Fated raids difficulty`?

[Tziva]

The downstairs seemed overtuned - it seemed like he had too much health downstairs. Am I crazy? We used to send 4 DPS down on Heroic and had to send 6 down on Fated Normal last night and still almost missed the timer.

Downstairs does seems more health than before, but I can't tell you how much more since I've always sent "too many" downstairs for the first 40/20% (final 20% we only ever sent two but we never made it that far last night) just to get in and out quick and then clean up adds up top after. The very first attempt we did blow up downstairs a percent short, but part of that was that multiple people I assigned to go down didn't. I added a few more people later, probably too many in theory but banking on the fact that some people wouldn't actually go (and they didn't), and it was fine.

We had a harder time dealing with the Fated affix itself on that fight shielding things at the worst time and not getting the shield down fast enough (or the adds down fast enough after getting the shield down). In a fight that is already "everything needs to die first/fast," adding a barrier to the mix seemed unideal. Starting in the second round, we lost people to attrition, and then dealing with shelded MCs, shielded tank adds, shielded little skeletons, shielded icicles, shielded aboms, etc, in the later phases sucked. I think a lot of it was just the chaos of the fight. People complained they couldn't find the barrier fast enough in a sea of skeletons and with such a melee heavy group it was quick a lot of running around to the current priority target rather than DPSing. But some of it was also just really unfortunate timing, like adding the barrier to icicles gives you so little time to dps them to space out their health (with the barrier chunking a lot of it it immediately), or losing a tank because of how the shield overlapped with the tank adds or aboms (or both), etc. We wiped four times on the fight and then ran out of time. We'll finish up Thursday.

That said, part of it is probably my fault for just throwing everyone into it expecting it to fall over like all the prior Fated bosses (we one shot everything in Nathria minus one bugged abiliity, and everything prior in Sanctum), even with several that didn't know/remember the fight and at least one hard carry. It's not a very good fight for people to just wing. I'll go into it Thursday with a little bit more of a plan and clearer instructions so hopefully it's less of a mess.

Edit: one shot it the second night (very clean/smooth one shot) with people paying more attention. It does help to prematurely dispel the barrier add out before tank adds or icicles go out so it doesn't fall off naturally and shield them all, so I recommend doing that.

[Makaloff]

So I have no care about the raids, dont know the tactics really, and I just wanna get my mount. Will it just be toxic if I join a pug for normal mode? Cba having to buy 3x boosts, but I worry the mount will be removed when DF launches...And I hate missing out on mounts. I can carry my own weight in most cases, 268 feral druid, but I just have no desire to wipe.

And im sure many people like me :&

wiping is part of raiding, if youll leave after a wipe then you have nothing to do there. anyhow most groups ive been in have been smooth, i had 1 wipe on Fatescribe but outside of that its been smooth. the tuning is soft so people can complete the stuff even if majority have no clue whats going on

[Biglog]

The fated raids aren't really much harder, but the whole idea is something that wasn't well thought out. It bought Blizzard some more time not being in a content drought by recycling the raids. But for returning wow players coming back in Season 4, it's kind of painful. In the past a returning player only needed to learn the single current raid to catch-up. Now with the raid recycling adding fated mode, a returning player gets to learn 3 all at once with the weekly fated rotation, plus the fated mechanics on top.

If you've been playing since 9.0 and have done the 3 SL raids a hundred times, fated mode is a nice easy slightly harder mode for more gear. That fits into Blizzards design model to continue raising the grinding bar. But for returning players, it's a challenge if not overwhelming. Especially since the SL raids already have some unforgiving mechanics and are generally considered fairly difficult, Sepulcher more than the other 2.

[Ragnarohk]

Besides that, you could easily just watch or read a short summary of strategy for each one during trash on the way to the next one. Then you don't even need to store the mechanics in your head for very long.

This, I do this (usually as a tank or healer) when I come back to the game mid-tier after a break, without having any idea how the mechanics work. Just start the video of the next boss as soon as you kill one and listen to it while you do trash

I think Fat Boss isn'T a thing anymore? But there are some TLDR videos that sumarize the fight in 2-3 mins and separate the guide into roles, so you can even skip to the pertinent part.

[Tziva]

I think Fat Boss isn'T a thing anymore? But there are some TLDR videos that sumarize the fight in 2-3 mins and separate the guide into roles, so you can even skip to the pertinent part.

AFAIK FatBoss still makes videos as recently as this expac and they are still good, but they are still usually ~20minutes long. I watch them when a tier is released to prep as raid leader, but I honestly wouldn't really recommend them outside of that context due to the length. There are lots of shorter quick summary video guides out there to choose from. Hazelnutty makes some good ones that are shorter but thorough, but you can probably find stuff even shorter in the 2-3 minute range.

But yeah, I recommend just playing something like that as you do trash to the next boss for anyone stepping into Fated raids for the first time (or if you've forgot everything from the older raid by now). Then it's immediately in your head, and it's not a huge time sink. I have done this occasionally going back to bosses that I didn't remember as well as I wanted to, even as raid lead.