I like that there have been concern about it and changes as it definitely was one of the less liked system but I feel at the same time the changes do impact negatively the content more when done this way. Being able to easily get 6 ilvl as a raid has a big impact on content, you were never really meant to be full thunderforged/warforged. I think people have some expectation toward content being decently difficulty and nerfing that way, as big, feels like a negative to me.
And while current solution do fix the rng problem thunderforging had it definitely won’t be as fun or exciting to get one and to some point that was pretty much the core concept of the thunderforged/warforged and even titanforged era to have those moments that you feel like you won (which became a bigger negative under titanforging when those upgrades would became bigger than the difference between 2 difficulty and became more like jackpots than reasonable wins). But no to its core to me those changes to thunderforging isn’t thunderforging anymore but that’s also fine and even good.
Maybe having another currency system closer to dinars would make more sense, something that is still gated in a certain amount so not as powerful and encourage you to clear content many more times as this was also the goal of those type of rng systems, to make people play longer. Something like having a currency that drops from certain bosses (without rng and even on normal or heroic) and you’d need a certain amount to get a thunderforged item seems more reasonable and not as powerful if done well. Another idea would be also to limit it to +3 instead of +6 reducing at least by half the max potential if we can upgrade everything as freely.
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the entire thing was bad, you shouldn’t feel bad because you got a heroic item that wasnt thunderforged. they can leave it as it is or remove the entire system of thunderforging. it was never exciting to see a thunderforged item drop unless you had your hand in the cookie jar and just took the items for yourself. using bonus rolls on a boss that I already had the heroic item from just to pray for a thunderforged item each week only to be disappointed with the 6th trinket that didnt thunderforge. just a bad system overall and it got worse with titanforging
10 years ago the top guilds did splits and every single player in there was fully TF and warforged, also it wasn’t hard when the patch lasted more weeks unlike what we have in classic.
so i believe this change in classic was done because phases isn’t that long and also because blizzard doesn’t want everyone to pressure themselves and we saw that in wrath classic with the new glyphs and in many cases. whole classic project is not about the challenge since this is just a decade old game and that is why we always got stronger classees with last patch notes and easier methods to obtain gear…hello alpha/beta/gamma/new vendors and celestials so raids in classic was meant to be easier to progress and in the end it’s just to have nostalgia and fun.
therefor this new TF change is really just the same as every change that happened, it’s for over all better game play and tbh it’s good that blizzard eliminating the rng and luck part.
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Completely agree with you here. This change also devalues Raden as a boss. There is literally no reason to do Raden as of this change.
A very easy solution would be - remove item upgrading and (random) thunderforging altogether. Only raden drops specific thunderforged items, would be similar to Elite gear in T14. Follow the path that 5.3/phase 4/whatever adds item upgrading. Makes the raid also a bit more juicy from a difficulty perspective as we are already in 5.4.8 balancing + custom buffs to specs.
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I’m not expecting challenge to be close to mythic raiding on retail but I think many players expect heroic to feel difficult enough to feel a bit challenging the same way that people had expectations in ICC or Ulduar for some bosses to be difficult. Classic will definitely keep getting harder and there are 2 difficulties for people that want an easier or harder challenge.
As far as H+ dungeons go their power is still much smaller when we’re talking about LFR gear or previous raid gear. This is more adding catching up and maybe letting you get your tier set a bit sooner. Same as some classes might be stronger but generally that’s more a buff to groups that wouldn’t class stack, for people that would the change isn’t as big. The change to healers tho is generally seen as something that has made it a bit harder as the best healers were really much stronger and could be stacked.
I don’t disagree with trying to eliminate some of the rng but doing splits and managing by the end of the tier to be maybe fully thunderforged (as there is still high chance to be missing some pieces) isn’t the same as being able to upgrade any items to that level during the tier as soon as you drop it, if anything this would most likely affect the next tier more (which then isn’t as huge of a power gain when next tier gear will still be generally much stronger so this mostly matter for guilds that will race). To note this doesn’t eliminate fully rng/luck as you still have to drop the gear and it is still much possible to simply not drop a piece you want for the whole tier but yes it still make it more reasonable and I don’t disagree with trying to remove the rng from thunderforging.
Normal which is what people consider the easy version
and Heroic which is slightly harder than normal
Later in mop with SoO raid we will have Mythic
Note that what makes encounter hard is not just boss’s Higher HP or damage or a new 1~2ability’s, The Encounters feels hard because players need to practice it, it’s always about the mechanics and how the players going to react toward it which is all about knowledge & practice.
Ulduar in classic was not a challenge at all as what people thought it would be because of 2 obvious reasons:
1st “most wow players in 2008~2009 was seeing the raid for the first try and feeling the challenge by trying to figure out how to handle it “mechanics wise, setup wise” but now after 14years almost everyone who play classic knew the encounters and knew what raid setup’s to bring.
2nd classic expansions being released with latest patch notes, which means revamped classes to last patch note with improvements that didn’t exist in early tiers/phases, buffed items dropping from 5man heroics which didn’t exist until later, raids come with the changes/nerfs and even though when blizzard claimed that some boss’s came with post nerf it was obvious that those raids had many changes and funny classic people call it fixes.
Speaking about icc(Only prof/lk) was tough because of the mechanics, and then cata 1st tier was destroyed with same reasons classic always does “game released with last patch note” 2nd tier was somehow same reasons and and as for DragonSoul that raid was never tough except for last boss. “even people in 2012 did 1shot 4~5boss’s on their first try during day1 of that raid.”
And now for classic Mop things is much easier because it’s classic with the reasons i said above yet we even have buffed classic which never happened in original.
In the End classic players are blinded to one fact “those you call top guilds that race through the raid once it’s released been already practicing the raid in a made up personal private server weeks before the raid gets released officially in classic” in there they clear the raid multi times under different conditions and setups to find out the best options to 1shot all boss’s faster than never.
There is no challenge or world race in classic! it’s an illusion most players created in their minds to keep playing with thrill, and what is funny about this all, is that even with the easier game we have here now after buffed classes & buffed gear and nerfed bosses! most players/guilds will still struggle hard in throne of thunder.
There is no “hard or easy” in wow! it’s just prospective based on Experience
That’s whataboutism to say there is no difficulty and it can only be subjective. It’s not because we know which comp are better that everyone wants to play that meta. And while yes having more information to help that doesn’t mean there can be a quantifiable difficulty to content and that people doing that content want it to be easier than needed.
Being able to bring more dps and having more hp are definitely big factors to beating a fight, if you’d start the raid fully geared it would go much faster as it would become much easier. The first big thing is that killing a boss faster means you have to do less mechanics, the second thing with more hp some mechanics that would require you to play your personal/group defensive cooldowns well doesn’t matter as much.
People one shot bosses generally because they have done their prog elsewhere, if you could test all the mythic bosses as long as you’d want (as those top groups aren’t just playing on ptr but using often private servers) the way they would release even on retail the raid would be cleared even faster. And not being the “hardest challenge ever” doesn’t make it not challenging at all even challenge mode that aren’t super hard would still be considered challenging content.
The fact that some guilds struggle should be proof enough that content can be challenging. Is it the most challenging content ever? No.
My only gripe with the thunderforging changes is that it undermines Ra-den as a fight because the loot is no longer “special”. It does still have extra sockets, but I almost think the Ra-den loot needs to be slapped with the Elite suffix and given half a tier of ilvl if thunderforging is going to be made free for everyone.
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a certain boss that some players will consider it super hard meanwhile “there will be other players who smash it believing it is too easy” and vice versa! the boss’s that some guilds smash in mop and think of it as easy! many people are struggling and dying non stop to that boss.
it’s hard to define something that has no scale But it is all about practice!
Method wiped ~500times on Deathwing, no one in classic wiped that much! does that mean classic players are more skilled than method players? Nah not at all, it’s just that method had to try hundreds of time till they figured the right tactic and comps then they had to practice it while classic players play with a walkthrough so they avoided tons of wipes to get the knowledge and just doing the practice part. “as for top guilds in classic, they also cut the practice part as wekk because they had practiced that encounters tons of times before it officially gets released on classic servers” Meanwhile the people that was trying classic raids for first time…failed to ever kill that boss! Same now for anniversary it’s a 3rd re-re-release after 25years old! some people clearing naxx in day 1 under 2hours while many guilds haven’t even cleared the raid yet because they are progressing the raid as if it’s new! to those people the raid feels so hard but to those who clear it under 2hours the raid feels too easy.
that is why i said the “hard or easy” is just subjective, but for the challenge part…
I have to agree with you that with More gear power the encounters will be shorter leading to “skipping mechanic or at least not facing it a lot” and this is the main issue that made classic easier is that every single expansion we had…we had more dps/heal in early phases due “game being released with last patch revamps to players & gear! so mop now getting granted 6x high item level is not that big deal compared to the general issue of the whole classic giving people more powers in early phases than it was on original, some people will always face-roll the new mop raids and others will struggle hard and find it challenging to out come.
Ofc anything can be challenging…i find it challenging that this week i cleared swp under 14min, while my last week swp run took 17min on this lvl 90 rogue 
People can make a challenge out of everything and this is why speed kills and parsing exist, but i was talking about the type of challenge that you have to beat the unknown instead of playing a 10years old expansion and worrying about if clears will be easily done or not because blizzard buffed items level while we already have buffed class’s anyway! but most guilds that struggle is because the hardest challenge in wow for most guilds is to find active players who show for every raid and doesn’t quit wow during progress ><
Anyway i’m not arguing with you :> i was just trying to imply my point which is “classic is just a game for nostalgia and fun, those who seek challenge can easily make the game challenging for themselves, they can create what so ever conditions for that But sadly most people do not want a challenge that is why they buy boosts go in gdkps to buy gear Or even “as guild run the meta classes just to smash the encounters”
But we have an average and there are bosses that are definitely harder than the rest, yes there is a variance but having a variance doesn’t change that a boss is difficult. Moreover needing more practice for a boss than another is generally a sign that it is more difficult. It’s not really that complicated. Generally if we see that a raid has a smaller clear rates (people that do easiest boss vs hardest boss) then it is generally more difficult for example.
I’ve already addressed the classes argument moreover the healing part being actually harder or the H+ situation with non-bis and far from being that op items and I don’t consider them to be as harmful as simply raising the ilvl cap that easily.
While you might not want to argue this is definitely some very circular logic to me when you refuse to consider my points. I don’t think there’s also just one way to enjoy classic, moreover personally I wouldn’t want to play vanilla for example but when you play mop just the class design is a lot more interesting. Wanting some content to be decently difficult not overwhelmingly is fine and not everyone do gkdps or buy gear if anything that’s probably the minority that do this and that do ptr/etc or even just run a full meta comp.
It’s not because something is also old that it can’t be challenging, plenty of old games can be even more challenging as some older games were rather punishing. And I’m not talking about some of the easier raids, ToT should definitely be a step over like was the Lich King or Ragnaros in Firelands. It’s not because some can do a mario 64 speedrun in less than 2 hours even if it’s an old game that it is not challenging.
But since all dps classes can do more dps, the raid can add extra 1healer for 10man 2~3 for 25man anyway and then healing won’t be an issue. “ofc people doesn’t do this because they want to smash the encounter faster”
i’m very aware of the gear power, my 25man guild in cata hc DS did run 5healers for progress and on farm we was running just 2healers only, now in mop the gear power scale is huge, more difference in power than any other expansion
but we’re speaking about “buffed classis before raid” vs “items that will drop in raid can be upgraded for more 6x item level” the buffed classes effect the whole progress for both top guilds that will 1shot everything day1 and normal players that will clear the raid later in weeks, Unlike the items that will drop and can be upgraded…Non of the top guilds will be effected by that and normal guilds are still facing variety of RNG such as same items keep dropping and getting disenchanted or items dropped for certain classes never others…etc
it’s all is rng and blizzard just eliminated part of rng when they allowed all items to be at the level of thunder forged.
i love the part where blizzard mentioned “Decrease frustrations” i still do remember my frustration when i was disenchanting warforged items while most of the raid still missing half the gear.
i do consider your points and i agree that this change will make progressing tot for most people will easier When it’s already easier than original tot but the whole rng part about loot is just a bothersome element and trying to control it to a degree is somehow easing the mind of players.
will SoO progress be effected by this change? ofc it well but not a big deal since SoO item level is on a whole another level and some boss’s in there is free loot anyway.