Ready Check is a weekly column focusing on successful raiding for the serious raider. Hardcore or casual, Kara or BT, everyone can get in on the action and down them some bosses. Sadly this week, Hong his stuck clearing trash in SSC. It's bad news when the little fishes come back, trust me.
There are a number of things that drive people to raid. Character improvement is one aspect, but for most raiders that I've run across, it's all about seeing content. These are the explorer/achievers who see bosses not as just a challenge, but as a stepping stone to where even more reclusive mobs and areas exist.
In the past, raids experienced pretty linear difficulty levels as they plowed through instances. You could skip ahead some if you stumbled across a particularly nasty boss (/wave C'thun), but you pretty much just worked down the list of baddies since each one got slightly harder. Even in Naxx where you had four different hallways of death to pick from, and the attunement wasn't dependent whatsoever on previous content you've completed, the progressive levels of boss difficulty kept you on the straight and narrow. You didn't have a chance killing the Instructor if you weren't skilled and geared well enough, no matter how much the Argent Dawn loved you.
Post-BC, linear progression (getting harder the farther you go) works up to a point. Overall, Karazhan is easier than the beginning 25-man raids like Gruul's. Sure, you might flip around specific bosses, like doing Void Reaver before Al'ar, but most bosses are set up to be completed in a line of progression, even if it's forced by way of geography. So extending this idea to current raiding content, you would expect Tier 4 content (Kara/Gruul/Mags) to be easier than Tier 5 (SSC/TK), which in turn is easier than Tier 6 (MH/BT).
Looking at WoWJutsu and from my own experience, this really isn't the case. The first boss you come to that's out of line with the gradually increased difficulty is Magtheridon. While about 57% of all raiding guilds have killed Gruul, only 32% have successfully downed Mags. The number of progressing guilds jumps right back up to 35% of raiding guilds grabbing lewts from Lurker because while Magtheridon does drop T4 chest, you can easily bypass him and his annoying cubes. The math shows there's little keeping people from T5 once they've gotten Gruul under their belts.
Examining the transition from T5 to T6, you'll see a similar but more extreme picture. About 21% of all raiding guilds that have beaten Leo, only 12% of guilds have defeated Vashj. This means about 43% of guilds that are working on Vashj have yet to move past her. It's even worse when you look at Kael, who drops the last piece needed for MH attunement. About 21% of all raiding guilds have downed Solarian, but only 9% have continued on to "kill" Kael. In other words, the difficulty of Solarian to Leo is nearly the same, but Kael is much harder than Vashj, even. About 57% of guilds on Kael have yet to get their vials. The difference here is you HAVE to kill these bosses to gain access to T6.
But both WoWJutsu info and experience have shown that once you get your foot in the door to MH/BT, there's little keeping you from beating the game. There is only a 2% difference between the total number of raiding guilds that have beaten the first and last bosses in MH. In Black Temple, the separation between Naj'entus and Illidan is roughly 4%.
You can also look at it as a matter of time to progress. It took my guild 4 months to clear SSC and TK's 10 bosses. MH and Black Temple's 15 bosses only needed 3 months of work. Note that we were downing a couple new bosses per night on the early T6 stuff and Illidan only took 2 weeks of serious attempts to master. We're a pretty average MH/BT guild, too. There's tons of other guilds reporting the same thing.
So what does this mean for raiding? Well for one, it means that T5 to T6 progression is still unbalanced. Over the past few patches, Blizz added additional tier drops to all bosses, nerfed Kael by reducing the health of his advisors and completely changed the Solarian fight, no longer requiring tanks to wear dresses. They have also introduced T5 level gear available via heroic badges, with the idea that guilds will be better geared before they hit Vashj and Kael. It was also to fill some gaps that the SSC/TK gear didn't cover.
I would argue that they still haven't done enough. If half the guilds on a medium level boss can't get past him, to the point he's earned the reputation as a "Guild Killer", there's something seriously wrong. If it was gear, then the heroic badge items should have helped, and perhaps they did on some small scale. But by all appearances, Kael and Vashj are still major tuning errors on Blizz's part.
Blizz has also worked themselves into a corner with the attunement situation. So far they've completely nixed the attunement requirements for TK and SSC, after Black Temple came out. Progression through those instances looks good, so that's worked out well. But with the ease that guilds are blowing through MH/BT once they get there, there's no way they can lift the Curse of the Vials. As soon as that happened, there would be no reason to even fight Kael or Vashj. And in my opinion, the early MH bosses are even easier than Karathress. With no vial attunement, you'd do about half of SSC and a couple of bosses in TK before you moved on.
So what you have here are thousands of raiders who are playing to explore end-game content, the majority of which will get trapped under a glass ceiling. What do you think Blizz should do about it, if anything? Should MH/BT continue to be artificially elitist? Do you think the Sunwell will allow Blizz to make some serious changes and open up the far end-game raiding content to more players? Do you think there should be attunements at all?
Marcie Knox has been raiding for a coon's age. It's all she's ever wanted to do and would be lost without the 4 nights a week where she can help put bosses in their place. You might know her from the Raid Rx column, but then again, you might not...
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
2-01-2008 @ 11:11AM
TotalBiscuit said...
Several things which I disagree with here.
1) Numbers or no numbers, Leo and Solarian are by no means equal difficulty. You've killed em right? You should know how much of a joke boss Solarian is, she barely does anything at at 20% she enters free-kill mode. The more likely reason that they're equal is simply because guilds are spending more time on Al'ar after having downed Void-reaver, and getting stuck in the mud at that point. Leo is a tricky boss, always has been a tricky boss, and everything can so easily go wrong in Phase 3. Not to mention you need a warlock with full fire resistance gear (2 preferably since they tend to die in Phase 3)
2) "As soon as that happened, there would be no reason to even fight Kael or Vashj." - This is naturally incorrect, since there are a good number of items dropped by both that are superior to BT/MH items. I refer to items like Vestments of the Sea-witch, Lightfathom Sceptor and in some cases, 4 piece T5 is preferred to T6 (for instance T5 is hugely superior for an Arcane raiding mage). The big mistake a lot of guilds make is abandoning SSC/TK once they get into MH/BT. They learn very quickly that the guild gear imbalance caused by this generally screws up their a-game and causes them genuine problems.
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2-01-2008 @ 11:36AM
TonyMotorola said...
There are no gear checks in BT/MH beyond the SR for Sharhaz and the 3 resist tanks for Illidan.
Vashj and Kael'thas drops are in no way needed to move quickly through BT and Hyjal. It's 100% execution and strat.
2-01-2008 @ 12:49PM
TotalBiscuit said...
Gear checks are irrelevant. If you are undergeared, regardless of execution, you're still going to have a harder time of it, especially considering how many DPS-race fights you have to deal with.
2-01-2008 @ 11:17AM
peaglemancer said...
Personally I am surprised the original now-defunct attunement (trial of the Naruu) was considered such a stumbling block. If Mag and his "annoying cubes" are any kind of coordination issue, how are you going to fair against any later boss?
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2-01-2008 @ 11:22AM
TotalBiscuit said...
You'd be surprised how many people can't click a cube. We used to wipe on Mag and we had cleared MH and were halfway through BT.
2-02-2008 @ 12:23PM
selljanetoo said...
Honestly!
People act like Mags is intensely difficult when it's more about communicating throughout the entire encounter and having people ready at a station.
2-01-2008 @ 12:12PM
hoeding said...
If you can't find 10 people who can click a cube when a boss gets a castbar and when deadly boss mods spams your screen with "ZOMG CUBE CLICKS INC". I don't think you should be given a free pass to progression. Blizz is devaluing the value of "epics" with the purples they are handing out to anyone who can spam their 2 key. I myself hope they don't remove attunement from hyjal/bt until WotLK, and let the guilds that can work together and progress be proud of the loot they get and the bosses they've downed. Elitist? Maybe - but on any other game getting the the last level is usually really really hard - why should WoW be any different?
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2-01-2008 @ 12:41PM
Keegan said...
I'm glad that someone still has some sense. Epic's are supposed to be just that: EPIC. You are playing an MMORPG; if you don't have time to put into the game, you should probably be playing a different genre. I'm tired of self-proclaimed casuals crying about their lack of time, but equivalent skill. This simply is not the case, and giving out free epics is not the solution.
2-01-2008 @ 3:29PM
Verit said...
@keegan
You know none of these items are real right? They are just entries in a database... So I personally have no problem with people getting gear fast.
I'm kinda depressed about the game right now - the guild I'm on can't get past 2 bosses in ssc, never mind bt/mh - I think I have the skills however. So I investigated a hardcore raiding guild, but the raid hours kinda frighten me - 7pm to 2am? Who can do that unless a) your in school and you don't care about grades or b) you're unemployed. Seriously I want to know (and if your recruiting - I'm well geared and dedicated!).
I have a job, but if I was up until 1-2am every day I don't think I could do my rather challenging position (tier 3 support).
2-01-2008 @ 12:27PM
Scoottie said...
BC attunements are retarded. The old ones for Onyxia and BWL and Naxx were good. They were simple because you didn't need 24 other people (or back then 39 other people) and hard at the same because you would actually need to do something. Karazhan was a god attunement because it made it so those that never raided before BC to prove they know at least the most basic needs to be in a group environment.
On a side note Blizz needs to bring back 40 man raids
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2-01-2008 @ 12:35PM
Arabelli said...
So we can have 5-10 people mooching off everyone else and not contributing but still taking loot? No thanks.
Attunement is a way of making sure that people don't rush straight into Illidan and spend five months wiping on him and complaining about how hard he is and how he needs to be nerfed. I'm not saying that only the zomg leet raiderz should be the only ones who get to do the fights, but it shouldn't be simple to get to him either. Ony attunement still required quite a few groups, and lots and lots of steps. The whole process was similar to the Trials of the Naaru, but now everyone skips it and runs straight to Void Reaver. I'm all for people getting to have fun on their terms, but who even tries for Mags now?
I just don't see anything wrong with having to fill in the steps. The scrolls on Kael and Vashj were such a good idea, because then you didn't have to go back and attune the new one or two people. For Archi and Illidan, that'd make sense! But scrapping attunements is just bad news.
2-01-2008 @ 12:41PM
Arabelli said...
While I absolutely agree about the gear (I'm in an Illidan guild that still downs Gruul every week for DSTs), I think his point was that we'd see the same thing happen to those two that happened with Mags. Guilds in Kara/Gruul gear now pushing BT simply because it's open to them and they want the best possible stuff.
I can't fault them for it, but it's not entirely logical that you should be able to walk up to Illidan's front door and just say 'sup. Even from a gameplay perspective, it shouldn't be easy to just freakin' walk into the Black Temple. Mechanics wise it might slow down progression as well, but from a game storyline it's nice to have reasons for things. (See also Mt. Hyjal and the complete lack of Infinate Dragonflight involvement.)
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2-01-2008 @ 12:54PM
Jukeboxhero said...
It's funny that'd you post this today because my guild downed Kael just last night. As a new person to the MH/BT scene I'll give my 2 cents. I feel the attunement should stick. It's nice to throw a bone to the people that can't coordinate a raid or gear properly but it's also a terrible thing to devalue the acomplishments of others who were there first. Throwing out the Kael/Vashj attunement phase would blow the doors to MH/BT down and make me and the other people in my guild feel like we wasted our time.
It's never a good idea to lower the level of difficulty in a game especially when people have already proven that the work is possible. In Kael Blizzard created the most engaging and challenging boss fight ever. It's such a wonderful feeling of joy when you down him for the first time, more than I've ever felt on any other boss.
So please don't ask them to nerf Vashj and Kael because the entire raiding scene would be made trivial. If anything MH/BT should be HARDER. We almost killed Rage on our first try yesterday. If we hadn't been 19-manning it and I hadn't talked to Jaina about 5 minutes before everyone was ready we would have had it.
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2-01-2008 @ 12:59PM
spellproof said...
My guild started hitting SSC/TK hard just before Christmas, and we were 5/6 3/4 and making our first attempts on Vashj last week. I think we'll get her within a couple more weeks (we have a light raiding schedule, only 10.5 hours a week). I personally don't want to see the attunements lifted because I don't want any temptation for us to skip Vashj and Kael, who I know we can kill with a little patience and effort.
My point is, when you look at guilds that are stuck in T5, some of us aren't stuck. Some of us just got here. I know that some are stuck, but all sorts of circumstances have put a lot of relatively serious raiders in the position of just really hitting the content hard now. We're late, yes, but we'll get there.
(Oh, and my guild is one that skipped Magtheridon. I'm sure we'll go back and do him one of these days, but our schedule is so tight that if we are serious about getting through the existing raid content before the expansion, we can't spend time learning "unnecessary" bosses -- and Magtheridon, sadly, just isn't necessary.)
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2-01-2008 @ 1:29PM
kenney said...
Finding content aimed at PVE raiders to this degree is a rarity on wowinsider, and it is nice to see.
I think one of the barriers that the mid-to-casual spectrum has encountered is that the raid design puts some questionable barriers up. Specifically, the raid composition required to optimally progress through content changes, so one raid of 25 players cannot easily go through all encounters. Some bosses require a lot of warlocks, others require a lot of mages, others require a large amount of melee dps, whereas a boss or 2 later you want a lot of ranged dps. I am in a guild where getting 25 raiders is doable, but getting the right 25 can be a challenge.
There is also the amount of coordination required- which isn't neccessarily bad. However, you can't really afford 10 players of 25 who are slow to learn even simple things like avoiding the Lurker's spout. A casual-ish raiding group will typically have 5-10 very capable learners, 5-10 people that will learn after a few tries, and 5-10 people that find it a monumental effort to maintain the kind of situational awareness required to beat these fights. Vanilla wow was significantly less demanding of the general raid force. A guild without stringent competence filters on their raiding force has a very difficult time progressing very far into ssc or tk.
The final decision I have found to be problematic in TBC has been that the utility of various classes and specs is non-uniform. Rogues go from being liabilities to the raid to ridiculously important assets as you go from Kara to MH- and casters experience the opposite. Bears vs Plate tanks also experience a sort of role reversal as they go from kara itemization to T6. This results in uniform frustration, and really just isn't fun.
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2-01-2008 @ 1:38PM
gd1107 said...
Magtheridon, Vashj & Kael are all communication fights.
Gear makes it easier, but it definetly isn't a requirement to have everyone decked out in T4/T5 or equivalent gear. Most of the fights are simply about execution, the rest include communication. Most bosses are easy to one shot after killing them once. If you can't communicate or follow instructions, don't bother past kara.
I like these blocks blizz put in to advance to the next level. Our guild has become more solid since we can effectively communicate during boss fights. We are a relatively young guild (less than 2 months from inception to kill Vashj). Some players have never raided before, yet we have accomplished so much so fast because of the communication levels during the raid.
Magtheridon is also quite a fun fight.So many people skip it because of the "difficulty" level and its no longer required, but it isn't that hard and its quite an experience.
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2-01-2008 @ 1:43PM
leo.e.coyle said...
Please see Tobold's comments regarding how to interpret Wowjustsu's numbers (which it seems you've used as the basis of your analysis). While the scale would remain largely the same as in your analysis it is pretty clear that Wowjutsu's numbers are quite inflated.
http://tobolds.blogspot.com/2008/01/how-to-interpret-wowjutsu-numbers.html
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2-01-2008 @ 1:46PM
hoviboy said...
the fact that kael and Vashj are pretty hard is nice, because without challenging bosses the loots are meaningless
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2-01-2008 @ 1:53PM
Snowmist said...
I couldn't agree more. Vashj and Kael are major road blocks to 94% of all guilds and represent a catch 22 situation where ppl want to progress further but can't because (a) their guild aren't good enough, or (b) They cannot join a HJ/BT guild because I've yet to see any guild prepared to run vashj and kael to attune someone who isn't already. Just take a look at all the recruitment requirements of any HJ/BT guild if you don't believe me.
That means millions upon millions of players are stuck and cannot see the content they want. If you ask me, Blizzard enjoys it being this way and have no intention WHATSOEVER of changing it, otherwise they would have done so already.
They may decide to do so come wotlk, but then it'll be far far far too late because not one single guild will ever go back to BT and Hyjal, leaving millions of players never able to see illidan and his ilk.
Good going Blizzard. >:(
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2-01-2008 @ 3:14PM
Arabelli said...
But it's not undoable. Plenty of guilds have done it before. It's difficult, but for crying out loud, you don't find the Princess in the first castle.
Why should Blizzard give people a free pass for something that was intended to be difficult?