Raiding kind of stinks now

[Jenerena]

Impossibly hard at 346 gear level - we had greens on when we did Atramedes 10 for the first time

Clearly it isn't a gear issue.

It sounds to me like your group has no patience. We have wiped and wiped and wiped on boss fights but we go away, we think about it, we discuss it, we come back and we one shot it the week after. That's how we roll. It sounds to me like your group won't even think about what's going wrong, they give up and you end up having to find others and start from scratch. Raiding should not be an easy ride - it is meant to be difficult so you need to have a good chat with your team and see what's going on. If they are giving up because they don't feel like they are getting anywhere then this may be a fault of leadership and general knowledge of the fight - are you even attempting different strategies? Tonnes of different things could be going wrong here but without the commitment then unfortunately you won't get anywhere.

[Deleted]

The problem with the cata raids is simply the fact that it is not a relaxing raid-environment anymore. You have to watch meters all the time, run around like a monkey (yes you have to) and watch over almost everything. Basically you're not playing an mmo in that regard anymore, but a single player coop game with twitch-gaming factors. That is why I unsubbed yesterday and will most likely not return in cataclysm. As for the next expansion we shall see if it gets better in my opinion.

As a raider from classic, tbc and wrath (and everquest raids) I find raids not harder in any regard, just more annoying and more stressful for less reward, because some purple stuff is not worth the amount of dedication you have to put into raids since cata release.

[Raaji]

I think 3 levels of difficulty would cover the wide diversity of players. Right now, there is hard mode and harder mode. That just doesn't work for 85% of the raiders out there right now. Wiping for weeks on end is not the answer. This isn't Vanilla WoW where people don't know any better. Say what you will about Wrath (yes the heroics are easy due to the gear) but the gear-appropriate raids were the best they've ever done because they allowed you bring people and actually show them how to raid. You weren't going to kill the Lich King by being sloppy, but you had a chance of being able to kill him with players who started raiding in Ulduar.

Right now, unless you have BC raid experience, you just won't be able to handle 90% of the mechanics in these current raids and if you bring any new raider, your raid will suffer horribly. Most guilds don't have 10 uber players, and any good players you have quickly move on to more prestigous raiding guilds.

It's not a game where you can bring friends you like and enjoy playing a game with. You have to bring navy seal commandos (the bigger the jerk, the better) and act like it's a damn military operation. Not fun.

I don't know where you're getting your numbers, or the idea that you need some kind of gaming cyborg gods from the future in order to complete content.

Let me share my experience with Cata raid content. I hope this helps you in some way.

My raid consists of the following:
Bear tank - never played bear before Cata. Did a bit of tanking on his pally in Wrath, which anyone will tell you was easy mode.
Pally tank - never tanked before Cata.
Resto shaman - been playing his class/spec for years.
Resto druid - been playing her class/spec for years.
Holy priest - never even had a max level character until 5 days before we started raiding.
Rogue (me) - been playing my class/spec for years.
Fury warrior - never raided before Cata.
Hunter - never raided as ranged DPS before Cata.
Ele shaman - never raided as ranged DPS before Cata.
Warlock - been playing her class/spec for years.

That means that 60% of my raid has either never raided at all, or never raided as their job/role before Cata. We're still managing to do quite well. If we can, so can you.

We went in to Cata raids wearing a couple of crafted/rep epics, and blues/greens. We've had 5 raid days so far, and we're 8/12 normals. We're not militant, we're not yelling at each other constantly, and we aren't the cybernetic ghosts of gaming past from the future. We're just 10 friends who play WoW together.

I strongly suspect the only major difference between us and your group is that everyone in my raid does their homework. Everyone shows up having watched a walk-through video on YouTube, and/or having read a strat somewhere. We go in knowing, basically, what to expect. Things get changed as we experience the encounter for ourselves. You shouldn't feel locked into doing everything exactly how Tankspot (or whomever) says you should - do what you find works for you. Pay attention to what is going on. Figure out what is causing people to die. Then, figure out what you can do about it. This is how you succeed in content that is not meant to spoon-feed epics to anyone and everyone. This is how it has always been.

Seriously. Do your homework. If you spend 15 minutes a week researching fights, you'll go in 1,000x more likely to succeed than if you don't.

If you're not doing your homework, you are the reason you are failing. Start doing your homework.

If your guild is not doing their homework, they are the reason you are failing. Make them do research, or find a new guild. Or stop complaining about problems that you refuse to do anything about.


I am not trying to come off as hostile, just blunt. These fights are not that hard. They are certainly some of the most complicated boss fights I have seen, but they're not hard either. There is plenty of wiggle room, plenty of margin for error. Take the time to find out what everyone needs to be doing before you attempt the fight. Take the time between attempts to figure out what you can do better on the next attempt. Don't stress when you wipe - this is how we learn.

[zox]

The problem with the cata raids is simply the fact that it is not a relaxing raid-environment anymore. You have to watch meters all the time, run around like a monkey (yes you have to) and watch over almost everything. Basically you're not playing an mmo in that regard anymore, but a single player coop game with twitch-gaming factors. That is why I unsubbed yesterday and will most likely not return in cataclysm. As for the next expansion we shall see if it gets better in my opinion.

As a raider from classic, tbc and wrath (and everquest raids) I find raids not harder in any regard, just more annoying and more stressful for less reward, because some purple stuff is not worth the amount of dedication you have to put into raids since cata release.

I'm quite interested in how you want to be challenged? With challenge, you will have stress. That is more or less how you know you're challenged.

[wolfpackfan]

hmmm, let us look at my server. Less then a handfull of guilds have went 12/12, but we still have 87 guilds that have downed at least one boss. I think the difficulty is pretty good. People just have to learn the fights and be ready to move around. Do Argaloth every week, and run your daily heroic for Valor points if you need gear. Earthen ring progression:http://www.guildox.com/go/g.asp?a=1&...n%20Ring-US&w=

[Zetsu727]

If 20+ wipes discourages you from raiding, I think there's a bigger problem than just saying "entry level raids are just too difficult". You say things like they're impossible, can't be done with 346 gear, etc. If it was "impossible", thousands upon thousands of guilds wouldn't have at least Halfus killed by now. If you say it can't be done with 346 gear, well then go get 359? I mean as a protection paladin, I know I bought 359 boots from Dragonmaw, 359 Mastery/Resist trinket from TB, 359 bracers from Ramkahen, 359 cloak from Mount Hyjal, crafted 359 chest and belt, crafted 359 shield, etc. That's about half your gear right there being upped from 346 without touching a single raid. I won't even get into the BoE's you could buy off the AH if you have the gold, or farm off trash in raids without even touching bosses.

I'm going to give you some tough love. I just read an article, (can't post links yet, but I give enough information for you to find it or understand my point), where a woman is currently suspended with pay in a school district in Pennsylvania. She's suspended because she blogged her students these days in school are "disengaged, lazy whiners". I completely agree with it, and so do 97% of people who took the poll on whether her calling out these kind of people was right. These days, and not just kids in high school, people want everything now. They don't want to work for something, they don't want to take time or effort, they don't keep a positive attitude, they just want everything handed to them now. If they don't get it, they whine and complain, bicker, talk ****, etc.

WoW is no different. Yes, it's a game, but if you want to have the best, you need to work for it. It's not something that should be handed to you. No offense intended, but if this is difficult for you to accept in WoW raiding, I'd be more concerned for your real life issues.

[Nefarious Tea]

I read the op. I read the guy defending his viewpoint.

For the first three pages. After that, I'd read enough to condense their arguments to the following:

"QQ. I cannot be bothered to properly learn the fights, or even my class for that matter, even though it takes about 20 minutes total. Neither can the rest of my raid. This strategy worked for us in WotLK, because the normal mode raids were as easy as the too-easy heroics. But now that the raids are raids and the heroics (used) to be heroic, we can't do this and we're dying like bitches. QQ."

Please, go and learn the bloody game and then stop whining about how shit is "too hard."

[Chucknourishh]

peersonally im happy with the diffiulty of raiding im not 20+ wipes a night but i feel your pain lol
the idea of having raids more challenging is cool bc i like seeing scrubs in blues not wearing free epics

but if your truly sick of wiping transfer to a better server in wrath right when uld came out i wa son nazjatar which was a shit server ranked like 200 somehting i went to eldre thalas which was ranked in the 100s at the time and raiding went alot better

[Jaerin]

In here, first boss off the gates you have:

Magmaw: requires massive amount of healing and AOE damage (when your AOE and healing are both nerfed to hell)

Stack everyone except your kiter in melee. We use a single frost DK. The pillars will only be cast on him and he can kite the adds. Additional adds only spawn when someone gets hit so at most you'll get 1 occasional add to deal with. With some practice the DK or hunter can easily kite them without getting hit at all. This person should not worry about dpsing or doing anything to the boss at all. Damage to this person should be extremely minimal. The other thing is always try to get on the head from the right side when you are looking at him. We had a lot of problems getting people on and chains hooked from the left. A ton of the damage in this fight is avoidable.

Omnotron: requires everyone to memorize and fully understand 12 mechanics. Everyone is utterly confused and it's just chaos.

The mechanics are not as hard as they look. It's really intimidating at first and there is a lot of RNG on this fight. Really people only need to remember a few though.

#1 on all of them - don't try to exploit the shields to your advantage. Just have everyone switch to the next golem when energy gets to 50%.

Toxitron
1.) Don't stand in green cloud - you can run through it but be aware of the damage you are taking
2.) When its time for poison bombs run away from him. Have someone call out who is targetted and immediately have everyone else dps them down.

Electron
1.) When you are targetted with the lightning charge run away from everyone
2.) There is a chain lightning, but not so much that you absolutely had to be spread out


Arcanotron
1.) Assign one person with a 10 second stun to be dedicated interrupted the whole fight when he is up
2.) If your casters are having mana issues with the fight they are not standing in the pools he puts down. Everyone with mana should be trying to get in those pools as quickly as possible when he's up. Almost free casting when you are in it.

Magmatron
1.) When you are targetted by the red beam run so that he turns away from everyone else. Distance from him does not matter so running away is wasting time. Others need to also make sure they aren't standing under the red beam when its out.

What we do is completely ignore the shields. Only one you really need to be super concerned about is the Barrier on Magmatron. You need to stop ALL dps when he pops that shield. Remember also the shields only last like 5-10 seconds. When the current golem gets to 50 energy everyone switches to the new one. The tank is the only one that has to worry about shields and we usually just stop attacking. There are dps bonuses and such that you can get from them, but we found they just made the fight more complicated and harder to deal with.

So really other than Toxitron there is only 1 thing you need to know about each one. A lot going on, but when you learn to filter the fight and only pay attention to what you need too it gets easier. Still one of the higher RNG fights.

Conclave: never even looked at this fight, but watching the Tankspot video where they describe the strategy for 5 minutes straight of (jump here, jump there, two people jump there, then 2 people jump here, you have to interrupt/jump/turn the boss just right or you wipe). Told me this is not worth my time.

We haven't done this either. Other group in the guild has, but loot is always crap so we haven't bothered.

Halfus: ridiculous amount of tank damage & tank gibbing mechanics (90% healing debuffs that stack up in 5 seconds when the other tank has 25 seconds before it clears).

It seemed like that at first to us as well, but the thing to remember on this fight is it is success or fail in the first 2 minutes. You get through the first add getting killed and it becomes exponentially easier since damage to the party goes down and the damage on halfus goes up. To be honest our group hates the whelps the most. They are by far the one thing that cause us the most problems.

Yes slate/nether combo sucks, but not impossible. It doesn't matter which you kill first just talk with both drakes right away. Remember that you can use a pallie to drop your tanks stacks if they can click it off and retaunt properly.

We've always talked to 2 drakes at start and did whelps last. Our priority for bringing the drakes up is always talk to Nether first + whatever other drake is up with slate over time if both are up. Also for the MS debuff a tank with very high dodge is ideal. Equip dodge trinkets, you can dodge the debuffs. Also have the tank taunt halfus and run him from max distance and tank him far from the edge. The 10-15 seconds it takes halfus to run over to your tank can be a big difference. Since all you gotta do is get the first drake or two down and then it gets a whole lot easier.

There's only a handful of guilds who've killed any bosses on my server compared to last year where it was close to a hundred by this point (over 50 clearing Naxx). Yes Naxx was easy, but that's what an entry level raid is supposed to be.

Well I'm not going to argue any more about this - not trying to get people riled up, just my opinion that raiding is terrible now and not something me or anyone else I know is enjoying. We're just doing it because there's literally nothing else to do and we have a lot more fun talking about other upcoming MMO's, can't wait for them to get here.

Stick with it. Fraps some of your attempts and post links to the videos asking for advice on how to improve your raiding. I'm sure there will be some people that would happily give you some tips on how to improve.

[Raaji]

Stick with it. Fraps some of your attempts and post links to the videos asking for advice on how to improve your raiding. I'm sure there will be some people that would happily give you some tips on how to improve.

This is a really great idea. You're bound to get some trolls, but you should be able to easily tell which comments are actually helpful. What have you got to lose?

[Shin]

This. I remember downing Anub'Rekhan my first time. Took us about a week of raiding (2 hours a night, 3-4 times a week). I enjoyed Wrath. The raids were easy enough that people (like me) who aren't playing 50 hours a week can actually see all the content. Keep hard modes hard, normal modes... normal. I agree that blizzard went too far with the whole casual thing in Wrath. Two wrongs don't make a right. The Nazis were bad, so were the Soviets.

I raid 8 hours a week (2 hours on Wed/Thurs, 4 hours on Sun) and am 10/12 normal modes so, normal modes are indeed normal. We're going to try some heroics but I expect to progress through those much more slowly. We cleared BoT normal last night in 50 minutes from first pull to Cho'gall dead. They really couldn't have made it much easier/shorter without it being a complete and total joke.

[Deleted]

Well, in my third week of raiding and it's just been 20+ wipe nights every single night. These bosses are just not fun, too buggy, too much RNG, just BS mechanics, the healers are tired of it, you have to dance around like a monkey all night, never miss an interrupt, always be in the right place at the right time, it's just too much for any mere mortal to pull off and it's a shame Blizzard decided it was more import to drag content out in this manner.

Normal modes are impossibly hard at the 346 gear level and if you can't kill any bosses, you can't make any progress. Just plain old boring. I don't understand why they didn't put in an entry level raid like Sartharion where a guild can actually go in and have fun and kill at least one boss to get the gear going, or the first bosses in the raids should have fewer than 12 mechanics you have to fully understand (Omnotron) or an impossibly high AOE requirement (after they nerf your AOE down to garbage).

The healers are frustrated because they are horribly gimped and still have to do all the super mario jumping around every 2 minutes, how are they supposed to heal. I'm sure this sounds like whining to high-end players who can pull all this off, so I salute you guys, but for the other 85% of us, it's a pretty crappy raiding scene.

God forbid you should use your brain for anything. My 9 years old cousin is our resto shaman. He got his first 372 piece yesterday and he has been in almost every single raid and was there for each of our first kills in way under full 346 gear. But atm the content is easy enough to be done in 2 healers (except Nefarian because of those stupid 3 pilars) so he went DPS and keeps up with everyone else.

So yeah... I tend to belive anyone who has problems with the current raiding tier has serious issues. Oh yeah he also started to actually play the game in Cataclysm so that's not an excuse either ;3.

---------- Post added 2011-02-17 at 04:53 PM ----------

I raid 8 hours a week (2 hours on Wed/Thurs, 4 hours on Sun) and am 10/12 normal modes so, normal modes are indeed normal. We're going to try some heroics but I expect to progress through those much more slowly. We cleared BoT normal last night in 50 minutes from first pull to Cho'gall dead. They really couldn't have made it much easier/shorter without it being a complete and total joke.

Just an advice, start wtih halfus, 3 tanks, 3 healers, whelps+storm raider+nether scion (released in the begining) and time warden after. Ignore slate. Enjoy free gear and killing him faster than normal modes.

[Papalenin]

Ok, I'm sorry, but the people claiming the normal raids are "too hard" need to use the resources at hands and l2p. This website is filled with amazing guides, USE THEM! If you're struggling with avoiding things and general inability to not tunnel vision, go do some BG's with the intent of dying as little as possible, and not trying to win. Go in there and practice. Keybind important abilities that will save your ass rather than clicking. Run heroics and try to minimize the damage you take. Turn off the dps/healing meters, and turn on the "damage taken" meters. Think the people you raid with aren't up to snuff? Push yourself to pick up the slack. Take lead and start communicating over vent. Communication is a MASSIVE part of raiding. Tell people to move if they can't be trusted to move on their own. Most importantly, change your attitude. Don't look at this as "too hard" or "impossible". Look at your failures and say "This is what I did wrong, I'll do better next time."

These raids are not impossible or tuned very tightly on normal. Yes, some are rather complex, but they are forgiving. My guild is very casual and we are all far from pro players, but we still manage to progress without having to min/max or raid 20+ hours a week. We raid 4-7 hours a week depending on if people are on, and generally have to pug at least 1 player and we're 8/12. It's definitely doable. You just need to better utilize the resources available to you and your guild, take initiative, and learn how to communicate efficiently during encounters.

[Tziva]

Coming from another casual raider who doesn’t think 12/12 normal is a “faceroll” (I hope most of those players for whom that is true realise they are in the top percentage of raiders and that is not representative of the average player)

Honestly, I think 20+ wipes is a reasonable amount for raid encounters. I think three hours of wiping to get a kill is fine.

I see lots of people laud Burning Crusade as the pinnacle of raiding, but I thought many of the bosses took far too long to beat. For a casual raid like mine that wasn’t putting in a lot of hours per week, we’d often be working on a boss for two or three lockouts periods. You think one night is bad? Three or four weeks without any new kills is a long time to go for morale. We went through all of classic WoW and most of Burning Crusade like this: years.

But in Wrath, when we occasionally one-shot bosses the first time we saw them, and beat almost all the others on the same night we first encountered them, it felt cheesy and made raiding less enjoyable. I’m not going to deny that I like winning and collecting loot, but I also like challenge. Yogg and Lich King were the only real challenging encounters of that expansion and the only ones that took us weeks to beat. Everything else in the entire expansion, including many ICC hard modes, took us just one or two lockouts to master.

It was forgivable however, because I could see that the hard modes were intended to be the challenge and normals were supposed to be overly easy. However, the jump from normal to hard modes was too steep for the average raider for all the pre-ICC portion of the expansion (this is another discussion entirely, but I feel like it missed the mark by not making the early hard modes slightly harder than the final boss, making normal -> hard one long, gradual slope). The normal modes were too easy for most raiders, and many of the hard modes were too difficult (ICC was the opposite, with many of the hard modes being “too easy”), leaving the bulk of us in the middle without much satisfaction. I’m glad some of my non-raiding friends got to enjoy a raid for the first time because it was actually something they could accomplish for the first time… but I wish there had been more for players like me who want a challenge but want something they have a reasonable chance of beating with effort.

If three hours of wiping is burning your raiders, I think you’re just going to have to find a way to push morale through it until people adjust. That amount of time is reasonable and a lot better than the way it was in the past, but the encounters now also give you a lot more interaction and challenge than most of those in Wrath did. It will make your wins feel a lot more satisfying, while still giving you a challenge you know you can actually beat.

[Caelia]

There was nothing "faceroll" about Naxx. I remember wiping on every boss before we figured it out and I think it took my guild 3 weeks to clear the first wing. It was perfectly tuned for the gear you had when you first entered.

If you're talking about classic Naxx then I can believe 3 weeks to clear 1 wing, if you're refering to WotLK Naxx then I'm thinking you're just trolling.
I cleared WotLK naxx on both 10 and 25man in PUGs during the first week of the expansion with people who had no clue what was going on. It was very much faceroll, all the trash was just gather up and AOE, bosses were very forgiving so even if you messed up or didn't know what you were doing when you first pulled you could still finish it.

Anyways back on topic, I haven't tried the new raids because of limited time because of work, but if you're complaining you might have to spend 2-3 hours on a boss to learn it I fail to see the problem? 2-3 hours is nothing compared to how it used to be.

[Susej]

in our first night of raiding togeather as a guild we killed Omnitron and Magmaw. I don't know what you're talking about.

Maybe you need to look into issues such as how you're playing and how your raid is preforming if these fights are "Imposable"

[Wonderboy]

Raiding difficulty is spot on (for the most part). Fun fight mechanics and spread over enough dungeons to not be too tedious.

Improvements for the future:

- Remove the severity of RNG from fights. RNG alone shouldn't wipe you. This hasn't been the case (hi, halfus heroic).
- Reduce the AoE requirements in 10 man raids to account for 25 man's ability to stack AoE classes.

Normal modes are impossibly hard at the 346 gear level and if you can't kill any bosses

I was doing heroic fights in mostly blues. Normal modes are way easier the 2nd week you down them. Its tactic perfecting, thats all.

[Nebthet]

it may seem very hard when you raid with a casual guild with 'random' players who dont put too much effort in playing well. i've been into this myself, hours and hours on magmaw, never downed any boss. then i changed guild (/server) and cleared the whole normal content in 6 hours of raiding.. its all about who you play with, the so called noobs just cant do it

[Buckwald]

Way too much flaming and trolling going on in here. Can't keep it civil then don't have a conversation. Good job.