While I understand “no one wants classic to become Retail” and by that I mean “no one wants classic to be mythic raid hardmode” and I agree with this statement. I do believe that if you are going to implement boss mechanics into the future SoD raids. Those mechanics should matter.
On my guilds literal first run of BFD (pre any BFD gear) we literally ignored 95% of all Boss mechanics despite the unavoidable ones (like Kelris dreamworld and the Gauntlet’s Totems). But for things like Murloc or Akumei we simply just ignore the entire mechanical requirements and just blast through it.
For instance:
If Kelris’s Dreamworld was originally designed where the Void Walkers were meant to be killed to reduce Kelris’s enrage phase damage, or even bypass his entire enrage phase (I don’t know if anyone’s actually tested this because most people just ignore the entire mechanical requirements of this fight now) then that mechanic SHOULD matter.
If Akumei’s mechanics are intended that you have to wipe your stacks at ~5 stacks or it’s too much damage to heal through. Requiring balanced and timely tank swaps and appropriate raid ready cleanses. That mechanic should matter. Instead we just plow right through it and ignore it completely because the boss dies far sooner than the dots matter.
Requiring the raid to have a “puzzle” to solve doesn’t inherently make the raid “retail hard” it’s the point of raids. While there is immense gatekeeping in a game like Lost Ark my general understanding is that players “want” to do the raids in Lost Ark because the mechanical puzzles of the bosses are fun to do. Now at points they like retail wow do get “too hard” for the average player in the hardcore variants, but the standard traditional raids I’ve only ever heard even the most casual of players have positive feedback about it being fun to “have to” deal with mechanics in a fight.
FFXIV is another example of this where the mechanics of the fight are arguably more important than the boss’s HP bar moving down as fast as possible. BFD is just a plow forward DPS race. 40min - full out “stand and hit” fest because the gear/runes out pace the Boss’s HP bar and the mechanics are not required to be done to move the boss’s HP bar to 0.
This to me, personally, feels cheap. And unintended, because I am sure someone designed these boss’s and mechanics to “matter” and they just don’t. So I hope in the future they consider making some mechanics “required” to be done so every fight doesn’t continue to be “stand and hit”.
A lot of people seem to want Classic to become Retail. People ask for pretty much everything you can imagine is in Retail to be added to Classic.
BFD is the first “raid” and it’s a 10-man instance at level 25 that resets every 3 days. There are some groups that are struggling to clear it. Enough that there are also posts asking for it to be nerfed even further.
Anyway, personally I’m having fun with SoD for what it is. While some people enjoy raid logging as their way to play the game, to me raiding is a side-show in Classic anyway, and it being a main (or the main) event is much more of a “Retail” thing, where in this case Retail means TBC and beyond.
If you’re saying you’ve never had to cleanse stacks on Aku’mai, even the first time ever you fought the boss with no raid gear, I think that is likely a unique experience. I imagine most raids need to do a few cleanses throughout the fight.
I don’t think it would be unfair for there to be a line somewhere in the middle between brain dead raid clears and pre-nerf Kelris for these ten man raids.
Correct, we’ve never cleansed in any of our raids. First attempt we just plowed through the boss. Second attempt we resolved that Paladin’s can just wipe the stacks in phase 2 and MT it without dot threat damage. It’s completely ignorable.
You can also cheese the stacks with hunter pets as well. But I don’t really believe the poster above that they figured out how to do the no cleanse stuff on their first run through on their own. Maybe if they saw someone else’s breakdown of it, but why would someone going in blind NOT try to clear the stacks.
In original classic mechanics mattered and people wiped all the time. Mechanics don’t matter now because everyone is much better players and min/max a lot.
Classic was never about the game being easy until it’s reintroduction in 2019.
