How do we define easier?
When the main strat in current WoW is “round up all the mobs, drag them to the boss, pop cooldowns and spam AOE” is that supposed to be the “harder” version of the game? What is the challenge there? Getting damage dealers to NOT dps till the tank has everything rounded up? Getting the Healer to NOT heal so he doesn’t pull aggro off the tank that doesn’t even need him?
That doesn’t sound particularly challenging to me.
Careful, you’re dealing with someone who’s killed a boss on a particular patch or something. Tread lightly
If you think you have a valid argument that classic has any difficulty at all it’s an argument you’re going to lose.
In no world does classic actually have any real difficulty.
Stopping priority casts in a massive pull in the difference. When you get to higher keys those casts one shot people.
That’s because you don’t do high end content.
Were also mostly talking about raiding not mplus.
Someone’s certainly caught in some feelings.
You just described ret paladins, two hunter specs, and name a mage spec.
Just enjoying the show man. Keep it up
I never said it did. Vanilla WoW wasn’t particularly “challenging”. The main challenge was getting everyone to show up on time and not stand in bad. Today’s lobby style of game just removed the show up on time part.
Other than that it isn’t that much different. Today’s encounter design just layers more mechanics on top of each other instead of favoring gear and dps checks.
That’s a whole lot of typing to show you don’t have a clue what you’re talking about.
Classic gear and dps/hps checks
Retail multiple mechanics gear and hps/dps checks.
If you think retail doesn’t have dps/hps checks lol
Maybe, I haven’t done raid content since Cata. I do notice you didn’t answer the question though, and instead opted for ad hominem attacks.
The main difference is in the nuance of the gameplay, old WoW favored things like careful pulling, CC, threat management. Today WoW favors speed and using mechanics as the main generation of “difficulty”.
I don’t see that either is harder than the other, just different.
#Bringbacktanknspank
I’ll apologize, you did offer this as an answer at least. So getting DPS to use their interrupts? That is the challenge? I mean, that has always been a thing, but you are saying there is just a lot more of it? Okay. If that is how we define challenging I suppose that is a place to start, lol.
Typically you can group the things mobs do as avoidable / unavoidable. Avoidable danger is commonly stuff like interruptible abilities with cooldowns, or area denial, or other such, unavoidable is just going to happen. It’s stuff you can’t stop and can at best mitigate.
In more difficult dungeons not only is the avoidable stuff lethal, but the unavoidable stuff is also extremely dangerous and requires a lot of coordination between mitigation abilities and healing CDs to survive through. Also there’s often a lot more dangerous abilities present in a large high end pull than players have resources to deal with indefinitely, it usually involves coordinating the resources you have whilst optimising damage output as much as possible to kill everything before you run out. Tanks aren’t immortal, healers run out of CDs, DPS run out of stops / defensives.
“group up and mindlessly AoE” is only really something you can do in lower difficulty dungeon content, or when severely over gearing whatever it is you’re doing. Even if something doesn’t seem particularly dangerous in lower difficulty because it isn’t doing avoidable damage you need to stop, the unavoidable stuff scales to a point it becomes just as deadly and needs to be respected.
Classic was certainly more of a tabletop. I prefer the more interactive fights, but can sort of see the appeal.
So not having done raid content since Cata means you honestly have zero idea what you’re talking about.
Watch a mythic kill of
BFA
Xanesh
SL
Painsmith
Fatescribe
Sylvanus
DF
Raz
Echo of Neltharion
Fyrakk
WW
Brood
And just look at the difficulty compared to classic.
The only difficult fight classic has is spine.
Retail requires CC interupts mob control and positioning requirements at a whole different level than classic ever has.
You not seeing it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.
The DPS checks in high end raiding are also significantly harder than they were in classic generally, not just due to the higher difficulty of execution for the classes themselves but the expected performance margins in order to secure a kill on top of handling mechanics.
Sure, everything you said there is true, but none of that is really any different than it has ever been. If it is just the layering of multiple mechanics simultaneously that is producing “challenge”, I suppose you can claim that. I still don’t see that as a skill challenge, more like a “can you operate in the ADHD nature of the combat loop”. Even that I wouldn’t say is particularly challenging.
I don’t find it engaging or fun, but it isn’t like “omg the game is so much harder these days”. DBM still today as it always has yells at you when it is time to move, time to interrupt, etc. The challenge is still the herding cats part of group content, and mainly in getting dps to focus on something other than their meter.
As someone who has raided at a comparable level to CE since cataclysm I simply cannot agree with this statement.
The execution requirements have gotten higher, the boss design has gotten complex, and the focus on being able to follow mechanics whilst also optimising damage has drastically increased.
That is fine, different people define difficulty differently. Some people prefer the more action arcade style of gameplay. This is something that WoW has been in a constant move toward more and more since Cata. This is the way the devs want to design the game and they have nurtured a playerbase that enjoys it. All good.
I will say that the continued decline of sub numbers since Cata might be an indicator of how well that change in direction has been received.
I don’t understand by what metric you define difficulty to reach the conclusion you have, you can like or dislike the current state of raiding but to say it’s no harder than classic is baffling to me.
Ultimately I guess all WoW is is using a mouse and keyboard and using a mouse and keyboard isn’t difficult, but that seems such a glib point as to be meaningless.
That is why I started by asking “how are we defining easy”. The answer seems to be moving out of bad and using interrupts makes the game harder. My point was, that has always been part of the game.
So what is the difference in today’s high end WoW from what it used to be? The frequency of mechanics? Are the mechanics simply more punishing if you miss it? I don’t know? Everyone seems to just assert in a “trust me bro” sort of way that avoiding mechanics today is harder than avoiding mechanics yesterday.