Friday, September 27, 2013

From Gear Check to Skill Check: What Made Wrath the Expansion of the Raider

This entire expansion we have been seeing posts on blogs, forums and anywhere you might find written word about warcraft online speaking about raiding.  From the beginning mandatory dailies complaints, to the valor grinding complaints and reputation grinding complaints to LFR and whether to keep it or remove it complaints to is raiding becoming to complex discussions.

No matter where you look someone is saying what is wrong with raiding or what is right with raiding.  One of my favorite discussions are the complexity ones, ones I have mentioned myself when referencing the looking for raid system and my belief that they are too hard for the average player.

Another one of the complexity arguments that always is sure to get me reading is the vanilla vs modern raiding threads.  Both sides argue their points well, the posts that are not just flinging insults at each other at least, and I can actually agree with both sides.  So my opinion would be best considered on the fence even if I were pressed to make a decision and would say moderns raiding in a thousand times harder than vanilla raiding.

See, I agree with what some people say about vanilla.  The difficulty with vanilla was in spending time playing.  Things were more a gear check.  Having enough gear to beat the boss, or more importantly the appropriate resistance gear to not get beaten by the boss.  That and of course finding 40 people, but that part of it is another story all together.

I did not raid during that time but I have read more than enough from the people that have and what the difficulties of that type of raiding was.  It was not with the boss tactics, it was with the time needed to gather all you needed to raid.  It was about assembling enough people to get it done.  It was about hours and hours of grinding for materials, for crafted items, for PvP items, for potions, for flasks, for everything, you needed to grind your butt off. 

It was about what was the best gear which sometimes meant you wore a mix and match of gear between the current raid, the previous raid and maybe even a dungeon piece or two all because the item levels (which did not really exist then) meant nothing, but what stats the items had on it meant everything. There was no reforging, so sometimes having a piece with better stats for you from the previous raids was actually the better item.  That was all because there was no huge gear inflation back then, so all gear was relevant gear. 

Not sure, but I think I would like to see if that would work in today's world, would people do MV if the gear in it was better than the gear in SoO?  It was more complex back then over all.  It wasn't just a case of raid the current tier for the best gear, but raid everything you could because the best gear came from everything.  All raids mattered, all raids had something for someone.  It was more complex to build a good set of gear back then.

The game is just not that complex any longer.  It is not that time consuming any longer.  You can get your food and flask and potions just by logging on a few hours before the raid, if that.  If you give out buffs they last longer and no longer need reagents.   Resistance gear is no longer needed, heck, it is no longer even in the game for current content.  I don't need to carry around 5000 arrows any more.  Many of the things that made vanilla raiding so difficult have all been removed from the game.

You could call everything about raiding in vanilla a gear check.  If your guild lost their tank and needed to get another and they would have to gear them up.  Running old content, gathering to craft them the resistance gear, basically putting their gear through the gear check.

As time has went on more and more conveniences have been added to the game.  Just the world of differences in paladins buffs from five minute ones, to 10 minutes ones, to 30 minutes ones, to ones that lasted an hour.  From needing to bless one at a time with reagents with various different ones that the paladin would need to know which worked best for which class.  Having it simplified to two buffs, all cast on the entire group and not individual and needing no reagents was a huge plus when it comes to the convenience factor.

Even if I did not raid back in vanilla I have seen a lot of changes and I know from a hunters standpoint it is a lot less to worry about not having to carry stacks of food for my pet, and arrows, and checking for my pet to be buffed as well as myself.  All changes we call general convenience.  None of it was ever really "difficult" but it was, or could be, time consuming and require attention.  Showing up to a raid with an unhappy pet and half the arrow you need would not be a good thing.  Wasn't hard to do, but compared to now where we have to do nothing of the sort, anything is harder than how it is now, even that.

All those little things could be considered part of the gear check.  Having a pet ready to fight and happy and not upset with you, which required feeding, was as important as having a better bow would be.  Having arrows means you could actually use that bow.  Having the paladin and the priest and the mage all have their reagents so they could buff you was like another layer of gear, so someone else doing their job by making sure they were ready to raid made you more ready to raid also.  It was all something that increased your performance.  So when looking at all those little things, all those time consuming things, all those things that required materials, gathering, preparing, grinding, being read ahead of time and preparing, etc, they were all part of the gear check.

That was vanilla raiding in a whole.  Vanilla raiding, as I see it from all the people I have spoken with and posts I have read, was all about the gear check.  Having the gear with the right stats, the right resistances were just as important has having all the other tools needed to make that gear better.  The buffs, the food, the flasks, the potions that you could use over and over and over again and not just once like now.  All that boosted your potential, all that could be considered part of your gear.

It was when the game started to remove some of the "grind" from the game that it started to change, to make the shift from gear check to skill check.  If we could just jump ahead from where this started to where we are I sometimes wonder how both actions were called raids.  They both could be classified as raids, but there is nothing really all that similar between a vanilla raider and a mists raider besides the fact they both play warcraft.

When the burning crusade came the era of convenience started to bloom even if ever so slightly.  Some things were added to the game that made the whole catching up through gear slightly easier while at the same time many advances in the grind for items and additional raid necessities became lessened.  It all remained there for the most part, just the trip to get it seemed shorter.  Problematic things started to be removed or simplified.

From that point on and in each incarnation of the game with each expansion they added more convenience by changing, removing or improving things as well as requiring a lesser of a gear check for the raiding part of the game. During that entire time and through all those changes they tried to keep the balance between gear check and skill check but increasing the skill check a little at a time for each new convenience they added that lessened the load of the gear check. The burning crusade started to see more complex bosses and the slider started to drift from the right which was gear to the left which was skill.

While there have always been and will always be bosses we call gear checks in every expansion they are not real gear checks, not like any vanilla raid sort of gear check.  Even the most simple of simple bosses in vanilla was a much larger gear check than anything we like to call a gear check now.  Making sure your tanks had the fire resist cloaks required much more work than waiting for a drop off the second boss, or buying the valor point cloak.  Making sure the tanks had massive amounts of potions to use for their defense or resistance.  Or having a massive amount of potions for everyone else, them using healing one, even bandages on themselves and on others because the tank would need all the attention.  All things that required a great deal of time to gather and get ready for.  Yes they are both equally fitting into the "gear" category but one was wait for to drop or buy and the other was grind your butt off to get it and a million other little things to assist with getting it.   The vanilla gear check by design for every boss was more than just gear, it was things that enhanced your gear.  So once you got that resist cloak your gearing did not end, you need your potions to add more to it, each and every week to support that gear.

The vanilla grind one was the real gear check.  If you wanted to be a raider, a real raider, you got that cloak and stocked up on potions, now that was a gear check.  If you needed a new tank you went through all the old content and got them the wrists from last tier, the waist from the tier before, the crafted resist items and every other little piece that was the best fit for the content you wanted them to be doing with you.  It was really a case of gearing up a new tank.

Now, when you want to gear up a new tank you just blow through last tiers content, pass them all the drops and hope for the best.  No matter what they get, it will be good enough because of the gear inflation being what it is and with the addition of reforging almost any gear will do.  Any new gear is getting the gear you need.  Any cloak that drops is a good cloak, you do not need a resist one.  The gear check is gone, because any gear is good gear as long as it of the appropriate item level and that gear is in the right hands of a skilled enough player.  This leaves current raiding more skill related than gear related.  Sure, gear helps, gear matters, but that is another post all together.  The difference is that any waist, any wrists and any cloak will do just fine to catch up a new tank now whereas in vanilla the right waist, the right wrists, and the right cloak were the only way you caught up your new tank.

So what made wrath the expansion of the raider?

Depending on who you ask it would be many different things.  Some people would cite 10 and 25 man lock outs as the boost that gave wrath the distinction as the raiding expansion.  Them being on separate lockout might be something another would say.  The "easier" 10s is something many people like to say was a boost to the raiding population.  The fact that the gear explosion was just starting but not full fledged meant something from a previous tier might still be best for you and that left a taste of the right gear matters more than the newest gear sometimes even if rarely which is a throwback to the beginning days of raiding.

Convenience really started to take center stage in wrath, gearing up became a lot easier if you were playing catch up, getting up to snuff was not half of the task it used to be removing one of the largest "difficulties" of vanilla raiding.  Smaller sizes to raids meant they were more accessible to smaller circles of friends and no one could ever deny that.  Buffs began to get simplified even if stats had not quite done the same yet.

After wrath there was more simplification for the "harder" things vanilla needed to deal with as convenience went full force forward.  Things like no more pet happiness, no more ammo, one shared lock out for raids, locked by boss and not by raid ID all came along with many others in cataclysm.  In mists we saw more and more convenience added with group wide buffs that took no reagents, rogues not needing to carry poisons, and what could be one of the most telling additions of complete convenience that actually came at the tail end of the expansion before it, a newer, lesser version of raiding that was meant for a random group.

The more convenience that was added to the game the more they had to increase the skill check to the bosses.  If there was so little effort to get to them now, they needed to be harder once you got there.  That is what the balance is all about.  The harder it was to get ready for a raid and get into a raid the easier they could make the raid, as a reward, but if you were getting the reward of being allowed to basically just walk into a raid because of the convenience of getting there, the raid itself needed to be harder.

When removing many of the factors that made vanilla raiding hard they needed to replace it with new difficulties in different ways.  The sliding bar moved more from the right of gear check to the left of skill check with each expansion that came out.  With each bit of gearing up that took a long time that was removed, the gear check on the outside dissipated and the skill check of the inside needed to be raised to compensate, to balance it out.

So, in my own personal opinion, the reason that wrath is often looked at as the high point for raiding is because it was at that perfect point between gear check and skill check.  The ability to over gear content was still there but it has some convenience added to it making it less time consuming than before. 

Convenience was also added to many parts of the game but not always some super simple as press one button and it was done like it is now, just ask any paladin applying buffs to everyone before a raid and ask them if buffing was simple and easy.  It was easier than vanilla paladin buffing for sure by leaps and bounds, but not one button easy and everyone gets the same thing like it is now.  The sliding bar between the gear check and the skill check was at its perfect point.  That is why I believe wrath worked well, why wrath attracted new raiders, why wrath is remembered as the expansion of the raider.

The raids themselves required more skill than most of the things that came before it even if people like to call wrath raiding easy.  They seem to forget that the reason it seemed easier was they were using 25 man gear to blow through 10 man content, which effectively meant they were over gearing it.  Of course it seemed easier. 

Two of the most complex and most unforgiving fights in the history of the game came from this expansion in the form of Yogg +0 and LK 25 heroic.  One of which required a raid wide flat out buff to beat even by the best guilds in the world, something no other boss in the history of the game can claim.  The most any other fight could claim was it needed targeted changes, not blanket ones.  So there was both ease and difficulty within the game at the same time in the same raid.  Once again showing that a balance had been found and it was a good one.

The more quality of life changes they add for the players, like not needing reagents, as small as that sounds, they are removing the little things that made vanilla raiding hard, tiny piece by tiny piece.  Each quality of life change we get for our convenience we need to have a balance on the other side and that other side is increasing the base skill level required to actually do the raid.

In vanilla anyone that had the time, put in the effort, and was willing to work for it, could have been a raider.  Time was the most important factor.  The difficulty was in being raid ready.  In mists, even if you are on 24/7 and get everything you can done every single week, if you are a lesser skilled player, you can not really get anything done, unless you don't mind being carried through the content.  The difficulty is in being raid aware.

The person with exceptional game play skills but no time to grind all the gear needed or raid for hours on end multiple tiers to try to catch up was basically locked out of raiding in vanilla.  The person with lesser skills but all the time in the world to get themselves everything they could get outside of the instance is basically locked out in mists, who cares if you can make the noodle cart if you can't get out of bad or preform at a hard line required minimum.

Wrath found that balance, where the exceptional player with not much time could play and raid.  Where the lesser skilled player with lots of time could play and raid.  Where neither of them would hold you back.  The exceptional player would let his skill speak for him, because the fact he did not have a resist cloak would not hold you back.  The lesser skilled player would let their time available get them gear outside of the raid to help compensate for their lack of skill otherwise in the raid.  They could both raid, they could both contribute, they will both remember wrath as the expansion that they felt most comfortable raiding in because in wrath they were both what we would call, raiders.

Now that exceptional player with bad gear because they do not have time is called the lazy player and that lesser player with all great gear and under performing is just called the bad player.  Thanks to wrath having the perfect balance from gear check to skill check that made wrath the expansion of the raider and back then we just called them both teammates.

So all these posts and points and discussions about raid difficulty mean nothing in the end.  The over all raid difficulty is basically the exact same now as it was in vanilla, just the bar is sliding more toward the skill check than the gear check, but there balance has always been the same, one plus the other equals the difficulty of the raid.  Wrath happened to find the sweet spot of just enough gear check and just enough skill check to be inclusive to the largest number of players, at least in my opinion, and that is why I believe raiding reached its high point during it.

27 comments:

  1. Except for resistance gear, pretty much nothing was a gear check in Vanilla or BC. People could do MC with <20 people in blues. In BC, people killed Brutallus (Patchwerk 2.0) with half their raid in blues, let alone current epics. Both gear checks and skill checks are far harder now than ever before -- unless it was something like resistance gear. Or if you're counting consumables as gear.

    Hell, in Wrath, a 10 man was able to clear everything on normal up until about halfway through ICC *in full blue gear from dungeons.* No epics at all. All blue gear. That's how lax the tuning was for 10 man normal.

    I'd also be careful equating something being time consuming with being difficult.

    "The lesser skilled player would let their time available get them gear outside of the raid to help compensate for their lack of skill otherwise in the raid."

    Except then the people in heroic raiding guilds need to spend extra time getting that gear outside the raid. Which really sucks. That's the problem with having powerful gear outside of raids - it's not an option for heroic raiders, it becomes mandatory to get. Just like flasks/potions/food are mandatory.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I agree with Grumpy. It has definitely shifted from Time to Skill.

      If you don't want to call it a gear check, call it a stat check. You had to have the proper resist gear for each raid and that stuff was a huge grind to acquire for your entire raid team. It was difficult to invest all of the time required to do that when it was released.

      Your comments about blues don't invalidate Grumpy's comments. The first tier is usually done in blues anyway. Also as Grumpy said, in a lot of cases, a blue item had the best stats for a specific encounter. Also in Wrath, there were catchup dungeons, so there was really powerful blue gear available.

      Regarding Heroic raiding, it didn't exist until ICC and by then the grind had been reduced a lot and the skill check had been increased a lot, as Grumpy said.

      Furthermore, the majority of the playerbase does not raid; therefore, there must be gear progression available outside of raids. If that means that hardcore heroic raiders who are competing for world first have to invest more time during the race in order to stay competitive, then that's a worthwhile sacrifice for the rest of the playerbase. The hardcore heroic raiders make up less that 0.1 % of the playerbase. Any succesful game must cater to the larger audiences.

      Delete
    2. @Balkoth

      I think that is part of the reason they removed valor gear, because it became mandatory for normal raiders. They wanted normal raiders to have the same progression as heroic raiders where the only gear you got is from doing, and skill advanced you, not over gearing it from the outside in.

      Yes, I am considering consumables as gear. Gear is about stats, consumables modify stats, so them, gems, enchants, everything, all go toward gearing.

      The difficulty was in time in vanilla, not in skill. That is what I what I am getting at. It was all a gear check (time check if you prefer that way). Now it is more skill based. Wrath was the perfect balance as I see it. Part time, part skill, best of both worlds.

      Delete
    3. "I think that is part of the reason they removed valor gear, because it became mandatory for normal raiders. They wanted normal raiders to have the same progression as heroic raiders where the only gear you got is from doing, and skill advanced you, not over gearing it from the outside in."

      The reverse. If valor gear was only obtainable by normal raiding, Blizzard would have few qualms with it. It allows people with bad luck to fill in missing spots. And it allows people who otherwise don't have gear progression to get some nice items

      But when LFR was introduced and was meant to be the playground for many players, valor gear simply rendered most LFR irrelevant. That was the problem. It worked when valor WAS your primary gearing source as a non-raider, but NOT when it WASN'T supposed to be your primary gearing source.

      "Yes, I am considering consumables as gear. Gear is about stats, consumables modify stats, so them, gems, enchants, everything, all go toward gearing."

      Except consumables in Wrath were NOTHING compared to Vanilla and were pretty much irrelevant. The shrinking of consumable usage occurred in BC. That's when you were limited to 1 flask OR two elixirs instead of being able to stack everything.

      "Wrath was the perfect balance as I see it. Part time, part skill, best of both worlds."

      And what was the part time in Wrath? Until 3.3, you couldn't get raid emblems from the Dungeon Finder once a day because it didn't exist. So if you wanted "valor" gear, you had to raid.

      Delete
    4. I saw the comment GC made about him not wanting valor gear to be BiS for the LFR crew. Made me scratch my head thinking "who the F cares".

      There were daily dungeons before 3.3. Maybe you never did them because you actually had to pug them, but they were there.

      Delete
  2. "You had to have the proper resist gear for each raid and that stuff was a huge grind to acquire for your entire raid team."

    Your entire raid team?

    Besides nature resist for Princess, maybe a piece or two for Rag, the single cloak per person for Nef, and Shadow for Shazrah...what other fights required resist gear on the entire raid?

    I didn't really raid in Vanilla seriously, just BC and beyond, so maybe I'm forgetting a lot of stuff. But it mostly seemed to be tanks and warlocks getting resist gear for most fights with a few exceptions.

    "Also as Grumpy said, in a lot of cases, a blue item had the best stats for a specific encounter."

    Explain? They just took a set of blue dungeon gear - and this was back when blues were far inferior to epics.

    "Also in Wrath, there were catchup dungeons, so there was really powerful blue gear available."

    No, there wasn't. The catch-up dungeons dropped epic gear.

    "Regarding Heroic raiding, it didn't exist until ICC and by then the grind had been reduced a lot and the skill check had been increased a lot, as Grumpy said."

    Heroic raiding definitely existed prior to ICC. One, it clearly existed in ToC. Two, Ulduar Hard Modes. Three, Sarth 3D. Four, Sunwell/BT/Hyjal/Kael'thas/Vashj/ZA Bear Run/vanilla Naxx/etc. You'll note Blizzard fiddled around with many ways to allow for an easier setting for raids while still having hard raids.

    "Furthermore, the majority of the playerbase does not raid; therefore, there must be gear progression available outside of raids. "

    How much gear progression? If normal ToT drops 522 gear and heroic ToT drops 535 gear, what ilvl gear should drop outside of raids while ToT is current?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tanks only but back then from everything I've ever read and heard from the people that did it, the guild went where the tank was geared to handle.

      So his/her resist gear dictated what the guild did, and if you lost your tank you had to start all over again.

      Gear check once more.

      "How much gear progression? If normal ToT drops 522 gear and heroic ToT drops 535 gear, what ilvl gear should drop outside of raids while ToT is current?"

      My opinion of course, the previous tiers gear. So now that the 553 gear is now, people should be able to get all 522 gear easily outside of raids.

      I see nothing wrong with people that don't raid having easy access to old out dated gear. Helps people catch up, helps people feel they are moving forward, helps people gear alts, there is nothing wrong with having last tiers gear.

      I understand they do not want to do that because they want people running the old content for gear, but lets face it, anyone that wants to raid, wants to raid THIS tier. They do not want to raid ToT to get ready for this tier.

      Trust me, as someone who raids in a casual guild with casual raiders of a variety of skill levels, even the least skilled player would rather not raid at all, then go back to raid "old" content.

      Those people are the majority of the player base.

      Delete
    2. "My opinion of course, the previous tiers gear. So now that the 553 gear is now, people should be able to get all 522 gear easily outside of raids."

      So people should easily be able to get full 522 gear but LFR drops 528 gear? No way, jose, that won't work. People can get 496 gear (and you only need 490 ilvl to enter Siege LFR) along with 502 boots, 522 valor/ToT gear, 535 Timeless pieces, and 522/553 crafted items.

      "I see nothing wrong with people that don't raid having easy access to old out dated gear. Helps people catch up, helps people feel they are moving forward, helps people gear alts, there is nothing wrong with having last tiers gear."

      It's wrong because of LFR. You can blame that if you'd like. If you handed out 496 gear in 5.2 then ToT LFR gear at 502 would not feel like upgrades.

      "Trust me, as someone who raids in a casual guild with casual raiders of a variety of skill levels, even the least skilled player would rather not raid at all, then go back to raid "old" content."

      Then they can build up 535 Timeless gear, 528 LFR gear, 522/553 crafted gear, 553 celestial tier items, and 559 Ordos items.

      If they want to gear up faster they can go into a 20% nerfed ToT that can easily be done in like 480 ilvl that offers 522s.

      I mean, are they just going to skip doing ToT for Secrets/Runestones for the legendary quest?

      Delete
    3. And what would be so wrong with giving people an option besides LFR?

      Are you and GC smoking the same funky cigarets? Why is there this obsession with wanting to force everyone into LFR if they want gear.

      The majority of players do not raid, many of the players that do LFR only do it because they feel like they have to if they want gear. They do not enjoy it.

      What is so wrong with giving people and option to gear up that does not involve being grouped with random assholes over the internet?

      With secrets/runestones dropping off the first 8 bosses of siege, why would anyone in their right mind do old content to get them, unless they were trying to speed up the process?

      Get all you need from the first two wings in flex. Avoid LFR at all costs.

      And why would anyone do ToT now beside speeding up the quest collection, for achievement runs or getting some alts some practice in something you are comfortable with because you were doing it so long (that is why I would do it personally)?

      LFR as horrible as it is, drops better gear, flex drops better gear, normal drops better gear, ordos drops better gear, celestials drop better gear, the island with a burden has a chance to become better gear.

      Seriously what is the big deal with giving people easy access to out dated gear?

      Delete
  3. (Jaeger, I agree with most of what you said)

    @Grumpy

    By using the term 'difficulty' you open up a can of AddOn and other third-party resources filled can of wurms that might be better averted.

    Personally, I like to use the terms 'effort' and/or 'dedication' instead.

    People tend to neglect the bonding experience that came from farming outdoor mobs for your resist gear consumables etc. (in case a guild didn't outsource it) , and it certainly made the world more alive.

    It also meant that the 'Raiding scene' had its uses for the rest of the server community, as e.g. someone who couldn't commit to set hours could go about farming Timbermaw etc. for crucial Recipes, farm Lotusses etc. and fulfill as such a valuable niche in the whole server-eco system.

    So one could argue that it made for a more social game.

    In game design terms, the emphasis on the prepration stage in earlier iterations made WoW more of a 'hobby game' like Magic: The Gathering, Warhammer and similar miniatures games, PnP RPG's etc. are, in which the deckbuilding/painting of mini's/preparing the adventure mean 'playing the game without playing the game', whereas it now more and more has become a 'shelf game' you log in and 'play' (even when that 'play' is too often essentially pure Skinner box).

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Effort or dedication might actually fit better. It took a lot more effort (time) to get the gear in vanilla than it does now.

      You make a huge point to vanilla raiding. You could very well have an entire crew of non raiders who were needed to raid. If they did not make the effort outside of raiding the raid team had to and that took away from the time they spent raiding. So even non raiders, in a way, were raiders on the outside.

      I like the M:TG design, and sadly did not listen to my friends back then and did not join wow until late BC. I think I would have liked vanilla a lot because that fit the type of preparation game, a hobby game, that I like.

      Delete
  4. I'm not really sure how much skill actual raids involve nowadays. Or did involve at any point, to be frank. Anything people can't bypass by using skill can be bypassed using brute force. 200 wipes nothing, planets will align at some point and it'll be a kill. Time is key, I guess.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I also believe Wrath was no 1 for raiding because of the story. The Lich King. Even my sister knew about him and she was as casual as they come when talking about computer games. To see the story unfold, you needed to raid. Tbh, I don't think any boss they throw at us would be able to top that.

      Delete
    2. Somehow I doubt you've ever raided heroics pre-nerf.

      Planets never simply align for Heroic Lei Shen. Or look at the recent Heroic Siegecrafter video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=pJb1xoOOicM

      There is no "brute force." The boss doesn't simply decide to give up after 200 attempts. That's 200 attempts of refining a strategy and trying to execute it perfectly with an incredibly tiny margin of error (or none in some cases).

      If raiding is so easy and only requires time, why did only 19% of guilds who killed at least normal Jin'rokh get at least 4 heroic kills in Throne of Thunder?

      The only 200 pull boss in there was Heroic Lei Shen. Dark Animus was MAYBE 50-100, Durumu 30-50. Nothing else was really past 20-30 for good guilds. We managed to clear 13/13H while raiding two nights a week.

      So why are there tons of guilds raiding 3-4 nights who couldn't get past the first heroic or two? It's clearly easy, right, and just about time. Why did they continuously wipe to the bosses we killed in a dozen pulls?

      Delete
    3. @ James

      There have always been bosses like that. I call them RNG bosses. When you wipe and say "if only they do not target the healer next time we got it" and you bang your head against the wall a few times until you get lucky with the RNG and it does not target the healer and bam, you down it.

      Usually bosses like that you either need to get lucky, or start to over gear it. I think Tortos was a fight like that for us because we had 3 shaman and it was making it harder on us then it needed to be. Oddly enough, once we beat it after wiping for a while, we had no problems after but we needed to luck into our first kill.

      The LK story was amazing. Anyone that actually paid attention to it would be in complete awe of his true power.

      All that time taunting us, always like a cat playing with mice, and never taking us out, he was testing us to see if we were strong enough to serve him.

      In the end, we never had a chance against him. When he wanted us dead, he killed us, at will. If not for one human that forgot he had his own personal PvP get out of jail free trinket, we would have lost. We never stood a chance against him, and that was great story telling.

      So the fight was great mechanics wise, and the story leading up to is was amazing, so I agree, nothing they make will ever come close to that. It will, without a doubt, always be the best raid boss of all time.

      Delete
    4. @ Balkoth

      I know James raids heroics, not sure how far, but he is a tank for a heroic raiding guild.

      While I might only raid normals I agree with James. To be quite honest, the process both you and I go through is exactly the same.

      You are playing with heroic skilled players, I am playing with normal skilled players. The learning process however is the same.

      Any boss, ever, you throw yourself at it enough, you will get better at it. That is what it comes down to and what I believe James is trying to say.

      Even if you use your "no margin for error" example his analogy still fits. The more pulls you get, the better people get at reacting to what they need to do perfect to ensure there are no errors.

      So yes, you are brute forcing it with pulls, not gear or avoiding a mechanic. You are going at it again and again until you get it right. Yes, throwing 200 attempts at it will eventually get it down because your raiders should be learning from their mistakes.

      The only difference between my raiding and yours is I am allowed to make mistakes, you are not. So I will keep that guy making mistakes longer and let him learn or wait on "luck" to not have him screw things up and you will replace him.

      In the end, we both did the same thing. I waited on luck so he did not screw us up, you replaced him so he did not screw you up. But we both kept going at it, kept getting better at it, until we downed it.

      James is 100% right. At any level of game play from LFR, to flex, to normal, to heroic.

      Just keep going at it, learn, get better, be more reactive, or proactive, or whatever you need to be, and you will get better until you down it.

      I've seen it many times, again, talking about the skill level of the people I play with. We wipe on a boss over and over for 100 wipes and then suddenly, it clicks, everyone in the raid finally "gets it" and bam, clean kill and then each week after that we go in and one shot it.

      All it took was for that magic moment when everyone "gets it" to happen.

      You might say heroic siegecrafter is one of those fights now. Maybe that is what you are progressing on at the moment, or you got it but it was a bitch. But soon, in a matter of weeks or months or maybe even six months, you will be back here saying how easy it was when I am asking for help with it.

      Yes, throwing attempts at things, even things with zero margin for error, will eventually see it go down. That is because people learn, or should learn. And then, as james puts it, when the stars align and everyone learned, you down it.

      Delete
    5. @Balkoth
      Your assumption is incorrect. We did down Ra-Den and all, before nerf or whatever. We're slightly more progressed than you at the moment.
      Yes, Lei Shen was ~200 pulls. I'm only talking personal experience, and I can tell this much, some are brute force. Lei Shen shouldn't have been 200 wipes but apparently, we're that bad. 200 wipes translates into 'let's hope for the best' in my eyes instead of actual skill.

      Delete
    6. My point is. Sure. Some have skill. But it works just as well with time. 200 freaking wipes. How many days is that?
      I'm not in any way shape or form judging anyone outside, I'm judging my own group and I.
      200 wipes = bad. 200 wipes = bad composition, missing players. 200 wipes = changing strat every 30 wipes. 200 wipes = fucked up raid leader who demoralizes the team. 200 wipes = tired people who do it mechanically, without thinking any longer. 200 wipes, in the end, means brute force.
      Planets DID align for Lei Shen. Do you think I would come and make such a comment if that wasn't how I felt it was for us?

      Delete
    7. You also come up as a bit of a jerk trying to belittle someone's experience. Of course the easy argument is always 'you didn't do that, so you don't get to say how it is'. But you know... we're on the same level, you don't get to tell me Lei Shen is this or that, when I know exactly how he is. Anything can be backed up by numbers, but that doesn't necessarily make a valid point.

      We didn't always raid progression on our raiding days. Sometimes we sacrificed that to do 25m for the whole guild. We didn't always spend the time right. We were supposed to start at 9 and we'd often start at 10-10:30 and finish up early. We'd have drama filled raid moments when my raid leader and I would act like idiots because of some common emotional background that we have which reaches different heights. Sometimes we'd just try raiding even if we were missing key players, just to see if maybe we can luck it out. After downing Ra-Den the second time, we went back to 25 so we could let the rest of the guild see as many heroic modes as we could. Time is time, and it can be very little or a whole lot of it.

      You may take pride in less time and good results. I don't take much pride in downing Lei Shen hc for example. Those 200 wipes in my eyes shows me we're putting in more time than effort and I'm disappointed.
      I don't have facts, this is feelings. So here's my assumption: I doubt we're the only guild that brute forced their way through heroics.

      Delete
    8. I would have to say, only complete guesstimate, that the vast majority of guilds brute force their way through things.

      There are those world first guilds that do it with skill and time and dedication, and I am talking extreme excellence of execution sort of skill, to be doing things with a lower gear level when they do it.

      Everyone that follows after them, admitting it or not, brute forced their way through the content. Why do I say that? Well, the most skilled players didn't need that gear, everyone else did.

      It even works that way in my world of normals. When we have an issue the answer is usually "lets get some more gear". Only recently have I been able to change a lot of the people to realize, we are a lot better than that. Sure, we can go back and get more gear, but if we throw 30 wipes at it, we can get it, we do not need that gear. We just need to "get it".

      So brute forcing through attempts until you "get it" or brute forcing through gear because you did not want to wipe that often. Everyone brute forces their way through it.

      One way or another we all brute force the content.

      Delete
    9. "Any boss, ever, you throw yourself at it enough, you will get better at it. That is what it comes down to and what I believe James is trying to say."

      Somewhat. But if you took your raid group right now, gave them full 535 gear (and undid the 20% ToT nerf), and threw them against H Lei Shen, how long do you think it would take to kill him?

      People in heroic guilds already have the necessarily skills to beat the next boss (usually, sometimes they need to improve a small amount), they just need to practice on the boss itself and work out the precise execution.

      But your raid members would need to vastly increase their skill -- you wouldn't even be able to make the phase 1 DPS check until everyone because much, much better at their DPSing.

      And if they don't start figuring out that their personal skill needs to go way up and if they don't actually work on improving their skill, you'll never get past phase 1. Doesn't matter how many times you try, you'll keep failing the DPS check alone until they get better.

      There's no luck involved in this.

      "But soon, in a matter of weeks or months or maybe even six months, you will be back here saying how easy it was when I am asking for help with it."

      No, I won't be.

      "And then, as james puts it, when the stars align and everyone learned, you down it."

      Again, if it's a function solely of time, why would one guild take 100 wipes and another take 1000 wipes?

      Not to mention that "planets align" means something that happens very rarely -- meaning that the kill shouldn't be easily repeatable because you effectively lucked out when you beat the boss. Except the kill is repeatable.

      "Lei Shen shouldn't have been 200 wipes but apparently, we're that bad."

      And yet if you took a guild working on normal Tortos they wouldn't get Lei Shen in 2000 pulls. There's a vast difference in skill, it's not just time.

      "Planets DID align for Lei Shen. Do you think I would come and make such a comment if that wasn't how I felt it was for us?"

      So you lucked out and weren't able to kill it again? That's what that phrase means.

      "Those 200 wipes in my eyes shows me we're putting in more time than effort and I'm disappointed."

      The usual metric I've seen for 10 man guilds is 150ish wipes. So 200 wipes is more than "typical" but not insane. There's just so many ways people can mess up on that fight and sometimes people don't even have to deal with a certain sequence of events during a transition for 100 pulls or whatever.

      "You also come up as a bit of a jerk trying to belittle someone's experience."

      I'm mainly tired of people claiming that raiding takes no skill and people only succeed because of better gear or more time and blah blah blah. Or claiming that Paragon must be terrible because it took them 500 tries on Heroic Ragnaros. Or that it took Paragon and such 250+ pulls on Lei Shen (in worse gear, to be sure) or 200+ pulls on Garrosh and thus they're "brute forcing" content rather than being some of the best players in the world.

      "Everyone that follows after them, admitting it or not, brute forced their way through the content. Why do I say that? Well, the most skilled players didn't need that gear, everyone else did."

      Wait wait wait. Is brute forcing through content related to time or to gear?

      In other words, imagine three guilds.

      Guild A beats the boss in 200 pulls in 200 ilvl.

      Guild B beats the boss in 200 pulls in 225 ilvl.

      Guild C beats the boss in 300 pulls in 200 ilvl.

      Which guilds are brute forcing? Are you defining that anyone who is NOT as good as the Paragon/Method players to be "brute forcing?" Because they will ALWAYS take more wipes, more gear, or both.

      Delete
    10. Reading this leaves me with thinking that one of three things needs to be true.

      1) You are stupid, which I do not believe to be true as you seem intelligent.

      2) You are trolling, which I completely fell for it.

      3) You have completely lost touch with reality. I think it is this one.

      Have you been doing good so long that you have completely forgotten what progression is? Have you forgotten wiping on a boss over and over and making tiny adjustments and getting better each time doing them? Have you forgotten that the DPS goes up, healing gets applied more when needed and mana manged better, tanks use their cooldowns more accurately, each and every attempt as people get more comfortable with the fights and the moment involved? Have you forgotten that how people became better players is by wiping?

      Yes, you have forgotten all of that. Completely and totally forgotten all of that.

      That is brute forcing something. Doing it until you get it right. Which means getting better at it. Sure, sometimes you get one of those "stars align" moments and get lucky but over all, it is the time and effort people spend doing something and learning about it that makes them better. It is the act of throwing yourself at something and getting better at it even a tiny bit each time until you "get it" that is brute forcing it.

      Even method and paragon brute force things, they are just better at it. The fact they wipe 100, 200, 500 times on something is proof of that. They make tiny adjustments, hope everyone gets a tiny bit better, and maybe, just maybe, get lucky once in a while, and they sooner or later down it because they kept banging their head against the wall until it broke down.

      That is what makes them so good, the fact they are willing to put that time and effort into it. The fact that they are willing to invest all those wipes into it. The fact they can get better in some of the little ways that 99.9% of us wouldn't even notice. The fact they are skilled, dedicated, and willing to keep going until they get it right.

      If that is not brute force I do not know what is.

      Delete
    11. "Have you been doing good so long that you have completely forgotten what progression is? Have you forgotten wiping on a boss over and over and making tiny adjustments and getting better each time doing them?"

      What makes you think I *didn't* wipe 150+ times to Heroic Lei Shen? I would be *extremely* surprised if there was a single guild that killed Heroic Lei Shen prior to 5.4 that didn't wipe at LEAST 100 times. Maybe 75 times as a lower bound.

      So no, I haven't forgotten.

      "That is brute forcing something. Doing it until you get it right"

      Then what in the world is learning?

      I mean, if I'm bad at multiplication and thus I practice doing multiplication problems again and again, I'm apparently brute forcing it instead of practicing and learning?

      Brute forcing stuff indicates having high enough DPS/HPS/health to be able to effective ignore mechanics. Aka you can force your way through the fight instead of doing it properly.

      That's very different from needing a lot of practice to get it right.

      "If that is not brute force I do not know what is."

      Doing Heroic Sha of Fear in 540 ilvl and thus basically ignoring all mechanics and killing him in one pull. That's brute force. What you're talking about is the opposite - they wipe and wipe and wipe BECAUSE they cannot brute force it.

      Delete
    12. You learn from brute force. Or at least the good players do.

      I've had to call raid nights because I knew throwing attempts at it would not get us anywhere. You can keep throwing yourself at it if you can see yourself getting lucky.

      I remember more than a few fights where I said, "if we could just get lucky and it not target the healer we can get this" and we kept going and going hoping and waiting for that one attempt where we get lucky.

      That is another approach to brute force. Pushing until you learn, pushing until you get lucky, things like that.

      A funny thing happens however while waiting for that one lucky moment. You get better, so much so that you end up downing it without waiting for that lucky moment. But you were still throwing yourself at it hoping for that lucky moment.

      I guess we just have a different definition of brute force.

      You define brute force as over gearing something. That works too I guess.

      I define it as waiting for that "right" moment. Throwing more heals at a moment, or calling of unconventional use of cooldowns so we can "just get past that 2nd phase and we will be okay".

      Perhaps you would call what I do when brute forcing a fight to be learning the fight.

      Delete
    13. "I remember more than a few fights where I said, "if we could just get lucky and it not target the healer we can get this" and we kept going and going hoping and waiting for that one attempt where we get lucky."

      Name a fight like that in MoP. I'm struggling to think of one.

      To me, that sounds like your strategy was bad or the healer was bad.

      "I define it as waiting for that "right" moment. Throwing more heals at a moment, or calling of unconventional use of cooldowns so we can "just get past that 2nd phase and we will be okay"."

      Except that's not brute force -- it is INTENDED you use cooldowns to get past moments. Brute force is when you hit the situation of "Well, we used all of our cooldowns to survive that AoE but now we have to survive a second AoE and have nothing."

      Guilds literally have macros and strategies saying "Use X healing cooldown at Y percent or when Z happens." This is intended. Healing cooldowns are MEANT to be used.

      "Perhaps you would call what I do when brute forcing a fight to be learning the fight."

      Think about the words you're using. Brute force = raw power. Or, in other words, the ability to ignore mechanics. You're forcing your way through the fight instead of doing it properly.

      Brute force is the opposite of practice and stellar execution -- it's saying "Our health/DPS/HPS is so high we can ignore X and Y mechanics."

      Delete
    14. Tortos because we had shaman with little to no movement healing. Usually the 5th stomp/ rockfall would doom us. We first downed it when it decided not to chase the 2 shaman and they could heal through it.

      Maybe we could have rotated cooldowns better but neither of them are what I would call "fantastic" players. They are capable but that was about it. Enough to get us through, but we needed for them to be able to heal.

      I can go through more and more bosses where having 2 shaman hurt us. Like horridon where we had no one that could dispel poisons or diseases. So we needed to keep going at it until we got perfect at making sure no poison ever got cast and no disease ever got applied. We brute forced it and did it in a way that should have been easier. We needed to get timing down on the poison door and a little luck on the disease door.

      Remember, I play in a normal guild with people of mostly average skills. Because of that many times we needed to rely on luck to get us past some rough patches.

      Yes, it did become easier later on when we could use the over gearing method and just kill tortos before the 5th stomp or mow down the adds so fast they never had a chance to apply any diseases.

      Or how about horridon heroic when you have that one person that just does not get the dino mechanic even after you have explained it 100 times. Hoping and praying that it chooses them last because you know they are going to screw it up.

      I don't think you could ever understand the difficulties in raiding that I have to deal with because of the style of play you do. But I would be willing to bet that sometimes on some rare occasions, my normal kills end up being more stressful, more exciting and more harder fought for than your heroic kill.

      It is easy to down a boss with a group that everyone knows what they are doing, when everyone watched the video and read about the things their class can do to help but when everyone shows up and waits for me to explain everything and tell them what their class can do to help and has to learn all the tips and tricks for everyone because they will not do it themselves. But in the end what I do there is rarely ever anything close to easy.

      That is why I call it brute force, even if it is learning. Because not everyone learns at the same pace and we are brute forcing it doing whatever we can to get it down in spite of the fact that someone just does not understand to run out when they have ionization.

      But yes, we go attempt after attempt hoping for a little luck. Many fights are like that. Just because you play with a better quality of player does not mean that most of the raiders do not have to deal with luck as a raiding factor.

      I guess you could say beating tortos before the 5th was when we were brute forcing it and not the waiting on luck. I guess I could agree with that.

      I just consider anything that happens banging your head against the wall is brute forcing it. Even if learning from it. You are pounding it out until everything fall into place.

      Delete
    15. "Maybe we could have rotated cooldowns better but neither of them are what I would call "fantastic" players. They are capable but that was about it. Enough to get us through, but we needed for them to be able to heal."

      Then you simply could have three healed it. Many guilds did.

      "I can go through more and more bosses where having 2 shaman hurt us."

      That's generally more a composition issue on a specific boss fight.

      "Or how about horridon heroic when you have that one person that just does not get the dino mechanic even after you have explained it 100 times. Hoping and praying that it chooses them last because you know they are going to screw it up."

      That's not the fault of the encounter. Not to mention basically everyone WILL have to deal with it (except for tanks).

      "I don't think you could ever understand the difficulties in raiding that I have to deal with because of the style of play you do."

      I was an a Flex run on my alt about two weeks back. We couldn't get past Protectors, they were that bad. I've seen and experienced the problems you have.

      But there's a world of difference between saying "Man, I hope X mechanic doesn't pick a healer five times in a row because we'll probably wipe to lack of healing if they have to keep dealing with it" and saying "Man, I hope X mechanic doesn't pick Bob because he'll screw it up."

      "It is easy to down a boss with a group that everyone knows what they are doing"

      Good to know Heroic Lei Shen was easy. I was kind of stupid and thought it was difficult.

      "But yes, we go attempt after attempt hoping for a little luck. Many fights are like that. Just because you play with a better quality of player does not mean that most of the raiders do not have to deal with luck as a raiding factor."

      Name a fight where luck is a factor that doesn't involve you saying "It's bad luck if Bob gets picked because he'll screw it up." That's a problem with Bob, not with the fight.

      "I guess you could say beating tortos before the 5th was when we were brute forcing it and not the waiting on luck. I guess I could agree with that."

      Indeed.

      Delete