How hard was Ulduar?

[garicasha]

How far would (edit: ) a guild that just barely made it through Sunwell (/edit) get in to Ulduar if it was out for six months and the original ilvls were used? Post-nerf bosses and the 3.3.5 class balancing or whatever classic will be launching with.

I tried for 30+ minutes to find parses from...legal...places but couldn't find any. I have a hunch that hardcore players crush even Yogg+0 shortly after release, but I'm not the least bit sure. But that fight in particular is a lot of experience in avoiding sanity-sapping skulls.

For reference it looks like 4000 US guilds cleared SSC & TK and 2000 US guilds cleared Sunwell according to the progress page on warcraftlogs.com

Oh and historical data on Algalon kills would be amazeballs.

[Hctaz]

I mean, it all sorta depends.

A lot of the time, these Classic clears haven't exactly been done "legitimately" so to speak.
If you've ever done something super difficult before, you'll know what I mean. The best example I can give is riding a bike or if you've ever played Guitar Hero.

I haven't played in probably 5 or so years, but I know that I could boot up and play Through the Fire and Flames on Guitar Hero 3 Expert and beat it on the first if not second try.
Once you've spent that much time conquering something, you won't really forget how to do it. If you took my old 25 man guild from Wrath and threw us in ICC, we'd probably clear it within the first week (assuming they don't follow the old Wrath schedule where ICC was time-gated weekly). Take any guild whose been clearing it using... less than scrupulous means for the last 10+ years and... well... you'll see content die within the first day it's available.

[rogoth]

if you're talking just getting boss kills and not any hardmodes, it will be cleared in a day no problem, the vast majority of the issues with the hardmodes is going to be people knowing how to use the vehicles properly on flame leviathan to get 'nuked from orbit' done properly, then you have the speed kills which won't be possible for a while before most people have full set bonus and BiS weapons/trinkets as the ignis one is pretty tight, the hodir one is extremely tight and just a ball ache in general, outside of that the biggest problems i see people having is not with the historically hard fights, but some of the easier fights due to the fact it forces you to do mechanics that haven't been seen or tried in a very very long time, and most people will have forgotten about them, as for 'alone in the dark' i don't know honestly where that sits, because assuming the 3.3.5 talents and class tuning, tanks will be way harder to kill than previously, in general burst dps is higher baseline making the challenge of the brain room hard to guess assuming appropriate gearing, so who knows, as for Alaglon kills, i think he will be done fairly early on but his 'hard mode achievements' will take a while to do, and i doubt many will manage herald of the titans for a long time, because assuming they follow through on this moronic ilvl squish bullshit they have been talking about, unless they do something to gear scaling on a fight by fight basis, some achievements might not even be possible to obtain due to how they were done back in the day, so only time will tell really.

[aceperson]

i don't really know how or why the wayback machine works or how to even use it (literally never used it for anything, mostly just hear about it) but there is an old parse site called worldoflogs. it was the warcraftlogs of it's day even though logs weren't a massive deal like it is today. i would imagine you could find old records using the wayback machine.

while i have no experience with pre-nerf or even post-nerf without outgearing it due to when i started, i can say hard mode bosses in ulduar were still decently hard as i tried a more casual achievement run during the icc patch and the group was able to get to iron council without too much issue before that. the group ended up falling apart because people were taking too much nature damage. my hunters aspect of nature allowed people to survive but i had to turn it off for a bit to get mana back every few minutes and people started dying shortly after. and the shaman totems weren't doing it because the area was incredibly large and they didn't exactly replace the totems every time the group had to move.

now i am certainly a much better player than i was then (one point being what would now be considered a cutting edge achievement), but the general player base hasn't improved that much, if it all. the general player base has effectively bullied the dev team into nerfing any encounter outside of heroic and mythic into being an almost literal faceroll. granted that has started changing lately but i don't think players are learning from smashing their heads into walls without getting proper tutorials.

[Marxman]

Compared to what came before? Hard.

Compared to what would come in subsequent expansions? *VERY* easy.

Other than Firefighter and Algalon, nothing is really that tough. Those might take you a night or two of learning.

[garicasha]

There’s a lot of variables, some known some not:
—How much health did bosses have pre and post nerf
—How much will 3.3.5 increase DPS over 3.1
—How much better do casual guilds play than in Wrath
—How much will anachronistic knowledge of the OP specs affect raid stacking
—How many guilds got Firefighter originally
—How many guilds got Yogg+1 before Trial
—How many guilds just got a normal full clear

Although I’m guessing it wouldn’t be terrible to guess that if 2000 US guilds made it through Sunwell, a similar number will get Yogg+1. Although if they’re talking about raising ilvl, they might be thinking that they’ll be too hard especially if we get pre-nerf versions.

Did you have to do the hardmodes to unlock Yogg hard? I think you just had to not talk to the keepers, although I’m sure yah needed the loot from them to have a shot.

As an aside, I remember pre-nerf Normal Mimiron’s tank-to-tank blast doing absurd amounts of damage. I was pretty bad back then but I remember one night I had the dps clear the way to mimiron and then dismissed them just so the tanks and healers could work out a cooldown rotation just to survive the dang thing.

[Kikazz]

There’s a lot of variables, some known some not:
—How much health did bosses have pre and post nerf
—How much will 3.3.5 increase DPS over 3.1
—How much better do casual guilds play than in Wrath
—How much will anachronistic knowledge of the OP specs affect raid stacking
—How many guilds got Firefighter originally
—How many guilds got Yogg+1 before Trial
—How many guilds just got a normal full clear

Although I’m guessing it wouldn’t be terrible to guess that if 2000 US guilds made it through Sunwell, a similar number will get Yogg+1. Although if they’re talking about raising ilvl, they might be thinking that they’ll be too hard especially if we get pre-nerf versions.

Did you have to do the hardmodes to unlock Yogg hard? I think you just had to not talk to the keepers, although I’m sure yah needed the loot from them to have a shot.

As an aside, I remember pre-nerf Normal Mimiron’s tank-to-tank blast doing absurd amounts of damage. I was pretty bad back then but I remember one night I had the dps clear the way to mimiron and then dismissed them just so the tanks and healers could work out a cooldown rotation just to survive the dang thing.

TBH id say id put it on par with first time stepping into Muru first time and spending a night to learn it.

i reckon most guilds will get to XT within the first night, and kill it,

i reckon sons they will have a fight and Freya,

most guilds will fail/fall at Mimiron,

only 10% of the guilds who get to Yogg will kill it 0 light.

i expect most guilds to clear up to General in the first week. on non hard mode.

[Speedlance]

Its gonna be super easy, dont worry.

[RobertMugabe]

Normal Mode Ulduar will be super easy and puggable (both 10m and 25m). Hardmodes are going to pose somewhat of a challenge (=you might not clear it in the first week) to average guilds.

It's a decent step up from the 3.0 raids, but that doesn't say much, considering how Naxx10 is basically a wotlk 5man heroic dungeon for 10 people and more bosses.

[Nymrohd]

Mimiron Firefighter, Hodir speedrun, Alone in the Darkness are all fairly hard. Algalon is more about the limited attempts. I did find Firefighter a more complex fight than anything until Lich King, every second in that fight counts. Cataclysm has much harder raids though.

Wrath in general is still before the top guilds truly embraced optimization and is just the start of the war between devs vs top guilds and add on writers. I don't think we reach anything close to modern tuning and complexity before Ragnaros (And mechanically he is nowhere near as complex as modern bosses; we'd have to reach Archimonde for that).

- - - Updated - - -

It's a decent step up from the 3.0 raids, but that doesn't say much, considering how Naxx10 is basically a wotlk 5man heroic dungeon for 10 people and more bosses.

Always thought Naxx should have just been released as four leveling dungeons with Sapphiron and KT as a small 2 boss raid while elevating some of the dungeons (Utgarde Pinnacle? Azjol-Nerub?) into raids to fill the tier.

[garicasha]

That’s an interesting idea, although Naxx was too epic IMO. It’s kinda too bad Thaddius and all of them were so dang easy though, it was a scary place with a lot of character and depth.

That does remind me they never did Aqir though, kinda thought we’d eventually get that.

I’d still love to see completion percentages from the actual raids though instead of pontificating.

But I bet more casual-ish guilds get Thorim and Freya hard mode, maybe Hodir, but yah I’ve heard Firefighter was kinda the first “modern” fight in my book.

Do you need a prot warrior with spell reflect for that btw?

[Nymrohd]

That does remind me they never did Aqir though, kinda thought we’d eventually get that.

Off topic but originally Wrath was supposed to have Utgarde Pinnacle as a raid and Azjol Nerub as a zone (at least that was the plan at Blizzcon 2007, finding it hard to find videos or slides from back then). I mean if you look at the two nerubian dungeons, the environment created was completely out of scope for the dungeons we got and it's probably what was salvaged from a zone or raid that they could not make work. Infamously I think Wrath still had flying mounted combat on the box.

[kranur]

Except for a couple of hard modes, not that hard. Like most hard modes are less intensive than Sunwell, but have a few mpre mechanics attached.
It will obviously be a cleared super fast because people have been doing these mechanics for many many years now and also a lot of people have been doing the encounters on private servers.

[shise]

+0 did take a while. It was really hard to manage.

That and a few more HMs, or else it was fine.
Ulduar is not so much about the difficulty but the overalge awesomeness of the raid

[Sarevokcz]

Off topic but originally Wrath was supposed to have Utgarde Pinnacle as a raid and Azjol Nerub as a zone (at least that was the plan at Blizzcon 2007, finding it hard to find videos or slides from back then). I mean if you look at the two nerubian dungeons, the environment created was completely out of scope for the dungeons we got and it's probably what was salvaged from a zone or raid that they could not make work. Infamously I think Wrath still had flying mounted combat on the box.

and dance studio! we will never forget...

[Nymrohd]

Except for a couple of hard modes, not that hard. Like most hard modes are less intensive than Sunwell, but have a few mpre mechanics attached.

I mean there is also the massive difference in organization with TBC. Wrath made organizing a raid much easier for 25man raids. Yes at 10man having most buffs was a headache (and having them all was I think impossible) but it was balanced around that; in Wrath party constraints were not particularly important like they were in Sunwell with drum rotations etc. It was just much easier to log in and raid even for the raid leaders. It also had two tiers that were easy even back then.

[Valysar]

It's gonna be cleared in 1h30 don't worry

[potis]

Ulduar was not hard, just something new and very very tedious cause of its size.

My guild managed world top 50-80 at bosses like Hodir HM and Thorim HM with keyboard turners and terrible players (IRL familiars), we did raid more than we should but my point stands.

Apart from +0 that requires some proper execution and maybe Freya/Mimiron HM, the rest are rather joke-difficulty wise.

[Mendzia]

Non-hardmodes are probably on BT level - pretty easy.
Hardmodes are around SWP.
Yogg+0 definitely hardest thing in Classic with many personal responsibilities, good plannning, brain portals learning etc. but still doable by mid-tier guilds.

[garicasha]

It's gonna be cleared in 1h30 don't worry

Oh yah I'm sure the hardcore will destroy it, I made the mistake of not putting in the OP that I was more interested in like...guilds that barely made it through Sunwell. I'll update the OP.

And also how much buffing the hard mode loot ilvls will make a difference.

My guild managed world top 50-80 at bosses like Hodir HM and Thorim HM with keyboard turners and terrible players (IRL familiars), we did raid more than we should but my point stands.

I believe yah but the statement is also slightly at odds with the idea of buffing the ilvls of the loot...if the devs expected people to walk all over Ulduar they wouldn't have suggested raising the ilvl of the rewards slightly, especially if their stated goal is to make the raid relevant a little longer. Although another stated part of the reasoning is so that Ulduar doesn't go straight in to obscurity the moment Trial drops.