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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsBreakfast Topic: I miss trash
by Matthew Rossi 
Sep 18th 2009 at 8:00AM
In fact, what the trashless boss gauntlet that is Trial of the Crusader/Grand Crusader has done for me is to show me that I've been missing trash, real trash, since after we moved out of Mount Hyjal, and even then it was in slow decline. No, I hate to admit it, but in a blazing moment of honest to Murgatroyd old fogeyism, I came to realize that what I miss was the brutal, punishing trash pulls in Blackwing Lair. Blackwing Spellbinders were harder to deal with than some of the bosses that followed them! You could wipe multiple times before you even had the room cleared enough to pull a drake!
Yeah, it sounds ridiculous that I'm nostalgic for that. And to be honest, it's a nostalgia tinged with a certain amount of relief that I don't have to go clear it again any time soon (and if I did, well, I'm level 80 now). But what I miss, and what I feel like we've been moving away from since Hyjal (which may have taken trash pulls to a height so ridiculous that the pendulum had to swing back this way) is trash with personality. Trash that sets the story, that makes you really feel like you're actually raiding an ancient lair of evil. That being said, I'm glad TotC is trashless. Just please, let Icecrown bring back trash that counts.
How about you? Never want to see it again? Looking forward to its return? Where do you stand on trash?
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Odds and ends, Breakfast Topics, Instances, Raiding
Reader Comments (Page 5 of 6)
Plastic Rat Sep 21st 2009 2:15AM
Very well said. I've noticed it as well. Players are generally getting worse and worse. Yesterday I was tanking normal Utgarde Keep. We had this warrior there on DPS constantly raging on about how awesome their DPS was.
The warrior was kitted out with a whole bunch of heirloom items and admittedly, compared to any other character their level, their DPS was sky high. Unfortunately the player kept getting killed because they insisted on pulling aggro onto themselves, only to rave again about how amazing their DPS was.
When I finally said, ok, you want to tank, then tank. I'm switching to Arms, they were like "No, no, don't want to tank!"
The whole game is starting to revolve around gear and DPS. The idea is currently that the person with the highest DPS is the most skilled, whether it's all from gear or not.
And in the end? For me as a tank who enjoys a bit of strategy, it's now a boring AOE-tank-rotation fest.
When I play my hunter? A boring AOE fest where I spam my middle mouse button for Volley and never do anything else.
Some people for some reason believe this is progress because somehow it makes us finish the instance faster.
Where exactly it is that they're trying to go in such a hurry, and why they're playing a game that they hate so much they want it to be over as soon as possible I have yet to find an answer to.
Tomnationwide Sep 18th 2009 12:03PM
This was stated before it's a 1 time format that may or may not come up again and that Icecrown will be trash laden.
Eshin Sep 18th 2009 12:17PM
Trash is one of those tricky things to balance. I agree with the author that while it's nice to be able to walk into ToC and get right down to killing bosses it also, as many players have mentioned, is a skill check.
I am in full agreement that having trash to simply have trash or making it so difficult that one small mistake causes a wipe is a bit over zealous. It does nothing but discourage and disenfranchise players from going any further. However in instances like SSC or TK where a bad pull with a solid team wouldn't always result in a wipe, and CC was a critical part GM's could use mods like Failbot to quickly point out or discover those who were paying more attention to their cool downs and DPS meters instead of the bigger picture in front of them. Either the players learned how to break those habits and become stronger players or they would be replaced.
With the removal of "thinking trash" players have begun to get lazy with being aware of their surroundings and once again are more worried about being at the top of the meters instead of the top of their game. Fight mechanics that seemed to be a minor problem before (e.g. standing in falling stuff ala Gruul) are now turning into a bigger issue and keep getting nerfed down. I mean seriously is it really that hard to miss the gas clouds in Yogg?
Should trash prevent a guild from seeing end content? No.
Should trash help everyone become a better player and perhaps weed out those that just can't seem to figure out there is more to a fight then a button mash/faceroll/AOE spam? Yes.
-Eshin
Tyu Sep 18th 2009 12:38PM
I'm also in favour of trash. But even more than that, I'm in favour of mini bosses. The Protector's in Freya's room are a good example of the kind of trash I mean. I'd love to see minor characters like that sprinkled throughout Icecrown Citadel.
nowdk Sep 18th 2009 12:49PM
I like the current situtaion. No trash headache. I'd rather wipe on aboss than wipe on trash. I am elast interested in wasting time and buffs for each ever mob rather than the boss.
As long as the boss fights are intersting I am fine. I dont want to have to deal with delays. As it is getting people to stay is tough with more tougher mobs its going to get more complicated.
The best part of boss fights is that the boss is immune to CC so no need to worry about people's skill and rng to decide if things go fine.
NecDW4 Sep 19th 2009 1:01AM
Yeah, i think i loved the trash in BRD more than any other place. They made sense, patrolling groups of dwarven guards in a massive fortress. There was a very good reason for them to be there, and in large quantity.
Demonedge Sep 18th 2009 12:51PM
I like hard trash or rather trash that isn't faceroll aoe easy. What I like best is trash that requires a tactic, be it changing targets, kill mobs at the same time, crowd control or Killing mobs in a certain order. What I don't like is mountains of trash between each boss.
I want just a few groups of say 4-5 mobs to prove you are worthy enough to face the boss you are clearing to, rather than 100 mobs that can be aoe facerolled.
In that respect I feel BWL was a really well paced raid. Trash was hard but the bosses weren't too far away.
Elmo Sep 18th 2009 12:52PM
I want trash in my instances but only if it requires some CC or even some tactic to defeat them.
(no AoE fests)
Black temple had a few nice pulls (ladies of pain, the Big charge orcs, the army of Broken/Demons) and things like scouts as in SWP and ZA so you can't just rush through it without using any brain.
Starkore Sep 21st 2009 5:09AM
I think SSC and TK got it right, trash you had to CC and have tactics for, TK especially. The Ignis, Mimiron and Vezax trash needed some thinking about and it's no harm having one raid that has none whatsoever imo. I'm 100% behind the 'trash with character' remark, if it's not interesting and can be beaten with mass AoE, then don't bother putting it in at all.
Murdock Sep 18th 2009 1:08PM
I want some trash and CC to come back. Why? Because I play a warrior tank, always have. I feel I'm pretty good at it, but I never get to demonstrate this, its just "Charge, Thunder Clap, Shockwave" repeat. I don't like AOEing everything I like to think, to move, to watch multiple mobs under CC and save that healer when the Mage doesn't get his sheep up in time, etc. That's the challenge in the game to me. Sure, boss fights are hard to start, but once you learn the patterns, not too bad. Trash feels like its always changing.
Now, I don't want trash like ShadowLabs coming back, some of that stuff was horrible! But Kara level is great. Mix it in with some things like ToC and you have a nice balance.
CapnSkillet Sep 18th 2009 1:10PM
I'm not for weeding out bad players, but I would like to see a few more imaginative trash pulls that require CC again. Right now the main purpose of CC is in PvP.
jakewisser Sep 18th 2009 8:43PM
Trash in kara made it fun, and a moderately skilled group could clear it in one night. I miss boss fights that required more coordination like High King, although mimiron is pretty good. But having the feeling of everyone have that role they had to be on top of, when you first went in it was just amazingly hard.
Tetsuo Sep 18th 2009 1:23PM
I like the trash that's immune to ccs yet still hits hella hard so the tank can only have so many on him at a time. Go go kite! My most memorable times involved kiting stuff around while a couple players focused down the first target. Or even just bouncing a target between two ranged players with aggro drops keeping him useless. Not often that this sort of thing came up, but it sure was a good time. Also, more mobs with fear. Fear pulls can always be a test of who's paying attention to that one mob that can ruin the group. There's a few fear trash pulls in wrath heroics, but there's not as many tightly grouped pulls that it matters. And if something bad did happen the tank would be fine with adding 3 more dudes to his tank fest.
Condor Sep 18th 2009 1:28PM
Never. Again!
Trash is trash, that's why they call it that. I think you're smoking something.
Evi Sep 18th 2009 1:55PM
I'd like to see a happy medium between what we had in vanilla WoW and what we have today. I don't miss the needless trash packs and multiple hour instances of yesteryear, but I do miss having to think about pulls. I miss using CC. I can't remember the last time I asked a rogue to sap something. The "round 'em up and AoE" tactic used in 99% of today's dungeons (or at least it feels that way) isn't challenging. I just want Blizz to ask us to THINK a little before charging in every time.
RetPallyJil Sep 18th 2009 2:09PM
Party: "Knock, knock!"
Boss: "Who's there?"
/stabface
Party: "Whew, that was hard!"
I miss trash so much :( Raids and instances are so damn boring now.
Sanguinarius Sep 19th 2009 7:42PM
Once again, i have to give credit to my favorite dungeon:
Karazhan!
The trash in kara was unique to each area, usually hinted at the upcoming boss(es), had personality (the banquet ghosts? the backstage actors? the CONCUBINES? lol). Some of the packs were difficult and required strategy, some was merciful and could be destroyed with blunt force. My point being, the non-boss mobs in kara helped set the ambiance for the entire instance. And that's just one of the many reasons Karazhan is my favorite! :)
Clydtsdk-Rivendare Sep 18th 2009 4:28PM
I was only about level 30 when Wrath hit. That being said, my favorite trash so far? Heroic Culling of Stratholme. Bunch of tiny zombies (even more fun as a Frost DK -- Howling Blast to kill two digit's worth at once, DND doing its thing...) while the elite trash spawns in various places, and you have to track it down and kill it ASAP... then when you did it right, somebody got a free epic flyer.
Chamual Sep 19th 2009 10:46AM
I loved the Kara trash but for me the best trash ever was Zul Aman. I remember the first few times we went in there struggling to even clear the trash to the bear boss. We weren't a great guild but we cleared Kara every week (2 groups), had downed Gruul and were getting close to killing Maggy. I couldn't believe that anyone could clear the timer and beat the last boss for the mount when we couldn't even down the first boss's trash!
Zul Aman trash was also awesome because it was the key to the timed run, an essential aspect of the instance that made it probably my favourite instance in WoW. Most mob packs needed CC of some sort, and most mob packs featured something different, whether a healer, a silencing mob or the scouts that called reforcements. CC was required, but key also were speed and thinking on your feet. You couldn't sit there for 5 minutes marking out the pull and discussing tactics, the timer made all of the trash part of one massive fight, you would use combat resses on trash, all dps were on full alert, the raid had to stay close and work as one for the entire run without breaks. And of course it could fall apart at any moment from the first to last pull, spelling disaster for your twice weekly speed run.
Zul Aman trash > *
Doorbasher Sep 18th 2009 5:18PM
People always tend to view the past through rose-colored goggles. Sure, it *sounds* like things were awesome back in the day. Instances were longer, they required skill and coordination, and more buttons than just the one marked "AoE".
But there's another side to it, that I remember well cause I was often on the short end of the stick. The long hours trying to get a group together cause you couldn't get someone who had the type of CC you needed. The fact that I, as a warrior, never got to go anywhere as fury spec, because I wasn't CC, and because half my rotation (whirlwind) was incidental AoE that made it ridiculously easy to break the sheep/shackle/trap/seduce/whatever. And even when I respecced prot, people didn't like that I wasn't a pally and had a much harder time holding two or three mobs at a time.
And this was when you were lucky enough to have a decent group. Just because trash was harder back in the day, it didn't always "train" people to be better players. Plenty of people back then broke CC, couldn't trap/sheep/etc properly, didn't know which mob did what or what each one was immune to, or were just bad in general.
For those who lament that instancing and raiding is "boring" these days, I reply, yes, but I'll take that any day of the week - and twice on sunday - over "pull-your-hair-out frustrating".