strec021
Legend
After numerous hours of testing, I have finally come to some conclusions about the state of WoD PvE for those of us who enjoy legacy raiding:
**Note** I am interested in testing small group content on beta if there's enough people with level 60's, 70's, and maybe 80's.
Let me start off with the first, most general, and most important discovery: dps, healing, tanking, etc., is hugely nerfed relative to PvE as it currently stands. You will not be soloing at-level content anymore unless you are the -pinnacle- of gear/skill for your level, and even then it will be hard. In any case, you won't be soloing raid content at 60 or 70 (80 is a maybe due to mechanics with those in ilevel 300+). It's literally the opposite of live right now, where you can 5 man sunwell at 70 with relative ease. I don't want to say the difficulty is back to what it was originally intended to be, but you wouldn't have to restrict your raiding rules too much to match it.
The second part of the title refers to the fact that I believe this will fly under the radar for the rest of beta, only to unwind at some point after release. Since you get a massive dps buff for soloing stuff under your level, no one will notice that it's magnitudes more difficult -at- level, so the forum complaining won't begin until a large enough sample size of people play and stumble over their feet. What does this mean for you? Plan to assemble raiding groups on the PTR and immediately at 6.0 release, because the appropriately challenging content likely won't last, as people are too used to steamrolling everything. So get your fill!
Now, to comment on each segment of PvE (with a recommendation on how to enjoy if you prefer that part of the game to be challenging)
Vanilla:
- outdoor enemies hit somewhat harder but have the same HP.
Recommendation? Level using only quest gear, vendor gear, and world drops.
- dungeons will be marginally harder leveling up. They will take similarly long (dps-wise), but tank dps and heals are somewhat lower, so that aspect will at least be nice. Recommendation? Level through dungeons in only gear you find in the world/quests/dungeons. You will be pleasantly surprised at the difficulty.
- raids will slow down significantly for several reasons: 1) there is no longer a jump in gear power immediately at 60 and 2), the overpowered base power on abilities is gone. Bosses do more damage, but it's comparable to your hp increase.
Recommendation? Progressively raid starting with greens and blues, preferably item level of about 50-55. If you combine this with a raid size of about 20 for MC, 25 for BWL, and 30+ for AQ40, you should have a nice experience.
BC:
- outdoor enemies have the same hp and hit noticeably harder.
Recommendation? Same as vanilla. Do some of the leveling objectives and get some flavor gear to round out the experience; don't fill your gear with expensive enchants and gems
- normal mode dungeons have the same numbers as live, except for a damage bump for increased player hp. The main difference is that your power in outland is drastically diminished due to the removal of base power. I can guarantee cowboys will not be able to run forward and solo everything like they used to
Recommendation? Proceed as before. These should be reasonably fun and well paced with a group in leveling gear.
- heroic dungeons have seen some of the most change. Between reduced player power, enemy health increase, AND enemy damage increase (to the tune of 80%), BC heroics will once again be formidable to those who do them in the appropriate gear.
Recommendation?
I actually tested some BC heroics with someone else on beta to gauge difficulty. We attempted to 2 man the dungeon up through the first boss as a tank/healer combo in an ilevel 115 set as well as a full 150+ super-set. In the item level 115 set, we were chased out of the dungeon by the first pull 3 separate times because we just couldn't keep up with the heals from the mobs. We finally killed it the 4th try with a bit of cc and priest deeps. After that? We couldn't get past the pull of imps and warlock. I was spamming heals until oom and the tank (paladin) blew through all of his cd's before he died. We switched to our super sets and we were able to whittle our way through the room full of overseers and cultists, but that required a lot of creative pulls and resulting wipes. So the conclusion here is that BC heroics are somewhat serious business again. If you run it with a full group of 154 people, fully gemmed glass cannons, etc., then obviously you'll likely roll them down, but it will be much closer to what it was like rolling them down back in the day with the same gear.
- Raids are in a similar boat, but not as much as heroics. It seems that the hp nerf from 2.4 might have been reversed, but I'm not 100% sure. Boss/trash damage seems somewhat higher, but not like heroics.
Recommendation? Similar to vanilla raids. If you start with a low item level, or a smaller raid, or strict raiding rules, you should be able to create an exhilarating raiding experience. My napkin math calculations recommend an itemlevel of about 90 for tier 4, 105 for tier 5, 120 for early T6 and 140 for sunwell. So it will all be easy if you run the raids with your decked out twinks, but you can definitely create a fun raiding experience.
Wrath:
- Dungeons are basically untouched. Player power lower than before.
Recommendation? Create the experience you want; I found wrath leveling dungeons somewhat boring, so I wouldn't necessarily make these artificially hard for myself.
- Heroics are slightly different. They have a bit less HP and about 20% more damage.
Recommendation? Probably jump into them with quest gear from Icecrown for the best experience. They will likely be pretty easy still.
- Raids are just weird. Early raids saw a slight HP buff with a sizable damage increase, while ICC saw an hp and damage nerf. So basically 80 raiding is going to be 4 similar difficulty raiding tiers. You might have to get creative in carving out your raiding experience.
Recommendation? I don't even know. You can probably run into 25 naxx with your questing gear and have a pretty epic experience, but I have no clue what item level you'll need for later tiers.
Anyways, I know that was a ton of information, but it's important that the community who it affects knows about it and can take advantage of it before someone complains on the forums and Blizzard applies a knee jerk, blanket nerf.
Discuss/Enjoy!
**Note** I am interested in testing small group content on beta if there's enough people with level 60's, 70's, and maybe 80's.
Let me start off with the first, most general, and most important discovery: dps, healing, tanking, etc., is hugely nerfed relative to PvE as it currently stands. You will not be soloing at-level content anymore unless you are the -pinnacle- of gear/skill for your level, and even then it will be hard. In any case, you won't be soloing raid content at 60 or 70 (80 is a maybe due to mechanics with those in ilevel 300+). It's literally the opposite of live right now, where you can 5 man sunwell at 70 with relative ease. I don't want to say the difficulty is back to what it was originally intended to be, but you wouldn't have to restrict your raiding rules too much to match it.
The second part of the title refers to the fact that I believe this will fly under the radar for the rest of beta, only to unwind at some point after release. Since you get a massive dps buff for soloing stuff under your level, no one will notice that it's magnitudes more difficult -at- level, so the forum complaining won't begin until a large enough sample size of people play and stumble over their feet. What does this mean for you? Plan to assemble raiding groups on the PTR and immediately at 6.0 release, because the appropriately challenging content likely won't last, as people are too used to steamrolling everything. So get your fill!
Now, to comment on each segment of PvE (with a recommendation on how to enjoy if you prefer that part of the game to be challenging)
Vanilla:
- outdoor enemies hit somewhat harder but have the same HP.
Recommendation? Level using only quest gear, vendor gear, and world drops.
- dungeons will be marginally harder leveling up. They will take similarly long (dps-wise), but tank dps and heals are somewhat lower, so that aspect will at least be nice. Recommendation? Level through dungeons in only gear you find in the world/quests/dungeons. You will be pleasantly surprised at the difficulty.
- raids will slow down significantly for several reasons: 1) there is no longer a jump in gear power immediately at 60 and 2), the overpowered base power on abilities is gone. Bosses do more damage, but it's comparable to your hp increase.
Recommendation? Progressively raid starting with greens and blues, preferably item level of about 50-55. If you combine this with a raid size of about 20 for MC, 25 for BWL, and 30+ for AQ40, you should have a nice experience.
BC:
- outdoor enemies have the same hp and hit noticeably harder.
Recommendation? Same as vanilla. Do some of the leveling objectives and get some flavor gear to round out the experience; don't fill your gear with expensive enchants and gems
- normal mode dungeons have the same numbers as live, except for a damage bump for increased player hp. The main difference is that your power in outland is drastically diminished due to the removal of base power. I can guarantee cowboys will not be able to run forward and solo everything like they used to
Recommendation? Proceed as before. These should be reasonably fun and well paced with a group in leveling gear.
- heroic dungeons have seen some of the most change. Between reduced player power, enemy health increase, AND enemy damage increase (to the tune of 80%), BC heroics will once again be formidable to those who do them in the appropriate gear.
Recommendation?
I actually tested some BC heroics with someone else on beta to gauge difficulty. We attempted to 2 man the dungeon up through the first boss as a tank/healer combo in an ilevel 115 set as well as a full 150+ super-set. In the item level 115 set, we were chased out of the dungeon by the first pull 3 separate times because we just couldn't keep up with the heals from the mobs. We finally killed it the 4th try with a bit of cc and priest deeps. After that? We couldn't get past the pull of imps and warlock. I was spamming heals until oom and the tank (paladin) blew through all of his cd's before he died. We switched to our super sets and we were able to whittle our way through the room full of overseers and cultists, but that required a lot of creative pulls and resulting wipes. So the conclusion here is that BC heroics are somewhat serious business again. If you run it with a full group of 154 people, fully gemmed glass cannons, etc., then obviously you'll likely roll them down, but it will be much closer to what it was like rolling them down back in the day with the same gear.
- Raids are in a similar boat, but not as much as heroics. It seems that the hp nerf from 2.4 might have been reversed, but I'm not 100% sure. Boss/trash damage seems somewhat higher, but not like heroics.
Recommendation? Similar to vanilla raids. If you start with a low item level, or a smaller raid, or strict raiding rules, you should be able to create an exhilarating raiding experience. My napkin math calculations recommend an itemlevel of about 90 for tier 4, 105 for tier 5, 120 for early T6 and 140 for sunwell. So it will all be easy if you run the raids with your decked out twinks, but you can definitely create a fun raiding experience.
Wrath:
- Dungeons are basically untouched. Player power lower than before.
Recommendation? Create the experience you want; I found wrath leveling dungeons somewhat boring, so I wouldn't necessarily make these artificially hard for myself.
- Heroics are slightly different. They have a bit less HP and about 20% more damage.
Recommendation? Probably jump into them with quest gear from Icecrown for the best experience. They will likely be pretty easy still.
- Raids are just weird. Early raids saw a slight HP buff with a sizable damage increase, while ICC saw an hp and damage nerf. So basically 80 raiding is going to be 4 similar difficulty raiding tiers. You might have to get creative in carving out your raiding experience.
Recommendation? I don't even know. You can probably run into 25 naxx with your questing gear and have a pretty epic experience, but I have no clue what item level you'll need for later tiers.
Anyways, I know that was a ton of information, but it's important that the community who it affects knows about it and can take advantage of it before someone complains on the forums and Blizzard applies a knee jerk, blanket nerf.
Discuss/Enjoy!
