So after some ditzing around in the spell database on WoWhead and thinking about the fun of BC raiding, I though about how fun it would be to recreate that raiding experience, but manipulate the current tools we have (similar to what FIFTY does with classic content).
The main issues that make it too easy as of now (even if you wear lesser gear/use less people) are among the following:
High Spell Scaling:
- Damaging spells have spell power coefficients that are on the order of 2.5x what they were back in BC. Spell power is also much higher than it was then (or, easier to get).
Strong base healing:
- Most heals, even naked, heal for more than half of a healer's HP these days. This will require some special modifications.
Much expanded toolset:
- Classes just plain have more tools to use to defeat encounters.
Vengeance for tanks:
- This is a huge difference for tanks and makes tanking too easy at lower levels. Easily remedied, though.
How to pull it off?
The most important thing that people forget when running this old content is the numbers. You need to optimize your raid to match the numbers of the content you're trying to clear. Example: you want to run Karazhan and create a similar experience to running it in heroic blues. DPS pulled about 500-800 dps in that sort of gear and the average raid group had 5-6. If you add that together, with tank dps (back then was about 1/3 to 1/2 that of dps at any given time), your expected dps should be ~3500 to 5000 for the best groups. Since the health of BC raids was nerfed by 30%, you also need to nerf your projected dps by 30% by bringing 30% fewer dps/tanks or limiting your casters to only pulling that sort of dps (the former is probably easier).
The main complication with pulling this off is recreating the toolset that players had. You will need to limit the abilities that players can use.
Healers:
Macros: All healers will need to have /cancelaura macros bound to each ability to make sure all beneficial side buffs that weren't there in BC are canceled with each cast (i.e. infusion of light, surge of light, surging tides, etc.)
Paladin: their tools were Holy Shock, Flash of Light, and Holy LIght. Holy Paladins should then be limited to HS, Holy Light, and flash of light. No divine light, beacon, holy radiance, sacred shield, etc. Since FoL is so much more powerful these days, it essentially becomes the big, expensive heal that holy light was. Holy light becomes the go to cheap heal like FoL was.
Priests: their tools were PWS, prayer of healing, circle of healing, holy nova, flash heal, PoM, greater heal, heal, renew. Today, they can use all of those except greater heal. Like Paladins, they need to have flash heal be their expensive, big heal, while heal is their cheap, go to heal. Also, everyone in the raid needs to macro all of their abilities to have this phrase attached: /cancelaura Grace. Grace gives 30% healing to the disc priest and this definitely did not exist back in BC.
Druids: their tools were lifebloom, regrowth, swiftmend, healing touch, and rejuv. Swiftmend can't be used anymore due to effervescence. Available heals would be LB, nourish as cheap heal, regrowth as expensive heal, rejuv.
Shaman: Same story. Chain heal, healing wave, healing surge, earth shield.
Tank:
All tanks needs to have a /cancelaura vengeance macro as well as one to clear any beneficial healer buffs that they receive that were not there during BC.
Warrior: Warrior tanks are tricky. Their abilities hit very very hard and might skew their dps contribution. When sizing a raid group, this needs to be kept in mind. Same spell limitations will be imposed.
Paladin: Toolset needs to be same as BC: avenger's shield, judgement, crusader strike will be allowed, consecration, ardent defender.
Druid: Tanking should be relatively the same. Swipe, Maul, Mangle, lacerate to tank. /cancelaura for savage defense (or w/e that little bubble is called).
DPS:
Mages: Fire mages get scorch, fireball, fire blast, and pyro as long as it's attached to a /cancelaura hot streak (no pom pyros). Frost mages get frost bolt, ice lance (/cancel fingers of frost), and pet. Arcane mages get Arcane blast and arcane missiles, but the arcane missiles have a /cancelaura arcane charge.
Warriors: Arms gets overpower, MS, slam, heroic strike, cleave, etc. No bladestorm, dragon roar, etc. Fury warriors get bloodthirst, heroic strike, whirlwind.
Paladins: Rets get to use CS, judge, and hotr. No exorcism or Hammer of wrath (HoW crits for like 6k even naked; it hit for like 1k back in the day).
Priests: Spriests get SWP, VT, mindspike, and SW
. Mindspike replaces mind blast because mind blast hits for about 3x what it did back in BC, so it can't be used. No atonement specced dps.
Rogues: Assassination gets mutilate, envenom, wound poison, slice & dice, expose armor. Deadly poison ticks for too much. Combat gets sinister strike, slice & dice, and eviscerate. Subtlety gets backstab, slice & dice, opener ambush (no dancing), and eviscerate.
Shamans: Enhancement gets windfury, primal strike (SS @ 375% weapon damage? lol.), shocks, totems. Must use /cancel Maelstrom Weapon. Way too powerful of an ability, so just get rid of it. Elemental gets lightning bolt, chain lightning, and shocks. No fulmination or lava burst.
Warlocks: Demonology doesn't get any of its demon form related abilities. Shadow bolt, immolate, agony, corruption, felguard auto attack/intercept/cleave only. Destruction gets incinerate, immolate, corruption, shadowburn, perhaps conflag, but it causes incinerate dps to go up significantly. Affliction gets UA, corruption, agony, drain life, shadow bolt.
Druids: Boomkin dps gets moonfire, wrath, starfire. Feral gets mangle, shred, FB, rip. Rake does too much damage.
Hunters: Steady shot, arcane shot, serpent sting, multi shot only for all 3 specs. Beast mastery only gets to use original pets & basic abilities.
Now for the gearing aspect:
Spell casters:
- All spell casters will wear greens from Outland. No gems/enchants past BC. Focus is hit rating. Since spell power scaling is so high, a melee weapon must be used to remove ~20% of dps. Healers can focus on spirit. Outland greens should suffice for tier 4 and 5. Tier 6 might require increasing to ilevel 115 blues.
Tanks:
- Tanks need to focus on hitting the appropriate HP for the content. So greens should get tank to 12k for Kara, 15k for t5, etc. Gems & enchants should be tank based. Like dodge & stam vs strength and crit.
Melee dps:
- Green weapons are to be used. Hit rating again should be the focus. Outland greens should suffice for hitting hit cap.
And finally, I'll put this all together using an example raid member: a fire mage getting ready to do TK. Raid leader decides 800 dps per player was good to kill stuff within the enrage timer back in the day, so either .7*800 = 560 dps should be the goal for all members of the retro raid, or the raid will run with 11 dps instead of 16. Let's say 800 dps will be the target. The mage will have ~400 spell power,18% crit, and 16% hit raid buffed in the set up I described above. This will result in a fireball damage of about 1700, a scorch damage of about 900-1000, a fire blast damage of about 1100, and a (casted) pyroblast damage of about 2.2k.
Expected optimal damage over 1 minute (steady fireballs for 1 min) = (5*3400+.22*1700) = 54400/60 = 900 dps.
So anyways, what do you guys think about a potential project where someone actually creates a retro raiding guild that actually uses its resources to recreate some magical moments from BC?
The main issues that make it too easy as of now (even if you wear lesser gear/use less people) are among the following:
High Spell Scaling:
- Damaging spells have spell power coefficients that are on the order of 2.5x what they were back in BC. Spell power is also much higher than it was then (or, easier to get).
Strong base healing:
- Most heals, even naked, heal for more than half of a healer's HP these days. This will require some special modifications.
Much expanded toolset:
- Classes just plain have more tools to use to defeat encounters.
Vengeance for tanks:
- This is a huge difference for tanks and makes tanking too easy at lower levels. Easily remedied, though.
How to pull it off?
The most important thing that people forget when running this old content is the numbers. You need to optimize your raid to match the numbers of the content you're trying to clear. Example: you want to run Karazhan and create a similar experience to running it in heroic blues. DPS pulled about 500-800 dps in that sort of gear and the average raid group had 5-6. If you add that together, with tank dps (back then was about 1/3 to 1/2 that of dps at any given time), your expected dps should be ~3500 to 5000 for the best groups. Since the health of BC raids was nerfed by 30%, you also need to nerf your projected dps by 30% by bringing 30% fewer dps/tanks or limiting your casters to only pulling that sort of dps (the former is probably easier).
The main complication with pulling this off is recreating the toolset that players had. You will need to limit the abilities that players can use.
Healers:
Macros: All healers will need to have /cancelaura macros bound to each ability to make sure all beneficial side buffs that weren't there in BC are canceled with each cast (i.e. infusion of light, surge of light, surging tides, etc.)
Paladin: their tools were Holy Shock, Flash of Light, and Holy LIght. Holy Paladins should then be limited to HS, Holy Light, and flash of light. No divine light, beacon, holy radiance, sacred shield, etc. Since FoL is so much more powerful these days, it essentially becomes the big, expensive heal that holy light was. Holy light becomes the go to cheap heal like FoL was.
Priests: their tools were PWS, prayer of healing, circle of healing, holy nova, flash heal, PoM, greater heal, heal, renew. Today, they can use all of those except greater heal. Like Paladins, they need to have flash heal be their expensive, big heal, while heal is their cheap, go to heal. Also, everyone in the raid needs to macro all of their abilities to have this phrase attached: /cancelaura Grace. Grace gives 30% healing to the disc priest and this definitely did not exist back in BC.
Druids: their tools were lifebloom, regrowth, swiftmend, healing touch, and rejuv. Swiftmend can't be used anymore due to effervescence. Available heals would be LB, nourish as cheap heal, regrowth as expensive heal, rejuv.
Shaman: Same story. Chain heal, healing wave, healing surge, earth shield.
Tank:
All tanks needs to have a /cancelaura vengeance macro as well as one to clear any beneficial healer buffs that they receive that were not there during BC.
Warrior: Warrior tanks are tricky. Their abilities hit very very hard and might skew their dps contribution. When sizing a raid group, this needs to be kept in mind. Same spell limitations will be imposed.
Paladin: Toolset needs to be same as BC: avenger's shield, judgement, crusader strike will be allowed, consecration, ardent defender.
Druid: Tanking should be relatively the same. Swipe, Maul, Mangle, lacerate to tank. /cancelaura for savage defense (or w/e that little bubble is called).
DPS:
Mages: Fire mages get scorch, fireball, fire blast, and pyro as long as it's attached to a /cancelaura hot streak (no pom pyros). Frost mages get frost bolt, ice lance (/cancel fingers of frost), and pet. Arcane mages get Arcane blast and arcane missiles, but the arcane missiles have a /cancelaura arcane charge.
Warriors: Arms gets overpower, MS, slam, heroic strike, cleave, etc. No bladestorm, dragon roar, etc. Fury warriors get bloodthirst, heroic strike, whirlwind.
Paladins: Rets get to use CS, judge, and hotr. No exorcism or Hammer of wrath (HoW crits for like 6k even naked; it hit for like 1k back in the day).
Priests: Spriests get SWP, VT, mindspike, and SW
. Mindspike replaces mind blast because mind blast hits for about 3x what it did back in BC, so it can't be used. No atonement specced dps.Rogues: Assassination gets mutilate, envenom, wound poison, slice & dice, expose armor. Deadly poison ticks for too much. Combat gets sinister strike, slice & dice, and eviscerate. Subtlety gets backstab, slice & dice, opener ambush (no dancing), and eviscerate.
Shamans: Enhancement gets windfury, primal strike (SS @ 375% weapon damage? lol.), shocks, totems. Must use /cancel Maelstrom Weapon. Way too powerful of an ability, so just get rid of it. Elemental gets lightning bolt, chain lightning, and shocks. No fulmination or lava burst.
Warlocks: Demonology doesn't get any of its demon form related abilities. Shadow bolt, immolate, agony, corruption, felguard auto attack/intercept/cleave only. Destruction gets incinerate, immolate, corruption, shadowburn, perhaps conflag, but it causes incinerate dps to go up significantly. Affliction gets UA, corruption, agony, drain life, shadow bolt.
Druids: Boomkin dps gets moonfire, wrath, starfire. Feral gets mangle, shred, FB, rip. Rake does too much damage.
Hunters: Steady shot, arcane shot, serpent sting, multi shot only for all 3 specs. Beast mastery only gets to use original pets & basic abilities.
Now for the gearing aspect:
Spell casters:
- All spell casters will wear greens from Outland. No gems/enchants past BC. Focus is hit rating. Since spell power scaling is so high, a melee weapon must be used to remove ~20% of dps. Healers can focus on spirit. Outland greens should suffice for tier 4 and 5. Tier 6 might require increasing to ilevel 115 blues.
Tanks:
- Tanks need to focus on hitting the appropriate HP for the content. So greens should get tank to 12k for Kara, 15k for t5, etc. Gems & enchants should be tank based. Like dodge & stam vs strength and crit.
Melee dps:
- Green weapons are to be used. Hit rating again should be the focus. Outland greens should suffice for hitting hit cap.
And finally, I'll put this all together using an example raid member: a fire mage getting ready to do TK. Raid leader decides 800 dps per player was good to kill stuff within the enrage timer back in the day, so either .7*800 = 560 dps should be the goal for all members of the retro raid, or the raid will run with 11 dps instead of 16. Let's say 800 dps will be the target. The mage will have ~400 spell power,18% crit, and 16% hit raid buffed in the set up I described above. This will result in a fireball damage of about 1700, a scorch damage of about 900-1000, a fire blast damage of about 1100, and a (casted) pyroblast damage of about 2.2k.
Expected optimal damage over 1 minute (steady fireballs for 1 min) = (5*3400+.22*1700) = 54400/60 = 900 dps.
So anyways, what do you guys think about a potential project where someone actually creates a retro raiding guild that actually uses its resources to recreate some magical moments from BC?
