Yeah this is dumb, why gatekeep new players from the content they need to Gear?
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Why join a server advertising itself as "hardcore" with more difficult content if you're going to complain it's harder?
Even if the general concept of this suggestion is accepted, I'd expect - and vouch for - the bigger focus and changes to be increasing the difficult of Heroic in relation to the current Normal, not so much in lowering it for Normal.
The current normal far exceeds anything heroic nor heroic buffs presented can present.
Ohiemetzen made an arguement in favor of being in raid gear from previous tiers, but thats not possible.
1). Naxx/Ulduar are harder than TOC or even ICC. This means TOC + boes + RDF HC + frozen halls hc are what you do to get bis.
2). The raid isn't hard, it's overtuned. The raw numbers required are too much. The mechanics are still ignored by raiders once they finish gearing up with the gear from the raid itself. The goal of the server to make raids harder failed. Instead it made ICC a raid-crawler, with most of the server farming 3/12 icc for months, then the next 3/12, then finally being geared enough to join a guild and finish normal and farm normal for a few more months before progressing HC
Pre-raid bis:
helm/chest/gloves/shoulders T10 from RDF HC farm + weekly frosty event (310 needed, 19 frosties/week, 16.4 weeks to farm 4pt10)
ICC Pants/Boots BOE
TOC Wrist/Cape BOE
ICC Neck BOE (Wodins/Bqc)
Ulduar Belt BOE or Fos/Pos/Hor HC
ICC Rep ring
ICC Boe ring or Dalaran gold ring
Mirror of truth for physical/Sundial for casters
Toc5 normal trinket OR DMC greatness
This is the pre-raid bis list for most classes, resulting in 4 months of rdf + weekly farming and 20-30,000 gold spent (almost 100 coins worth of gold alone). All raiders are expected to BUY the BOE's that drop from the bosses in the raid to clear the raid itself, and even then this is just to enter ICC and kill marrowgar, not to full clear. At this point you're welcomed into a guild raid at 5.2/5.4k gs not into a pug raid.
The current system of balancing makes no sense. The normal mode raids are balanced around all the raiders in the raid except 1 or 2 people having full bis 264/271 ilvl normal mode gear.
W/raid of 6.1k+ raiders, we killed fester today /w 13 people over 10k+ dps, many 12-14k dps with full bis, Shadowmourne, etc and /w only 5 dps geared at content level. We still had 2 explosions on fester + nearly wiped to low dps (2 heals swapped dps, tank was doing 8k dps).
w/ a raid as geared as were, we shouldn't be struggling to carry a few at-content raiders.
Now imagine how much of a **** show it is for less geared raiders who haven't done the content. The only time I successfully cleared fester with at-content raiders was when we forced 3 healers to go dps, all CDs were used, all players performed perfect rotations, flasks/prepots/postpots/flamecaps were used and we bubbled through the enrage timer for an additional 10 seconds of dots to burn the boss down.
good and correct topic. It's a pity that it will be ignored once again. Everything is as usual.
I do also want to point out that the advert "hardcore server" doesn't deliver.
-Simply buffing boss hp by 50% in dungeons and raid boss hp by 60-100% doesn't add any "difficulty" to the content itself, but just makes it drag on for longer and require more gear.
-Dungeon farming takes a lot longer making it "harder" by desentivizing players from joining because nobody wants to do that content except people who absolutely have to.
-Mechanics are unbuffed and since bosses require more overgearing, mechanics are instead ignored. The majority of pug raids end up resulting in a hyper-fixation of perfect dps rotations and a complete ignoring of all mechanics and positioning in favor of "more dps more dps"
To wrap the point up, a buff to the actual mechanics and a compensatory nerf to the pure raw numbers would allow the realm to actually be "hardcore" instead of "gear longer"
Difficulty is a subjective thing. Everyone is going to perceive what you're talking about differently. So that's not relevant.
But let's talk about the game functionality because that's what actually matters. It is supposed to be a hardcore server. So what matters here is, does the path to beat the game exist? Yes. As you've mentioned there is a gear set you have to obtain to beat the content. You have to meet a threshold to win. That is a very good thing in this environment. The discussion would be different if a player couldn't meet the threshold, but they can. Even more so in a fully progressed environment where you can get carried. Hardcore environments are meant to push players to extremes.
What you've mentioned with players having to beat a couple bosses and another couple bosses working their way up falls in line with the philosophy of the server. If players aren't beating bosses until they meet that extreme threshold then that's a great thing. That's how it should be. This isn't content catered to casuals where casuals can also execute mechanics. The content has to be hard capped. You have to push the limits of the class and the content to win.
Now as far as the gap between normal and heroic keep in mind the gear and skill discrepancy. You're talking about two extremes on a spectrum. Full BIS veteran players in a guild steamrolling heroics vs players barely with enough gear in a pug group trying to kill a couple bosses. The real question is at what threshold is a player able to kill a heroic boss. Do they clear 6 normal bosses and can now kill Marrowgar heroic? You're not really accounting for that gap. Some players and guilds on this game honestly just need like a mythic level raid mode at this point where the server is so progressed now.
That's just your opinion on what "hardcore" means for you.
Ironic too, when you make posts about how they require "perfect composition, overgearing, perfect tactics, no deaths AND 95%+ rotation perfection on class dps from all members of the raid." I guess we lowly mortals don't consider thrice perfection to be just "extra time."
Obnoxious, the reality is every raid results in overgearing and people bringing bis characters from the 2015-2019 run and helping gear newer players.
The current server's population is largely levelers and casuals. The raiding scene is struggling hard. Even havi's pughouse discord is hosting so many less raids than before.
its the first time i post here, but I wish that the developing teams reads your message and finds a way to make the hardcore server actually hardcore, instead of just gear longer, because, as you said, once the players meet the minimal gear requirements they can pretty much ignore the mechanics
feels that Lordaeron wants you to play like a "robot" with a perfect rotation, rather than raids being HARD itself, which is what people want. Nobody wants this.
if i might give my 2 cents on the question.
Some players , myself included did start on icecrown back in the day , sadly during peak raid hours, trying to log in was simply not possible when the Queue times were 30 min + , some would log in hours before the raid, but if you crash or DC during the raid, there goes your raid night.
it got annoying enough that we did swap servers simply to not have a Queue time to deal with ( for those not willing / unable to donate ). Weeks and months later , after establishing professions and a circle of friends , one reaches icc only to face the big hurdle that is increased HP/damage values.
I did obviously get over all of those things, donated , finished the game and what not, but for a lot of people , the reality is : Lordaeron is the only option if they want to raid because icecrown is gated by a donation that a lot of people can not / dont want to pay.