One of the few good things from WoD was the introduction of Raid Skips. Where after killing a certain boss on that difficulty 4 times allows you to skip to that boss.
Looking back on older raids pre-WoD there are only a few raids that feel like they desperately need a boss skip. (Primarily due to the old way of having 2 to 3 raids per raid tier, ie Serpentshrine Cavern and The Eye). These raids being:
Siege of Ogrimar: This 14 boss raid I think everyone can agree needs to have 2 boss skips like Hellfire Citadel and Antorus have. Ideally the 2 boss skips would skip you to the Iron Juggernaut and Paragons of the Kalaxxi. This would be a massive QoL for players farming for transmog and items from this raid.
The Battle for Mount Hyjal: This is arguable THE worst raid of all time. Fun to do once, never fun to do multiple times after. This doesn’t need a boss skip but more so an option to force the boss to come to you without the 8 add waves. (Even worse if you are a melee class). Having a dialog option to have the boss just spawn avoiding the add packs would be a massive QoL improvement for everyone trying to finish their T6 transmog.
Changes to these 2 raids would be a massive QoL improvement and have players who farm these raids rejoicing at the changes.
Add Ulduar to the list. After it became a time walking raid, they merged 10 and 25 man, which also merged the loot tables, bloating them so large that if you are farming mog off the last 2 bosses, have fun.
Ulduar isn’t that bad though, you can already skip a few bosses. Ignis, Razorscale, Iron Assembly, and Algalon. And the teleporter allows you to move around and back track pretty quickly as well.
However I do agree the merged loot table really screwed up any transmog farming. Trying to get any tier piece is extremely difficult in Ulduar.
that’s because the raids you do are easy and don’t require mental breaks. When you get into more hardcore raiding you begin to realize the value of trash and trash respawns.
I don’t do any raiding now but based on my experience in the past, I don’t find trashpacks to be a “mental break.” They were boring and sometimes stressful.
I mentioned this in another thread about raiding but it would be nice to have the raid turn into a boss gauntlet, no trash, after it’s been cleared. Get in, get out, done.
Maybe as an option then, like choosing Normal/Heroic/Mythic. Call it Gauntlet and it becomes an option per difficult after completion of that difficulty (Normal Gauntlet, Heroic Gauntlet, Mythic Gauntlet). Have a portal to the next boss pop up after each boss kill. That way Blizz can still design story elements and trash can still have their teaching mechanics for the boss they lead up to.
I’m aware of Crusader’s Coliseum though, that was designed that way from the get go.
My theory is the reason it was poorly received is because they timegated the crap out of it for almost no reason. I know it was supposed to represent the building of the AT but taking 30 minutes to kill one boss then having nothing to do the rest of the week but go run raids you already had on farm.
However, like I said, just a theory. It probably would have been a better idea to release The Ruby Sanctum then instead of at the end.
Nope definitely Mount Hyjal and its waves of trash which reset if you wiped on the boss.
Reason why ToC was hated, as you mentioned was the burnout from doing it 4 times a week and the PvP fight was mixed in its reception. Other than that it was a good raid.
Mount Hyjal though… 8 waves of trash was boring and if something happened and you wipped on boss you had to redo the trash waves.
Even the raids with 2 to 4 bosses lmao? I mean the only other old raids that might need a skip is Karazahn (but the place is pretty compact and easy to kill the bosses fast) and Ulduar (which is pretty fast to run).
This is just garbage reasoning. I did heroic ToC when we still had limited attempts, and you had to one-shot all the bosses to get the mount. I also agree that ToC is actually a great raid, and was simply underrated due to following Uldar. It’s a great raid, with solid bosses, and a cool theme to boot.
If we needed mental breaks during a raid night, then we took a break. Also, I don’t think I’ve ever heard someone praise trash respawns before, let alone during my mythic days. We wanted to progress on the bosses, not waste time with trash.