I note that Raggy doesn’t have too many mechanics in the first place, and at least one of them, maybe two, wasn’t working in that kill.
Notice the rogues never ran out? I’m pretty sure that’s because they had figured out that if you stood at the edge of the platform, you outranged his knockback ability while still being able to hit him. That was patched later.
Then his Lava Burst ability where he just randomly splashes lava on some people - that wasn’t working either due to a bug. Also patched later (and nerfed at the same time so that he could actually be killed with it working).
So during his tank and spank phase, the only abilities that were actually firing were his tank damage (melee + DoT) and the “nuke casters into the lava” ability. Since we’re looking at it from a rogue’s perspective we can’t see how many casters died but probably a bunch. It took a while to figure out exactly how to minimize the effect of that ability and these guys were the first - who got 1 hour a week on him to practice.
I haven’t seen any hard evidence on whether his melee or DoT were nerfed, but at the end when they’re wiping, he turns around and two shots the rogue, and it doesn’t look like he does much less damage than he did to leather in GRIZZLY’s combat log.
They had more trouble gathering the sons for AoE than APES obviously. Do the same dance for 15 years, you get better at it. I suspect some LFR heroes are going to have trouble with that too, UNLESS Battle Shout spam works in which case it will be an abject joke.
If they wrongly thought they needed FR on everybody that would explain why they took a bit longer to kill him. FR is totally meaningless for melee. For casters, it might give you a little better margin for error on swimming out of the lava. But again that’s the kind of thing you figure out in 15 years of doing the same thing.
And of course they had 1.3 talents and 1.3 items - spirit on warrior gear, etc. They didn’t have healers rocking 200 +heal even if they were wearing full T1.
I don’t really think players now are exactly “better” than back then. It’s a different skill set. This guy we’re watching was clicking and typing about his feelings because he could. Doesn’t mean he would still be doing that if it was a modern raid where Blizz has cleared out all the obstacles and you just need to perfect your choreography.
However I think there’s always two components 1) develop the strategy, 2) execute the strategy. In vanilla raids #1 was by far the harder part - and for a raid that’s been done for 15 years, #1 is quite simply done. That only leaves #2.
A voice of reason, crying out in the wilderness.