I wish we were getting a TBC Hardcore, but I don’t think Blizzard will give us that.
If we ever see another server for Hardcore, I think the best bet that if Blizzard does give us an official (and permanent) classic+ servers, they make one hardcore.
Getting to experience some new content without resorting through going through the dark portal.
Maybe a hardcore version of Karazhan Crypts from SoD.
Over time we could have various other additions to the server while keeping to the spirit of Classic Hardcore.
Fresh bc would be awesome, as long as the server doesn’t progress. I was having a ton of fun with wotlk, then cata hit, and I never logged back to those characters. What a waste of time I spent on them.
I don’t recall any specific TBC mechanics that need to redesigned when vanilla is littered with far more “Screw this up and die” ones.
But watching people try to do pre nerf Vashj would be hilarious. Talk about a cluster of a fight for most guilds, even in Classic.
Edit: there is actually the Doom guy in MH, but that’s the only one I can think of. I suppose something like that would have to be revamped into something more like a massive DoT or something.
From a leveling perspective I can’t really recall any that were problematic, the main challenge would be raids which were far more complicated and deadly, especially pre-nerf, that said Kara should be doable.
I guess I don’t remember if pre-nerf mag channel damage was obnoxiously overtuned or not, but it wasn’t a one hit mechanic. The only one I can think of is a boss in Mount Hyjal that literally put Doom on you which killed you in order to summon an Infernal, and that was the intentional mechanic.
Yeah, it’s really not. There’s a little bit of scary things here and there, but if you can get through Classic getting through TBC is pretty easy as well. Casters especially get good gear thrown at them to where they can be decent without needing raid gear, and you have to look out for just a few mean quests.
Yeah, T4 would be an obvious faceroll. Gruul may be the only one who kills people via bad placement with shatters. Pre-nerf Lady Vashj would ruin most guilds though. I progressed through her with two guilds, and both of them got to P3 very quickly, but then got stonewalled because pre-nerf P3 is just genuinely unfair. I had to tell my second guild that got excited to seeing P3 in one night of attempts that we weren’t even close to a kill yet, and I was right. It was like another solid week or two of progression to get her right before the nerf came through.
After that T6 falls over for the most part; Illidan and Archimonde were small walls for most guilds. SWP has a few really mean fights, namely Twins and Mu’ru. KJ is a really well designed fight, but I can’t imagine most guilds being able to get to him, let alone beat him. He’s one of the few bosses in TBC that has a learning curve you have to master over many attempts.
Ehhhh I don’t remember, but I kind of doubt this. SWP was a mixed raid IMO, but it didn’t get really annoying until Twins and Mu’ru was a noticeable block as well. I went back through my old logs and it looks like we took 2 days to get through Felmyst and then another week to get Twins dead. Mu’ru took us like two weeks or so and then KJ took us another 2 or so as well.
Not a high end guild by any stretch; just a two day a week guild. If you were getting through T6 content getting through the first three bosses may have given you a fight, but they were just kind of mediocre/annoying bosses more than anything.
Twins really weren’ that hard, Brutallis was a DPS and Healing check, which most guilds simply didn’t meet, the mechanics of it weren’t that difficult. The two really hard fights were Muru and KJ.
I’d leave em in so people could attempt if desired. Pretty much all the nerfs that went through made that content faceroll for the typical Classic player; We got the pre-nerf on Lady Vashj on the last week with a ~10 minute kill time and then our next kill was ~7 minute which is dramatic for a week’s worth of progression and only that small because her intermission phase locks her HP up. When you look at post-nerf SWP timers kill times dropped so dramatically it’s kind of ridiculous. Every boss for us went from 5+ minutes down to typically less than 2.
I’m also not betting that some people couldn’t clear it and would want the chance to attempt, but I am confident it’d be no-go territory for a lot of guilds.
Maybe it was more than I remember for the more casual guilds, but I’m not really sure anymore. SWP was by no stretch a fall over raid, but if you were clearing out T6 content and had the time to get geared for it the first half wasn’t particularly crazy. I want to say most wipes occurred because of tank deaths more than anything so maybe more healing than DPS.
Prenerf content is only for bragging rights. And, outside of who did it, no one cares. And, there’s no proof you did it. Just give us post nerf, so it’s available to as big of an audience as possible. HC is already niche as it is.
Yea I’d like to play a version of hardcore where something other than Warrior has some spec diversity. Even just classic with TBC talents would be fun.
Sure, the problem is post-nerf the difficulty goes way down to the point of not really being a challenge at all. Classic HC raiding is entertaining because it does have difficulty via an unforgiving component, whereas later raiding focuses more on complexity and management rather than solely about one or two mechanics that just one shot you if you fail.
My point is that I doubt it’d be seen as that fun of content for people. HC as a leveling challenge in Retail wouldn’t be popular because that’s not really difficult. Raiding completely nerfed to the ground raid content on HC also wouldn’t be that crazy difficult and at that point you might as well just be doing normal TBC.
I’m not asking for anyone to care, but people do like being able to do challenges and my point would be to let the pre-nerf ride to see who can do it. Nerf it when it becomes clear that people are no longer engaging in the content.
There is, I have the logs. That’s why I’m looking back and giving you some specifics, but what I did or didn’t do isn’t relevant to the discussion. You can go and look at anyone who cleared pre-nerf content and see how their kill times through the phases got drastically lowered, or you could research TBC Classic patch cadence and see what they did to each chunk of content.
And now that I looked a little closer it appears the final patch, the pre-patch to WoTLK, nerfed T6 to the ground. I thought T6 content didn’t get hit much, but I have sub 1 minute kills on a lot of bosses with the pre-patch. I don’t have any T5 bosses to review, so I’m not sure if they nerfed it even more or not.
If anything I’d opt for manual rebalancing to strike a balance between difficult while fair versus picking between overtuned or a joke.
I think we had five guilds clear pre-nerf SWP on BSB, could be wrong, but a lot of people I know their guilds didn’t even bother after a few wipes, and most were competent guides that had managed all the other content. Funny thing is post nerf they just went in in and essentially one shot the entire raid.
I am not really against making content a bit easier so more casual raids can complete it, and in that. I don’t think SWP was tuned for many casual raiders even in Classic, but the nerfs just went to far in TBC, perhaps if they toned them down a bit, obviously HC is a different thing and even the nerfed content would be scary, especially if there was no petri, but I suspect that will remain in.
I think what I’m trying to say is that releasing all content pre-nerf TBC would be really hard for the bulk of the playerbase, but I don’t think it’s necessarily wrong to put it out that way and see how well the playerbase does and adjust accordingly.
And then what I am saying beyond that is if you just release TBC in its final patch that the entire raiding scene becomes a joke and will not be very fun for people trying to knock out content on HC.
Full-clears I can see. Mu’ru and KJ were both very challenging fights. You also had to contend with the fact that T6 content still had good loot, and with a lot of guilds being more casual with their raid times you had to balance progression and farm because MH/BT didn’t become obsolete with SWP.
Yeah, it was a complete gutting of all the content. Which was fine since it pre-patch and the expansion was over; some extra free gear for alts, etc. But as far as difficulty…I mean maybe a T5 geared raid would struggle with SWP a little bit.
Yeah, I’ll give you that all the raid content prior to SWP was pretty relaxed; KT and Vashj were the only two exception in T5. I would just expect the casual guilds that could get T6 to get walled at Mu’ru and not Brutallus.
Fully nerfed TBC is basically a T4 simulator if you ask me. There’d be deaths for sure, but it’d be a lot less scary than Vanilla raids. Vanilla raids aren’t fun IMO, but for HC they’re definitely scarier because of how they can delete you or the raid in a matter of seconds if you mess something up.
