After going 4/12 in my first week in 25 heroic, I can say that I’m actually more pleased than I expected. No, the fights aren’t dramatically different, but they seemed a little more different than your post seemed to imply.

Not in as tremendous a way as Sarth3D, but still, some cool things. I like that Rotface and Festergut heroic had to deal with additional elements from the other fights. It just seems to ‘fit.’ The added raid damage from blood princes is not a unique element, but still does add some complexity directed at the ‘heart’ of the encounter (movement). Still…. yah, not so different overall.

I really, really enjoyed MH/BT. I think that as instances they were great (well…save the MH trash!), and I thought progression through them was well paced. While I am glad that Blizzard is exploring different avenues of raiding, I do hope that they find a better balance for everyone

Maybe every boss doesn’t need to take weeks to kill, but I do think that some should take more than an evening. THen again, perhaps I am not seeing it through a clear enough glass, being in a guild that has played together for so long. I know that there are things that seem simple enough for us, but very challenging for others.

Argh!

The more progressive hard modes were definately interesting, even if I looked at them and thought “dear god, how is my guild ever going to pull that off”…but you know what, we did! The MOAR = HARDER, though, has got to go.

I find that I’ve been longing for the Burning Crusade raiding model. No hard modes, the bosses were challenging enough on their own. There was also usually more than one raid instance to work on at a time. I really thought that the Mount Hyjal/Black Temple era was the highest point of WoW raiding. The content was engaging and kept the more hardcore guilds occupied. A few months later, everyone got hugely buffed and the less hardcore guilds were able to clear those instances too.

IF you accept the premise that everyone should be able to kill a boss, but SOME guilds can kill it HARDER, then Hard Modes are here to stay. And anyone who disagrees is welcome to their opinion, but I say their elitist jerks and I don’t like them, and there’s about 11 million paying subscribers who agree with me.

Can we make Hard Modes better? I sure hope so. I, too, like the idea of adding elements to the fight ala Sarth or Ulduar… but as you pointed out so well that’s a very hit or miss proposition. Some of them work supremely well, some do not. I know I don’t like the moar damage/moar healing model as you have described it. I hope Blizzard puts extra effort into giving us Hard Modes that change the fight dynamic and make it …. different.

On a couple other points. Limited attempts. I think we’ve seen the fail there, and hopefully they go away. Some guilds have the time and dedication to work around it with alts and transfers. Does that make them better? I certainly don’t think so.

Gating. I think I like it. It’s not perfect, but if ICC had been released as a whole, some guilds would have had Lich King a week or two in and then be bored and clamoring for new content. I’m at peace with farming bosses for a few weeks while waiting for a new boss to open up. But I can see how others would object.

Well, I’ll stop my ramble too. Good post.

I also feel that Algalon was a good thing. In fact, I wish there were more Algalons in this game, and by that I mean, specific bosses that are only obtainable to the “harder” raiding group, only unlockable after completing the “hard” versions of the other bosses of the instance.

But I would want them to do things to make the fights more interesting, ie Firefighter. Probably one of my favorite fights in this expansion. Yogg0, another amazing fight, one that is highly different than the normal version, without changing too terribly much of the fight mechanics because the “normal” version allowed for so much wiggle room and brute forcing that you just cannot, CANNOT do without Keepers. The Iron Council is a great one too, in that depending on who you left alive you had a completely different fight on your hands. Same with Sartharion.

I thoroughly agree that an “enrage timer that’s 3 minutes shorter” on an already steep enrage timer does not a hard mode make.

Anyway, a favorite term I hear lately is “poopsocking”. A lot of the bosses now are just poopsock targets, meaning anyone and everyone can kill it if they throw enough shit at it. It’ll stick eventually, right? And then it’s muscle memory after that. Having hard mode encounters of those same bosses (preferably in unique ways that make each encounter different from the normal version, making it feel fresh and new) allows those kills to feel a bit… better. And then, unlocking a SUPERSEKRET boss that no one else can get to, and then killing IT, brings back that feeling of kills mattering.

I think I’m rambling now. I should stop. D=