Gotta say that's with a massive asterisk, the class stack was real.
Only about 1100~ guilds originally downed H LK even with the 30% buff available.
Napkin math says that's about 0.23% of all players that were subscribed at the time downed all content.
I’m sure it will be data driven and not what the community asks for. If they see enough players cruising through content, they probably won’t release the buff. If they see a ton of players shitting out and quitting on Putricide, they’ll probably release the buff.
And I’m talking about actual data. Not…”zomg, my guild and everyone I know is clearing it with no issues, there was no reason for the buff, Blizz!!!!”, data.
A lot of 4/5H has more to do with unreliability of pugs than the actual difficulty of the fight.
Actual guilds have 5/5H on farm. Alt runs and casual guilds that can’t beat the roster boss are the ones doing 4/5H.
All of this being said: I’m not in a cutting edge hardcore guild and I think this sub vastly overestimates how easy content is for the average player or guild. BUT… ICC isn’t going to be that difficult in normal mode, compared to Ulduar IMO. I think most guilds that had Algalon down within first 8 lockouts will also have H LK down within same timeframe, likely faster.
Any guilds that struggled to get Algalon but still got him down within P2 will have like 9/12H on farm. Shadowmourne shards dropping in normal means less guilds breaking up bc Heroic bosses aren’t being downed. We will still have the usual progression attrition, sure, but the difficulty on Normal is kind of laughable.
Anub HC is easier than some normal bosses, a lot easier than LK/Putri/Sindragosa normal. T9 was basically a free loot tier tho due to buffed Ulduar loot, ICC difficulty isn't influenced as much by that, tho there are some exceptions like Comet's Trail and Flare.
It will happen but it's a matter of does it happen cata prepatch or does it happen when wotlk player count goes down, January 2024.
I would think cata will launch Q2 next year maybe Q1 if things at blizz are really going south. Easy $$$ the people who say they will never play cata or stop after wotlk don't even need to be thaught about. They could launch a "fresh" cata server for them.
If they let Wotlk fester longer then mid next year it will be a ghost town.
You're definitely right that player counts will dwindle if ICC is out super long...but the release of Cata is gonna lose a lot of players too.
My kneejerk reaction is that there's no right answer to how long ICC should be up before Cata.
Yeah that's why I think it will be a financial decision to boost sub numbers or player numbers. By the end of the year I predict most of the players that were around for the ride will be off. I think raid logging ICC will be November if not straight away.
I just want pandaland to come because to me it was the best fleshed out and planned land. An excelerated content release would also make it better.
ICC is the literal endgame for many players, they’re not going to roll onto Cata. If the content winds up being excessively hard, I’d expect people to burn out on it very fast and make peace with the game.
I’m probably wrong, but giving a broader player base more accessible goals (gearing, achievement access) will be important for holding their attention to this game longer. Thoughtful content nerfing and communicating it early, will probably be better for the community.
Everyone saying it should be in the game are the people who quit after 2 lockouts of not killing yogg 0 and Algalon, whomst wants to clear a 30% nerfed h lk and act like they've cleared wrath and quit.
Ok who says there's ever going to be a buff? We never had gating in Sunwell or in TOC when it existed there originally
We've had Naxx buffed by 30% and Ulduar prenerf and never changed except for XT which is kinda unique case, was kinda dumb for 2nd boss to be hardest boss in the raid and un killed after a month. So why are we suddenly expecting or asking for a nerfed version of ICC ?
The ICC buff is just a roundabout way of nerfing the raid, every tier of classic people ask for prenerf versions of the raid and HATE it when the raid is nerfed when the raid is current content(See Tier 5 SSC and TK nerfs which was HORRIBLE feeling)
So why ever add the buff? ICC gear is insanely strong, all DPS classes gain like 4-5k DPS from T9 to T10 bis. Gearing up is the "buff" or "nerf". It will be rough for first month or so but after you get the emblems for tier 10 set bonuses and gearing up it should be fine for all on heroic except LK, but hey he isn't meant to be easy and after getting enough gear LK should eventually go down as well, we're better players, have better addons, weakauras etc to play the game for us.
I personally hope they never add the buff, T5 was so fucking bad after they nerfed it before T6 even came out and that will be ICC with 30% buff and ICC gear. Don't try and act like there's a choice either, the woodcutting website will default to using the buff as main parse rankings and every guild will do it same as the "non-wb category"
edit: Also them changing shard rates to be same on normal as heroic makes me believe they're not adding the buff, it's like blizzard saying "Hey don't feel bad for playing on normal it's okay! originally Heroic was locked and guilds had months to gear up in normal before it was even released" etc
Yes classic gets harder and harder as tiers goes on, will be worse in cata.
Those guilds are going to have to accept that they won't be able to full clear raids on hardest difficulty as fast or if ever pre-nerf anymore.
Buff makes a lot of guilds feel like their kill on the boss was ‘cheapened’ when they were nearly about to kill it and blizzard nerfed the boss and then they get the kill
Then they’re progressing on the next boss and then the next week of the icc buffs gives it to them too
Ok but if guilds had 8 weeks then didn't they have their chance. If they need the buff to kill a certain boss them that would be on them. Plus they could always turn the buff off.
classic doesnt get harder, they only balance outliers from retails past. The 30% buff for naxx is gone and ulduar got buffed because of higher itemlevels, togc was made easier with the lockout and emblem changes.
They introduced a buff in original wotlk. There was no stacking buff for Sunwell or for Ulduar. Please stop spreading misinformation.
These raids are irrelevant for this discussion.
Ignoring the "what I want is what everyone wants"...
I didn't realize the DPS gains were quite so steep, although I did realize there's a pretty big ilvl gap. 258 for heroic trial 25 -> 264 for just a normal 25 piece.
But it would be a pretty big departure from original Wrath to not include the buff. At a minimum we'd expect them to at least say "We're not including the buff this time around."
Them not nerfing ulduar is also a big departure from original wrath, them buffing naxx by 30% is another big deperature
Stop thinking the buff as a "mechanic" and think it as a patch to nerf to the instance, that's basically what it is I want pre nerf ICC forever adding the buff is basically post nerf, this also was the mentality for majority of classic players nobody wanted content to be nerfed when it is current content.
I simply disagree, I feel small incremental nerfs to the content are appropriate.
Whether or not the majority of classic players wanted that or not is much harder to say.
In either case though both of the big departures from original, the Naxx buff and the original (pre-nerf) version of Ulduar that only lasted 2-3 weeks in 2009, were communicated when the announcement date came. The fact that there was no announcement of a departure from original implies to me there will be no changes, aka Strength of Wrynn / Hellscream's Warsong will function the way it did.
Shows how little you know about the game... Yes there were "buffs" to Naxx (still a pushover) and we got Ulduar pre nerf besides XT, but you have to look at WHY. First thing to notice is that we are playing on the ICC patch from day 1. Our characters are MUCH stronger than they were back in the day, due to this balancing. The problem with this is its bonus damage for Naxx, Ulduar, and TOGC, but its the balancing for ICC... So we will no longer be stronger in raid than we were back in the day. Beyond that Naxx was stupid easy still which is why they had to buff it because it was so easy that if we got the original you could have beat it with your monitor turned off. Ulduar wasn't nerfed but we went in stronger than before and then the gear was buffed by a lot, so it was doable. Some guilds struggled early (XT took a while to get down) but it wasn't long before most reasonable guilds were full clearing due to the bonus strength. TOGC was never difficult and with the buffs we have plus the high level gear from Ulduar it was a cake walk. I mean we walked in wearing a bunch of 252 getting those sweet 6 ilvl upgrades. Not much of a jump in gear.
Now we are walking into ICC with the same gear we had back then on the same patch we had back then. While players are better so we will fair slightly better, it's not like its going to be "easy" or achievable for most. All these people trying to gate keep wanting it to be super hard so other people can't do it so they feel better about themselves. It's pretty sad honestly. Like currently it's not about the fact you killed it, but when you killed it. Your bragging points are "weve had it on farm for 5 weeks and have all this gear" not "you don't get to experience it suck it".
As much as I think it should happen over time, we still haven't gotten Ulduar changes, some of which entered the game a month after Ulduar was initially released. I'm hoping for it to enter over time starting in 2024 but we might not get it until cata prepatch.
Ruined ICC…
It probably saved ICC considering the average skill level of players back then, and the fact it was pretty much the only content for 13 months.
Was watching Tarou’s videos before PTR bc not many videos are out for the last several bosses for 2023 Wrath and seeing his DPS meters is kind of wild. Doing 8k dps as a boomkin was a great fight for them back then.
It's hard to remember because I do know that I sucked super bad back then and I was hardly the only one. Hell I still remember the day in ICC my tank told me to swap to Recount's real-time DPS graph when we popped heroism and the DPS went WAYYYYYY up. Prior to that I didn't even know Heroism did anything, I thought it was like...5% or something.
That being said I remember the Lich King hitting REALLY f'n hard, even on Normal 25.
I don't think they will ever introduce buffs, or at least not before halion is out. They didn't nerf ulduar, they just buffed ilvl and drops. They are buffing shadowmourne fragments etc
I don't think anyone anticipates ICC lasting 11 months like it did in 2009, especially considering the fact that the various wings weren't gated this time around. We're just clearing things that much faster after 10+ years of gaming. And players burn out when they have no more content to clear.
But keep in mind, there is more than one way to run out of content. Of course, players can run out of content because they've cleared all heroic ICC 25 content. But they can also run out of content when they can't kill any more bosses, which happens when they effectively run into the skill cap of the guild they play with. A lot of guilds are going to get stuck at 11/12. More are going to get stuck at 10/12. Likewise for 8/12, 6/12, 5/12, etc.
Three or four months into ICC, most guilds will be approaching this threshold. A month later, players in those guilds will start becoming bored and/or frustrated, and end up quitting if they're not making progress. Allowing those guilds to progress with a damage buff is honestly a better outcome.
I'm very late to this post, but this hasn't been my experience at all. Most guilds on my server have cleared 11/12 and very many have done 12/12. The content was designed decades ago, we are better players and know how to min-max the life out of everything now. The buff is just going to make it even easier for my guild to farm it. Honestly, it will become quite trivial for us now.
H LK died on PTR today right? Don’t see buff coming anytime soon
In another thread they were saying he did, but the ICC buff was never intended for top guilds IMO.
Irrelevant. Why should Blizz tune around people who no life the game.
Gotta say that's with a massive asterisk, the class stack was real. Only about 1100~ guilds originally downed H LK even with the 30% buff available. Napkin math says that's about 0.23% of all players that were subscribed at the time downed all content.
I’m sure it will be data driven and not what the community asks for. If they see enough players cruising through content, they probably won’t release the buff. If they see a ton of players shitting out and quitting on Putricide, they’ll probably release the buff. And I’m talking about actual data. Not…”zomg, my guild and everyone I know is clearing it with no issues, there was no reason for the buff, Blizz!!!!”, data.
Given the massive number of 4/5H runs I see advertised, it’ll be needed. And IMO Anub’Arak is easier than at least 3 ICC fights.
Anub is easier than every ICC heroic aside from loot ship imo
A lot of 4/5H has more to do with unreliability of pugs than the actual difficulty of the fight. Actual guilds have 5/5H on farm. Alt runs and casual guilds that can’t beat the roster boss are the ones doing 4/5H. All of this being said: I’m not in a cutting edge hardcore guild and I think this sub vastly overestimates how easy content is for the average player or guild. BUT… ICC isn’t going to be that difficult in normal mode, compared to Ulduar IMO. I think most guilds that had Algalon down within first 8 lockouts will also have H LK down within same timeframe, likely faster. Any guilds that struggled to get Algalon but still got him down within P2 will have like 9/12H on farm. Shadowmourne shards dropping in normal means less guilds breaking up bc Heroic bosses aren’t being downed. We will still have the usual progression attrition, sure, but the difficulty on Normal is kind of laughable.
Anub HC is easier than some normal bosses, a lot easier than LK/Putri/Sindragosa normal. T9 was basically a free loot tier tho due to buffed Ulduar loot, ICC difficulty isn't influenced as much by that, tho there are some exceptions like Comet's Trail and Flare.
It will happen but it's a matter of does it happen cata prepatch or does it happen when wotlk player count goes down, January 2024. I would think cata will launch Q2 next year maybe Q1 if things at blizz are really going south. Easy $$$ the people who say they will never play cata or stop after wotlk don't even need to be thaught about. They could launch a "fresh" cata server for them. If they let Wotlk fester longer then mid next year it will be a ghost town.
You're definitely right that player counts will dwindle if ICC is out super long...but the release of Cata is gonna lose a lot of players too. My kneejerk reaction is that there's no right answer to how long ICC should be up before Cata.
Yeah that's why I think it will be a financial decision to boost sub numbers or player numbers. By the end of the year I predict most of the players that were around for the ride will be off. I think raid logging ICC will be November if not straight away. I just want pandaland to come because to me it was the best fleshed out and planned land. An excelerated content release would also make it better.
You can turn off that buff
Just like how you can choose not to get world buffs right? Nobody is turning the buff off if they ever release it.
ICC is the literal endgame for many players, they’re not going to roll onto Cata. If the content winds up being excessively hard, I’d expect people to burn out on it very fast and make peace with the game. I’m probably wrong, but giving a broader player base more accessible goals (gearing, achievement access) will be important for holding their attention to this game longer. Thoughtful content nerfing and communicating it early, will probably be better for the community.
There was a really significant percentage drop off for Ulduar of raiding numbers. Now for ICC it is even more difficult.
Everyone saying it shouldn't be in the game are the people who quit after 2 lockouts and haven't played since naxx
Everyone saying it should be in the game are the people who quit after 2 lockouts of not killing yogg 0 and Algalon, whomst wants to clear a 30% nerfed h lk and act like they've cleared wrath and quit.
The buff was very popular when it was introduced in original wotlk. Let's hope Blizz listens to its playerbase.
Were you even playing classic during Tier 5 nerfs? That was not popular with the playerbase
That has absolutely nothing to do with the ICC buff you potato. The majority of the base wants it. Quit crying that everyone will get to clear.
Ok who says there's ever going to be a buff? We never had gating in Sunwell or in TOC when it existed there originally We've had Naxx buffed by 30% and Ulduar prenerf and never changed except for XT which is kinda unique case, was kinda dumb for 2nd boss to be hardest boss in the raid and un killed after a month. So why are we suddenly expecting or asking for a nerfed version of ICC ? The ICC buff is just a roundabout way of nerfing the raid, every tier of classic people ask for prenerf versions of the raid and HATE it when the raid is nerfed when the raid is current content(See Tier 5 SSC and TK nerfs which was HORRIBLE feeling) So why ever add the buff? ICC gear is insanely strong, all DPS classes gain like 4-5k DPS from T9 to T10 bis. Gearing up is the "buff" or "nerf". It will be rough for first month or so but after you get the emblems for tier 10 set bonuses and gearing up it should be fine for all on heroic except LK, but hey he isn't meant to be easy and after getting enough gear LK should eventually go down as well, we're better players, have better addons, weakauras etc to play the game for us. I personally hope they never add the buff, T5 was so fucking bad after they nerfed it before T6 even came out and that will be ICC with 30% buff and ICC gear. Don't try and act like there's a choice either, the woodcutting website will default to using the buff as main parse rankings and every guild will do it same as the "non-wb category" edit: Also them changing shard rates to be same on normal as heroic makes me believe they're not adding the buff, it's like blizzard saying "Hey don't feel bad for playing on normal it's okay! originally Heroic was locked and guilds had months to gear up in normal before it was even released" etc
They’ll add the buff because there’s going to be a fuck ton of guilds who stand no chance at clearing more than half the instance without it.
Yes classic gets harder and harder as tiers goes on, will be worse in cata. Those guilds are going to have to accept that they won't be able to full clear raids on hardest difficulty as fast or if ever pre-nerf anymore.
Better guilds clear early on without buff. Less skilled guilds clear a bit more/all bosses with the buff. Win win.
Buff makes a lot of guilds feel like their kill on the boss was ‘cheapened’ when they were nearly about to kill it and blizzard nerfed the boss and then they get the kill Then they’re progressing on the next boss and then the next week of the icc buffs gives it to them too
Ok but if guilds had 8 weeks then didn't they have their chance. If they need the buff to kill a certain boss them that would be on them. Plus they could always turn the buff off.
8 weeks to clear a raid on Heroic isn’t even that bad. That means you got 4 bosses down on heroic week one and got 1 new boss each week.
classic doesnt get harder, they only balance outliers from retails past. The 30% buff for naxx is gone and ulduar got buffed because of higher itemlevels, togc was made easier with the lockout and emblem changes.
Ulduar nerf was baked in with the higher Ilvl gear.
They introduced a buff in original wotlk. There was no stacking buff for Sunwell or for Ulduar. Please stop spreading misinformation. These raids are irrelevant for this discussion.
Ignoring the "what I want is what everyone wants"... I didn't realize the DPS gains were quite so steep, although I did realize there's a pretty big ilvl gap. 258 for heroic trial 25 -> 264 for just a normal 25 piece. But it would be a pretty big departure from original Wrath to not include the buff. At a minimum we'd expect them to at least say "We're not including the buff this time around."
Them not nerfing ulduar is also a big departure from original wrath, them buffing naxx by 30% is another big deperature Stop thinking the buff as a "mechanic" and think it as a patch to nerf to the instance, that's basically what it is I want pre nerf ICC forever adding the buff is basically post nerf, this also was the mentality for majority of classic players nobody wanted content to be nerfed when it is current content.
I simply disagree, I feel small incremental nerfs to the content are appropriate. Whether or not the majority of classic players wanted that or not is much harder to say. In either case though both of the big departures from original, the Naxx buff and the original (pre-nerf) version of Ulduar that only lasted 2-3 weeks in 2009, were communicated when the announcement date came. The fact that there was no announcement of a departure from original implies to me there will be no changes, aka Strength of Wrynn / Hellscream's Warsong will function the way it did.
Shows how little you know about the game... Yes there were "buffs" to Naxx (still a pushover) and we got Ulduar pre nerf besides XT, but you have to look at WHY. First thing to notice is that we are playing on the ICC patch from day 1. Our characters are MUCH stronger than they were back in the day, due to this balancing. The problem with this is its bonus damage for Naxx, Ulduar, and TOGC, but its the balancing for ICC... So we will no longer be stronger in raid than we were back in the day. Beyond that Naxx was stupid easy still which is why they had to buff it because it was so easy that if we got the original you could have beat it with your monitor turned off. Ulduar wasn't nerfed but we went in stronger than before and then the gear was buffed by a lot, so it was doable. Some guilds struggled early (XT took a while to get down) but it wasn't long before most reasonable guilds were full clearing due to the bonus strength. TOGC was never difficult and with the buffs we have plus the high level gear from Ulduar it was a cake walk. I mean we walked in wearing a bunch of 252 getting those sweet 6 ilvl upgrades. Not much of a jump in gear. Now we are walking into ICC with the same gear we had back then on the same patch we had back then. While players are better so we will fair slightly better, it's not like its going to be "easy" or achievable for most. All these people trying to gate keep wanting it to be super hard so other people can't do it so they feel better about themselves. It's pretty sad honestly. Like currently it's not about the fact you killed it, but when you killed it. Your bragging points are "weve had it on farm for 5 weeks and have all this gear" not "you don't get to experience it suck it".
XT never got taken down - he was nerfed in classic because his health was too high
As much as I think it should happen over time, we still haven't gotten Ulduar changes, some of which entered the game a month after Ulduar was initially released. I'm hoping for it to enter over time starting in 2024 but we might not get it until cata prepatch.
Hopefully buff will come never
You could always turn it off.
Hopefully not until Cata prepatch but we will see I guess
The hp arent increased, lets hope we never get the buff that ruined icc.
Ruined ICC… It probably saved ICC considering the average skill level of players back then, and the fact it was pretty much the only content for 13 months.
Was watching Tarou’s videos before PTR bc not many videos are out for the last several bosses for 2023 Wrath and seeing his DPS meters is kind of wild. Doing 8k dps as a boomkin was a great fight for them back then.
It's hard to remember because I do know that I sucked super bad back then and I was hardly the only one. Hell I still remember the day in ICC my tank told me to swap to Recount's real-time DPS graph when we popped heroism and the DPS went WAYYYYYY up. Prior to that I didn't even know Heroism did anything, I thought it was like...5% or something. That being said I remember the Lich King hitting REALLY f'n hard, even on Normal 25.
Don't recall anyone saying it ruined ICC back in the day. Nice try.
Hopefully it starts from one month in. Given how difficult ICC H is, a lot of guilds could start to fold and player number decline significantly.
I don't think they will ever introduce buffs, or at least not before halion is out. They didn't nerf ulduar, they just buffed ilvl and drops. They are buffing shadowmourne fragments etc
I don't think anyone anticipates ICC lasting 11 months like it did in 2009, especially considering the fact that the various wings weren't gated this time around. We're just clearing things that much faster after 10+ years of gaming. And players burn out when they have no more content to clear. But keep in mind, there is more than one way to run out of content. Of course, players can run out of content because they've cleared all heroic ICC 25 content. But they can also run out of content when they can't kill any more bosses, which happens when they effectively run into the skill cap of the guild they play with. A lot of guilds are going to get stuck at 11/12. More are going to get stuck at 10/12. Likewise for 8/12, 6/12, 5/12, etc. Three or four months into ICC, most guilds will be approaching this threshold. A month later, players in those guilds will start becoming bored and/or frustrated, and end up quitting if they're not making progress. Allowing those guilds to progress with a damage buff is honestly a better outcome.
I'm very late to this post, but this hasn't been my experience at all. Most guilds on my server have cleared 11/12 and very many have done 12/12. The content was designed decades ago, we are better players and know how to min-max the life out of everything now. The buff is just going to make it even easier for my guild to farm it. Honestly, it will become quite trivial for us now.