Is Sepulcher the most difficult raid tier ever?

[TheWorkingTitle]

Naxx 40 > It's not even close. Only 23 guilds cleared it. Only 900 guilds had killed even a single boss in there before TBC.

[xmirrors]

Naxx 40 > It's not even close. Only 23 guilds cleared it. Only 900 guilds had killed even a single boss in there before TBC.

Hard disagree. The game and, more importantly, its players, have changed drastically and comparisons based entirely on numbers don't make a lick of sense.

[rogoth]

Um… you’re telling him not to make an asinine statement when you yourself made a very similar statement in that same post. Of course if you have proof of your asinine claims then I will withdraw my comment but we both know that you have nothing concrete

so, just using numbers from this current expansion, the number of guilds that killed the first boss on mythic during castle nathria is 13.5k, the number of guilds who killed at least the first boss on mythic in sanctum of domination was 8729, the number of guilds that cleared castle nathria was 2225, the number of guilds that cleared sanctum of domination was 1746, now, here's the part that's gonna blow your mind, the numbers for castle nathria AS A PERCENTAGE were less of the of the total playerbase than those from sanctum of domination, just looking at the number of guilds who killed sire denathrius, that number was approximately 5% of all players who set foot in the raid, whereas mythic sylvanas, a significantly lower number of kills was worth 6.5% of total players who set foot in the raid, meaning that those who actually try to raid CE between the first and second tier has shrunk by AT LEAST 1.5%, and the numbers for other boss kills is even worse, the largest shrinkage being almost 4% for the penultimate boss of the raid tier.

looking at the previous expansion, and the kill numbers for N'zoth on mythic, the number of guilds who managed to defeat him were 2667, not that much more than sire denathrius, however, the player percentage representation was ~10% for N'zoth, so based on that information we can extrapolate that HALF the players who killed N'zoth quit and didn't return for the start of shadowlands, going back another tier, only 1100 guilds killed mythic queen aszhara, however that number equates to 4.5% of players, meaning that the same number of people killed her, that have killed mythic sylvanas as a portion of the playerbase, crucible of storms was an outlier and as such can't be used for data comparison, in dazar'alor 7400 guilds cleared mythic jaina, that equates to a 20% portion of raiding playerbase, just looking at boss kill totals over the last 3 years, not even going back to when we know the playerbase was significantly higher than it is now, it's clear to see that there's nowhere near the players raiding anymore, ergo, the person i was replying to made an asinine comment about how 'well hur dur not enough guilds have done it therefore it's harder hur dur', clearly they haven't bothered to look at these kinds of things, and it should be very clear they have no concept of what constitutes 'difficulty' in the highest level of raiding, feel free to come at me again, i welcome educating people on how they are wrong.

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I was gonna say something about this, anything before Cata a wipe for a casual guild was at least a 10-minute affair, maybe the hardcore guilds could get it down to 6-7 minutes but with no mass rez and if even one individual had to run back from the entrance to AQ40...comparing modern pull counts to legacy pull counts is apples to oranges IMO.

An unlocked ICC would be interesting, but I think Heroic Lich King could actually survive a lockout or two. The place was tuned with a 30% buff to damage, healing, and stamina in mind. And I know one guild was on track to do him with +0%....but I'm pretty sure that was with months of farmed gear from the place.

Plus there were no other avenues for loot back then, week 1 there would be a ton of gear from the previous tier (which was only five bosses' worth), and I suppose there was 10 and 25 man loot but no mythic+, no great vault, no scaling valor, if you tried LK week 1 the raid would have 33 pieces from the previous bosses + whatever they got out of 10 man and that'd be it. Well I guess they could do 10-man splits...

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One other interesting thing about this tier is that it's anyone's guess how much longer it's gonna take. I think we can reasonably expect Anduin to go down this week (it'll be nerfed if the top 4 start hitting walls), but heh you can't rule out that each of the last three bosses will take 3 or 300 pulls each.

keep in mind that only 1 guild in the entire world killed 25HC with no buff active, and that was with fully geared BiS heroic loot and the gear that came from halion which wasn't available at the time ICC was 'current content' (depending on how pedantic you wanna be there).

[RobertMugabe]

As others have said, the raid has been tuned around things we don't have yet. This makes it of course a much more difficult raid right now, but it will become a lot easier soon enough (beyond people naturally gaining higher ilvl)

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Naxx 40 > It's not even close. Only 23 guilds cleared it. Only 900 guilds had killed even a single boss in there before TBC.

Ofc it is. How many people actually cleared Naxx40 back then doesn't automatically mean that it was the most difficult raid ever. It released right before TBC launched and thus most guilds either didn't have the opportunity really to get into it or in the case in the vast majority of guilds: they didn't give a shit.

Classic and vanilla private servers in the past have proven just how easy this raid has always truly been and that time investment doesn't equate to difficulty and challenge.

[FelPlague]

rofl

Not even close. Mythic raiding only opened a little over a week ago. Even if it takes them another week, they won't crack the top 20 longest times to down the final boss of a raid.

"Time to kill a boss" was longer back then because of how fucking long it took to get back to the bosses, and how long it took to even do pulls, as there would be massive breaks to buff and everything between.

pull wise the old bosses died in far less pulls, but took far longer cause each pull took 15 minutes of prep between them, and eventually they would legit run outta consumeables and give up to go farm.

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Naxx 40 > It's not even close. Only 23 guilds cleared it. Only 900 guilds had killed even a single boss in there before TBC.

cause back in vanilla few people cared
people didnt do naxx because it cost FUCKLOADS of money and time to enter, remember it had a gold cost for attunement unless you repfarmed which took FOREVER to do.
pair that with the raid coming out AFTER the announcement of TBC and people went "wait i am gunna replace my raid gear with leveling greens? lol fuck that" and dipped, i remember my guild got a fair bit in then went "Wait we need HOW MUCH for this next boss? fuck that were quitting till tbc"

[exochaft]

Week one heroic endboss kills:

70~ Guilds defeated Heroic Sylvanas in Sanctum of Domination.
98 Guilds defeated Heroic Sire Denathrius in Castle Nathria.
Over 600 Guilds defeated Heroic N'zoth in Nya'lotha.
Over 400 Guilds defeated Heroic Azshara in The Eternal Palace.
Over 450 Guilds defeated Heroic Jaina in the Battle of Dazar'alor.
Over 400 Guilds defeated Heroic G'huun in Uldir.

So yeah about the Jailer heroic kills in week one...

Obviously not a perfect metric and the 2nd legendary will work wonders next week, there is still a trend I'd say.
Also even Liquid raiders say heroic is like the old mythic, so everyone who picked option 2 might want to reconsider lol.

With respect to what's bolded: that's absolutely the case, and I'm not saying that's a good thing.

If you've played the game long enough, you'll notice that Blizz has been constantly amping up the difficulty of the hardest raid difficulty at the time (even pre-mythic raiding existing). While it's likely not the only factor that's killing the amount of people actually playing WoW, it's certainly a factor.

I've made it no secret that I loved playing with my friends and family in the hardest raid difficulties back in the day, but over time they left the game or quit raiding because the difficulty just kept going up and up. I've seen the trite "Well just raid normal/heroic/etc.!"... yeah, that's like spitting in your face and telling the player that the game is no longer for you if you've always done the hardest content up until that point.

In some respects, that's basically what mythic raiding is now, as they're absolutely tuning the raids around an unofficial WFR competition, and that has nasty consequences on anyone that isn't a WF contender. If anything, the initial state of a boss is a first impression that lasts. As an example, even if the nerf Halondrus several things will happen: either all your hard work will seem like a waste if you're progressing on it then it's nerfed, you'll expect the nerfs and just not do the boss until there's another nerf, and/or people will be demotivated even before getting to a boss that took a WF guild with so much time/resources/skill over 300 pulls to kill. Actually, there's another consequence that anyone who wants to try mythic raiding will likely be discouraged from trying as the difficulty keeps going up, or people get tired of mythic raiding and quit. Also, this doesn't just affect mythic raiders, as it will also affect heroic and normal raiders.

Saw someone mention that having Emerald Nightmare mythic difficulty was a bad thing, and I'd say that was probably the most accessible the hardest raid difficulty in the game has been in a long time. Who cares if you have a boring WF race that ends quickly? People seem to be getting stuck into the Blizz brainwashing of anything worth doing in a game must take a lot of time and take an entire patch cycle to do while being tuned to the nth degree. Instead, Blizz is designing a game (mythic raiding included) to not respect your time at all and only for a small subset of players.

I guess I'm beating around the bush to say I'm not sure if Sepulcher is the hardest raid as a whole because it's not even cleared yet, but it's certainly the most indicative that Blizz has not really changed at its core despite everything that's gone on with Blizz the past year. If anything, they're still learning the wrong lessons and will continue to ostracize their player base.

[Alvito]

Most of those that took ages to kill are irrelevant though. TK taking as long as it did means very little other than people were poor at the game back then. Anything pre-MoP can be mostly ignored IMO.

Is SotFO the hardest tier ever? Too early to tell. Tomb of Sargeras stands out as KJ lasted into the third week if memory serves - we'll have to see how the last 3 bosses go for Liquid/Echo. There's definitely an argument for Halondrus being the hardest pre-final boss of all time.

People generally were probably worse or less informed on average. World first raiders aren't those people though. We also have a significantly smaller player base now. The biggest change is not letting people ptr test some of the bosses with lower than average amounts of pulls that did get tested. People often mention live pulls and ignore the time top 1% raids put into ptr testing.

[ClassicPeon]

While the people that think that are pretty out of touch, there are other expansions inbetween TBC and Shadowlands and people that ignore that is equally out of touch.

Modern expansions are tuned around the world first race in a way that older expansions werent. Blizzard wants the bosses to be killed in the first week or two. This was not always true in the past. Ragnaros 25HC and Lich King 25HC are two good examples of this. Both boss fights were mechanically extremely easy, but the tuning on output requirements were insanely over the top. Yogg0 25 man is also a good example. ICC in general is a pretty fun case study. People tend to forget that the raid was not released with a 30% buff and how significant the time gating was for allowing people to gear up before the final encounters were even available.

A lot of bosses are also very easy with hindsight. If we look at Cata, bosses like Nefarian25HC, Al'Akir 25HC or Spine of Deathwing 25HC would be extremely easy due to their "difficulty" stemming from class stacking and weird tactics that took a while to figure out. In a Tier 11 classic, people would be ready with 10 feral druid alts for Nefarian.

Because of the world first race being so important for blizzard now, modern expansion raids will always be easier than the hardest encounters of the past.

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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Old raids such as in vanilla, tbc and wrath took months to down. Newer raids perhaps more mechanically difficult have been killed in much faster times. Some bosses in the past took thousands of wipes.

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

[Feanoro]

Ah the dishonesty of "classic proved it was easy!"

No shit it's easy when you know exactly what to do, with fifteen years to optimize every last iota of it.

[ClassicPeon]

Naxx 40 > It's not even close. Only 23 guilds cleared it. Only 900 guilds had killed even a single boss in there before TBC.

I killed naxx 40 with 39 other randoes in a pug in classic. It was an absolute snorefest. Sure the mobs hit hard on tanks but everything died super fast because the group had pretty optimized players in it.

Difficult? I'd say its on pair with normal difficulty today. You do need some gear to go through it but thats really all thats stopping you from moving it down

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Ah the dishonesty of "classic proved it was easy!"

No shit it's easy when you know exactly what to do, with fifteen years to optimize every last iota of it.

Classic was actually less optimized then retail is today.

Your example only serves to widen the gap in terms of difficulty

[zenzaliv]

I remember reading somewhere that the hardest raid boss ever in WoW was Uu'nat. The guild that killed it first had over 700 wipes. Nothing else has ever come close in difficulty and wipe count. And that was just last expansion.

[czarek]

Dunno how it is not playin atm but as i watch world first race. Looks quite hard. And damn this is 2nd week and no one come even close to last baws yet on mythic ;o

[garicasha]

I was working on Heroic Xy'mox and Halondrus tonight, they didn't seem super bad. Normal Anduin was kind of what made me think the whole tier was outta control.

[Segus1992]

Tuned around 4p and double Lego we don't have that's all

Yep, this. Pretty clever way to make the world first race interesting while not having it be overtuned for normal mythic guilds without requiring buffs or nerfs.

[Eazy]

Imagine saying that vanilla is harder while the raids in classic were cleared in the matter of dozens minutes when they released. xd

Sepulcher is one of the hardest raids in the entire game, that's for sure. It's optimized around tier sets and double-legendaries though.

[Dioporco]

Or it shows that the heroic end bosses in SL were harder?

no just how much people left, if you think sylvanas or denny are harder than ghuun jaina or nzoth HC you are delusional

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Imagine saying that vanilla is harder while the raids in classic were cleared in the matter of dozens minutes when they released. xd

Sepulcher is one of the hardest raids in the entire game, that's for sure. It's optimized around tier sets and double-legendaries though.

imagine comparing redoin the same raid after 20 years of doing it vs a new raid.


if tomorrow blizzard release BFA Classic people will disintegrate Ghuun or Jaina in 1 day from their release.

[Magical Mudcrab]

Are you one of those people that genuinely believes vanilla and TBC bosses were harder because of their long kill time?

Even after we watch them all die within hours with classic?

In regards to early WoW bosses specifically, relative to average player skill, availability of information at the time, and limitations of classes, they were more difficult; however, nowadays, nearly two decades after they were released, they are mechanically simple and trivial to clear, and this is furthered by the ever increasing power of addons. That's not even accounting for the the fact that most large Classic guilds are from private servers, who have been working towards perfecting those fights for over a decade, which exacerbates the aforementioned availability of information.

However, more generally, SotFO could go weeks of attempts before even surpassing some raids in Legion. Currently, it's not even close to being the most difficult.

[Eazy]

imagine comparing redoin the same raid after 20 years of doing it vs a new raid.

if tomorrow blizzard release BFA Classic people will disintegrate Ghuun or Jaina in 1 day from their release.

Highly doubt it. Considering the amount of mechanics, which requires faster reflex, planning(e.g. groups sorting) and sometimes special addons for certain bosses.

Raiding in SL is leagues above harder than raiding in classic and that's a fact.
Vanilla raiding was piss easy compared to the mythic raiding we've go right now.

About the "redoin the same raid" argument - not like it's almost the same right now. There are guides, simulations and other sources that are comparable to the "redoin" things. People who were obliteraing whole Classic raid scene weren't doing the same raid 20 years, all they needed to do was reading some guides and just not stand in the fire. A thing that required like a week(not counting leveling) at max. Still some mythic bosses weren't killed as easy as the Classic ones. There were plenty of time(a few months!) to kill Mythic Sylvanas, but not everyone got it. Because it's much, much harder.

It's not matter of time - it's matter of commitment and skill. Times change...

[OrcsRLame]

Unless the last 3 bosses are all severely undertuned relative to the rest of the raid Sepulcher will objectively be the hardest raid in the game so far.

Every mythic raid that was ever released, the final boss was at least seen before the end of the first reset. Here we are a good chunk into the second reset and there's 3 other bosses that need to be killed before anyone even gets to the final boss.

On the lower end of things think about the first moss. It was like 3 days before anyone killed the first boss on mythic. In most raid tiers like 50-100 US guilds kill the first boss on mythic before EU even gets the patch.

[looney troons]

I did the first wing and I thought it was easy.