The Question of Naxxramas Difficulty

[Slippy]

I feel like a lot of the "Buff it!" crowd played on Feenix and ran Naxx for years. Maybe they're worried about being bored and want something a little different since they've done it so many times? Well, myself, and I'm sure many others here haven't seen the inside of Naxx and are just excited about being able to run it. I don't get how the people who've ran AQ(not the most exciting of raids) for a year now will suddenly up and quit if we get a so-called Blizz-like Naxx. If that is their attitude then a buffed Naxx isn't really going to keep them around for very long either. They're already out the door.

I understand some of the arguments for buffing but In the end I want authenticity. I'd also like to be able to compare Kronos Naxx with Elysium's. None of this "Well, OUR Naxx is buffed and blah blah blah, Elysium easymode!" the way Elysium players like to imply about Kronos. Fuck that.

 

[crimsonsage]

Yeah you made me check, maybe we were extremly bad, like more than i thought.

https://vanilla-twinhead.twinstar.cz/?npc=14601#bosskills

Seriously, 70% of the guild kill it between 1 minute and 2 mins which is 10-17k raid dps.

So please stop talking about average when you clearly dont know what you are talking about, i am raidleading an average guild, you dont.
We wont force our players to get flask on Naxx, we have like 300 titan flasks ready for our tanks to make it easier but dps wont increase that much.

Dont ruin the fun of others, just because you are bored. Noone forced you to be that try-hard, if you have fun with your number and not the actual down, we don't care, just keep getting fun with kronoslog and let the other play the game.

Here's the thing. Even with 15,000 DPS the raid is going to kill Heigan in 2 minutes of damage. He's alive for 90 seconds before the dance phase starts.. So you get him to 25% health roughly before dance phase, then you go back into DPS and your whole raid pops cooldowns melting him in 15-25 seconds. That's 1 dance. Gluth will die almost immediately after 1 decimate. All of these mechanics your guild will be bypassing within the first month after you've picked up 20-30 more pieces of gear. We are not advocating to require your whole guild to use flasks and to never be able to kill these bosses -- but if you admittedly are not a top tier guild, does it make sense to be able to clear all of the content on launch day? There has to be a progression farming period.. if it doesn't exist for you, what will it be like for others?

 

[fadge]

Remove world buffs completely in Naxx.

 

[Chainsaw]

^crimson: if players are able to put out "only" 15k raid dps (remember: 16k was their benchmark), do you really think their melees can do that while doing the dance without dying? This should be no fun about brochette's guild, but rather an Illustration of how raiding reality REALLY looks like for guilds outside the nerd bubble. I know players who it took TWO months to learn how to not die from the explosion of the abubisaths before twins. Be it from their hardware setup or their skill, do you expect such players to execute the heigan dance properly? Again: nobody ia asking for making naxx easier, only for not overbuffing it for the average player. This is the time for the top guild players to show how skillfull they are in respecting others who aren't that skillfull, instead of acting like you're the only person living on this planet. Yet, you haven't shown that ability of yours.

 

[Brochette]

You clearly don't know how works a normal guild. Players like me who actually did Naxxramas 11 years ago there are like 4 in my guild. Casual/normal guild is : 10% know already the fight, 20% will read and look video about it, the 70% will just wait for raidleader to explain the boss just before we go. Normal players never did Naxx, log for their raid after work, there is no way they are gonna do some homework to prepare for some fight.
They dont compete for 1st kill on a 12y old game, they dont care, they want to have fun in trying something new for them.
Some others guild will be 100% ready, making sure everyone knows what to do and will polish their raid comp for each fight to insure 1st serv kill, fine by me, we play the game like we want to enjoy it.

Heigan 1 dance is enought , most likely because like retail vanilla, we will down the boss to 40%, dance, half the raid will die, do 30% because not enought, redance (lol 2nd dance), finish the boss.
Maybe the trick to stick follow someone will work here, but in retail vanilla it didn't work due to the constant lag, you had to step in a erupted area to beat the lag.

This boss isn't really hard to begin with anyway, we used to kill it with 15 alive for 5 mins, so yeah increasing his hp wouldnt matter for this encounter specifically, because no enrage timer, it will be just long and boring.

Then 15k dps is with partial world buff, without it's more like 12k dps but whatever.

 

[nimeralos]

Dont ruin the fun of others, just because you are bored.

Why not please everyone - buff Naxx on release and nerf it in some weeks? Would it be fun for players of average guilds to clear Naxx in a couple of IDs?

And by the way, it's a mistake to impersonificate the guilds. Take my own example. I play warlock. I'm quite a casual: I've like never took a Blasted Lands/Silithus buff, I've like never used a mana potion/demonic rune, I often slack on protection potions/poison elixirs. It's been ages since I checked realmplayers. I'm in a semi-hardcore guild from K2 that does 19-25k DPS on a usual Ebonroc. Should I leave my guildies just because we are coordinated and have some players that are pushing to the limits?

Dont ruin the fun of others. It may sound banal, but the idea that everyone should be able to get quick purples is what've ruined retail.

P.S. Food for thought: what is "average" for you?

 

[Gruuz]

That list is not very good, it takes in 20 mans to consideration. No one gives a fuck about 20mans, as it dont count towards kronos-logs.

 

[nimeralos]

You're right, it was just a food for thought The list looks rather accurate for me although, at least up to position ~10. After all, everyone equally doesn't care about 20mans.

If I've not miscalculated, 18 guilds killed C'Thun last week. Then, I'd say an "average" guild is not that far behind the top 4. In particular, an "average" guild seems to kill Ebonroc in less than a minute. Hence, no Heigan dance would be pretty common. For me, it means that not only for the top tryhards would be able to bruteforce an unbuffed Naxx.

I realize that all these Heigan-Ebonroc examples are nothing but speculations. Still, I think a trivial Naxx is a real danger. Way more real than a too-hard Naxx.

 

[Sarei]

I feel like a lot of the "Buff it!" crowd played on Feenix and ran Naxx for years. Maybe they're worried about being bored and want something a little different since they've done it so many times? Well, myself, and I'm sure many others here haven't seen the inside of Naxx and are just excited about being able to run it. I don't get how the people who've ran AQ(not the most exciting of raids) for a year now will suddenly up and quit if we get a so-called Blizz-like Naxx.

This is exactly the point of all this. I am worried about being bored with Naxx, since if we're able to brute force 10 bosses down, how the fuck are you not supposed to be bored with it? People talked about Heigan last few post. Is standing still and casting your 1, 2 or 3 button rotation, depending of class, until he die before the dance supposed to be fun? The excitement would last 3 IDs only because it's something new and perish after that because it would be just another brainless gear farm. If even lesser guilds clear and farm it after that time period, it will be just pure business later on, same as AQ was from the 3rd ID and later on, no excitement at all.

You're asking youself why would people quit after an easy Naxx since they showed that they can still be interested in the game when farming an easy content, which was the case with Ahn'Qiraji. Well the only reason people sticked around was incoming Naxxramas, the game wasn't finished. Do you honestly believe most people are going to stick around after Naxxramas is cleared if it's going to be as trivial as AQ was? If Naxx wasn't supposed to come after our AQ, noone would farm it for more then 2 months because it brought no excitement at all.

 

[Lilcow]

Is there an option to revoke already given votes to redo them? I have to admit I voted prematurely without thinking through the numbers. A challenging raidinstance such as Naxxramas needs difficulty to it to live up to the vibe it has created back then and which lasts to this day. My guild back in the day did the first few easier bosses and (sort of) "struggled" with them even weeks after the first kill. Hadn't the arrival of TBC stopped the slow but steady progress, with A LOT of work, more bosses might have fallen eventually. That's what life was like as a slightly-more-than-casual ambitioned guild. Here on Kronos, the same progress (around 6-7 bosses, however within 1-2 IDs) for equally minded guilds certainly is no worthy representation of what Naxxramas is or was.
Of course the benchmarks have gone over the top since then and therefore the boss difficulty has to be adjusted. Bruteforcing your way nearly all the way to the end should in no way be possible and therefore, imo, the Devs should do whatever it takes to up bosses HP or reduce fixed ability timers (such as the dance phase) to bring back some kind of challenge. Those that prepare beforehand won't mind and those that do not prepare beforehand will hopefully be somewhere closer to the point of having to work hard for their first kill (be it perfecting the dance or getting into better sync where the tank learns to generate more early threat so that dps can start earlier to get more output done to crack the enrage timer, etc...). A state of bossconfiguration where the average casual guild takes a week to actually master a boss to down him for the first time should be something to aim for since that is what Naxx was about.

Naxx was not the place to go if you wanted quick loot pinatas. Let skill prevail instead of mindless buff stacking - that would be seperating wheat from chaff.

 

[Brochette]

P.S. Food for thought: what is "average" for you?

https://vanilla-twinhead.twinstar.cz/?npc=14601#bosskills

Every guild (whitout min-maxing healers and raiding with a normal raid comp) killing ebonroc in more than a minute on a dmf week is average, so, for now every guild on this timer are. Those guild wont kill Heigan before the Dance, especially not if world buffs are removed.

 

[nimeralos]

Funny how we gave each other the same link to draw different conclusions from... I saw 10 guilds killing him last week in under the minute, you saw the other 14. 14 > 10, so if "average" is Ebonroc-speed-position-wise, then you're right, an average guild would see the Heigan dance. The one slightly above average, however, would not. We risk to face a situation when a bunch of guilds are bruteforcing a bunch of bosses on their very first run. And again, it's not only about Synced/VG/Fei/Agony (who, I think, do deserve some sort of challenge as well).

 

[shard]

Vanilla Naxx was tuned to be HARD. It wasn't tuned for the "average" guild to go in there and have a cakewalk. Honestly, it wasn't tuned for the "average" guild to really ever be able to kill the tougher bosses, like Loatheb, Gothik, Four Horsemen, Sapphiron, and KT.

Some of you are arguing that Kronos should be more inclusive, allowing these "average" guilds to not be pushed too hard to be able to clear the raid. That's unblizzlike in itself. Because of its difficulty, Naxx was inherently exclusive--the most exclusive raid ever, in any expansion. If Irae can only field a raid of 33 people for Naxx progresion, then I'm sorry, but you SHOULDN'T be able to clear Naxx. If some "average" guild can't get its players to grasp the simple mechanics of Anubisath AQ trash, then I'm sorry, but you SHOULDN'T be able to clear Naxx. Kronos shouldn't feel obligated to degrade the Naxx experience for everyone, just to be inclusive for these "average" guilds. Not everyone deserves to always be a winner. The "dumbing down" and inclusivity/casualization of WoW is what lead to the steaming shit-pile that retail is now, and it's why many of us are here...

 

[Brochette]

The arrogance in this thead is over the top.

Never said we would clean naxx, pretty sure Irae will never kill Thaddius or 4HM if properly tuned.

I went to 4HM in retail, half our guild was mouse clicking, and we had barely no data on the boss, so we were fucked because we didn't have enought geared tanks to do the encounter.
So you say that, with 11years of knowledge we shouldn't be able to kill a boss just because we are 35, for Naxx we will be probably 40 but unlike your guild, we dont have the luxury to recruit ilvl 74 players, they start with 0 gear.

But yeah, it's better than we face a wall, that way you can feed on dead guild like you usually do, server will appreciate.

 

[Masmin]

it's not only about Synced/VG/Fei/Agony

RIP Risen, not in the club I guess.

 

[varth]

I would like to see an actual blizzlike Naxx myself. I'm not a fan of custom content especially regarding raids, and if a challenge is what the top guilds want then go ahead and unequip half your gear. Go ahead and not consume. To my knowledge not a single decently scripted blizzlike Naxx has ever been released on a private server and I would love to experience that. Why should the rest of the server be punished with custom content just so you guys can have a challenge when you have made every effort to make the content unchallenging for yourselves? If you want a challenge you have that option without custom changes screwing 50%+ of the server.

 

[nimeralos]

You're again impersonificating guilds, varth. No one can just unequip the gear, and no one can stop consuming, because he would be kicked from a guild (even if it's an "average" one), or, equivalently, because he would piss off his guildies who then boost him. It would be fun to create a guild that doesn't consume out of principle, but such a guild doesn't exist right here and now.

You just won't see half of those decent scripts in an unbuffed Naxx...

 

[Amoonir]

Unequiping gear and not using consumes is not a valid way to increase difficulty. You're right that it will make the content harder for the raid by making themselves weaker but people want to overcome difficulty by working hard not handicapping themselves. People make marathons longer not purposefully starve and dehydrate themselves prior to a marathon to make it harder. Whether or not naxxramas is buffed up for debate but to suggest guilds who desire a difficult experience to simply not consume and remove gear is not a valid compromise

 

[varth]

But that's their entire line of reasoning. They don't want to be able to do Naxx fights and not experience the various boss abilities and have been pushing that the bosses be buffed so they can. Well guess what, their "problem" (that they are causing themselves by maximum try harding) can be solved without screwing 50% of the server with custom content. I don't see them complaining about being able to skip worms on fankriss, I don't see them complaining about being able to kill Cthun in one weakened phase, I don't see them complaining about being able to kill Ouro with no submerge. They just want to be special snowflakes in naxx and only let the elite guilds experience Naxx because that was how it was in retail.

I didn't see them advocating for a straight up unkillable ouro like it was in retail for ~3months, I didn't see them advocating for a straight up unkillable Cthun like it was in retail for ~3months. The elite guilds are just pick and choosing when they want their "full blizzlike experience" to suit their needs.

How about just full blizzlike non buggy content, maybe not allow wbuffs (even though essentially every single world first naxx kill involved a wbuffed raid) and call it good. The elite guilds can continue to do what they have ALWAYS DONE up until this point. Compete with speed runs, epeen raidstats records, and realm/region first kills.

I'll bet there will be plenty of guilds that don't clear naxx in the first month if its just standard blizzlike. There were 9 k1 guilds and 6 k2 guilds that took 1month + to clear AQ40 on Kronos.

P.S. People that run Marathons that want to further challenge themselves move on to Ultra's or work on running the marathon faster (sound familiar?). They don't badger the marathon organizers to add obstacles. If you want a challenge greater than vanilla blizzlike Naxx then move on to another expansion where fights are harder.

 

[Slippy]

Vast majority of guilds won't get close to clearing Naxx early on. There are not enough raid leaders, experienced in Naxx, to go around.

 

[bl4ckc0d3r]

I don't see them complaining about being able to skip worms on fankriss, I don't see them complaining about being able to kill Cthun in one weakened phase, I don't see them complaining about being able to kill Ouro with no submerge.

I don't want to spend a second longer in AQ than I have to. Same about to happen with Naxxramas?

 

[Danielle]

So you're fine with skipping mechanics just because you don't like AQ40, but it's untenable in Naxx because you want it to live up to some fantastical hype because it's Vanilla Naxx™.

 

[Chainsaw]

Unequiping gear and not using consumes is not a valid way to increase difficulty. You're right that it will make the content harder for the raid by making themselves weaker but people want to overcome difficulty by working hard not handicapping themselves. People make marathons longer not purposefully starve and dehydrate themselves prior to a marathon to make it harder. Whether or not naxxramas is buffed up for debate but to suggest guilds who desire a difficult experience to simply not consume and remove gear is not a valid compromise

If you're only running like an athlet, you cannot take a slow walk through a forest and enjoy it's whole beauty, because due to your pace you will miss things you would otherwise notice. Please change the forest so the athlet can also enjoy it in the same way as a slowly walking old man.

 

[Amoonir]

That's what they are advocating for though. There isn't another server offering a harder Naxx experience(that I know of atleast) like you are suggesting how there are more difficult marathons to find if you desire the challenge. so those guilds are trying to create this option by making kronos be that more challenging provider for Naxx. Not everyone agrees with this of course which is why we are having this debate. So I have to say this point just isn't solid enough to prevent Kronos from buffing content.

Your other point tho that one is good. You only see the guilds here advocating for a buffed Naxx but nothing else. Mostly because they only care about Naxx and they don't really care about the other instances. These raids were not buffed so buffing Naxx would be inconsistent with their previous practices and thus inconsistant behavior that people didn't sign up for.

 

[bl4ckc0d3r]

So you're fine with skipping mechanics just because you don't like AQ40, but it's untenable in Naxx because you want it to live up to some fantastical hype because it's Vanilla Naxx™.

Well, no. But AQ40 is a year old now. I mean... sure, it sucked and it felt ridiculously easy when we cleared it, but what's the point of complaining about it now a year later? Deek made a post shortly after AQ release asking for more difficulty but whole community raged at him. So... "we" did complain in case of AQ too. But no one listened.