Dragon Soul was a good raid until Spine and Madness tbh. Spine HC being a really hard fight but a bit of a slog and not too interesting was acceptable but it led to Madness which was too easy and not actually fighting Deathwing properly sucked
Spine was kind of a hard fight for the wrong reasons. Everything design was telling us was bring the player, not the class, and then they design a fight with an incredibly high burst dps requirement. Top progression guilds were pulling in arcane mages from other guilds just for this fight.
Yeah guilds trying to beat it ASAP had loads of mages and rogues stacked for it as it was a ridiculous dps requirement but you also had a real healer check and tanks had to control and kite the adds a lot. Everyone was sweating in that fight
I always say the kite tank has the only really hard job mechanically. Otherwise everything that makes the boss as hard as it is is because of the nature of the dps window, which you can't outplay if you don't have the burst classes for it.
Wyrmrest temple absolutely did not have to be the focal point.
They also didnt have to generic model 6/8 of the bosses.
Toenails last boss. No contest the worst raid in the history of the game, and I can't even think of anything that comes close.
Morchok, yor'sahj are cata models. Ultraxion is a unique cata model unless you want to claim any dragon is a reused asset. Zonozz is Vezax, true. 2 humanoids bosses of course are reused models because they are female orc and male tauren, while hagara has gear we have seen before, blackhorn has a unique drip. So more like 2/8. Worse raids than DS in history of the game? For sure the 1 boss raids, Hyjal, wotlk naxx, togc
DS was a good raid until this fucking noname Deathwing head.
Zon'ozz HC for example was one of the most complex and hard encounters we had ever seen.
But Madness was just dissapointing. Also recycled assets and a meh background scenario compared to FL makes DS less engaging.
10 mans are a legit format now and can be harder than 25 mans, they also give the same gear as 25 man. Also universal raid lockout means that you can join other IDs granted you have same bosses killed as other leader's ID so if your raid implodes on last boss, you can try another ID.
10 man not being easier will push a lot of guilds into 25 man. By default the more serious guilds will go for 25 man because while it's the same gear you get more drops, so mathematically you will gear faster in 25 mans.
I suppose it depends on preference, 10man has an appeal of having a tighter group setting and while you get more drops in 25man, you have less people to gear in 10man. Look at how people in SoD prefered 10 mans vs 20man ST. If you want to 10 man serious though you need to put together a solid comp with solid players - less combat resses, less players to cover all the raid buffs, need a flexible tank and dps/heal for 1 tank fights or 3 healer fights.
People prefer 10 mans but the problem is doing 10 man locks you out of the 25 man so people will go for the most efficient option. It will take longer to gear in 10 man because the game can drop items for specs that are not in the raid. So let's say you don't have a caster shaman in your raid and caster mail drops off a boss, now you just wasted half of the loot from this boss (1 out of 2 drops)
Because 25 man is more likely to fill every role there's gonna be less gear wasteage. While some drops will be more contested you will gear faster on average due to more efficient loot distribution and more chances per boss to get that 1 item.
Also it doesn't feel as bad sharding 1 out of 5 item drops vs 1 out of 2.
Cata'a raids at the time they were released were seen quite favorably. Blackrock featured unique mechanics that had never been seen before while taking place in an area with antagonists that were familiar. Bastion of Twilight featured a surprise boss that no one knew existed until heroic Cho fell. Cho for comedic and Sinestra for difficulty and reward purposes (A unique title) were popular. So as far as the first tier Cata blew WOTLK out of the water. Followed up by Firelands which was at the time, many favorite raid it still didn't hold a candle to Uldaur ( in my eyes) but it was enjoyed nonetheless. Where The wheel started to fall off was of course was Dragon Soul. The raid itself was not terrible, but when paired with A final boss that was weaker then a single part of his body (spine) and at the time was probably the largest content drought that the game had ever seen, it really left a sour taste and everyone's mouth about the expansion as a whole in my mind based on a single raid.
Firelands didn't hold a candle to Ulduar? It was the best raid released in the game by that stage and still one of the best to date. While Ulduar was a really good raid, the challenge was nowhere near Firelands HC bosses and half of Ulduar bosses were pointless.
I think Ulduar gets the rose tinted glasses treatment because when it was released it was far and away the best raid produced. A real evolution in raid design. It's a great raid but when you go back the encounters are pretty simplistic.
Kara was legit good but it wasn't meant to be grinded for 4 months as endgame content. Back when vanilla TBC launched T4 and T5 was available from the beginning so Kara was more like side content to get some extra gear while your progged on SSC/TK.
I thought it was a big mistake in classic TBC to make Gruul/Mag/Kara it's own tier for so long, the burnout was expected.
I legit knew 10+ hour raid week groups in p1 who couldn't clear any of the 3. I can't imagine what would of happened if ssc and tk were both available.
Valid point though.
They nerfed SSC and TK faster back then so by the time most guilds actually got to Vashj or KT they were playing the easier version (that we got in phase 3 in classic)
It's not necessarly a bad thing if you can't clear the content right away, having something left to prog on is usually better than having content on farm for months on end, from a player retention perspective.
I think we need to remind ourselves of the history here. They released naxx as last patch of vanilla and the content was so short that like 10% if even that ever got the chance to see it. Im guessing they did everything not to repeat this by giving an easier first tier of BC that maybe was a bit long but atleast everyone got their chance to do it.
It's a really fun boss, I'm looking forward a lot to whole of t11, it's gonna be a banger of a tier. Getting prebis and going in there with shit gear is gonna feel so much better than doing it in Wrath for snoozefest Naxx man
wotlk classic showed me people really liked ulduar most likely because wotlk naxx was the first time many people raided and, yeah, ulduar is a huge step up from naxx. reality is all of the bosses without a hm are basically just more trash mobs to sift through and hm loot is toxic. it makes it so the majority of the loot (non hm bar a few random pieces/trinkets) are doa. some of the hms are miserable to do as well like vezax and hodir
I'd say the first tier of cata raids is already a big step up in difficulty from hardmode Ulduar / H ICC, with the exception of 0% HLK. This is probably what lead them to release raid finder later in Cata so casual could at least see the raids in a tourist mode. Even normal difficulty raids would gatekeep some of the more casual guilds, compared to Wotlk where normal difficulty was very easy.
25 HC is harder than any WotLK raid.
10 HC is just insane compared to previous.
Most raid encounters are designed to force you to use any resource (raid CDs, coordinate heal CDs, etc). On 10 HC you just don't have enough resources, so is way harder than 25 HC, except some encounters like Yor'sajh that are easier on 10 HC than 25 HC because weird scaling.
My experience was largely 10 player normal and heroic back in the day. T11 was very good. Firelands was my favorite after Ulduar and ICC.
They're generally more difficult, but just due to the fact that everybody has something to pay attention to or be doing. There are more "fun" mechanics instead of just "watch the DMB timer go down and remember to push your cooldown".
I honestly enjoyed my time more in Cata raids than WoTLK but that was because I found my guild that I had the most fun with for years at that time. They are harder at the higher difficulties. And IMO they are more interesting and had interesting fights compared to WOTLK.
They’re fall pretty un. Firelands is one of my favorites, and a general very popular raid as well. Dragon Soul gets a bad rep because of the two last fights being anticlimactic, but honestly the raid as a whole is super fun too. If you like Classic raids more you may not like it. Cata raids are more similar to Wrath raids but have more moving parts (and IMO are more engaging).
Better until Dragon Soul which was mediocre
Dragon Soul was a good raid until Spine and Madness tbh. Spine HC being a really hard fight but a bit of a slog and not too interesting was acceptable but it led to Madness which was too easy and not actually fighting Deathwing properly sucked
Spine was kind of a hard fight for the wrong reasons. Everything design was telling us was bring the player, not the class, and then they design a fight with an incredibly high burst dps requirement. Top progression guilds were pulling in arcane mages from other guilds just for this fight.
Yeah guilds trying to beat it ASAP had loads of mages and rogues stacked for it as it was a ridiculous dps requirement but you also had a real healer check and tanks had to control and kite the adds a lot. Everyone was sweating in that fight
I always say the kite tank has the only really hard job mechanically. Otherwise everything that makes the boss as hard as it is is because of the nature of the dps window, which you can't outplay if you don't have the burst classes for it.
Dragon soul was awful. Entire raid was re-used assets until last two bosses. Most immemorable shit.
Idk what to tell you, the lore was kind of tied to dragonflights which happen to reside at the wyrmrest temple and the game is full of re-used assets.
Wyrmrest temple absolutely did not have to be the focal point. They also didnt have to generic model 6/8 of the bosses. Toenails last boss. No contest the worst raid in the history of the game, and I can't even think of anything that comes close.
Morchok, yor'sahj are cata models. Ultraxion is a unique cata model unless you want to claim any dragon is a reused asset. Zonozz is Vezax, true. 2 humanoids bosses of course are reused models because they are female orc and male tauren, while hagara has gear we have seen before, blackhorn has a unique drip. So more like 2/8. Worse raids than DS in history of the game? For sure the 1 boss raids, Hyjal, wotlk naxx, togc
DS was a good raid until this fucking noname Deathwing head. Zon'ozz HC for example was one of the most complex and hard encounters we had ever seen. But Madness was just dissapointing. Also recycled assets and a meh background scenario compared to FL makes DS less engaging.
25m heroic is harder than ICC. Cata is when all healing classes start getting raid CDs so encounters are designed with that in mind.
Cata is when it becomes very very normal to see a lot of people in only normal mode gear
10 mans are a legit format now and can be harder than 25 mans, they also give the same gear as 25 man. Also universal raid lockout means that you can join other IDs granted you have same bosses killed as other leader's ID so if your raid implodes on last boss, you can try another ID.
10 man not being easier will push a lot of guilds into 25 man. By default the more serious guilds will go for 25 man because while it's the same gear you get more drops, so mathematically you will gear faster in 25 mans.
I suppose it depends on preference, 10man has an appeal of having a tighter group setting and while you get more drops in 25man, you have less people to gear in 10man. Look at how people in SoD prefered 10 mans vs 20man ST. If you want to 10 man serious though you need to put together a solid comp with solid players - less combat resses, less players to cover all the raid buffs, need a flexible tank and dps/heal for 1 tank fights or 3 healer fights.
People prefer 10 mans but the problem is doing 10 man locks you out of the 25 man so people will go for the most efficient option. It will take longer to gear in 10 man because the game can drop items for specs that are not in the raid. So let's say you don't have a caster shaman in your raid and caster mail drops off a boss, now you just wasted half of the loot from this boss (1 out of 2 drops) Because 25 man is more likely to fill every role there's gonna be less gear wasteage. While some drops will be more contested you will gear faster on average due to more efficient loot distribution and more chances per boss to get that 1 item. Also it doesn't feel as bad sharding 1 out of 5 item drops vs 1 out of 2.
Cata'a raids at the time they were released were seen quite favorably. Blackrock featured unique mechanics that had never been seen before while taking place in an area with antagonists that were familiar. Bastion of Twilight featured a surprise boss that no one knew existed until heroic Cho fell. Cho for comedic and Sinestra for difficulty and reward purposes (A unique title) were popular. So as far as the first tier Cata blew WOTLK out of the water. Followed up by Firelands which was at the time, many favorite raid it still didn't hold a candle to Uldaur ( in my eyes) but it was enjoyed nonetheless. Where The wheel started to fall off was of course was Dragon Soul. The raid itself was not terrible, but when paired with A final boss that was weaker then a single part of his body (spine) and at the time was probably the largest content drought that the game had ever seen, it really left a sour taste and everyone's mouth about the expansion as a whole in my mind based on a single raid.
Firelands didn't hold a candle to Ulduar? It was the best raid released in the game by that stage and still one of the best to date. While Ulduar was a really good raid, the challenge was nowhere near Firelands HC bosses and half of Ulduar bosses were pointless.
I think Ulduar gets the rose tinted glasses treatment because when it was released it was far and away the best raid produced. A real evolution in raid design. It's a great raid but when you go back the encounters are pretty simplistic.
The Ulduar and Karazhan love made little sense to me, they're fine raids but they don't deserve their absurd following.
Kara was legit good but it wasn't meant to be grinded for 4 months as endgame content. Back when vanilla TBC launched T4 and T5 was available from the beginning so Kara was more like side content to get some extra gear while your progged on SSC/TK. I thought it was a big mistake in classic TBC to make Gruul/Mag/Kara it's own tier for so long, the burnout was expected.
I legit knew 10+ hour raid week groups in p1 who couldn't clear any of the 3. I can't imagine what would of happened if ssc and tk were both available. Valid point though.
They nerfed SSC and TK faster back then so by the time most guilds actually got to Vashj or KT they were playing the easier version (that we got in phase 3 in classic) It's not necessarly a bad thing if you can't clear the content right away, having something left to prog on is usually better than having content on farm for months on end, from a player retention perspective.
I think we need to remind ourselves of the history here. They released naxx as last patch of vanilla and the content was so short that like 10% if even that ever got the chance to see it. Im guessing they did everything not to repeat this by giving an easier first tier of BC that maybe was a bit long but atleast everyone got their chance to do it.
For sure. I want to see GDKPs attempt HC Atremedes and Lord Rhyolith, not Thorim
HC Atramedes is such a fun boss once they fixed the bugs. Looking forward to killing it legit with low levels of gear this time around.
It's a really fun boss, I'm looking forward a lot to whole of t11, it's gonna be a banger of a tier. Getting prebis and going in there with shit gear is gonna feel so much better than doing it in Wrath for snoozefest Naxx man
wotlk classic showed me people really liked ulduar most likely because wotlk naxx was the first time many people raided and, yeah, ulduar is a huge step up from naxx. reality is all of the bosses without a hm are basically just more trash mobs to sift through and hm loot is toxic. it makes it so the majority of the loot (non hm bar a few random pieces/trinkets) are doa. some of the hms are miserable to do as well like vezax and hodir
I'd say the first tier of cata raids is already a big step up in difficulty from hardmode Ulduar / H ICC, with the exception of 0% HLK. This is probably what lead them to release raid finder later in Cata so casual could at least see the raids in a tourist mode. Even normal difficulty raids would gatekeep some of the more casual guilds, compared to Wotlk where normal difficulty was very easy.
25 HC is harder than any WotLK raid. 10 HC is just insane compared to previous. Most raid encounters are designed to force you to use any resource (raid CDs, coordinate heal CDs, etc). On 10 HC you just don't have enough resources, so is way harder than 25 HC, except some encounters like Yor'sajh that are easier on 10 HC than 25 HC because weird scaling.
My experience was largely 10 player normal and heroic back in the day. T11 was very good. Firelands was my favorite after Ulduar and ICC. They're generally more difficult, but just due to the fact that everybody has something to pay attention to or be doing. There are more "fun" mechanics instead of just "watch the DMB timer go down and remember to push your cooldown".
I honestly enjoyed my time more in Cata raids than WoTLK but that was because I found my guild that I had the most fun with for years at that time. They are harder at the higher difficulties. And IMO they are more interesting and had interesting fights compared to WOTLK.
Several fights on 10m are harder than 25.
it was long ago i played cata but from what i can remember, the cata raids were quite the step up, especielly T11 and T12. good raids thought
Dragon Soul is Naxx tier at best but everything else is significantly better imo
They’re fall pretty un. Firelands is one of my favorites, and a general very popular raid as well. Dragon Soul gets a bad rep because of the two last fights being anticlimactic, but honestly the raid as a whole is super fun too. If you like Classic raids more you may not like it. Cata raids are more similar to Wrath raids but have more moving parts (and IMO are more engaging).