Is this the easiest Normal/Heroic Raid ever?

[Phob]

Item levels where always close between difficulties since the invention of M+. The only difference is they made heroic raiders less reliant on m+ to get said ilvl. Helps for raid trinkets more than anything, ilvl across the rest of gear would of gotten to the same point regardless from M+.

This is more of a short term boost than a long term one as getting upgrade crests is free as fuck right now giving people a quicker boost than usual. I would guess they will nerf the weekly crest cap in the next season, because they overkilled it a bit(also the biggest reason the RWF ended so quickly).

Idk I don't ever remember a normal piece of gear being 4 ilvls behind heroic and 13 ilvls behind mythic. Having the gear upgrade system boost you this much at the beginning of a patch when the majority of the player base plays will make more people clear more content quicker making this content patch one of the easiest. We couldn't even upgrade 1 single piece to max every week with the old system now we can upgrade multiple.

- - - Updated - - -

Just because you get to higher gear potential faster doesn't make something easier or harder. The result is the same. Sark is an easy farm when everyone is 430+, archimonde was an easy farm when everyone had ring. This ain't rocket science. One might of took longer, both end in the same result.

What? More gear absolutely means easier content? You even say so in the next sentence? lol

[Kiltura]

I think it is a mix of the raid not being too difficult (which is ok) and the gearing process being totally out of controll (which is too much IMHO)

I currently have ilvl 440 equipped and the only loot I got from the raid was 4 pieces tier set heroic.

I upgraded everything I got but 2 items to 441 or 437 and crafted two 447 items. I do have two items with 437 (normal upgraded) instead of 441 (heroic upgraded) but they are worth it (leech / socket > 4 ilvl).

All in all, we are at the end of week two today and I am already fully equipped. We haven't even made significant progress in mythic raiding yet (First Boss) and we already discuss about extending because there is no point in killing the first few bosses again and again.

This is a joke.

Whatever, free CE, here we come.

[erifwodahs]

absolutely did just not in the same sense

Normal was 10 man Heroic was 25 man.

HC and Normal differs mechanically. Naxx didn't, I would argue 25 was easier because you can have all the buffs instead of running suboptimal 10 man where you do 20% less dmg because there is not boomie and demo in your raid.

[czarek]

Kinda yes. Already done full normal and 5/9 hc in a single runs so far. With not changed gear since end of 10.0

[VinceVega]

Yeah it is rather easy.
But you get gear like crazy right now and can upgrade it nearly to mythic before ever setting foot into mythic.

Gearing has become a joke and trivializes content way to fast.

[Surfd]

HC and Normal differs mechanically. Naxx didn't, I would argue 25 was easier because you can have all the buffs instead of running suboptimal 10 man where you do 20% less dmg because there is not boomie and demo in your raid.

Depended a lot on the fights. Some fights in Naxx were significantly easier in 10 man groups due to all the extra room you had. Less players in same size space made Thaddeus a total joke in 10 man. You could literally have 90% of your raid group just stay in the same place and totally ignore the + / - charge mechanic for example. Some fights were also just mechanically easier due to the changes they effectively had to make to account for only 10 people.

[potis]

They tune around the base level of the previous rewards
Normal is tuned around 402-415
Early heroic is 415-420
This ignores that the 402 gear can boost to 428

Should they tune higher? If they did then you'd see "this raid is too overtuned"

Yeah but i mean, i have been playing mostly with the same people for 8 years, they dont magically get better i can tell when things end up being a bit "eh".

What i am seeing right now, is basically gear that usually comes around the 3rd/4th week, mostly by the 70% that does M+, carrying the other 30% of the raid, is already here week one/two which is clear as day.

And at the same time, that 30% that never does M+ or generally is always less geared than the rest, is running around with a higher tier weapon, which they usually dont get for a few weeks.

[erifwodahs]

Depended a lot on the fights. Some fights in Naxx were significantly easier in 10 man groups due to all the extra room you had. Less players in same size space made Thaddeus a total joke in 10 man. You could literally have 90% of your raid group just stay in the same place and totally ignore the + / - charge mechanic for example. Some fights were also just mechanically easier due to the changes they effectively had to make to account for only 10 people.

Not sure about that. Besides Raz with needing 2 priests in 25 I did not notice any differences at all in Classic Wrath. Only bosses with spacing was KT and Saph - and again, in normal raids it's the same - if you do 10 people raid and 30 people raid space changes - but it's still normal difficulty. HC has new mechanics and additional effects added as well as harder tuning.

[czarek]

Yeah it is rather easy.
But you get gear like crazy right now and can upgrade it nearly to mythic before ever setting foot into mythic.

Gearing has become a joke and trivializes content way to fast.

I think they want more ppl to achive mythic raid and keymaster as common idea for everyone in seasons. I dont care tbh. I like that way. Maybe short seasons?

[Kaykay]

It is easier, and it's great. Best raid in a decade.

Allow people to play the game for fun, leave the sweaty nolife bullshit in mythic difficulty.

Imagine playing on a schedule 2-3 days a week, fucking garbage requirement to play a game

Puglyfe is great.

This season in total, with crests and m+ changes, is the best wow has been in a long time, no longer gated by shitty weekly bullshit for no reason, forced to do retarded daily quests to get a socket in 2 months.

We're getting upgrades regularly, every playsession gives you something, where in previous seasons, if you didnt get your bis shit from vault in the once a week lottery, everything else you do that week was a waste of time, only serving to get another lottery ticket for next week.

[richardhuntr]

I don't mind the raid being easier, one of the complaints I heard about the previous tier was that it was hard for a 1st tier raid. That said I hope that mythic brings some challenge when we start it!

[Nalam the Venom]

Maybe it’s worth giving this raid a try then.

Not doneany current content raids since nighthold

[Revamp Man]

Yeah but i mean, i have been playing mostly with the same people for 8 years, they dont magically get better i can tell when things end up being a bit "eh".

What i am seeing right now, is basically gear that usually comes around the 3rd/4th week, mostly by the 70% that does M+, carrying the other 30% of the raid, is already here week one/two which is clear as day.

And at the same time, that 30% that never does M+ or generally is always less geared than the rest, is running around with a higher tier weapon, which they usually dont get for a few weeks.

Yep and I can say if you asked those lower geared players (half my raid) they prefer this over constant wiping. I'll just hit mythic a little early

[Tojara]

It's the easiest raid I've seen in awhile from a normal/heroic standpoint. The only thing I can think of being easier in recent memory (and it's scary that recent means Legion) is probably Emerald Nightmare.

There are absolutely 'hard' bosses in there, but from a normal/heroic lens it's probably Zskarn, Neltharion and Sarkareth. Why it's like this probably boils down to a few things which is normally not the case. The amount of bug fixes or tuning fixes for this raid is remarkably low compared to past raids, which in my opinion is a good thing because it tells you that it was more or less tested properly. The mechanics can be punishing, but most of them are pretty intuitive and you can figure them out fairly quickly. Even bosses like Sarkareth with a lot of visual clutter you quickly figure out what you're suppose to be looking for. Those bosses that I mentioned being difficult are bosses with mechanics that you can offload onto select players, to which you can boil down an encounter to try not to stand in the bad (mostly).

As a final note they aren't really gate keeping gear as badly as they use too. For all the whining about the new upgrade system (and yes, I will agree it takes a lot of inventory space) it's actually a really good system for everybody involved. World content gear can be upgraded all the way to 424 with some pieces allowing you to get to 437, LFR allows you to get up to 424 gear, and the difference between normal and heroic iLvLs fully upgraded is 437 versus 441. It takes out all bad qualities of the old valor system, meaning that there's no real need to hold onto currency for a really long time for fear of wasting a hard capped currency. That's not even counting small perks like TW caches and raids actually being more useful than they've ever been (which IMO is fantastic).

All in all, I don't think it's a bad thing. Mythic was cleared at the tail end of the first week, which historically means the tuning might be a little lower in that difficulty than normal, but I also don't think that's a bad thing either. Those people raid upwards of 16 hours a day, have dedicated WA makers, and play more in a week than a standard player might play in nearly two months. Mythic is normally the place where tuning issues are usually really bad as well, and in this case they actually buffed the last two bosses before they reached them.

"Easy" doesn't mean bad. Mythic comparatively is still hard, and having players actually dip into normal, let alone heroic for the first time in ages because a raid is more approachable and the pathing towards collecting gear is straight forward is absolutely a good thing IMO. I'm pretty sure most Mythic raiders would be fine with just a couple brutally hard bosses than an 3/4 of the raid being a slog.

[Osmeric]

It would be interesting to hear them explain why they've made it easier. Was it just that raid participation was too low in the previous tier, or has fallen too much, or (less likely) is there some deeper reason?

Right now, wowprogress records 13052 guilds having downed a boss on N or above in this raid. In contrast, some 24150 guilds are recorded as having downed a boss in N or above in Vault. Neither of those numbers includes China.

[jeezusisacasual]

The best way to bolster activity is to make it as forgiving and easy to enter then go from that point. What good is a raid if no one experiences it? Does that make the artist or in this case Dev happier that few people get to take part in their masterpiece?

We are nearly half way cleared in mythic and i usually leave once i clear Heroic but i have stayed this time simply due to the level of annoyance being so damn low which is brilliant, this is the right step into showing the larger community that raiding is not some mountain to overcome. Do i want the days of TBC level of ease in the raids? No but this feels about right and with that means a longer break ( likely skipping 10.1.5 all together and a 10.1.7 if one is coming ). Let the game be casual enough that you can play other games while maintaining your toon is a win FOR EVERYONE. For reference i am 434 ARMS and 433 Prot.

[Osmeric]

Do i want the days of TBC level of ease in the raids?

What are you talking about? Almost no one cleared all the raids in TBC. Did you mean WotLK?

[Biomega]

Almost no one cleared all the raids in TBC.

What do you mean by that? Got some data of some kind?

[Lunareste]

What do you mean by that? Got some data of some kind?

In original TBC, Sunwell was a DESTROYER. I doubt most guilds who could get 6/9 BT could even complete the trash to Kalecgos.

[Biomega]

In original TBC, Sunwell was a DESTROYER. I doubt most guilds who could get 6/9 BT could even complete the trash to Kalecgos.

So what they're REALLY saying is "few people cleared Sunwell"? Because that's not really helping make the point they were trying to make.