The Queue: Wrath's current raids and their difficulty
by Alex Ziebart 
Nov 18th 2008 at 11:00AM
Today's edition of The Queue is a little raid-centric with a heavy splash of opinion, just as a warning, starting with kevin's question...
There are currently only four raids in Wrath: Vault of Archavon, Naxx, The Obsidian Sanctum, and The Eye of Eternity. Later on Icecrown Citadel. Is that all? What other raids are to be include into Wrath?
Blizzard has laid out the basic framework of their next few content patches for us, so we know a little bit. Patch 3.1 will bring us Ulduar, a raid in Storm Peaks using the Titan motif. Patch 3.2 will contain a new raid instance, but Blizzard hasn't announced what it is. My money is this raid will take place beneath Azjol-Nerub/Ahn'kahet and focus on Yogg-Saron and the Faceless Ones. Patch 3.4 will, most likely, contain the Icecrown raid, and that will have brought us full circle on Wrath of the Lich King and prepare us for the next expansion. Sunwell Plateau was in 2.4, so it makes sense.
RMCEACHI said...
What's going on with Shadowmeld? Is it broken?
I have no idea what you mean, you're going to have to be a little more specific. Every Night Elf I asked about a Shadowmeld bug didn't know of one, and are really excited about the ability. A racial Vanish when you're out questing is pretty freaking awesome.
Omnishinzui said...
People have been saying Naxx is easier then Kara when it first came out. Can you or someone compare the two? Is it easy as kara after the 3.0.2 hit or is it just not like what Zul'aman was where you had to wipe about 10x before getting the entire raid to understand how to survive a boss fight (pre-3.0.2 patch)?
The best comparison I can come up with is that 10-man Naxxramas is a lot less like Karazhan and a lot more like UBRS, if you're old school enough to remember that place. It's not really a raid so much as a 10-man dungeon, if that makes any sense at all. The bosses have their gimmicks, but you hardly need finesse or team coordination to pull them off. You can blunder through it with a PUG, and you don't need to really gear for it at all. Are you level 80? You can kill Kel'thuzad with 9 level 80 friends.
I really think they're all a little too easy. I completely agree that the intro raids in The Burning Crusade were too hard in the beginning, but they swung around to the other extreme. That's not much better. If you could still zone into raid instances before top level like you used to be able to do, I have no doubt level 78s would be clearing the places. The Obsidian Sanctum is the first raid that will pose any challenge, and that will be with 3 drakes up, the 'hard mode' of the raid.
This is all made worse by the fact that... if you were a high-end raider before, you're probably really good at learning/following strategies and adapting to things going to hell. Raiding does hone your PvE skill, whether people like to admit it or not. If you're going from something like Black Temple or Sunwell... or even Tempest Keep and Serpentshrine, going into Naxxramas is a massive step backwards in difficulty. That's how it should be for new players, but it's jarring for everyone else. The new Naxxramas is perfect for people who have absolutely never stepped into a raid before in their entire lives, but I'm willing to bet that most people who plan to do Naxxramas have done at least a little raiding in The Burning Crusade and this content will be rendered trivial. A little challenge would have been nice. I don't think anybody expected it to be a step up from Sunwell Plateau, but we also didn't expect the new raids to be done in PUGs with greens. That's too much.
Players are going to run out of raid/dungeon content really, really fast early on, especially those people that play specifically for that. Patch 3.1 is going to need to arrive fairly quickly, and I hope Ulduar is more of a challenge.
Patch 3.1 brings us Ulduar, dual specs, significant changes to all the classes, and more! We've got you covered from top to bottom with our Guide to Patch 3.1.Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Raiding, Wrath of the Lich King, The Queue
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 8)
aurorallew Nov 18th 2008 11:09AM
Heaven forfend. Blizzard actually tuned content so that most players will get to experience it.
Malyfactian Nov 18th 2008 11:16AM
I thought this was the entire reason for Blizz opting to make all raids either 10-man or 25-man. 10-man raids for the casuals, 25-man for the hardcores.
The 25-man raids will no doubt still pose a serious challenge to the "ZOMG Wrath raids are too easy" crowd.
Naix Nov 18th 2008 11:28AM
Indeed.
I am all for Blizzard making Heroic modes for each instance currently out there.
Metal Geario 360 Nov 18th 2008 11:31AM
I agree with Malyfactian
Although in my post below i mention not doing many raids, but im referring to mostly old world.
I find the "ZOMG" crowd wont tell you how many times they're going to*technically wipe*( gotta love soul stones) and will have to reset, to try again. Im not referring to ALL raid groups just the poser's.
This after all, is WoW, and im sure you've been around a big talking tank who cant hold aggro, or another class that thinks "well maybe if we just do this..." we can get it (after wipe number 6 or so). : /
Falcio Nov 18th 2008 11:45AM
Put training wheels on your bike right now. In fact, everyone should.
You certainly don't need them if you know how to ride the bike, but at least everyone can use it, too, right.
I applaud the mentality that everyone should be able to play the game, but you shouldn't punish the guys that want a real challenge beforehand.
Ulduar will hopefully be a very intense raid that will REQUIRE the gear from Naxx, Malygos, and OS to be doable and no T6 gear at all...and an attunement wouldn't be a huge issue, either.
Raiding should be available for all, but that shouldn't mean the guilds that do raids well should be punished with a very easy raid to start with. It's a very hard thing to balance.
SimpleSurvival Nov 18th 2008 11:54AM
I'm all for the content being available to everyone... but there is a point where it should be a challenge...
If the content isn't challenging then its not really worth playing
Now... I'm not riding the egotist elite wagon on this one... I only saw the first pull in BT and we wiped on it... and couldn't make it past the 2nd boss in hyjal post patch.
I want my raiding to be challenging and engaging, not just another timesink
GG bliz on the 10 man raids for everyone, stick with it
25man versions should be harder tho... it didn't even take a full grp of 80s to clear all the 25man content
Malyfactian Nov 18th 2008 12:03PM
"GG bliz on the 10 man raids for everyone, stick with it
25man versions should be harder tho... it didn't even take a full grp of 80s to clear all the 25man content"
This I agree with completely. The 25-mans should pose an appropriate level of challenge, equivalent to prior raiding progressions. If they do not, it's a failure in design that needs to be fixed.
Agelamer Nov 18th 2008 12:20PM
heaven forbid you L2play.
Don't act like BC content was hard. I know a guild that raided for 1-2 days per week and easily cleared BT pre 2.4. It wasn't a huge time commitment, but they did have to know how to spec/gear their toons so they could succeed.
Implying that BC was tuned for hardcore players is a joke. SWP maybe, but everything before it? No.
hold up Nov 18th 2008 12:26PM
I've actually quit playing my main because everything is going to be so easy. Just think about what happened - ALL of the raiding content has been cleared in less than one week. That means that very little of the new Wrath gear is actually required to "beat the game". Theres also a good chance that some of them were still wearing some Sunwell gear. Twentyfivenovember(?) didn't spend weeks gearing up their raid and crawling through progression raids, they walked in, laid the smack down, now they can take 3 weeks off until Season 5 starts.
Blizzard is getting rid of their "hardcore" players in favor of attracting the more casual player. Its a business strategy. Can't blame them. They lose 2% of their players due to easymode content and they add and extra 3 million kids that can finally clear all the content.
I'm not saying I'm going to quit WoW over this, but before Wrath going in Sunwell and downing Kalecgos and Brutallus actually felt like it was a major accomplishment. With the way the raid content is being cleared its just going to feel like - "meh".
Max Nov 18th 2008 1:10PM
Yes, they should be more accessible, but I'd have to say that kara was pretty damn accessible. I didn't have to do much to get going in there.
And the point is you shouldn't be able to walk in with greens as a fresh 80 and clear the place. You should at least have to spend a few weeks getting blues from 80 instances
Ben Nov 18th 2008 1:36PM
@hold up
You also have to realize, 25thnovember spent months in the WotlK beta working and plannning so they could be first to do this stuff. They didnt just wake up at 12:00AM release day and go, hey, lets beat Wotlk and get all the world firsts!
It was ridiculously easy to get into the wotlk beta and they were all in their devising plans to reach the appropriate level and then do those raids they had practiced.
When SWP came out, how long would it have taken to down kil'jaeden if the raid had been accessible right away. It would have probably taken that guild the better part of a week maybe two. Then you also gotta keep in mind they wouldnt have had months to practice the content on beta realms.
Rora Nov 18th 2008 2:02PM
I think some raid content should be accessible to
@hold up
The people who cleared the content were the cream of the crop of min-maxers and experienced raiders. What they didn't tell you was just how long they spent in beta practicing to clear it so fast. They've been through the content multiple times already in beta and honed their strategies. They had Sunwell gear, which wasn't all that short of the gear we're expected to have when we start raids at level 80.
It's not going to be super easy. We'll still have to work on it, like they did in for those months in beta.
Maybe a little of the raiding content is like training wheels, but we had issues in BC with newer players because there were no training wheels. We had UBRS back in vanilla WoW and could run people through there to get them used to being in larger groups, using addons, following a kill call, and general raid protocol, all in an easy and fun environment. I think that we should have at least one easy raid instance for this purpose. There are a lot of people who have never raided who aren't bad players, just new, and it's just not feasible to drop them into the middle of a difficult raid because it hurts the rest of the group. That happened with Karazhan pretty often.
I think that we need to wait for more reports before passing judgment on the content difficulty.
Clbull Nov 29th 2008 5:25PM
@ hold up
Of course its not going to be a massive challenge. These are Wrath starter raids (Tier 7 content) and are suitable for when you hit 80 and get a little bit of gear.
These top raiders are complaining that content is too easy in Wrath, but bear in mind there are other raids which would be much harder coming up, like Ulduar and Icecrown Citadel.
I'll admit, the content was okay in TBC, but my main problem was finding a raiding guild that would accept me (I played a Hunter then, and its hard to find raid spots as one)
Tinwhisker Nov 18th 2008 11:07AM
The Shadowmeld bug is a bug. It's not supposed to be a Vanish (how it acts now), it's supposed to be more like Fade.
Currently, it drops all threat completely and permanently. It is supposed to drop all threat for as long as you stay shadowmelded. When you break shadowmeld you should get that threat back, but currently you don't. That's the bug.
James Nov 18th 2008 11:30AM
SM is one of my main escape mechanism's as a boomkin, I really hope they don't nerf it...
How do you know it's supposed be like fade? Blue plz.
AlexW573 Nov 18th 2008 11:55AM
Actually, I'm not sure but it might be working as intended. Here's what I mean:
If other people are in your group and in combat nearby (so also have aggro), you often stay in combat. Mobs often see right through it and eat you alive anyway. The wording in the text isn't clear, but I think they might mean "you stay on/return to the aggro table", not "the specific number your threat was at before you shadowmelded is returned"
Also, it is not as powerful as Vanish, and I'm pretty sure it's weaker then FD (never played a Hunter though). Vanish you can move after, and it has a temporary HUGE buff to Stealth, letting you get out fast. Shadowmeld is very often seen right through if your against a very high level mob, or if your near the mob's spawn (if it's around your level or higher). Probably almost as many times as I've used it to escape, it's not helped whatsoever and the group I was in wiped anyway.
Adamanthis Nov 18th 2008 11:55AM
When you are soloing, it is supposed to work just like Vanish; the enemies drop combat, and so threat is not restored when you break Shadowmeld.
In a group, threat should be restored because the enemy will still be in combat. This may currently be buggy; I haven't had any reason to test it.
"Activate to slip into the shadows, reducing the chance for enemies to detect your presence. Lasts until cancelled or upon moving. Any threat is restored versus enemies still in combat upon cancellation of this effect."
Za Nov 18th 2008 2:32PM
What bugs me about the change to Shadowmeld is that I can no longer eat/drink while doing it. I didn't get to play BC during the 3.x days, so I was quite surprised when it was "broken" while in Howling.
It's one of the biggest reasons I prefer NE on the alliance side, that I can safely eat/drink/sm, then go grab a RL drink or something.
It's not major, but it's a serious annoyance, and it bugs me that this change was not significantly noted.
Ian R. Nov 18th 2008 12:57PM
I'm glad Naxx will be like UBRS. I miss the times when a casual player who has a night off could hop into a raid. Not all of us can commit to raiding guilds. With all the lore in Wrath, I think its even more important that everyone gets to see the end of the story.
This looks like a good step in the direction of accessibility. They will probably patch in the harder raids, but this way there'll be something for everyone.
Mitch Nov 18th 2008 1:22PM
If it is a bug I have yet to see a Blizzard dev admit to it.
As a druid I actually can't get enough of shadowmeld. I drove by a Horde city the other day to explore it and three Horde came chasing after me bent on destruction. I laughed irl, shadowmelded, went cat, stealthed, and sprinted away.
Silly Horde. No more ganking for you.