Wotlk Raiding Mentality and why it blows

[Badpaladin]

The wrath model of raiding, in my eyes:

- Everybody should be able to kill the bosses in the instance in some form(assuming some effort is applied), normal or hard
- Hard modes are designed to keep those who want a challenge playing
- It should be easy to gear up for the current tier of raiding
- Raiding should be fun, but not extremely time consuming

Taken at face value, I like this. I think everybody should be able to kill things with some effort, hard modes are for people like me who enjoy a challenge, and at the same time I don't want to spend 30+ hours a week trying to kill a boss. However, this is what it has led to:

- If you can't kill it in a week, wait for the next ICC buff for more attempts
- If you can't kill it in three days, wait for the next ICC buff for more attempts
- If hard mode is taking more than 5 attempts, go back to normal mode and wait for the next ICC buff for more attempts
- If you wiped on something for a night, post on the forums about how hard it is
- Not many guilds have killed X boss and they talk about how hard it is on the forums, so it's time to close shop for Cataclysm
- If the boss isn't 1-shot in a pug, leave
- You're entitled to loot that is perfect for you in every instance
- Gear Score at a level higher than what is available in the instance is required
- If you haven't already killed it, you don't get to go

Have any other people seemed to see what I see? Laziness, entitlement, lack of drive and ridiculous qualifications are now the norm in the modern Wotlk scene. I'm hoping this changes in Cataclysm.

[Ranlif]

In could not agree with you more. There was even a group earlier today for icc 10 that wanted a 5.6K GS minimum and wanted you to have at least 8/12, yet they were going 6/12. Guild raiding is dyeing because you can just pug everything. I mean, there is still a lot of good guilds out there but compared to Vanilla and Bc, heck even early Wrath it seems to me that the guild dynamic of being in a raiding guild to do current content is dead.

[Sarcasm]

- Not many guilds have killed X boss and they talk about how hard it is on the forums, so it's time to close shop for Cataclysm

THIS is what is killing guild raiding. The ease of normal modes has spoilt a large portion of the player base, who bitch and moan for hard content, yet when it comes along, they want it to be easy so they can steamroll it and get the loot they want. When they don't get their way, and they can't be assed putting in the hard yards as a team for it, they quit.

WotLK has taken a raiding mentality that was once about working as a team, and made everything puggable. In doing this, you are able to successfully raid with 24 faceless people, which has trained players in to believing that raiding is about them and not about the team.

[Grethem]

It's not the system, it's the people.

[Grimsdott]

It's not the system, it's the people.

Or the system making it easy for people. Small comparison:

ICC with buff - supposedly endgame content made for elite players. Yet people pug half of the place on HC
AQ / Naxx - endgame content as well, yet noone even dreamed of putting a group together and going there. Sure, grabbing 40 players is bigger pain than 25 but the actual point is that gear allowing players to pug wasn't accessible so easy as it is nowadays. Those dedicated guilds that earned every single piece of an epic, wanting a challenge, are being constantly downgraded cause thousands of lazy bads want their purples.

It's the system

[Metallikiddd]

People ask for a high GS cause they DON'T CARE about OTHER PEOPLE getting gear. They just want geared players so they can blow through the content and farm their badges. Plus half of those people will try and use some excuse to not give loot to people who need it and give it to someone they know. Doesn't matter if they suck or were slacking off or complaining. They do it so they don't feel like they are carrying someone's alt. Well that's my breakdown of it anyway. People like that need to DIAF.

[jarnet87]

playing early vanilla i agree that the emphasis was much more on guilds with the 40 man raid content. I quit before BWL, and didnt return until just before Ulduar, so to me what killed raiding mentality in wrath was 3.2 ToC. It took everything that required coordination, teamwork, and gratification for actually downing content and threw it down the drain. ToC dumbed down the PvE population, and to me was a joke. come on 5 fights, no trash, a raid that can be done in 30 minutes with ease, even with same item level gear.

[Deleted]

I think blizz should work on educating new players about raiding instead of just making the content easier. Where are Blizzards own guides/instructions about raids, buffs/debuffs, cooldown use, set bonuses, etc.

[calinass]

playing early vanilla i agree that the emphasis was much more on guilds with the 40 man raid content. I quit before BWL, and didnt return until just before Ulduar, so to me what killed raiding mentality in wrath was 3.2 ToC. It took everything that required coordination, teamwork, and gratification for actually downing content and threw it down the drain. ToC dumbed down the PvE population, and to me was a joke. come on 5 fights, no trash, a raid that can be done in 30 minutes with ease, even with same item level gear.

You sure it took 30 minutes?
I put together a raid yesterday that spent an hour actually finding people and got going after 15 minutes, then wiped on Jaxx, Faction Champs, and Anub when he hit is timer. Probably about a 3 hour raid including formation, wipes, waiting, loot distribution ( I go slow ), etc.

[Cruxidus]

The problem is Blizzard isn't seeking everyone's approval, sure compared to other big businesses they look like saints but casual sells after all and Blizzard is going to cater to that. Now I'm not saying causal players are bad, I'm saying the mentality of casual is to make things easy to play and to be able to accomplish alot in a short amount of time. I know alot of 'hardcore'(high GS = skill amirite?) players that want things handed to them too. The older raids were awesome because of the hard earned victories but honesty would anyone really want to spend their night wiping to DeathFace McKill-boss if they had limited play time?

[Thetruth1400]

You sure it took 30 minutes?
I put together a raid yesterday that spent an hour actually finding people and got going after 15 minutes, then wiped on Jaxx, Faction Champs, and Anub when he hit is timer. Probably about a 3 hour raid including formation, wipes, waiting, loot distribution ( I go slow ), etc.

You said it yourself, you're slow. That and your group most likely wasn't as good as the average group. jarnet was right, you can blow through there in under an hour.

The problem is Blizzard isn't seeking everyone's approval, sure compared to other big businesses they look like saints but casual sells after all and Blizzard is going to cater to that. Now I'm not saying causal players are bad, I'm saying the mentality of casual is to make things easy to play and to be able to accomplish alot in a short amount of time. I know alot of 'hardcore'(high GS = skill amirite?) players that want things handed to them too. The older raids were awesome because of the hard earned victories but honesty would anyone really want to spend their night wiping to DeathFace McKill-boss if they had limited play time?

This. Blizzard has focused on the majority, and the majority is okay with that because it lets them do whatever they want with no real commitment. Now I'm not saying the game should be a second job, but I do feel that it should offer some sort of challenge, and not through artificial means like hard modes. If Blizzard is so concerned with casual easy stuff, they should start instances off with bosses like this, then ramp up the difficulty. The end bosses should always be more difficult and require a challenge. Also, things should take time. You shouldn't be able to walk into an instance and wipe it out in week one. That just leads to the problem currently plaguing the game, Stagnation. ICC has been out for 7 months. People have pretty much been farming it for the better part of 5 months. It's dead content for a lot of people now and they will quit if they don't get something soon.

[Smithsonian]

You sure it took 30 minutes?
I put together a raid yesterday that spent an hour actually finding people and got going after 15 minutes, then wiped on Jaxx, Faction Champs, and Anub when he hit is timer. Probably about a 3 hour raid including formation, wipes, waiting, loot distribution ( I go slow ), etc.

I know not long after ToC had been out we were doing guild runs in regular 10/25 in about 35 minutes for 10man and a little over an hour for 25man.

OT: Had Faction Champs not been nerfed, I would have enjoyed the instance far more. (togc 25man FC is still a fun fight)

It's funny how many ToC pugs i've joined on my alts and watched fail at worms. While PuGing wasn't nearly as common in vanilla/tbc, if you joined a PuG you were to KNOW the fights. These days there is soooo many ways to learn encounters and there are still people (by the handfuls!) that walk into what should be a lawlfest ToC 10/25 man run (yes, even in 4.8k GS gear!) and fail miserably. To date, ToC is probably the easiest raid to full-clear and there are still people who consider themselves "raiders" that are unable to execute the fights properly. That should say a bit about the current state of "raiding"

[Kärmä]

- If you can't kill it in a week, wait for the next ICC buff for more attempts
- If you can't kill it in three days, wait for the next ICC buff for more attempts
- If hard mode is taking more than 5 attempts, go back to normal mode and wait for the next ICC buff for more attempts

My guild just sits on bosses and slams their head into the wall until we down the boss, probably took us 50+ attempts to kill 25 man professor hardmode. Now we're sitting on RS hardmode until we kill it.

[Badpaladin]

My guild just sits on bosses and slams their head into the wall until we down the boss, probably took us 50+ attempts to kill 25 man professor hardmode. Now we're sitting on RS hardmode until we kill it.

Sadly, you're a minority. Hopefully you get your kills though!

[Deipfryde]

It's not just raids.. people get crazy about heroics, too.

I was farming Forge of Souls for the 232 dagger on my rogue, and got kicked from a group for "not putting on my PvE gear". My rogue is my PvP toon, so I don't even have PvE gear for him, but I was doing everything correctly.. using Tricks on the tank, 2500+dps (#2 on recount if I recall), etc, but apparently it was all my fault that we wiped. Even in PvP gear, I still outgeared the instance by a rather wide margin, and had a higher GS than some of the other players.

I'm still scared of running heroics on my fresh-80 pally tank, because I've "only" got a 3k gearscore and 25k health. It's not that don't think I can do it, it's that the groups will probably rag on me for being a n00b. That just boils down to stupidity.. they'll tell me to go run normals, despite the fact that I'm already better geared than normal dungeons can get me. Because the people that will say it have no idea where a tank should be coming out of normals and starting heroics. In reality, I'm right where I should be, if not slightly ahead. But most PUGs don't know that, or care.

[Shadowviper]

It's not just raids.. people get crazy about heroics, too.

I was farming Forge of Souls for the 232 dagger on my rogue, and got kicked from a group for "not putting on my PvE gear". My rogue is my PvP toon, so I don't even have PvE gear for him, but I was doing everything correctly.. using Tricks on the tank, 2500+dps (#2 on recount if I recall), etc, but apparently it was all my fault that we wiped. Even in PvP gear, I still outgeared the instance by a rather wide margin, and had a higher GS than some of the other players.

I'm still scared of running heroics on my fresh-80 pally tank, because I've "only" got a 3k gearscore and 25k health. It's not that don't think I can do it, it's that the groups will probably rag on me for being a n00b. That just boils down to stupidity.. they'll tell me to go run normals, despite the fact that I'm already better geared than normal dungeons can get me. Because the people that will say it have no idea where a tank should be coming out of normals and starting heroics. In reality, I'm right where I should be, if not slightly ahead. But most PUGs don't know that, or care.

This. I made a Resto shaman to 80 a few months ago, made a few epics and got a few BoE to start with. So Nexus gets queued up and this retarded rogue come up and say *LawL noob your GS is too low for this instance go run reg* Its nexus for goodness sakes. Funny part is instead of me getting kicked the rogue did and we went through the instance smooth and quickly. But seriously its a heroic. Do some of these people know what kinda of health and stuff people had when wotlk was fresh and even then it wasn't hard.

[superfloc]

gearscore is the biggest joke in WoW today

[calinass]

Everyone was geared accordingly to ToC25. Took a bit long to get people since I asked for their gs (hoping from 4.8k+) and 10 or 25m achieves. Only 4 people there didnt have the achieves for 25, which I saw in the end after downing Anub.

Only 3 wipes, one was at lord jara (no one dispelled his buff) one was at faction champs, not sure what happened there, and one was at anub because the tank who was getting the adds failed to do so, really. I switched to tank the adds and it was better.

[Organoth]

The biggest issue I have is because of things like GS and the ability to get 232 or higher gear with out stepping into a raid people constantly think they can over gear older content with out having to know anything about it. Having alts I like being able to gear up quickly once I hit 80 so I can get that toon into ICC. But at the same time I have done every ICC fight dozens of times including 10 of them on Heroic. The other people try to run things like ToGC pugs or Ulduar HMs for the drakes yet they know nothing about the instance. I ask some of these people when I see them posting in trade if they know the difference between reg and HM and all I get is "LOL no, but everyone is over 5.5k GS". Yes with people who know the fights they are very easy to over gear, but take a group of average or below average players who don't know the fights and their gear won't save them.

[patrins]

You sure it took 30 minutes?
I put together a raid yesterday that spent an hour actually finding people and got going after 15 minutes, then wiped on Jaxx, Faction Champs, and Anub when he hit is timer. Probably about a 3 hour raid including formation, wipes, waiting, loot distribution ( I go slow ), etc.

we cleared togc in 22 minutes this week.