Sugestion on how to improve the quality of raids in cataclysm

[veemon_ro]

1. Lower the dificulty gap between Normal and heroic.

At the moment normal mode is incredibly easy while hard mode is exactly the oposite. This causes alot of newlystarted or mediocre guilds to think "hard mode is impossible" because the game doesn't provide a smooth learning curve for new players.
Basicly the first boss as a hard mode should be slightly dificult then the last boss normal and then bosses should become harder and harder as the instance goes on.

2. Make 2 instances per tier.

Alot of guilds that I know off have stoped raiding ulduar, just because toc gives better loot as they bring the "Why whipe for cheaper loot" mentality.
Its sad but true, alot of players do play the game for rewards or the promise of a reward and in many cases this comes from epics.

Having 2 instances share the same tier (like tk/ssc mh/bt) would increase the life span of both raiding instances, and also adds a bit more variety to the guilds raiding calendar.

3. Add a sense of progression back into the game

At the moment if I would start a new guild id begin raiding nax 10 then toc 25, skiping ulduar alltogether (wich is harder then toc btw)

While I understand new players should catch up to the end game raiding, people shouldn't be able to simply jump over instances. Otherwise one could just cancel his account untill the last raiding instance is available, play that then cancel his account again untill the next expansion.

4. Stop making instances puggable.

While I agree that every one should see all the content, they should do so inside a guild. Otherwise guilds will start to decline and experience alot of dificulties as players will realise they don't have to be in one in order to acomplish things anymore.
The keepers in ulduar were decent bosses that, while beeing easy, were also chalanging enough that most pugs wouldn't be able to clear them.

5. Stop showering people with epics.

The whole reason of epics beeing fun was that it took some time to gear your toon up. In tbc I've spend 2 months to get full t6 gear from mh and bt.
Now a days it takes maximum 2 weeks to gear up an alt to full epic making the excitment of geting a new item far less then what it used to be.

6.Make heroic 5 mans heroic again.
Add CC and make them chalanging. That way people can master their class a bit more and the experience of doing a heroic wouldn't be just "Gogogo pull gogogo aoe come on move gogogogo".

[seam]

1. Lower the dificulty gap between Normal and heroic.

No, keep it as is. It currently gives weaker guilds a chance to complete everything while giving stronger guilds the chance for a challenge.

2. Make 2 instances per tier.

I like the idea, but sadly it wont change the 'lets not go there, the loot isnt better!' mentality. Just like people skipped SSC/TK to go to Hyjal/BT

3. Add a sense of progression back into the game

There is, hardmodes. Progression isnt loot, if your guild can't do Naxx they can't do anything else. Yes, you can skip it through loot, but again, loot != Progression.

4. Stop making instances puggable.

By instances I'm going to hope you meant raids. The thing is, pugs arent near as bad as they used to be. I have seen good pugs clear ToGC10. Now if they made things hard enough to not be pugable it kinda kills their normal mode ideas.

5. Stop showering people with epics.

Loot never really was hard to get. In BC you couldn't buy the T6 gear itself with badges, but you could get gear that was just as good. The only thing that has changed is the gear you can actually get with the badges.

6.Make heroic 5 mans heroic again.

"Crap! I BROKE SHEEP! Wipe it up guys."
Jokes aside, heroics that take a lot of CC are bad. I remember MgT groups that wouldn't take my 2k dps lock in there due to me not having enough CC. Also, using CC isn't 'mastering' a class, it's learning to CC. I don't mind some CC being needed, but not so much that classes like shamans and locks can't go because they don't have enough.

[Aerikaya]

1) Hard modes are hard... THAT'S THE POINT

2) So theres a difference between 1 instance with 14 bosses and 2 instances with 7 bosses? Not really, especially when you can, for the most part, pick and choose which bosses you do in whatever order you want. Smaller instances tend to be linear, bigger instances provide diversity in kill orders.

3) Said before, progression is in the hardmodes. Normal mode is for everyone to see the content. If you feel you are "progressing" doing normal ToC 10/25, you should see a doctor because you are delusional.

4) Technically everything is puggable, or doing with a group of people not in the same guild. NOTHING is doable with morons that can't get out of the fire, dodge a yeti, do over 4k dps in ToC10 gear, nor understand how their class works. PuGs =/= Bads, but Bads usually end up as PuGs.

5) People are still working for gear. Farming a one room instance in normal mode over and over gets mind-numbing. Doing every heroic everyday to buy all your 226 badge gear is still a pretty good time sink. Epic does not have the same value it did in TBC or Vanilla, but its how Blizzard wants it. Heroic tags are the new purple.

6) Possibly the only point I agree with, but they don't have to be difficult to the point where you HAVE to have a mage to sheep, or a priest to MC. Maybe a tiered system for heroics, where some are designed more for new max leveled characters while others are for characters which have badge and heroic gear. BC was alot like this, having harder heroics like Shattered Halls and Magister's Terrace being noticeably harder than Ramparts and Underbog.

[veemon_ro]

[quote=Aerikaya ]
1) Hard modes are hard... THAT'S THE POINT

Did I say make them easyer? All I said is that the gap between normal and hard shouldn't be so huge to feel like you're doing a normal progression.
Either make the last normal bosses a bit harder, or make the first hard bosses a bit easyer. Or do both

2) So theres a difference between 1 instance with 14 bosses and 2 instances with 7 bosses? Not really, especially when you can, for the most part, pick and choose which bosses you do in whatever order you want. Smaller instances tend to be linear, bigger instances provide diversity in kill orders.

Yes obviously ssc and tk were very linear. I guess they should also stop making so many heroics eh? Just make a huge heroic with 20 bosses and people can choose wherever they want to go. By your analogy that would be better.

3) Said before, progression is in the hardmodes. Normal mode is for everyone to see the content. If you feel you are "progressing" doing normal ToC 10/25, you should see a doctor because you are delusional.

If you think some one should go to a doctor because of what he types on a forum about a video game then maybe you should see a shrink.

Oh and you keep saying "go do hardmodes" like its so easy. Tell you what. If you start your own guild. with random people from trade and then take your guild to toc hardmode, I will personally transfer on your server and give you 10k g but till then stfu cause you have no clue what you're talking about

4) Technically everything is puggable, or doing with a group of people not in the same guild. NOTHING is doable with morons that can't get out of the fire, dodge a yeti, do over 4k dps in ToC10 gear, nor understand how their class works. PuGs =/= Bads, but Bads usually end up as PuGs.

I can easily do nax and toc and voa with morons that do 4k dps and die in fire.
I could not do yog saron with morons for instance.

5) People are still working for gear. Farming a one room instance in normal mode over and over gets mind-numbing. Doing every heroic everyday to buy all your 226 badge gear is still a pretty good time sink. Epic does not have the same value it did in TBC or Vanilla, but its how Blizzard wants it. Heroic tags are the new purple.

Exactly so you agree with me that its not fun. Wich is why I wish that in cataclysm they make it so that epic items are epic again. Instances should drop 1 max 2 tokens of tier again so you don't gear yourself up in 2 weeks and most importantly tier items shouldn't be available from badges or "voa"

6) Possibly the only point I agree with, but they don't have to be difficult to the point where you HAVE to have a mage to sheep, or a priest to MC. Maybe a tiered system for heroics, where some are designed more for new max leveled characters while others are for characters which have badge and heroic gear. BC was alot like this, having harder heroics like Shattered Halls and Magister's Terrace being noticeably harder than Ramparts and Underbog.

Since bring the player not the class is in play almost EVERY class can cc. So "bringing a mage isn't the problem". The problem is that trash is so easy that it doesn't require any effort to get through it.

[Deleted]

Jokes aside, heroics that take a lot of CC are bad. I remember MgT groups that wouldn't take my 2k dps lock in there due to me not having enough CC. Also, using CC isn't 'mastering' a class, it's learning to CC. I don't mind some CC being needed, but not so much that classes like shamans and locks can't go because they don't have enough.

As a lock you weren't taken to MgT because of a lack of crowd control !? :S

Once you get to the demons (which was fairly quick if I remember) you could personally CC 4 targets at once.

1) Enslave one demon.
2) Use that demon to either tank or seduce another target.
3) Banish another demon.
4) Pull something back and fear it.


Fear was a great crowd control (slightly less now due to the recklessness change) if you knew how to use. Enslave is fantastic when fighting demons, as is banish.

Although I do agree that shamies sorely needed Hex.

Oh, and on topic:

Please bring back CC without crappy psuedo-pvp thrown in, I miss the feel of a perfectly executed pull. Some trash was better than bosses ocasionally (I'm looking at you TK and lootreaver).

[veemon_ro]

Yeah i've found it funny when a developer on tweeter said "lolz cc? you mean like what happened to faction champions?"

Well no wonder people suck at faction champions when they have no where else to brush up their CC'ing skills in the game.

[Beasterbrown]

1. These guilds should go back to Ulduar hard modes after clearing normal CC. Some of the drops from Ulduar hard mode are the best items in the game if you are not going to be doing ToGC.

2. Again, some items (including legendary) from Ulduar HM are still good and can not be replaced in ToC regular. Also it is good practice for building coordination and skills working together as a team.

The reason they did not do this is because they wanted to give you the loot pinata to get you ready for Icecrown. Also, Ulduar and Naxx are long enough to be one tier.

3. I'm not sure about this. personally I feel left out if I haven't completed all the content in the game =/. The whole reason ToC is so easy is so you can go back and finish Ulduar/start Icecrown with your uber gear. See the content, Get Ironbound Drakes and get you ready for Icecrown. It was a gift not a restriction saying you can only raid ToC.

4. This is why they are making guilds have levels and alot more percs in Cataclysm.

5. I agree here, they should make more use of rare items.

6. I would like this, but its a tough one. If heroics were that hard again seems like people might just run 10 naxx instead. And those who cant get a group for 10naxx might not do them at all. /shrug

[rabbimojo]

Long post inc!

1. Lower the dificulty gap between Normal and heroic.

I think there's something to be said for ensuring there's a way to challenge a guild continually. I think that exists already, since Ulduar still has plenty of content between ToC and ToGC. The "problem" then is just that iffy guilds are having trouble motivating players to wipe on old content.

This is a good time to recall that WoW is more or less easy on a technical level, and all the difficulty is on the social level. Partially, this difficulty exists because WoW players are not all the social butterflies they might be. Real leadership skills are commonly replaced with abusive strictness. Etc.

I don't think that's a problem Blizz can solve (although I think there's more they could do for it, it's an enormously difficult task). They can't make your guild value personal progression without requiring it of every guild (attunement, basically?) and that is something that they, and many other players, do not want.

Some of us have to be content merely seeing the content. :P Life does not always deal a generous hand.

2. Make 2 instances per tier.

I think is probably not a very useful suggestion. I wouldn't mind having two raids per tier if they were used as relief for one another, but I don't think it's a great use of "lore property" or anything. SSC and TK could both have been even more epic if they'd been their entire tier.

But it would be nice to have a tier with say, a ToC-style raid (low trash, more about the bosses) and something a bit closer to Naxx (or maybe some parts of Ulduar) where it was more of a big crawl through. I don't know how you'd balance the two, but something to provide different scenery and the like..

3. Add a sense of progression back into the game

Blizz allows people to jump over instances because they want people on the current raiding tier. Going back and doing previous raids is something to be decided by the guilds, and any guild with personal pride will either do progression, or not claim any such thing at all.

IE, not everyone -wants- to spend a ton of time raiding each week, and if the amount of time a guild is willing to invest is not enough to "get them through" some raid, then Blizzard has to let them skip that content eventually.

Before you say "Uld/Naxx/Walter's Tools and Sundries Shoppe doesn't take that long", I know. Believe me, I know how fast a well-tuned guild can clear content, even HMs. I'm just saying that most guilds are not well-tuned, because it is really truly difficult to find talented, devoted, skilled raiders on many of the servers out there. Even if you're the top guild on your realm and are nice, hardworking people, you will often have trouble pulling in enough talent. People are too dramatic. :P

Blizzard has chosen to cater to guilds saddled with various levels of "making do", as well. This is probably a good, shrewd business decision, but it's also a good decision from a design perspective. Forcing guilds to follow some standard would force Blizz to continually re-balance old content, too.

Imagine if you had to clear MC and all the other L60 content before you could unlock BC? IE, you couldn't even level to L61, and couldn't use any loot from BC, until you cleared vanilla. Then similarly require attunements and progression up through Sunwell before Northrend. Just one looong-ass ladder of progression.

People would burn out -far- sooner, and many people would never have entered the raiding game.

4. Stop making instances puggable.

Pugs aren't as bad as you think. Normal modes being puggable is a good thing, and as raid pugging becomes more acceptable, it eases the burden of backflagging new players/characters in guilds. I think of it a bit like the benefit of moving from single-realm to cross-realm battlegrounds. Allowing a bigger recruitment pool is a good thing.

5. Stop showering people with epics.

I'd half agree on this. I think it would be nice to make item color meaningful again, but I'm not sure how they would really do it. The original grey/white/green/blue/purple scheme doesn't have enough granularity. I think it's realistically still in place just to allow the -really- distracted (say, 8 year-olds) players to guide their item acquisition, and get some excitement out of drops. It's expected that, by the time you -can- get all-epics, you've been playing long enough to know the difference between a good item and a bad one.

6.Make heroic 5 mans heroic again.

While I don't think "more heroic heroics!" qualifies, I would -love- if they figured out how to make some serious 5-mannable content. I don't think we'll see it happen this xpac or even the next, as it requires some drastic reworking of the entire premise of WoW gaming. It's unlikely they'll ever attempt it here.

[veemon_ro]

1. These guilds should go back to Ulduar hard modes after clearing normal CC. Some of the drops from Ulduar hard mode are the best items in the game if you are not going to be doing ToGC.

The problem isn't that these guilds can't do it, its that the mentality players have who prefer doing the easy content then stop caring as "they seen everething".
Imo most players play to "see" not for the chalange. If you don't bealive me make your own guild and youd reach for the same conclusion/

2. Again, some items (including legendary) from Ulduar HM are still good and can not be replaced in ToC regular. Also it is good practice for building coordination and skills working together as a team.

Agree but the same problem remains. Convincing people to show up to do the hm is harder then the hm itself. And im talking about mediocre guilds here, the kind of guilds that were doing bt in tbc but never got into swp.

The reason they did not do this is because they wanted to give you the loot pinata to get you ready for Icecrown. Also, Ulduar and Naxx are long enough to be one tier.

Yeah they shouldn't of done that. Again I as a player could just log out on the last patch, play for 2 months and then log out and i would "see" everething.

I personaly loved the tbc way of boosting people. Make instances hard at launch and when the next tier comes, nerf the previously made instances.

3. I'm not sure about this. personally I feel left out if I haven't completed all the content in the game =/. The whole reason ToC is so easy is so you can go back and finish Ulduar/start Icecrown with your uber gear. See the content, Get Ironbound Drakes and get you ready for Icecrown. It was a gift not a restriction saying you can only raid ToC.

It shouldnt be like that. t9 should be harder then t8. You should farm ulduar and with the gear you got there to go to toc not the other way around.

4. This is why they are making guilds have levels and alot more percs in Cataclysm.

Yes i agree with this. But i honestly hope the rewards would be worth it. Otherwise people will still prefer to pug.

6. I would like this, but its a tough one. If heroics were that hard again seems like people might just run 10 naxx instead. And those who cant get a group for 10naxx might not do them at all. /shrug

Well you cant run allways 10 man nax since you need 9 other people. Then the first 10 man in cataclysm should be harder then heroics.

[Izenhart]

1. Lower the dificulty gap between Normal and heroic.

If by lower it you mean boost up the difficulty in the Normal one, I'm with it.

If you mean lower the Heric difficulty to reduce the gap, I'm not.

[veemon_ro]

I think there's something to be said for ensuring there's a way to challenge a guild continually. I think that exists already, since Ulduar still has plenty of content between ToC and ToGC. The "problem" then is just that iffy guilds are having trouble motivating players to wipe on old content.

Well i can't blame them. Ulduar is out for half a year now and alot of people are bored with it. The hard mode might be "new content" but in reality its just 20% different and it takes away the fun you have in the begining when the instance is new and you're curious to "find out whats behind the corner",

This is a good time to recall that WoW is more or less easy on a technical level, and all the difficulty is on the social level. Partially, this difficulty exists because WoW players are not all the social butterflies they might be. Real leadership skills are commonly replaced with abusive strictness. Etc.

Fully agree. But when every guild is doing the same content and everething is pugable. Its kind of hard to tell the average joe why its important to show up for the progress raid when he can

a) Join ANY other guild on the server since every one is doing the same content.
b) Pug the instance so he doesnt care if he logs on or not and misses the raid.

In tbc if you were doing black temple, chances were you had 3 maybe 5 other guilds on a medium pop server doing bt as well.
If some one would stop caring about loging on on time, he would miss the raid and be unable to get items that week and if he did it often he could even get kicked from the guild and then have only 4 other guilds he could join to.

I don't think that's a problem Blizz can solve (although I think there's more they could do for it, it's an enormously difficult task). They can't make your guild value personal progression without requiring it of every guild (attunement, basically?) and that is something that they, and many other players, do not want.

No just make a progression ladder that guilds need to start raiding from point A to get to point D rather then just every one to be able to hop to point D while skiping A B and C entirely.
And make it so that beeing in a guild is far more advantageous then soloing by
a) making instances be unpugable
b) The thing they are already making in cataclysm with the guild leveling up system is awesome.

Some of us have to be content merely seeing the content. :P Life does not always deal a generous hand.
I think is probably not a very useful suggestion. I wouldn't mind having two raids per tier if they were used as relief for one another, but I don't think it's a great use of "lore property" or anything. SSC and TK could both have been even more epic if they'd been their entire tier.

.

Thing is alot of people play to "see everething". Once you get to see it all the game isnt as much fun. Tbc and vanilla used to be a carrot on a stick. You could never see everething as you allways had more to see behind the corner.
The game was fun and you allways had something to do when loging on.
Now a days most people spend more time on an alt rather then on a main and if you're reading this, deep down you know im right.

But it would be nice to have a tier with say, a ToC-style raid (low trash, more about the bosses) and something a bit closer to Naxx (or maybe some parts of Ulduar) where it was more of a big crawl through. I don't know how you'd balance the two, but something to provide different scenery and the like..

Trash is good. It makes people relax between bosses. Some of the best moment ive had on vent were while doing trash mobs. The trash in ulduar was really good as well. No trash how ever is very boring and makes the instance last just several minutes once its on farm. Adding to the fact that there arent many instances to begin with can leed to 1/2 days a week of raiding wich is fine for a casual guild, but some one who wants to raid more cant do it.

Blizz allows people to jump over instances because they want people on the current raiding tier. Going back and doing previous raids is something to be decided by the guilds, and any guild with personal pride will either do progression, or not claim any such thing at all.

Again I showed you why i dont agree with this. It simply makes it hard for guilds to motivate members when all the guilds raid the same content. There is nothing wrong with beeing in a nax guild and progressing your way to ICC. In fact imo the game becomes 10x more boring when you have the last instance on farm then when youre climbing your way towards it.
I hope they dont make it the same in cataclysm

IE, not everyone -wants- to spend a ton of time raiding each week, and if the amount of time a guild is willing to invest is not enough to "get them through" some raid, then Blizzard has to let them skip that content eventually.

Yes but the people who want to invest time should. And blizzard did do it in TBC in a much more subtle way.
They would release very hard content and when new content was added the previous content was nerfed.
That way people who couldnt kill gruul and mag, manage to do it when bt and swp were out. Eventually gruul and mag became pugable but only when t6 was out.
What was wrong with this system?

Before you say "Uld/Naxx/Walter's Tools and Sundries Shoppe doesn't take that long", I know. Believe me, I know how fast a well-tuned guild can clear content, even HMs. I'm just saying that most guilds are not well-tuned, because it is really truly difficult to find talented, devoted, skilled raiders on many of the servers out there. Even if you're the top guild on your realm and are nice, hardworking people, you will often have trouble pulling in enough talent. People are too dramatic. :P

Hard modes are NOT hard. And this is coming from some one who raid leaded sunwell. Geting people to DO hardmodes is hard.
I remember whiping on brutalus for a few weeks since people didnt have enough gear, yet no one was q.q'ing back then.
Yet now with the same guild the ammount of q.q for whiping on XT HM pre nerf is enormous.
Why?
Because back then people where curious of "whats behind the corner" and wanted to down brutalus. and 2. If they would q.q and get kicked from the guild or not show online for brutalus they wouldnt find another swp guild that needed their class that easily.
In wotlk who cares about XT hm right?

Blizzard has chosen to cater to guilds saddled with various levels of "making do", as well. This is probably a good, shrewd business decision, but it's also a good decision from a design perspective. Forcing guilds to follow some standard would force Blizz to continually re-balance old content, too.

I don't have the numbers, but considering the number of friends i know (and probably any one that reads this has 1/2 friends that im talking about) who play for 1/2 months after every patch then cancel their accounts untill next patch, might not be a good monney maker like the old carrot on a stick strategy.

Imagine if you had to clear MC and all the other L60 content before you could unlock BC? IE, you couldn't even level to L61, and couldn't use any loot from BC, until you cleared vanilla. Then similarly require attunements and progression up through Sunwell before Northrend. Just one looong-ass ladder of progression.

Its NOT the same. I did have to clear dungeon/heroics/kara ssc/tk mh/bt before i could clear sunwell.
And I did have to clear dungeons/aq20//MC/zg/bwl/aq40 before i could clear nax.
How ever when I was in bt kara/ssc/tk was nerfed so much it wasnt 50% as hard as when i did it.

But in wotlk you have what nax wich is ridiculously easy and even new guilds can farm it since day 1.
Ulduar wich would take 2 months to farm for a newly started guild
and toc wich takes 3 days to be on farm.

SO for a new guild to spend 2 months to get into icc is not unreasonable.

People would burn out -far- sooner, and many people would never have entered the raiding game.

The reason alot of people raid now is because of pugs. Most of the people in pugs who fake dcs and ninja loot wouldn't get along in a raiding guild anyway.
But the thrend should be to find ways and help these people into guilds not make content for them.

Pugs aren't as bad as you think. Normal modes being puggable is a good thing, and as raid pugging becomes more acceptable, it eases the burden of backflagging new players/characters in guilds. I think of it a bit like the benefit of moving from single-realm to cross-realm battlegrounds. Allowing a bigger recruitment pool is a good thing.

Pugs are bad because

-It teaches people that faking a dc is a good thing
-It makes people expect that using vent isnt necesary
-Doesn't teach people a true guild like raiding enviroment
-It makes people expect to get epics on the first run and not to wait to get dkp.
-The content is made so easy that the instance is on farm in the first few weeks.

While it does make for a biger recruitment pool 80% of the reason guilds disband is because they recruit players with the mentality i wrote above.

I'd half agree on this. I think it would be nice to make item color meaningful again, but I'm not sure how they would really do it. The original grey/white/green/blue/purple scheme doesn't have enough granularity. I think it's realistically still in place just to allow the -really- distracted (say, 8 year-olds) players to guide their item acquisition, and get some excitement out of drops. It's expected that, by the time you -can- get all-epics, you've been playing long enough to know the difference between a good item and a bad one.

Its easy to do. Make bosses drop ONE epic token and 1 random loot drop. Make 10 and 25 raids have same lockout and make badges drop only from heroics not raids.

That way loot would be RARE and youd get an orgasm every time a new weapon drops for you rather then..yeah ok ive got t9 pants..i think they drop from voa too..

While I don't think "more heroic heroics!" qualifies, I would -love- if they figured out how to make some serious 5-mannable content. I don't think we'll see it happen this xpac or even the next, as it requires some drastic reworking of the entire premise of WoW gaming. It's unlikely they'll ever attempt it here.

I don't care as long as its not the joke of wotlk heroics again

[atomicalibi]

I actually agree with all of those except for 1 and 4

+ they are adding guild acheivments and progression which will hopefully push players to pug less and stick to a single guild while although i think this is a step in the right direction, i dont think that they should make it impossible to pug

[Skarrd]

I do think ToC25 was too facerollable. All it needs are relevant enrage timers for every boss. Northrend beasts doesn't have an enrage to be seen. I did a pug on my alt a while back and we had 4 dps alive for all of icehowl from badness on worms. We had plenty of healers and both tanks, didn't hit enrage. That is dumb. I rather liked the difficulty of ulduar on normal and for the hardmodes (before the nerfs). I do think normal modes should be puggable by good pugs, though. Mostly because it's nice for my alts and our alt runs, but ToC normal modes are far far too easy. The fights are all so basic and there are no dps requirements. Then they went ahead and nerfed the FC's dmg output. I can sit still on my mage in guild runs while being focused and not die. Hopefully ICC has some complicated fights that at least require intelligence, if not gear.

[Munk]

Ive read a lot here on this thread and ive got a lot of thoughts so apologies as they come out like a jumble.

The biggest problem that im seeing in WotLK which is tied to the "welfare epics" mentality is that good guilds just arent worth what they used to be. Dont get me wrong, being in a top 200 guild still has amazing perks but recruiting is really difficult for the better guilds out there because with the small disparity in loot between normal and heroic/HM's the VAST majority of talent thats NOT clearling heroic/HM's simply just doesnt care.

There is no "WIFM"* for those players to seek out a better, more structured, and ultimately successful guild because the reward is so little and the feeling of personal risk so great.

Im all for closing the gap between heroic mode and normal mode, but probably not in the way the OP mentioned. Im perfectly happy with the difficulty of "heroic modes" as there is currently only 2 that I have not achieved being Heroic Anubarak, and 25m alone in the darkness. I like the idea of making the INSTANCE accessible to many but like hyjal or bt the gatekeeper bosses need to be the easy ones NOT the end bosses. Not the yoggs, anubarak's and KT's.
In my mind there is NO excuse for a guild that cant kill yogg +4 to be able to kill anubarak and yet thats sadly the case.

I dont think blizzard needs to lower the number of drops from each boss but rather make each consecutive boss harder than the last so there isnt the "if you can get past gormok you can get past anub" mentality. By doing this you help set the incentive for the skilled players that are rotting in mediocre guilds more willing to step out and join a more progressed, successful, and talented guild which in turn makes those guilds more likely to hold onto there members since content is difficult.

*WIFM being "whats in it for me"

[seam]

As a lock you weren't taken to MgT because of a lack of crowd control !? :S

Once you get to the demons (which was fairly quick if I remember) you could personally CC 4 targets at once.

1) Enslave one demon.
2) Use that demon to either tank or seduce another target.
3) Banish another demon.
4) Pull something back and fear it.

In MgT, unless you have forgotten, not every pull had a demon, and many didn't. Groups also were very very hesitant to let me fear yo-yo.

And on topic, I really like things how they are. Yes, a lot of players are in the "I don't get anything from it, I'm not doing it" mentality....but it was like that in BC also. Or did you all forget those 3-5 people in your guild who all got sick on progression nights?

[veemon_ro]

In MgT, unless you have forgotten, not every pull had a demon, and many didn't. Groups also were very very hesitant to let me fear yo-yo.

And on topic, I really like things how they are. Yes, a lot of players are in the "I don't get anything from it, I'm not doing it" mentality....but it was like that in BC also. Or did you all forget those 3-5 people in your guild who all got sick on progression nights?

Those demon packs were the biggest and nastiest in the entire instance. In fact you didnt need more then 1 mage to reach to that point.

The thing with bc was that it was much, much more rewarding to do a hard boss so it was more motivating to people.
The true reward of downing vashj and kael wasnt the epics, but the ability to SEE black temple and mount hyjall.

That and once you've beat all the bosses up to vashj and kael the dificulty gap was not that insane

[Melonberry]

1. Lower the dificulty gap between Normal and heroic.

If anything raise the gap. Harder hardmodes are always welcome.

2. Make 2 instances per tier.

Yeah, can't really argue.

3. Add a sense of progression back into the game

There is a sense of progression. It's the same as bc or even vanilla. If you go from naxx 10 to toc 25 you are overcoming gear requirements with skill. Most people can't do this. They will have to take their babysteps, and I know many guilds are still working on ulduar and perhaps have 2 bosses down in toc10.

4. Stop making instances puggable.

Most of vanilla was puggable, not sure if it was pugged...but it's easier content and therefore if it was ran today...it would be pugged. All of BC was pugged on most servers. Often to the progression of the top guilds or just under. Everything looks better with rose colored glasses on. Hell, ony was 3 manned at 60. Try 3 manning even ony10 now.

5. Stop showering people with epics.

In tbc you were bad. Last time I checked you couldn't get out in ICC loot yet anyways, so you can't have done it in 2 weeks. Unless you are comparing MH/BT loot to say, naxx/226 loot...in which case you are dumb. You could gear out in Kara and with badges just as fast as you can gear out in naxx/226 loot now.

6.Make heroic 5 mans heroic again.
Add CC and make them chalanging. That way people can master their class a bit more and the experience of doing a heroic wouldn't be just "Gogogo pull gogogo aoe come on move gogogogo".

No.
For one, people would stop doing them.
For two, tbc heroics weren't fun. You only did them because you had to. And if you were in good gear you still pulled it all and aoed it down. With the accessibility of both raiding and information gear just came a bit faster than before.


I'd go as far as to say that more people are enjoying raids now than ever before. Mostly due to the fact that more people are able to raid and progress instead of hitting a wall on the first trash pull. If anything, I learned more about my classes in wrath than I did before, because I get to play more than just my main. I'd have to say the knowledge of my main went up a lot too. Participating in top end raids forced me to learn and just flat out get better...something I would have never had a chance to do in BC. Even mediocre guild are attempting hardmodes now, that's a huge leap from .2% of players even seeing content. That's why people pug the content too...the playerbase as a whole is not nearly as bad as before.

Raiding is better now than ever before. Stop being bad.

[sd78]

1. Lower the dificulty gap between Normal and heroic.

At the moment normal mode is incredibly easy while hard mode is exactly the oposite. This causes alot of newlystarted or mediocre guilds to think "hard mode is impossible" because the game doesn't provide a smooth learning curve for new players.
Basicly the first boss as a hard mode should be slightly dificult then the last boss normal and then bosses should become harder and harder as the instance goes on.

2. Make 2 instances per tier.

Alot of guilds that I know off have stoped raiding ulduar, just because toc gives better loot as they bring the "Why whipe for cheaper loot" mentality.
Its sad but true, alot of players do play the game for rewards or the promise of a reward and in many cases this comes from epics.

Having 2 instances share the same tier (like tk/ssc mh/bt) would increase the life span of both raiding instances, and also adds a bit more variety to the guilds raiding calendar.

3. Add a sense of progression back into the game

At the moment if I would start a new guild id begin raiding nax 10 then toc 25, skiping ulduar alltogether (wich is harder then toc btw)

While I understand new players should catch up to the end game raiding, people shouldn't be able to simply jump over instances. Otherwise one could just cancel his account untill the last raiding instance is available, play that then cancel his account again untill the next expansion.

4. Stop making instances puggable.

While I agree that every one should see all the content, they should do so inside a guild. Otherwise guilds will start to decline and experience alot of dificulties as players will realise they don't have to be in one in order to acomplish things anymore.
The keepers in ulduar were decent bosses that, while beeing easy, were also chalanging enough that most pugs wouldn't be able to clear them.

5. Stop showering people with epics.

The whole reason of epics beeing fun was that it took some time to gear your toon up. In tbc I've spend 2 months to get full t6 gear from mh and bt.
Now a days it takes maximum 2 weeks to gear up an alt to full epic making the excitment of geting a new item far less then what it used to be.

6.Make heroic 5 mans heroic again.
Add CC and make them chalanging. That way people can master their class a bit more and the experience of doing a heroic wouldn't be just "Gogogo pull gogogo aoe come on move gogogogo".

I agree with all of the above 100%

The game is now a complete farce. I cancelled my subscription a month ago.

[sd78]

Most of vanilla was puggable, not sure if it was pugged...but it's easier content and therefore if it was ran today...it would be pugged. All of BC was pugged on most servers. Often to the progression of the top guilds or just under. Everything looks better with rose colored glasses on. Hell, ony was 3 manned at 60. Try 3 manning even ony10 now.

No it wasn't. Not by a long shot.

The typical 'casual' guild couldn't kill the Bat Boss in ZG

[sd78]

And Ony 3 manned at lv 60? What? The same Ony that needed 40 people? Maybe it was 3 manned by 3 x lv 70 when Ony remained lv 60....

Exactly.

I four-manned Ony after hitting lvl70 and it took over half an hour. The only way it would even remotely possible at 60 would be abusing some borderline exploit.

It always makes me laugh the rose-tinted revisionism where 'everything got PUG'd in Classic'. My favourite one was when someone claimed that BWL got farmed by PUGs because it was 'easy'. He then produced a as 'proof' a pic of a raid stacked with Naxx epics, including the chest from Four Horseman (which VERY few guilds downed). The 'PUG' was made up of players from a total of three hardcore raid guilds...