Originally Posted by Sirloin
Here are my suggestions for Heroic/Normal raids:
Length and Difficulty:
The normal raids would be tuned easier, and would have fewer bosses (An easier BT could omit mother/council/illdian or even more like gurtogg+ros omitted). Trash would be on a longer respawn or might not respawn at all. Some trash packs might be omitted.
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Trash is everything, in my opinion.
When you look at the TBC raid instances, pretty much the only one that has achieved mainstream success is Karazhan. I did a /who mage karazhan last week and got 40 results. I have no idea what the average number of mages in a Karazhan raid actually is, but assuming it's somewhere near 1.0, that's 40 raids running Karazhan. At the same time, there were 3 guilds in ZA, three in Tempest Keep and none at all in SSC, BT or Hyjal. It seems that at the end of tier 4 content, which is mostly 10man bosses, progression just completely dies.
The content after this point has been nerfed quite a few times, but it seems like a majority of people just aren't interested. It can be hard to pinpoint why. The first thing said is usually "the gear there isn't worth the effort compared to badge/pvp gear", which may be true but that wouldn't explain why Karazhan is so popular, as the gear there is even worse. The raid size isn't a huge issue either when you consider all entry-level guilds that would field 40 man raids pre-BC.
Anyway, trash is everything. Trash is the first impression any guild gets of a new instance. When the AQ gates opened, you had hundreds of people outside and dozens of guilds forming raids outside there. A quick wipe on the first patrol or anubisath pack in aq40, and people realised they should probably clear BWL first and then come back.
TK and SSC trash is pretty mean. It's harder than Black Temple trash in many places. And it respawns after 2 hours, which is something pretty new in TBC (I know core hounds and such respawned, but we're talking full trash clears here, to pretty much every boss). I don't really see a reason in this at all. Understandably it was to stop the top guilds from progressing too fast, by limiting their boss attempts, but now those guilds are miles ahead it shouldn't need to act as a block at all. Going back to Karazhan, Karazhan has nice short and relaxed trash clears (except maybe the 2 rooms after Curator), which is really what SSC and TK should be like since they're low-level 25mans.
Which brings me to the subject topic - nerfing bosses is bad. Bad bad bad. Everyone loses when you nerf a boss - the people who killed it originally feel like their accomplishments have been taken away, and the people who are coming to up it aren't generally happy about it either, and get grief rather than congratulations from the more-progressed guilds. What should be toned up and down is the secondary factors that make them harder to learn, especially trash, but also wipe recovery, easier-to-get resistance gear, attunements (the whole "get attuned on hard boss to access some easy bosses" thing is a terrible idea) etc.
Boss health/length is also an issue. Most would call changing it a Primary nerf, but it really depends how you balance it out. Generally, the bosses in tier 5 zones are long fights. You suddenly go from Karazhan bosses that die in 5 minutes with average DPS to 10+ minute fights like Magtheridon, Al'Ar, Morogrim etc. The shortest fight is probably Astromancer, and that can still take a guild 6-7 minutes. Pre-BC that would be considered a long fight for any guild before.. Chromaggus? Short fights tend to be way more accessible, anyway.