I’ve heard people say that it’s arguably the hardest raid in WoW history. Is that true? Will a lot of casual guilds not be able to clear it even months after it goes live?
Mmmm, it was hard at the time, but I think more cleared it, than cleared OG naxx?
My old guild used to have to get NPCs involved in hyjal trash waves. We killed 3 bosses in Sunwell. Do with this info as you desire.
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Muru was a wall for a non optimized raid comp and is why the shaman/drum meta exists. These types of players will plow through eventually and then find a better way.
However the dad guilds will still have to work a bit.
Side note I’ve come across a few guilds still on ssc progress which was a shock. I found out it’s just casuals ignoring any online guides and fumbling around on their own.
For the player base at the time sure it was hard. For todays it will be fairly easy for the best and alright to easy for others?
Prenerf will absolutely stunt many guilds who are riding the high horse after their week 2 BT clear.
Unsure if it will be as bad as SSC/TK… But it might be close.
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They must have deep pockets for all the wipes!
I managed back in the day and I wasn’t a whole lot better then than I am now.
i think that if a player/guild is still raiding and killing illidan , sunwell will not be any different. for new guilds / players probably will never see it.
At the time of its release? Yes.
Compared to future raids? Not even close.
Much like Naxx in Classic, the name of the game is high damage and minimal forgiveness for errors. Which means if your raiders can execute the few mechanics that exist with decent consistency, they’ll progress. There was a time when Brutalus was considered a very tough DPS check to overcome, because if you couldn’t drop him then you weren’t going to have the DPS to kill anything else really given every boss has a short enrage, extra mechanics, and high health. But people are slaughtering Illidan before he even hits his mega demon mode and killing bosses absurdly fast.
So all that is left are mechanics, and most SWP mechanics are straight forward and easy. The most “complex” of the bunch is likely Twins. There are a number of ways to handle their debuff mechanic (each has their own debuff, get hit by the other and it cancels the first) but with how Healers and DPS alike just power through things, it might be stupid easy today.
Casual guilds currently struggling to kill BT/Hyjal will absolutely struggle to get beyond Brutallus. Otherwise, they should make it to Twins or Muru at least, but I think a lot of folks are going to down the content no matter what and way way way more than did it initially.
Not hard at all.
Most people who are focused and dedicated will have success.
Dad guilds will take longers.
Pugs will be farming trash.
Getting attunements is more difficult than the raids themselves.
Some dad guilds will wipe on stuff, most will get through it eventually.
Iirc more guilds cleared but it was a lower percentage. Raiding became significantly more popular in BC compared to vanilla. So the fact that 26, or whatever the number was, US guilds cleared Naxx sounds rough, but most of the difficulty was in getting there. Pretty much nobody saw Naxx during vanilla. For SWP the difficulty was in the raid, because getting there was trivial by comparison. Almost everyone i know who raided back then got to brutalus, very few got past him. I can’t recall anyone i know getting past Mu’ru pre nerf. Most guilds fell apart on Brutalus.
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not my choice but i dont criticize them for trying to figure it out on their own.
Back in the day many guilds cleared up to muru and never were able to kill council, let alone illidan. Heck, I just watched an old Elitist Jerks ZA bear run video. They were in full t6 and had to go with 1 real tank and a hybrid holy paladin/3rd healer to make the timer and they only had like 3m left when they finished it. We blasted through with half alts last night and had 18m left when we got the mount.
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It’s not true.
Sunwell will be a complete joke and disappointment to many in TBCC. I’m about to share with you is a very important concept that players are over looking when they’re talking about raid difficult. The average gear quality in TBCC is all ready much, much higher than it was during sunwells release in 2008.
Back in the day most players never had an opportunity to farm full raid lock outs each week for months on end. But in TBCC, they do. If you complete your full Hyjal/BT bis back in the day, you were in the 100th percentile of players. Most players never came close. You may have only had 1 or 2 guilds on a server capable of reaching that point. In TBCC, nearly any guild that can get 25 players together on a regular basis can clear the content.
To top it all off, the average wow player now is more experienced and more knowledgeable than ever. Sunwell will not be hard. Especially considering how geared the average guild will be going into it.
Just look at old raiding guides for TBC. They encouraged you to run 7 or even 8 healers. Nobody is doing that in TBC, even for prenerf phase 2. At most people run 6 healers, and many guilds run 4 or 5.
That tells you the real story of how difficult TBC is in this era.
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This is super true. We went in and got brutallus (the dps check) with people in catch up loot, that still had kara gear on.
Now, people are going in full bis, hes going to melt.
I imagine it will be comparable to Naxx in Classic. Tuned quite a bit harder than anything else that came before it. The best guilds will still plow through it. Others will eventually work their way through it over the course of months. But probably 1/3 or more of the guilds that are currently clearing BT/Hyjal will never see the end of Sunwell.
Hopefully, guilds have a harder time with it, i.e. pre-Nerf Vashj and KT. But that’s just me. Might as well go out with a bang. If people get frustrated and quit, they’ll be back for wrath anyway.
I made a comment to my brother at start of 9.2: Normal Anduin was the hardest normal mode boss since M’uru.
that’s how hard Sunwell is.