Tobold's Blog
Friday, May 16, 2008
 
WoW raiding made easy

Last weekend I was present when my guild killed Rage Winterchill, the first boss in Mount Hyjal, for the first time. Me being more of a casual raider, it doesn't happen all that often that I'm there for a guild-first kill. In fact we didn't really plan to take down Rage, we were just there to have a look around, and for jewelcrafters like me to gain some reputation. Mount Hyjal reputation gives you the same jewelcrafting recipes as the new Sunwell Offensive vendor, but for 6 gold instead of 40 gold. As there are a *lot* of recipes, MH rep saves you serious money. So on our first attempt we got swamped by the waves of mobs. But the second attempt we already had the waves down pat, engaged the boss, and to our surprise brought him down to 12% before we wiped. Everyone suddenly realized that this was totally doable, so we did a third attempt and promptly succeeded in taking Rage Winterchill down.

If you had told me a year ago that one day I'd kill a boss in Mount Hyjal, I would have laughed at you. We have a lot of casual raiders in our guild, and we still haven't even tried the final bosses of Serpentshrine Cavern and Tempest Keep. But while before we would have needed to kill both bosses to even get the attunement for Mount Hyjal, patch 2.4 removed all attunements from the game, and it was announced that Wrath of the Lich King wouldn't have any attunements at all. Another development was that over the last year lots of raid encounters have been made easier. For example we recently killed Magtheridon, who was too hard for us before the nerf, and now was well within our possibilities. Besides making raiding easier by removing attunements and nerfing encounters, raiding is now also easier because getting epics is easier. There are now more crafting epics, more PvP reward epics, more badge epics, and all the raid bosses drop more badges and tokens than before. Getting fully epic equipped now takes less time than a year ago. And of course raiding is also getting easier with time simply because everyone inevitably gets more powerful and experienced the longer he plays at the level cap.

While Burning Crusade raiding was made easier with every patch, there are some indications that Blizzard wants to make raiding more accessible in Wrath of the Lich King right from the start. As mentioned there will be no attunements in WotLK, and every raid dungeon will exist in one supposedly easier 10-man version and one harder 25-man version, with better loot. At least right now it sounds a lot like my suggestion to create easy-mode and heroic raid dungeons. But how easy or hard these raids will be in the end, we don't know yet. 10-man raids are not automatically easier than 25-man raids. Larger raids can be easier, and easier to organize for a casual raiding guild, if the larger number means that you can take a couple of less good raiders with you. 10-man raids can be extremely hard if there is no room for error at all, and you need exactly this or that class mix, and any minor error of any of the 10 members leads to a wipe.

So what I would be hoping for is that there is a progression in difficulty between the various WotLK raid dungeons, with the first 10-man raid dungeon being easy enough that a 10-man group freshly arrived at level 80 and with slightly suboptimal raid composition can still beat it. For the next 10-man raid dungeon you'd already need some of the loot from the first place, plus a bit tighter organization, and so on. The most difficult 10-man raid could actually be more difficult than the easiest 25-man raid, because some casual raiding guilds have less problems getting large numbers together and more problems with tight organization. Up to now there is simply no information whether WotLK raiding will play out like that, but it is still possible. Accessible raiding for a larger part of the WoW player base is a good thing, and I sure hope that Wrath of the Lich King will bring us that.
Comments:
I did not raid due to time shortage in the last couple of months. Now our guild / raid group has started Mount Hyjal and Black Temple in the last weeks and with a mixture of Tier 4, Tier 5, crafted epics and badge rewards this is a killing spree. Some of the fights - with the right setup - seem to be easier than Attumen in Karazhan. I am totally astonished to see us going through the first 4 bosse in Mount Hyjal in one evening. In the Black temple we already downed the first 3 bosses. So I believe that raid groups who managed to kill Kael'thas and Vashj had even easier time.

My only fear with 10 mans is that the designers overdo it sometimes with difficulty jumps between instances. Take Karazhan and Zul'Aman the difference in difficutly is enormous. But let's hope that Blizzard understands that they need to stick to their promise. I am looking forward to both 10 man Naxxramas and 25 man Naxxramas plus all the other fun instances in icy Northrend.
 
im in the same boat Tobold. i went from a very very casual guild who struggled on Kara, to a guild that was learning Gruul and Maggy post2.4, and progressed into TK/SSC. Downed the Voidreaver but struggled on Lurker. I moved to a guild that would 1 shot everything in Kara, Gruul, Maggy, SSC (bar Vashj) and TK (bar Kael) only to then destroy Vashj, the first 3 bosses in MH and then the first in BT.

if you'd told me that i'd kill Gruul, let alone Naj'entus i'd have laughed and laughed and laughed... i've never seen myself as a hardcore raider, and still dont. i'm in the 2nd best horde guild on this server (unleashed - EU-Bronze Dragonflight) and we dont profess to being hardcore, but a year or 2 ago i would have shunned any mention of me killing BT bosses :P
 
Hi Tobold,

I'm curious how pre-nerf Magtheridon could have been too hard for your guild. The only nerf to him recently has to do with cube clicking, which was nerfed in two ways:
1. You only need one set of clickers
2. You don't get the debuff until after a successful click

Since the cubes were the only nerfed aspect of the fight, what part was "too hard" for guild before?

I'm puzzled because to me if one has 25 people and has clicker teams of people who are capable of 1) getting in position at the right time and 2) clicking at the right time, then I just don't see how Magtheridon can ever have been too hard. Maybe I'm taking issue with your choice of the word "hard"; to me something as trivial as getting into position and clicking at the right time seems just too trivial to merit the adjective hard.

Also, if I'm totally off base and the difficulty came not with cube clicking but with gear not being up to par and the influx of badge gear has solved this problem, then I can see how having undergeared people would make Mag too hard...

In any case, feel free to pontificate on what is "hard" in a MMO if you so choose :P

Thanks!
 
That wasn't the only nerf. They also reduced the amount of infernals that can be spawned by the channelers.

But more than that, you're underestimating the fact that the Mind Exhaustion becoming a 30 second duration was a HUGE nerf. In the Mag fight in its current state, you can basically just park your leftover tanks at the cubes and not have to worry about a thing. With the pre-nerf longer duration, you had two sets of assignments and various DPS running back and forth to the cubes. There were lots more things that could go wrong. A clicker dying, a clicker being caught out of position, or a clicker just screwing up his assignment, whether it be going to the wrong cube or just forgetting where he is in the clicking rotation.

All that being said, I thought the nerf was unncessary and the fight was fine how it was. It's now too easy. I think Blizzard should've improved his drops and left it at that.
 
I'm looking forward to welfare raiding.
 
I just want to mention that givinag away free epix ruined WoW.
Before TBC being full epic was part of hard job and epics was meaning that...
Now everyone can be full epic.. So what?

Pre- TBC i was a full T2 mage.
Now we farm BT and we are ready to enter Sunwell.
Btw we cleared BT in 1 month...
I think that blizzard has to try hatder if WoW is ment to stay at the top...
I'm also an AoC player and i'm planning to stop WoW.
 
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