boss for no benefit.

But I think that trend really started in BfA which guilds not re-killing Uu'nat or Jaina (until the last patch where you could pretty much focus them down due to corruption gear). Jailer in those terms is exceptional un-rewarding for re-kills. Pretty sure he will receive multiple nerfs so that people in Heroic might actually kill him in sub-optimal raid setups but BIS gear...

[Goatfish]

You are severely understating how much better people are at the game today.

Anything from wrath to cataclysm(probably most of mists aswell) would last hours today.

Its not that bosses are easier, they are mechanically much harder in fact, and its not that they are tuned to be easier to kill, its just that players have gotten LOADS better and have much better access to information then we used to.

You are absolutely kidding yourself if you think anything pre wod can even be talked about in a "hardest encounter to date" list.

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I heard back in the day it took many humans to kill a bear.

Today a human can kill 10 bears with a machinegun.

I guess bears where just much stronger back then.

Logic101

The most idiotic take a human can have, is pretending that his ancestors were just primitive idiots who weren't that good at life.

On topic, I don't think it's the hardest, but it's pretty hard.

[cparle87]

You are severely understating how much better people are at the game today.

Anything from wrath to cataclysm(probably most of mists aswell) would last hours today.

Its not that bosses are easier, they are mechanically much harder in fact, and its not that they are tuned to be easier to kill, its just that players have gotten LOADS better and have much better access to information then we used to.

You are absolutely kidding yourself if you think anything pre wod can even be talked about in a "hardest encounter to date" list.

https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads...ed-the-longest

Updated through BFA. You have to get to 28th place to find anything post WoD, that being mythic Kil'jaeden. He's tied with Majordomo Executus.

Some of them can be explained by shit like needing to farm resist gear, blocked by stupid walls like SWP/ICC, or limited encounters. But it does seem you're right. KJ only went 12 days unkilled. Original KJ, for instance, only took 5 days from when his gate opened, but that was 8 weeks after raid release.

[Karawaka]

Something I noticed that's been occurring more recently, and appears to have gone full throttle in sepulcher, is that in previous raids, normal and heroic have been more about gear checks. There were mechanics, but once you got enough gear you could easily clear through the raids with only maybe one or two bosses continuing to be road blocks. Mythic was where mechanics took the front role, where everyone had to do their part perfectly to ensure a boss kill. Lately tho, it feels like normal and heroic have much more mechanics involved to the point where, especially on later bosses, one mistake is a raid wipe. This content was released with the ability to be fully puggable but with how tightly tuned the bosses are every single person needs to be playing perfectly and be geared enough to meet all the damage and healing checks, which feels higher than the level of gear the bosses drop

[ClassicPeon]

https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads...ed-the-longest

Updated through BFA. You have to get to 28th place to find anything post WoD, that being mythic Kil'jaeden. He's tied with Majordomo Executus.

Some of them can be explained by shit like needing to farm resist gear, blocked by stupid walls like SWP/ICC, or limited encounters. But it does seem you're right. KJ only went 12 days unkilled. Original KJ, for instance, only took 5 days from when his gate opened, but that was 8 weeks after raid release.

The amount of days it went unkilled is completely irrelevant. People are much better players today. Ask ant wf raider or blizzard themselves. You cannot compare the difficulty of those raids to todays.

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The most idiotic take a human can have, is pretending that his ancestors were just primitive idiots who weren't that good at life.

On topic, I don't think it's the hardest, but it's pretty hard.

I was there myself.

Your attempt at ad hominem is laughable.

[cparle87]

The amount of days it went unkilled is completely irrelevant. People are much better players today. Ask ant wf raider or blizzard themselves. You cannot compare the difficulty of those raids to todays.

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I was there myself.

Your attempt at ad hominem is laughable.

I was actually agreeing with you. Glad to know you actually read my post. /s

[jeezusisacasual]

Wasnt there a ticking buff you got in older expansions as the raid instance went along that nerfed the content over time that is something they could go back to or not either way they need to figure out a way to make raiding more enticing and less headache inducing to actually not let it die off. I would not want to be in a recruitment position given the current climate.

[Zequill]

It's not even hard, there are no "thread the needle" mechanic, it's just so stupidly overtune. There are nothing in there that will won't get one shot if they don't nerf those fight by 5%/10%. For normal, we got the boost of double legendary and 4p to make them easier, it's like we would need a other boost like that to get through heroic. Only 2 guilds on my server have kill heroic Jailor, that insane. There are 14 guild that are at least 5/11h, so that 14% of heroic raider that killed heroic Jailor. I get that they want to

[garicasha]

Alright, today's announced nerfs seal the deal for me:

Sepulcher of the First Ones
Artificer Xy’mox
Decipher Relic cast time increased to 30 seconds on Mythic difficulty (was 25 seconds).

Prototype Pantheon
Imprinted Safeguards reduce damage and healing taken by 35% on Mythic difficulty (was 50%).

Lihuvim, Principal Architect
Lihuvim’s health reduced by 10% on all difficulties.
Protoform Schematics health reduced by 10% on all difficulties.

Halondrus the Reclaimer
Ephemeral Eruption initial damage reduced significantly on Mythic difficulty.
Lightshatter Beam increases the damage taken from Lightshatter Beam by 300% on Heroic difficulty (was 500%).

Anduin Wrynn
May 17:
With realm restarts Blasphemy duration increased to 12 seconds in all difficulties.
With realm restarts Lost Soul duration increased to 40 seconds in all difficulties (was 35 seconds).
With realm restarts Wicked Star now targets one player at a time in Mythic difficulty.
With realm restarts Players are now invalid targets for Blasphemy for 20 seconds after the effects of Lost Soul expire (was 10 seconds).
With realm restarts Reduced the health of Grim Reflections by 15% in Mythic difficulty.
9.2.5:
Anduin Wrynn’s health reduced by 5% on all difficulties.
Monstrous Souls health reduced by 5% on all difficulties.
Anduin’s Despair health reduced by 10% on all difficulties.
Anduin’s Hope movement speed reduced on Heroic and Mythic difficulty.
Remorseless Winter damage reduced by 10% on all difficulties.
Hopebreaker damage over time reduced by 15% on all difficulties.
Fiendish Soul’s Necrotic Claws cooldown increased by 50% on all difficulties.

Lords of Dread
Mal’Ganis and Kin’tessa health reduced by 5% on all difficulties.
Swarm of Decay and Swarm of Darkness damage reduced by 7.5% on all difficulties.
Ravenous Hunger now heals the Inchoate Shadow for 13% on Mythic difficulty (was 10%).
Cloud of Carrion no longer disorients when jumping between players on Heroic and Mythic difficulty.
Infiltration of Dread duration increased by 10 seconds on Heroic and Mythic difficulty.

Rygelon
Collapsing Quasar Field duration increased by 50% on Mythic difficulty.

Plus his May 17 nerfs:
[With realm restarts] Rygelon’s health has been reduced by 5% in Mythic difficulty.
[With realm restarts] Collapsing Quasar Fields now last 8 seconds (was 6 seconds) in Mythic difficulty.
[With realm restarts] Dark Collapse damage has been reduced by 25% in Mythic difficulty.
[With realm restarts] Unstable Quasar radius reduced by 25%, and damage reduced by 20% in Mythic difficulty.
[With realm restarts] Cosmic Ejection damage-over-time reduced by 33% in Mythic difficulty.
9.2.5:
Dark Eruption damage reduced by 45% on Heroic difficulty.
Collapsing Quasar Field duration increased to 12 seconds on Heroic difficulty (was 10 seconds).
Cosmic Ejection initial damage decreased by 25%, and the damage over time decreased by 73% on Heroic difficulty.

The Jailer
9.2.5
Rune of Compulsion’s absorb reduced by 33% on Normal and Heroic difficulty, and 10% on Mythic difficulty.
Misery no longer knocksback on Raid Finder, Normal, and Heroic difficulty.
Decimator no longer knocksback on Raid Finder and Normal difficulty.
Diverted Life Shield no longer heals on Mythic difficulty.
World Crusher produces 2 less Bloods of Azeroth on Mythic difficulty.
World Shatterer produces 1 less Blood of Azeroth on Mythic difficulty.
Phase 4 is now triggered at 15% Health on Mythic difficulty.
May 17:
[With realm restarts] Azerite Radiation increased Arcane damage is now 80% (was 100%) in Mythic difficulty.
[With realm restarts] Meteor Cleave damage decreased 10% in Mythic difficulty.
[With realm restarts] Torment initial explosion damage decreased by 10% in all difficulties.
[With realm restarts] Shattering Blast damage over time decreased by 33% in Mythic difficulty.
[With realm restarts] Chain Breaker damage decreased by 10% in all difficulties.


Some more huge, huge nerfs. The #1 most needed one was the reduction in damage from Swarm phase on Mal'Ganis and Kin'tessa, pretty much every pug I was ever in was running an extra healer on that fight. Cloud of Carrion not disorienting is a nice quality-of-life thing but IMO not super necessary. 10 sec more for Among Us will also be a boon to less organized groups.

Anduin is almost certainly one of the most nerfed fights ever at the heroic level, and possibly the mythic level as well. I'll say it again, the fight isn't bad but it could have been so much better. The way the adds walk in/out makes the phase too spastic, I would've rather see them in a line or something and not be movable but just have way more health. Make it more of a DPS race instead of a "do you have a DK" check.

I don't really think Lihuvim's health needed to be decreased but decreasing the health of the adds will make it much easier for more casual groups.

Rune of Compulsion being reduced by a third is big, and I'm pretty sure the mythic changes to the final phase of the Jailer are absolutely massive, but I haven't raided mythic this tier.

[jeezusisacasual]

Its almost the same line of thought that players will rise against the challenge instead of just say screw it and not bother, maybe we need Wow Raids are hard post to really please the playerbase.

[Biomega]

Its almost the same line of thought that players will rise against the challenge instead of just say screw it and not bother

Just to be clear: it's MOST players, not all, that won't rise to a challenge.

Hard raids exist because there's an audience for them. It's not the average player and it's not a majority, but it's a substantial enough number. Those players DO rise to a challenge.

That being said, how much of a challenge is up for debate.

[garicasha]

It’d be one thing if it was a 6 or 7-boss raid, but Anduin (original) was pretty much an end-boss, Lords of Dread swarm was overtuned, Rygelon is a 1-mistake KaBoOoM boss, and Jailer is very scripted but definitey a 50-100 pull heroic boss.

[Progenitor Aquarius]

Anduin is actually easy, but the Jailer, Artificer and Dausegne are kinda difficult for me. It’s actually pretty good raid but it’s demotivating to finish it since there is no positive relevance to the story. So I just couldn’t be bothered spending hours on it.

[Visor]

hc version doesn't seems harder than first raid of this expansion (Castle). And many other tiers too.

But I agree - this raid not comfortable for many ppl. You dont want to clean up it just for fun.

[Skildar]

In heroic we've faced some issues against a handful of bosses.

Anduin
He is especially hard for group of 10 people because the burst healing required was to difficult to deliver with only 2 healers.

Lords of Dread
They were similarly difficult to kill because of the swarm damages that could bring some 260 ilvl people to 10% HP in a couple of seconds. You need some pieces of 278 gear otherwise you're just a chip waiting to get crushed.

Rygelon
The damages required for this boss with a small group are quite absurd. Focusing the little stars becomes a necessity for the whole raid but deprive you of continuous dps on the boss and makes it a race against the clock that is very hard to manage.

Jailer
Nothing to say, boss is on Sylvanas level, so not really complicated but a bit stressful with the mindcontrol in a small group.

Most importantly a lot of the tuning here seems to be done for a raid group that already has its set pieces at ilvl 278 when they don't even drop this quality of loot. We're progressing solely through normal and heroic raids, no dungeons or pvp. And were facing walls on each of these bosses.

They have very good designs but unfortunately not balanced for 260-265 ilvl

[garicasha]

I agree it's not balanced for 260ish ilvl at all. My first kill of Lords I ran 2/5/11 and all 5 healers did 10k or more on a pull that was really clean for the first half. How that fight would be done 2/2/6 I have no idea. But definitely the fact that pug raids are easily at a 268-275 ilvl and it's still not that much easier really showed how overtuned it was.

Doing the raids as 10-man has always come with some tradeoffs, however, and frequently tanks and healers have to do things they would never dream of in larger raid sizes. That is somewhat intended though, as the logistical ease of having so few cats to herd is balanced by them having to do more tasks. If it wasn't like that people would only ever run 2/2/6 because it'd be so much easier.

Yah Jailer is probably also rough in small groups as I'm guessing you still get 3 bombs each time so that's a lot of DPS time in the air. I dunno if the number of MCs scales with raid size (or the damage needed to be done to get them out) but yah that could get rough because you don't have a thousand CCs to draw on.

I highly disagree that Sepulcher was as hard as Castle Nathria. Sludgefist and Denathrius were the only two bosses that gave raids with great DPS any trouble at all. Heroic Stone Legion Generals wasn't particularly hard; I'd argue both Rygelon and Lords are harder. And Anduin is more complicated, but now he's nerfed to the ground. Jailer and Denathrius are IMO on the same level but Denathrius was easy P1 and hard in P3 and Jailer is all about doing P1 clean and then it gets easier.

[Eosia]

I can't remember any time people ever complained about high ilvl loot from the last boss. Also that topic started back in Vanilla Naxx ... Most complains where that a) the last boss did not drop anything "special" or even a tier token (see original Blackhand in WOD where they fixed it with a quest item) b) those items being no severe upgrade and sometime even a downgrade from other items due to stat distribution c) that those items could be part of the vault which all together caused people to simply avoid an extremely hard boss for no benefit.

People complained about it in WoD for Patch 6.2 and Hellfire Citadel. It was not so much the loot being a higher item level in and of itself, but Magtheridon and Archemonde dropped weapons so it was seen as a distinct advantage to the classes that could use those weapons versus say Hunters where the ranged weapons dropped off previous bosses.

[garicasha]

And here we are, finally at what is probably the final version.

https://www.wowhead.com/news/upcomin...-coming-327416


We’ve heard feedback that several encounters in Sepulcher of the First Ones would benefit from adjustments, as they’re too difficult due to punishing mechanics, and we want to further reduce the likelihood that those mechanics can quickly cause an unrecoverable wipe.
We’ve also send feedback that the Lihuvim encounter was too constrained due to the difficulty of some of the Automa, so we want to make adjustments to open the possibility of different strategies to players. At this time, we plan to make the following adjustments with scheduled weekly maintenance on Tuesday, June 21:
Sepulcher of the First Ones

Lihuvim
Lihuvim health reduced by 15% on Mythic difficulty.
Resonance Cascade damage reduced by 90% on Mythic difficulty.
Increased the cooldown of Guardian Automa’s Form Sentry Automa on Mythic difficulty.

Halondrus
Aftershock damage reduced by 75% on Mythic difficulty.
Planet Cracker Beam damage reduced by 65% and its damage occurs less frequently on Mythic difficulty.

Anduin Wrynn
Hopelessness and Overconfidence duration increased to 16 seconds on all difficulties (was 12 seconds).
Blasphemy will no longer be triggered when coming in contact with an unmarked player on Mythic difficulty. The tooltip will reflect this change in a future patch.
March of the Damned damage reduced by 75% on all difficulties.
Soul Explosion damage and travel speed reduced by 30% on all difficulties.
Banish Soul cast time increased to 16 seconds on Mythic difficulty (was 12 seconds).
Necrotic Detonation cast time increased by 30% on Mythic difficulty.

Rygelon
Dark Eclipse now targets 3 players on Mythic difficulty (was 4).
Unstable Matter health reduced by 25% on Mythic difficulty.

The Jailer
Torment damage reduced by 30% on Mythic difficulty.
Unholy Eruption damage reduced by 30% on Mythic difficulty.
Rune of Compulsion absorb reduced by 30% on Mythic difficulty.
Chain Breaker now targets the nearest 3 allies on Mythic difficulty (was 4).
Incarnation of Torment health reduced by 20% on Mythic difficulty.
Diverted Life Shield reduced by 75% on Mythic difficulty.
Chains of Anguish will no longer reposition linked targets when the primary target moves out of range on Mythic difficulty.

I'm not quite sure what Diverted Life Shield being reduced by 75% means, or a lot of them honestly but dang Anduin is almost certainly the most nerfed Mythic boss of all time.