Thoughts about re-releasing Castle Nathria and Sanctum of Domination

[Greyvax]

OP, you're WAYYYY overthinking it. Why can't it just be a fun, extra thing to do? The reason why you reference burnout in your post, is because you treat it like a job instead of something fun to do.

I'm actually stoked to hit up CN again (to a lesser extent, SoD) with relevant gear drops. It mixes up the monotony of having just 1 raid to do every week, and CN was awesome.

[Sarkli83]

A good change to help curb the content drought that comes at the end of an expansion.

[LordVargK]

my playstyle has been raid focused. if i dislike the current raid. i unsub for sure. i hated sod, so i left. this new system appears to bring back sod as required guild raid activity. i will unsub if true. i imagine many feel this way. so if all 3 raids become required, it will hurt the game as some people will hate at least 1 of the raids and quit.

only ONE raid should be current content. this sounds like a disaster.

Honestly, i think you are maybe the only player thinking that way. All others will just sit out every third week, if they don't like a specific raid.

[[Apok]]

Honestly, i think you are maybe the only player thinking that way. All others will just sit out every third week, if they don't like a specific raid.

Or maybe they will just vote with their wallet until the next expansion hits.

[Celement]

I think it will be a freebie tier... I can't see how you can toss in randomly weekly mechanics without making the fights far easier then orginally without making certain scenarios impossible to handle.

[garicasha]

I don’t quite share the optimism.

Well plus the stated design philosophy is to make things too hard at the beginning and then nerf them. Which is good, the opposite would generate mega rage.

But given that Sanguine Depths got a nerf like a year and a half or whatever it is now after release, these things don’t always get done super fast.

[Shyzhi]

As someone who dropped out after castle nathria iv never been in sanctum so for me its gonna be cool to see that raid and the mechanics. As a non raider tho it could get boring fast

[MrLachyG]

I'll definitely at a minimum do normal fated raids. if I get a chance to do heroic, cool but not going to worry too much about it

[Thunderball]

I don’t quite share the optimism.

Well plus the stated design philosophy is to make things too hard at the beginning and then nerf them. Which is good, the opposite would generate mega rage.

But given that Sanguine Depths got a nerf like a year and a half or whatever it is now after release, these things don’t always get done super fast.

This doesnt apply to S4. There's going to be no RWF for this so there's no reason for them to tune the raids for top guilds to create content. And even if it's super hard I still dont get what you're concerned about?

[Luck4]

Bad, just bad...

I really disliked the whole premise of Season 4.

For me:
New Raid = New Season
Same Raid = Same Season

Season 4 is fake content IMO.

[Nymrohd]

Bad, just bad...

I really disliked the whole premise of Season 4.

For me:
New Raid = New Season
Same Raid = Same Season

Season 4 is fake content IMO.

Oh so every season of M+ after launch is fake content then

[enigma77]

It's trash that I'll skip. No way I'll spend even 5 minutes trying to re-learn some old boss artificially made hard again. Fuck that.

If they think people will bother reprogressing frustrating cancer bosses like Stone Legion Generals Mythic all I can say is hahahahaa.

[VinceVega]

It is weird honestly and shows the... weird opinions of wow players.

People always say old raid get obsolete to fast. No one ever speaks against that.

Now blizz tests it by giving us something to do until the next expansion hits and everyone is pissed they dared to do it.

IMHO this is just a fun offseason at the end of the expansion where you can replay whatever you like from the current expansion wihtout the need to do everything as you have allready cleared it once. No pressure at all. Just stuff to do with a current difficulty and rewards.

Mythic+ is allready scalable until the end and PVP never is not current so this keeps raids in line with it.

Sure a new raid is always better but this bridges the downtime for the people who do not take a break. Nothing lost just something gained.

[Luck4]

Oh so every season of M+ after launch is fake content then

It's, and the only thing that makes it appealing is that M+ provides gear to progress in the new raid.

But you're free to disagree. Personally, I'm going to boycott this season.

[enigma77]

It is weird honestly and shows the... weird opinions of wow players.

People always say old raid get obsolete to fast. No one ever speaks against that.

Now blizz tests it by giving us something to do until the next expansion hits and everyone is pissed they dared to do it.

IMHO this is just a fun offseason at the end of the expansion where you can replay whatever you like from the current expansion wihtout the need to do everything as you have allready cleared it once. No pressure at all. Just stuff to do with a current difficulty and rewards.

Mythic+ is allready scalable until the end and PVP never is not current so this keeps raids in line with it.

Sure a new raid is always better but this bridges the downtime for the people who do not take a break. Nothing lost just something gained.

The only way older raids should stay relevant is because there's some decent gear to be had from easy bosses.

Expecting people to go back and relearn old bosses because they made them hard again is a huge no no. Fuck that.

[Mardux]

This is largely and issue that only affects the top 1%.

If they are burnt out, simply dont do it... Its a 'Bonus' season

The other 99% of the population is going to aproach these fights as intended: a 'fun', interesting new way to look at raiding for a season.
By the end of the patch/expansion, all 3 raids should be puggable up to heroic difficulty, just like they are/were/will be every other patch.



Ultimatly, the question is, who does this cater to? Is it the raiders who may be burnt out already on the same fights? Or the casual players who will approach this as just another patch cycle to play the game?
The answer is: the casuals. If 1% of raiders, the good ones, are burnt out and dont want to redo the mythic fights, the 99% of membership paying raiders are more than a good enough tradeoff for blizzard.

It's kind of weird that you chose to imply people who approach it as just another patch cycle (which it is) are casual. Also weird how you think anyone not in the top 1% is "casual".

[Luck4]

It is weird honestly and shows the... weird opinions of wow players.

People always say old raid get obsolete to fast. No one ever speaks against that.

Now blizz tests it by giving us something to do until the next expansion hits and everyone is pissed they dared to do it.

Obviously, it's not the same players.

However, I know some people that advocate for older raids to be relevant in the gearing process in the whole expansion length, and this is very different from re-releasing old raids like they're doing in Season 4.

[VinceVega]

The only way older raids should stay relevant is because there's some decent gear to be had from easy bosses.

Expecting people to go back and relearn old bosses because they made them hard again is a huge no no. Fuck that.

There is so much gear in this game allready why do we need ANOTHER easy source? Gear feels meaningless as it is allready. Another epic... yay... to the garbage bin with it!

It's kind of weird that you chose to imply people who approach it as just another patch cycle (which it is) are casual. Also weird how you think anyone not in the top 1% is "casual".

Mh... these where obviously arbitrary numbers. By the 1% i mean the people who want to clear everything everytime.

And i don't imply 99% are casual. I don't think anyone who puts oen foot into raiding is casual. It is just that an extraordinary low number of people are going to clear every raid again on the highest difficulty.

It is another patch cycle. Even the selfie patach was another patch cycle. But only one that gives you something to do not a new raid. No new RTWF.
But it is only a test if people would like it. And to bridge the gap to the new expansion. It is not a new content patch like 9.1 or 9.2... and it should not be lokked at like that.
If you do that... well yeah you are going to be burned out rather fast.

- - - Updated - - -

Obviously, it's not the same players.

However, I know some people that advocate for older raids to be relevant in the gearing process in the whole expansion length, and this is very different from re-releasing old raids like they're doing in Season 4.

This would just mean you have to reclear the same boss again and again and again becuase of that one pice of gear. And not everyone in you raid needs the same boss. So in the end you have to clear everything or a few persons in your group are going to be pissed because their boss is not done.
And who honestly likes to go backto a raid immediatly after they have done the raid for 3 months allready.

They should just expand the timewalkign raids.

[loras]

I'll start by saying it's better than Sepulcher being the only current content until Dragonflight.

But I think there's a possible problem in player experience levels.

So let's say you've got a mythic raiding guild with a roster of 25 that got Cutting Edge every tier. Say 15 of those players have been on the same toon the whole expansion, they've done 300+ pulls on Stone Legion Generals, Sire Denathrius, Sylvanas, and 200 or however many pulls on Sludgefist, Painsmith Raznal, Fatescribe Roh-Kalo etc.

Let's say there's another five players on the roster that also got Cutting Edge, but maybe with a different guild, maybe they changed their main, maybe their spec got nerfed/buffed so they're playing holy priest now instead of discipline, etc.

And let's say the last five players on the roster either re-activated just for Sepulcher, or they were with a different guild that wasn't as advanced, etc. Either way they have 0 pulls on mythic SLG, Sire, Sylvanas, etc.

For more socially-oriented guilds it's not much of an issue. The 15 that know the fight (re) teach the fight to the other 10, done deal. But a lot of mythic guilds are pursuing the satisfaction of accomplishing something difficult and aren't there for the camaraderie. So now what do these guilds do?

Chances are some of the experienced raiders would rather gouge their eyes out with toga clips rather than re-do 300 wipes on Stone Legion Generals. Or even if it was easier with 3/4 of the raiders knowing what to do, my estimate is that it's still gonna be a 150+ wipe boss.

And this is to say nothing of the friction caused between the 15 players that have 6+ weeks of experience doing the fight watching the 10 that don't die in Phase 1.

Now toss in the next issue--the three-week rotation. Now the players that are learning the fight have a two-week gap after every week of progress, which is gonna exacerbate the skill level even more. (I feel the players that know the fight will be able to get back in to it easier and the newer players will need a few pulls each week to refresh it.) And it's not clear to me how extending lockouts will work either.

So although I think there's some sense in making all the efforts of the raid design last a little longer, re-releasing raids is not like re-releasing dungeons. The other reason for that is dungeons last 30 minutes and the pattern is generally like "completion-completion-barely miss timer-completion-completion-barely miss timer...etc." The pattern for mythic raids is "fail fail fail fail fail fail fail fail fail fail fail x 300 ....fail fail fail SUCCESS" which is very very different from dungeons.

Then there's a final issue, class stacking. With anachronistic knowledge of these fights, do you make players roll to required or over-performing specs? I know warlocks and hunters are doing real well in Sepulcher; but their pets never worked quite right on Denathrius because they don't travel through the mirrors but have to run across the room. I don't think it'll be that big of an issue as social considerations kind of trump these concerns except at the highest levels. Or put differently, let's say that Castle Nathria fight 'x' requires a death knight, a warlock, a couple great AoE DPS, a brewmaster, and a demon hunter tank. Then Sanctum fight 'y' requires 4-5 great single-target DPS, classes with short DPS cooldowns, a blood tank, stampeding roar, etc. So now what roster do you run when you have to cover all 31 fights in a three-week rotation?

And who knows, maybe the Fated affix will change the fights so much that it's new for everyone.

The last issue is that I believe that player counts have decreased dramatically since the launch of Shadowlands, so even if 2-3 players say "Hey, I like the guild, I'll be back for Dragonflight, but I'm not gonna spend 10-12 hours a week for four months doing something I've already accomplished" it's gonna make some pretty nasty recruitment problems.

In summary, though, I'm saying the re-release of these raids could cause guilds some friction as a majority of their players will know all the mechanics but a small minority won't.

Consider it an experiment - it seems Blizzard does.
And why not? Can't figure out how to counter raid-repetition burnout without trying things.

My opinion though? They ought to just keep all raids relevant throughout the expansion by upping their ilvls, as they do with m+.
One raid too popular or avoided instead? Consider it a learning opportunity for Blizzard.

[Luck4]

This would just mean you have to reclear the same boss again and again and again becuase of that one pice of gear. And not everyone in you raid needs the same boss. So in the end you have to clear everything or a few persons in your group are going to be pissed because their boss is not done.
And who honestly likes to go backto a raid immediatly after they have done the raid for 3 months allready.

What you're saying is the same as re-releasing all raids every Season, and what I was referring to is something close to TBC raids where the ilvl between tiers were tight close, and items weren't discarded so fast.

Anyway, this is not what I want, I think scrapping everything every Season is okay as long we get a new raid, something that Season 4 lacks and I think is not right.

Like I said above:

New Raid = New Season
Same Raid = Same Season