Before you dismiss my question, hear me out. I am talking about an average raider during both time periods (2020 and 2008 respectively. This is not about vanilla 2006 naxx). Your average classic raider is much more knowledgeable about the game than the average wrath raider and know the fights through and through already. Meanwhile, your average wrath raider has never seen naxx before, and only heard fables of its legendary status from vanilla. The classic raid may be harder mechanically, but this is evened out by player skill.
So this poses a legitimate question…do you think classic naxx will be generally easier than wrath naxx? Looking back at my early wrath days, my guild didn’t think much about player skill, raid comp, or prior research. We struggled to beat patchwerk’s enrage timer and had issues with many other harder bosses as well. Nevertheless, we still full cleared 25 man within a couple weeks of launch (that includes leveling and gearing all our casual raiders).
13 years later in classic, I’m also in an “average” guild that only recently got aq40 to a single night clear (granted, our gates opened late). But “average” is so much better than it was 13 years ago.
I could very well see classic naxx being comparable to, if not EASIER than, wrath naxx. What do you think?
Smaller raid groups are easier to build and maintain. It will be easier to fill those smaller raid groups with more quality players too since you dont need as many
less prep work in wrath since a lot of changes since classic lessened the demand on consumables
So im just gonna take a gut shot here and say i think wrath will be easier because it will be less taxing on the group as a whole
It wont be easier for 2 reasons. One being that you still have to coordinate 40 people and not 25. I will also remind you that Naxx was crushed in blue gear in nearly a week or so after Wrath. While people will have been farming AQ for months at this point and be near the top of the power scales at that point.
The only reason i would give the edge to Classic naxx is mostly how different a game Wrath was that comparing them is kinda silly.
Naxx 40 is tuned around consumable use, survivability. Naxx 25/10 was an entry level raid for Wrath, it took us like 2hrs to clear for the first time in wrath. A few of the mechanics changed and the tunning of the raid was much more relaxed. Zero fear of tank deaths on any boss, mechanics got ignored because of this. I don’t even think heigans dance killed people unless DC or AFK. I was very disappointed going into wrath Naxx. While we already know the Naxx mechanics for classic, the tank dmg spikes and risk of death is always present. It will never be as hard as it was in vanilla but wrath Naxx was a joke in comparison.
Wrath Naxx, without question, will be far and away the easier of the two.
The mechanics were simply entirely forgiving and you could literally mindlessly AoE down most of the place without regard to any particular mechanics or debuffs. There was zero threatening trash in the Wrath version of the game and you could even pull multiple packs without being punished for it, even if done accidentally.
Malygos took far more skill than Naxx did, and even he wasn’t that difficult at all.
Classic Naxx will absolutely get demolished by any appreciable standard, but some guilds will struggle through it for a period of weeks before their first full clear. That kind of struggle just didn’t exist in Wrath unless you were just entirely unable to fill a raid. It took my guild a few weeks of struggle on Sarth3D, Naxx we cleared on Day 1 without any headache.
I was too, don’t get me wrong. But I have this lingering suspicision that classic naxx will leave us disappointed in the same way. Everyone will come to the raid with the meta figured out, strats on the back of their hand, consumed and world buffed to the teeth. Even average guilds will clear it in the first week without a huge amount of trouble.
Wrath Naxx was about as easy as Molten Core. I was in a terrible guild where no one knew how to play in WotLK and we managed to clear Naxx before 3.1. Bosses in wrath did no damage which allowed you to ignore most of the mechanics. No one kited Anub’Rekhan, no one interrupted Kel’Thuzad. Loatheb required zero coordination, Four Horsemen only had two horses that were actually tanked. Patchwerk was a complete joke, Razuvious’s MC’s couldn’t break.
Naxx 40 will most definitely be harder than Naxx 10/25. It’s not the super hard raid everyone always made it out to be, but it’s also not the complete joke we saw in Wrath.
In general, I found Wrath Naxx far easier. In Wrath Naxx it seemed like it was just easier to find groups that could successfully complete the Raid and at one point we were actually running it so fast that you could do a full Naxx run and still go out to farm up for next week and get dailies done.
Man, really wish we could down vote comments. You deserve at least a few thousand. What you’re saying isn’t true. Especially, if you played WOTLK on launch. You had to do mechanics or your raid would die.
Now what did happen is that later on item levels got really out of control and that trivialized a lot of the older raid tiers. Maybe you picked up the game later when everyone out geared content and you went back to do the previous raid tier. Item levels in WOTLK did get a bit out of control and you could easily go back and stomp content. But that wasn’t the case on it’s release. Mechanics were mandatory or you’d wipe.
WOTLK Naxx was not as easy as Molten Core difficulty. Molten Core Difficulty isn’t even as hard as LFR content in current retail. WOTLK Naxx is about on par with LFR difficult, and normal difficulty raids. It’s somewhere in-between.
That being said the only hard part about classic Naxx is going to be the 40 man raid size. That’s it. No other factor really matters. Poor guild leadership will harm many guilds, but is it hard for experienced players in good guilds? Not at all. It’ll be about as challenging as normal difficult raid tier in retail. Meaning it’s really close to the same difficulty wotlk naxx offered on launch.
Most raids guilds were not well geared. Many guilds actually had to pug random people to fill their raids because it was hard to find people who were decent enough for the content. IT was not uncommon for many guilds raiding naxx to pug 5-10 spots each raid.
Wrath Naxx is an entry level raid for WotLK. It’s literally a cake walk. You have improved and new talents from 2 expansions. Classic is by far harder, it’s not even an argument. However I don’t see Naxx this time being as bad.
That doesn’t change the fact that abilities do as much damage at 60 as they did at 80. Trash is z nightmare compared to wrath Naxx. The top guilds will still clear the place in a few hours.
But how long did it take the world fist guild in wrath? They had Naxx cleared in like 24 hours after the expac went live, so that time includes leveling to 80. How long did just the raid take them? Without that info there’s no solid basis of comparison
Wrath Naxx was by far the easiest raid ever released in WoW up to that point. It was easier than MC and ZG as they were in vanilla (with corresponding talents and itemization). It was Blizzard experimenting with releasing a raid that any group of drooling idiots could clear, so everyone could get geared up in full epics and feel like they had accomplished something. And then they sharply ramped up the difficulty for Ulduar by a lot, before offering BOTH levels of difficulty for Trial of the Crusader.
Classic Naxx will be far, far more difficult than Wrath Naxx, IMO, and it’s not even close.
Wow there buddy that’s really pushing it. I remember my first raid in classic doing MC and Onyxia and I was like wtf is this? Where the bosses?
Mind you I was use to raiding in TBC and WOTLK in particular Kara, BT, wrath Naxx and Ulduar. That was the benchmark I used to measure MC, Onyxia and BWL. Needless to say I was very disappointed with classic raiding. I eventually got use to it and AQ40 came out and I view that easier than Kara.
