Full WBs, no limit on debuffs, other small changes in the game - these make players more powerful. Full WBs by themselves have really, really significant impact. Add to that faster PCs, improved knowledge base, experienced players, voice communication etc., and we are so much more powerful than the players were when the game first came out. And the result? Many bosses die in 40 seconds, you never see Ragnaros phase 2, you don’t need to learn any mechanics, you can just faceroll on the keyboard and the bosses die. You can AFK, you can watch a movie, you can be drunk or whatever.
I played BWL on Wednesday for the first time in my life. I didn’t even have time to see what is happening, we cleared already. BWL feels like SWP during the WOTLK pre-patch. Just running and pulling like you would do in Wailing Caverns, with mana breaks every 15 minutes.
On Wednesday in MC we had 2 (two!) players detonating in the group during Baron Geddon encounter, and can you guess what happened with us? Nothing! Nothing happened, we just killed the boss.
Who is this game made for? Why is the boss difficulty not adjusted? Why don’t they make Ragnaros go to phase 2 at 50% HP, since DPS is now so high? Why don’t they do something? Why is everybody happy with the state of the game? Is everybody else also playing drunk, like I am, so the difficulty is thus OK?
In 2004/5 when WoW came out in US/Europe respectively the internet speeds and computers were much worse as were Comms. There was no knowledge of the game, therefore the encounters were much harder.
People remembered the harder encounters, so when the pirate servers in the 2010s emulated classic most of them over tuned the classic raids/encounters to match how difficult they felt during the 00s when the game first came out. People played this a lot and made strategies to deal with the bosses and shared them around on line essentially “figuring them out”.
When classic came out in 2019, Blizzard (according to them anyway) restored the game as was and it became clear that if this is correct, the pirate servers had over tuned the encounters to match the “nostalgia” and the raids were actually way easier. This was compounded by the fact the playerbase had already trained themselves on over tuned versions of the bosses so they found them very easy. Further more Blizzard just used the 1.12.1 itemization so the base items in the game were way more powerful than the would have been on a true progressive server where molten core was released with the original itemization in the game.
If they ever make classic + this would be the time to adjust the bosses a bit
I wiped in MC, I saw Ragnaros phase, my first BWL raid ended after 4 bosses because we couldn’t kill trash. Difficulty feels just fine. Seems like the problem is on your side.
I can’t understand players going to classic for raiding content, either. The people I know that are raiding in classic are clearing MC/BWL bosses in literally seconds. The fastest logged kills I can see, looking at my friends logs, are all below 30 seconds. Some bosses die in 14-18 seconds (Lucifron, Gehennas, Shazzrah). In BWL, only 4 bosses survive longer than a minute (Firemaw, Ebonroc, Chromaggus, Nefarian). Seems rather braindead to me (and no the content isn’t even remotely difficult without world buffs either).
Comparing that to my guilds kill times in Dragon Soul over in Cata classic, no boss is dying faster than 2 minutes. The Deathwing encounters (Spine and Madness) take 10 and 14 minutes respectively. Assuming you oneshot both bosses, that’s almost an entire MC speedclear worth of time. And if you for some reason end up dying, your entire raid night isn’t over because you lost all your world buffs.
Don’t get me wrong though. I still like vanilla style gaming. The leveling journey is amazing even in 2025. But the raiding really is two decades dated and designed for a completely different era, and about as interesting as watching paint dry.
Well for me that I dont have a guild and a regular schedule i prefer having easy raids with a single difficoulty mode. (The pug i have joined usualy takes 90/100 min to clear MC)
Like on friday i got the judgement legs for my paladin and unless i manage to pug naxx in the future I am pretty good till TBC (for prot even better, they are bis currently)
I would like to have the same possibility but saddly the only option is GDK and so I had to left my Classic main (with 78 days of played) reroll on memehennas.
Now that I have reached lv85 in gearing in dungeon and farming Gold, I would have moved my main but my character name is not aviable there and i dont want to use accents or other weird letters.
To be fair, I prefer more casual approach to raiding and not to care about million mechanics and learning every fight, every rotation and act like it’s my second job. When I play, I want to relax, chill and have fun. Tried to raid in Retail and it was way too much stuff going around, even on normal/heroic difficulty.
Classic is something that I like, you need to focus, but not too much, you can to talk, joke and mess around with friends between pulls, but not on the fights. You can approach to it more casual or if you want to “test” yourself you can push a bit harder with buffs. No need to be a real gamer to clear the content, but also you need to put some effort.
On one hand, people complain that the game is too easy.
On the other hand, they ask for gs, logs, gearchecks, WBs, flasks and S tier classes/spec to do MC.
I mean yeah, you can raid MC with lvl 40 green gear and it will be more difficult. But imo, for the wrong reasons. It’s still just making yourself artificially weaker, it doesn’t change how the bosses work, and their lack of interesting mechanics. It’s still just a loot pinata that takes longer to kill, and puts more stress on your healers.
Just compare MC Ragnaros to FL Ragnaros in Cata. I can atleast say for certain which boss I find to be the most well designed, interesting and rewarding to kill.
For me, complaining about world buffs and using workable specs in raid is the same.
Getting world buffs with chronoboon is the easiest thing in the game, there’s no reason not to do so (outside of getting warchief buff as alliance, but I don’t think that many raids actually require that).
Getting raid composed of proper specs is the same. If you want to raid, you play proper spec. Every class have one or two. Playing meme spec is the same as playing naked. It’s artificial handicapping yourself and your raid. Some people might do that, but generally it’s frowned upon for good reason.
Flasks are on the border. For many classes, flasks just not useful. I’m healer and for me flask is not useful, I have enough mana drinking pots and runes. So I don’t think that flasks should be a requirement in current content. Tanks must have flasks and undergeared casters should compensate weak gear with flask buffs. That’s about it. And I don’t even think flasks are considered mandatory in the community. I saw plenty of pugs raid which just add one SR for flask.
Raids are easy, yes. This is vanilla, everyone saw that in 2019. Some people love easy raids.
If you enjoy raiding in retail, then stick to retail. It’s very simple. Classic isn’t supposed to lean into the “e-sports” mindset of retail. I’m not sure if you are aware, but mostly the retail and classic player bases don’t overlap very much. If classic began moving towards retail in terms of mechanics and gameplay (i.e. character abilities, rotations etc.) most of the classic crowd would simply stop playing altogether. We’re not playing retail AND classic. We’re playing classic BECAUSE it’s not retail. And yes, the raiding is easy. It’ll be a lil’bit harder come AQ40 and Naxx, but not hard in the way the retail crowd wants, and that’s fine. It’s a different sort of game. It’s not about spending weeks honing your raid tactics and such. Not everybody has the time, or even interest in doing that anymore.
I haven’t raided in retail (or played even) for almost a decade, so I wouldn’t know.
Imo, the raiding we’ve had in Cata hits the sweetspot. You don’t need 100 addons and/or weakauras to make it, but the bosses still have mechanics. I’m in a fairly casual and relaxed raid team without any set requirements than showing up on raid day rather than not showing up, come with relevant gear, enchants and gems. Then you learn as you go. That’s been good enough for us to kill every single boss so far.
I did weeks of wiping and memorizing all phases by heart on LKHC a year ago. When he finally died, all I felt was “oh thank Elune this is finally over”. There was no sence of accomplishment or joy, just sort of numbness. I was not having fun.
Our kill of Nefarian after we lost a main tank and two healers on pull was fun tho. In any serious raid that would be instant wipe and 10 min recovery. Here we cheered on an offtank in dps gear with a shield slapped on for 4 minutes and it was just about enough “stress” for me.