What if Ulduar hard modes for +ilvl came back...just a little bit?

[garicasha]

Ulduar was IMO the heyday of WoW. And although the Ulduar hard modes were obviously not going to work as the baseline (there's only like three ways to do it, adds like Freya, boss order like Council of Iron / Bug Trio, or timer like Hodir. IMO Firefighter was clicking a button inside the raid as opposed to a button outside where you choose your difficulty.) I don't see why 1-2 bosses per tier couldn't have such an option, especially on heroic difficulty. Especially if the boss itself was optional.

Nothing crazy, like a +3 ilvl upgrade or something. Could also help fill a niche for guilds good enough to crush heroic but have a roster too big or small to do mythic. I'm also thinking that the difficulty and loot table would be set up in such a way that it would not be the best way for mythic raiding guilds to spend their time.

It'd also mean the baseline encounter could be easier, which after the stratospheric difficulty of Sepulcher would be good.

[enigma77]

Yep I'd love that. I disagree though that there are only 3 ways to do it. There are so many ways to do it, you just have to get creative.

Off the top of my head here's a few examples of what they could have done in the (Mythic) current raid:

Skolex: make the boss re-emerge on top of the puddle that he spawns when he burrows by baiting him onto an existing puddle, hardmode triggered

Artifcier: ignoring the platform buffs the boss, if you ignore all 3 the boss gets extra abilities, hardmode triggered (admittedly this would require a slightly different design, as ignoring a platform currently simply wipes the raid)

Dausegne: make the spawned add get hit by 6 waves, causing it to despawn and buff the boss

Prototype Pantheon: allow the bosses to heal to full health, triggering hardmode

Lihuvim: never kill the sentry adds

Lords of Dread: take at least 6 swarm debuffs into the among us phase

basically just do what they did in Ulduar, make the raid play things purposefully "wrong", to trigger an optional hardmode

the more complex the fight the easier it gets actually, on something like Anduin I doubt anyone would really want a hardmode, but you could get very creative on a fight like that, requiring you to for example hit all p2 adds with wicked stars simultaneously

[erifwodahs]

Yep I'd love that. I disagree though that there are only 3 ways to do it. There are so many ways to do it, you just have to get creative.

Yeah... Blizzard creative:

Your movement speed is reduced by 50%
Your casts sometimes are interrupted
You miss all attacks unless you attack him from specific side.

[Kralljin]

Feels pointless in a world where you have four difficulties.

That makes sense in an enviroment where you have 1-2 Difficulties, but not 4, especially when Mythic is also this massive leap in difficulty towards the later bosses.

[enigma77]

Yeah... Blizzard creative:

Your movement speed is reduced by 50%
Your casts sometimes are interrupted
You miss all attacks unless you attack him from specific side.

YEP. Probably why they stopped doing it.

[Celement]

YEP. Probably why they stopped doing it.

It's their states reason why and I have no reason to doubt them.

[OokOok]

As someone who actually did Ulduar when it was current and got Death's demise and then continued to clear all raid content until BFA, i've always been an advocate for the way loot was done in Ulduar.
I thought it was and still is the best loot system they ever did, switching to heroic loot was the worst decision they ever did and LFR is what ultimately just destroyed the whole system which led us eventually down the path to shit like weekly loot chests and the sort.

Blizzard is constantly botching balancing in raids, they have 4 levels they have to balance to 4 levels of player skill. They are over doing it, especially when it comes to how many classes/specs they have that they then have to balance around those raid difficulties.

Ulduar did it right, you have 1 set difficulty... you could either do it...or you couldn't. Eventually you would be able to do it. By killing that boss, you were now in a position where if you wanted better gear or more of a challenge you could then do the hardmode version by simply doing whatever was needed to push the boss into the hardmode... like killing a heart...blowing up all towers....pressing a red button or simply just killing the boss under a certain amount of time.
It was unique, challenging, fun and you were rewarded for it.

Players these days just expect to get all the best loot just for logging in

[Belloc]

Yeah... Blizzard creative:

Your movement speed is reduced by 50%
Your casts sometimes are interrupted
You miss all attacks unless you attack him from specific side.

Those are mechanics, not triggers.

[SinR]

Yeah... Blizzard creative:

Your movement speed is reduced by 50%
Your casts sometimes are interrupted
You miss all attacks unless you attack him from specific side.

Boss has 15% more HP and does 25% more melee damage
Boss summons orbs that need to be soaked
Boss adds explode on death, leaving a pool that heals hostile NPCs and damages players

[Polybius]

Yeah... Blizzard creative:

Your movement speed is reduced by 50%
Your casts sometimes are interrupted
You miss all attacks unless you attack him from specific side.

M+ in a nutshell and why I'll never like this iteration of dungeons. Almost dreading Fated raids.