So, lately we've been bashing our heads against Hydross. The fight itself is fun, the mechanic is new and the requirements are easy to meet. However one thing that takes most time of it all is the trash. Who doesn't love bog lords really, but having them on a 45 minute spawntimer... Isn't that overdoing it?

There's the same issue in Karazhan and Gruul's, I haven't been past Hydross and not even visited Magtheridon so I can't speak about that (I'm not even sure I should be speaking about this, there might be worse later on?). In Gruul's Lair there's this stupid respawn that actually walks into the door if you're a bit slacky.

Is it just me or is the TBC trash kind of killing off peoples motivation when it comes to raiding? Naxxramas was awesome, long trash spawn but somewhat challenging at first and the trash stopped spawning when you killed the boss following them. Am I the only one thinking this? How can 45 minute spawns for mobs with 1m HP, spawning adds with 250k HP when they die, be fun?

Apologize if this has already been brought up, couldn't find a thread regarding this.

Time the last bog lord then you only need to kill that one every 45 minutes.
There is a save zone where you can res up.
And the trash is prolly like this to slow down the progress.

We are doing that, but that's not what this thread is about either. Of what I hear the trash after Hydross is just the same, and there's even more of it >.<

This has been discussed a lot in other TBC raiding threads.

Basically, it is decidedly poor design. You will not find anyone, anywhere, who will defend the way trash has been implemented in the 25-man zones.

It remains to be seen whether Blizzard will address this issue in 2.1.

I hope they will. If they do not, there is going to be a massive torrent of complaints as more and more guilds get into SSC.

This is coming from an outsider to TBC trash headaches, but I do wonder if it's time to take a new direction with raid trash more generally. Obviously trash provides a time sink and a way to avoid doing nothing all night but beat your head against a boss. The usual solution to too much trash is to nerf its difficulty and respawn timer.

What about going the opposite direction? What if trash was made genuinely challenging and fairly long, placed on a 10-15 hour respawn timer so it only had to be cleared once a night, and dropped enough loot to moderately defray raiding consumable and repair costs? You could even include a few minibosses with more special abilities, and have them drop useful items at a low rate such that clearing all in the trash in an instance might net the raid 1-2 items a week.

You would still have the time sink; each night rather than kill boring stuff three times for 20-40 minutes you kill interesting stuff once for 60-90 minutes. You also still get the diversity in fights; trash would still serve as a warmup on the way to work on a boss for the evening. And you don't waste your flasks reclearing trash.

I'm sure there's someone out there who thinks it's some sort of "team building."

But, yes, SSC trash is god awful and only gets worse after Hydross.

I don't really have any problem with Karazhan trash. There isn't all that much of it between any given boss encounters, you can skip a lot of it, and it's all tied to bosses in a logical progression. It's also highly varied, and you aren't really doing the same pull 20 times in a row.

Apart from the "drop cash" part, you just described the Twin Emps -> C'Thun trash, which everyone hated. To a lesser extent, the Huhu -> Emps trash. The point is that interesting trash is only interesting a few times. Colossi and Flayer packs were actually excellent trash mobs. They required a decent plan and good execution, but when you were fighting them for hours, it sucked.

Trash serves a double purpose in most zones:
Prepare you for upcoming bosses by using similar abilities.
Timesink.

The timesink part is something everyone hates, which is why it should be minimized. Keep 4-5 packs between each boss, each taking 2-3 minutes to kill, and make it not respawn, ever. Progress will be slightly faster, but enjoyment will be up a ton.

I'll have to partly disagree. I for one loved the huhu -> twins trash becuase it actually required people to do what they are there for instead of standing around. The twins -> c'thun trash was godawful though, but still rather nicely designed. I loved the part where they never respawned.

I still can't see how blizzard could go "Hey, let's put trash on a laughably low respawn timer because people like trash, amirite?".

BWL still owns the crown with respect to trash in instance design.

Entry: No trash to boss. Then a mini-sequence trash to Vael, which as a neat chase character and doesn't feel like trash clear. Then 2 somewhat interesting packs after Vael. Then a gauntlet, which by its gauntlet nature didn't feel like an honest-to-good trash clear. 2 packs to Firemaw. Then the only longer stretch of trash clears in the instance, with 5 techie packs and 2 Draconid packs. Then without intermediate trash: Ebonroc and Flamegore. Just 1 trash pull to Chromaggus and no trash to Nefarian.

And still way better cash per clear than any instance in the game.

BWL should wins many categories in terms of instance design. While it does have a gauntlet, it's not as tedious or frustrating as others, especially as the Boss linked to it is arguably the easiest in the zone.

No trash respawns except for the gauntlet too. Anyone got any clue why Blizz left the design philosophy that made BWL?

In some sense I felt respawning trash was Blizz's way to let locks restock shards, but shard consumption is down since TBC thanks to the 10-for-1 HS dispenser.

It's going to take a lot to get Blizzard to change this though Prae. It was a gigantic design decision to switch to 1 hour respawns when no other dungeon had anything like it. Which means that the entire idea is the baby/brainchild of a senior designer somewhere. The problem with that is, when a design decision comes from that high up, it's very hard to get a designer to admit they were wrong and completely change it, as you do lose a little bit of face when you have to do a 180 on a decision (that probably had some internal conflict in the first place on making it).

Best example I can give of this being an issue would be original meeting stones. A completely god awful idea that had no shot of really working. However because it was some senior designer's baby, it stayed in the game for *far* too long. Trash repopping in instances will be much the same.

My problem with it comes from the fact that post-Curator trash (mana wyrms, mostly) is annoying to fight and the Aran door bugged out on us twice in a row leading to 4 clears of that trash in 5 days.

The AQ40 Supertrash would've been fantastic if Blizzard just reduced their number to about, oh, 20% of what was actually there. Hell, even the normal trash that came before the Twin Emps was about twice as long/populated as it needed to be. Pre-Huhuran trash packs? The Fankriss tunnel? Skeram to Sartura?

That stuff was hard to swallow when you had what seemed like the perfect balance of trash/bosses in BWL (after the atrocity that was MC, of course). People might complain about the Suppression Room, but that was just part of the boss encounter really. And the Lab Packs seem long but when you consider that they're the aggregate trash for 3-4 bosses almost entirely in a row, you don't mind as much.

Naxx was a fantastic mix of trash and bosses. The trash was hard but not too long, was never more difficult than the bosses themselves, and there was a lot of variety. And a lot of the trash made sense, like the Gargoyles before Noth - if you can't kill those, don't bother trying to kill Noth.

I'm not familar with all their spells, but wouldn't Soulshatter (er, the aggro reducing spell) increase shard consumption? Soulstones are still around, and I bet someone could make a compelling argument that Soulwell increases shard consumption.

I still don't see it as a good reason to have respawning trash. I do agree that Karazhan trash is manageable.

I don't really think that Tigole is sitting behind his desk, thinking "how can we make a raidzone decisively unfun" and comes up with the trash from hell idea, nor do I think that it just is blatant negligence (if this would be a SOE product maybe, but certainly not with Blizzard).

Clearing trash is in my experience very much a function of discpiline and general attention span within a raid. During trash clears many people go on autopilot (DPS slacking, healers becoming inattentive) and this is what makes trash often enough so painful.

Trash is necessity in crawl type dungeons, because just a series of pure boss encounters would feel very empty and anticlimatic. A boss should be as the name implies a special encounter that contrasts his preceding underlings (the trash). A boss without trash works only in the Onyxia model, as a single encounter, but not in dungeon where there are supposed to be several encounters.

One could curtail trash if Blizzard would change their design paradigma from the "crawl dungeon" at least partially to the "camp dungeon" type. A camp type dungeon is not a strict linear string of trash -> boss -> trash -> boss encounters, but allows for different paths within the zone to rooms where certain bosses dwell. There usally isn't to much trash on the way to the boss rooms, but bosses are not always up, so you have to camp them. In this model it isn't so much the trash that serves as a timesink and makes bosses special, but the spawn event itself (think about outdoor raid bosses in WoW). Of course camp type dungeons make only sense in a non instanced, or at least only partailly instanced (several raids within on instance) envirionment.

Btw, I would also like to subscribe to Elsias comment on BWL being very good blanced in it's boss to trash ratio.

It might be a good idea to make this thread a discussion of what makes good trash and what makes bad trash. The topic has come up on quite a few different threads lately, and it looks like this thread is heading that way.

Arcatraz has my favourite trash pulls at the moment. Every room has something different, & some different way you have to react to it, and there aren't too many of them before you're on the next boss already.

The problem with Karazhan between Curator and Aran isn't just the respawn timer imo, it's the sheer amount of trash you have to clear. The fact you have to do it all over again every couple of hours while you're learning Aran is just icing on the cake.

This was something I was writing as a critique of TBC raiding, but I realized it was too specific and decided to broaden its scope a bit. Regardless, I think it's meaningful to post here. It's not complete in its analysis, but it touches on much of what people mean by "good" and "bad" trash.

Raid instances pre-BC had a fairly clear evolution in trash mobs. In Molten Core, there were fast respawning trash mobs like Ancient Core Hounds, Core Hound packs, and Lava Surgers, slower respawning trash like Fire Lords and lava packs, along with “once per clear” respawns with Molten Giants/Destroyers Killing Magmadar stopped Core Hound respawns, and later on killing Garr stopped Lava Surgers, after many a raid group got ambushed by the surger before Golemagg or Majordomo repopping on them.

BWL did away with respawns altogether – once something died, it was dead, with the exception of the suppression room pre-Broodlord, which became the standard for a pre-boss ‘gauntlet’ to contain a raid’s attempts on a boss to one per trash clear. AQ started the pattern of linking the respawning of trash mobs prior to a particular boss to the death of that boss, and – with a few exceptions - the pattern of trash staying dead until an instance soft-reset. Naxxramas – which almost all raiding guilds point to as the pinnacle of instance design – followed through with this, linking all of the trash to the following boss and leaving almost every trash pack dead until instance reset.

In TBC, raid zone trash mob implementation seems to have been turned completely on its head. We went from “until instance reset” respawn timers to 45 minutes. We went from a handful of trash packs (or none!) between bosses to hours of tedious trash clearing – some of which isn’t even linked to the boss following it. We went from the Naxx model to the AQ40 post-Emps model with a bit of Molten Core thrown in.

Many players express distaste for trash mobs in general, but they clearly have an important function. From how I understand it, trash mobs serve several major purposes in raid zone design. Those purposes are as follows:

1. Strengthen zone theme
2. Introduce players to new mechanics
3. Slow clear times
4. “Stage 0” (gauntlet style)
5. Provide zone specific drops

The relative importance of these is debatable, although I think from an overall design perspective the first clearly stands out. If Molten Core were nothing but the bosses, it wouldn’t have had the same feel as the domain of a fire demi-god – similarly, Naxx’s themed wings reinforced the breadth of the power of the Scourge, and Blackwing Lair would’ve felt a lot different without all kinds of dragons. Despite what many “hardcore” players might suggest, these zones are as much or more about advancing lore and story as they are about providing challenging content for groups of max level players.

The trash in TBC does this very well, particularly in Karazhan. I crack up at the emotes of the pre-Maiden and pre-Moroes trash, and on the whole it gives the place a very distinct flavor and identity. The ogres in Gruul’s Lair drive home that Gruul is the ogre god, and the Magtheridon trash demonstrates his enslavement/containment by the Fel Horde warlocks under Illidan. Serpentshrine Cavern’s trash shows the extent of Lady Vashj’s influence over various beings, etc, etc. All in all a job well done.

The introduction of mechanics is something that we saw a lot of in Molten Core, which is especially appropriate since it was the introductory raid zone. Basically the idea is that trash mobs prepare you for dealing with certain types of abilities you’ll encounter later on – in a lot of cases, this is related to the issue of reinforcing theme. Fire Lords in MC soul burn, and later on Baron Geddon uses Ignite Mana. Ancient Core Hounds can AOE fear, much like Magmadar. Molten Destroyers have a ground stomp similar to Golemagg’s Earthquake, etc, etc. The first time this idea really clicked for me (and what I felt was the best implementation of mechanic reinforcement in raiding) was when we first aggroed Chromaggus in the early BWL days. I saw the emote “Chromaggus flinches as his skin shimmers”, and figured it had to have something to do with the different vulnerabilities/resistances we’d been introduced to by the Wyrmguard trash leading up to him, and sure enough that was true. Being able to make that inference meant that the design of the preceding trash had really done its job at presenting the concept/mechanic of chromatic dragons and vulnerabilities.

The third issue is what most raiders view as the primary intent of trash, and is indeed what it seems most of the trash in TBC serves as – a time sink. Many people view this term as a pure negative, but time sinks have a very real place in the MMO model. With finite time to produce content, some measures have to be taken to preserve the value of that content. If raid zones were simply bosses lined up one after another from room to room, they would not only feel tremendously empty and devoid of flavor (see #1), but they would also take far less time for players to defeat, simply because a higher percentage of their raiding time would be spent on tackling the boss fights themselves. Trash mobs provide a buffer between bosses and slow down advancement, which preserves the value of content over time, since the zones take longer for players to defeat.

Issue four is a related one, but a specific case. Some bosses, like Broodlord, Fankriss, and Heigan, have pre-encounter “gauntlets” that require players to re-clear through quickly respawning trash for each attempt. This gauntlet trash is best understood as an extension of the boss fight itself, much like a “stage 0”, since it serves to add complication to the boss fight, as well as limiting attempts on the boss over time. This can add a layer of difficulty to otherwise straightforward fights, which can allow a fairly simple design to stand as an overall complicated encounter.

Issue five is a matter of logistics – you have items/reagents/whatever that you want to put into the hands of players, and trash mobs in a raid zone are one of the tools you have available to do it. This was seen immediately in Molten Core with Lava/Fiery Cores and Core Hound Leather, along with BoE set pieces, and then again in BWL with Elementium Ore in the same vein. Basically these are items to aid a guild’s progression, whether directly or economically. Hourglass Sand was a very specific sort of item that aided progression against a specific boss in that zone, while AQ had mounts/scarabs/idols and Naxx had the T3 set piece scraps/Frozen Runes (specifically the ones on the outer ring, which are guarded by the trash packs), along with BoP epic drops. Not unrelated to this is reputation – trash mobs in a zone linked to a particular faction tend to give reputation with that faction. These sort of “bonuses” with trash mobs make clearing them seem less like pure tedium and more profitable – many guilds even farmed MC trash mobs for cores and BoEs early on, and later guilds farmed Naxx trash for BoP epics.

The trash to get to Fathom lord is so absurd that by the time we get there our entire guild is out of gas and energy. Fortunately subsequent raiding nights are faster, but it is depressingly bad. Think AQ40 post cthun trash... multiply that by 1.5, and then have it respawn every 2 hours. You now have SSC trash.

You could get away without having any trash between bosses... hell naxx did it for a lot of bosses. I didn't notice or miss the trash.

I feel like this post gets to the heart of the matter, though who really knows what goes on over there? I'd also add the original PvP Honor System to this as a prominent example (damn you Kalgan).

I kind of get the feeling that since both SSC and TK have so few bosses (5 and 4?) Blizzard felt compelled to fill the instance with trash to slow progress down, instead of additional bosses.

As many can remember Naxxramas didn't really have THAT much trash (save for the DK wing), but instead it had 15? bosses. Most of them with brand new mechanics catering for interesting fights. Granted, the fights we've seen so far also supply this, but they are alot fewer than the ones we saw in naxx.

I've seen several point to BWL as a good example of trash well-done; I'd have to disagree a bit there. It was monotonous. Take the lab packs; the lack of variance in them made the Firemaw -> Ebonroc clear boring. Difficulty and annoyance was fine; goblins are annoying, it fits. But the repeating pulls made it boring; albeit slightly made up for by it being the only real 'trash' in the instance that was of any substance. With a little more variety I think BWL would have been solid, in terms of trash.. if lacking in flavour.

Karazhan.. bothers me, to an extent. Attumen, Moroes, Maiden, Theater and Curator trash is fine. What bothers me, personally, is the clear from Curator to Aran. Its mind-numbing. Not overly difficult, but if it repops on you.. it feels like a kick upside the head; especially since the flavour of it pales in comparison to earlier trash.

Personally, what I'd like to see is more mini-bosses. Imagine a Focus of some-sort in the room with the Spell Shades and Mana Warp packs. You clear the room; it 'phases' in. Small mini-boss encounter, yields moderate gold as only drop. But with it dead all trash is 'non-repoppable', irregardless of timer. It, itself, however, is on a 45 minute timer. If it repops and is not killed within x minutes, it begins to repop the trash leading up to it. When Aran dies, it no longer repops.

Done properly, I think this would add sufficient 'flavour' to the clear, as well as a small 'victory' for the guilds learning the place. This model could then be brought into SSC; mini-boss encounters 75% of the way to a boss. Defeat it, small gold reward and all repops before the mini-boss become tied to it like the above example. This gives guilds a way to manage the repops when learning the boss, with sufficient 'punishment' if mis-managed. And so long as the mini-boss encounter has enough flavour it can feel appropriate; more like you're actually assaulting the base of a Big Bad.

And forgive me if I'm incorrect, but it seems to me we could use all the 'flavour' we can get for these zones, given the surprising lack thereof in many cases. Perhaps even make them not repop that raidID; to give the less.. well, skilled guilds the small victories of being able to 'turn off' the repops while they take their time trying to learn a boss.

I don't know.. just some of this design change on trash boggles the mind and seems like it will thoroughly demoralize the larger portion of raid guilds when they finally crack into these places.

(Personally, I just want more lore-flavoured encounters in the trash, if you couldn't tell..)