Ah, but the context that's necessary is that SSC/TK are harder than BWL - i.e. harder than anything most raiders have ever seen. Not having a dig at anyone in particular, just trying to keep a grounding in what the facts on the ground among the great unwashed are.

I would love to see a raid with shartuul's transporter style elements (i doubt it's feasible to have 25 toys though, so you're looking at 10-man or making some people play fair). Being able to step into an overpowered MS warrior mock-up was a pretty fun change of pace, and phase 2 is challenging and completely unlike anything i have done in wow before or since (granted, this does not involve that much raid progression yet).

While i'm in the thread i will chime in in agreement with the current discussion of how essential your worst person is in TBC. While that is probably very rewarding for the high-end, i think it's definitely inappropriate for the earliest tiers of raiding.

Pre-nerf gruul was not just an overall tuning problem, that guy is simply way too early a point at which to hand all 25 people the ability to murder your attempt single-handedly. I don't imagine a lot of 'friends and family' style guilds stayed friends after the 8th time someone blinked into you and shattered you for 9k, effectively dooming the raid in the process. And i think that those guilds are a valid part of the early raiding demographic. I'm sure this isn't a great place to campaign for catering to groups that have some sucky members, but the reality is that the vast majority of guilds form by something other than pure skill assessment, and as such are gonna have pretty varying levels of ability. Anything more complicated than "don't move during flame wreath" being required (or potentially required in the case of purely randomly targeted mechanics) of every person on your team is gonna blow a lot of the player base out of the water on a regular basis.

With the current state of gruul/mag and the lack of t5 attunements there's probably an acceptable amount of 'accessible' content, and i don't want things as passenger-friendly as they were on the whole pre-tbc, but i suspect it's still best for the game for slightly more pre-vashj/kael stuff to allow some dead-weight. I suppose ZA will accomplish this though, so existing encounters are unlikely/unneccessary to change.

As a mage, I'm not really liking this change. I need my mana gems and that means my healthstone is on cooldown for the majority of the fight on most fights. I might need mana pots as well so I can't liberally use my health pots. There comes many moments where I'm debating whether to health pot or wait for a heal. That has caused many moments of cursing when my indecision has killed me and almost just as much cursing when I get 3-4 heals at the same time I use my health pot and get massively overhealed.

My point was a bit of an exageration, the reality is a lot more varied than that. There were a lot more fights in the old world where your raid went a lot further than the average skill of the group - for example, on Razorgore, as long as your dragon kiters/orc kiters were not retarded everyone else pretty much could collect purps. On the other hand, there are fights where you need everyone to be pretty much on the ball and pay attention the entire time, expecially at a level where they aren't trivial - Archimonde was brought up, I have no experience on that fight, but for example on a fight like Morogrim, where you need to have completely fluid healing assignments because of how random the graves are, you cannot get away with having a weak healer assigned to an easy task, because the good healers might get graved and he would have to jump in and compensate - we still wipe a few times because the healer who heals the paladin tanking the murlocs gets graved and nobody switches to him early enough - and bam he dies the AoE'ers aren't quick enough to avoid him.

The continuum is something like this, with on one side a raid where only one person has to pay attention and has the potential to wipe the raid, and on the right hand side a raid where everyone has to pay attention.

In some bizzare sense I like the change - because it is extremly easy to see who fucked up, if someone died, very very often it is their fault and there is no more 'blame the healer' syndrome. On the other hand, it can be exceedingly frustrating to lose your DPS and slowly watch the raid wipe and die when the monster is on 1 or 0 - compared to EQ, there are very very few fights where you can 'recoup' from a near loss. EverQuest, expecially during Luclin was the complete opposite - I recall fights where we rezzed up after losing nearly everyone just by tanking the boss and a near wipe got completely saved.

Oldschool EQ veterans will know exactly what I am talking about - in WoW this is nearly impossible, at most you pull through a win barely by killing the boss with your last remaining DPS, but there are no recoveries.

That middle progess is because Vashj and Kael are harder (in that there are more things going on) and last longer than any other fight seen previously in the raid/5 man game (excluding WoW 1.0).

I aggree it is both factors to lead to slowing progress.

I think TBC post 2.1, despite my whining was done fairly well. The only thing the game really "lacks" at this point is maybe 1-2 "Optional" bosses per zone, that are VERY difficult (ala Ouro and Viscidus), along with another 25 man zone - not a 2 boss 1h clear like Gruul that is easier than TK/SSC. Just put T4 tokens on the new 25 man zone, along with a rep, and itemization differing from Karazhan (but same ilvl) to let players figure out how the 25man group dynamic works. Not that these bosses should be pushovers, but they should be "easier" than TK/SSC, maybe a progression even with the first boss being a simple tank and spank, very similar to Attumen with some adds that come, all the way to a final boss with fairly difficult mechanics like Prince. Add in rep rewards and unique enchants (buyable Cloak/Shield/Offhand enchants for example) and I think everyone would be happy. Make it so each boss gives huge amounts of rep, and the trash not so much - so if you clear the place 3 times you are Exalted, but even if you wipe to the 2nd boss over and over, you'll still get somewhere rep-wise. Basically a 25-man ZG.

I am very excited for Zul'aman - it does sound fun and I hope they do it right. The timed quests, etc are exactly what is needed to attract T6 players.

The only other gripe I have is the utter lack of any reason to do Heroics with the advent of BT Gems. What if there were Epic Meta-gems that you can only get via Heroic Quests? (repeatable of course) like a timed Mana Tombs run, or very difficult summoned side boss? I still think one of the most epic 5 man things I've ever seen is Atiesh - there is simply no paralell for that except maybe Murmur. More fun 5 man content that EVERYONE wants a reason to do. New Metas/Shield Enchants/etc along with "upgradeable" quest Trinkets would keep my weekends busy instead of mindlessly bitching about how I can only do 5 Dailies because of no epic mount.


p.s Fix the holes in Itemization please. More Idols/Librams/Totems, more MP5 Cloaks, and more Trinkets in general. Everyone loves Trinkets . Don't make me farm Scarab Brooch for an upgrade.

Oh, I remember the good ol' days of Molten Core where you could have a Paladin (priest, etc) sit way back, out of combat, and run around rez'ing people while fighting a boss. My first toon was a paladin, and looking back, nothing said fail more than those nights where I would rez 20-30 people when fighting Shazzrah or Magmadar. Still, fun as hell to take a bunch of really un-coordinated players and brute-force your way through encounters.

It's actually a symptom of the problem that people can say "TBC raids are very difficult" or "TBC raids demand a lot out of the raiding population" or "TBC encounters are all rehashes of previous content". It indicates that TBC raids have all been aligned at a sort of homogenous level of difficulty, without a really clear starting point (especially now that Gruul and Mag were taken out of the "gateway" status that they had). 25-man raiding just starts out too difficult for the average newbie guild, plain and simple. Guilds attempting to start in on a 25-man raiding schedule need some farmable trash content just to keep their momentum going (how many guilds sustained themselves for a year on Molten Core?) and to keep the raiding scene alive. Karazhan is great, but it's even more substantially different from 25-man raiding than ZG was to 40-man raiding.

Speaking of trinkets, I'm really sick of the "one passive boost, one activated related boost" model they seem to love. Also Idol/Libram/Totem items are still completely useless.

And despite mine, I would agree. After 2.1, and after the attunement lifting, I think 25-man raiding is in a pretty good place, as long as people do understand that (a) the lower-performing half of almost any "casual" raiding guild will be left behind, and (b) if you have a "heterogeneous" guild, split up and find new homes. It'll save time and pain in the long run. Both of which are a shame, but by now the milk is well and truly spilled.

As you say, I would like to see an easier (Karazhan-level) 25-man dungeon, both for this "lower echelon", and also a training ground for those new to the game who've never set foot in a 25-man before. Heck, make it zo you can zone in before you hit the level cap - like you could with MC and ZG.! It's a shame SSC isn't that dungeon, but again that's something that can't be helped now. Actually, Maulgar and Gruul would be excellent end bosses for such an instance. Add some easier bosses in front of them, and leave a "side entrance" so you can skip straight to Maulgar and Gruul once you're ready for them, and it would fit the bill nicely. You could use it to fatten up the lore around Gruul, which is... tenuous, to put it mildly!

I'd also like to see more 10-man content at a variety of different difficulty levels, post-Kara and Kara-alike. Again, some of this is on the way, so I'm encouraged that Blizzard are finally heading in the right sort of direction for the majority of the raiding playerbase.

Good point. One could almost make the case that the first two-three bosses of the entry level raid instance should be killable within the first week by any guild that tries. Because it's killing those two-three bosses that's going to sustain morale while you work on progression bosses. So yes, Lucifron 2.0 *is* what's needed, because the first boss of the first instance shouldn't ever qualify as a progression boss, even for a week.

I dont think the Kael'thas fight is necessarily too hard but I too think it is a combination of unforgiving and tedious when you factor in the complexities of a five phase fight across ~20 mins and throw in the 2 hour trash repop.

The trash to him should be a 6 hour pop and they should do something to shorten the phases a little.

I really did not enjoy the experience of our raids 'learning' the fight, but now that everyone knows what to do and its mostly a matter of execution, I think it is a fun encounter.

Now that we are in Hyjal and BT I have to say that BT is a hell of a lot more fun/rewarding. We are at Gorefiend and the trash has a good pace and is very rewarding, throwing an epic gem or item every other pull.

Meanwhile Hyjal...no thanks. 8 waves of trash to get a pull on the boss. One critical mistake and then you are reclearing. The rep gain seems very slow there too, contrasted with BT.

I echo the sentiment of less clicky + heal trinkets, more passive boosts or click Effect trinkets. As a Paladin, +heal click trinkets aren't very useable - very few fights do I need a shot of Burst healing, and I tend to use the trinkets for more of a passive boost than anything. More trinkets like the Piston from VR, Gruul's Eye, etc - passive bonuses with a chance on that makes things interesting - espescially from a Paladin POV since we have -3- heals, one of which isn't very viable for raids (Holy Shock.).

I'm at the point where I think weekly about kidnapping 5-10 guildies, and going to BWL to get my Scroll of Light, then attempting to 10-15 man Viscidus for Scarab Brooch. This shouldn't be the case. Yes they are click trinkets, but the effects far, FAR surpass anything I can get in the expansion. The only thing they lack is a passive - and I have other trinkets I can use for a passive (Alch stone, BT trinket, Gruul's, etc.). Need more interesting click trinkets.. the only two that I like are Ribbon and Pendant of the Violet Eye. Ribbon when used in conjunction with other healers adds another element to healing that actually makes it fun at times. On top of Violet Eye which is one of the most underestimated trinkets for any class.

We've now killed Mother I think 4 times? We have had 1 person ever ported somewhere where they could not move, and it was a gnome. By no means are we anywhere near perfect on this fight, but I've never seen this happen in the degree you mention, truthfully. We also don't have our OTs sit/etc, they take ports, we deal with it. Two people taking a lash should never kill the 2nd OT, and yea, it can hurt on the MT, but it requires a parry with that port or whatnot for it to happen. In addition, any DPS warrior can throw a shield, hit def stance, and move in front to take a few lashes, assuming they wear plate/etc, and not some leather garbage. As for mana/etc, we decided running as many healers as posible was flat out better on the fight. We basically bring every healer we have in the guild in for Mother, to reduce these bad ports (we run 10 if they are all online). Yea, it's stacking, but it makes the fight significantly more manageable, and I don't think we wipe to the reasons you list either. And as I already, by no means are we perfect on this fight, we have never 1 shot her, but we have also never failed to kill her before trash respawns, for what it's worth. We wipe to attrition (while you claim you play perfectly/etc and still wipe, I maintain that some of our raid still makes some pretty bad errors, and we don't feel like continuing short too many people). I've seen 2 people run side-by-side with an FA for way way too long. It's obviously their fault/our fault.

For Archimonde, every other week we have someone feared through the world. If anyone crashes at all, or the net drops, it's awful (I believe that the design 1 death = near wipe, is bad in of itself). On top of that, there's what you listed...we have had people die midair though from a curse, with all their timers down. Also, for fear breaks, unless you stack shaman, you have perhaps 2-3 groups with a tremor, a 2min cooldown per person past that...and what then? It's hard to discuss what is likely, and what isn't on Archimonde. Perhaps you are just a lot better than us at the fight...but we have deaths to things all the time that feels unavoidable. Someone gets feared into 2-3 fires in 1 fear duration, taking somewhere in the realm of 12k dmg in that fear. Sure, a nearby healer could trinket and save them perhaps, but at what point is this actually just *too* random.

Without a doubt, we wipe more to Archimonde than Mother. With something like 6 kills on 1 and 4 on the other, perhaps we're all talking from an anecdotal standpoint here. Perhaps we really have had better luck on Mother than you, and you have had better luck on Archimonde than us? Who knows. In the end, randomness, in some fashion is what makes an encounter challenging. It is why I have posted that I felt Illidan was easy, there is very little going on that is random. Most randomness however, is still controllable, and the more control you have over it, the easier the fight seems. Acknowledging randomness, and preparing for it, as you have done, is obviously the best way to go about it. Honestly though, while most things are controllable to the point you shouldn't wipe to randomness, at times, sometimes random events can still just be so ridiculous, there is little you can do.

Once on Gorefiend, a rogue pulled aggro (I don't recall the %, let's say 50 for fun). He lived <2 seconds. Yes, it was controllable for him to not pull aggro, but right after he did, Gorefiend, despite the odds on both timing and targetting, chose our MT to give Shadow of Death to. Needless to say, a minute later all our DPS died. Yes, it was sloppy of us, it was entirely our fault it happened...but at the same time, if there hadn't been some <1% chance event happening there, it wouldn't have been near a wipe, at all. It would have been 1 rogue's death, probably a crez, and then a kill. I guess the point is, pulling aggro is an obvious mistake, and perhaps even a decently large one, but it's nowhere near the first time someone has done it, nor was it the last, and the RNG capitalized on said mistake. In both Archimonde and Mother, these types of events can amplify. You can make one very very small mistake, and it can cause a disaster. I think that is the biggest difference, more than the fight being "more random".

Quick note on the healing trinket tangent: Clicky trinkets are good if they're powerful enough that you want to use them situationally and tactically. Double all heals for 10 seconds, or make all heals instant for 10 seconds, etc. That makes for an interesting new power at your disposal that you need to make sure you use carefully and deliberately.

Clicky trinkets are bad when you need to constantly click them for a fairly low-powered effect, a la Lower City Prayerbook. Either I pack its use into a macro on all my spells (annoying and then it's effectively passive), or I use a mod to yell at me every time it's cooled down (annoying), or I forget to use it at all (a waste).

Overall I like the raiding in TBC a lot more than I thought I would when I realized how dramatically druid healing was going to change. I miss HT spamming a bit and lament the fact that a Balance/Resto hybrid is considerably less desirable than full Resto, but rolling Lifeblooms coupled with Regrowths and Swiftmends makes for very active, interesting healing. Far less of the HoTbot chore that I was expecting.

Some of the posts in this thread are pretty painful to read, with people complaining about the "luck" of Magtheridon and how he actually damages your tank, or Prince Malchezzar infernals...

Honestly. "Random" and "luck" is being thrown around so often now as a complain about encounters, and it really only applies to a very very small amount of fights - and they're in the T6 instances.

Aside from that, I wanted to express my confusion at some guilds dropping SSC/TK from their raiding (when they're done with progress). We're raiding 4 days a week, and that's clearing every instance the game has in TBC, every one. SSC, TK, Mag, Gruul, Hyjal, BT, and multiple Karazhans. Oh, and Naxxramas. And we still have 3 offdays.. and get bored as hell. (A few of us also kill the emerald dragons and onyxia each week). Some of the raiding in TBC is just actually fun and enjoyable, and to me, those fights are Lurker, Leotheras, Vashj, and Kael'thas. There's more in BT/Hyjal of course, but these are lesser "older" instances I'm talking about.

I honestly just wish there was MORE to raid, more instances, or something, anything to give more fun content to do.. even it's somewhat easy, or not even that loot-rewarding. I like to do Vashj because phase 2 and 3 are cool, especially Phase 3 when you're playing sloppy and take so long that you're having to kite Vashj everywhere while the entire raid runs around, etc.

I also severely disagree with the thought that the first phases of Kael'thas, or the waves of trash before the Hyjal bosses should be skippable in someway. The instances would be absolutely horrible then, the boss fight would be over in minutes and you'd be out of the instances so quick. The trash is a much needed pacing mechanic, besides it's rather quick, and some of the waves/phases are hard enough on their own that they get people into the mindset needed, if it's not present in the boss fight itself. It should be apparent to the raid that the trash before the boss is considered to be part of the boss encounter itself, since if you wipe to the boss, you have to redo all the trash anyway.

I think they created TBC raid instances pretty decently after the fixes/changes that they all went through.

Oh, and major /agree on killing Pre-nerf Al'ar as being EPIC. Holy shit, that was some crazy raiding. I actually miss the truly absolutely crazy hard, overtuned fights. Not random, but just disgustingly hard. I'd easily rank Pre-nerf Al'ar above Mother Shahraz currently, and I'd actually want more of that (Al'ar) - even if it's optional.

There's lots of other stuff though that I will agree is fucked up though, lots of itemization holes, or stupid itemization to begin with.

I think one of the worst mistakes they made with TBC was announcing a release date. I hope they are very cautious about when the next expansion is going to come out. Delays aren't a bad thing as you get a more finished product, but in-game delays kill guilds and make people loose interest. I noticed a huge fallout in my previous guild in October due to the fact, "Why raid the expansions coming out our gear is going to be useless". Was one of the major things that broke apart the guild I was in. I just hope that they give themselves more than enough time (if there is such a thing) and push the release date up instead of back this time.

At the risk of going off on a slight tangent, some of those old boss fights aren't far off from what you could put in a "heroic" version. Old Al'Ar definitely wouldn't be out of place in a Heroic TK for example. Old Gruul (perhaps actually buffed slightly even) and old Mag for their respective heroics. It'll never happen due to the logistics of having to raid both normals and heroics, but while I am glad those fights are gone for the general populace, I miss them for the challenge. Put the current Shahraz in a heroic BT and be done with it. :P

But then just that last paragraph illustrates exactly what Blizzard had to learn, that those bosses were wildly inappropriate for where they were in the raiding pyramid.

Didn't think I would read something like this after all the talk about randomness that has been posted here lately. I totally agree with this, the random factors add a new challenge. Sure it can be too harsh and simply wipe you sometimes, it is hard to balance. But I still like the randomness more than 100% repeatable fights, where you only wipe because of basic mistakes. A matter of preference, I guess.

About pre-nerf Al'ar, it was one of my favorite fights as well and I was really disappointed to see him getting changed so much (though the nerf in difficulty was expected). The only things that actually needed a fix were his horrible hitbox and the charge + melee instagibs. That just resulted in too many deaths, promoting the whole mass soulstoning issue.

My main issue with TBC raiding is the unfinished instances Blizzard keep releasing. I really hope they will learn at some point that it could be to their advantage to release something that is possible to beat. How many times now have an instance been released that is so overtuned it is practically impossible? Or if it isn't impossible it can be like the 12-wave Hyjal, so boring and frustrating it's clear no testing has been done. I know we suck but we had one raid on Anetheron where we continued to wipe on wave 11-12 for 6 hours. Hard to think of anything more frustrating than that.

I would much rather have a statement from Blizzard saying they're not quite done with the balancing and have a few weeks break from the raiding.

Other than that I think there is something missing from the feeling, or atmosphere in TBC raiding. Naxxramas had that epic feel in almost every encounter. I can't pinpoint exactly what it was (could be nostalgia of course) but I have great memories from all encounters in Naxxramas and I actually looked forward to killing almost all bosses every week even though I didn't need anything from there. Killing 4HM, Sapphiron and KT gave that happy feeling all the way up to the TBC release.

I feel like there's a decent amount of content in the game right now. Yes, if you're killing Illidan you're out of progression content, something that hasn't been a problem since the launch of TBC and was only an issue at the extreme tail end of Naxxramas (by which point everyone was goofing off with their 41-point talents and PvPing). Personally I'm okay with clearing the entirety of BC raiding content in 4 days. If you are used to raiding 6-7 days a week for 5 hours (as Xaviera might be, I don't know Death & Taxes' schedule) maybe you'll get bored. But since Blizzard designs so much of their content for the very top-end (certainly more than supply/demand requires) you put yourself in that position. Complaining that you ran out of bleeding-edge content is even sillier than complaining you'll never see Illidan raiding 2 nights a week.

This is definitely one of my pet peeves with the Mage situation at present. Should I die, I may well cost the raid a shot at the encounter. At the same time though, I am exceptionally easy to kill and have very few personal methods of staying alive. Even the standard healthstones are essentially unavailable to me unless I give up one of my alleged class strengths from manastones. More and more though, I aggressively use mana potions and save the timer just in case.

I know, Mage whining is well past critical mass and no-one wants to hear it anymore. Hell, that includes me. As encounter design has changed though, the way the class plays has been rather dramatically shifted.

Rogues are in a similar position to some degree as well. For the majority of pre-TBC encounters a Rogue foolishly dying was more a matter of amusement (Ranger down! syndrome) than an actual concern. Now it can kill an attempt on some content. At least CloS gives a pretty decent "out" for Rogues in many situations where they are at least aware of a present danger.

All in all, I like the idea of making DPS (and raid-wide participants in general) more accountable and involved. I do think the way these encounters affect the different classes is far, far too varied though.