Cynical Brit Leaving WoW :(

[Kalliope]

The first week of Cata, heroics were FREAKING IMPOSSIBLE, even in full 333 gear.

Well, yes and no. The first 48-72 hours they weren't impossible. In fact, that was the most enjoyable time in Cata so far for me. Alright, so I was a nutter who attempted a realm-first hunter (and got soundly beaten), but to me the initial heroics where you had to work things out on the fly together with Banes of the Fallen King, Celestial Defenders and other highly skilled players was a lot of fun.

I think that also had a lot to do with who you got randomed in with. The hardcore players were the first to reach 85 and be in 333 loot, so the first few were fine/enjoyable. But in the days that followed, UGH. That was when it became impossible. Although in some sadistic way, I enjoyed actually completely H Deadmines that first time. And yet, I was glad for the nerfs when they came along because had that level of difficulty persisted, I would have gone out of my mind on alts.

Were the heroics tuned too high for the casual audience? Yes, probably (though it wasn't as bad as Shattered Halls if you ask me). Did the level of fun decrease with the success rate of pugging heroics? Yes, definitely.

Agreed on all points, including that Shattered Halls heroic was RIDICULOUSLY BAD for the majority of TBC. (Again, alts....plus that predated the LFG system, so good luck finding a tank.)

What am I trying to say here? Umm... probably something along the lines that perhaps the tuning of both dungeons and raids should be in sync. I.e. if you want to attempt Heroic Raids, you should have Heroic Dungeon gear, but for regular raids regular dungeon gear is sufficient. Tuning it that way would hopefully let Blizz keep the harder difficulties in there without disadvantaging those who just want to see the content. It would also fix the issue of having to grind regular raids in order to do the almost-same-but-more-challenging fights in heroic raids.

The only issue with this is that players in heroic level gear would be able to walk into heroic mode raids either without needing to unlock heroic mode or by overpowering normal mode in order to get normal raid gear to tackle heroic level raids.....but said raids would be tuned for players in heroic instance gear, so they'd be less difficult. This is why normal mode is a necessary evil for raids.

[Royi]

Agreed on all points, including that Shattered Halls heroic was RIDICULOUSLY BAD for the majority of TBC. (Again, alts....plus that predated the LFG system, so good luck finding a tank.)

I remember being a Druid tank in Karazhan gear in there 4 manning the place, with the most amazing hunter I think i've ever come across who was in my guild. It was a guild healer, his brother (mage), him, and me in the instance. I just remember those rediculous Centurion guy pulls I think. That hunter was able to keep one mob trapped, one I think sleeped (I didnt play a hunter at the time so I dont remember if Wyrvern sting was there in BC), and kited another around. Crazy when a hunter is able to make it look easy by CC'ing mobs.

Alas we won Shattered Halls that day. And I completed my Nightbane Urn

*end tangent*

[Worba]

Yup, wyvern's been around since Vanilla.

[Ebonrook]

It's a shame to see CB go... I've always enjoyed his ranty and rambling podcasts, from pre-Cata and beyond. Though, part of me wonders why this is all such a big deal...

While I am personally unsure of what to really make of the entire debate at-large, I do feel that this is another overblown case of Hardcore vs. Casual. The poster who made the Grandpa Simpson "We walked three miles through the snow to get to school and we were grateful for it" comparison was, in my opinion, pretty spot on. I remember several other instances like this from WoW's history, so I, too, am rather surprised to see the massive amount of indignant outrage at this "adjustment".

Yes, the Blues said that Cataclysm instances would be hard – and boy, they were/are. Though I knew it would never last, since it's just how they handle things anymore. With each new tier or "midpoint" pre-raid heroics added, old encounters will become significantly easier due to being overgeared on top of the gradual adjustments and tweaks they do each and every patch. As it was mentioned before by another poster, we all knew that this would happen.

Though, with reading all of these comments (here on Petopia, MMO-Champion, and the official forums), I've been seeing a lot of people seemingly wanting a return to the old Vanilla and BC tier progression. Personally, I thought that was a horrible model...

Though when I look back at BC raiding, all I remember was the tremendous gap between raiders – which, surely, some liked since the cremé de la cremé were always at the top of the heap and maintained their special feeling of being the best. I also remember on how much of a pain everything was because it took several groups of varying gear levels to help the entire guild climb the ladder of tier – all of this with much larger group compositions. It took more planning, more raiding time in the week, more pain for the officers and/or raid leads to deal with, and so on. I was one of my guild's few healers back then, so I was asked quite a bit to help out the "lower tier". I could have said no, sure, but even though they asked it was still a silent expectation since I was in a raiding guild.

Overall, it was just a huge, dare I say needless, timesink with a heck of a lot more cat herding than I personally would have liked. I also remember the laments of people who had to quit/go on hiatus for some reason or another coming back to see their once cutting-edge gear vastly out of date compared to the rest of their guild. It would take weeks, sometimes months, for them to catch up – provided that the right gear dropped, that they managed to get it for themselves, and that they were able to set aside multiple nights to slog through various raids for 3+ hours at a time. That, to me, wasn't fun. That was needless drudgery.

This is what, ultimately, made me quit being a hardcore raider. I could not, and would not, spend four days a week (at the very least) locked into an instance for three to five hours anymore. If this is the playstyle that some honestly miss, that's fine, but those people must have a great deal more time to play than most do.

Doubling back to the nerf debate, I will admit that is one that I am somewhat torn on... While the conversion of T11 to Justice Points was expected, I do think going through and making the normal soon-to-be-outdated raid content easier might be a little much. Even as a casual raider, I'd rather see the encounters as they were meant to be. But, on the other hand, what harm could these adjustments do in the end? Even if I wanted to go to Blackwing Descent for a lark, the encounters would already be trivialized, to a degree, since everyone would be sporting full T11. The crux of this entire issue is that most people are enraged over the thought of scrub raiders going through and getting easy epics when the real raiders worked hard for theirs. But...why would it matter since there's a whole new tier to get and T11 has gone the way of so many other tiers before it?

Though this is the plight of the hardcore raider: They are forever chasing the best thing available and they are forever unsatisfied. I don't mean the latter of the last sentence as an insult, but that's just the name of the game. Raiders raid and when there's nothing new to raid, they generally find the game far less interesting than before.

The thing is... If people are concerned about their prestige being cheapened by this, I don't think you have to worry about it at all. If your guild already has all of the raids on farm and you're taking a stab at (and possibly succeeding) at the heroic versions, chances are the other people on your server already know your guild is a bunch of badass raiders. They already know you're going to be dominating Firelands in no time flat and getting the fire hawk mounts or, just maybe, a Dragonwrath legendary staff.

Yet in the end, guilds can attempt this in some semblance of solidarity rather than having their numbers strewn across several echelons of raid content. That, in itself, is a wonderful thing to me.

[Setanta]

You shared a lot of the way I think about this process Ebonrook without the whole being a healer part. I think what others forget is that even if the content itself wasn't being 'nerfed', the change to the gear in regards to there being "better available" would in and of itself nerf the instances.

[Anyia]

Although in some sadistic way, I enjoyed actually completely H Deadmines that first time.

The first time through H Deadmines was epic!

What am I trying to say here? Umm... probably something along the lines that perhaps the tuning of both dungeons and raids should be in sync. I.e. if you want to attempt Heroic Raids, you should have Heroic Dungeon gear, but for regular raids regular dungeon gear is sufficient.

The only issue with this is that players in heroic level gear would be able to walk into heroic mode raids either without needing to unlock heroic mode or by overpowering normal mode in order to get normal raid gear to tackle heroic level raids.....but said raids would be tuned for players in heroic instance gear, so they'd be less difficult. This is why normal mode is a necessary evil for raids.

Well the way I was envisaging it was that you'd have it tuned so that heroics were about as hard as they were at Cata release time. Heroic dungeon gear would be of similar ilevel as normal raid gear. The idea being that at any given point, it's possible to transition to the heroic "stream", rather than having to hop through it all the time. Imagine a gear progression like:

Code: Select all

                   ,-->[Heroic Dungeon]--+-->[Heroic Raid]
[Regular Dungeon]--+-->[Regular Raid]----'

effectively leaving the heroic dungeons optional for those who want the challenge, rather than they way they currently exist as a require part of the progression. It might also help the smaller guilds who want a good challenge but can't get the numbers for regular raids.

I don't know about you, but I haven't found the requirement to first go through a set of encounters on normal mode before they can be attempted on heroic mode as very satisfying - the best I can call it is "tedious". For my play style, I'd much rather spend five-six weeks overcoming the heroic encounter, than spend say four-five weeks farming gear on normal mode, then another four-five weeks besting the heroic encounter. What I want is the satisfaction of overcoming something non-trivial. Having to spend twice the amount of time on what essentially boils down to the same encounter doesn't do anything for me, to the point where I haven't even bothered pushing into heroic raiding this expansion - ICC kind of wore me out (but Algalon was awesome).

For the tier progression I'd imagine something like the following:

Code: Select all

                   ,-->[Heroic Dungeon]----+-->[Heroic Raid]-----+-->[Next tier heroic raid]
[Regular Dungeon]--+-->[Regular Raid]------+-->[Next tier raid]--'
                       [Next tier dungeon]-'

Once you skill up enough for heroic content, you'll be able to keep tracking heroic content, and fill in any gear gaps using the easier modes once the tier shifts. This is how I think I would go about removing some of the tedium, hopefully without making too many people unhappy. Of course, all this musing is rather pointless given I don't work for or have an ear with Blizzard.

[Kalliope]

Your first suggestion is actually what's happening right now! The Zul instances are *almost* on par with normal raids; at the very least, using that gear should get you decked out to power through the normal raids pretty well.

The other suggestion is interesting, in that players wouldn't have to bother with learning normal modes, but I actually like the steps of progression to learn an encounter without all of the complications heroic mode has before getting overwhelmed with new information. It saves on some of the real new-to-the-fight wiping under the worst of circumstances later on.

That might just be me, though.

Blizz actually commented on progression and cutting out some of the tedium by doing these nerfs in a couple of blue posts that MMO picked up yesterday:

Cataclysm Raid Difficulty Progression

I think the biggest issue now is that Cataclysm didn't launch with an intro raid tier. We're now following through with the stair-step method of having one hard raid and one intro raid, but it took a while to see the plan through -- which is obviously a bit jarring. So now we have a new tier, VP converts to JP, the old tier gets stepped down and the new hotness is going to be that difficult climb.

I think if we had the intro tier/hard tier available (as we will in 4.2) when the expansion first launched it would feel more natural now to see that stair step just moving forward. With the current setup it seems like we're the bad guys going in and messing with your stuff, and that view is somewhat based on not really including the new harder tier in the equation since it's not available yet. It's just not going to be an issue when the new content is available, but for now it's something to make observations and personal declarations about.

Firelands Difficulty

If you've completed Blackwing Descent/Bastion of Twilight then you should focus on Firelands (you're ready to step up), but if you haven't yet seen most or any of BWD/BoT we want to make sure you're able to as soon as 4.2 comes out - not spend weeks running dungeons and grabbing the new gear before you can start progressing.

The content has been out quite a while, there's no reason to make people wait and spend even more time running dungeons to grab the new gear before they can start on raid content they haven't seen yet.

(Source)

[Raederle]

Though this is the plight of the hardcore raider: They are forever chasing the best thing available and they are forever unsatisfied. I don't mean the latter of the last sentence as an insult, but that's just the name of the game. Raiders raid and when there's nothing new to raid, they generally find the game far less interesting than before.

**MASSIVE APPLAUSE**