yall are gonna get STUCK. I expect whining and crying here on the forums for at least the first 3 weeks.
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Those who are ready for it (Guilds mostly) will have a decent time with ICC.
Outside of that, people with alts may have an ok time if RDF includes more than just leveling dungeons (I’d suggest it go all the way up to Beta protocol dungeons, leaving Gamma dungeons in the current LFG system), especially if it can be farmed for Emblems.
Gamma dungeons will continue the trend of being “for the elite” with people wanting huge GS requirements that out-level the content by at least three fold.
A player surge will happen upon release of the ICC patch, then level out after about a month as players get geared and begin raid-logging again.
Classic Hardcore will continue to be a thing except on raid nights for Wrath guilds.
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all im saying is don’t expect a pushover raid at the start like naxx or togc. watched top guilds spend all day today and didnt even get to the last 5 bosses. I think people forget how much more difficult it is without a 30% buff which is probably what 95% of players are used to
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that depend on what you mean by top guilds, but so you know top guilds aren’t those guilds that have 99% parsing, top guilds are those guilds who always cleared new raid within 1~2hours of it’s release And so you know…all those guilds been clearing icc25man Heroic in past few weeks on personal P.servers repeatedly as a form of practice and confirmation for confidence So when raid gets released on live…they walk over it.
Yes, it’s somewhere inbetween Ulduar and ToGC in terms of difficulty.
We’ve known this for 15 years.
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Icecrown Citadel should be fine, for the guilds that can take any challenge and overcome within a few tries they won’t need any help outside of bug fixes.
For the guilds that struggle on not standing in the fire, the raid will naturally become easier as time goes on and they’ll eventually get it done.
It’s an end-game raid, it’s fine for it to take time. It certainly won’t be like Sunwell or Naxx40. Even the most casual guilds will still be able to clear 25N with little issue.
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the problem will be “amount of time you’re raiding” & “the roster you have”
there is no challenge in 15years old game but those guilds who doesn’t run with optimized setup and wasn’t running split raids to get full bis geared before icc will still struggle in icc 25m heroic even if those players will not do any mistakes, and the most important thing is…if they’re just raiding 2days 4hours each then it will takes them months to be able to kill lcc 25m hc
everyone will be able to do normal but heroic is a whole new level & most people will never clear heroic till blizzard add the 5%–>10% HP/heal/damage Buff
That’s fine though. Most ppl didn’t clear 25H back in the day even with the 30% buff, and they still didn’t clear it even in the cata pre-patch. That’s not unique to ICC either. Most folks didn’t clear the Heroic (now Mythic) version of any raid introduced while it was current content.
The good news is there’s two difficulty options for an end-game raid now instead of just one, so everyone will still get to fully experience the raid on at least Normal.
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I expect for the HC guilds (read: does at least 2-3 split runs and spends at least 30+ hours on this PTR) to be on average 9/12 first reset, 11/12 or 12/12 second reset. With maybe 5-10 guild’s doing it 12/12 the first reset.
For the Semi-HC (read: Doesn’t really do splits, but puts up respectable time on the PTR). to be on average 7/12 first reset (maybe 8/12), 10/12 second reset, and being 11/12 or 12/12 third reset. With probably at least 500ish guilds having cleared H Lich King.
For the average H raiding guild (read: no PTR time, but puts the time to fully know the fights before going in). 5/12 first reset, 7/12 second reset (maybe 8/12), Then be stuck on Putricide, Sindragosa, Lich King, and maybe Saurfang or Blood Queen until they get more geared.
For every other guild, I expect them to get stuck on N Lich King and begin to complain about it.
For the GDKP I expect them to only be normal for quite a while (potentially only going 10/12, with Lootship, Marrowgar, Rotface, and Festurgut being heroic), and for the rest of the pug scene Maybe they would get 9/12 (only lootship heroic).
Most GDKPs are better than most guilds. They’ll probably be between your guesses of Semi-HC and Average H guilds.
With plenty being much better, and ofc many being much worse.
My low prediction for them is that they will be able to carry less then they would have previously, and one person can mess up an entire pull.
Then why are they wiping atm?
you mean on ptr?
only Un-prepaired guilds use ptr lol
as i said in my comment
this been happening since 2019 for months before any raid new gets released on live, they never wait the ptr and sometimes don’t even bother being on ptr & this is why any raid in 60-70-80 so far was being cleared within minutes of it’s release because they practiced clearing it tons of times weeks before it even come to live.
I’m excited to see people trying H Lord Marrowgar lol
they can practice all they want but none of those servers have 0% buff with the exact gear and they’re not perfectly scripted still. Even fartmane has bugs in icc as well as class bugs still. and pretty sure they’re not doing it on private servers at all because if they were surely more would have gotten to lk. lmao fusion, one of the top NA guilds barely touched LK. they literally wiped for 20+ hours on other bosses, same with the guild welcome.
I am very happy with the PTR so far. Seems like most of these bosses are on par with Sunwell in difficulty, or higher. LDW heroic is the first big wall most places will run into, and that’s the 2nd boss. She was pretty challenging, reminded me of how hard M’uru/KJ were.
I am sure that H LK will be the hardest boss Classic has seen so far. In original wrath, it wasn’t killed until the 5% buff came out, which was a month after the release of H LK.
My guild and I actually went onto PTR.
We tried 10 HC
And we tried 25 Normal.
We cleared 25 Normal with ease somewhat. Mostly mechanics issue, but it got better and better with every wipe. Only had a few and some were really silly accidental wipes.
Then we tried 10 HC.
Note - we didn’t optimize the comp or had BIS geared folks. It was just whomever was available to come.
oh boy. We couldnt kill Saurfang 10 HC. It was ROUGH. Getting 2 marks is a HUGE healcheck. So we just did 10 normal for the rest. Marrow and Lady on HC were fine.
Having said that, I do believe some top guilds will clear it all, including LK 25 HC in like 2 weeks.
They can be set to 0% and the same gear fairly easily. The dps requirements for H LK are insane but with class stacking it will probably be dead the first week. The healing requirements are extremely low so you will find a lot of fights no longer have dps checks because you have 1 or 2 less healers.
This is why there is an incrementing nerf. at 30% it becomes TOC territory.
Nobody cleared this raid at 0% remember. Paragon did at 5% and did 0% later. Of course I expect people to clear it now, but it’s not an easy raid, people have the 30% nerfed version in memory.