RL friend of mine, mythic raider, guild was selling Sylvanas mounts all last patch, took 28 people to normal Anduin and it took them 2 hours to get a kill. Last night they did Heroic with the same group, 1 shot every boss up to Anduin, then spent 3 hours on him. The best they did was survive around 10 seconds into his FIRST intermission. Meanwhile our casual guild couldn’t survive more than around 15 seconds in his first intermission on normal, and we just called it early after enough wipes to finally have a clean transition into his first intermission. The ramp up in difficulty is absurd.
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We did Anduin last night on normal. It took us about 13 pulls…
He’s a very large difficulty spike over the bosses prior which are much easier versions than their heroic counterparts. Heroic will probably be nutters in comparison once we make it there.
It’s just one of those fights where gear will just make you be able to push through all the mechanics that are otherwise dangerous.
Thank you for introducing some legitimacy to the forums today…ffs.
People are entirely way too entitled for games these days. I’m not even a boomer and that’s my mentality.
GUYS.
Just because you can’t beat a current content raid boss with a bunch of randoms on the first lockout does not mean the boss is overtuned.…
Smgdh…
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there’ll be LFR if he’s too hard.
We started progression on him on heroic (53.4% best pull), but after an hour and a half of wipes and experimentation we switched to normal. We one-shot normal.
It’s not overwhelming; it requires a lot of coordination. Even in 9.1 PUGs were wiping to mythic Mekkatorque in BoD transmog clears.
The reality is that it was tuned with the expectation that some/most of the group would have 2-set, and likely double legendaries. This is from the perspective of pugging it, rather than an organized VC guild raid.
I’ve been contemplating this post, and the responses, for a number of days, because this issue is really symptomatic of a greater problem Blizzard has with raid design - an issue that always gets brushed aside by AOTC and CE raiders.
So let’s start with a little history course. Back in Wrath, Blizzard introduced into the game 10 man and 25 man raiding. The goal of 10 man raiding, originally, was to provide a fun experience for casual guilds, while providing challenge for progression guilds. This then branched into 4 levels of difficulty, 10-man normal, 10-man heroic, 25-man normal and 25-man heroic. The goal here was to offer a variety of difficulty and raid compositions to suit a wide variety of interests. And this model was wildly successful, given not just the fact that Wrath is the singularly most popular expansion Blizzard released but also had the largest engagement of raiding at all levels of difficulty, with a massive friends and family guild community dipping into 10-man raids.
The stupidity of having different itemizations for each n-man aside, towards the end of Wrath Blizzard decided to combine raid ids and up the difficulty floor of 10-man content. At that time, I foretold that this would destroy the casual raiding community. 10-man normal was perfect for the average player to experience raiding, and there was no reason to go “hardcore” on that, but Blizzard was irked that hardcore players were getting “bis” trinkets in 10-man content too easily. So instead of just having each raid tier have the same exact item at a higher ilvl, they decided to gut community raiding.
Cut to Cataclysm, the massive drop off of players - and the collapse of the community raid scene. I should know - I made my guild in 2010 specifically to counter-program against Blizzard’s anti-casual bias, and watched as guild whose names were prominent since Vanilla evaporated, while Blizzard crowed about how they were making raiders “work” for their gear.
However, Blizzard seemed to understand they made a mistake, and with Dragon Soul, introduced LFR, a means by which players could see the raids if they could not field a 10-man team, or for players who could not commit to dedicated raid nights. By that time, we had stabilized a 10-man team, but we used LFR to pick up tricks, or get some gear. We actually killed Deathwing before the next expansion (though AOTC Deathwing was not a thing).
So lets fast forward to the end of Mists, when Blizzard released flex raiding. This is important, because NORMAL flex raiding had always been intended for friends and family raiding, with heroic flex being the “hardcore” version. That was the plan. Those were the lanes. If you were casual, you wanted to raid normal flex. If you were hardcore, you wanted heroic flex. If you were “leet” you wanted mythic raiding. If you can’t commit to a raid schedule, don’t belong in a guild or just want to do your thing on your time in your way, there is LFR. That was the intent since Mists.
Blizzard seems to have forgotten this, and the player base is so far shifted on the “WoW Overton Window” its almost impossible to have a rational discussion on the topic. But because Blizzard is off the chain again, being directed by someone who only knows hardcore raiding and is a spreadsheet theory crafter from a guild literally called “Elitist Jerks” it is not hard to understand why casual raiders keep losing ground.
So let’s go back to why we need distinct difficulties of raiding, and why CE and AOTC raiders need to stay in their lane when it comes to difficulties that would be trivial for them. As a business, Blizzard is going to want to publish “services” that reach the broadest number pf people. CE raiding is maybe 10% of the total player base. AOTC raiders maybe 20%. The rest are casual players. And by casual, I mean players who can spend anywhere from 7-20+ hours a week, but spread across a wide array of interests. Players who are of a wider delta of skills and gearing. Players not interested in the “meta” but want to experience the game with their friends. So just like Dell puts out several versions of their hardware, so to does Blizzard need to put out legitimate difficulties aimed to their target audience.
Instead, what Blizzard does is “trickle down” development - making sure mythic is up to the challenge for their “specials” then tuned for flex for their favorites. Then Blizzard just wings it by turning down some nobs and flings it over the wall for the rest. This is because normal raids stopped being “the raid for casual players and their friends” and turned into “the raid hardcore players have to plow through to gear up for the content they really like.” The end result is you have people overskilled for a normal raid ignoring mechanics that normal raiders can’t or otherwise overgearing normal difficulty - thus making it look like normal raids are tuned “ok” when they are generally badly tuned for the target audience and critiqued by people who have no idea what a “casual" player actually is.
And now we’re back to Cataclysm, with casual players feeling shut out from the content that is meant for them. And Blizzard just doesn’t care. Which is absurd in a day and age where Blizzard doesn’t have the luxury of just telling casual players to “deal,” because these same players can find satisfaction in an MMO that actually designs a raid difficulty for a causal player while also having challenging difficulties for the hardcores.
To let’s reiterate what we should be seeing for each level of difficulty:
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LFR - this should be for players who cannot commit to a regular raid night, or otherwise has to grab a raid in bits and pieces.
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Normal raids - this should be designed around casual players, assuming up to 20 hours of gameplay a week. There should be no insta-kill mechanics on first bosses (beyond the obvious willful ignoring of mechanics) and the bosses should bot be tuned out of the gate for set pieces and double legendaries or any other pithy meta Blizzard and the hardcores are dithering over at the time). You should be able to do, say, the first bosses up to the first tier boss simply by either having catch up gear, or last raid’s gear. 235 should be sufficient to get you through the first four bosses in SoTFO. There should be a few fewer adds on the first boss, and no way for that third insta kill mechanic to overlap the boss (the boss release should cancel the third insta-kill). For scaling, Blizzard should always round down for normal or raise the threshold for when more is added to the flex. There are no bragging rights with normal raids, so there is no reason for there to be punishing mechanics. Again, it shouldn’t matter if the raid is “too easy” for a hardcore raider - normal raids aren’t meant for you. They’re meant for regular folks to enjoy raiding with their friends and family. Let them have fun.
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Heroic raids - this is where we should see the one-shot mechanics, and the meta gearing start to flourish. After all, this is the difficulty in which you get shiny rewards. I won’t go much further because this is not my lane - just that as someone who runs a guild that focuses on normal raids with heroic as a “stretch goal,” I may dislike heroic mechanics, but unless a heroic raider is saying the mechanic is bad, I just take it for what it is.
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Mythic raids - again, not my monkey, not my circus, but I do think that Blizzard should move Mythic raiding out of the retail game and onto dedicated servers. Why? Because most mythic raiders I have seen hate playing the game and just want to raid, so this gets them out of having to do content they don’t like, and then allows Blizzard to actually invest in gameplay that isn’t just raids. This also allows Blizzard to go ham on all sorts of boss mechanics or add raid affixes or do any number of crazy things that can only be done in isolation. Blizzard can even play with alternate power systems, and iterate from season to season because they are in a sandbox of pure mythic raiders who are all in on the meta. And if the end result is that the narrative team is given room to actually tell a story for the rest of us, well, that’s just icing on the cake.
The tl;dnr is that normal raids have always been intended for casual, friends and family raiding, regardless as to what hardcore raiders seem to think; and that Blizzard has forgotten this. Blizzard needs to re-invest in “raiding for the rest of us" before the “rest of us” ends up leaving for an MMORPG that does design raids for us.
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While much of your post has accurate information, even if I disagree with the slant, this is not correct. The 4 raid difficulties are designed for progression from one tier to the next without needing to switch lanes. The progression path isn’t N to H to M, even if some people choose to do that to speed their progress. It’s N CN to N SoD to N Sep, or H CN to H SoD to H Sep, and M CN to M SoD to M Sep.
And this is why the distinction I’m mentioning above is significant. The progression pace of a Normal group should be similar to the progression pace of a Heroic group or Mythic group in their chosen difficulties. Sure, Mythic guilds will burn through Heroic, or Normal if they bother, and Heroic groups will burn through Normal if they choose to, but inside their respective difficulties, the pace should be generally equivalent (excluding outliers like a World First Race).
So the tuning of Normal should include whatever numbers, mechanics, and gear requirements necessary to give Normal raiders the chance to move through the raid at a progression pace. This means some wipes. Wiping is part of raiding. Wipes mean some degree of punishing mechanics relative to the skill of the raider. I’m sure there are mechanics a normal raider would call punishing that I wouldn’t, and I’m equally sure there are things I would call punishing that a RWF raider wouldn’t.
bingo. normal was always intended to be a progression raiding experience (in the real sense of “progression”, not the GD meaning of getting big loot quickly) for casual players, f&f groups, etc. it was never intended to be cleared in a night by its target audience. the fact that a CE guild can stomp it in a few hours doesn’t say anything about its tuning, because they’re not the people it’s tuned for.
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Slight modification. While there’s some progression to be present for groups within their respective difficulty, they’re not actually meant to be similar across all difficulties. Normal is an introductory raid experience which generally awards terrible loot, making it more about the “introductory” side of things.
Mythic is meant to be for those wanting the ultimate challenge. So while, say, it’s fine if Mythic Jailer is a 200±pull boss, Normal Jailer isn’t really meant to represent that sort of challenge to a Normal player. it’s good and ideal for Normal Jailer to be significantly harder than early bosses, but there’s still a limit to where it’s probably acceptable as an introductory raid difficulty for people to step into and become familiar with raiding, maybe a few nights or in the ~80-100 pull range. Normal probably should have the least progression-y aspect of all of them.
Numbers not exact, just sort of there to illustrate the idea. And of course, I’m not implying that Anduin is too hard.
Normal doesn’t award big loot quickly anyway, and often awards obsolete loot, but being for casual, new, F&F type players is literally its intent, even from back when Mythic was first originally split out in SoO (from Flex, Normal and Heroic). Those ARE its target audience. Anyone actually familiar with or wanting some semblance of non-hardcore but still competent raiding are meant to be at Heroic level. Those seeking challenge, obvs Mythic.
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I mean, if you’re upset about Anduin just wait until you get to the dreadlords. Or Jailer for that matter.
If there’s anything I’m likely to agree with, it’s that the healing requirement might be too high for a lot of “normal” level groups. That being said it will inevitably get nerfed (via gear acquisition or actual encounter adjustments) over time. That’s how raiding works. Even just re-clearing the raid and getting new drops is a huge power increase from week to week, no matter what difficulty you consider progression.
I definitely wholeheartedly agree that complaining about normal Anduin on the 2nd week is wildly premature - especially if you were able to kill the previous 7 bosses.
When I said “similar” I didn’t intend for that to be construed as having 200 pull fights included, so this is a great clarification. While I believe progression should be present in Normal, it definitely shouldn’t be as demanding as Mythic, or even heroic.
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Read through this my personal take is that Anduin needs additional tuning for smaller groups. We ran in normal with 12 last night. Our comp was admittedly far from ideal since we only had 2 ranged and 3 heals, but it just highlighted how unforgiving the healing requirements are for smaller groups. I looked over logs and we didn’t take a bunch of unnecessary damage so for all intents and purposes, we passed the mechanic checks with a few exceptions of people running stars through the group, but that was corrected.
Personal requests would be:
- Reduce the damage from and amount of healing needed to break the befouled barrier.
- Reduce the amount of aoe damage from hopebreaker.
- Slightly reduce the hp of the tank add in the down phase.
- Reduce the damage rain of despair in the down phase. They are pretty easily avoidable but their scaling seemed off when someone got clipped. Either that or slow down their speed.
Otherwise, I think the fight is fine. I just think it’s still overturned for smaller groups (10-15 size), especially in regards to the healing requirement.
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My guild usually clears AOTC by around week 9 or 10 of the past two patches…
Thus far with our comp (2/3/6 or 2/3/8) we’ve been unable to make the healing required checks. We also verified from our logs that we’re taking minimal unnecessary damage. I don’t believe that a normal boss should require complete perfection in order to be killed…
It’s kindof ridiculous that the 8th boss of the raid is tuned around people having 2pc/4pc or double leggos when you literally can only get 2-3 pieces of tier for your 13 man raid per week if you can’t kill Anduin until raid finder wings come out. Fight needs NERFS for normal…
Read through this my personal take is that Anduin needs additional tuning for smaller groups.
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Having killed normal Anduin twice, I think he’s fine.
Pugging dreadlords on normal would be hilariously fun to watch.
The difficulty curve is all over the map for this raid. First week some of the bosses were a massive let down, specifically lihivum. He’s an entirely different fight after all the tuning they did to avoid him being a pushover. Rygelon and and Dread lords are also significantly easier than Anduin, though I feel pugging Dreadlords will be worse than Anduin.
And then there’s halondrus, arguably my least favorite boss of all time, should be fun for players once they finally get into heroic.
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Pretty much.
SFO is pretty much something akin to EN and ToV or BoD and CoS. But instead of two different raids, it is just the one raid.
That is usually the case though. For example Blizzard stated that the Restless Cabal in CoS was around Mekkatorque in difficulty while Uu’nat was above Jaina. Even though they were the 10th and 11th bosses in the 8.1 tier. And we have to consider that blizzard intentionally designed Anduin to be an end of raid boss. Acting like Jaina while Zovaal is Uu’nat in this comparison. With Rygelon and the Dreadlord duo being slightly easier than Anduin.
Blizzard tends to have the first or first two bosses after a brick wall to be easier. Even on mythic.
This is where I at least from the standpoint of a former mythic raider would argue.
There are a lot of one mistake and the raid is dead mechanics in SFO, on all difficulties. When I think normal, I think a mistake should punish a player and not exactly kill them. If there are three to four players that don’t fully get the mechanics, the boss should still be killable.
If the portal is placed wrong on Xymox it’s a raid wipe.
If the stack point is done wrong, Skollex will start one shotting people in the raid when there’s no one in melee range and not burrow.
If someone messes up a blasphemy, they kill generally speaking 4 people (because the other two don’t have a matching color).
Have someone mess up quasars and it’s a raid wipe.
If the spark is improperly killed or delayed you instant wipe on massive bang.
I don’t even know how you would even do amongus without voice coms.
There are things that 4 years ago we would have collectively called to difficult game design unless it was near the last few bosses of Heroic and then exclusively otherwise mythic mechanics.
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I think it’s perfectly fine for Normal to have mechanics where people insta-die or wipe the raid, providing other factors are accounted for. If people have appropriate reaction time, they aren’t being overloaded by other mechanics, etc., it’s absolutely fine if they’re being asked to drop everything they’re doing and get to a point, or whatever, and the penalty is death. It’s perfectly appropriate to have a relatively easy mechanic trade off being unforgiving.
Also, sometimes the way several people screwing up can still allow the raid to kill the boss is by praying they don’t get a mechanic. That’s not exactly a new phenomenon. Depending on group size, having 3-4 players not getting mechanics is a large portion of the raid, and maybe might be an indication the group needs to re-think its approach and get up them to scratch. If the cost of those people focusing and nailing the important mechanic is them stopping focusing on maximising damage and doing 500 less dps or whatever, that’s what it takes. If THAT is impossible in Normal, maybe THEN Normal is overtuned, but there’s lots of ifs to get there.
ANd given Anduin’s status, he’s allowed to be more unforgiving than most bosses.
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We run a 10 man comp, and no we don’t have the best top players in the world, but we went 7/11N first week with a couple wipes on Halondrus and then brick walled on Anduin, couldn’t even survive first intermission. Week 2, 1 shot every every boss on normal up to Anduin, and then brick walled again. Looked at Warcraft logs and at the time only 2 10 man groups in the top 2k had killed him on normal. Taking ALL 13 man and under groups there were only 10ish groups in the top 2k. And most of these are 2 healing, when the healing requirement is bonkers. We can’t survive it with three healers.
One of our guys checked the math to see damage intake vs healing output that “WE” are able to do, and found that it was mathematically impossible for us to progress at all on this fight as it is currently, without magically finding and recruiting around 5 more people. No one wants to join small raid groups with basically no progress.
It was the same with us on Sylvanas Heroic. 1 shot every single boss like it was a joke with 10 people, brick walled on Sylvanas until we invited 2-3 more people, because of the way her hp scaled. Even if the three people we invited were garbage dps, it let us beat her enrage vs being mathematically impossible with our dps and no deaths with only 10 people.
TL;DR There is absolutely zero reason a small raid can kill every boss without issue up to Anduin and then get brick walled when he isn’t even the final boss of the raid and the two bosses after him are apparently way easier than him.
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How many weeks technically should one spend on normal Anduin anyways? I dunno it feels too intense damage wise. No snark.
Sorry for necro or rule breaking if I did.