Another SM nerf post, but I am going to propose the solution that I would recommend to the Devs. There are a LOT of issues surrounding this raid involving the difficulty in a 20-man team. NOT 21, NOT 25, 20 is the issue. With 30 the raid feels balanced in a normal raiding team. So let’s get with the changes:
Add an ICC buff that increases the damage of your team by 30-45% per player. But, as a penalty for choosing this difficulty you get the normal scarlet loot table, minus both mounts that can drop from Beatrix & Caldoran.
You can get this “difficulty mode” by talking to an NPC in the beginning that can be changed at any point in the raid before a boss. However if you choose to not have this buff activated, you get the chances at both new mounts in the raid, plus another tier piece off of each boss. If you beat every boss on this difficulty, a chest appears after Caldoran that has 3-5 additional random non-tier items and 2 additional lightforged ingots (to incentivize running the full raid on hard-mode).
This satisfies both parties. If you don’t like the difficulty of the normal level, or just feel your raid needs to gear-up more before trying normal (hard for 20) mode, or just some bosses are easier than others, choose your difficulty, but know the amount of loot you get will be at the normal, slow rate we currently have. However if you are part of the elite that can clear this raid with 20 people on the hardest difficulty you will be rewarded with the ability to truly be BiS at a relatively good rate, and have the epic new mounts out of the raid.
I do NOT want to hear the raid should be left the same (and “get good” mentality) because it obviously shouldn’t. But what I do want to hear is what tweaks to this there should be? Any more reason on running it on 1 difficulty vs. another? Should there be more penalties/benefits to running it on specific modes?
For whatever reason, blizzard decided to PTR scarlet enclave live instead of an actual PTR. I agree that the raid is currently balanced around 30 players~ Its a shame they couldn’t follow the BWL/AQ/Naxx trend with activated hard modes. I thoroughly enjoyed being able to create PuG runs on an easier level and then a harder setting with my main raid team. Anything they propose is going to upset someone at this point. To them it’ll be a lesson learned for future content
It’s fine the way it is. It’s not that hard. It takes a bit of progression for 2-4 weeks then you’re clearing in a night, just as it should be for the penultimate raid of the season.
For 30 players, yes. This raid is still very difficult for the intended size that we’ve run for the rest of the game. Getting more SE gear should not make the new raid doable; getting the new gear should make the new raid more of a cakewalk. I just want to hop on and chill for 3 hours with my guildies, get a full clear, then log off for the rest of the week. Having to stress every week and raid 6 hours is so over the top.
I think everyone should have to post their logs to have opinions on scaling/raid. So we don’t have to listen to “it’s too easy” or “it’s too hard” from groups of wildly unrepresentative raids.
The hard mode toggle does seem to fit well for the SoD audience. Naxx in particular it worked well. Its the “we got 30 minutes left lets just finish the raid” button.
I can’t tell if you’re asking this of me or of the people who are advocating this raid is too easy, but feel free to look on WCL for “Gone to Ship”. That’ll be our logs, we have gone 7/8 in SE, but in order to do so we were forced to go 30-man so we could get there.
both the raids ive been in have at least 7/8 this past week and one of them was 8/8 . thats with carrying my old butt and a mix of blues- purps and 25-27 man.
i feel like everything other than the last boss is doable by 30 people on avg parses and it might not be too long till they end up tuning the last one to be a bit more possible for that group setup.
seriously though its quite a bit better than it was the first 2 weeks and a good bit better than the 3rd.
they are slow rolling it and i would imagine it will be maybe 2 weeks till they touch up the last one.
Oh I 100% agree with you, whether I complete this raid or not I’m actually uncertain. After realizing what this phase was we have a kill-date on May 22nd. After that some of us are leaving, some are staying. It being tuned for 30-man is the problem. This wasn’t what Blizzard communicated to us for the last 4 phases (& at least a year minimum). I don’t want to sweat my nuts off every week to this raid, to be honest it’s stressful progressing on a boss for hours on end. I feel this is the current case with Caldoran. But I would much rather see this raid more tuned for the traditional 20-man.
If we don’t clear though, I can’t just say we suck oh well. My anger is pointed at Blizzard and their tuning this phase. It doesn’t really feel like we’ve been progging at all, it’s more like Blizzard keeps opening the gates further for 30-man to clear it. It’s not fun.
While I agree that the first 7 are better now, Caldorans execution sentence is horrendous to deal with as horde compared to alliance, all alliance do is have a paladin sac the tank & bubble themselves, horde has to taunt swap or the tank gets globalled in 0.0s and the tank that taunts is getting smoked in the back by ravagers.
Nah, not directed at anyone specific lol. I think there are a fair amount of people that call things easy…and then bring 25-40 and spend 4-5+ hours in the raid regularly. I also suspect some “it’s too hard” people are not putting their best foot forward.
You shouldn’t have to bring 3 extra. It’s not a fixation, either. Raids in WoW for 20-years have been tuned very carefully for 10/20/25/40 group sizes. 25-man mode dropped more loot than 10-man.
This arbitrary “bring more players” notion is a bandaid fix to lazy tuning. It only incentivizes your core raid team to get screwed on their gear progression.
But this shouldn’t NEED to be the mentality for a guild. Like we do usually bring more than 20 not because we must have those extra 3, it’s so they don’t get benched. We are at the point now where we are having to pug 33% of our roster.
Admittidly we do have some dumpers in terms of dps. We do not have anywhere near the best players, but at the same time it was enough to do 20-man, MC, BWL, AQ, Naxx HM4 KT (took a while on him specifically), but now it’s practically impossible for SE.
I know, right? crazy. I have him on ignore anyways so I don’t see his chatGPT crap anymore.
Guild did a small progression run tonight on Caldaron. Im a bear tank. Can someone explain to me how 22k execution into an immediate 4k melee is supposed to be tuned for a 20 man? I had pain supp and i had survival up, i lived the 22k but died immediately after it. Why is it that certain tanks cant tank caldaron? I was told only rogues and shamans can tank him. I have 4 pc btw. We ended up not killing him.