Dungeon and raid difficulty in MoP?

[Stoove 347]

WARNING: THERE WILL BE A LOT OF TEXT IN THIS POST.

A lot of the arguments Blizzard has offered for easier and nerfed content has been in direct conflict with what they initially intended. Take LFR for example. They said that LFR was intended to show those who weren't in high progressive guilds and people who didn't want to play in guilds an opportunity to down all the PvE content available to those in controlled, organized groups. They dumbed down mechanics to make it so that voice coordination and leadership wasn't required, mistakes were easily overcome, and loot came generously.

I agree that LFR is to help people see the content. I like it, I think it's nice to have something like that. You're welcome to disagree, but it does what it's there for, mostly.

Then they decided to nerf Dragon Soul...but what was their reasoning? To help those not in higher end guilds see the PvE content. Once you killed Madness on LFR, killing him on normal or heroic was no different...it just required a higher level of skill. This created a challenge for those who wanted it, but LFR players wanted higher item level gear. Gear should have been displayed on people as a separation of their skill. Now, with the 35% nerf effective, those LFR players are likely Saviors of Azeroth with no separation of players with skill other than linking an achievement with a date acquired.

I'm afraid I have to call bullshit here (sorry, I don't like it). Several reasons;

1. From conversations where Blues have got involved, it's clear that the nerfs were not there because Blizzard wanted people to "see the content". They were put in because they believed it wasn't fun for most guilds when they got stuck in a rut. Furthermore, nerfs aren't new in endgame (GC made the comment that they've been doing it since Vanilla). Whether this is a valid point is legitimate debate, but let's not have straw men here.

2. Those people who relied on LFR to see content are not and never will be Heroic raiders. Due to time commitments, due to self-improvement attitudes, whatever. I never relied on LFR to see the content, but it was where I started the tier. The whole point was always to go as far as I can in the "real" raids.

3. Even with the 35% nerf, getting 8/8H is not trivial. It's easier, and I respect anyone who did it with less of a nerf than I did, but it's not easy. Not by a long shot. Normal is easy - all you have to do is play competently and co-ordinate. In Heroic raiding, you have to play very well, even with the nerfs. I admit that anyone who did un-nerfed content is still miles ahead of where I am.

4. Even if the nerfs got to the point where the health was equivalent to the original Normal bosses, Heroic would still be harder. The reason is the extra mechanics - that's what makes Heroic raiding fun. It is NOT the extra health (though the extra health does make it more of a challenge, just "doing more dps" is boring). Heroic raiding still takes a very different kind of player to what it takes to complete Normals.

5. If you are basing your judgements of a player solely on what bosses they have killed, you are doing it extremely wrong. Sorry, but you are. No guild should recruit based solely on current progression.

Players who have killed 8/8H but wouldn't have without significant nerfs are the ones crying that Blizzard has catered to casuals and made content too easy. This is CLEARLY evident in the number of players who have killed Heroic Ragnaros versus Heroic Madness. If you want a more drastic look, look at the players who killed Heroic Nefarian...far less than Rag or Madness because that content was never nerfed. Because they were able to clear all of the bosses on heroic, many of them forget how significant the nerfs were and will go into Mists and the first raid and expect to be awesome...and they won't be. Then the complaining begins.

I'm mildly offended by this because I'm one of those "players who have killed 8/8H but wouldn't have without significant nerfs". I've never complained about difficulty in any direction. Please don't implicitly lump me in with those who do. Neither have I ever been technically less skilled than I am now - it has uniquely been time commitments which have affected my raiding progression. Just because someone has not got Heroic Rag kills, does not necessarily mean that they were not capable of same. I think it is a little unfair to imply such.

I also think that a large part of the complaining comes from a small, vocal, minority of the playerbase who lack a broad understanding of the sheer range of skill levels and experiences that exist in wow. This includes Heroic raiders. As a raider, I've played at almost all levels during this expansion, so I have a nice broad perspective on how different groups perceive difficulties and why. I think I'm qualified to say that most of the complaints that happen are sourced in a lack of a broad perspective (in contrast, a broad perspective is something the Devs have a very good opportunity to get).

I have my own problems with the nerfing system, but they are complex and need to be looked at from a balanced perspective - something I think that many people don't have (through no fault of anyone). This is a complex topic, and I think that most people (including your good self) do it an injustice by oversimplifying it.

[Vladamyr 169]

Blizzard might be on the right track with the Challenge Modes for dungeons (at least I'm hoping). I do like the % nerf for normal raiding as it allows your casual 10m raid groups something to work through. I do wish Heroic raids were not affected by the % nerf (and I'm not a Heroic raider). I think that that status should be left to the high end raiders.

The one thing that I feel they should do is match dungeon and raiding difficulty naming. There should be a LFD/LFR (Easy mode), a Normal Dungeon/Normal Raid (Medium mode) and Heroic Dungeon/Heroic Raid (Hard mode).

Maybe making the gear gating as such:

LFD>LFR=Normal Dungeon>Normal Raid=Heroic Dungeon>Heroic Raid.

Just wishful thoughts

As a note: I do think the normal raids should be tuned more like how T11 and T12 were and not how DS was.

Edited September 20, 2012 by Vladamyr

[Stoove 347]

And they wonder why they lost 2M subscribers. When the better guilds and players clear content and have to wait 3 months doing the same thing, people will quit.

Just a small note:

2 million people did not clear the content before the nerfs hit. At a high estimate, maybe 20 000 people did. Probably less. I covered this in an argument on the official forums - the number of people who actually can clear Heroic content in its original state is much smaller than most people realise.

Also, I realise that I sound rather aggressive here. I certainly don't mean to be - I'm just interested in not letting this thread devolve into the mud-slinging that one sees on the official forums. I'd like to think that here we're slightly more invested in honest debate rather than appealing to the Devs, and so I think it's right to try to do the topic justice.

[Vlad 411]

Many good points have been made, and I agree with many of them, and disagree with a few.

I will say that my biggest annoyance with this system, speaking strictly as a player, is that Blizzard seems to be giving more and more thought to the considerations you guys have been talking about here, and less about the actual narrative and the atmosphere and experience of the raid tiers.

I'm annoyed that every major patch reminds me that this is a continuous Beta for Blizzard. They've gone through and basically experimented with so many different ways of doing things (just look at how Valor Points and their equivalents have changed on a patch-to-patch basis from BC to now). Every expansion, they throw away their old philosophies and announce new ones (an expansion every 1.5 years - gone; more secret bosses like Algalon - gone; epic gear will mean something again (and again!) - gone). It's annoying me that every raid tier follows a different format.

I'd like to see them drop this issue, stick with a format that makes sense (and all of them so far have, in my opinion. I was the least excited about Dragon Soul out of the past 4 years of content tiers), and work on making many bosses, with varied mechanics, with story, exploration, lore. Work on making awesome unique items that are memorable (like Fandral's Staff in Firelands).

I do not know what their internal processes are, but it looks like they're dedicated way too much time thinking about how to make every customer feel like he's doing really well, and too little time on actually putting out the awesome and original content that they're clearly capable of.

I did poorly in terms of progression in Tier 11. Only a rather short while before Firelands came out did I manage to kill Heroic Nefarian, and for many months before that I was stuck on Heroic Halfus. In terms of "making sure everyone 'has fun' equally", it was a clusterfuck. But it was fun.

I don't understand the point of LFR. I'm sorry, but I don't. I think the best model they ever had was Ulduar, where normal mode progression was meaningful. There were enough bosses to give something to everyone. Weak guilds could still get quite a few kills in, and choose the boss to progress against next; better guilds could show their skill by clearing more content and working on the hard bosses (yogg). Super good guilds had access to heroic modes which were actually uniquely designed and fun (not all of them, some were really dull).

After this, they just started diluting their content more and more and more, until we come to what we have today where you "finally kill a boss" twice on two different and rather unimpressive difficulties before you even begin working on him for real, by which time you're feeling pretty jaded.

For me, the ideal would have been dungeon difficulty from T11, with raid design of T8 (although the bosses and the variety in T11 was nice too).

Oh well.

[Stasis 36]

It's an impossible argument, this. It's a subjective comparison of experiences, and the paradigm of WoW has changed dramatically in Cata, for better or worse depending on your perspective.

Previously there was a whole dynamic based around Guilds and Raiding. Where the top end guilds on a realm were special and likely the only ones seeing the high-end content. This created an almost Darwinian struggle where people were pushing themselves to be good enough to apply to these Guilds, or Guilds striving to be good enough to progress. The rewards being the shiniest gear and the best titles, which further reinforced other's desire to progress. This did create an interesting environment, where hard work was rewarded and victories were hard fought with great reward. And for the people within that system, it was WoW, it was the game; and it's now a relic.

The net negative was that 99% of the paying population weren't getting to see the content they paid for (in their and Blizzard's eyes). Which is a fair issue. And, as a publicly traded company, ridiculous to continue with that model.

For me, as I've previously mentioned, I'm not sure I care anymore. I'm happy to pursue the game as a single-player game, and most the changes actually improve that play-style. And as Stoove alluded to, the general community is poison, and the less I'm in contact with it the better. This is probably is a reflection of the internet as a whole, or rather the effect of how generally unpleasant humans can be in an anonymous community... but that's not Blizzard's fault. I'm in a casual-progression raiding Guild, so at least I get to experience the raid content with more agreeable company :)

Personally, as a compromise to better the game, I'd like to see a return to the Ulduar raid model. Where the raid was open and available but you could chose to modify the encounter to unlock the Heroic mode. They've taken a step in that direction with the Heroic Elite modes, but I think they should have scratched Heroic mode altogether and just added the Elite mode to all the Bosses. This way everyone gets to progress on the same Bosses; people know that all they have to do is push that button to unleash hell, and if they choose not to that's their choice. It's not like a whole raid difficulty is denied them. As it stands, the community feels like it's missing out on significant content if it can't progress to Heroic raiding, and Blizzard won't let that happen.

WoW for me is kind of like Metallica's discography: the raw and gritty Kill 'em all was Vanilla; the exciting and trail blazing Ride the Lightning was BC; the ambitious Master of Puppets was Wrath; the polished ..and Justice for All is Cata; the popular and radio-friendly Black album is Mop... I sure miss early Metallica, but it's gone, they grew up and got rich. Wow is still good, it's just different; and we gotta re-learn how to enjoy it or change the station.

[Zagam 1,982]

I'm not sure how 8/8H isn't super easy now. There is absolutely no difficulty to clearing 8/8H testified by the alts of my raiders who did it in just an hour over my normal group with no one's ilvl over 395. It's only mechanics that separate normal from heroic, and nearly all of those heroic mechanics are wiped out by the nerfs.

Morchok - nothing different, but didn't matter as monkeys could clear this on heroic.

Yor'sahj - used to be difficult because of a DPS requirement to kill him in 10 minutes (100M HP in 10 man), no longer necessary to choose killing the Black Ooze over a different one just to slightly raise your damage done to the boss helping you kill him within seconds of enrage timer

Zon'ozz - no one pre-nerf came close to killing this guy in 3 black phases. many of the first kills on Youtube show him enraged as he is being killed for that group's first kill. This fight required high DPS, no mistakes, and perfect execution of the adds and stacking properly. We killed him during the 2nd Black Phase this week. Yawn.

Hagara - avoid taking unnecessary damage and she falls over. Again, pre-nerf used to be an intensely tight DPS race.

Ultraxion - DPS wall. Button pressing. Literally no different from normal if you can press buttons (just required higher DPS)

Warmaster - don't stand in fire. Tanks had two things to tank in P2 rather than just 1. Pre-nerf, strategies had to be devised on how best to keep your ship alive. That doesn't matter anymore as the Drakes die in one harpoon phase each limiting the maximum possible Barrages.

Spine - no different except for healers. DPS had to do 2 lifts per plate instead of 1, only making the fight take longer and do more damage because of that. With nerfs, you can easily kill all 3 plates in one lift.

Madness - no different except for a parasite that is easily handled and bloods in P2. Pre-nerf, this was extremely grueling and required varying strategies based on comp to pull off.

I'm not putting anyone down based on their progression, but if you have been raiding and aren't 8/8H, then your group won't succeed in Mists. The nerfs have essentially taken the normal fights, added a mechanic, and then nerfed it to the point it doesn't matter anymore. When groups can sell runs by essentially 9 manning the raid, the fights have become trivial.

I am NOT one to denounce those who progress at a slower level. In fact, I've defended those who progress at a slower rate than myself and offer tips and suggestions to help them overcome challenges they still see as difficult. Helping people over those walls is what makes this game rewarding for me. However, hearing those players get over the wall way later and then talk as if they were too good for that raid anyways is what I'm trying to say is surfacing now. The only reason people are bored with content now, unlike what happened at the end of T11 and T12 is because a VAST majority of players have killed Heroic Madness now compared to those who killed Heroic Ragnaros and Heroic Nefarian. You can't argue with numbers...T13 was embarassingly easier than T11 and T12, and it's going to give a much higher impact on players who weren't forced to properly play their class in T13 post nerf as they head into Mists.

[Stasis 36]

I think the best model they ever had was Ulduar, where normal mode progression was meaningful.

You and me both. It's almost inconceivable to me that they haven't gone back to this raid design. Surely the Blizzard designers know how amazing Ulduar was. It's almost like they hire a new design team every expansion, 'right, we need something new and fresh.. what haven't we done before?'. If it aint broke, people...

[Zagam 1,982]

Hard modes that are hard? Wait a second, I remember those! In Ulduar...

+1 who get the reference

[Stasis 36]

I'm not sure how 8/8H isn't super easy now. There is absolutely no difficulty to clearing 8/8H testified by the alts of my raiders who did it in just an hour over my normal group with no one's ilvl over 395. It's only mechanics that separate normal from heroic, and nearly all of those heroic mechanics are wiped out by the nerfs.

We were struggling on Spine during the 25% nerf, we had to use 4 healers to kill it. And we were the 13th Guild on our realm to defeat it. Granted we are 'casual', but that's more due to limitations than intent. It may seem inconceivable, and certainly once you beat a Boss once it becomes 1000% easier, but it's just how it is. Progression is hard simply due to being progression.

If I chose to be in a more progression orientated Guild, I would have killed it much earlier. But then I'd have to put up with less agreeable company (on our realm). And if they hadn't nerfed the content, then our raid would have rage-quit and would have likely destroyed the Guild... and I would joined one of the before mentioned Guilds and probably quit WoW in disgust lol.

Edited September 20, 2012 by Stasis

[Vladamyr 169]

Vlad I 100% agree with all those points. My only addition would be that I like LFR for seeing content but I would have much prefered it if it was 1 Tier of raiding behind (my favorite choice) or made it so that LFR was in no way a needed gateway for gear.

Oh how I miss you Ulduar and for that matter ICC!

[Zagam 1,982]

I strongly feel that anyone with current issues or issues back to any amount of nerfs could have been handled through two means: collecting specific strategies from others who were doing the fight (something I think Icy-Veins will have with me leading the Warlock forums) to find specific strategies that worked or replacing someone. If you have a group where 9/10 members are performing well but one is lacking, you have to find what type of place you want to run...do you want to kill bosses or do you want to tolerate mistakes because recruiting is too difficult and/or you like that person too much to replace.

It's hard to do, but sometimes you have to replace people due to behavior or performance. If you're having issues still, the problem is the fight or mechanics...it's someone in your group. I recently replaced a Fire Mage with a Shadow Priest because the Mage was doing 35k DPS to Ultraxion with a 409 ilvl and should have been doing a ton more. It also didn't help that once a month, he would just have to go at some point during the raid due to high girlfriend aggro. He was upset about being replaced before Mists, but you have to decide what's best for your group. It sucks being in that position, and if you're not, thank whoever is in your guild making those decisions.

By large, the hardest part of this game is finding 9/24 other people you like playing with who also are good raiders. Bad raiders can be molded into good ones with patience, but bad people who are good raiders won't do you any better in the long run.

[Stasis 36]

Yeah, but then you have the social 'family' type Guilds, where you can't just fire someone from the raid roster.

And frankly it's hard to find dedicated raiders these days. Our trade chat is non-stop guilds looking for members, and the 'old school' types that grew up reading Elitist Jerks and using rawr to optimize their gear are few and far between. They all got married and quit! Nowadays it's the log in for a couple of hours after work/school and don't expect me to do any out-of-game research folk! And these guys want to be 'progression' also.

Our Guild has a mix of dedicated raiders, pouring over the latest theorycraft and raid strategies, and casual raiders, but the raid's success is often determined by the lowest common denominator. And you work with what you have, sacrifice personal pride and keep plugging away.

And there's no reward, really, for the effort and heartache involved in crafting a better guild now. The only real reward is the raid experience, and if you have a good group then who's to say that your experience is worse than a more progression orientated guild.

Personally I would much prefer being in a raid where 100% of the raiders were progression focused, did their homework, were proficient in playing their class, and were pleasant people to associate with. But such a guild doesn't exist on my server.

Maybe WoW is just changing along with their demographic. The few dinosaurs that remain are a dying breed.

[Zagam 1,982]

Yeah, but then you have the social 'family' type Guilds, where you can't just fire someone from the raid roster.

And frankly it's hard to find dedicated raiders these days. Our trade chat is non-stop guilds looking for members, and the 'old school' types that grew up reading Elitist Jerks and using rawr to optimize their gear are few and far between. They all got married and quit! Nowadays it's the log in for a couple of hours after work/school and don't expect me to do any out-of-game research folk! And these guys want to be 'progression' also.

Our Guild has a mix of dedicated raiders, pouring over the latest theorycraft and raid strategies, and casual raiders, but the raid's success is often determined by the lowest common denominator. And you work with what you have, sacrifice personal pride and keep plugging away.

And there's no reward, really, for the effort and heartache involved in crafting a better guild now. The only real reward is the raid experience, and if you have a good group then who's to say that your experience is worse than a more progression orientated guild.

Personally I would much prefer being in a raid where 100% of the raiders were progression focused, did their homework, were proficient in playing their class, and were pleasant people to associate with. But such a guild doesn't exist on my server.

Maybe WoW is just changing along with their demographic. The few dinosaurs that remain are a dying breed.

I COMPLETELY understand. It took me 3 months to put together a raid of which you speak, but I promise you, they exist. I have been fortunate to find people just as you describe and the optimal raider on forums far more often than trade chat. Those dedicated and looking for an excellent guild will make the effort to find you. I've had 4 people drop $55 to transfer to my guild because of their desire to be with a top notch guild who isn't a bunch of asshats out to ruin the community. They have been FANTASTIC in my guild and all 4 of them hold leadership positions in my guild, with my DK tank being my 2nd in command. I think out of the original 10 I had for my first group, only I remain. People have cycled in and out based on poor attendance, performance, or an attitude change, but those who have stayed loyal to me understand my efforts in finding dedicated, skilled, nice players, and they know they won't find that elsewhere, especially on Mal'Ganis-US, the land of eternal douchebags. When your raiders find a GM with good leadership qualities, focuses on accentuating successes and minimizing and removing errors, and is solely dedicated to building a team to make WoW enjoyable, they stay.

Sometimes I wish I could have found players on this website to raid with me, but most of you all are European, so that wouldn't work =)

Trust me, when you find a group like this, nothing is hard in this game. No one gets mad at wipes, no one freaks out and points fingers, and even their usually-trustworthy GM admits when he messes up (I'm only human). It sucks replacing someone...I know...but keep at it. The fruits of your labor will pay off when you have the same team throwing bodies at a boss...it will die eventually.

[Stoove 347]

It's an impossible argument, this. It's a subjective comparison of experiences, and the paradigm of WoW has changed dramatically in Cata, for better or worse depending on your perspective.

I think this best sums up the debate here. Specifically: it is impossible for anyone to say what "casual", or "hardcore" counts as today. There is no single divide and there is no simple split of the playerbase. When Blizzard implement nerfs, they are attempting to cater to some of the spectrum of the playerbase that haven't had attention yet in the tier. That's a difficult thing.

I'm not sure how 8/8H isn't super easy now. There is absolutely no difficulty to clearing 8/8H testified by the alts of my raiders who did it in just an hour over my normal group with no one's ilvl over 395. It's only mechanics that separate normal from heroic, and nearly all of those heroic mechanics are wiped out by the nerfs

Again, I say; that is from your perspective in the top handful of players in the world. If you were able to clear the content before any nerfs hit, then well done to you. But the vast majority of the playerbase are different. Just because you do not find it hard, that does not mean it is not still difficult. For people who are not coming in from a high standard of raiding - like me - these things are still hard. I know they are easier, but they aren't easy. Maybe for someone who'se been raiding Heroics for multiple tiers, they are easy. Again, I say; that is not the majority of the raiding playerbase. You cannot possibly pretend that you, at the top of the pile, should be setting the standard for "easy". As was said above; it's relative, and what is easy for such an experienced set of raiders as your team cannot be described as "easy" for the vast majority of the population, even the raiding population. And certainly not on servers which don't have the required breadth of players to draw many excellent raid teams from!

I strongly feel that anyone with current issues or issues back to any amount of nerfs could have been handled through two means: collecting specific strategies from others who were doing the fight (something I think Icy-Veins will have with me leading the Warlock forums) to find specific strategies that worked or replacing someone. If you have a group where 9/10 members are performing well but one is lacking, you have to find what type of place you want to run...do you want to kill bosses or do you want to tolerate mistakes because recruiting is too difficult and/or you like that person too much to replace.

I don't think that anyone should be forced to replace anyone for the 2% difference that's holding them back. Again, that might be practical for those of you in the top handful of guilds, but for the vast majority of the raiding playerbase it's simply not possible for a variety of reasons. The nerfs are primarily there to provide that small boost guilds just like mine need to get the kills. They work. 35% sure makes it a lot easier, but it's never been easy. Even collecting other strategies only gets one so far - not far enough in some cases.

The simple fact is that an attitude which talks about Heroic raiding being easy clearly hasn't the breadth of experience of the (perfectly valid) raiding playerbase that there is in order to form a sensible perspective on what is easy. You can say it's easy all you want, but that only shows that you're so used to difficult things that you're genuinely one of the best players in the world. I applaud you for that, but don't pretend that means you're qualified to make a judgement on what is genuinely easy or difficult, because that's intellectually dishonest.

Again, I sound aggressive. I certainly mean no offence or disrespect. What I do want is that we have a well-argued counter to the all-too-common "stuff is easy and anyone who doesn't think so should try harder" argument.

To give you an idea of my breadth of raiding levels in the past year; I started WoW in January last year, raided for the first time not long after. I thought I did well to see the endbosses on Normal in T11. (in fact, for my realm at the time I did extremely well!) I went on to complete Firelands Normal, one of the first ten or so guilds on the server. Perhaps the top five on the server even saw Baleroc Heroic. Dragon Soul was my first Heroic raiding, and even then I couldn't commit more than 2 nights a week to it. I started in LFR, moved to a casual guild and killed Normal Madness there. Then I moved over to my current guild. We were well within the first 20 guilds on the server to kill Madness Heroic.

So you know what? Based on that broad range of experience, yes. Heroic is hard even with the 35% nerf. Maybe it's not UBER difficult. That just brings it to a level of enjoyability for me. Maybe even I can't speak for the raiding population. I'm damn sure that I'm both an inferior player to those here who killed 8/8H pre-nerf, AND that I'm almost certainly more qualified to talk about a reasonable level of "easy" than said people. You might disagree, but then can we even be having a discussion here rather than an argument?

Whatever. You're entitled to your opinion, and I hold no grudges, but you do yourself a disservice when you pretend that your specific experiences are typical.

[Zagam 1,982]

I think this best sums up the debate here. Specifically: it is impossible for anyone to say what "casual", or "hardcore" counts as today. There is no single divide and there is no simple split of the playerbase. When Blizzard implement nerfs, they are attempting to cater to some of the spectrum of the playerbase that haven't had attention yet in the tier. That's a difficult thing.

Again, I say; that is from your perspective in the top handful of players in the world. If you were able to clear the content before any nerfs hit, then well done to you. But the vast majority of the playerbase are different. Just because you do not find it hard, that does not mean it is not still difficult. For people who are not coming in from a high standard of raiding - like me - these things are still hard. I know they are easier, but they aren't easy. Maybe for someone who'se been raiding Heroics for multiple tiers, they are easy. Again, I say; that is not the majority of the raiding playerbase. You cannot possibly pretend that you, at the top of the pile, should be setting the standard for "easy". As was said above; it's relative, and what is easy for such an experienced set of raiders as your team cannot be described as "easy" for the vast majority of the population, even the raiding population. And certainly not on servers which don't have the required breadth of players to draw many excellent raid teams from!

I don't think that anyone should be forced to replace anyone for the 2% difference that's holding them back. Again, that might be practical for those of you in the top handful of guilds, but for the vast majority of the raiding playerbase it's simply not possible for a variety of reasons. The nerfs are primarily there to provide that small boost guilds just like mine need to get the kills. They work. 35% sure makes it a lot easier, but it's never been easy. Even collecting other strategies only gets one so far - not far enough in some cases.

The simple fact is that an attitude which talks about Heroic raiding being easy clearly hasn't the breadth of experience of the (perfectly valid) raiding playerbase that there is in order to form a sensible perspective on what is easy. You can say it's easy all you want, but that only shows that you're so used to difficult things that you're genuinely one of the best players in the world. I applaud you for that, but don't pretend that means you're qualified to make a judgement on what is genuinely easy or difficult, because that's intellectually dishonest.

Again, I sound aggressive. I certainly mean no offence or disrespect. What I do want is that we have a well-argued counter to the all-too-common "stuff is easy and anyone who doesn't think so should try harder" argument.

To give you an idea of my breadth of raiding levels in the past year; I started WoW in January last year, raided for the first time not long after. I thought I did well to see the endbosses on Normal in T11. (in fact, for my realm at the time I did extremely well!) I went on to complete Firelands Normal, one of the first ten or so guilds on the server. Perhaps the top five on the server even saw Baleroc Heroic. Dragon Soul was my first Heroic raiding, and even then I couldn't commit more than 2 nights a week to it. I started in LFR, moved to a casual guild and killed Normal Madness there. Then I moved over to my current guild. We were well within the first 20 guilds on the server to kill Madness Heroic.

So you know what? Based on that broad range of experience, yes. Heroic is hard even with the 35% nerf. Maybe it's not UBER difficult. That just brings it to a level of enjoyability for me. Maybe even I can't speak for the raiding population. I'm damn sure that I'm both an inferior player to those here who killed 8/8H pre-nerf, AND that I'm almost certainly more qualified to talk about a reasonable level of "easy" than said people. You might disagree, but then can we even be having a discussion here rather than an argument?

Whatever. You're entitled to your opinion, and I hold no grudges, but you do yourself a disservice when you pretend that your specific experiences are typical.

I think you perceive me as arrogant when I'm quite the opposite. I'm a supporter of lesser geared players and recruited those with little to no experience over heavily experienced players. I took players right out of trade chat who hadn't raided since Firelands came out and took them to 6/8H the first night with an average group ilvl of 383 at 15% nerf. Difficulty in anything is ALWAYS OBJECTIVE and I only offered my opinion without saying you were wrong or confused. I offered my side of things. What I fear is that your server is many tiers below mine. I know that I'm one one of the top US PvE servers, but I did not realize the frustration of those on lesser progressed servers and finding Dragon Soul difficult. By the time 20% nerf hit Mal'Ganis, we had over 150 guilds who had cleared 8/8H and now the numbers are astronomical. Mal'Ganis does have a rep for being able to PuG into better groups than most other servers' guilds, but you seem to portray that is as bad as rumors sound. I have legit taken my 390ish Rogue into a full PuG where no one player was in the same guild as another player and we cleared 8/8H at 30% nerf in just over 2 hours without any voice communication. I find it difficult to tab any raid as challenging when you can play it like LFR (without the trolls) and succeed with very little resistance.

Also, you don't replace people that make a 2% difference. 2% is almost always negligible due to error in estimation. That's why nearly any credible approximation accounts for a 0-3% error. The replacements I talked about very clearly in my response were bad attitudes, poor performance, and tardiness/absence. 2% constitutes none of the above.

[Bleisch 1]

My first post so hopefully im not completely off base....but as I do enjoy reading everyones opinions and thoughts on the upcoming expac, the comon theme is that everyone is worried about it being too easy. i can appreciate that but, and maybe its just me, why hasn't the evolution of addons seem to ever come up? My recent patch dl verified this for me when our guild ran Heroic DS before most of the adds, like DBM, recount, Omen, Healbot, hadn't been updated yet, or people had forgot to dl the new versions. Playing without addons felt very awkward as well as rejuvinating since I didn't have things flashing at me or telling me what was coming. Probably the last ten weeks had felt like we were on autopilot. But even with the nerfed raid we had wiped to some traditionally easy mechanics(embarrassingly ultrax "PUSH BUTTON NOW!") because of how easy the addons seem to make things. So I guess what Im trying to get at, is this just me or is what is really dumbing down the content the ability to install something that tells you exactly what to do and when?

(standard addons I use are DBM, Tidy threat plates, milkscrolling text, and recount)

[Vlad 411]

My first post so hopefully im not completely off base....but as I do enjoy reading everyones opinions and thoughts on the upcoming expac, the comon theme is that everyone is worried about it being too easy. i can appreciate that but, and maybe its just me, why hasn't the evolution of addons seem to ever come up? My recent patch dl verified this for me when our guild ran Heroic DS before most of the adds, like DBM, recount, Omen, Healbot, hadn't been updated yet, or people had forgot to dl the new versions. Playing without addons felt very awkward as well as rejuvinating since I didn't have things flashing at me or telling me what was coming. Probably the last ten weeks had felt like we were on autopilot. But even with the nerfed raid we had wiped to some traditionally easy mechanics(embarrassingly ultrax "PUSH BUTTON NOW!") because of how easy the addons seem to make things. So I guess what Im trying to get at, is this just me or is what is really dumbing down the content the ability to install something that tells you exactly what to do and when?

(standard addons I use are DBM, Tidy threat plates, milkscrolling text, and recount)

Welcome to the forums! I'm a bit too busy now to go into answering your nice post in more detail, but I will just point out one fact. At some point, Blizzard did admit to the fact that they are now designing raid content with addons in mind. Specifically, they were referring to raid boss design, taking into account that raiders use boss mods that make abilities manageable that would not have been so otherwise.

[Stoofvlees 2]

Well, 16 raid bosses that are really difficult on heroic could cause some problems. If they wait on releasing the next patch "because not a lot of good guilds have cleared it" we might have the same thing as in T11. The bosses were really difficult and on my server it took even the best guilds a whole lot of time to have it all cleared on heroic, while many were burned out on it because of the normal modes. I do think it would make sence to see the good guilds clear it all. Guess we'll have to see how difficult they end up being and when 5.1 comes out.

[Boradan 17]

I think a lot of people are missing (what I believe to be) the point of the nerfs.

The main reason for the nerfbat hitting DS so hard is the fact that it took TOO DAMNED LONG for Blizzard to release MoP.

MoP should have been out 4 or 5 months (at least) ago.

The nerfs then helped a LOT more people stay in the game who would have probably left simply because Heroics were impossible for them to do in their guild buy making HC content a viable target for them.

I have no problem with the nerfs coming in at the time they did and cleared most of HC with the nerfs included. I would have LOVED to have cleared HC pre-nerf, but I took a break from WoW mid-way through ICC and only got back to the game a week before DS came out. Due to our realms relatively low population, and few raiding guilds of any calibre, I struggled to get into a decent raiding guild until a raiding spot opened up in my old ICC guild (I had to change my main from my warlock to my mage to get the spot). Even with this, I was still in on the 11th realm guild to kill Madness HC. Man, our realm sux (Khadgar EU).

I am one of the old-skool vanilla raiders who spent hours farming blasted lands mobs (and shards) for raid nights. I have NO problem at all spending hour upon hour wiping on progression bosses as long as we ARE making progress, and not wiping to stupid mistakes constantly. I would be quite happy to go back to that scenario in my current guild: 5-6 raid nights of 4-5 hours per week. Saying that, I am also happy enough with our current setup of 4 nights per week of 3 hours per night.

I'm looking forward to MoP and getting in on the ground floor of new content for the first time in a loooong time.

I dont think MoP raids will be as easy as some people seem to think they will be. Those complaining about HC being so easy for them to do on alts need to take into consideration that the MAJOR issue in HCs (apart from the fights that are a dps check) is the tactics. If your entire team has had HC 8/8 on farm for ages, your alts are gonna be able to do it with a significantly lower ilvl simply because you guys know the tactics off by heart aswell as the fact that the nerfs are in.

One other thing.... Zon'Ozz.... TWO black phases ??? For the last few weeks, we have been doing 13 bounces (with a pain supp on the tank at 10 bounces), stack, Hero and nuke him. Dont even bother touching the addds......Did this tonight on a pug run too.

[Stasis 36]

I know that I'm one one of the top US PvE servers, but I did not realize the frustration of those on lesser progressed servers and finding Dragon Soul difficult. By the time 20% nerf hit Mal'Ganis, we had over 150 guilds who had cleared 8/8H and now the numbers are astronomical.

omg.

Our Realm has 24 Guilds that have currently cleared Madness Heroic, with almost half of those waiting 'til the 35% nerf to do it. And the realm first clear was during the 15% nerf... 4 Guilds managed it before 20%.

We'd be lucky to pug a normal DS from trade chat (if we spent 2 hours advertising it).

Didn't actually realize 'til now how backwater we are... gg Oceania.

[Stoove 347]

I think you perceive me as arrogant when I'm quite the opposite. I'm a supporter of lesser geared players and recruited those with little to no experience over heavily experienced players. I took players right out of trade chat who hadn't raided since Firelands came out and took them to 6/8H the first night with an average group ilvl of 383 at 15% nerf. Difficulty in anything is ALWAYS OBJECTIVE and I only offered my opinion without saying you were wrong or confused. I offered my side of things. What I fear is that your server is many tiers below mine. I know that I'm one one of the top US PvE servers, but I did not realize the frustration of those on lesser progressed servers and finding Dragon Soul difficult. By the time 20% nerf hit Mal'Ganis, we had over 150 guilds who had cleared 8/8H and now the numbers are astronomical.

I think you may be right here. On my server, we still don't have 25 guilds who've cleared 8/8H. My guild was 18th of 21 so far. The next highest kill is 6/8H. I guess we come from extreme opposite ends of the spectrum :)

I didn't mean to portray you as arrogant, but I'm glad that you can acknowledge that the difficulty is relative (Actually - question, did you mean objective or subjective? Objective means there is only one right answer). Certainly for us, we're struggling to get more than two or three guilds to be competitive on an EU scale, let alone on the World scale! (We have one top-500 10's guild, the next highest is well outside that).

So yeah, I think that a large part of this is perspective. You find it easy on your server, we find it very hard. That's just the nature of population centres though.

Guess my point about "2%" was a little off. :)

Anyway, there's significantly more to the discussion on difficulty than just a simple "it is easy" or "it is not easy". I actually wrote a small piece on it on my blog ("On the Nerfs to Current Content"), when the debates on the official forums flared up a bit. You may be interested in it, but I won't post the words here due to length =]

[Zagam 1,982]

Yeah, it always saddens me to hear players who sound like they could perform really well suffer through lackluster performances around them just due to that being the normal for their server. I have a love-hate relationship with Mal'Ganis. Yeah, it's nice to PuG good runs on alts...but is it worth the elitism? If you want to see what I'm talking about, and are able (not sure how European and American licenses work) make a character on Mal'Ganis horde and just sit in trade chat for about 5 minutes. I may be guilty of relaying some of that elitism, and for that I apologize.

Also, you are correct in correcting me to say subjective, not objective. I think higher skilled players force others to play to a higher level to remain competitive and desired in guilds. I can't tell you how many Warlocks whispered me asking for help with rotations, buffs, trinkets, etc. because they had seen my logs and were told by their GMs to seek me out or be replaced. While I find those GMs repulsive, it did give me a deeper incentive to see those dedicated players rewarded for seeking out help and assistance.

Stoove, one of the reasons I decided to play a major part in Icy-Veins is to not only help with questions about Warlocks and other things, but I want to be one of the upper-tier players who goes and throws bodies at difficult content and relays the tips and tricks one would learn after 100 attempts back to those who are just starting the content. I'm a firm believer my job of a contract analyst holds me back of my real calling in life of being a teacher. Nothing is more rewarding than helping others understand and succeed in things. I love being in trade chat on Mal'Ganis and people asking questions about classes or talents and people sending them to Icy-Veins. I actually re-rolled an Alliance Paladin on Kel'Thuzad and joined a guild to get the perks while leveling. While I was questing, I saw someone in guild chat talk about how they were killed by Zagam in Halaa and was hoping it was the same dude who wrote sweet Warlock guides on Icy-Veins. I confirmed his suspicion and I instantly gained cross-faction celebrity status. They immediately began pestering me about how they should approach MoP and one Paladin asked me to write a page about something that got taken away from Holy Paladins. I told him I don't do QQ pages lol...but you can bet your bottom dollar that those who actively seek out advice for future raids won't have to go far from here. I'll be all over the Warlock specific strategies, but as a raid leader, I'll also be helping with each role in our progression. How sweet would it be to give I-V the shout out for all the hard work they do!