They have entirely seperate team for SoD. Classic and Retail teams have almost no cross over. What are you even whining about lol
1 Like
What happened to progression raiding in classic.
1 Like
Totally fine with progression raiding but each raid size should have similar progression curves.
Why the bananas they didn’t scale the raid difficulty with number of players so the experience for all was fairly equalized (like retail) is just…bananas.
The dps for 20-man groups was far too tight. You keep bringing 40 people and forgetting that Blizzard said this is a 20-man raid.
1 Like
4 weeks one piece of loot total.
loot for 5/8 20 mans feels very tight and im one of the lucky ones. could definitely throw a chalice onto dragon or earlier bosses for morale.
My guild and I beat Caldoran last week… it was absolutely the most challenging fight ive had in wow in a couple of years. We beat our faces into that wall for weeks and hours and hours each time.
It needs a nerf. The first phase and phase 2 are crazy difficult for most guilds even when 100% locked in and on their game. The later phases are a cake walk in comparison. All yall gotta do is nerf his damage by about 5%, and his health by about 10%. Then nerf the Ashbringer phase damage by about 5% as well.
If you dont plan to nerf that fight so that everyone can get to the end of it… then gear needs to drop a little more often. Add some more chalices… or put some set bonuses on that crafted scarlet gear to help folks stand a chance.
2 Likes
This is a great change.
But we still need more loot drops. And a couple bosses like Solistrasza and Council still need nerfs. Solistrasza is way too hectic.
1 Like
Wait what?
Increasing loot drops isn’t the right solution—it risks trivializing progression and reducing long-term engagement. Classic WoW has always been designed around gradual gearing, ensuring that loot scarcity drives continued participation and strategic planning. If loot were handed out more generously, it would diminish the significance of gearing decisions and make progression feel more like a checklist rather than an earned achievement.
As for boss nerfs, difficulty is part of the challenge that makes raiding rewarding. Solistrasza being hectic doesn’t mean it’s unfair—it means it requires strong execution, coordination, and adaptation. If every tough encounter were nerfed just because groups struggle, it would undermine the sense of accomplishment that comes from overcoming difficult mechanics.
Instead of demanding easier loot and nerfs, the focus should be on refining strategies, improving teamwork, and adapting to the challenges as intended. Classic WoW isn’t about instant gratification—it’s about earning success through perseverance.
Dude, go away with your AI responses with the overused bolded sentences.
4 Likes
Increasing loot drops strategically isn’t about trivializing progression—it’s about preserving it. In a limited-time seasonal environment like SoD, where raid tiers don’t last a year, the old model of ultra-gradual gearing doesn’t hold up. Loot scarcity isn’t driving participation anymore—it’s driving attrition. If people stop showing up because they’re weeks deep into progression with nothing to show for it, there is no raid to plan around.
“If loot were handed out more generously, it would diminish the significance of gearing decisions…”
No one is asking for free loot showers. A few additional chalices early on don’t erase gearing decisions—they help stabilize raid comps and give underrepresented specs a chance to shine. That’s strategic engagement, not checklist gameplay.
“Difficulty is part of the challenge that makes raiding rewarding.”
Agreed. But difficulty needs to be reasonable. There’s a difference between challenging and overtuned.
“If every tough encounter were nerfed just because groups struggle…”
The argument isn’t to nerf everything—it’s to fine-tune bottlenecks that disproportionately gate progress and create burnout. When bosses feel less like puzzles and more like brick walls, it doesn’t inspire perseverance—it inspires players to quit or reroll.
“Classic WoW isn’t about instant gratification…”
True—but it’s also not about letting entire raid groups stagnate while trying to “earn” a single tier piece over weeks. The most successful Classic experiences reward effort, not just outcomes. More reasonable loot pacing and balanced encounters encourage teams to keep going—and that’s what sustains raiding long-term.
This isn’t about making things easier—it’s about making them sustainable. SoD’s longevity depends on players staying engaged. A few well-placed loot tweaks and sensible tuning help more people reach the end—and that’s what gives the raid meaning.
Not really.
It is driving participation.
We are in the 4th reset and I already see some players engaging in the type of behavior that signals that they’ve “been there done that” and are ready to quit the game because they’ve seen and got it all. Clumps of bis or near-BIS Ret Paladins just standing around in Stormwind with their Ashbringers.
Imagine if the gear was acquired even faster. SoD would be dead by the end of next month. Yes it’s a seasonal server, but ideally this patch would last 4+ months, not kill the game after 2.
Show some data that says the fights are overtuned. Hint: they’re not. Every time people try to defend this overtuned comment, people link week 1 data. Newsflash we’re not still in week 1.
1 Like
3 NA horde guilds have cleared this raid at the intended difficulty
1 Like
Do you not see how your failed attempts to justify increased loot drops under the guise of sustainability, but it fundamentally contradicts itself and misrepresents raid progression. Let’s break it down:
- Loot scarcity drives engagement, not attrition.
- You claim players quit due to loot scarcity, yet increasing loot flow only shortens engagement, making progression too fast and reducing the need to keep raiding.
- If loot flows too quickly, your raid loses its long-term incentive, leading to burnout rather than sustainability.
- More chalices would absolutely diminish gearing decisions.
- You say “no one is asking for free loot showers,” yet pushing for extra chalices massively inflates tier acquisition, speeding up gearing and removing meaningful loot decisions.
- Early chalices don’t just stabilize your raid comp—they trivialize progression, turning earned rewards into guaranteed tier handouts.
- Difficulty should be challenging, not nerfed for convenience.
- Your distinction between “challenging” and “overtuned” is subjective—if every tough encounter is nerfed simply because your group struggles, difficulty loses its meaning.
- Raids are supposed to push teams to adapt, not be adjusted just because you find them too hard.
- Nerfing bottlenecks undermines the sense of accomplishment.
- Tough bosses create memorable raid moments—not everything needs to be tuned down for easy access.
- If your raid quits because a boss is difficult, the solution is refining strategies, not altering mechanics to remove the challenge.
- Classic WoW thrives on effort over instant gratification.
- You argue that “the best Classic experiences reward effort,” yet advocating for faster loot acquisition contradicts itself.
- Earned progression is what keeps your group engaged—extra loot shortcuts risk making the raid feel transactional rather than rewarding.
- More loot doesn’t ensure sustainability—it shortens engagement.
- Your final claim that loot tweaks ensure longevity is flawed—speeding up gearing only accelerates content consumption, leading to your raid disengaging sooner.
- If SoD is the final raid phase, rushing progression through extra loot would just end the content faster.
Extra chalices would flood raids with tier, trivializing later bosses and breaking progression balance. Loot scarcity drives engagement—front-loading rewards shortens the raid’s lifespan and diminishes the challenge. Classic WoW thrives on earned progression, not instant gratification. If you want the raid to last, you need to preserve its difficulty and pacing, not undermine it for convenience.
This isn’t about sustainability—it’s about preserving the challenge that makes Classic WoW rewarding. Your approach would speed up burnout, not engagement.
Loot scarcity drives engagement, not attrition.
Loot scarcity used to drive engagement—when raids lasted over a year and rosters were huge. In a 20-man seasonal raid with finite time and experimental specs, extreme scarcity leads to roster instability and burnout, not long-term dedication. Players don’t quit because loot is abundant—they quit when weeks of effort produce no progress. Scarcity without forward momentum isn’t engaging—it’s demoralizing.
If loot flows too quickly, your raid loses its long-term incentive.
One or two chalices on early bosses does not cause loot to “flow.” It creates a floor, not a ceiling. It ensures underperforming or less meta specs can contribute and aren’t benched for being two patches behind on tier. Players still have to kill bosses to get loot. You’re not speeding up the whole gear curve—you’re smoothing the first few steps so teams don’t collapse before they get going.
More chalices would absolutely diminish gearing decisions.
No, they would enable gearing decisions. Right now, progression is often determined by who gets lucky with tier tokens, not who’s playing well or building smart comps. A few extra tier pieces earlier on allows for strategic flexibilityand reduces burnout caused by bad RNG. That enhances meaningful gearing decisions instead of reducing them to dice rolls.
Early chalices don’t just stabilize your raid comp—they trivialize progression.
Progression isn’t trivialized by gear—it’s trivialized when players outlevel content by phase timing, or when you can’t field a comp because people quit. Early chalices are a small lever to keep people involved. They make the start of the raid accessible, not the whole raid trivial. If anything, they make it possible for more groups to reach and meaningfully attempt the final bosses.
Difficulty should be challenging, not nerfed for convenience.
Absolutely. But challenge has to be tuned for 20-man, not recycled from 40-man logic. There’s a difference between meaningful challenge and punishing bottlenecks tuned for world-first comps. Calling any tuning “convenience” dismisses the need to balance content for the actual player base, not just the top 5% of raiders.
Your distinction between “challenging” and “overtuned” is subjective.
So is any tuning decision. But when a wide swath of stable raid teams stalls on the same boss—not due to mechanics but due to healing throughput or specific comp demands—it’s a design issue, not a skill issue. Adjustment isn’t about nerfing everything hard; it’s about identifying friction points that threaten participation. A boss that wipes 70% of groups for three weeks straight isn’t a test of perseverance—it’s poor tuning for a seasonal format.
Tough bosses create memorable raid moments.
Agreed. But doable tough bosses do that—not ones that block 90% of teams from seeing the second half of the instance. You don’t get great memories from the boss you never got to kill. You get them from overcoming something that felt barely possible. Early chalices and light tuning aren’t about removing difficulty—they’re about letting teams get far enough to face it.
Classic WoW thrives on effort over instant gratification.
Exactly—and it still would. Nobody is asking for instant gratification. A single chalice per early boss isn’t instant loot—it’s a reward for coordinated clears that still require planning and execution. There is zero suggestion of removing challenge—just supporting teams who show up every week and make slow progress. That is effort by any Classic standard.
Earned progression keeps your group engaged—extra loot shortcuts risk making the raid feel transactional.
What kills engagement faster: a few early loot drops, or spending 3 weeks wiping with no tier, watching your priest quit because they haven’t seen a single upgrade? Engagement isn’t maintained by theoretical purity—it’s built on morale and momentum. Chalices are not shortcuts. They’re footholds. You still have to climb the mountain.
More loot doesn’t ensure sustainability—it shortens engagement.
That’s only true in a permanent raid cycle. In a seasonal raid, with known limited lifespan, more loot extendssustainability by keeping people present. Teams don’t disengage because they finish gearing—they disengage because they can’t gear at all. Loot pacing should reflect the window you have to enjoy the content—not the nostalgia of multi-year Vanilla cycles.
If SoD is the final raid phase, rushing progression through extra loot would just end the content faster.
The opposite is happening. Lack of early loot is ending progression before it starts. Extra chalices don’t rush content—they ensure teams can get deep enough into the raid to see, attempt, and eventually beat the final encounters. Right now, some groups won’t even make it halfway through before burning out.
Extra chalices would flood raids with tier, trivializing later bosses…
This is hyperbole. Two early chalices across six bosses in a 20-man does not “flood” anything. That’s 2–4 extra tier pieces per entire raid week. Later bosses still drop the bulk of tier and will still be required to complete sets and chase BiS. This doesn’t trivialize—it incentivizes reaching those bosses.
Classic WoW thrives on earned progression, not instant gratification.
Agreed. And in SoD’s seasonal context, earned progression doesn’t mean holding back loot to the point of collapse. It means supporting player momentum just enough to keep them striving. Chalices on early bosses are not handouts—they’re earned loot that rewards consistency, not shortcuts.
Conclusion:
You’re arguing for integrity, but integrity without adaptability is how systems die. The Scarlet Enclave is a seasonal, 20-man, time-limited raid. Adding a couple chalices doesn’t betray Classic—it rescues it from attrition. Players don’t need freebies—they need reasons to keep coming back. Early chalices give them just enough to believe it’s worth showing up next week.
There are only 43 NA Horde guilds who raid 20 man it looks like. Starting from that point, 25 of those guilds have killed Beastmaster (more than half / the dad gamer is at least up to Council). 11 guilds have killed Voss (so around half of the guilds who reached Council broke through already). 3 have killed Caldoran. The average 20-man NA Horde guild is more than half-way through and 25% of them are on the final boss on the 4th reset.
That sounds completely normal to me. 20-man is harder than >20 format so you’re going to less slightly slower progression than intended, and it should probably take dads about 8 weeks to clear the raid in total, as that’s about how long it took dads to clear HM4 Naxx. SE may actually be slightly too easy compared to that benchmark target, especially with the latest nerf, we’ll see what happens.
Aggrend says he’s happy with the data and right now everything at this time seems to be lining up in the ballpark. I think the enrage timer changes are heavy-handed and may encourage bad behavior longer term but in the short-term the raid is playing out as intended.
Not overtuned. Next.
1 Like
You keep contradicting yourself. First, you claim loot scarcity doesn’t drive engagement anymore, yet you argue early chalices are needed to ensure teams don’t quit—which proves scarcity does drive participation by making progression feel rewarding.
Then you claim early chalices won’t speed up gearing, but also argue they help undergeared specs catch up—which means they do accelerate progression and reduce scarcity.
You say early chalices enable gearing decisions, yet push for tier based on attendance rather than loot drops—which undermines the earned progression system Classic is built on.
And finally, you argue loot pacing should reflect SoD’s seasonal format, yet want increased loot drops to avoid burnout—ignoring the fact that faster gearing shortens the raid’s lifespan, not extends it.
If you actually want sustainability, earned progression must remain intact, not be artificially accelerated for convenience.
That’s a solid breakdown, and the progression data does seem to support the idea that the raid is playing out as expected. The pacing for a 20-man format was always going to be different, and the fact that most guilds are progressing steadily shows that the tuning isn’t unreasonable.
I agree that the enrage timer changes might have unintended consequences in the long run, but right now, the numbers indicate that the challenge level is falling within the expected range. It’s good to see that Aggrend and the team are actively monitoring things, which means adjustments can still happen if needed.
Overall, it seems like the difficulty is properly balanced—challenging but not insurmountable. If things continue trending this way, the raid should hold up well for its intended duration.
“You keep contradicting yourself. First, you claim loot scarcity doesn’t drive engagement anymore, yet you argue early chalices are needed to ensure teams don’t quit—which proves scarcity does drive participation…”
Scarcity used to drive long-term engagement when content was permanent. In Season of Discovery’s limited-time format, scarcity without reward kills motivation. Early chalices don’t eliminate scarcity—they give just enough return to keep people engaged. If teams are quitting before reaching midpoint bosses, that’s not scarcity driving engagement—it’s scarcity causing attrition. Morale needs some payoff to sustain perseverance.
“Then you claim early chalices won’t speed up gearing, but also argue they help undergeared specs catch up…”
There’s no contradiction here. Helping one or two specs catch up through 1–2 additional pieces of loot per week across a raid of 20 is not “speeding up gearing.” It’s leveling a wildly uneven playing field created by RNG and comp stacking. Chalices don’t hand out full sets—they smooth gearing variance, allowing more classes to contribute meaningfully earlier.
“You say early chalices enable gearing decisions, yet push for tier based on attendance rather than loot drops—which undermines the earned progression system Classic is built on.”
Attendance-based rewards are earned progression. Showing up weekly, wiping, learning, and clearing early bosses is the backbone of Classic raiding. When that effort yields nothing due to bad RNG, progression feels unearned, not the other way around. Early chalices don’t give free wins—they reward team effort and consistency, which aligns perfectly with Classic’s original ethos.
“You argue loot pacing should reflect SoD’s seasonal format, yet want increased loot drops to avoid burnout—ignoring the fact that faster gearing shortens the raid’s lifespan…”
No, it’s the opposite. Slower gearing in a seasonal format shortens the lifespan by driving players away before they get invested. A slight increase in early loot extends the raid’s viability by helping teams reach later content—content that otherwise goes unseen by the majority. Gearing faster doesn’t mean quitting sooner if the raid remains challenging and enjoyable throughout.
“If you actually want sustainability, earned progression must remain intact, not be artificially accelerated for convenience.”
Agreed. And it does remain intact. A couple of early chalices don’t break earned progression—they preserve it by keeping your raid roster together long enough to see it through. This isn’t about convenience—it’s about viability. If you lose your raid team to burnout or demoralization in week three, no one gets to earn anything.
Only 9 of 43 horde NA guilds have progressed through council in the more hardcore 20 man bracket. That’s pretty low.
Sort of an accounting gimmick it looks like. Two of those eleven guilds look like they added extra players in order to push past the fight, scoop loot, and then drop back down to start putting pulls into Caldoran. There are eleven 20-man guilds putting pulls on Caldoran not 9.