Naxxramas: Not Mechanically Hard

WoW Classic WoW Classic General Discussion
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This thread is coming from someone who actually did Naxxramas in Vanilla. My guild cleared Spider Wing and killed Noth and Razuvious. After this, we hit a wall. It wasn’t a difficulty wall, it was a logistical one. A large portion of our raid team, which was over 40 people, was getting burned out. The Burning Crusade had been announced months prior, and the pre-expansion apathy was starting to hit. We didn’t even get started on Naxx until much later after it was released, as the guild had newly formed during the AQ40 patch, and we had to progress through BWL and AQ40 prior to even attempting Naxx, due to gear requirements. After we hit a burnout wall, the rest of us left tried to merge with another guild on our server with similar progression. We had one raid where we couldn’t even clear BWL, and gave up until TBC.

I say all this because, while Naxxramas in today’s terms of mechanical difficulty was maybe normal mode, the logistical requirements of fielding enough people, the amount of consumables and world buffs required for progression, really wears the average player out. My thoughts were sparked by a HamsterWheel video I just watched (yeah yeah LuL pRiVaTe SeRvErs go ahead and get it out of your system), where he goes into more detail on his recent clearing of Naxxramas. Keep in mind the server he raids on is low-population, so many of the consumables and world buffs required they had almost zero competition on.

I’m curious if others that actually dipped their toes into Naxx in 2006 had a similar experience, or if you still think it’s just going to be bulldozed.

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For prepared guilds, it is not mechanically hard by any stretch. Naxxramas is largely a series of intense number checks (think Patchwerk, healing on Kel’thuzad, everything on Four Horsemen, etc). So in that sense, it may not be steamrolled immediately by every guild.

For people that have raided TBC/WotLK and other high level raids since then, the mechanics will not be hard at all. It’s all just tuned to be very difficult.

Logistics is what makes Vanilla raids hard. Actually doing them when you have all the necessary things is not.

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Why do people keep making these pointless threads?

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Why do people keep making these pointless replies?

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I cleared Naxxramas in vanilla, and the thing is, while mechanically most of the encounters weren’t too complex, all the effort you had to put into just preparing for the raid and the time commitment since the game was slower just wears on you. It made everything feel like it had much higher stakes than even modern Mythic raiding.

I discussed this in another thread, but when my guild was learning Mythic (heroic at the time) Garrosh it’s possible we wiped on that boss more times then all of my guild’s wipes on all of Naxxramas combined. But because wipe recovery was so quick and easy wiping on Garrosh felt pretty inconsequential. You were back at it within minutes and the failures didn’t feel very significant.

Compare that to wiping on a fight like 4H. You had to run from (I believe, my memory is fuzzy since this was a long time ago) Light’s Hope Chapel graveyard just to get back to the instance, then you had to run all the way to 4H. Trash respawns only increased that time. When you look at the records for how long a boss went un-killed and see all those bosses from WoW Vanilla that’s why - it just wasn’t possible to get the sheer amount of attempts in compared to modern raiding.

The consequence of that the stakes for each pull were much higher. And when the stakes are higher, it’s going to feel more challenging even if the actual mechanics are simpler.

Classic WoW is going to be very interesting from that perspective. Between the content not being new and private server guilds running vanilla guilds on their servers, it’s quite possible the raids on classic get cleared withing a week of availability. But don’t let that trivialize the reality of what raiding was actually like back in vanilla.

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Mechanically, it is pretty simple. But the damage output of even trash mobs was extremely high and people had to be on their game and paying close attention.

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It is harder then most people believe it is as they look at wrath that had a lot of the mechanics stripped out of the original naxx.

I don’t think it will be some massive wall but I expect it to last roughly as long as a mythic raid takes to clear on current.

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Yea and a lot of people are not familiar with all the buffs and pots you guys were blowing through in those wipes too. All that farm time :open_mouth: shi*'s rufffffff

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Damage taken in Vanilla Naxx is very high and there isn’t room for mistakes which leads to wipes, tons of them, so you had to give your best at all time which is hard with 40 people.

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Yeah all Vanilla raids were more or less logistical challenges.
They required many things
A: Gathering gear
B: Gathering resistance gear
C: Gathering consumables
D: Lots of time

Just to name a few. It was a war of attrition and perseverance contest a marathon if you will. On top of that if you were using world buffs it was additional logistics to get them and then you had ONE chance to succeed if you wipe the buffs are gone so big pressure.

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It’s why I’m considering maining a mage again - ports just save so much time when you have to run around the world farming for dreamfoil, mountain silversage, gromsblood, and black lotus. As much as I want to try a warlock this time around the thought of playing without teleport makes me whimper.

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You hit the nail on the head in the first paragraph and even blizzard has stated Naxx in Vanilla was a mistake not because of the raid but due to the timing of the raid there was hardly any time between Naxx -> TBC. Many guilds we’re still doing AQ and feared going into naxx thinking it would be harder or didn’t have enough raiders doing the Attunment to Naxx.

While i never got to see all of Naxx during Vanilla, I was in a guild which had killed KT as a friend rank and due to being a warlock ( which was quite geared from us selling BWL gear to fund Naxx and doing AQ Mainly 20 but a little bit of 40) i was dragged along to even kill a couple of bosses and some of the others on private servers.

When Naxx rolls around on Classic it will mostly be steamrolled because of a couple of major factors.
1.Timing - At this stage we don’t know of a follow up TBC realm. So we won’t have to worry about mass people giving up much like your guild due to the expansion right around the corner.
2.Experience - Players are better now, say what you will about “retail plebs” or what ever but no matter what your experience is be it LFR or Mythic raiding you’ve played in a raid environment and picked up some knowledge, Not everyone had that.
3.The raid Itself. - People have done Naxx be it in Vanilla,Private servers or even during Wrath, While it won’t be entirely the same and a lot of data and numbers could very well be changed, Hell it could and may be exactly the same as a certain private servers Naxx but people are still going in knowing what they are getting themselves into and while KT may take 100 wipes or 200 wipes it will still be less than what it was than back in the day because of information.

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You forget one of the most important parts that will speed things up. The information on how to gear. How many tanks kept a frost draconic reflector? How many green frost resist rings went to vendors/ used in unimportant ways? We know what gear is going to be useful and what isnt. We sisnt know while raiding mc/bwl that we would need nr gear. We didnt know we needed frost gear while raiding aq40.

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I don’t entirely agree. The Emerald Dragons were released before AQ and had a lot of the important nature resist pieces; by the time you got to Huhuran most of the raid had a bunch of NR gear. Same with FR; many of the big FR pieces were crafted and the others dropped from Naxx bosses so you had what you needed by the time you got to Sapphiron. I don’t think there’s going to be a big difference on this front.

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I killed Anub’rekhan, Faerlina, Maexxna, Patchwerk, Grobbulus, and Noth back in actual Vanilla. We didn’t get any farther before BC came out and because we attempted to stonewall against safety dance and Razuvious (GG having like 3 capable Priests on the entire server) and never got any further.

But since then, I’ve cleared it maybe 40 or 50 times total on 3 separate private servers.

What made Naxx hard back then was a combination of the skill cap increase and time commitment which led to player burnout.

While my guild was extremely good and killed pre-nerf Twin Emps, we lost people weekly. During our trials in Molten Core, everyone showed up constantly, and we had a healthy 60 raiders with those 20 extras rotating in and out and running dungeons/pvp/farming while waiting for a spot to open.

During BWL we lost quite a few people because it took us 3 weeks of wiping on Vael. I think about 15 different people quit due to being burned out, or couldn’t commit to staying up 2 hours past raid time, or wanted to try a different guild.

As we progressed into AQ40 the noticeable spike in time required to prepare and farm for consumables, left us with about 35 people. We had to recruit, and on a server with 2500 people, that meant poaching from other guilds. I distinctly remember the amount of in-fighting we had when we decided we needed less Hunters and Warlocks for more Mages and Rogues, so we lost more people than we gained at first.

We had about 25 insanely good “cream of the crop” players, and through poaching, we found those other 15. We had 40 of the absolute best. And while we were geared, rich, and highly skilled, we were no longer revered. But Twin Emps folded, Cthun died, and we were the only Ally guild to step into Naxxramas for almost a month.

After we stonewalled on safety dance for a couple weeks, and the amount of trash we killed led to even our Paladins having Ghoul Skin Tunics and Misplaced Servo Arms, BC was on it’s way. With news of that, we lost more people. And we never recovered beyond that 6/15 mark. Looking back I don’t think we were that good. Not with how good I’ve seen people play on private servers.

Heading forward this time, I foresee it being a lot like how it was. People are going to go so hard early on in MC and BWL that they’ll have little desire for AQ40 in a progression state. Some will go casual or raid less, and the elite will be further ahead than before. I think you will however see more guilds doing it this time. But it will remain that a lot of burnout is going to happen. People are older now, have kids, and while Vanilla is insanely fun for me, it might not be fun for someone else when they realize they need to be farming an additional 20 hours a week to prepare for Naxx and be successful there.

Naxx will come and people will hit those same walls; logistical and time allotment. The skill cap will have nothing to do with it. Google, the sharing of information, and the ability to prepare better beforehand will assure that Naxx is done by more people, much quicker. But the majority of your average raiders will fall behind the progression cue ball, unable to hit the 8 ball, and wonder when TBC Reforged is coming out.

Me? I’ll be done with Naxx, enjoying the spoils on an alt, and wondering when the next F R E S H server launches. For as much as I love raiding Naxx, the entire journey is paramount to me.

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It’s the same argument with everything. “Modern” WoW is learning a dance, where to go and when to go there, what to stand in or not stand in and learning what order to press your buttons in. Old WoW was a numbers game. Threat, dps, healing, buffs/debuffs. It wasn’t all that much easier or harder, it was just very different.

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watch naxx come out an be faceroll easy cause it turned out pivate servers guessing the data just tuned everything really high because they expected players to go in with BiS and world buffs and they needed to inflate it or else people would cry its too easy

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They challenge you in different ways. I agree typically the final two Mythic(Pre-Nerf) bosses in retail wow is harder than anything Nax… I highly disagree that it is equivalent to normal mode… and I will tell you why.

Retail challenges you most in reaction time and memorizing a lot of mechanics. I see it as the equivalent of juggling 7 balls, balancing a chair on your head, one legged crane karate kid pose on a pole, while singing the national anthem backwards.

Naxx challenges you in making smart decisions on resources, the mechanics are not overly complicated, but they aren’t always easy to pull off 100% of the time with 40 people, and it challenges you with much harder punishment for mistakes(And that ties in with making smart decisions on resources).

  • Many cooldowns are 5 min., 10 min.,30 min., or an 1 hour long… you spend one incorrectly, you will have to wait for a long time sometimes to be able to use it again.

  • Spending consumables are essential, and making the correct decisions to do so and to not do so. They are a limited resource that you need to conserve.

  • Everytime the raid wipes, it is significantly more punishing. You have to corpse run(Or rez, no mass rez) and rebuff, every… single… time. There are also time constraints on world buffs that you have to be concerned about. Sometimes in retail, encounters are like throwing darts at a dart board, and just doing it over and over until you get a lucky bulls-eye where everything aligned correctly… to retry, all you have to do is just gather the darts and start throwing again, over and over, very quickly. In Vanilla, you don’t have that luxory… You have to perform better, in fewer tries. Which makes it more difficult.

  • The room for error is doubled because the amount of people in the raid is doubled. It’s like a rube goldberg machine, the more points of possible error, the more likely SOMETHING will go wrong. This pressures everyone to be more consistent in not making mistakes, otherwise you’ll never complete it. lets say you make a mistake only on 5% of the runs, that means only 1 out of 20 pulls you make a mistake(Which is actually really good). I am going to make a table of likelyhood to succeed based on average raid error 5% per person in comparison to 20 man and 40 man raids.
    If your Raid averages only 5% error per person for a 40-man your chance of success is 12.9%. And for a 20-man raid it’s 35.8%…that is quite significant! Obvious this is assuming the 20 man and 40 man has similar chance of error.
    5%=> 12.9%(40-man) vs. 35.8%(20-man)
    10%=>1.48%(40-man) vs. 12.2%(20-man) if the raid average error is 1 in 10 pulls per person, then you only get a 1.48% success!

More than likely you’ll have group of 5 people who have a 25% chance to have an error while 15 10% chance and 20 5%… but idk how to calculate that xD

  • Character class resource management like mana. You have to make smart give or take decisions on resource managment that can make or break the success of the raid. This is something that does not exist much on retail.

If you read the comments… the creator of the video actually doesn’t agree with you. He found the raids to be difficult, not just in a time cosnuming way

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The average guild went into naxx and could clear a few bosses.(spider wing etc)
The above average guild would stall out around loatheb and gothik.
The elite guilds cleared. (which were far and few between the numbers)

If naxx lasted another 6 months, I think the above average guilds may have cleared it depending on their server situation etc.
I don’t think the average raiding guild would of ever cleared, as most dissolve withing a year or so.

This time around there should be allot more elite level guilds.

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I had the exact same experience. Same bosses and everything.