Sugestion on how to improve the quality of raids in cataclysm

[Melonberry]

No, back then you needed 40 people to do a raid and boss battles could even last up to 30 minutes in such cases.
There was ALOT of room for error and for some one to do a mistake and cause a whipe.

Now you have 25 people and boss battles last 10 minutes maximum. They have no enrage timers and some bosses can be killed even if half the raid dies after the boss is bellow 50%. Id like to see you do lets say the emperor twins with half the raid dead at 50%.

Heh id love to see you get a PUG of 40 people who dont fake dcing, go afk etc.
Id like to see how you manage to CC all the mobs and make sure no one breaks sheeps (and yes back then trash wasnt just round them up and aoe, youd have to make sure you cc and respect target assigments).
And most importantly id like to see you manage to get your nax pug to get the dps required to kill KJ.
As I remember back then, we would do an onyxia run before nax, just so every one would get the cry of the warchief buff for the KZ fight.

You're right about bosses having a lot of room for error. Of course you don't know what that means. It means you can mess up a lot and still down the boss. Completely true about vanilla bosses.

And while you are correct about bosses only lasting about 10 minutes now, that's because of enrage timers...Which make bosses harder...I figured that was obvious. All those auto-shot-afk hunters in vanilla? Yeah you'd have to kick them now. And apparently you can do vanilla bosses with 92.5% of the raid dead from 100%. Quite an improvement to require half the raid to be alive for half the battle. (of course you could never do say, heroic anub with half the raid dead at 50%, but you're bad and will never see that content so you wouldn't know.)

It's easy to get a pug of 40 people who don't fake DC or afk constantly. If they do, you blacklist them. It's simple. CC shouldn't be an issue since CC is still used. It just gets outgeared eventually. (Just like..-gasp- vanilla trash)

Doing ony before KJ wouldn't be required if everyone was good. Like, as good as today. People know their rotations, how to gear, how to do everything. Sure the gear was just junk back then and loaded with bad stats, but not all of it. Nowadays people wouldn't just grab the naxx purple because it's purple and from naxx, they would sim the hell out of it to see if it is really an upgrade. If it wasn't, they'd use their older item that gave more dps. That's near unheard of in vanilla terms...

Just because you seemingly haven't improved since vanilla, that doesn't mean no one has.

[Astray]

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 think heroics should be less outgearable. There are ways to to this, like making Lokens nova "one shot", or making cc needed because mobs support each other with debuffs on the tank.
Smartness should be awarded more than gear.

[Starstruk]

2. Make 2 instances per tier.

great idea, having 2 saves as opposed to a fuck long instance with over 9000 bosses is something blizzard should bring back. but there always needs to be lolore so maybe blizzard are running out of ideas???

[Ultralisk]

Nowadays people wouldn't just grab the naxx purple because it's purple and from naxx, they would sim the hell out of it to see if it is really an upgrade. If it wasn't, they'd use their older item that gave more dps. That's near unheard of in vanilla terms...

This is a very good point. Even the most casual player these days knows about CC, letting the tank pull, and watching aggro at least somewhat (not that that's so important now). Most people have some idea of what stats they need etc.

Back in Vanilla I had a tweaked pre-raid-BiS spellpower set for my fire mage. Only 2600 health and about 4.5k mana unbuffed but I had 360 fire damage and regularly crit for over 1k with Scorch. I always laughed at the MC raiders in full Arcanist with their umpty billion spirit and int and 200 spellpower.

It makes me sad that all gear is itemised so similarly now, so there's little advantage in knowing game mechanics. If it's purple and it's your armour type then it's probably good enough for you. Where's the tradeoffs?

[sd78]

3 manning ony40 at level 60. It was easily soloed at 70. Vanilla was hard right?

LMFAO!!!!!

Yeah, a guild with KT on farm abusing a borderline exploit in 2007(!) to 3man Ony represents the level of difficulty as a whole...LOL!

And I said puggable...Not that it was pugged. Although a lot of it was. Given todays level of info/addons/player skill...It would all be pugged. Nothing is really complex in pretty much all of the fights. And yes, I used to see MC pugs near daily. BWL pugs maybe once a week. (both being selective about who they bring of course...not like today)

You are full of shit.

MC was only partically PUG'd on one of my two (high population) servers and attempting anything higher was unheard of. I absolutely GUARENTEE that the 'BWL PUG' you refer to was stacked with players in full T2/T3 from hardcore guilds. You're probably the same guy who posted the pic of the raid wearing I refered to earlier.

Given that way more people didn't know how to optimize their dps/heals/tankage back then than now...that's acceptable. If they did I'm sure there would have been naxx pugs

Oh please...not this bullshit again.

I had a plethora of mods telling me what to do and the oldschool Decursive that could auto-cleanse the entire raid by spamming one button.

You both are horrible. It was soloable at 70...and that only took ~20 minutes. No wonder you never saw pugs, if you think you are the good people on your server....-shudder-

LMFAO!!!!!


Let me guess, you're going to post a clip of someone in full Sunwell epics slowly grinding Ony down in 2008 using a specific spec and try to claim that was the norm in BC?

Seriously, were you all on horrible servers or something? No ony pugs in vanilla? No MC pugs? Of course since some of you took half an hour to 4 man ony at 70, maybe you just weren't invited.

No, it's because you are LYING.

[sd78]

Content was tuned around the fact that everyone was bad. TBC was tuned a bit tighter, while people were doing 3.6k on brut, the average person in a good guild was getting a lot closer, doing at least 2k in a similar fight.

Nowadays, everyone does 90%+ of what the people in the top guilds do. Content is tuned around everyone being...fairly good, but not the near perfect we actually see so many people doing. If the current cap was 60, ony would be pugged with 5 people or less constantly. People are that much better now.

Hell, togc10 and 25 are both pugged now, and often full clears. OS25 +3 zerg has been pugged since sometime in the ulduar patch. You don't think the people pugging this stuff could have pugged through naxx40? Naxx40's strats and dps requirements are way lower than togc.

What a LOAD OF CRAP.

Vanilla was INFINITELY harder than the joke that is WotLK. Everything has been dumbed down and made easier, even game mechanics like having multiple HoTs stack and tauntable bosses.

The bad players in 'casual guilds' who couldn't beat the Bat Boss in ZG now chain-farm undertuned content. It's as simple as that.

There weren't 11 million players back then. Also, everything was tuned around people being absolutely fucking horrible back then. Even naxx40. Sure, the best players in the best guilds did about 1.4k on patchwerk, but the average player did like 200.

Bullshit.

The 'average player' doing that poor DPS wouldn't even be in a position to attempt Patches unless they were an alt in a guild which already had him on farm.

[Astray]

Vanilla was INFINITELY harder than the joke that is WotLK. Everything has been dumbed down and made easier, even game mechanics like having multiple HoTs stack and tauntable bosses.

Vanilla was ha~ha~ha~ha~ha~ha~ha~ha~ ololololol xDDDD

Don't stand in the fire you 10 afk people. Lets farm nature resistance items. Run around the corner for T2, hey everyone, not just 35 out of 40. Oh one was lagging again olololol xD

The game has greatly improved in encounter mechanics and hardmodes are more about skill than almost everything from vanilla and tbc. Later AQ40 and Naxx-40 were unforgiving, so was Sunwell, but so are hardmodes. Try Yogg-0.

Vanillas difficulty was getting the group together and make sure everyone was listening what to do. The encounters were "run out of the fire" and the usual stuff, just like now. Olololol oldskool elitist xD You were so awesome as a player with your automatic "do 100% of my work" dispell makro and your 2 damage spells and your awesome 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 rotation.

[sd78]

Vanilla was ha~ha~ha~ha~ha~ha~ha~ha~ ololololol xDDDD

Don't stand in the fire you 10 afk people. Lets farm nature resistance items. Run around the corner for T2, hey everyone, not just 35 out of 40. Oh one was lagging again olololol xD

The game has greatly improved in encounter mechanics and hardmodes are more about skill than almost everything from vanilla and tbc. Later AQ40 and Naxx-40 were unforgiving, so was Sunwell, but so are hardmodes. Try Yogg-0.

Vanillas difficulty was getting the group together and make sure everyone was listening what to do. The encounters were "run out of the fire" and the usual stuff, just like now. Olololol oldskool elitist xD You were so awesome as a player with your automatic "do 100% of my work" dispell makro and your 2 damage spells and your awesome 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 rotation.

Oh please...

WotLK is random trade chat PUGs stacked with bad players facerolling through undertuned content. These same players couldn't kill the Bat Boss in ZG with a raid in highend blues. They simply couldn't do it.

[sd78]

Casual Players aren't necessarily Bad Players. However, ALL Bad Players claim to be 'Casual' as an excuse for being bad.

[LeperHerring]

There is progression, but its only in the hard modes.

Guess that depends on how you define "progression". To me progression means that when you kill a boss for the first time you get to see a brand new boss, in a brand new part of the instance with some brand new lore. I don't see how working on a boss that I've already killed three times this week just to see another boss that I've killed three times this week is progress by any meaningful definition; it's just doing the same crap over and over again.

[Domestikos]

I personally don't complain about the current difficulty level. I found Ulduar well tuned, and am confident ICC will be as well.

But the thing that worries me is the sense of progression others here have mentioned. Sure, I'm okay with everyone having the chance of seeing the content, but there's absolutely no reason why they would need to see it right away! Freshly dinged 80's just are not supposed to be able to do the current tier content. If I myself dinged 80 now, I'd love there to be something to look forward to, that being the highest tier raids. I'd want to work towards it by first progressing through heroics and lower tier raids. Now, when a "casual" clears the normal content, what's there left to see? The treshold for hardmodes being as high as it is (not a bad thing), not much really. This lowers the lasting appeal of the game, and the developers are effectively shooting themselves in the foot. If that player had had to clear the old contest first, he would enjoy the game (and pay) for much longer. The older raids are also made next to obsolete. New players possibly won't even see Naxx, OS or Malygos at all.

So, if there's one thing I want from Cataclysm endgame, it's this: in any point of the game, a fresh 85 MUST first get gear from normal 5mans, then heroic 5mans, then first tier 10mans, then first tier 25mans and 10man hards, and so on. Keep the difficulty level, but bring back the sense of progression!

[Gron]

Agreed Domestikos, and agree with the following:

Casual Players aren't necessarily Bad Players. However, ALL Bad Players claim to be 'Casual' as an excuse for being bad.

[Domestikos]

Ok, I might have chosen my words poorly. Of course I don't mean literally forcing anyone to do anything or releasing content periodically in that way. Just making the difference between, say, normal level 80 5man and a heroic or first tier 10man great enough to strongly encourage players to gear up first. And making it so that at a later point (such as this point in WotLK) the newcomers can't just jump into greater itemlevels, skipping the entry content, which could be achieved by making the later-stage heroics actually require good gear before it's encouraged to attempt them. Naturally players could still boost each other, and nothing could or should be done about it.

I understand Coliseum 5man and raids, along with the 3.3 5mans serve as a gear reset, but I just don't see the point of it. Before Cata arrives there would still be plenty of time for a newcomer to progress through the entire instance arsenal of WotLK and still see Arthas. Why the rush? This is a little offtopic yes, but I'm only saying I'd rather not see a similar situation in Cataclysm.

[Domestikos]

Surely there is a middleground between the extremes of Vanilla and the current WotLK-stage's "ding 80 -> tier9". TBC was mostly on the right tracks in my eyes, except for the attunements, which aren't necessary.

I'd also clarify that my mindset isn't "I worked hard, I don't want others to have it easy". I want to work hard to reach the absolute highest-end content, because when I reach that, I've seen it all. And I believe great many others look for that lasting appeal as well. Again, in the current system the lasting appeal suffers.

[sd78]

in any point of the game, a fresh 85 MUST first get gear from normal 5mans, then heroic 5mans, then first tier 10mans, then first tier 25mans and 10man hards, and so on. Keep the difficulty level, but bring back the sense of progression!

100% correct.

-WotLK Heroics were so easy that they made normal lvl78+ instances completely redundant. I was in beta and had two lvl80s on live yet literally have never done normal HoL, HoS or UP.

-This was compounded by the fact that the actual raid content on release was ridiculously easy to the point where 25Spider Wing was less challenging than heroics, while dropping some of the best gear in the game at the time!

-Blizzard took a step in the right direction with Uld (even after the nerfs), then completely wrecked raid itemisation by introducing an undertuned subsequent tier and started handing out ilvl245 badge rewards for facerolling heroics (last UK I ran took 12min to complete). This basically made Uld redundant.

Whoever is directing PVE content at Blizzard is an idiot.

[Domestikos]

I think it suffers when you get into the mindset of "Anub 25 HM or Yogg +0" isn't absolute high end content.

Be that as it may, for me the highest end content is the newest tier raid, ie. currently TotC and soon ICC. As it is for the majority of casual players who have no interest in even attempting the hardest hardmodes and consider seeing new stuff the most important objective, I'd dare to argue.

What comes to that middleground, like I said mostly as things were in TBC. I have no interest in planning a whole endgame structure here, but some points would be: start with a gear reset so that the first tier content cannot be steamrolled in last expansion's gear, make heroics hard again, don't bring back attunements, don't make needless later gear resets such as 3.2/3.3. Ideally bring new tiers of 5mans later on, with increased requirements and rewards for those who don't raid but enjoy 5mans.

Blizzard took a step in the right direction with Uld (even after the nerfs), then completely wrecked raid itemisation by introducing an undertuned subsequent tier and started handing out ilvl245 badge rewards for facerolling heroics (last UK I ran took 12min to complete). This basically made Uld redundant.

This was indeed sad. Ulduar was great, and it pains me that its enjoyable and challenging hardmodes were rendered obsolete by TotC. This is again that same needless midgame gear reset. At the very least the rewards from TotC normals shouldn't be better than Ulduar's hardmodes.

I ignore your pointless MUST MUST MUST -mockery as I believe I've explained my opinions already.

[nietmakkir]

i can honestly say the only raiding change i hope gets implimented will be if you can only get saved to a 10man OR 25man raid, then buff some of the itemisation in 10mans so people don't feel 'pressured' to join a 25man guild just to update one piece of ancient gear.

[Vrachara]

1. Lower the dificulty gap between Normal and heroic.

I suggested several times on how to make the Normal/Heroic so it's not absolutely boring. It would also solve the issue that has lead to ICC Radiance. Instead of making Heroic an insanely hard version of normal with the best loot, make it like this:

Normal versions of raids have the same ilvl of loot as previous tier's Heroic versions.
Result: People who want Heroics don't have to and have no gear-up incentive to run Normal versions and bore themselves to death so they can raid Heroics. Heroic version will be "easier" in general, but the difficulty is compansated by lack of the current normal mode gear (imagine raiding ToC heroic with no ToC normal gear)

2. Make 2 instances per tier

God yes. Also remove the 10/25 man modes and make separate 10 player instances. I'm constantly baffled by the community's response of "but there's the same amount of bosses" to these kind of threads by people who completely disregard the fact that Blizzard completely killed off 2 whole instances of content compared to the last expansion.

3. Add a sense of progression back into the game

Agreed. In TBC, you had to go heroics>Karazhan then see a bit of SSC/TK at least before jumping into MH/BT. The difficulty progression also felt very natural and stable, rather than the current "gear up in heroics for 2 weeks, jump into latest 10 man instance, go 25 man instance".

4. Stop making instances puggable.

Agreed. Sense of being in a guild quickly vanishes when you're able to do the same with just any bunch of 25 random people. Yes, you can't jump into Heroics, but to get to that point, it'd be nicer (subjective term, flame my arse) to have the incentive to learn to work and play with your guild rather than a bunch of strangers.

5. Stop showering people with epics.

QFT. TBC had access to epics, but there's a difference between access and showering. Stop showering them with gold as well, it takes all the fun and most of the effort out of grinding for a crafted item. I suck ass at getting cash but am still keeping stable at 24k gold with next to no effort (in fact, no effort, lately I've only been logging on for raids)

6.Make heroic 5 mans heroic again.

One of the worst things WotLK's done is destroy the need for 5 man CC and destroy any difficulty the heroics had. Why, after adding a viable form of CC to almost every class, would you want to destroy the need for it entirely? Being able to tank 5 mans straight off in level 70 gear with no CC was the most disappointing thing in this game.

[Baever]

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.

First;

I'd much rather spend three hours in one instance, then another three hours in a different instance of a different theme, than six straight in one single-themed raid. You could counter that BT took four+ hours when progressing through it, but at least Hyjal was there to mix things up.

Second, the idea of CC in heroics is more aimed at early gear levels. I don't know about you, but even on day one of being level 80, I forgot my mage even had sheep.

And lastly, don't kid yourself. Progression doesn't exist outside of hardmodes. You do heroics, get badges, then run ToC. GG.