You’re mostly right. I don’t want to say I disagree with you, because I’m not, but I think many people seriously underestimate the skill of the average player in the current state of the game (relative to classic). I think leveling is going to weed out more people than the difficulty of raiding itself.
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That’s a detailed and well reasoned argument you presented there.
Every raid encounter gets harder when someone dies. This is especially the case during progression raiding where the content isn’t overgeared and a death or two might make it difficult to make enrage timers or dps checks. That was true in all Vanilla raids and continues to be true today.
However, that’s not the same thing as having encounter mechanics that require everyone to play flawlessly or the mechanic itself causes a wipe. As mentioned, the first encounter I recall that ever had such a mechanic was Archimonde in Battle for Mount Hyjal in BC.
But I see that you disagree.
Perhaps you would like to name the Vanilla raid boss encounter that had such mechanics where a mistake by anyone (not just the tank or other player in a critical role) would almost certainly kill multiple people and cause a wipe… even when the raid has previously downed the encounter before and outgears it.
I don’t remember if it was 100% lethal, but someone standing in the wrong group on Thaddius would kill multiple people, if not everyone standing on that side.
Good memory there.
Phase 2 Thaddius had a polarity matching mechanic. If you had the wrong polarity and stood with the wrong group you could potentially wipe the raid. Took some wipes before everyone had the hang of it and everyone had to pay attention (or at least listen on Teamspeak).
That said, Thaddius’ mechanic wasn’t nearly as hard to learn as Archimonde’s flame phase in Battle for Mount Hyjal or the mechanics in many Retail mythic raid boss encounters.
Definitely not arguing that it’s as challenging as a mythic encounter, because it isn’t close. If I was able to do it at 13, then I’m pretty sure the average player can do it once it’s re released and we have current addons.
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I think most people undermine the difficulty of logistically managing a 40-man group. On a lot of boss fights and even trash pulls if 1 person messes up it can be a wipe for an overwhelmed group. Mechanically, yes the newer content is more difficult, but that in no way means every guild will just face-roll through the raids. Many guild will require weeks to pass the suppression room before Broodlord and Firemaw. Many PuGs won’t make it past Garr in MC and Razorgore in BWL. Those encounters are of minimal difficulty considering the content in AQ-40 and Nax.
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The epitome of skill and the sheer difficulty of Vanilla raiding embodied in this video:
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This game play is INSANE!
Using Serpent Sting and arcane shot as rotational abilities. Bringing an arms warrior to the raid. Not using an auto shot timer (video definitely before addon’s release time).
I’m so glad we have this insightful guide on what to expect when we enter into this unconquerable world…
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We will never truly be able to compare the early Vanilla raids to Retail as Classic is not Vanilla in a lot of ways. The later raids will maybe be a grounds for comparison but if they continue to go Vanilla lite as opposed to original we may never know.
I disagree. The raid content is the 1 thing that they must get correct in a very precise way. In seeing what the team has done so far, I’m confident they will get this right. In the end, any QoL changes that they bring into classic will have minimal impact in comparison to raid content. Raids are one of the only things pServers can’t 100% accurately reproduce and Blizz knows they have to get it right. A lot of people seem to think the content will be ez this time around and some of it will be easier. Most of the raid content however is gruesome in requirements and dedication compared to modern retail content. It is going to surprise many and will surely humble a few others.
This. Vanilla raiding difficulty isn’t about mechanics. At least not primarily. Mechanics just set the stage. Challenge stems primarily from the other players in your raid. Herding the cats, reacting to each other, and logistics are more prevalent than other versions of the game. And it keeps things interesting, imo.
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The first raid encounter I ever experienced where a mistake by anyone in the raid caused multiple fatalities and the entire raid to wipe was in Vanilla. We stepped into Molten Core with people in preraid gear, someone went a yard or two too far and pulled a core hound when we weren’t ready, and it wiped the raid.
It actually took us a week or two before we got everyone’s act together enough to kill our first core hound. I did spend the intervening time productively getting Finkle’s skinner so we could skin the hounds for gear that we would need before we could finish the raid - no finishing raids without gear from the early bosses/trash back then.
Also, a healer killing themselves typically resulted in a raid wipe.
The issue someone mentioned about aggro was also key. If any DPS pulled aggro on the progression boss, that was almost always a wipe. Usually it was a wipe even if you already had the boss on farm.
That strat also resulted in a wipe. Actually downing Onyxia was much more difficult.
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Normal raids are very close to LFR.
Another thing that is worth noting in Vanilla is the sheer amount of time it takes to get gear. Most seem to just assume everyone will be full BiS in a matter of days… This just simply won’t be the case. It will take many months to get everything they need that would make any of the content trivial. There are just a lot of aspects left out of the debate regarding the difficulty of these raids. It is in no way, shape, or form “easy” to clear all the content in Vanilla.
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Yeah that is a meme video.
She is a very simple fight even for Vanilla. You can totally screw it up and get tail whipped into a whelp cave, feared, wipe to deep breath hitting and killing too many people etc.
The mechanics are more creative than Classic gets credit for.
How about Blood Lord Mandokir?
He tells a player, [Name] I’m watching you! And they have to stop, or he kills them.
He levels up every time he kills a player and even says “Ding!”.
So the more of your raid he kills, the stronger he gets until he is way too powerful to tank or damage. Really simple, but I think that was kinda genius and its fun.
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That’s the hard part. It’s tough getting 40 people to show up for anything.
The only real “difficulty” in Classic raiding will be keeping 40 players plus a bench corralled and showing up.
The attendance boss is the most difficult one.
Are they mechanically harder than retail now? No. However, I think Vanilla was much less forgiving than a lot of difficulties in Retail, though. Even fights that weren’t mechanically “difficult” in Vanilla (Naxx - Anub’rekhan) could be very unforgiving with little margin for error. was it rocket science? no, but it could still be quite challenging between placement, add spawns, impale, and locust swarm.
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Ah yes… wiping on trash in Molten Core. I remember that. Usually due to someone standing in the wrong place and pulling adds, someone getting feared and pulling adds, or poor planning by the tank resulting in adds pulling.
My first Molten Core raid, I think we only got as far as some of the trash before we had to call it. Players just needed more gear and a bit more experience.
However, by the second raid it was no longer a problem. Sure we wiped several times due to trash, but the trash alone wasn’t seriously holding up progression and we were able to get to the bosses without problem.
but what were we talking about? We were talking about difficult fights with fight mechanics where one mistake by any player causes a wipe.
I mentioned that the first boss encounter I ever fought with such mechanics was Archimonde in Battle for Mount Hyjal raid in BC. The fire mechanic in that fight was insanely difficult, because any single player stepping the wrong direction caused a wipe and it was a long fight with many fire phases.
My raid group at the time spent 2 months wiping on the fight before we finally got a kill then another 3 months afterwards trying to repeat it without success before the next raid tier came out (Black Temple) and we gave up.
In total we probably spent 5 hours per week for 5 months working on just that one fight and only ever got one kill. That’s over 100 hours of raiding time spent on just one fight!
In Retail WoW, downing the tougher mythic raid bosses requires a finely tuned raid group consisting of highly experienced raiders who are used to working as a team and have excellent gear. Even then, it may take weeks or even months and hundreds of wipes on the same boss to actually master the encounter and get a kill.
Comparing a difficult retail raid boss to early Molten Core trash? … it’s really not a fair comparison at all. The mythic raid boss is many orders of magnitude more difficult.
I was certainly not claiming that a single core hound was comparable to Jaina. I was just pointing out that mistakes by a single player could easily wipe the raid in Vanilla.
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