Difficulty of Naxxramas

Based on what we know now, what are we looking at in terms of how difficult Naxxramas is going to be? Patchwerk being an example - this fight is the “simplest” in terms of mechanics, but has always been a gear check.

If a guild has been clearing AQ (or most of it) for months prior to the drop date of Naxx, just how hard IS it going to be?

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Night one clear unless folks forget to get attuned. WTS arcane crystals for waaaaaaay too much. Think simple mechanics like Vael, that didn’t even seem to be the real problem for middle ranked guilds.

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But, from what I’m told, the damage output from Vael is nothing and the difficulty REALLY begins to ramp up come AQ.

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Some of the mechanics of aq might pose problems but same to be said for other bosses in naxx. Patchwerk is straight forward and lots of guilds will have the ability to do him. Other fights will give more humor watching on twitch for sure. Trash packs will probably kill more raids over and over than patchwerk.

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Any guild that can coordinate 40 people will clear it week two, week three at the latest.

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Trash will be harder than bosses.

My guild will fail at Frogger >_<

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An entire guild leveled 40 players to 60 (give or take a few), then 1 shot Molten Core, in 4 days.
BWL was down in less than 45 min.
ZG? Wasn’t it like 19 min or something.

Naxx? Day 1 100% guaranteed.

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Sure, but the average guild didn’t clear BWL in under 45 minutes.

The heavy hitter guilds will have Naxx cleared quick but the rest might be a bit longer.

:cactus:

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I’d guess that most guilds will have it on farm a month and a half after release, with more casual guilds still clearing it but maybe taking 2 nights instead of 1.

hardcore guilds will of course have it on farm day 1.

this is why we need temporary pre nerf c’thun for a week or two. (and needed hakkar blood plague server event) but these things are too exciting for blizzard

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Honestly if there wasn’t an actual IRL “blood plague” event happening we’d have probably gotten one. I don’t think we need to be practicing social distancing IRL and in-game.

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well in the argument for recreating a classic vanilla experience, by definition not including hakkar blood plague is against the original point of classic

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If your guild has been together for ~6 months, clears all content, and doesn’t implode before Naxx. I think you will clear it week one.

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Any guild that would struggle heavily in Naxx would have broken up due to AQ 40 I would assume. I didn’t play pservers but based on everything I’ve heard from guildies who played on them for years, the end of AQ40 (twin emps trash and cthun) will be harder than a majority of Naxx.

I would bet if your guild can consistently clear AQ 40 it’ll probably steamroll most of Naxx.

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talking about maxers? they will go with world buffs & clear it within 3hours of release.

talking about casuals that raid 1~2days and not bothering to get world buffs or use pots? they won’t clear it.

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my guild on kronos struggled to clear it entirely, mostly because we were losing good players every week. if you are bleeding players during naxx progression you will have a rough time. the pickings will be slim on most servers at that point, you shouldn’t expect to have geared players lined up ready to help you slog through a 15 boss raid.

every week we would lose someone who’d played a big part in our progress. one example is the mage who kites the zombies on gluth. the first 2 weeks we had no trouble with the boss but then had to replace the guy who did it and it took us 5 wipes to get a kill, after never wiping on him before. that ruined the week in terms of progress. this same thing happened in the following weeks with razuvious (having to replace the priest who always MC pulled the boss and got him into position), and patchwerk (replacing our 2nd tank with a bear which caused weird hateful strike rotations and dead tanks).

other common pitfalls for less experienced guilds doing naxx:
-pushing Maexxna to her enrage phase too early, main tank dies during web spray
-lacking dps, first aid, and survivability consumables for loatheb
-overwhelming the dead side of your group on Gothik with too many adds
-healers underestimating the damage Feugen deals (thaddius mini-boss)
-people dying to void zones, running out on meteor boss too early on 4horsemen
-melee misjudging range on kel’thuzad and spreading ice block to the ranged/healers
-priests panic-shackling the guardians on phase 3 of kel’thuzad, allowing them to run randomly and kill healers

basically, if you get stuck on any of the bosses, your progress stalls immediately and you have to hope you can execute better the next week. the fact that there are 15 bosses means there’s a lot of potential for mistakes. I’d say 4 of the bosses are on the MC/BWL level, but scaled up in HP and damage.

Most of these mechanics can easily be learned with a little bit of practice. I would recommend most guilds use the PTR to give themselves a better idea of what to expect.

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Day 1, but not for 99.99% of us so it doesn’t really matter.

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Ouro and C’thun were the big bois of AQ40

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By the time P6 comes everyone will be getting in for free…

by the time you are geared in MC and optimized you are doing plenty of damage to be able to clear Naxx. Once people have AQ gear Naxx with be a joke.

Night 1 clear, maybe a second day to work out kinks and because you just don’t spend very long any given night raiding anyway. The stuff in Naxx isn’t very complicated and most of the mechanics are timer based, not health based, so with enough DPS, you’ll skip mechanics on a variety of bosses.

Patchwerk will still be a “gear check” of sorts, mostly on your Tanks to be able to consistently survive Hateful Strike and on your Healers to get them topped back off, but DPS are going to blow him up so quickly that the OOM issues of old just won’t be there and we’ll all have a clearer idea of how much excess Armor/Health we can shed given the rather fixed nature of Hateful Strikes and how he chooses his targets.

Fights that were formally very difficult or nuanced due to numbers like Loatheb will likely be jokes. Thaddius will be simple as can be because raiding addons will make sure polarities never get screwed up.

On the other hand, Maexxna will likely wipe some guilds who can’t hold back enough to not have her Enrage go off during a stun. Four Horsemen may still be a bit of a cluster but that really depends on how much DPS we’re putting out by then and how strong their Shield Wall ability actually is, which may allow us to just straight circle zerg the mobs and ignore the more wonky swap mechanics.

Only really Sapphiron may completely block guilds from progressing until they get sufficient resistances. I really doubt we’ll be able to skimp on the resist gear for it but who knows, bring enough Priests and it might not matter (again with the DPS numbers people can churn out).

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