The guild I’m in is fairly accomplished (only Anub hard-mode and Algalon haven’t been downed), and as such, we’ve come to expect good performance and achievable clears. Then last week we got our asses handed to us for an entire night by Valithria, and it did take me right back to Curator. Not in the fight mechanics, but in remembering when my guild back then would spend a week on each boss, and hope we could put it together faster the next week. To be fair, we had similar experiences with Patchwerk & Grobbulus in Naxx, but that could have been an affect of trying to raid too fast with minimal gear.

To counter the argument, though, while I like hard-fights, I don’t want to go back to raiding 20-30 hours a week just to clear. Those days got old quick….

I remember these guys, Lets go further back yet. You had Razorgore in BWL, and a bunch of keepers in Molten Core.

I can’t believe how we even got together 40 people to be on the same page, and now it’s tough to get 25.

In kara, we got Attuman first night.

Moroes took about 4-5 weeks.

Next cockblock was a few weeks at Curator.

Then about another month at Shade of Aran.

In SSC, the fucking water giant banged our drum too many times to count. First time we downed him, I was there on my Warlock. Took about a month to down him the first time. And another month to down him the second time.

The new boss in VoA – Toralon – requires that all your ranged DPS make an effort. Because they want groups to succeed you don’t need to have 8 ranged DPS doing the right thing. You need about 5 doing the right thing. The rest of the raid can be pretty hopeless and still you will win.

Attumen required more coordination (as did the trash – remember Shackle Undead? Frost Traps? These were a requirement to get through). From memory you needed 2 coordinated tanks (not just 2 dudes to stand and share cleave damage), you needed people to dispel or decurse (can’t remember which tbh) and you needed all your DPS to meet a decent DPS requirement too. You needed people to stand in the right position and you needed them to DPS the correct target at all times.

I feel that most of the new bosses have 3 rules: This is what melee have to do, this is what ranged have to do, this is what tanks have to do. You can have like 80% of each group doing the right thing.

Moroes required 4 players to CC while DPSing. Healers had to heal more and more bleed damage if you took too long. Tanks had to keep stuff under control. 1 person not doing their job, or sucking at CC, meant you would wipe.

The first boss that I believe this is true of in Icecrown is The Blood Prince Council which is a true test of individual environmental awareness and control. All it takes is for 1 Hunter to SUCK at pet control and a Kinetic Bomb will go off. Any person standing in the wrong place at the wrong time can nearly kill off another player during empowered shock vortex, a player can get themselves killed if they get (or stand instead of moving) in the range of one of those swirly white 30 yards force field things.

Watching your fellow raiders get themselves and the players around them killed in Blood Princes can make you doubt the skill of your raiders. And there are not many fights (Mimiron maybe? Yogg?) that make it so apparent when one person fails.

They have been moderately successful, except for one thing: there is hardly any “end game” (aka – hard) 5 man content stuff to do. Yes, FoS, PoS and HoL are tough, but they are still (apparently) only intended to be “gearing fodder” and are not intended to be long, arduous multi -week (or day?) fights.

This in turn keeps the heroics (even the tough ones) as exclusively farm content. Suitable ONLY for PuGs and n00bs. And because they ARE such loot pinatas, pretty much everyone overgears even HoR now.

“Serious” content is reserved for the 10 & 25 man runs.
And if you don’t have a large guild, or a pretty active guild, you’re screwed.

Maybe Bliz could release TOUGH 5 man versions of the ICC raids? Nerf the loot/drops from there as much as they want, to prevent farming, but at least offer a “real” raiding experience that forces people to learn, practive and pay attention.

case in point, this past weekend we took down ignis and the constructor in ulduar, both in that exact same pattern. we had never been to either of those fights as a guild group before. some people had been there, most hadn’t. we talked out the parts of the fight that the veterans knew about, tried it, failed, tried again, maybe failed, maybe didn’t. and it was a helluva lot of fun, and we felt like rock stars at the end. good times.

i think i read this over at The Grumpy Mage’s blog (http://thegrumpymage.wordpress.com/), and it’s stuck with me so i will repeat it: “if you’re not wiping, you’re not challenging yourself.”

excellent, excellent words.