Cracks starting to show?

[Paelos]

I don't think the difficulty increase, decrease, whatever is an issue. I think the issue is a matter of mechanics changing to put more emphasis on how the few can seriously hinder the many in a group.

Example - Before this exansion, you could have good players with good gear carry weaker players with little consequence. Say players were rated from 0-100 in skill/gear. It was a math problem where you had a total of 300, and you just had to get there together. It didn't matter if you had 5 people worth 60, or 3 worth 50 being carried by a 70 and an 80.

I think in Cataclysm, it's created a floor that you have to all have to pass. The group with 5 60's will be fine. The group with two great players and the 3 sub-60's will struggle. As a tank it's especially frustrating, because I don't really believe what you do in a raiding scenario has any real effect on the group. You are simply interchangable with your gear, and the skill is frankly minimal. The catch is even with awesome gear, you still aren't that big of an asset anymore.

[Ingmar]

Now they've been nerfed and should provide a wipefest to only the worst groups while being a non-snoozefest to everyone else.

A) this is just not true, I've seen groups that weren't made up of outright bad players fail endlessly (and yes I know the difference).
B) there is a large, large group of 'good enough to win' groups that still take something approaching 2 hours to get through one dungeon. That is just not the right place for heroics to be sitting in terms of time commitment for reward, not nearly.

[Modern Angel]

We've all had the fluke wipes which extend things, no doubt. Everyone has. But the argument only holds water if the assumption is that Heroics should be 30 minute long snoozefests where nobody engages their brains. I don't share that assumption.

For point B, I'd rebut that they've done wholesale trash removal (looking at your Deadmines!) to shorten them and that if it's taking two hours and many wipes to clear Heroics on a regular basis than the gear available probably is the proper reward for where you're at.

[Fordel]

I think that's my problem with Cata, I can't pick up the slack anymore. I don't mean won't, I mean can't.

My Moonkin used to be the greatest pinch hitter in a 5 man group. Oh shit the healer died, that's okay I can cover this short term. Oh fuck our DPS is dead/shit, that's okay, I'll just crank it up to 11. Oh fuck the tank and healer both died and all our DPS is also shit, that's fine, I'll CC the dangerous mob, kite the rest, rez the tank and out DPS the still living DPS'ers while healing everyone and off-tanking the AE Chaff.


Now it's just, oh fuck the healer died, time to wipe. 

There is no fucking recovery, no one has the mana or resources to do it anymore. I can do my optimal DPS and keep my CC target on task. The end.

[Ingmar]

MA: I think you're too far into the high end to really see what it is like for the majority of players at this point. Heroics as they stand now are breaking social ties, reducing people's interest in playing, and reducing the amount of fun people are having playing the game. The social consequences in particular are enormous. There are many players in my guild that I am comfortable enough in their skill level to take to a raid (if they could get the gear to do it, heh) that I am not willing to step into a heroic with, but I can't exactly say 'sorry dude, you suck too much'.

Thankfully, this being Blizzard, they will most likely fix it eventually.

[Modern Angel]

I'll take your word for it. Taking that at face value, why is it doing that now but didn't in TBC or Vanilla? No Heroics in Vanilla, obviously, but you didn't have this with Stratholme. I keep coming back to the expectations change from the LFD launch. TBC if you weren't good or unsure or good but in a not so good group you went to do your normals and that was *completely acceptable*. Now it's magically not and the only thing I can figure is the expectations marker moving.

[WindupAtheist]

We've all had the fluke wipes which extend things, no doubt. Everyone has. But the argument only holds water if the assumption is that Heroics should be 30 minute long snoozefests where nobody engages their brains. I don't share that assumption.

I don't care what it is or how much it makes you think, if it takes like an hour on top of a 40 minute queue, you can ram it up your ass.

[Modern Angel]

But how would that fit into the shitty lore?

[Ingmar]

I'll take your word for it. Taking that at face value, why is it doing that now but didn't in TBC or Vanilla? No Heroics in Vanilla, obviously, but you didn't have this with Stratholme. I keep coming back to the expectations change from the LFD launch. TBC if you weren't good or unsure or good but in a not so good group you went to do your normals and that was *completely acceptable*. Now it's magically not and the only thing I can figure is the expectations marker moving.

It did happen in vanilla; our guild almost collapsed and most of us quit for about 6 months because there was just noting for casual players to do. TBC was better because stuff started opening up for us to do - we could manage most of the heroics with the right groups, there was an Actual Raid we could do - EDIT: and remember, normals and heroics in TBC dropped the same gear other than the bonus purple at the end. Then Wrath came along and fixed the game into what finally was the 'right' state for Real Casual Players. Fun quick heroics to get you into pre-raid gear, and raids the right size and difficulty for our guild and the literally thousands of other guilds like ours.

Then they break it so that it is painful to get into starter raiding gear and you expect us to smile and like it? Sorry, no.

I already play my character, IMO, very very well. I could leave my guild today and join a bleeding edge raiding guild and if I could make their schedule I would do just fine. But I'd be putting progression over my social attachment to my actual friends by doing so. That's what Wrath did so stunningly well; it made it so that players like me could do all the regular content with our derpy friends while still giving the hard mode stuff to the people who wanted something more. Part and parcel of that is accessible heroics. If we could get acceptable starting raid gear from normals at any kind of decent pace, and if there were more than three normal level 85 dungeons, then sure, super nut punchy heroics could work. But as things are set up now, no way.

What you're essentially saying with your "just go run normals" to people is "be happy with the grand total of 3 dungeons that you can run for the next 4-6 months until they add a new one". Stop acting surprised when nobody agrees.

[Fordel]

I'll take your word for it. Taking that at face value, why is it doing that now but didn't in TBC or Vanilla? No Heroics in Vanilla, obviously, but you didn't have this with Stratholme. I keep coming back to the expectations change from the LFD launch. TBC if you weren't good or unsure or good but in a not so good group you went to do your normals and that was *completely acceptable*. Now it's magically not and the only thing I can figure is the expectations marker moving.

It did happen in both of those expansions? Hell in Vanilla most of us in my guild quit the game for half a year until Blizzard got their shit back on track.

-edit- Damn you Ingmar!

[Xanthippe]

I find it absurd to have a thread bitching about retards ruining your LFD groups and then getting mad about elitists telling you L2P in this thread.

We're all the LFD Retard to someone. All of us.

Your analysis missed the mark.

I'm not mad about elitists telling me to L2P; I'm disappointed that the devs, who produced a fun game in Wrath and trained people to play a certain way, are now telling people who aren't having fun that if they'd only L2P they'd be having fun.  (I know how to play.  Casual != bad.  But surely you know this by now.)

I also know that random heroics in Wrath were fun.  Random heroics in Cata are not.  The difference between regulars and heroics is too wide, the heroics too unforgiving, and the rewards too small.

Few like punishing gameplay, and Cata heroics are certainly that.

[Sjofn]

I think that's my problem with Cata, I can't pick up the slack anymore. I don't mean won't, I mean can't.

My Moonkin used to be the greatest pinch hitter in a 5 man group. Oh shit the healer died, that's okay I can cover this short term. Oh fuck our DPS is dead/shit, that's okay, I'll just crank it up to 11. Oh fuck the tank and healer both died and all our DPS is also shit, that's fine, I'll CC the dangerous mob, kite the rest, rez the tank and out DPS the still living DPS'ers while healing everyone and off-tanking the AE Chaff.


Now it's just, oh fuck the healer died, time to wipe. 

There is no fucking recovery, no one has the mana or resources to do it anymore. I can do my optimal DPS and keep my CC target on task. The end.

This might be a more accurate description of my current problem, thinking about it. It's less "I don't want to give piggyback rides" and more "I can't give them any more because dungeons don't work that way in Cataclysm." It isn't helping, of course, that I can usually tell after the first wipe or two if the group just needs to execute better and will be able to do so with a little practice, or if they're just too crappy to get it done, but a lot of the people I already feel iffy about going into a heroic with (because, bless their hearts, they are nice people but just not very good at the game) like to ram their head against a brick wall for hours if need be. The thought of doing that makes me cry.

I sure love leveling in Cataclysm though!  

[Xanthippe]

At the same time I think the idea that OH GOD THIS IS THE TURNING POINT IT WILL NEVER BE GOOD AGAIN is a silly attitude to take, given Blizzard's track record of fixing the stuff they've screwed up before. Yeah they still don't totally get PVP, but everything else they've generally improved over time. This isn't Mythic we're talking about here, and in the end I really don't think Cataclysm will be TOA.

I agree, but I don't feel like shelling out $30/month for my 2 accounts until Blizzard puts my fun back in.  Why should I, when I can't even muster up the enthusiasm to log in?

I'll be back.  Meanwhile, I'm finding my fun elsewhere and another company will get my gaming funds.

[caladein]

I'd argue that there's enough non-Raid/Heroic gear available for most specs (even before getting to Darkmoon Cards and Archaeology) that even with a very high failure rate in Heroics you'd be able to jump into a raid rather quickly.  That doesn't fix there being so few level-cap Normal dungeons though.

[WindupAtheist]

But how would that fit into the shitty lore?

Don't even get me started. (Really, or Rasix will yell at me!) I'm still pissed that they couldn't even have Chromie give you a quest about sending you back in time at the beginning of the BC & Wrath content to give it even the "meh whatever" veneer of lore sense.

[Malakili]

I agree that they fucked up. I just disagree where the fuck up was. If Heroics in TBC were too hard (they were), in WLK they were too easy.

I actually thought the TBC heroics were pretty good.  There were some very easy and badge rich (Mechanar), and some that were very difficult at launch that had raid quests tied to them (Shadow Labyrinths, Shattered Halls).  It felt like there was some progression within the heroics, which I liked at the time.   Then again, the very beginning of TBC was pretty close to my  "glory days" or WoW in which I was as hardcore as I ever got, so my memories of how bad it was might be skewed.

[Stabs]

Casual people aren't bad, Casual people are people who put up with others being bad. 

You know ... that's a pretty good definition.

I stopped being that sort of casual sometime during WotLK. It's making me play WoW less, because I just ... don't want to give piggyback rides.

When I tire of giving piggyback rides I queue as dps and use my alternate spec. I don't think I'm absolutely terrible as dps but I'm much less focused and usually have something on another screen while I idly follow the group and tap a button.

Psychologically it cures my feeling bad about being taken advantage of.

I realise this is flawed and that I'm probably dragging down the average quality in my own small way. But oddly I get better groups when I do this. My theory as to why is that tanks and healers always have a baseline competence (ie they can be excellent good or average but almost never mediocre or terrible). When I'm dps I guarantee that at least one of the dps is good to average even if I'm not paying full attention. So that makes 3 people who are average+ which is enough to do heroics pretty comfortably. If I tank however I might get 3 awful dps and we might be boned because of that.

[Paelos]

I'd argue that there's enough non-Raid/Heroic gear available for most specs (even before getting to Darkmoon Cards and Archaeology) that even with a very high failure rate in Heroics you'd be able to jump into a raid rather quickly.  That doesn't fix there being so few level-cap Normal dungeons though.

Depends on how willing you are to grind rep. I managed to get into most of my tanking raid gear with very few heroic runs (because I hated them). Then, they took the trash out of the ridiculously cockstabby ones, and I ran them until I got my profession orbs covered.

Now, I don't go back unless it's the weekend when I can actually alot 2 hours to them if something goes wrong. It's fucked up that I have to even consider THAT much time commitment to a five man.

Also, a lot of people are simply giving up on the "annoying" jobs like tanking or healing and focusing on their second spec or alts.

[Rendakor]

I already play my character, IMO, very very well. I could leave my guild today and join a bleeding edge raiding guild and if I could make their schedule I would do just fine. But I'd be putting progression over my social attachment to my actual friends by doing so. That's what Wrath did so stunningly well; it made it so that players like me could do all the regular content with our derpy friends while still giving the hard mode stuff to the people who wanted something more. Part and parcel of that is accessible heroics. If we could get acceptable starting raid gear from normals at any kind of decent pace, and if there were more than three normal level 85 dungeons, then sure, super nut punchy heroics could work. But as things are set up now, no way.

This describes me very well; I'm a hardcore player but I work nights, so I can't even join a normal raiding guild. Since most of my RL friends have similar schedules, we formed our own late night raiding guild and did pretty well in WotLK (I think we were 8/12 H ICC10). However, Cata has caused several problems that are fucking up our ability to raid well. One of our core DPSers decided to grind Arch for two weeks while most of us were doing heroics (trying to get Zin'rokh, which he never did), got burnt out, took a few weeks off, then came back and got upset when we wouldn't run chain heroics for him because they're NOT FUN. Two of our three healers went DPS; we've got a static, non-guild healer who raids with us, and we pug our third every week.

This on top of the fact that heroics are longer and you never know what you're going to get with your daily. Back in LK there was ONE daily heroic, and it was a quest. This made things easier for tanks for two reasons: you could only do the zone once, and if it was a shit zone (HoL, HoS, Occ) you could just not go. Now if you get a shit zone, you're already in there with your guildies or pugs and you look like a dick bailing. You also have the issue of JP being less useful than their equivalent in WotLK (particularly for someone who has all the old heirlooms already) and the lack of epics from heroics which combined make heroics get useless much sooner than they did. You can also now run an infinite number (rather than being limited to 12/day at max, realistically less than that since most people had a few they hated), which means you can finish heroics in a few days of hardcore grinding, rather than taking weeks to get your one epic from the boss.

[Paelos]

A lot of the problems with raid comp stem from the fact they've taken healers down a road that was best for their design of raids, but extremely punitive to the already dwindling representation.

If I was gunning for one place to "fix" the problem, I would start there by making healing more interesting and less of a resource battle. Only problem is that all the bosses are tuned to healers running out of mana. Give them more resources, and bosses become simplistic! 

[Sjofn]

I agree that they fucked up. I just disagree where the fuck up was. If Heroics in TBC were too hard (they were), in WLK they were too easy.

I actually thought the TBC heroics were pretty good.  There were some very easy and badge rich (Mechanar), and some that were very difficult at launch that had raid quests tied to them (Shadow Labyrinths, Shattered Halls).  It felt like there was some progression within the heroics, which I liked at the time.   Then again, the very beginning of TBC was pretty close to my  "glory days" or WoW in which I was as hardcore as I ever got, so my memories of how bad it was might be skewed.

I always see people say H Mechanar was easy and I always think those people are fucking crazy.

[Rendakor]

A lot of the problems with raid comp stem from the fact they've taken healers down a road that was best for their design of raids, but extremely punitive to the already dwindling representation.

If I was gunning for one place to "fix" the problem, I would start there by making healing more interesting and less of a resource battle. Only problem is that all the bosses are tuned to healers running out of mana. Give them more resources, and bosses become simplistic! 

Making healers manage mana was someone's pet project for Cata; it's all they talked about in the months prior to launch as a feature. I agree that it's shit, and that punishing healers who are already few and far between is a bad call. Of course, I'm sure MA will be in here in a sec to post about how he LOVES the new healing changes, and how much fun it is going OOM all the time.

[Rasix]

I agree that they fucked up. I just disagree where the fuck up was. If Heroics in TBC were too hard (they were), in WLK they were too easy.

I actually thought the TBC heroics were pretty good.  There were some very easy and badge rich (Mechanar), and some that were very difficult at launch that had raid quests tied to them (Shadow Labyrinths, Shattered Halls).  It felt like there was some progression within the heroics, which I liked at the time.   Then again, the very beginning of TBC was pretty close to my  "glory days" or WoW in which I was as hardcore as I ever got, so my memories of how bad it was might be skewed.

I always see people say H Mechanar was easy and I always think those people are fucking crazy.

Easy if you skip flame bitch.  I never beat her once, even with groups that steamrolled Heroic SLabs and Arcatraz.

[Ingmar]

I think that was our problem, OCD must kill all bosses completism.

[Merusk]

It was Furor & Metzen chatting up the mana resource issue whenever I heard about it.  But that was Blizzcon, I don't know who else might have been talking about it.  The way they presented it was, "Hey, BC raids were much more fun when the raid was sitting at 50-25% health all the time because healers couldn't actually keep everyone topped off.  We're going to aim for that, so healers who keep trying to keep everyone topped will just be OOM and their group will die."  

Having healed a few heroics I can agree this is the case.. but at the same time the cocksuckers keep standing in the fire or eating a cleave at 25% so they wind up dead and I'm blamed.  So yeah, fuck that shit.  The last heroic I healed was a Deadmines where the hunter kept dropping the Reaper's target RIGHT FUCKING BEHIND ME as the tank ran over the lip and out of LOS.   Apparently it was my fault when I, or the tank died.

[Sjofn]

A lot of the problems with raid comp stem from the fact they've taken healers down a road that was best for their design of raids, but extremely punitive to the already dwindling representation.

If I was gunning for one place to "fix" the problem, I would start there by making healing more interesting and less of a resource battle. Only problem is that all the bosses are tuned to healers running out of mana. Give them more resources, and bosses become simplistic! 

Making healers manage mana was someone's pet project for Cata; it's all they talked about in the months prior to launch as a feature. I agree that it's shit, and that punishing healers who are already few and far between is a bad call. Of course, I'm sure MA will be in here in a sec to post about how he LOVES the new healing changes, and how much fun it is going OOM all the time.

I won't lie, I love the new healing changes. I play a paladin healer, though, so it not being a completely mindless two button affair is totally novel and distracting me from the whole mana thing. I also don't heal in PUGs because my brand of tough love (you stand in the fire, I'm letting you die, asshole) would not be well received.

I honestly don't think making mana matter was a mistake REALLY. I think the bigger mistake was giving everyone these gigantic health pools but leaving healers with these little bitty heals as their main heal that don't look like they've done anything. You just feel like you're treading water, and that sucks.

[Rendakor]

Our paladin is the one guy we have still healing, so at least what you say matches my experience. Our priest went shadow, while our resto druid switched to his enhance shaman.

[caladein]

A lot of the problems with raid comp stem from the fact they've taken healers down a road that was best for their design of raids, but extremely punitive to the already dwindling representation.

If I was gunning for one place to "fix" the problem, I would start there by making healing more interesting and less of a resource battle. Only problem is that all the bosses are tuned to healers running out of mana. Give them more resources, and bosses become simplistic!  

Making healers manage mana was someone's pet project for Cata; it's all they talked about in the months prior to launch as a feature. I agree that it's shit, and that punishing healers who are already few and far between is a bad call. Of course, I'm sure MA will be in here in a sec to post about how he LOVES the new healing changes, and how much fun it is going OOM all the time.

I don't know how much I like Cata healing (as it's hard for me to separate my class from encounter design) but it's a lot better than Wrath.  Wrath was just pushing a few mouseover binds as fast as possible.  Discipline was the fucking worst, but Holy Paladin/Priest and Resto Druid were hardly engaging.  It was bad enough that for all the talk in here about letting subs lapse, I was probably not subbed for half of Wrath altogether.

Cata offers (or offered, Shield Spam has reared its stupid head with this patch) the ability to see damage patterns instead of just low health bars which I like.  (Except for Chimaeron, fuck him.)  Mana management though is mostly irrelevant in raids, even with the regen/cost changes, thanks to Mana Tide Totem.  You can't just piss it away with the wrong spells and massive overhealing, but I'm never worrying about bringing throughput down a gear so I have mana left for later.  I'm still reacting to what the fight is giving me for the most part, but I have a few more buttons to press.

Edit: I haven't spent much quality time with Holy since the patch, but most of my issues with Chakra were cleared up so it's gone from "promising but clunky" to "alright".

[Fordel]

Resto Druids pretty much play nothing like they used too.


I actually have to CAST fucking heals, what is that bullshit about!

[kildorn]

A lot of the problems with raid comp stem from the fact they've taken healers down a road that was best for their design of raids, but extremely punitive to the already dwindling representation.

If I was gunning for one place to "fix" the problem, I would start there by making healing more interesting and less of a resource battle. Only problem is that all the bosses are tuned to healers running out of mana. Give them more resources, and bosses become simplistic! 

Making healers manage mana was someone's pet project for Cata; it's all they talked about in the months prior to launch as a feature. I agree that it's shit, and that punishing healers who are already few and far between is a bad call. Of course, I'm sure MA will be in here in a sec to post about how he LOVES the new healing changes, and how much fun it is going OOM all the time.

I liked the new healing when I got used to it. My complaints with the new system are simple (coming from a priest standpoint):

1) There is a gear floor at which you CANNOT HEAL. And you magically hit the proper spi number (~1900) and suddenly healing goes from how the fuck does this possibly work to "oh hey, this is interesting, engaging, and makes me think about when I can break my healing rotation on the tank to adapt to changing situations!"

2) Around 2200 spirit, it changes again to "oh hey, I don't need to think about when I can break my rotation, I'm now going to just spam heal to keep everyone topped the fuck off because mana is a limitless resource!

Basically, the design they went for to make mana matter.. has a very small window in which it WORKS, before which it's impossible, and after which it's Wrath again.


But hey, everything may have changed. Even playing a primary tank now (due to a lack of guild tanks and a shitload of guild healers), I've lost my desire to bang my head against heroics for hours a night or try to find a raid to bang my head against for hours a night. Doing Tol Barad for the first time was Fun for me, but mostly because it was the guild together and seeing something new. The actual fight mechanics just seemed to be Cata's basic idea again: extremely punishing to minor mistakes, but in essence the same shit you've already done. Basically all that changed from Wrath to Cata is what Fordel said: there's no longer a recovery phase after a fuckup. Which is really what our guild does amazingly well. We've never been great at doing things right, but we always refused to die and often came out the other side with the world's messiest boss kills. That's gone now in favor of "do X absolutely perfectly or wipe" which I find to be a far more stressful gameplay mechanic. And I play this game to avoid the high stress of the rest of my day.

[Sjofn]

It's true, the messy "Oh fuck oh fuck OH FUCK everything is going to shit fuckity fuck try to salvage it oh hey we won" boss kill is a Slap in the Face specialty.

[Nevermore]

Resto Druids pretty much play nothing like they used too.


I actually have to CAST fucking heals, what is that bullshit about!

Man, Druid healing was the only healing in any MMO (besides CoX) that I could tolerate, because you could just HoT stuff up and not have to play wack-a-mole with the little health bars.  So they fucked that up, too?  Between that and the stupid root change I just read about, I'd be pissed if I still gave a shit.  Blizzard, leave Druids alone! :Chris Crocker:

[Modern Angel]

Of course, I'm sure MA will be in here in a sec to post about how he LOVES the new healing changes, and how much fun it is going OOM all the time.

Amazingly, I didn't have to because the non-jerks actually enjoy it for the most part.

The only healer I think got fucked over a bit was Cataclysm release Priest. Enough people said that they had the worst mana issues (as in, OOM constantly, not oh no I have to think about mana) that I believed them.

[Ironwood]

Priest healing is in a bad way right now.

[Feverdream]

I play a Priest in a raiding guild, and while I totally agree that healing was godawful horrible bad before Tuesday's patch if you were Discipline, it's OK now.  Holy always seemed OK to me...the issues I had were about needing gear and stacking Spirit...Holy is actually a lot of fun to play with the Chakra system, and is even very viable as a PvP spec.  Shadow came out of the patch looking and playing very nicely, as well.

But that still isn't making the game feel like fun to me these days.  I mentioned earlier in this thread that even for those of us in the kind of raiding guild that is clearing content regularly and which shelters us entirely from the pug/dungeon finder system, the game has still lost something in terms of quality of life, I guess I'd call it.  My opportunities to group up with more casual friends and do stuff together are far more stressful now, both for them and for me.

Part of what I like about the game is playing with several folks who are in little tiny friends and family or casual guilds.  Some of my best moments in Wrath were when I was helping little guilds like that and they got epic gear for their tank or healer, or they managed their first kill in ICC when they'd never even seen raid content in other expansions. They were so damned happy and excited that I became utterly convinced of the importance of making high-end content accessible to non-raiding guilds and more casual players.

I don't particularly want to go back to the faceroll days of Wrath, but I think they over-tuned Heroics in Cata.  I shouldn't be looking at doing ONE heroic with friends outside my guild as something that is going to probably take up all my available gaming time on a weeknight.  I like the raid fights.  I despise the Heroics. I'd like to see them made more accessible and less punishing.....that would give folks the opportunity to gear up to the point where they have a chance of getting into raiding.

My guild LIKES to collaborate with smaller guilds and help them get through higher level content (guild 'alliances' are something that Blizzard has utterly failed to encourage, but they could be really helpful in Cataclysm), but we can't do it if the smaller guilds are getting chewed up and spit out at the Heroic level, and can't get their team geared up in a reasonable amount of time because one freaking Heroic takes all evening.