There, I said it. For a raid that was being hyped as the “Greatest of All Time” forever I’m glad we had Wrath Classic to reveal it’s really not.
Ulduar was a terrible experience, Too many bosses too much trash “stupid” mechanics that were basically a dice roll if your raid would wipe or not (shout out to Blizzard for never fixing tentacles spawning in last phase of Yogg Saron)
Way too many loot pieces that are straight-up useless, Molten core level of useless drops.
Meanwhile TOGC was 5 bosses that were perfectly balanced, mechanics and loot wise.
You have to remember Ulduar was Blizzards first ever attempt at hardmode/heroic raiding.
With that in mind though. Ulduar killed my raid team in 2009, and so it did in 2023. History seems to repeat itself. Several straight up weird/clunky bossfights like Iron Council, Hodir, Vezax and Yogg to a certain degree. Also FL, a good contender for one of the worst bosses in WoW history. I have to say though, Algalon still holds up as a good boss encounter to this day.
ToGC definitely felt underrated, though. Since my raid team dissolved in Ulduar back in 2009, I never got to see it properly back in the days when it was current content. So properly progressing ToGC for the first time was interesting to me. While it wasn’t exactly difficult, it was still quite enjoyable to me, and made several altruns manageable even for the “casual dads” with limited gametime. A downside of this, I suppose, was the GDKP scene literally exploding, since everyone and their grandmother could do atleast 4/5 heroic in 25 man.
After (almost) managing to clear ICC HC before the buff set in. I would probably rate Wotlk raiding tiers as: ICC > ToGC > Ulduar/Naxx/OS/EoE.
ICC really was, and is, the pinnacle of Wotlk raiding. Sindragosa aside, I really like the raid.
Togc is the best patch to play warth.
Having 6 toons you can togc with is much better then 2 toon you go icc with.
There are bobstupid insane pve items in arena and way less procs.
Most of the Wrath andys were kids when WotLK was released, and it is their nostalgia.
I remember WotLK mostly being disappointing raidwise, and a big step up for PVP, which it still is today. Ulduar was always a bit meh, and TOGC just too bland. ICC was however somewhat interesting back in the day already, and I too felt like replaying it for a bit, which I did.
When doing TBC again this time, I knew this was the best raid expansion and it was not going to get better. And that’s how I felt about it when TBC ended again, though perhaps it was shameful TBC was so easy this time around by being able to queue up spells unlike in the original game, and everybody having 10% or so more dmg / healing output as a result.
I wouldn’t say Ulduar was terrible, I quite enjoyed it, but it did get rather tedious after a while, especially the straight up annoying mechanics of which there were quite a few. ToGC wasn’t exactly the pinnacle of raiding either, but it didn’t become as tedious as Ulduar.
LOL what
togc was the most BORING raid of wotlk
even naxx was more fun
clear the raid in 1 hour, then what? back to Ulduar?
Ulduar was 10 times better, but farming it after togc got released got boring
We did an Ulduar skiprun (Algalon, Kologarn, Auriaya, Thorim, Mimiron, Vezax, Yogg) on mains after clearing ToGC. Then we still had time for a few ToGC altruns during our regular 6 hour raiding week. I actually didn’t mind running ToGC several times at all.
Sounds about the same as what we did.
Back to ulduar and also gearing alts, i had to make another shaman so i could atleast play enhance atleast a few more hours/week.
But was it fun doing the same 5 ez togc bosses over and over again? no.
The reality is simple, yet an unpleasant truth. You struggled in Ulduar & ICC. You only have one LK kill with the buff now introduced, after raiding every single ID. You also missed around 8 IDs on Algalon.
Your guild was/is bad. The people you’ve played with are bad. They’ve made you struggle on a game which is ridiculously easy with 25 competent people.
Saying the raid is bad because the people you played with are bad and have created self made struggles you’ve mentioned about “stupid” mechanics etc is hilarious. You just adapt and well play - the reason is togc was Vanila style difficulty, whereas Wotlk is quite a step above when it comes to Lich King, Yogg0 & Algalon etc.
Sorry you wasted your experience with bad players and your experience is tainted - very unfortunate.
Not sure what this has to do with anything. Bosses like Vezax HM and Sindragosa HC are terribly designed bosses no matter how many times you did or did not kill LK HC.
Besides, the hardest boss this expansion has by a large margin been the roster boss.
General HM wasn’t great, conceded.
Sindy, however, isn’t that bad and I don’t think the design is bad. It’s designed to really make you rotate CDs, rotate tank healers, to prolong P3 to make it challenging and slow to whittle you down.
The design of General is horrible because our DPS is massively higher than it should’ve been (buffed gear, massive minmax in comparison to original, and if you check my posts I have said it before, including changing general and massively against buffing gear for this reason and others in the first place).
However, Sindy is fine and it’s bad for some because people in said guild have no brain.
Also, roster boss again only happens for bad guilds. Recruit good players who enjoy the vibe & raiding and you’ll play with the vast majority of the same people from Naxx. Roster boss myth in full flow since MC. it exists for bad guilds with terrible leadership.
I play 3 characters - every week since Uld, one being healer and another being caster.
The fight isn’t that enjoyable, but bad design and not enjoyable is different.
I don’t like the fight on my melee either because you also get stacks that you need to reset, and in P3 you have buffet. The fight is designed to whittle you; and if you don’t enjoy that type of encounter that’s your preference, but it doesn’t mean the design is inherently bad. Having to AFK for a few seconds sucks, but the exact same “move out of slime” is more boring. The game was designed a decade ago, it won’t have 12/12 perfectly designed bosses that you enjoy.
It’s not really a few seconds we’re talking about though. Our first kill I got unchained 7 times, that’s 3 minutes 30 seconds of afk (with a 2 parse). Second kill 4 times, that’s 2 minutes of afk (42 parse). Third kill I got it once, that’s 30 sec of afk (87 parse). Doesn’t sound like good design to me.
You got obscenely unlucky on a boss which is designed to be taken slow and whittle you down. Melee have the same problem. Could they have created a mechanic to do it a bit differently and less obnoxious? Yes - it’s on retail. This is a decade old game. The design it fine, but it’s just not perfect.