Back in Vanilla when I was raiding Naxx on the top guild on my server everyone used max consumables and the raid leads were very careful to stack buffs.
And yet we didn’t breeze through Naxx. We got stuck on 4-horsemen and failed to clear the raid.
And the overall caliber of player in that guild was excellent. Half the players ended up transferring off server to join a Top100 U.S. guild where they continued raiding for many years starting late vanilla.
Sure after tank swaps were made cake easy in 1.11… yeah I would give you that.
Pre 1.11 tank swaps took a bit more finesse because taunt did not auto-top your threat.
Additionally pre 1.11 threat generation was different in that it was slower, as a result getting to the point where the tank had enough to allow the DPS to run rampant took a bit longer. In turn the fight was longer and the mana management was a bit more complicated.
Post 1.11 you just rolled you face across the keyboard because you were never going to pull aggro again so long as you’re not a lab rat reject…
Maybe she tended to join guilds after they had most of the raid on farm? There was a world of difference between farm bosses on the one hand, when the tank was plenty geared and the pressure was not on for the DPS, and server first progression bosses on the other hand, where the tank is struggling to hold aggro and the DPS are riding the line between pulling aggro and wiping the raid, or doing 1% too little damage and having the raid wipe with the boss at 1%.
Edit: changes in aggro mechanics might have been big too, as someone mentioned.
Sure - if you couldn’t do enough DPS to rip aggro from the tank.
The flip side was also true, though: if a raid lost a good player, they’d find the player extremely hard to replace with anyone else comparable. So the good players could get away with a lot. Then there was the whole SO/mother/child of the raid leader bit.
I think it will depend on the guild. But, while I have a vague idea of how many weeks these things took, I don’t really have a good memory of how many pulls we did per session. I think there were fewer because consumables were expensive and you couldn’t buy gold for repairs without risking your account, which is also why I think number of hours/days is a better measure.
My recollection is that Ragnaros required significantly more gear than the Majordomo, so server first guilds might be farming for a reset or three in between. Presumably they would do at least a few pulls just so people got used to avoiding fireballs without easymode hit location identifications, etc. But I also seem to recall that some guilds got stuck on Majordomo because of more difficult mechanics, so those guilds might down Ragnaros directly afterwards.
Obviously they won’t be doing a world first number of pulls to learn the mechanics and experiment with strategies, because the world first will already have happened 15 years earlier.
major domo teleports the tank to the mid randomly and also random people; the middle part does damage so u need to move out of it. there are 4 elites and 6 healers. you cant sheep the elites, you sheep the healers. I think once u kill one of the elites you cant resheep the healers. So it’s one of the first encounters where multiple people have different jobs to do, someone makes a mistake and it’s a wipe.
was gonna add that, that is more than 1-2 mechanics. Also you needed to have a mage iceblock pull or a hunters pet pull since the healers? nuke the ever loving fudge out of the first target.
Now I remember. Way more difficult to pull off than Mekkatorque, in my opinion.
I believe we ended up misdirecting to a tank that was out of range of the initial barrage, so the healers could be CC’d before they could coordinate, or something like that.
Sure, never done it or even tried too look it up. All I know is that vanilla raids aren’t as simple as people seem to think. I’ve been in both casual and hardcore guilds on PSers and the difference is staggering. The biggest difference is getting an amazing tank and healers that are on the ball. Only then can u do a 30MIN MC. The casual guild I was in took us 2 months or so to clear BWL maybe. Skarem in AQ40 took us 3 weeks 6 raid nights or so of trying, while we got sartura down in 4 attempts. Then hit a wall at finkriss the scorpion dude in there. Guild blew apart. Second guild I was in cleared to OURO in AQ40 in 1 month, then got stuck on ouru for a month or so then fell apart after hitting a wall on C’thun for a month or so. Then the final guild I was raiding with just blew everything out of the water.
The Anubis dudes in AQ40 WILL PUSH YOUR POOP BACK IN if one or 2 people screw up. there are like 6 of em or something you need to kill. Oh I will also add that on Nost I played with a bunch of friends that came from WOD and they took about the same amount of time to clear content as the casual guild I was in.
Actually what Myst said sounds about right.
I’d hold fire till 3 sunders, only generating 3 Cp to get SnD going.
When he’d hit 5 + 2 shield slams I’d pop AR and BF and go ham till I was dancing that threat line.
When it was clear the tank wouldn’t hold anymore I’d vanish, finish off the remaining CD on AR, refresh SnD and settle in to wait for my next CD window.
I know for a fact that nobody ever pulled threat if you gave the tank enough of a start.
I would love it if you didn’t spread misinformation about 1.11 threat when you clearly have no idea what you are talking about.
From Kenco’s Research on Threat posted Jan 2006 which would make it from Patch 1.9 at the latest might even be from 1.8 or earlier.
"Casting taunt causes three effects. A) The warrior is given as much threat as the person who currently has the mob’s aggro. Obviously if the warrior has aggro, this will do nothing. Also, this effect will not lower the warriors threat. For example, if player 1 has 100 threat and aggro, a warrior could have 105 but not aggro; after taunt he would still be on 105 threat. B) The mob recalculates its actual aggro target. If the warrior was on the mob’s hatelist before the original aggro target, the mob’s actual aggro target will switch to the warrior. Otherwise, the mob will remember it’s original target. C) The normal taunt debuff. The mob is forced to attack the warrior, even if the warrior is not its actual aggro target.
The threat that the warrior gains from (A) is permanent, regardless of the outcome of (B). Note that it will not necessarily give the warrior the equal highest threat on the mob. If player 1 has 100 threat and aggro, Player 2 has 109 threat but not aggro, and the warrior has 0 threat, then the warrior is given 100 threat, not 109, so he could easily lose aggro to Player 2 after taunting."
So ya taunt ALWAYS set your threat to the current targets threat. Try again next time…
I think he’s talking about the change to taunt that perma set your aggro at the top of the list. Instead of how taunt worked early on, it just made the mob attack you for 6 seconds doing zero about your threat.
Haha I only raided 3 times in vanilla at 2 FPS, couldn’t do it. but I did start at launch so I know how tanking was. Was even worse before the rage generation increase. More rage per hit, more rage per damage taken, Didn’t lose the full cost of a dodged attack. Oh man how many times a HS would get dodged and just staring at my overpower that I don’t even have 5 rage for.