Well yeah… having a CD on dispel was pretty rough when only 3 people did it 
More mechanics? Sure, maybe. But there’s also less player mechanics like managing aggro, mana, etc.
And do mechanics count if you can ignore them completely? Mechanics have been made increasingly less punishing since WotLK even in raid encounters. Naxx is a great example–players went in 500% stronger at level 80 and boss mechanics were significantly simplified from their original iteration, and the damage from mechanics was either barely adjusted (KT frostbolt from 3250 to 5500) or completely the same (e.g. Anubrekhan’s insect swarm @ 1300 damage stacking).
Lifted - kromcrush
Brutalllus had 3 mechanics (meteor slash, stomp and burn), and in practice, there were 2, a tank swap (meteor slash and stomp combined) and a “move out of the raid” mechanic (burn).
Reliquary of Souls, by contrast, had 11 across 3 phases. And while RoS was considered one of the harder bosses in BT, along with Bloodboil and Illidan himself, there were a lot more guilds that downed Reliquary than downed Brutallus, especially before the nerf that came with the Wotlk pre-patch. That’s because the tighter tuning on Brut made it a harder fight, despite being less mechanically complex.
Was Brutallus more mechanically complex than Patchwerk? Sure. But not a whole lot more. It was still a simple fight to execute. Moreso than Kalecgos or Felmyst, both of which required a lot more mobility and snap decision making. But neither the boss before or the boss after was considered to be as difficult, in fact, if you could beat Brutallus, Felmyst was considered basically a gimme.
Mechanical complexity can add difficulty, I think that’s self-evident. But it has far less to do with difficulty than tuning does.
Any guild with the DPS output to kill him before he ports will abuse him like the loot pinata he is, and he will become an even easier, less mechanically intense encounter.
That’s exactly my point. If the tuning is off, a boss is a joke, no matter what mechanics they have. If the tuning is hard, even a boss with few mechanics can be hard. Tuning is more important than mechanical complexity in determining difficulty in a raid encounter.
I don’t know how valid a metric that is. In expansions without catch-up mechanics, the bosses further along in progression always are going to have less kills than the ones further back simply because fewer people get to them. And if they’re the gear check bosses, then they can only be killed by people who actually get the gear to kill them.
I always think the perfect retail fight is Jadefire Masters. A trillion stupid ways to die, and on Heroic, it is tuned high enough that that stuff actually kills you. Constantly run around, run OUT of the fire, run INTO the fog, run AROUND away from the beam, run the obstacle course, etc etc etc, and whatever you do, never don’t decurse for 4 freaking seconds, or the searing embers blow up the raid.
Nothing nearly that intense in MC or BWL. Nothing really to be done except do it over and over till you build the reflexes, and boot those who can’t. Not a lot of strategic insight to be had.
The thing I missed doing it though is: chat was still pretty silent. Any coordination would have distracted each individual from their own elaborate, twitchy dance.
Mc and ony has always and will always be ran in greens with some players not being 60.
They are, very easy raids…But…They are not BWL Vael, AQ40 or Naxx where the gear checks hit like a hammer.
These are the real raids, these are the ones that if you struggled just a little in MC you wont go far in the rest.
Horde has a very hard time at pve soon as MC is on farm, because they do not have a paly in the raid.
In patch 1.12, there was only i think 3 horde guilds in the top 10, 11 in the top 25 and 15 in the top 50 in the world to beat naxx.
And dont think there were very many more i think it ended with 64 total patch 1.12 naxx clearing guilds.
This is where the previous raid gear is the MINIMUM to enter and kill a boss.
What you have noticed is the same thing that most notice, “we are not streamers with unlimited recruitment, and we are not a super guild made up of top notch players use to beating content”
I know we all hear people saying vanilla etc blah blah blah, easy this easy that.
Well we shall see just how easy they say naxx is.
From what I have seen on streams, the hardest part is figuring out what went wrong - as in I watching had no idea what is killing the raid and what they did different to allow them to down the boss.
Vanilla really doesn’t convey its mechanics very clearly.
In direct contrast would be queued raids in FFXIV where I can generally figure out what went wrong pretty quickly - which is good for PUG raids made up of people matchmade by the Dungeon Finder.
This is largely chicken-egg now. Without the presence of additional mechanics, tuning has limited directions of growth, and therefore learning curves to down the encounter shift accordingly. Jumping ahead several expansions: look at at Mythic Hellfire Citadel at the end of WoD. Several fights were very simplistic relative to one another, but the steepest learning curve with the most “Yes we’ve killed this for weeks but we still wipe sometimes because laziness” were the mechanic laden fights that didn’t strictly end your fight for screwing them up then and there, the ones you could actually kinda try to muscle through with good heals, etc. The Construct piloting boss was interesting but otherwise fairly easy to drop since one dude needed to learn it like on Prof Putricide of WotLK, whereas the hot potato mechanic from Lady Vashj made a fun return with the Arakoa boss and frankly caused far more problems than almost anything else up to Mannoroth.
The mechanic itself was the source of frustration and difficulty. Even on the easier run-throughs, because the mechanic was one of those oft-cited “not playing my character” things people love, it just straight up caused problems and stymied progress on an otherwise easy boss. This is why Felmyst’s fog doesn’t just do a lot of damage a tic, it straight up ends you and disrupts the raid. One-shot mechanics or “you lose” mechanics feel cheesy, but I don’t put those in a tuning bucket the same as damage taken and DPS/Healing thresholds, which is also why %-health transitions became the norm rather than straight timers.
As a final note, it’ll be interesting to see how people attempt to simplify Loatheb. I know we’re aware of the undermanned Shadow Priest/Warrior method but unless you’re bringing 20+ Priests, the raid isn’t going to like that. We’ll see.
if you die, you absolutely know why you died in mc/ony. it’s just not the easiest thing to convey on a stream unless the people watching are familiar with what is happening in the fights. for example, in onyxia most people die from fear/lava spurts, getting knocked into the whelps, or getting deep breathed on. on a stream that would just look like random people just die for no reason.
It’s also hard to figure out what to do to not die.
This is where newer games with their very visible telegraphs are clearer - and even if there are no telegraphs graphics, the boss typically do something atypical and that’s a big hint; e.g. the boss drops rocks that stick around during its long cast AoE one-shot move.
there are things you have to watch out for sure. but you never just go “oh well there is nothing i could have done to not die there” For example melee think they can walk into mc wearing all this pure damage gear with no stam on it. there are melee cleaves that will 1shot you if you dont have more than around 3500hp buffed (using a rogue in leather for example). how do you survive that? you gear yourself to have enough HP to survive so you don’t get 1shot.
the thing about vanilla is that there are alot more “random timing” moves for bosses because every fight isnt scripted from start to finish with every melee swing on a perfect timer so add-ons can play the game for you.
pretty much… if 40 people are actually at their keyboard and use all their cooldowns before they die it should be fine lol
Ya, I know. It’s just figuring out what it is you are suppose to do is the tricky part. It can be a bit obscure at times.