Since P3 started, we had to take 1-3 pugs every run; despide the guild’s best effort to recruit people, there were always some peeps who coudn’t make it, or people simply quitting the game.
Last raid night, we had 2 bosses left from the previous raid night and we had to take some pugs, and after some Eranikus wiped, they started to be obnoxious in chat, really messed up our whole vibe, and we didn’t managed to kill anything.
Today we had to call it a night after spending 1 hour trying to get a healler with no success. The only thing that we killed was the first trash mob.
Having 10 man raids with 3 days CD was one of the best things about SoD.
You could simply run the raid 2 times per week with your friends/guildies and have a nice time, while also constantly getting gear every run (because the raid acutally resets, so it’s not just a wipefeast). I think the raid dificulty is no issue, that’s actually the fun part, trying to overcome the bosses and gear up as a guild; what is an issue is not even being able to find enough people to do the damn thing and not even pug it.
Sunken Temple, at this point in time can be cleared by a raid of sub-20 players.
as long as you got your two tanks and two-three healers you’re pretty much gucci. heck, most encounters can be solo-tanked now, including Eranikus.
i tank for my guild, and i am very much put in the “go slap that other thing to keep it off the raid”-category every week now, i feel like i have no impact on the encounters at all… its not very engaging to tank unless you are main tanking right now…
that being said; the raid is very easy. you can likely clear it with 15 people if you play optimally and bring somewhat geared people (note; ‘somewhat’ doesn’t mean full bis).
the 3 day lockouts will come back next phase when we get MC and (hopefully) ZG.
maybe they’ll even put MC on the 3 day timer instead of the 7, seeings as they are gutting that raid’s difficulty in favor of casual andy’s as well.
if you can’t tell, i am very much one of the “sweats” who think the content is borderline braindead right now. its way too easy, its unfathomable to me that some people are still struggling.
oh, and we also have to pug some people every week because our roster has some gaping holes in it as well… this is why i was adamant from the start of SOD that we should have started the raids at 20, not 10.
people got too comfortable inside the comfort of their little eggshell, and now that its time to expand its a miserable experience because everyone is already solidified in their 10 man rosters/friend group guilds.
we call this “a bear service” where i come from. this essentially translates to doing someone a favor which ends up having a negative impact on them… in this case, blizzard giving us 10 man raids for 2 phases caused a negative impact, as people now refuse to budge when it comes to merging with other guilds who are in the exact same position.
Firstly, I’m not particullary sure how can you solo tank Eranikus, since he takes away 33% of your armor, and that’s stackable, furthermore with a mearly 15 people group.
We were bearly able to kill the gear check boss, ‘Hazzas and Morphaz’ in 19 men with not WB and without exploiting the dream realm to much, literally on the last second; and we were “somewhat geared”, considering that we had full gnomer gear + other prebis that we managed to farm in dungeons, so I’m not sure what “somewhat geard” means in your book.
Yeah, the raid difficulty it not hard compared with retail wow, but for classic standards it’s definitely a step up, especially since a lot of people that play SoD are casuals. Every raid can be “easy” with the right ammount of gear. Also, not sure why do you bring up difficulty since that was not the topic and I already said:
Most people usually log in just for the raid night, to have fun with their guildies; there is no fun recruiting people every week (because they either quit or can’t commit), or taking randoms just to lose guild loot. And even killing the whole raid in a single night, means the raid nights are halved.
I see nothing wrong with that, at the end of the day it’s a game (SoD it’s just classic with what if) you make it sound like raiding 20 or 40 man raids it’s a life milestone that you need to reach, to toughen up, in order to have a fulfiling life =)))
‘10 man raids’ is not “a bear service”, it’s a game feature since 2008 (that was 16 ago); and I think it was well received by the playerbase, also it was healthy for the game.
As I mentioned, we were not able to find a healer for a full run, in 1 hour, and there were also 3 raid groups that were searching for the same thing with no hope. Maybe that is a sign that something is not ok with the current game state.
the way to solo tank Eranikus is to force him to go to sleep before you reach 3 stacks on the tank. on 2 stacks you pump the tank with some defensives, such as barkskin (20% damage reduction for 15 seconds with 1 min cooldown) and rinse repeat until he dies.
the tank will drop the stacks while Eranikus is sleeping, so it soft-resets the encounter, tank-wise.
that would indeed qualify as “somewhat geared” in my book.
not sure what you are doing wrong then, tbh. maybe its time to start pulling out the ol’ WCL and start looking at what people are doing, because someone is doing something wrong if you can’t meet the dps check with 19 people who are “somewhat geared”.
unfortunately, this also means you have to call them out on a mistake(s) they are making, and i recommend doing that in private through whispers or private discord convo, and not publically in front of the whole raid.
my apologies for skipping the part where you said the difficulty feels alright, guess my skimming came back to haunt me there.
that being said, i don’t like the position some people take when they say “its not supposed to be retail level difficulty” like yeah true, but its not supposed to be a loot pinata either… while classic content might be relatively easy when it comes to the challenge it presents, the content we have gotten so far has been alright, up until the (in my opinion) over-nerf of ST… don’t get me wrong, when the raid first came out it was atrociously overtuned, but blizzard went too hard with the nerfbat when addressing it, so now the problem is simply that its atrociously easy.
so far the game has walked a pretty nice line when it comes to difficulty increases from raid tier to raid tier.
BFD was literally a tutorial raid meant to get new players into the raiding mindset. the first boss in there is quite literally a loot pinata you would actually struggle to wipe on.
Gnomer stepped it up a bit, with the final 2 bosses being relatively challenging (until you learned mechanics).
ST was supposed to be the “ok, babytime is over, time for real raiding now”-raid and after the nerfs it fails to deliver on this philosophy.
we can only speculate on what MC 20-man is going to look like.
logic would dictate that its going to be a step-up in difficulty from ST, but i am not holding my breath, seeing as blizzard is eating the “its way too hard”-feedback up with hide and hair.
yet this is the position blizzard has put everyone in by deciding to go with 10 man sized raids from the beginning. people have already formed their rosters and cliques and nobody is willing to give up their power and authority to merge with another guild, so now we’re all stuck, waiting for ‘your team’ to cater to ‘our team’.
every guild merger i have done since 2019 has been a catastrophe when it comes to allowing the guild being taken in their right to retain some power in the guild they enter.
we tried a few times to demand one of our officers being given officer role in the new guild, but each and every time they are being outvoted by “democracy” since its 1 vs. several officers + the GM.
this right here is pretty condescending, and i’m not liking your tone, so i will not respond to that.
given that everyone has access to cheap dual specs, and essentially free respecs on top of that, this is very much a you-issue.
get respeccing. im sure you got a few people in that group of 19 of yours who knows how to throw a heal or tank a mob. its not that hard.
I’m sure that for Tony Hawk a lot of skateboard tricks are very easy that for others are quite difficult. What if you are just really good at playing the game and then assuming others are just naturally going to be on your level when that is not the average skillset of players?
And who is SoD meant to cater to? You, or the casuals? Either is fine but the SoD team should be upfront about who this experiment is for and from what I heard it is meant for casual raiding guilds and using logs is not casual. In fact I’ll argue that using any addons such as DBM or weakauras are not casual. And if any raider here came from WOTLK or Retail raiding then they are also not casuals.
It’s too easy, to you. But are you the average gamer? Or are you a really good raider when we get down to it?
I mean you need the gear too and if someone wants to tank but doesn’t have tank gear then they’re gonna be a pretty poor tank. I’d assume the same for healing.
i don’t know what to tell you. if you are still struggling in ST its a skill issue. i am not even a parser (i don’t care to follow the rigged parse rules to boost my ego). my guild is struggling to get 20 signups every week, we ALWAYS have to pug upwards of 5-10 people, and we still clear the raid every time.
this week we cleared it with 0 wipes and barely any deaths.
tell me, because i am genuinely curious here; what aspect of ST do you find to be hard?
serious question, no flame.
Me personally? Only problem I have is on the 4th boss where the stacks suddenly make damage jump crazy high (lock tank) and the 7th which we were progressing on at the time so it felt like a chaotic clusterduck and it takes a long time for us to do the raid, took us 3 hours to get to Eranikus and the only reason we wiped 3 times was because people were dumb and afk’d for a break way too close to a boss, first time doing the priest boss and… I think it was #4, and that’s because of the sudden damage that happens that just cuts through me like a searing hot knife through hot summers day butter.
I’m a tank, off tank at that, so my job is relatively lax in the raid. Keep threat, point boss’ pointy bits away from the rest and then just spamalam some damage and worry about managing some defensive stuff. It’s not really difficult for me. As to why it is taking so long, why we’re struggling with #4 so much and why #7 is so confusing? No idea. I can’t speak for a dozen other guildmates and a bunch of pugs.
It’s not a difficult raid raid, but it’s not meant to be a raid raid, it’s meant to be a leveling raid. And it’s not easy. It’s doable for us, but it’s not a cakewalk as you imply it to be.
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Like, I think that #1 is fun, #2 is fun and require a bit more coordination, #3 is fun if a bit chaotic. I have no problem with any of these. #4 is fine mechanically, things make sense in that fight, except for when the damage just suddenly goes 800 800 500 800 800 and then I’m dead. Tank lock is all dodge based and there is no dodging any of this, my high armor is meaningless against this magic damage and the stacks just jump so crazy high that I just die. #5A is fun (pally) #5B is tolerable (spriest) #6 is quite fun now that we got the hang of how he works and I quit at #7 cause it was too late but I found it overwhelming.
If this was a lvl 60 raid I wouldn’t have a problem with it. For some it is going to be easier for others it will take more progression. The problem is that label of “leveling raid”. What does it mean? My assumption was that a leveling raid is just that, a thing you can jump into for an hour or two to have some fun while not being pre-BIS geared and get some goodies and a level or two. Pugging.
And going from that assumption I would say that it is still too hard. It sounds to me like you’re treating it like a “real raid” when it isn’t supposed to be that. It’s just meant to be a fun thing to level in. And for a bunch of uncoordinated pugs it is far too punishing for that in my eyes.
[edit2]
If I am not the target audience with raiding then that’s fine but why give me something I find fun only to rip it out from underneath my feet? BFD and Gnomer should’ve been 20man prenerf ST raids from the get go in that case.
ok that’s a very poorly constructed post.
who is boss #4? the 2 dragons that spawn after the 5 trolls?
assuming that’s the encounter you are referring to, your tank is being clapped because you’re not tank swapping.
when the tank gets 2 stacks of breath, you’re supposed to swap to the other dragon, drop the tanks stacks and swap again if the offtank gets to 2 stacks as well.
this is assuming you are low on dps. if you are high on dps tank swapping is barely necessary tbh. it also goes without saying that falling into the hole in the center is a dealbreaker, if you allow that to happen that’s a 50 DKP minus.
you’re going to have to help me out in regards to who boss #7 is, some names would be extremely helpful here, because tbh i don’t remember the encounters by number, or rather, if i struggle to think maybe i’ll get it right, but tbh you’re just making it harder for me to help you by not being a little more specific.
on a sidenote; brother, if you think raids will remain easy aka puggable, you’re in for a rude awakening. babymode BFD and Gnomer days are over - those were your tutorial raids, its time to get serious now, because we’re getting to the endgame and anything after this point will only increase in difficulty and appeal less and less to a pug environment.
this is a good thing btw. we need more people to actively seek out a place to call home, aka a guild.
when raids are puggable, guild integrity suffers as a direct result.
heck, see phase 1 for reference… because of GDKP nobody would even want to join a guild, because why would they? there was no incentive.
when the raids cannot be easily cleared (emphasis on ‘easily’) by a bunch of literal who’s, it motivates people to find a more solid roster of people to play the game with - a guild - which is a good thing.
nobody should be running around actively not wanting to join a guild, that’s not how classic works. this is not a single player game.
Yep, I read up on that as well during the encounter, it’s something the others will have to deal with now. Should’ve been more studious.
Conversely, I do not remember the names of the bosses!
Erik the dragon I think it is.
Hm, that’s not what they said that SoD would be about.
Also, nah, I’ll just tap out and stop playing SoD when that becomes confirmed, I can’t be bothered to tryhard this silly little game.
I just joined the first guild cause I was bored and wanted to socialize.
We left and started our own guild cause we found one another to be fun to poke at.
Raided all the while for funsies.
People join guilds because they want to have fun with other people, not just cause of raid comps.
im wondering how this wasn’t obvious to anyone in your raid during the encounter? like, did none of you hover your mouse over the debuff to see what it does?
because if you did, it should have been relatively obvious that its a tankswap mechanic even at a glance… main tank is getting stacks, offtank is not = what do? swap.
Ah, so Eranikus.
Normal (intended strat):
cleanse the poison - do not allow it to sit on your casters, it triples the mana cost of all their spells - cleanse it at all costs.
tank swap at 2 stacks of acid breath. rinse repeat.
enter poison clouds when boss starts casting awakening nightmare.
interrupt bellowing roar (this cannot be allowed to go through).
Tank and interrupt/nuke the 2 tree men.
ignore whelps / kill them with some minor AOE. tank shamans really shine here because fire nova + overcharged = easy aoe tanking and killing adds.
that’s pretty much all there is to the “legit” strategy.
Cheese strat:
Solo tank the encounter (get 1 tank to swap to dps for faster kill).
pump the tank with defensives when he gets 2 stacks, druid’s Barkskin and any other physical damage reduction defensives will do the trick.
if you meet the dps check needed for the cheese strat, Eranikus will fall asleep before the tank gets more than 2 stacks, while Eranikus is sleeping the tank’s stacks will drop - now you simply rinse and repeat until Eranikus dies.
obviously you still want to be tanking the tree guys when they spawn and you also want to cleanse poison from raid and enter clouds during nightmare + interrupt the roar, just because this is not mentioned in the cheese strat list does not mean you don’t need to do it. the cheese strat is basically the exact same, except you skip the need to tankswap.
so then my efforts to help you here is wasted.
you’re straight up admitting that you refuse to learn… not even that you’re incapable of learning, but that you actively do not want to
i dunno what to tell you man, maybe go play fortnite or smth.
that is indeed how most of us start.
don’t expect your first guild to be the best guild you’ll ever find, its more often than not a temporary waiting room until the endgame where more serious guilds start to form as a matter of pure necessity.
the good players will congregate in said serious guilds, and if you have an interest in doing the content, you join one of those guilds - the vast majority of guilds will be willing to help you learn if you tell them up front that you want to learn… if you refuse to learn? yeah, nah, you’re not getting a spot bro.
thats the spirit, but if none of you know how the game works, you should look to recruit someone that does. with a bit of effort and dedication even the noobiest noob can become a good player.
forget about 99+ parses, this is not the standard most people will hold you to.
challenging content can still be done for funsies. challenging does not mean impossible, it means “turn your brain on, don’t stand in the fire, click your buttons”.
luckily for all of us, SOD is the one version of classic wow where all specs and classes are viable in a raid environment - even frost mage has some niche uses, and even lucklier for us, we now have dual spec, so there is room to meme AND room to dream.
Case in point about the raid being too easy to you, you’re too good at the game. Played too much raiding, spot things too easily. You’re not exactly the average player. The raid isn’t too easy. You’re just too good.
I’ll forward that to the guildies.
Playing Starcraft right now.
Honestly sounds like toxic game design to me. Should just be a fun thing to do with your guildies.
Not fun when it runs into 3 hours and overtime however.
mate, if you run into 3 hours overtime its time to throw in the towel and look up a guide.
you tried to do it blind, it didn’t work. look up a guide.
nobody will blame you for it, because that’s what everyone does when they get walled during “blind” raids.
(btw blind means you’re going in with no prior knowledge of any encounters).
setting the standard for what makes a “good” player a bit low here tbf. reading what a debuff does should come natural to anyone who ever had one on them, because that’s how you learn how to deal with them… ever found your movement to be severely hindered? that’s usually because you have a debuff on you, causing your movement speed to be reduced, the debuff tooltip will usually let you know a couple of things:
what type of debuff is it? curse? magic? disease? poison? - a debuff without a classification is usually undispellable.
information on how it actually affects your character.
when people use the term “debuff” they usually refer to a negative effect that impairs an aspect of your character, usually without also ticking for damage, in which case a “debuff” is usually referred to as a “dot” (damage over time).
i know this might be a hard ask, but the best way to learn to deal with debuffs is to try and remember what said debuff does.
its important for you, as a player (regardless of class) to learn what a warlocks debuffs does to you, for example, because many dots function as trap cards.
a good example is unstable affliction - a warlock dot - which IF you dispel it, will silence you and do a ton of damage, therefore the way you deal with it is to instead outheal/mitigate it.
do not allow the warlock to stack his other dots on you, because if you do, you’re gonna end up being hit with an unstable affliction, which will protect the warlocks other dots from being dispelled.
see how that makes sense?
it might seem complicated at first, because it is.
best advice i can give is try to keep a lexicon of what at least the class debuffs do.
boss debuffs will only be relevant as long as that is current content.
a lot of people don’t store game knowledge of every boss encounter like some sort of databank, which is why people who did MC back in 2019 would probably need to refresh their memory on the mechanics of that raid if they were to go in today in 2024.
