Raid difficulty

[Hyrja]

What has happend with especially heroic raid difficulty?
In WoD and Legion I always did the raids on heroic but nowadays pugs wipe and wipe and voice comms are mandatory.
Raids used to get easier as time passed by but Dazar'Alor heroic is still hard AF.

Any thoughts? ideas?

[Orwell7]

What has happend with especially heroic raid difficulty?
In WoD and Legion I always did the raids on heroic but nowadays pugs wipe and wipe and voice comms are mandatory.
Raids used to get easier as time passed by but Dazar'Alor heroic is still hard AF.

Any thoughts? ideas?

In WoD you didn't have Titanforging, and in Legion, you had Legiondaries which inflated your ilvl so TF wasn't that of a big deal than it is NOW.

Now bosses are tuned with TF in mind, but they don't drop really meaningful upgrades OUTSIDE titanforging.
Back then, if a Heroic boss dropped ilvl 100 gear, it was tuned for an average ilvl of 90. Now, if a boss drops 100 (+10 TF), it is tuned for an ilvl of 100. Maybe 105.

The problem is that you cannot overgear an encounter now!
Also, even with TF, the bosses drop 415 and the max ilvl is 425. So you have ~10 ilvls of RNG to make the game easier for you.

The difficulty between Mythic bosses are absurd, the rewards should be too. After a few weeks of raiding I didn't have anything "to look for", and it is atrocious.
At least in HFC you got increased ilvl for killing later bosses, and let's not forget about the genious trinket Archimonde had for each spec.

And yes, I play WoW instead of.. god knows what, BECAUSE it got easier week-by-week. I felt progression of my character, progression of it's strength. I miss that.

[Ange]

Raids used to get easier as time passed by but Dazar'Alor heroic is still hard AF.

It was a stupid decision to allow mythic 1-player-wipes-raid mechanics or forced comms for mekka beeing a thing.

LEGION's raiding structure with WORLD-TOURS every week was a chore and many raiding players enjoyed it. You had at least 1 weekday for voiceless speedrun WORLD-TOURS, with the same kind of players you did heroic or mythic. Some players did not like the chore, but those did not like many things about MMO's/WoW, but it was healthy for the raiding community and it was fun.

I am still not sure what killed raiding in BfA, M+ and all the alternative gearing paths or the destroyed raiding difficulty, because right now if you raid heroic, you just might spend 1 extra raid day a week and just raid mythic with a similar demand in difficulty.

[Arainie]

I can only relate to my guilds "casual/alt" heroic runs, but we've been experiencing the same thing.

Ever since Legion started we've been hosting Heroic (starting with Normal first 2 weeks of each tier) runs every Friday where we invite our casual members and friends as well. In Legion we were comfortably able to invite anyone who wasn't in just blues to join, require no flasks or anything like that and still clear any given raid in one night. In BfA we've had to introduce higher item level requirements (10 ilvls below what HC drops so far) to even be able to clear the raids in 3 hours comfortably, and often had to use some of our mains to compensate for the casuals who can't handle mechanics or can't pull numbers close to what they should be doing.

In BoD it was so bad (mostly Mekkatorque bombs and Jaina P3) that we stopped doing the HC runs for the first time in 2 years after 4-5 clears. G'huun was an ordeal in itself, but back then we could at least assign all of the orb carrying to our main raiders who did it on Mythic and get it over with.

EDIT: I guess what I'm really saying is that I don't really the BfA Heroic raids are too highly tuned (maybe just a tiny bit), but the mechanics are too punishing. In a mode that's not meant to be cutting edge, someone messing up probably shouldn't mean the whole raid is punished (at least not harshly).

[Marrilaife]

What has happend with especially heroic raid difficulty?
In WoD and Legion I always did the raids on heroic but nowadays pugs wipe and wipe and voice comms are mandatory.
Raids used to get easier as time passed by but Dazar'Alor heroic is still hard AF.

Any thoughts? ideas?

No tier sets in raids and mostly shit trinkets except maybe a couple. Good players farm m+ early in the season and get geared. So take a wild guess who makes the bulk of the pug raids and why.

[RobertMugabe]

Yeah heroic and even normal raids are way overtuned. There are way easier and faster ways to get better loot

[ID811717]

The better players have fewer incentives to carry bad players through HC pugs on a weekly basis nowadays.

[Marrilaife]

Now bosses are tuned with TF in mind, but they don't drop really meaningful upgrades OUTSIDE titanforging.

Raids are tuned around the fact everybody and their dog will have the gear from m+ (and pvp, and emissaries, and warfronts, and come 8.2 "benthic" gear...) so basically they're planned to offer no gear reward just the "epic experience" or w/e, if you still need the gear from heroic it will be too hard for you, but you can farm other content and easily outgear lfr, normal and with time, heroic too.

In the past players did content to get ready for raiding, nowadays when you feel ready for specific difficulty mode, you no longer have reason to run it. The only thing worth it is pugging 1st boss on mythic since both in Uldir and BODA they were complete jokes, below the difficulty level of Skorpyron or Hellfire Assault.

There are way easier and faster ways to get better loot

Basically what's wrong with raiding in BFA. It requires extra organizational investment over 5 man or solo or auto matchmade content, but the reward structure completely disregards it.

[Garymorilix]

What has happend with especially heroic raid difficulty?
In WoD and Legion I always did the raids on heroic but nowadays pugs wipe and wipe and voice comms are mandatory.
Raids used to get easier as time passed by but Dazar'Alor heroic is still hard AF.

Any thoughts? ideas?

I have pugged BoD heroic without ever stepping into normal on the 2nd week of the raid.
First week I made it to 6/9 only, not because it was too hard, but because I didn't have more time.
Everybody was 385-390 first week, 390-395 second week.

Don't you dare telling anyone you need 415+ gear to clear BoD hc. Raid is not tuned around titanforging.

[Specialka]

So? Play nm then if hm is too hard. No shame in that.

[Greyvax]

There are lots of bads, especially this late in the patch cycle.

The bads have gotten gear via titanforging, world bosses, and weekly quests, and step into heroic pugs without a clue on mechanics

the solid players who would normally carry said bads thru the raid have moved onto mythic or are tired of doing heroic pugs.

so what you have left are a slew of clueless folks and undergeared raid leads. The better players will be impatient and leave because no one wants to teach people mechanics for the umpteenth time.

[coprax]

What has happend with especially heroic raid difficulty?
In WoD and Legion I always did the raids on heroic but nowadays pugs wipe and wipe and voice comms are mandatory.
Raids used to get easier as time passed by but Dazar'Alor heroic is still hard AF.

Any thoughts? ideas?

True, in Legion I did the Ahead of the Curves in PUGs, but nowadays I don't ever bother trying the endbosses.

Endbosses used to drop higher gear or just special items like really good trinkets, or the last item to complete your Tier Set. Now there is just no incentive to do them, or better to endure them in a pickup group.

[Moonsorrow]

When brain dead content (emissaries) offer near HC-ilvl loot even the most causual player feels entitled to raid heroic. Hardcore casuals with said gear can't even generate a fracture of the gear appropriate dps.
BoD has some mechanics that can simply not be outgeared (e.g. bots@Mekka; P3 with the King; Conclave overlap of different ultimates) but have to be handled by every single player and individual mistakes can wipe the raid.

-> the combination of the above result in many frustrating pugs.

[Sencha]

Raids is all about communication. So I'm glad heroic pugs are having a bad time.

[Atreyes]

Raids is all about communication. So I'm glad heroic pugs are having a bad time.

This, there's nothing wrong with heroic content being too hard for groups without communication, it's not supposed to be faceroll.

[Twdft]

EDIT: I guess what I'm really saying is that I don't really the BfA Heroic raids are too highly tuned (maybe just a tiny bit), but the mechanics are too punishing. In a mode that's not meant to be cutting edge, someone messing up probably shouldn't mean the whole raid is punished (at least not harshly).

Yeah, it's the mechanics. Some of them can't really be outgeared.

It's great fun while progressing, but noone wants to progress again months later on Alt farm runs. Even middle bosses like Conclave can become a shitshow if you have a couple inexperienced players with you.

[MidnyteTV]

I don't have any experience with BfA heroic. But since WoD, Heroic difficulty is MUCH more difficult than normal difficulty (the equivalent) from Wrath through MoP.

The buzzword starting in WoD was "Personal responsibility."

But what essentially happened was Blizzard removed a shit ton of cooldowns and abilities that trivialized content. During ToT and SoO, you could Cooldown your way out of problems (Ele Shamans had healing tide, all druid specs had tranq).

They also made mechanics much more punishing.

- - - Updated - - -

Yeah, it's the mechanics. Some of them can't really be outgeared.

It's great fun while progressing, but noone wants to progress again months later on Alt farm runs. Even middle bosses like Conclave can become a shitshow if you have a couple inexperienced players with you.

Also this.

During SoO, you could outgear the raid and just plow through it. Preach Gaming did a video during Nighthold that showed that no matter how much gear you had, you were unable to outgear and fight and smash through it.

This I think is a mistake, but it's a topic for another day.

[Sofo1]

there is a bunch of bosses that punishes the whole raid if 1 guy makes a mistake or bosses like mekkatorque that requires the raid to be a bit more coordinated than previous raids. Raiding with a guild and coms has gotten better but pugging is slightly harder now.

[Jastall]

Pugs sucking is what pugs do. Nobody who has went through Heroic HFC or Tomb can say BDA is an outlier with a straight face because there, on Heroic a good amount of bosses will use your head as a mop if you ignore their mechanics as well.

And that's a good thing. Heroic isn't supposed to be a totally free kill even if you outgear it. The one think I do think should happen is make endbosses more attractive with better gear.

[MrExcelion]

The quality of players has likely gone down. Not much reason to step foot in one without the chance for a warforged tier piece, chance at a legiondary, or warforged trinket that's actually good (raid trinkets are meh this xpac). 400 gear is whatever with all the other sources of gear. Azerite is guaranteed to drop at base 400 and odds are that's worthless to you too. I also think there's also just a lot of good players that used to pug raids in group finder, that focus on m+ instead of raiding now because they found a community to join. We're also later in the tier with BoD. I'd imagine a lot of players just stopped pugging it after a month or so. Normal BoDs lifespan must have been extremely limited with the loot it drops.