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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsBreakfast topic: Has Trial of the Grand Crusader been a reasonable challenge?
by Matt Low 
Sep 6th 2009 at 8:00AM
My raiding guild suffered from the Anub'Arak soft reset issue where we were unable to reach the floor where the oversized bug was. We wanted to clear him out on normal mode before we switched over to the harder difficulty. But since the floor was intact, we couldn't! (Note: This has since been fixed).
Because of this, we decided to toggle on Heroic mode for Trial of the Crusader on 25 just to get a feel for it. Some guilds believe that the Coliseum, even on heroic, is too easy. So I went in wondering what the fuss was all about. I wanted to know how easy the heroic setting would be.
But that's when I faced the reality check.
Remember, not everyone is in a top 100 guild. We burned through about 10 attempts that night just working on the first encounter alone. That experience helped to ground us and we realized what we needed to do to get through that mountain. In the end, we weren't able to even get past Gormok. We came to the conclusion that we were definitely going to need to coordinate healing and tanking cooldowns to break past the final minute of the first boss.
Nonetheless, it was fairly humbling. We'll have to go in next time much more carefully and with a more detailed game plan in mind.
It's been several days since Trial of the Grand Crusader has been accessible. Do you feel it has just the right amount of challenge for your raid group? Have you found it too easy or too difficult?
Filed under: Breakfast Topics, Raiding
Reader Comments (Page 3 of 5)
rexicon1 Sep 6th 2009 10:12AM
Epic troll, well done.
Zinn Sep 6th 2009 10:12AM
@jam
Generally when people say something like "it's easy" they do it without any hints or helpful comments about what made the encounter so easy to them. Therefor the comment is totally unnecessary cos simply stating that something is easy brings nothing. Equally helpful would a comment about gnomes being ugly be. (It's true tho).
I haven't read the comments you're talking about here tho, so don't know why they got downrated.
rexicon1 Sep 6th 2009 10:22AM
My guild recently smashed our heads against the Beasts in 25m ToGC and... holy crap, that fight is hard. I mean the worst part about it is that the worms come out often in the middle of Gormok at like 5%. Nothing is more insane than having to try and coordinate our tanks and healing to make sure they stay alive through a crazy amount of impales. We still don't know how we are going to deal with the damn poison, it's been a challenge and it's a lot of fun trying to down it. I think that people who say that ToGC is too easy are a bit confused. I think its very well tuned, and doesn't leave a lot of room for error.
Akhilesh Sep 6th 2009 10:43AM
The Remnant -Aggramar
My group on 10 man heroic mode is working Anub 'arak.
We rank 3 Healers for ALL of the fights thus far however we plan to run TWO on Anub.
Since you only have 6 frost spheres we plan to burn Anub to 60% (which we did on multiple attempts) before his first burrow. This should make P2 MUCH easier.
When he comes back up we plan to just nuke him yet again to 30% and pop BL.
Shall see what happens.
I like the difficulty of the 10 man heroic. It has been a lot of fun. we burned through A LOT of attempts on twins before figuring out a strat that works. Now it should be easy sauce week by week.
Now 25 man just smacked us with a wet towel. We got to the 2 jomungars but the debuffs kept killing our tanks before wearing off. So some things to work out still.
Tridus Sep 6th 2009 11:00AM
Grand Crusader is in a lot of ways a classic hard mode. Same fights, only life is harder on the healers.
Icehowl is capable of bursting a tank for 70k damage in one second. Healers, deal with it. Gormok's impale hitting for over 40k per hit, with a melee attack at the same time for 20k? Healers, deal with it (or pray the tank parries the melee hit).
The tanks need to be in insanely good gear to even stand a chance of surviving without a whole lot of healer cooldowns being blown. DPS can just faceroll their rotation, same as on normal.
Daigeil Sep 6th 2009 11:03AM
I think quite a few 25-man guilds send groups into 10-man heroic and then beat the place up and proclaim it easy. This annoys me. I run a 10-man only guild and I can tell you - with 10-man only gear, it is not easy by any means. Please, if you're doing 10-man mode with 25-man gear, make sure you mention that - I'm trying to get a feel for how challenged we should be, and all the guilds saying it was quite challenging but they managed it with 25 tries remaining but oh, as a sidenote 25-man thwacked us is making this alot harder.
Not all guilds doing TotGC-10 are 25-man most of the time, or even some of the time.
Sayis Sep 6th 2009 11:13AM
From my experience, normal mode ToTC 10 has been an absolute cake walk; the difficulty is probably closer to Naxx than Ulduar. My guild started one week late, since we wanted to grab a few more pieces of loot from Ulduar... I'm almost sad we did. We've managed to get a new boss down every single week with few problems, if any. The only tough fight was the Faction Champions, every other fight is relatively easy.
Now, hard mode, on the other hand, is tough. Really, really tough. I feel like we'll be doing that for several weeks before we get somewhere.
Bossy Sep 6th 2009 11:17AM
Next time when you comment on "easy" please include YOUR armory, so we can ALL have a laugh.
It suffices to see on the web where each guild is.
And pathetically, the hardest modes in Ulduar AND the torunament are down to .... 1% of the ... raiding guilds.
HALF of the servers didn't even have ONE guild to put down Algalon.
So there are 2 possibilites here: OR that 1% is publishing all over these posts.
OR the web is used .... for some incredible lying bragging.
YOU choose.
James Sep 6th 2009 11:28AM
Everything is always too easy or too hard for someone.
What's important for Blizzard is striking the right balance. Something like normal mode: this is meant to be pugged. Yes, you read that right. It is not only for dedicated raid guilds (ie. 5-10% of the population). It is rated E, for everyone. Again, if you raid, you should be able to clear normal mode, period. Blizzard has basically turned them into oversized dungeons, but I think this is the correct approach. Most people don't enjoy a) not seeing content b) wiping for hours and hours just to see content
Now, if you do enjoy a challenge. Well that's what hard mode is for, as well as the greater rewards. To be honest, I would even made hard mode TWO tiers higher. Just to really distinguish the two modes.
tim Sep 6th 2009 4:25PM
I'm with you, with the caveat that one or two bosses in every raid are heroic only (like Algalon). Feel free to disagree, but I think it makes the entire raid more epic to know that there's a boss like that.
Slaytanic Sep 6th 2009 11:32AM
At the time of my post here, only 201 guilds in the WORLD have completed 25-man Heroic Northrend Beasts, and NO ONE has killed Anub'arak yet.
Normal mode is easy. Heroic mode is hard. That's how Blizzard wants it, that's how it is. gg.
My 10-man is on H Anub and the fight is quite hard. We have about 20 attempts left this week. Yes, I'll post my armory.
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Uldaman&n=Slaytanic
lazymangaka Sep 6th 2009 11:32AM
Wow...that was....wow....
Totally unnecessary. I feel considerably less intelligent for having read that.
/facepalm
joshbuddha Sep 6th 2009 11:35AM
How many guilds have even made it past beasts in 25 man heroic less than 100 worldwide? The enrage on Icehowl is so tight in 25 man, that even the best guilds are hitting it and simply spreading out and hoping DoTs finish him before he can kill everyone. Most of those have then made it past Jarraxxus fairly easily, stumbled through faction champions then hit a brick wall on twin valkyrs, even the top guilds in the world have not killed heroic 25 man anub. Faction champions is really the same on heroic as in normal, it is a lot of RNG, what group do you get, who do they focus. If they don't have the MS warrior or either shaman for heroism it is a much simpler encounter.
The 10 man heroic is not nearly as hard as 25 except for the dps requirements on anub. With limiting the amount of the frost it requires a severe burndown and lack of burrowing phases.
Aigarius Sep 6th 2009 11:40AM
Heh, 4% wipe on Anub on the second try (25man regular). It is a fun challenge.
twyst Sep 6th 2009 11:45AM
I was let down by the challenge of 10 man heroic. we didnt even have a death until faction champs (dk + warrior = paintrain), and finished with over 40 attempts left.
25 man is extremely dificult and I find it tuned right where it should be, my guild is nowhere close to killing beasts, but it gives us something to work towards instead of farming content til icecrown.
Shrews Sep 6th 2009 11:44AM
I think my problem with TotC right now is that there is no middle ground between the difficulties. I'm in a guild that has most of the 25-Ulduar hard-modes down except for freya, mim and yogg (the hard ones). TotC25 bosses were pretty much a cake walk. I think the most we ever wiped to a boss on normal was twice and subsequently 1-shotting them every following week, if not the first week they were out. TotC25 was boring, too easy.
We bumped it up to heroic this week and the jump in difficulty is pretty brutal. We spent a whole raid night wiping to northern beasts and didn't come close to downing them. The tanking, healing and DPS requirements for the fight are very high. This normally wouldn't bug me too much as it is a hard-mode, and I am confident that we can get it before the fight gets nerfed. What is annoying is that there is no ramp up in difficulty at all. The fights just go from pug friendly to incredibly hard.
ava Sep 6th 2009 11:47AM
I'm disappointed at how easy the regular 10/25 man versions are. The casual players I know still like some challenge and to quote a friend of mine "it felt like we were just handed loot".
The heroic ten man version was more difficult. We managed to clear it the first night and get a tribute to skill, but we're not a ten man guild. I think it was tuned nicely. I can see many guilds getting stuck at faction champs though.
The heroic 25 man version was a HUGE challenge - we loved it. We were very close to getting NRB down While I personally really liked having a challenging raid again, and something that requires planning and strategy, I personally feel the difference between the regular and heroic version is huge.
Avalonna, Priest
Bloodhoof
Ryan Sep 6th 2009 11:53AM
My guild completed Trial of the Crusader this week and we're on Grand Crusader. The Beasts of Northrend fight is a good challenge since it's a major dps race. Our first attempt, we got Gormok the Impaler to 30% before the worms came out. We ended up wiping and have 0 attempts left. I hope it's an isolated bug and not happening to everyone.
Adel Sep 6th 2009 12:00PM
Personally, my poor guild hasn't even finished Ulduar yet. Sure, we're causal, and can only raid two nights a week (only 3 hours on those two nights), and we've cleared a bit (up to Thorim, you might not think that's a lot, but for us, it's a ton.) just in those two nights. But, I hate it when people QQ that content is too easy. It's not. It's just perfect. Sure, the people who have no life and can clear content in a week or two thinks it's easy. But it's not. Personally I think it's just fine the way it is. Challenging for the casual player. Challenging for people who have lives to juggle. :)
Kduff Sep 6th 2009 12:00PM
Haha, this is why I even bother reading comments. Such blatant stupidity, misinformed ranting, and just plain off point stupidity. You made my morning better.
Our guild is working on 10 man hard modes and still clearing Anub after getting the floor bug and locking us out on our last raid night of the week. He should be down if we can get enough people on an off night, and then I guess I'll see first hand the Heroic version. Until then, the 10 man seems pretty difficult, we almost cleared the beasts after a few wipes, and called it a night. We usually do 10 mans after 25s, so we don't really leave much time for them.