Bloodterror

Couldn't agree more. A lot of people are in the same boat as you and if their preparation has been in vain I think the dissatisfaction will be loudly expressed. The pacing issue has been debated to death; I'm sure they won't make a mistake like that again. However, I think its a pretty common belief that the fights in 40 man content were better than the fights these days. Fights like RoS and council are ok, but most of the encounters are just so ho-hum. In my mind there have been 4 really well done bosses in TBC, Arch, Illidan, Vashj, and Kael. Those bosses are even a step up from the best encounters in pre-bc barring C'thun. Blizzard still knows how to make good content, even with the self-imposed 25 man hurdle. I have to wonder why they do not. Of course all the bosses in an instance can't be as epic as the end boss, but even looking at the "bad" Naxx and AQ fights, they put TBC encounters to shame.

The bar has been set very high by this long, long wait for new content. With only 6 bosses I am very skeptical there will be even 2 really good encounters in Sunwell. I don't know if 5 more Kaz'Rogal's and maybe one gem of a fight is going to do it for the raiding community. I'm very worried about the raiding malaise I have witnessed on a wide scale.

Nerfing the consumable requirements, taking out world buffs, and scaling down the raid size may have been changes that Blizzard wanted to make, but all of those taken together have diminished this as a game for raiders. Add to that that PvE gear may as well despawn like a fucking Kael weapon when you zone into an arena, and I'm left grasping for reasons people should raid.

 

• Playered

Well what they have done in ZA seems like one way forward, having a 'real' raiding instance for 25 people being both hard, and having a timer on it could prove one way of adding abit more competition for people to 'be the best' and so-forth.

How would it be if people managed to clear a timed BT and got a 100% drop rate on a Glaive? tuned so only the people who had been farming BT/MH for months and months (and raid setup... mass shamans >>) could stand a chance. Be-it a timed zone-wide challenge or simply a mini-timer per boss (sub 15min Illidan or so).

Methods like that could result in the content being more accessable to everyone, however only the true high-end raiders had a chance on the 'best' items within the zone which tentativly is more likely to please everyone than now.



I am curious if they will buff BT/MH weapons this patch however, people seem to of forgotten about it after the previous uproar about it, and I hope their solution isn't simply to make Sunwell items the answer to this.
I do not like it being [ T5 -> S2 -> T6 -> S3 -> Sunwell ] in terms of weapon progression (based that on MH swords...), regardless I know how difficult it will be to manage this properly but the weapon DPS/etc should be equal if that, because Warlgaives exist does not mean Arena items have to be a bridge towards them.

 

Akron

I think you are living in a dream and you will be very dissapointed. I have farmed Illidan for two months, by the time Sunwell is released we will be in your same situation - having most of our raiding core with almost perfect gear. However, I think it's very dangerous to have such high expectations as you have. Face it, the game has changed. This is no longer Naxxramas. No world buffs, consumable nerf, 25-man raiding and above all a clear message by Tigole that he wants raid content to be experienced by a lot more people than say, Naxx was. Illidan was killed by around 1.5% of raiders...that's already three times or more the number that killed Kel'Thuzad. Why no face some facts? Naxxramas was only hard because of 1) the 4H fight requiring 8 warriors and at start being hard to figure out 2) it was tuned for a system which does not exist anymore (world buffs, full consumables, lots of farming - very hardcore).

Read the interview, please. Tigole already clearly stated that Sunwell is only "slightly" harder than Black Temple and will not even drop a new Tier, merely an extension of Illidan/Archimonde item level drops presumably. It will be tuned for T6 players, but I doubt it will require our "perfect gear". In all probability, a mid-BT guild will be already good enough for Sunwell. The "Full T6 guilds with 1000 mana potions in bank" will simply be overkill. Overgeared for the fights already...and tactics will be known from PTR. Zone won't even last a month unless there is a C'Thun 1.0 stuck in (which you actually desire in a desperate attempt to find something challenging for your level of guild). Although cheer up, the server event unlocking the last three bosses should keep you busy for a few weeks after killing the first three bosses in one night which will happen especially after PTR testing.

Just the game is different, but many are still stuck in the past. Even if content is tuned to the maximum "effort" possible, that maximum effort is very easy to reach. Every player, even very casual, can reach the "Max Consumables" effort now. Naxxramas was just an one-off, it ain't gonna happen again because the raiding system does not allow it anymore. However, I do expect good things from Sunwell. The boss selection seems to be very good and we could look forward to some very technical encounters that take some imagination to complete - a good thing.

However, I think you are only fooling yourself if you think you're expecting some sort of Naxxramas comeback worthy of stacking consumables for. The TBC system is not even Casual-friendly in PvE...perhaps Arena is. 1.5% is still a very, very small number. The TBC system mostly rewards the second tier of guilds - you know - those thousands who cleared 1-2 tiers in Naxxramas but did not have the time or were not hardcore enough to finish it off. In many ways, it's very cool that such players get the chance to finish content. They're the guilds who did not kill Illidan in the summer but killed him in Autumn. They're not casuals, I'd define them as semi-hardcore. Good enough to kill Illidan, but not good enough to kill him in the first three months since the first kill registered by Nihilum. THEY are the main audience of TBC raiding. They will be target audience of Sunwell too. The top guilds, those which led progression in Naxxramas and killed Kel'thuzad were pretty much sacrificed.

The real losers, the intended losers - sorry to say - are the first tier of guilds whose efforts are now overkill for raiding post 2.1. They get the glory at the start but then stuck doing nothing for months. You are much better off taking your time with things than getting first kills. Sad reality for few, a great thing for many.

 

Jebraltar

I couldn't possibly disagree more. From the perspective of someone who only ever cleared BWL and killed Skeram/Razuvious, BC was an enormous step up. Nearly every encounter in BC has had more going on than basically every encounter pre-BC until a few bosses into AQ at least. I would definitely do Al'ar over Skeram any day of the week, that's for damn sure.

Apart from the change to raid size, these are basically all changes that were received positively by nearly the entire raiding community. Balancing encounters around being world buffed out the ass and consumable stacking is a pain in the ass more than anything - rather than asking you to get better, it asks you to waste more time on the game. Removing that has made raiding something that's a lot more reasonable.

 

• Falk

Hahah, this is a really good point, and it briefly surfaced when Nihilum dropped Illidan 1.0... the question arose that since BT was so easy (back then, when Gurtogg was supposedly tuned so low he'd die on the first pull when people knew what to do), what was the point of getting T6?

Blizzard came up with the answer by hinting about another final, exclusive raid instance before the next expansion. However, it's resurfacing again. What WILL Sunwell gear be used for? Trophy items? It's definitely not going to be competitive in PvP vs S3 (or better... hi S4 whenever you come).

That's probably a quandary Blizzard will have to address come WotLK... I'm pretty sure they're happier with the PvP vs PvE gear balance than it was in 1.0, but now the inevitable result of that is, PvE gear means nothing much once you reach the end.

It's kinda sad that I'm only half kidding when I say I'm happy to gear up because it allows me to farm rep faster.

 

Cottonface

I don't have a link, but I am quiet sure, that when Sunwell first was announced, it was supposed to be "significantly" harder than BT, and not "slightly" as it is suggested now. Slightly harder than BT is not a challenge at all, as most guilds with BT on farm more or less don't focus 110% during raids anymore, but can go thru it rather relaxed within a 6-7 hour frame. I - personally - have a hard time taking the note about "being tuned for tier 6" serious, looking on how relaxed my guild completes most bosses in BT; and I would wish, that Sunwell would have stayed "significantly" harder, rather than "slightly". But be that as it may.

A good point. Most guilds who will attack Sunwell, already have full tier6, in many cases also full tier6 for off-specs (feral/moonkin/fury/etc), so I ask, would you sacrifice the 4-set bonus of tier6 for "Loot quality above Tier 6"?

The rogue set-bonus is 6% more damage from Sinister Strikes, which in terms of dps is about 2%. While a better head, chest, shoulders, and so forth, surely is possible, I somehow doubt that 1 piece of gear, even 2, from Sunwell would make up for the 2% dps loss. Consider this: most tier upgrades (tier 5 --> tier6) represent between 0.5% to 0.75% dps bonus (roughly estimated), hence gear from Sunwell would have to represent at least 1% dps upgrade per item to par the 2% dps drop for rogues. Also for BM hunters, the sacrifice of 4-set is something that comes at a heavy price, while MM would be able to do it.

All in all, I would mainly consider belts/bracers/boots and weapons as items I would change, before I would sacrifice my 4-set tier6 bonus. Looking at trinkets, the best trinkets in the game at still is DST (Gruul), WSC (Void Reaver) and MotB (Council), and if Sunwell is to offer a trinket more powerful than anyone of those, it really will be godly, but then again, within the limits of the item level, I really do not see that happening.

So what purpose is there to farm Sunwell is there, when you can become a "stronger" player by continuing to farm BT/MH and complete your tier6? To me, Sunwell really looks more like a Zul'Aman for tier-6 players, and nothing more.

 

• Falk

Something interesting may be the abuse of the Ring slot for set bonuses, like Kel'Thuzad. Imagine if some of the non-class-specific sets were... bracers belt boots gloves shoulders and a ring, which drops off Kil'Jaeden. The set could have bonuses for 3 and 5 pieces. You could either settle for the 3-bonus, or sacrifice your 4t6 for the 5-bonus. Or, after beating Kil'Jaeden, you could have the 5-bonus AND 4t6.

The possibilities and different combinations are limitless - it's going to be interesting to see what comes out.

The point I was making, however, was that getting more powerful from a PvE perspective would be rather pointless, except maybe to level faster in WotLK. (Do note that 'getting more powerful' as a goal is a different aspect from 'experiencing the content'. Of course I want to experience the content.. nothing's changed about that :P)

 

heel

KJ could be completely unitemized, for all I care. PvE gear from the last instance of the expansion is nothing but leveling gear. A well-tuned encounter that drops cloth caps would be just fine.

Raid content already has a broader appeal through the policy of "release it now - nerf it later." There's no reason to make Sunwell easy upon release. One thing to remember about the raid game is that a lot of people raid because they want to be that guy. My guild is chasing Nihilum. Every other guild on our server is chasing us. There's meaningful competition to complete content before the other guy. If you reduce the difficulty to such a point that Sunwell gets cleared on the PTR, then there's nothing for the players at the top to compete for anymore, and the whole competitive raiding structure is diminished.

 

Krazen

This is already the case for several classes. For warlocks, better pieces than t6 exist in 3 slots (legs, chest, helm), but none of them are sufficiently superior to forego the set bonus. It'll probably take a combination of Sunwell pieces for us as well.

 

Bloodterror

Well you never saw Emps, Cthun, Ouro, Heigan, Thaddius, 4h, Saph, KT, etc so how can you realistically compare pre-bc and TBC? In terms of encounters BWL was a garbage zone, MC was a garbage zone, early AQ was garbage. The reason people ballyhoo about Naxx so much is that even nothing encounters like Maexxna and Razuvious were still so so good in comparison to everything that had come before.

And you're right, those changes were received positively by the raiding community. But as is often the case the patient doesn't know what medicine he needs to feel good. Its the same psychology that goes into deciding how much of a penalty to have for dying in an MMO. The players say no no no please no death penalties in development. If the devs listen and the penalties for death are too low the game loses meaning and isn't compelling. Sure worldbuffing was obnoxious, but the only encounter you really had to do it for was Loatheb, and thats what made the fight unique. I'm sure there were guilds too that didn't even buff to kill him, but rather waited for enough gear to pass the gear check (also intelligent design if worldbuffs hadn't been around). If people were buffing for 4h and Saph then thats just them going overboard, and you can't really complain about a system that allows you to go the extra mile but doesn't make you--as those encounters were definitely beatable without world buffs. People say they hate world buffs now, but when you pulled Loatheb for the first time, shadow pots strapped, flasked and elixered and well fed and sharpening stoned up, tell me your heart wasnt beating out of your fucking chest. Can anyone think of a single encounter in TBC that has done that for you? Maybe Archimonde at low %'s, or pre-nerf Shahraz.

A lot of what made Naxx epic were the very things people didn't like. Its easy to look back on them nostalgically now, sure, but there was good raiding to be had there.

 

Amera

Tigole said recently that they are looking for ways to make raiding more competitive.

Really, though, the heart of the problem is really that there is a skill cap for PvE, and the evolution of the raiding game in the last year has really emphasized it. Everyone who has ever seriously raided knows the hardest part of raiding is logistical - having good leaders, having people show up, having people bring consumables, pay attention, etc. Actually participating in an encounter is generally easy, with very few exceptions, or for maybe a few select people in a given fight. The only thing that ever made raiding actually difficult was artificial blocks - defining artificial as anything not player-skill related.

For example, every top tier guild cleared MC, BWL, and AQ up to the point where they were impossible within a matter of weeks - sometimes during the first reset. Then once the encounters were beatable, they dropped within days. Fast forward to Naxx and you have largely the same thing. Loatheb blocked people for a week or so because of the consumable requirement (Artificial). The four horsemen was a legitimate encounter that took a long time to learn, but it is really marred by a logistical requirement (8 warriors, artificial). Everything else died within a few days.

Fast forward to TBC release, and you have people stuck in T5 because of the insane trash respawns and hit points, and massive consumable requirements (Artificial). You remove those, and stuff all dies within a week. T6 is released with no super bugs, just a sort of ridiculous Mother, and it is cleared within weeks.

My perspective in this is that the only way Blizzard can slow down PvE content is to introduce artificial barriers to restrict progression, which no one besides the ultra elite like (and I bet many of them don't either). This is because the vast majority of difficulty in raiding is logistics and any top guild at this point has already bypassed the logistical hurdle - they have the raiding machine fully ready to go. This is one reason why I think arena has a development eye at the moment, because logistical concerns are so small. The biggest difficulty is at the gameplay level, not at the logistics level. Despite the huge presence of videos and commentary, very few people ever compete at a top level because of its nature.

But competitive PvP is not for everyone, and most people who read these boards especially want to raid, either socially or competitively. If they want to make PvE competitive and not artificial, they need to find a way to increase the skill ceiling dramatically. Personally I am in favor of seeing MMOs starting to use actual AI for their bosses, but we know that will never happen in WoW, so really I'm at a loss in how they can do this. A static mob can only pose so much difficulty to modern players with the abundance of theorycraft, videos, and commentary that is so readily available. Ideally I think you'd see a mob that requires some level of gear requirement on top of a dynamic encounter that requires skilled players. But a "dynamic" encounter with AI is essentially just random, and we know how much people complain about randomness in PvE.

 

Liebestod

I don't think it's infeasible at all to have more severe "skill check" encounters, maybe overtuning them at first to slow down the bleeding edge guilds. Imagine if Aran's Blizzard could one-shot people, or if Mag's Blast Wave could wipe the raid on its first tick, or shatter damage on Gruul was doubled or tripled, etc. etc. (Though Shatter does have an element of luck.) Intuitively one can see that there must be a margin at which even skilled guilds would start to struggle.. the only reason this wouldn't happen is if these guilds were so skilled that they literally could no longer improve, and I don't think that's a reasonable assertion.

It's simply a matter of making encounters less and less forgiving. This is what made fights like Vael famous - if your tanks can't maintain aggro in the right order, you lose. Period. Nowadays of course this is much easier, but that simply means that there's more room for the challenge to be jacked up.

 

heel

The "skill ceiling" is higher than you think. For example, the initial incarnations of Magtheridon and Gruul were hard enough that after multiple days of attempts on each of them, a lot of players - myself included - felt they were close to undoable. However, if Gruul suddenly reverted to 1.0 today, and our raiders reverted to the gear we had back then, I'm confident that we would down him in an attempt or two. There have absolutely been encounters which have challenged even the most experienced raiders without throwing up an excess of artificial roadblocks.

 

Amera

And those were all pre-2.1 TBC. I mean TBC seems to get a bad rap these days from nostalgia, with people saying that Naxx was truly the glory of raiding, but really everything in Naxx was easily defeated by top guilds that didn't have some kind of artificial block.

So I think what you should be asking for is an incredibly low tolerance for failure, yet almost everyone here complaining about raiding being easy indicated that they wanted consumables, world buffs, and the things almost no one likes. Does anyone really want that?

 

Prod

I absolutely don't believe that raiders have maxed out their skill and anything Blizzard throws at us, excluding some bug, will be easy. I'm a better player than I was when I started SSC. But this game is in no way as hard as an RTS or FPS or whatever. There is a lot that can be done in that area, as long as Blizzard is creative enough. Personally, I went to Blizzcon and I am skeptical they can actually do it. Or maybe I mean that they wouldn't do it, given the current trends in TBC.

It just about goes without saying that the incentive to raid is gone. Ask yourself how many man hours a new guild will have to devote to go from point A to killing Illidan. Man hours including research, recruitment, farming, and raiding. That much time requires sacrifice of some sort. So what is the incentive to do all that and go to Sunwell?
- Experience the content.
- Get progression loot.
- Status symbol
- Socialize

As far as content goes, you don't have to farm an instance for content. I've seen people actually buy spots in raids for a drop they want, but I suspect a large part of that is to experience content on the shoulders of a guild that won't wipe all night. Besides, they could go out every night instead and watch it on warcraftmovies.com some other time.

You don't need progression loot from the last instance. This gear is no longer desired for anything outside of leveling to 80 faster. As I see it, the reward has been absolutely watered down in this area.

Blizzard has made it extremely crystal clear that pvp and pve gear will be on par with each other. That means they look the same and have similar ilvl's. Unless someone actually inspects you and reads the name of your item, for all they know you're wearing Gladiator gear. Warglaives remain the status symbol however. Unluckily for most of us the damn things won't drop.

And finally, to socialize. This is the one area where, whether or not you look the same as someone or you watched the bossfight on youtube, you cannot recreate artificially.

Now, a lot of us have already come this far. We already know the people in our guilds. You can't turn back. But if I started all over, there is no question in my mind that the sacrifice is not worth it. If I rerolled on a new server today and I wanted to see Kil'Jaeden, I'd wait patiently for the youtube of it. I'd really really really really like that to change in WOTLK.

 

Amarilia

Now, I think you are underestimating Naxxramas a bit. Our guild has killed illidan late september so about 3 months ago. We killed Kel'thuzad once and most bosses gave us at least a week of wiping.
Only Illidan phase 2 is really difficult in Black Temple. Sure the difficulty is mainly on the tanks but you need superb healing aswell and there's a real incentive to get those elementals down asap.
Now compare to that Thaddius and Loatheb. Thaddius was ALWAYS close on the enrage timer for us, even with a lot people having 6/9 t3. We were never able to kill Loatheb without world buffs. Now I'm not advocating to implement raid buffs again but it says much about the difficulty of naxx.

But now, we have been farming Illidan for 3 months and nothing is really difficult anymore. I agree you can never make encounters hard enough to keep Nihilum busy for months. But many "subtop" guilds like mine are bored with the raidgame now, something which never really happened before for my guild.

Sunwell is aimed for the serious 25man raiders. If everyone will clear it in one month, then what is the point of the instance? It's the only thing we'll have in a small year between BT and WotLK, they better make it last for a while.

 

Emeraude

Are we all forgetting that the ZA event is perfectly tuned for a Tier 6 geared group? Down to the last minute almost.

If The Sunwell is as tightly tuned I'm sure we'll all be in for a fun challenging surprise.

 

Obligatory

Personally, I feel like the biggest problem with TBC raids is that everything is tuned too low. Now, I'm not in a bleeding-edge guild (we killed Illidan the week before thanksgiving, and it took us ~2.5 months to clear all t6 content), but it really feels like the only thing that ever holds us back is raid focus. Every time we had a week where everyone showed up focused and ready to give 100% on all 4 nights, we would kill at least one, and usually two new bosses. I can't really think of a boss where we ever felt like "okay, we've got this, we just need to gear up our tanks/healers/DPS a bit better and he'll die." Instead, we brought in new recruits and people who went casual for awhile wearing t4 and still blew through most fights. Hell, the first time we killed council, I was still wearing almost half a dozen blues.

Basically, what I'm saying is bring back gear checks. As much as it kind of sucked to bang your head against an encounter that you probably couldn't win for another two weeks, the feeling you got when that motherfucker finally died was well worth it. I remember all the screaming and shouting over vent on our first kills of most pre-TBC bosses. Weeks of pent up frustration and hope all erased with a minute of ear-splitting joy. The closest we ever got post-TBC was when archimonde died, and that was still a shadow of, say, patchwerk or C'thun.

When a guild like ours smokes the enrage timer on most new boss kills, encounters are not tuned properly imo. And the result is some very un-satisfying encounters.

 

Kazanir

Remember, the problem with Gruul and Mag 1.0 was not the difficulty itself, but the placement of the encounters. Imagine if you had had BT be composed of the following encounters:

1. Gurtogg Bloodboil, current incarnation
2. Teron Gorefiend, current incarnation (has he even been changed)
3. Gruul 1.0
4. Leotheras 1.0
5. Al'ar 1.0
6. Illidari Council, current incarnation
7. Mother Shahraz, somewhere between 1.0 and current in difficulty
8. Magtheridon 1.0
9. Illidan

This instance would have taken a lot longer to clear than BT did once Nihilum finally got in there but I doubt that the people getting in there would have complained since it was, after all, the final instance in the expansion (or so they supposed at the time.) The reason that Gruul and Mag sucked in their original incarnation was because they were the second and third 25-man encounters in the game.

'War' is too small a word for what I'm fighting. Like a candle in front of the whole burning Sun. I told you. This is bigger than a war. Now, I am not going to die today. I have other projects, and other options.

You can come with me. I can protect you.

 

KrinKer

Take off LEotheras and put in RoS and Bt would have been Naxx 2.0 ! !

 

Veneda

I hope you are aware that having current, highly technical fights, enrage timers combined with gear checks will lead to even bigger gap between top guilds and the rest of the crowd, attemting to leave Karazhan ghetto?

It's nice to hear you are modest by saying that you have killed Illidan before thanksgiving, so you are not bleeding edge. But you are still leap and bounds ahead of the average raiding crowd that is still dealing with tier 5 content.

My raid force is at the moment at the Vashj. 3 nights a week, only last 3 months are proper raiding after reorganization. Reorganization caused by nothing else but early versions of Gruul (and, no matter how much laugh it will cause, early versions of Aran) - banging heads against 2nd 25 encounter in game and inability of multiple players to move from "stand and shoot" fights to "be aware of what is going around" was painful. And only nerfing of the Gruul, Maggy and later SSC allowed us to start moving - because by stacking tier 4, tier 5 and PvP gear people are able to overcome things that otherwise would be a problem. It's great that other guilds are able to do that in half blues and one hand tied behind their back - but it's not the case with all the raiders.

Of course we can agree that not all the raiders have to see all the content - and I'm perfectly fine with that. Thing is, by following your suggestion top raiding guilds will outpace average crowd even more - mainly because with 4-5 days a week leads to faster gearing up, while guilds that raid just 3 evenings a week will be stuck at certain points even longer, wating for their gear levels to catch up.

 

Derketo

Raiding more leads to faster and more loot. Thats the way it should be.

The thing that generally allows the non bleeding edge crowd access to further tiers is the systematic nerfing of content after the bleeding edge has passed through.

The cutting edge guilds need it, and whether you admit it or not given your raids current state, you need for them to have it.

I'll be alright when we get to pass out time.

 

Hate Monkey

Well I'll say this: If Sunwell has one true tank 'n spank warrior gear check fight, like Patchwerk, Twin Emps, Garr, it will be a success of a zone.

There is not one fight in the TBC raid game that can even compare with those fights in terms of repeatability, out right gear checks. It has been long over due for a straight up tank 'n spank raid fight (Attunemen excluded) with no raid damage attached.

While that may not be a stopper for guilds with many months of T6 content farming under them, it will surely put a hampering on lesser guilds.

 

Amera

It's been suggested many times before in other threads, but having a "heroic" version of raid instances with better loot and harder boss encounters would solve a lot of problems in terms of encouraging PvE competition, while at the same time catering to social guilds. Most raiders could still organize raids to see the content, while the bleeding edge could compete against each other in overtuned encounters to their hearts content. Timed versions of things are really just one step away from this.

They would need to spent a bit more time than they did with heroics, however, and introduce new abilities that actually change the fights rather than just giving all the mobs a 300% damage modifier and more hit points.

 

Hate Monkey

So Mechano-Lords changing of abilities from normal to heroic doesn't show that they've already experimented with this? Or how about Murmur's AoE on heroic?

I can go through and name more, but the point is there. But for raid zones, if you do that, it's practically making a brand new raid boss, which then takes away time from making new raid zones, so new abilities for raid bosses is practically a no go. You'd have to do the generic damage increased, or just add a reflective shield here and there, which is easy enough to add, or a stacking enrage to bosses. Both those abilities are already in the game, wont change core abilities to bosses, and adds a new flavor of how to die.