Why Tier 4 Was The Best Raiding Tier

[garion55]

So thinking about it I finally realized why wrath failed, why cata is failing and why Burning crusade had it 95% right.


Think of Tier 4. And for those of you that were there you know what I am talking about.


Everyone ran normal dungeons. Got our kara keys. Geared up. Then started raiding. Some of us in gear we crafted. Frozen shadoweave for casters. It was real easy to start raiding for everyone.


Some of us started in Karazhan. FUN!!! Every raid should be like that place. Bosses started off easy and then got tougher as you progressed. but there is real cool stuff in there. opera. chess. go go if you havent yet.

Others, went to Gruuls lair if they could get 25 people. The first boss is tough in that you have to pull all the mobs the right way or everyone dies (its like moroes X 100). its an execution check. pull it right and you can do it all in greens.


Gruul himself. Well in the beginning he was just god awful. Like king kong on steroids. Once they tuned him right, gruul is a dps check. and a skill check too. but if you dont have the dps you can have all the skill you want, wont matter.

The only thing Burning crusade got wrong was not having 10 man versions of gruul/ssc/tk etc. We tried to run SSC but the toughest part was getting 25 people. if it was 10 we would have been in there all night.


So Tier 4 had two levels of progression basically. kara and gruul. keep kara easy. make gruul as hard as you want. Split the raiding player base in half, give them each half the content.

You can do the same the next tier. make a bunch of bosses and split them in half. 6 kara type bosses, 6 sunwell type bosses.

One side goes and raids 6 fun bosses somewhere and the other goes and gets their faces smashed in.



With me so far? There are bonuses!! Yes! Goodies!


The kara side, honestly you can spread out their bosses forever with tons of trash in between that drop gear and as long as you have some cool stuff to look at they are just happy being somewhere, anywhere other than stuck in a 5 man.

Todays bosses are zone in boss. stairs boss. left wing boss. right wing boss. ZZZZZZZZ


Let me wander around somewhere with my guild and look at cool stuff like the kitchen in karazhan that leads nowhere but just cool too see, or the basement.



Hardcores get TWO bonuses!!!


You can make heroic versions of the kara bosses, and the gruuls bosses and the hardcores can have a blast in both!


AND you can make a bunch of 5 man runs, you can call them heroics, and make them real hard. Why? So that the hardcore guys have something to do in between all those heroic bosses. It will help them to gear up quicker!! FUN!!


Hardcore guys are always busy. Casual dudes are hanging in kara. maybe trying a heroic see how it goes.





Why Wrath failed.

It started off with kara (naxx 2.o) but had no Gruuls. Naxx hard modes dont count. Vanilla raiders already saw naxx they wanted something new. And there were heroics for them but im not sure they were that difficult , i didnt do them at first.

But they were stuck in 5 mans. And had no gruuls.

Then uldaur which was a littler harder, still not too challenging for raiders but more challenging for casuals. Toc blech who wanted to even be in there. Finally ICC. Hardcores had to wait till the final tier to be challenged. no wonder many of them werent pleased. You cant blame them.


Why Cata is failing

So we swung it totally around. This time we took all the bosses, made them all hard, made super hard versions right at the beginning. AWESOME for hardcores! im glad they didnt have to wait this time.

Kara people? We are looking around and looks kind of bleak. no aq20. no ZG (LOVE ZG) no kara. we dont even want naxx again ugh.


What do kara people have this time. basically 3 normal dungeons and a watered down mish mash of heroics sort of easy for kara people to get through but sort of hard for a challenge for the gruuls people. mixing the two camps together in heroics this expansion doesnt seem to be quite working and i am not quite sure what the thinking was behind it. leave the heroics hard for the hardcore guys and keep the kara guys out unless they choose to be in there. I just dont get why that was changed this expansion.


Anyway there you go. Problem solved.

Every tier should be based on the tier 4 model and I PROMISE you that everyone is happy. They were back in BC. except for no 10 man versions of all the other raids 8-(



TLDR - Tier 4 had raids for both hardcores and casuals. go back to that.

[SilkforCalde]

Gruul's sucked. Mag's sucked. The 10 to 25 progression was insanely poorly thought out. It certainly made no sense.

[Steady]

Three 25-man bosses, definitely the best raiding tier!

[xxAkirhaxx]

It is based on the tier 4 model, you also forgot malygos and OS in your wrath description, there's your gruul. Also the normal bosses aren't difficult, none of them (except halfus) are even gear checks, it's all about coordination.

[Tziva]

While I liked all thet Tier 4 raids, and Karazhan remains my favourite raid to this day, it was far from well designed.

Magtheridon was, for the longest time, far too hard for players actually in Tier 4 gear. The average raid didn't kill him unless they were in higher tier gear or until he was nerfed. While Gruul was much easier, even the roster transition from 10 to 25man was painful.

And while that tier might have been strong, but the later tiers supported by it were hurt by the way it was designed. For example, it was very hard to get subs due to attunments and long quest chains and a big PITA for people who had to reroll, until those things were removed or nerfed. Every time people lament the lack of attunments in-game now, I remember trying to get subs for raids where players had to be attuned and run all the prior raids just to get in the door.

The badge design was also a little absurd, especially after 2.4. It's silly for people running Karazhan to be getting Tier 6-quality badge gear, and it's equally silly for people raiding Sunwell to feel obligated to go back and farm Karazhan for the badges so they can buy upgrades.

The main thing Blizzard got right with Tier 4 was Karazhan. Although it had a few annoying aspects, it was a really great raid. The environment was very cool looking, the fights were interesting, and it was such a vast upgrade from vanilla raids that it really made people better players for doing it.

But what do I know, I also liked Icecrown Citadel and Ulduar, which everyone complained about

[Hakto]

The idea of raiding a 10 man to gear for 25 is wrong.

Firstly Sarth 3d and Maly were Wrath's version of Gruul vs kara.

I personally enjoyed T3 and T6 better than T4.

Everyone ran normal dungeons. Got our kara keys. Geared up. Then started raiding. Some of us in gear we crafted. Frozen shadoweave for casters. It was real easy to start raiding for everyone.

How is it any different now? Run normals, run heroics, get geared up, get crafted gear. Start raiding.

[Pxl]

I'm personally happy with Cata's raiding. It has it's game-playing difficult times and has its visual entertainment sides. BoT isn't very visually exciting but BWD is pretty badass. Not to mention if you raided BWL back in vanilla. If you take BWL and then add BWD like that's where Nef's hidden lair was, it makes it feel that much cooler.

In wrath, yeah there wasn't a whole lot to look at in Naxx since everyone has seen it before (or at least SS/Vids of it) and Maly and Sartherion was just one room so there was only so much you could look at (and it all pretty much looked the same). However, the next tier... Ulduar? That place was pretty badass (before you had to do it 200+ times). Overall, yeah, wrath sucked. But there was some pretty cool moments in wrath. I still wish they would have kept the "If you do this, it turns into hard-mode" and not "Here toggle this switch and he hits harder. Grats"

I really enjoyed Vanilla and really enjoyed BC... In its time. Would I want to go back to vanilla? No. I like all of the options the further expansions give. I don't want to have to go from flight path to flight path because none of them connected like they did in vanilla (one of the MANY reasons). BC was really good because, everything was such a new fresh feeling. They played such a popular game for so long and BAM it was the first expansion.

Cata is much like BC in my opinion. However, you can't get that "new expansion" feel like you did in BC because... same ol', nother xpac, we already know what's going to happen.

Every ones view point in the game itself has changed, and so it changes how you see the new expansion. The picture that was posted on the front page of MMO a bit ago is a perfect example of what I'm talking about (http://nerfnow.com/comic/450).

[Deleted]

Nothing, NOTHING, will better SSC.

Leo the blind tells you this.

[Myrlae]

Then uldaur which was a littler harder, still not too challenging for raiders but more challenging for casuals. Toc blech who wanted to even be in there. Finally ICC. Hardcores had to wait till the final tier to be challenged. no wonder many of them werent pleased. You cant blame them.

Ulduar wasn't challenging?? I'm not in one of the best guilds of the world, but still top200 and we had some great time/fun in Ulduar. Algalon was a quite cool fight and you only had 1 hour to progress on him. Yogg0 was so challenging that even the best guilds in the world said it would be undoable, until Stars came and proofed them wrong. So tbh ulduar was challenging, atleast for me and my guild.

[Deleted]

Ulduar wasn't challenging?? I'm not in one of the best guilds of the world, but still top200 and we had some great time/fun in Ulduar. Algalon was a quite cool fight and you only had 1 hour to progress on him. Yogg0 was so challenging that even the best guilds in the world said it would be undoable, until Stars came and proofed them wrong. So tbh ulduar was challenging, atleast for me and my guild.

I thought uld was the best of that expansion content. it was not tough, up until crazy cat lady, then got a bit harder as you went (mimron for example was a great fight and challenging).

I suppose it also counts when people are doing these things, if its full BiS epiced all the way then they may not be challenging, but most people found ulduar to be fairly challenging.

[Deleted]

Thats what she sayd!

[noteworthynerd]

Tier 1/2 was the best raiding Tier, in my opinion. There was PLENTY to do: you had normal dungeons, you had dungeon-raids (UBRS, UD Strat), you had 15-man raids (ZG), and you had 40-man end-game raids (MC, BWL, and Ony). You also had PVP that was actually fun (I haven't PVPed since TBC, I tried in Wrath and hated it).

The bosses in raids were structured like Karazhan, for the most part, they started off fairly easy, and got progressively harder (although you could argue that all of the BWL bosses were pretty fu**ing hard).

You also had guild companionship, guilds did EVERYTHING together. They ran raids, they did world bosses, they ran guild battlegrounds, they did world PVP, they leveled professions (back then, it took whole guilds or at least 5-man groups to do things like make flasks, or level enchanting), and they crafted legendaries (Thunderfury required you to defeat a 20-man raid boss).

I know I sound like a Vanilla-fanboy, but I guess that's because I am, I doubt WoW will ever compare to it (for me). That is when I started playing, that is where my fondest memories are, and that is when I had the most fun.

[Pxl]

Nothing, NOTHING, will better SSC.

Leo the blind tells you this.

Bosses were exciting.

The hours on trash can go to hell.

[thedankson]

Kara was not easy when it first launched. It was fun though. Kara became easy later on the same way Naxx became easy later on and the same way t11 content will be easy later on most likely. People still ran it during t6 content times because it was the most efficient way to farm badges. At that point it was not fun for most people.

Mag was untouchable for most guilds pre-nerf/t5 gear. Gruul was hilarious. I love/loved the HK Maulgar fight but it gave lots of people issues.

We had Obsidian Sanctum and Malygos along with Naxx. They actually compare to Gruul & Mags. Most people didn't finish Mags and Maly until later on in progression or after they had farmed Kara/Naxx for gear at least. Gruul was obviously tougher on pugs than OS, but OS had 1-2-3 drake versions that gave it much more longevity.

[Deleted]

T6 was the best.

[Jaerin]

BC was easy for anyone that had a 5 man group that ran regularly.

I know several healers in my guild that weren't in the "1st" or "2nd" 10 man raid group and got left behind. Remember we are transitioning from 40-man raids. Those people who didn't have regular 5-man groups had trouble getting rep to get heroic keys, and therefore couldn't get the gear, rep, or attunement to even begin in Kara.

Although i do think they really need to bring back some kind of attunement process. Just make it such that doesn't take 200 hours to get it. Make it something that requires help to get, but not so much that it requires a geared group. Something that is going to make a basic check as to whether you are ready for the next level of content. Make it a quest chain...something.

[Stevegasm]

T4 was terrible. 10 players x 3 raid groups for one zone. And then shelve 5 players for the 25 man zones. Naxx had it right. Give the players different wings to choose from. SCC/TK, and MH/BT were good as well giving us options. The linear raids are terrible, because some bosses end up being total cock blocks for some raid groups. The nice thing with the T5 and T6 pairings was the change in scenery. But those tiers would almost necessitate 2 day raid weeks even if they were on farm.

[garion55]

The idea of raiding a 10 man to gear for 25 is wrong.

Firstly Sarth 3d and Maly were Wrath's version of Gruul vs kara.

I personally enjoyed T3 and T6 better than T4.



How is it any different now? Run normals, run heroics, get geared up, get crafted gear. Start raiding.

they stuck heroics in front of raiding this time. normally heroics are a side grade to the first tier raids. that keeps the heroics hard and keeps the bads out.

[Syntic]

Tier eight!

[garion55]

Gruul's sucked. Mag's sucked. The 10 to 25 progression was insanely poorly thought out. It certainly made no sense.

thats why it would have been better to have 10/25 man version. imagine all t4 raids with both.

---------- Post added 2011-02-10 at 09:34 PM ----------

I guess the point was just in general try to have content for both halves of the raiding spectrum at the same time instead of starting slow and working your way up to hard tiers. split every tier into hard and easy mode content as its released.


thats basically it.