Thoughts about re-releasing Castle Nathria and Sanctum of Domination

[garicasha]

I'll start by saying it's better than Sepulcher being the only current content until Dragonflight.

But I think there's a possible problem in player experience levels.

So let's say you've got a mythic raiding guild with a roster of 25 that got Cutting Edge every tier. Say 15 of those players have been on the same toon the whole expansion, they've done 300+ pulls on Stone Legion Generals, Sire Denathrius, Sylvanas, and 200 or however many pulls on Sludgefist, Painsmith Raznal, Fatescribe Roh-Kalo etc.

Let's say there's another five players on the roster that also got Cutting Edge, but maybe with a different guild, maybe they changed their main, maybe their spec got nerfed/buffed so they're playing holy priest now instead of discipline, etc.

And let's say the last five players on the roster either re-activated just for Sepulcher, or they were with a different guild that wasn't as advanced, etc. Either way they have 0 pulls on mythic SLG, Sire, Sylvanas, etc.

For more socially-oriented guilds it's not much of an issue. The 15 that know the fight (re) teach the fight to the other 10, done deal. But a lot of mythic guilds are pursuing the satisfaction of accomplishing something difficult and aren't there for the camaraderie. So now what do these guilds do?

Chances are some of the experienced raiders would rather gouge their eyes out with toga clips rather than re-do 300 wipes on Stone Legion Generals. Or even if it was easier with 3/4 of the raiders knowing what to do, my estimate is that it's still gonna be a 150+ wipe boss.

And this is to say nothing of the friction caused between the 15 players that have 6+ weeks of experience doing the fight watching the 10 that don't die in Phase 1.

Now toss in the next issue--the three-week rotation. Now the players that are learning the fight have a two-week gap after every week of progress, which is gonna exacerbate the skill level even more. (I feel the players that know the fight will be able to get back in to it easier and the newer players will need a few pulls each week to refresh it.) And it's not clear to me how extending lockouts will work either.

So although I think there's some sense in making all the efforts of the raid design last a little longer, re-releasing raids is not like re-releasing dungeons. The other reason for that is dungeons last 30 minutes and the pattern is generally like "completion-completion-barely miss timer-completion-completion-barely miss timer...etc." The pattern for mythic raids is "fail fail fail fail fail fail fail fail fail fail fail x 300 ....fail fail fail SUCCESS" which is very very different from dungeons.

Then there's a final issue, class stacking. With anachronistic knowledge of these fights, do you make players roll to required or over-performing specs? I know warlocks and hunters are doing real well in Sepulcher; but their pets never worked quite right on Denathrius because they don't travel through the mirrors but have to run across the room. I don't think it'll be that big of an issue as social considerations kind of trump these concerns except at the highest levels. Or put differently, let's say that Castle Nathria fight 'x' requires a death knight, a warlock, a couple great AoE DPS, a brewmaster, and a demon hunter tank. Then Sanctum fight 'y' requires 4-5 great single-target DPS, classes with short DPS cooldowns, a blood tank, stampeding roar, etc. So now what roster do you run when you have to cover all 31 fights in a three-week rotation?

And who knows, maybe the Fated affix will change the fights so much that it's new for everyone.

The last issue is that I believe that player counts have decreased dramatically since the launch of Shadowlands, so even if 2-3 players say "Hey, I like the guild, I'll be back for Dragonflight, but I'm not gonna spend 10-12 hours a week for four months doing something I've already accomplished" it's gonna make some pretty nasty recruitment problems.

In summary, though, I'm saying the re-release of these raids could cause guilds some friction as a majority of their players will know all the mechanics but a small minority won't.

[Squigglyo]

This is largely and issue that only affects the top 1%.

If they are burnt out, simply dont do it... Its a 'Bonus' season

The other 99% of the population is going to aproach these fights as intended: a 'fun', interesting new way to look at raiding for a season.
By the end of the patch/expansion, all 3 raids should be puggable up to heroic difficulty, just like they are/were/will be every other patch.



Ultimatly, the question is, who does this cater to? Is it the raiders who may be burnt out already on the same fights? Or the casual players who will approach this as just another patch cycle to play the game?
The answer is: the casuals. If 1% of raiders, the good ones, are burnt out and dont want to redo the mythic fights, the 99% of membership paying raiders are more than a good enough tradeoff for blizzard.

[garicasha]

Is Fated on the PTR? Can anyone explain it?

At the normal/heroic level I think it's gonna be more dependent on how Fated works. If it doesn't change the fight much, players that know it will have a big head start. If it changes the fights a LOT, then it'll be more of everyone learning a "new" fight. Although the more different it is from the original fight will mean that the standard raid tuning process will take a little longer, as there might be ability overlaps that are very difficult.

[Low Hanging Fruit]

So I wouldn't like it if it was more an actual raid tier. But with it just being the end of the expansion period when typically we get nothing for 6 months to a year I feel it makes sense in a way. It is more or less an expansion in review season just popped on the end to get them all seen and such. Add a little meh content where normally their was nothing. Granted we can argue if they just worked faster and better sort of thing it wouldn't be necessary but after like.. the whole life cycle of this very long lived game.. its been kind of proven that just won't ever be the case.

[Puri]

Your assumption is that the fated raids are going to have the same relatvie difficulty as they did before.
But we have no idea how the raids scale, how they adapt to our four times larger health pool, how they deal with our stronger burst, how they implement the raid affixes. Earlier one-hit mechanics might not even drop the raid to half health.

They are meant as a nice bonus and add some variety, they are not meant to (once again) provide try hard progression.

So unless we know what their tuning is going to be I don't see what your point.

[Gurahk]

I think this is a much better way to handle "drought seasons" after the end of the expansion. I hope they expand on it and maybe include some older raids in DF.

[Kokolums]

my playstyle has been raid focused. if i dislike the current raid. i unsub for sure. i hated sod, so i left. this new system appears to bring back sod as required guild raid activity. i will unsub if true. i imagine many feel this way. so if all 3 raids become required, it will hurt the game as some people will hate at least 1 of the raids and quit.

only ONE raid should be current content. this sounds like a disaster.

[Tommi]

This is largely and issue that only affects the top 1%.

If they are burnt out, simply dont do it... Its a 'Bonus' season

The other 99% of the population is going to aproach these fights as intended: a 'fun', interesting new way to look at raiding for a season.
By the end of the patch/expansion, all 3 raids should be puggable up to heroic difficulty, just like they are/were/will be every other patch.



Ultimatly, the question is, who does this cater to? Is it the raiders who may be burnt out already on the same fights? Or the casual players who will approach this as just another patch cycle to play the game?
The answer is: the casuals. If 1% of raiders, the good ones, are burnt out and dont want to redo the mythic fights, the 99% of membership paying raiders are more than a good enough tradeoff for blizzard.

That wouldn't be an issue if the gear dropped wasn't higher than the current raid. Fuck, NORMAL FATED drops same ilvl as MYTHIC SFO....

[cparle87]

That wouldn't be an issue if the gear dropped wasn't higher than the current raid. Fuck, NORMAL FATED drops same ilvl as MYTHIC SFO....

You know how each season the gear that drops from dungeons goes up? I'm presuming that when S4 and fateds come out all the raid, including SFO, will be raised up to drop equally.

[Gaidax]

We will cross that bridge when we get there.

All in all I don't expect anything to take any more than token amount of wipes. People know key mechanics by heart and we already were bringing as much as 3 or even 4 boosties to previous patch Mythic raids when they were current, so the 2-3 new guys or some such will be even less of an issue.

Sure there is that new mechanic and maybe on an odd fight or two it will really fuck stuff over, but the stuff like Fate or Painsmith is already something raid knows by heart and it's not going to change, so amount of wipes already will be lower.

Overall I'm OK with this idea. I do think it would be nicer if you could choose which fated raid to do for the week with a lockout as a guild.

[Athorha]

And people who are running m+ since launch are still taking the safe way on plaguefall mechanics / downeight failing.

More opportunity to just get rid of bad players from your roster before dragonflight if you care about that sort of thing

[Revamp Man]

I don't think it will be a huge issue
Yeah you gotta relearn some timings but honestly I don't see it being too much of a problem

Honestly I really missed some of the old bosses

[loras]

I mostly don't "get" the need to control players' options by allowing only one current "fated" raid. Just allow all three and adapt some reward currency so that players do them in relatively equal proportion (and potentially rotate some increased reward or something), but leave the actual choice to them.

But honestly this just dances around the real issue that they do not accumulate content, they develop and abandon, leaving players needlesly burnt out on endlesly running the same stuff.

[garicasha]

That’s a good idea, all three available (maybe just mythic) but something else steering people towards one each week.

Problem is splitting pugs three ways though.

[MrLachyG]

Is Fated on the PTR? Can anyone explain it?

At the normal/heroic level I think it's gonna be more dependent on how Fated works. If it doesn't change the fight much, players that know it will have a big head start. If it changes the fights a LOT, then it'll be more of everyone learning a "new" fight. Although the more different it is from the original fight will mean that the standard raid tuning process will take a little longer, as there might be ability overlaps that are very difficult.

yes, it is on the PTR. and lots of people have already explained it, on youtube and on wowhead. this isn't a new phenomenon

[Squigglyo]

That wouldn't be an issue if the gear dropped wasn't higher than the current raid. Fuck, NORMAL FATED drops same ilvl as MYTHIC SFO....

What are you gearing for? The Prepatch?

The fact the gear gap is so huge means theres plenty to do. Almost everyone can jump into Normal and get upgrades.
Last few patches, I had to clear the end of heroic before I would see anything high enough to be an upgrade.


But ultimatly, if your burnt out, dont do it. Theres no Hall of Fame, no AOTC. Not likely to be any World First Race. Its litteraly a season for the casual retention. It is almost designed for those burnt out to take a break without missing out on anything important.

[garicasha]

What are you gearing for? The Prepatch?

The fact the gear gap is so huge means theres plenty to do. Almost everyone can jump into Normal and get upgrades.
Last few patches, I had to clear the end of heroic before I would see anything high enough to be an upgrade.


But ultimatly, if your burnt out, dont do it. Theres no Hall of Fame, no AHOT. Not likely to be any World First Race. Its litteraly a season for the casual retention. It is almost designed for those burnt out to take a break without missing out on anything important.

That’s not a bad take…but I’d argue that if they’re re-releasing mythic it’s not meant to be super casual.

And the world-first race won’t be anything like Sepulcher I’m sure (it can’t with all three raids on a rotation)…but tryhards gonna tryhard.

[keyone01]

I mostly don't "get" the need to control players' options by allowing only one current "fated" raid. Just allow all three and adapt some reward currency so that players do them in relatively equal proportion (and potentially rotate some increased reward or something), but leave the actual choice to them.

Blizzard is allergic to BLP currency, it's miracle that we get this new system at all.
Also, without loot adjustement and/or forced rotation you would only run SoD and target some bosses elsewhere - loot in general is bad in CN and SotFO (there is a reason why some m+ trinket got nerfed this tier).

[thunderdragon2]

i just wish they would fix the sire denatherius fight so that its fun fo every1 INCLUDING pet classes if it goes live as it was back when it was current it wont be

[cparle87]

What are you gearing for? The Prepatch?

The fact the gear gap is so huge means theres plenty to do. Almost everyone can jump into Normal and get upgrades.
Last few patches, I had to clear the end of heroic before I would see anything high enough to be an upgrade.


But ultimatly, if your burnt out, dont do it. Theres no Hall of Fame, no AHOT. Not likely to be any World First Race. Its litteraly a season for the casual retention. It is almost designed for those burnt out to take a break without missing out on anything important.

And that'sssssssssssss... bad? /Kuzco