Improve the quality of raid releases on CC

[NinesCC]

Introduction

The reason of this post is to create awareness regarding the quality of raid releases. I know a lot of players feel frustrated by the current state of raids and I want to help them understand why they feel that way and what is the problem with the tuning the way CC does it and why some of the custom changes are making fights feel unfair but my main objective with this post is to give documented feedback to the leaders of the project so we can solve this situation.

Just for reference, I am the GM of Limbo. We are a casual raiding guild that has cleared all content with every new release since Molten Core, including Mount Hyjal (before fixes) on a weekly basis. We have been contributing to this server since January 2023 doing PTR testing, opening GitHub issues and we've given detailed testing reports of all TBC end game content, including unreleased features like the Mythic Dungeons.

I want to start this post with a summary of my work for the server, followed by a little bit of history of CC and finally an explanation of the basics of all the topics at hand before dwelling deeper into the problems and solutions.

Limbos Testing & PTR contributions

Here are all of our reports for the past 18 months, where we have provided the most accurate and detailed community based testing on Chromiecraft, with hundreds of hours invested on the PTR and the creation of these reports. I am just adding this section so that people not familiar with the server understand we are actually involved in this project and this is not just a random complaint post with no basis.

• Karazhan (January 2023, 26 github issues opened) https://docs.google.com/document/d/1rgYp1-ZYHrU3HZrk40P-Hd4wwYMxV1mlfXPtImqG26Y/edit

• Karazhan (May, 20 github issues opened) https://docs.google.com/document/d/11osH_AP56jnrHI4bxlO8sb5ZNPHLhNhXQLHgUj_FNt8/edit#heading=h.2jad6ayraj2y

• World Bosses: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1f0fAqBPBbRmy0a8Q73EekIrEeHAt-PBU5IaOcTccUXo/edit#heading=h.2jad6ayraj2y

• Heroic Dungeons https://docs.google.com/document/d/1CkpIDYQixYlnFH8Me-AEyXP9gHikHgigy5i6G6Jai0E/edit#heading=h.2jad6ayraj2y

• Heroic Dungeons, critical bugs on release https://docs.google.com/document/d/1N0hGMx_TZxoW02dZOBLd-G6txIVHrjfD3CZ7oXNlJgI/edit#heading=h.2jad6ayraj2y

• Mythic Dungeon PTR Part 1 https://docs.google.com/document/d/1uKyC6EB8KbCWGOLeiBOFL67CMy7OlfAUPjn6C6_gDYo/edit#heading=h.2jad6ayraj2y

• Mythic Dungeon PTR Part 2 (this was cancelled, we still spend hundreds of hours of man power on this one) https://docs.google.com/document/d/14WwWSt4M3Cik_XbkpOGiPPasvATNjCsABfHOGKkSGfk/edit#heading=h.40a512imq5ij

• Gruul and Magtheridon (our reporting made the fight doable as it was impossible with the coefficient scaling plus the Growth mechanic) https://docs.google.com/document/d/1rGpc4sY7Pgkcoa8DCOxNGLc9voIYZKDtWvR24Osfu7A/edit#heading=h.2jad6ayraj2y

• Heroics were released with untested tuning so we released a CC specific guide to the dungeons to support the community:
  https://docs.google.com/document/d/1CguCmUMBuFhouUn7s4JKALri8NzkF-dQSn_UhUCJOJY

• Our investigation regarding the uselessness of Resistance Gear for Hydross which we shared with you all: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1xQCcLL9Me6tromb2vr02k_85-JJNsks0PFmduftnrxo/edit#gid=0

Tempest Keep PTRs:

• [PTR Raid report - Tempest Keep]: Limbo - NA Team PTR-review#3
• [PTR Raid report - Tempest Keep]: Limbo - EU Team PTR-review#4
• [PTR Raid report - Tempest Keep]: Limbo - EU Team PTR-review#7

Mount Hyjal PTRs:

• [PTR Raid report - Mount Hyjal]: Limbo NA Thursday 23rd PTR-review#14
• [PTR Raid report - Mount Hyjal]: Limbo EU Sunday 26th PTR-review#15

How tuning works in Chromiecraft

The tuning as it's done in Chromiecraft can be divided in two parts which affect different aspects of the game:

• Global modifiers on Healing done and Damage Done by the enemies.
• Added health pools on the enemies.

You can see the tuning for Tempest Keep in the following link, back when the tuning was public. You can still calculate the blanket modifiers by comparing the values to the originals but sadly we can't check it anymore for Mount Hyjal or any future raids as the code as been made private.

Tempest Keep (before nerfs): https://github.com/elthehablo/GeneralACResearch/blob/main/tk_our_tuning.sql

How encounters work:

Every enemy in this game has different abilities, some are meant to do minimal damage, others a lot of damage and anything in between. Each encounter can have different types of enemies with different abilities and they all need to be balanced in order for fights to be fair and feel fun. The way they interact between each other depends on a the type and complexity of the mechanics, the more of them and the more complex they are, the harder they are to balance.

This is no easy task, as the original values for these raids were done by a Blizzard team back in the day with extensive resources for research and testing. Modifying these values unbalances the previous work done by the original creators and while possible, it does require a lot of work to accomplish in a satisfactory way.

The need for balancing in Chromiecraft

This server runs on the Wrath of the Lich King (WotLK) client which means players deal a lot more damage compared to their The Burning Crusade (TBC) client counterparts. The reason is that all talents and spells got reworked into being stronger. The same goes for the healers and tanks as they are more effective at their jobs doing more healing and mitigation, respectively.

This means if encounters are left untouched, the fights end really quick without giving the enemies enough time to cast their abilities thus eliminating any mechanics from the encounter. This is why normal dungeons are so easy, compared to how they are approached in the TBC client.

Since the idea of the project is to detect bugs, it makes sense that content should allow enemies to use their abilities in order to detect if they work or not. This is why some sort of tuning was needed.

The history of tuning in Chromiecraft

We used to have a different system back when UBRS released in which there was no tuning, but a debuff on the damage done by players. This meant players inside raids would do reduced damage, so for example you would do 50% damage instead of 100%, meaning all your gear and itemization calculations would be done and then the damage would be divided by the % of the debuff. This meant that raids didn’t need values to be changed to be challenging and playable since they would be using the original Blizzard values, the only problem being the speed in which enemies were killed which was solved by the damage debuff.

This tuning worked pretty well, which made UBRS was one of the best End Game Brackets in Chromiecraft. At the end, for reasons we won't discuss here (and that I honestly don't know), this system was removed and changed to what we have now for better or worse.

Globally modified raids

Because of the backlash of the previous system, we moved from a method in which raids remained pristine and predictable into one in which everything would be globally modified away from Blizzlike values unbalancing each and every encounter affected by the tuning.

Instead of working around the increased player damage, which was the main problem, we moved to nerfing healing, boosting enemy damage and inflating enemy health pools by a global command. The first iteration of this method was Molten Core back in 2022 and has mostly remained the same ever since.

It's worth mentioning that there was a update to this system made by Eldiablo in which you can not only modify the global values but specific enemy values, making it easier (in theory) to adjust numbers that are breaking the fights and having better encounter balance. Although this has been more theoretical than practical as for this to work properly there needs to someone in charge analyzing every encounter to provide proper numbers to be changed.

The problem with the current method of tuning

These blanket modifiers affect every enemy the same way, but not every enemy or abilities are the same or interact the same way either. The repercussions of the damage increases and healing reductions vary from encounter to encounter and from boss from boss.

For purposes of simplifying all examples, we will assume all global modifiers are as follow:

• 25% Healing Reduction
• 40% Damage Dealt from enemies (even though its been reported its around 36% for MH)
• 2x to 7x times the amount of health on all enemies

Non raid examples of unbalanced encounters (Tuning on Release):

Shadow Volleys from Black Morass (Heroics Release): The increase in overall damage made healers struggle keeping up with the damage, making groups have to min max with more ranged than melee in order to finish the dungeon. At the time most groups were unable to finish BM until the damage from this AoE spell was reduced.

Carnivorous Bite from Shirrak the Dead Watcher:
The first boss in Auchidon Crypts is an excellent example of how this tuning breaks all balance when mechanics are more complicated.

In this case, Inhibit Magic (lets put aside that it doesn't work as intended in CC) makes your casting time increase by 200%, which for a healer means less healing in all casted heals. Consider that once your heal lands it will heal for 25% less health, while the damage from the boss is 40% higher. The increased casting time must also be taken into account as that means less damage from casting classes which means a arbitrary health increase on the boss difficulty making groups rely again on composition.

Warchief Kargath Bladefist in Shattered Halls where the Blade Dance would just delete players because of the increased damage, again making it reliant on composition.

Raid examples of unbalanced encounters & mechanics (Tuning on Release):

• Most fights in AQ40 but specifically the trash after Twins
• [Karazhan] Aran, Nightbane and Netherspite increased AoE damage creating lots of problems for Pick Up Groups (PUGs)
• [SSC] trash before Leotheras the Blind just deleting DPS before the healers could react.
• [SSC] Fathom-Lord Karathress: Cataclysmic Bolt dealing more damage than 50% total health.
• [SSC] Leotheras the Blind: Whirlwind's bleed and Chaos Blast dealing more damage than originally intended
• [SSC] Lady Vashj Poison Bolt damage from Tainted Elementals dealing huge amounts of damage
• [SSC] Lady Vashj Toxic Spit from Toxic Sporebats killing people the same way Archimonde's fire is bugged right now
• [TK] all the trash that does AoE damage leading to instant deaths on the melee
• [TK] High Astromancer Solarian Arcane Missiles and Wrath of the Astromancer once shotting players
• [TK] Kaelthas: Telonicus bombs one shotting any non tanks

The main problem as you can see is that while Tanks do mitigate more damage and healers do heal more just from being in the WotlK client, the rest of the raid doesn’t mitigate more, so the combination of increased 40% AoE damage in the raids plus the healers healing 25% less due to healing reduction means that in fights where there is a lot of AoE damage, the healers will have to carry the raids.

We have reported this issue for almost a year now about the blanket tuning breaking a lot of mechanics back in June 4 2023, where in our conclusions we stated this very same issue: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1CkpIDYQixYlnFH8Me-AEyXP9gHikHgigy5i6G6Jai0E/edit#heading=h.2jad6ayraj2y

You can also read on the same conclusions on Limbo's last Mount Hyjal PTR report here chromiecraft/PTR-review#15

Added health pools on the enemies

The health pools are the least of the problems but they are still a problem. Health on the enemies only mean how long they live, which will impact if they live long enough to do their rotation of spells/mechanics. If they die before they can do their rotations then it feels boring, if they live for too long, they also become boring. We will refer this as TTK or Time To Kill.

The reason people feel better about TTK on trash in Tempest Keep right now (after the first wave of nerfs) is because while enemies still have time to do their mechanics, some of them can be eliminated before a 2nd rotation, making the encounters less frustrating. Still not perfect but an example of how simple changes can make a good or bad experience.

So a perfect balance on TTK is to have enemies live long enough so they can do their rotations. How many rotations will depend individually in each encounter as a trash pack can't be measured the same as another trash pack with different enemies or a boss fight.

Specific problems with Mount Hyjal and how to fix them

It’s evident now that the more we go into the last TBC raids, the more problematic this tuning is becoming since bosses have more complex mechanics. I will proceed to point out specifics and how to solve the problems specifically with Mount Hyjal and later I will comment on suggestions on how to move forward.

Rage Winterchill

• Death and Decay is being scaled meaning that instead of getting 15% Total Health Damage Per Second (THDPS) we are getting 20.25% THDPS, meaning that instead of having 6.6 seconds to get out of the zone from the center, the player has only around 5. This increases the difficulty of the fight with reaction times by 32% https://youtu.be/GRNZglE70RM. Source: https://warcraft.wiki.gg/wiki/Rage_Winterchill_(tactics)
  (Copy pasted from our PTR report back in May 23rd [PTR Raid report - Mount Hyjal]: Limbo NA Thursday 23rd PTR-review#14)

This is a good example of how the flat % increase modifies reactions times and while this ability or boss isn't really a problem at the moment, the problem itself should be acknowledged as encounters that are meant to have lower reactions times could cause players with higher pings to run into unfair problems. Not everyone in CC plays with 50ms and it really makes a difference when you only get 0.5 seconds to react and you are playing with 250ms.

Anetheron

• Towering Infernals: These will kill most players marked within 2 seconds, as they hit for around 3.8k+ with Immolation while immediately meleeing with 5k+ hits giving the effected player 2 seconds to be healed/tanked off and anyone nearby around 4 seconds. (From our PTR report back in May 23rd [PTR Raid report - Mount Hyjal]: Limbo NA Thursday 23rd PTR-review#14)

To put this more into perspective lets compare this encounter with original values(OG) against tuned values (CC):
Towering infernals:

• OG Values: 220K Health / CC Values: 465k
• Immolation damage output: OG: 2500dmg every 2 seconds / CC: from 3.5k to 5k damage every 2 seconds.
• White physical damage is probably increased as well, but it does around 3k to 4k damage on a bis tank (CC).
  

In this case the reaction times are reduced for the tanks and the healers as the damage increase is not reflected in increased health by a DPS player, meaning they have less time to accomplish the same mechanic before the person targeted by Inferno dies. This is against the original design of the encounter.

Solution: The damage from immolation aura should be reverted to original Blizzlike numbers. The only thing being accomplished here is requiring more work again from the healers which get reduced reaction times on top of increased healing reduction.

• Carrion Swarm: The Carrion Swarm is a 75% healing reduction debuff that also stacks with the 25% healing debuff for a 83% total healing reduction. Again, this just makes life harder on the healers or requiring extra healers.

In the case of the damage:
OG Values: 4250-5750, CC Values: ≈ 5k to 6.5K.

Since the code is private now, we can't know the exact numbers without extensive testing, but I can say here that thoughts were put in the tuning of this particular spell as it doesn't have the flat 40% increase as it would be hitting for around 8K damage to every raider hit by it. This approach should be used on many other spells as well.

Solution: Probably not possible but the debuff should probably just be a flat 75% as intended instead of the cumulative healing reduction added from the global 25% healing debuff. Damage values should be closer to Blizzlike values though, as currently this puts more stress on the healers as it is, specially combined with the current state of the infernals.

Kaz’galor:

Abilities in this fight are not a big problem with the % buff. This is how fights in Chromiecraft would be with no tuning and just increased TTK. The reason this fight is simple is because the spells it casts deal no damage, so the tuning doesn’t affect the fight besides the modified boss health. In fact this fight is so easy it could be balanced around the boss having more health and playing more with Mana Regeneration problems of casters to increase it's difficulty to somewhat challenging.

Azgalor

• Rain of Fire: The increased 40% damage means less reaction time, again for the healers for the same mechanic, which also increases the Damage Over Time (DoT) part of it. This is not balanced around the Howl of Azgalor which is a 5 second silence meaning the healers still need to carry the raid but without being able to heal by huge amounts of time.
• Lesser Doomguards: Instead of 63K health, they have around 463K making the usual strategy of killing them not viable, since you are in a race against time because of the Doom and the Rain of Fire problems mentioned above. This again is not balanced around a 5 second silence, limiting the amount of damage casters can output to kill them ASAP.

This fight is broken and needs the following adjustments:

• Lesser Doomguards need to be reduced from 7.35x times the health to just 2x times to keep consistency with everything else as they currently have 433k hp instead of the Blizzlike 63khp.
• Either you have to reduce the Silence by the same amount 40%, so instead of being a base 5 second silence it should be a 3 second Silence or just remove all the tuning from Rain of Fire to original values.

This fight is a clear example of how this boss is nowhere close to how the fight should be and it's more close to a custom Mythic encounter as you have to create new tactics to overcome the new problems. The tactic on this boss has always been clearing the adds but them having 7 times the base health makes it a huge loss of DPS considering how much people die due to the Silence not being balanced around the health of the players and the damage done by Rain of Fire.

Archimonde

The main problem with this boss is that was released in a very unfinished state. The mechanics are not working correctly as I write this and makes the fight much more complicated than it should because on top of the regular RNG mechanics of the fight, you have the RNG of all bugs.

• Critical Problem: Boss killing a BIS tank in 1.2 to 1.8 seconds of white damage swings, depending on how many times this happens in a single fight, it’s a wipe. This makes having a Paladin Tank a necessity as it's the only one who can survive that RNG with Ardent Defender Also take note that there is no place to report these type of errors and it's this single problem that motivated me into writing this post.
• Fire spawns anywhere, then follows someone else then someone else, also not spawning from the boss as it should, so if you get bad RNG and this is spawning always in the feet of people it’s a wipe. (Fixed)
• Fire can spawn in your feet and instantly kill you while providing no record on the combat log, basically you get deleted. (Fixed)
• Same spells being used at the same time, for example after Air Burst while people are in the air you can also get feared and you will die to the inability to use your tear. The same happens with the fear mechanic and then fire spawning on someone being feared at the same time. Every time this happens someone dies. Get this RNG on enough healers or decursers and it’s a wipe. [TBC Hyjal Summit] - Fear Breaks Air Bursts #6972
• One broken mechanic that was in our favor: when someone dies due to fall damage or fire, the boss doesn’t get his soul charges which made the fight still possible on release. This was fixed while not fixing the problems that kill people mentioned above, which shows that the people in charge do not play on the content. This should have been delayed until everything else was fixed.
• Another broken mechanic that should not be fixed until everything else is: [TBC Hyjal Summit] - Doomfire ticks Deals No Damage #6970
• Critical bugs don't any attention or priority [Hyjal] Archimonde Doomfire doesn't work as intended #7137

Solutions:

• Revert this fix until everything else is: [Hyjal] Archimonde doesn't gain a soul charge when the kill is not linked to him #7107 as this buffs the boss leading to a wipe every time anyone encounters one of the bugs mentioned before.
• Remove the tuning until the fight is on better shape as for now it's a RNG nightmare that can only be overridden with perfect raid composition or favorable RNG with perfect execution, which as stated before you have said is not how fights in CC are intended to be.
• Fix the white damage on the boss, this has been stated multiple times before release on the PTR reports like this one for example: [PTR Raid report - Mount Hyjal]: Solaris 25th of May PTR-review#12 but the feedback from testers keeps getting ignored.

Conclusions

The current system of tuning has been kind of working so far, but it definitely needs more attention post release, as it seems everything that is stated on the PTR Reports just gets put under the rug as soon as the patch is out, as proven by multiple problems reported from Tempest Keep which still persist. It's been a month since Hyjal release and it's still as frustrating as week 1 and if nothing is said it would remain like this until it gets nerfed and forgotten when Black Temple releases.

Maybe it's time to reconsider what is the purpose of these brackets because you are failing at giving a good raiding experience while also failing at fixing the problems with each release. It has become a trend now for a couple of patches where the big guilds just skip the last bosses for weeks because they are so broken they don't want to bother with it, which creates a loop in which nothing gets reported or fixed. This is not something new, as to this day Karazhan is at a worst state than in release: https://github.com/chromiecraft/chromiecraft/issues?q=is%3Aissue+karazhan+is%3Aopen; issues reported for Tempest Keep back when tested in the PTR are still active like Telonicus still one shotting melee or #6714; while Mount Hyjal is at a terrible state and we are already moving into Black Temple.

Right now you are giving us Mythic encounters without any Mythic rewards as these can all be considered custom content because they do not align to how the fights should actually work. All reaction times being modified to be shorter and health pools not aligning with the original idea of the raids developed by Blizzard which makes raids reliant on perfect execution and composition. This is a contradiction to this announcement https://www.chromiecraft.com/en/dev-diary-6/ where you state: Knowledge of the raid will be required and decent geared characters. Full-BiS, perfect comps and every consumable in the game however won’t be needed to clear these.

There also needs to be a way to report problems regarding tuning as there is no place for these type of problems. For example, this very same post was created because when I asked in Discord where to submit issues with the tuning, I was redirected to this part of the github.

When people express their disapproval with this release on official channels, they are met with comments from staff members that just ignore the issues (There's plenty of evidence of problems being ignored in the Mount Hyjal channel in the official discord https://discord.com/channels/788063059926712341/1245416476089778256).

I understand that the CC staff fights with a lack of resources, but if there is need for help then positions should be opened as this is supposed to be an open source project, plenty of people would be interested in helping get better raid tuning including myself. This server needs someone that actually plays the content actively to understand all the problems that are currently happening.

Final Comments and recommendations for future raids

• WotlK doesn't give you more health at level 70 besides Commanding Shout which is only 1080hp, this is not equal to 40% more health, but maybe 10% on most classes, so start with a more sensible number.
• Tune spells one by one. Abilities that are meant to only damage the tank should be buffed to reflect the increased mitigation done by them (which seems to be on a good spot right now), but not abilities that damage the whole raid as those should remain either Blizzlike or just around 10% increased damage.
• When you have a good start up point, tune anything up that you want to be more challenging but only specific mechanics instead of doing everything globally.
• Health pools right now on trash on Tempest Keep seem to be on a good spot as enemies still have a chance to use their abilities but they don't live long enough to feel like a drag, this should be taken as a template for Black Temple. Remember that this is Wrath after all and people just want to AoE everything, if not people will keep using invisibility potions and exploits (which they don't report) to skip the trash defeating the purpose of tuning for testing purposes.
• If a fight like Kael'thas or Archimonde is not working on release and the problems have already been reported (exactly the case in both TK and MH), either disable the specific fights or remove their tuning until its fixed.

It is my hope that this post is not taken as an attack to the CC staff, but as a plea to give attention to this situation that if not addressed will lead to more long term damage to the raiding community.

TL;DR:

Don't release the raids and forget about all the issues around them once they are out. Also improve the communication with the raiding player base. Open new positions if help is needed as this is supposed to be an open source project. Buff spells on a one by one basis instead of a huge global number.

[Krateozshael]

Shael here

I am raid leading on this server for over 2 1/2 years now for a raiding team, which always stood on the top 5 of the raids on this server and this post speaks out of my heart. I agree on 99% what dearest Nines is talking about here. I tried to voice my concerns and thoughts multiple times on discord and here on GitHub #6854 and #6498 but was always not acknowledged by or got a response from the CC Staff. As i know they are reading through all of them but the communication about their decisions with the community are for a lot of cases just not there. You always get to hear "go onto the PTR and give us tuning advice on tuning before raid release, if you don't do that the tuning wont be changed after the raid release (for the most cases)". IMO this is a terrible approach. Alot of guilds either don't have the manpower, nor find the time to do those testings additionally to their general raiding time. There is no real compensation when the raids sacrifice their raiding day for a PTR testrun, CC points are okay, but don't appeal to the majority of people since they give only cosmetic benefits on a private server. The server always said that their goal is to fix all the bugs and that the main draw is to have valid raid testing, this is only done if more than 2 guilds do those testing and give influence on the tuning (which is part of this whole system). You should reconsider the approach of touching the tuning even when the raid released. You should focus on the next raid first, if the current raid is fun and enjoyable to play, which includes being bug fixed and having a good tuning-experience.

Another topic from a organization stand point of the raiding teams and their leaders is the following: Over the past months (especially since SSC/TK) raids on the server always have trouble to keep their players and have a consistent raiding team. Raiders get demotivated facing overtuned, severely bugged raids and not seeing any progression made on both aspects, therefore loosing interest and inevitably quitting the server, meaning the GMs/Raidleads being on a 24/7 recruiting state.

Those are all aftereffects and a elaboration on Nines TLDR. as he said DONT FORGET ABOUT RAIDS AND ITS TUNING AFTER RELEASE WHEN MORE GUILDS ARE ABLE TO CLEAR THE RAID

Refering to some of Nines takes:

Lesser Doomguards: Instead of 63K health, they have around 463K making the usual strategy of killing them not viable

As i know, this is currently the strat on Azgalor. Tho i fully agree that a 7* modifier is just stupidly much for this mechanic, causing raids that have slightly less ranges having a nightmare experience on this fight.

Either you have to reduce the Silence by the same amount 40%, so instead of being a base 5 second silence it should be a 3 second Silence or just remove all the tuning from Rain of Fire to original values.

This is somewhat already in game. Problem is that you need a Holy Paladin. With talents you can make that silence being only 3.5 seconds long + aura mastery being a big thing. We are always running 2 HPallies on the fight (Rets switching to healing as well) to play around with that.
But its no excuse, since this is again just a way to fight against the over tuning and contradicting against CC own way of approach to raiding, that raids shouldn't require a min-maxed comp.

I know i talked about some stuff that is not directly linked to the quality of the raids itself, but is a side effect or an aftermath of the tuning decisions. As Nines i dont intend to attack any of the Staff-Members and especially ElDiablo, since this man tries his best.

• Shael <3

[the-Deleuzian]

[Krateozshael]

also have a raid release timeline that keeps people on this server playing

As from the overall vibe of the server, people are more eager to play on mostly polished raids than smashing their head against completely bugged and over tuned bosses. E.g. this Hyjal release we are quite lucky that we didn't had to face Archimonde on the first 2 weeks when this boss was killable, but a complete RNG-fight. I rather wait 2-3 more weeks for a raid release than smashing my head against bugs.

aswell as some luck

COMPLETE disagree. A fight should NEVER be determined by RNG. Tank getting hit by a 1 second 25k one-hit-combo, no-go. People dying from Airburst+Fear resulting in wipe, no-go (happend to us yesterday on one attempt). There is no reward for skill-expression on RNG deaths in a raid (e.g. rage winterchill is bugged to this date, throwing out too many icebolts and oneshotting targets for 11k+ dmg). Its never good to determine difficulty based on rng. Difficulty is made by mechanics and you cant change that on a blizzlike-server what CC tries to be.

Nines and me don't want to shit on CC staff, we know they are trying their best. We are giving incentives and reasoning to make the experience and quality of raids better.

TBC is beaten due to the knowledge we have from playing the game for 20 years. As TBC-classic showed, almost every boss is a one shot, there is no real progression. CC states they want to be blizzlike which means the difficulty should be blizzlike. Difficulty in 2006 was caused by people not knowing the fights/being worse overall as players and having wrong itemization. We have this knowledge now and are better gamers, so there is no reason to make TBC raids harder than they are supposed to be.
Some challenge to compensate the WOTLK buffs are fine, thatswhy good tuning is necessary. But unfair tuning resulting in RNG deaths isnt good at all.
A sentence i often say and believe in: If you want to have true progression and true challenging fights: Retail WoW is the way to go, not CC. This servers purpose is to fix bugs and giving everyone a fair shot on contributing to that cause, softlocking people through making content unnaturally harder is against that servers mentallity.

[Zelfie]

We used to have a different system back when UBRS released in which there was no tuning, but a debuff on the damage done by players. This meant players inside raids would do reduced damage, so for example you would do 50% damage instead of 100%, meaning all your gear and itemization calculations would be done and then the damage would be divided by the % of the debuff. This meant that raids didn’t need any change in the scripting to be challenging and playable since they would be using the original Blizzard values, the only problem being the speed in which enemies were killed which was solved by the damage debuff.
This tuning worked pretty well, which made UBRS was one of the best End Game Brackets in Chromiecraft.

Can we have this again, please?

If you really want to keep your wacky tuning, put it on a "Mythic" mode so Solaris can brag, and the rest of the server can try to have some fun playing normally.
The Archimonde fight is fun, but watching the BIS geared tank die instantly to a parry haste wombo-combo and a wipe ensuing due to dodgy tuning attributes to TBC fatigue and more players quitting.

Big respect to Nines for the detailed, informative, respectful post, as always.

[Peti321]

Give this man a spot in CC Staff!

( Well written Nines. Thank you for your contribution! I hope it gets heard! <3 )

[Tereneckla]

I agree on most parts and the the recommendations for the future are good.

However, instead of increasing the damage done at all, reducing the healing even more is a better strategy as that will not lead to oneshot scenarios.
Alternatively, if "nerfing" players is not fun, a global npc damage and player hp increase by the same amount would achieve the same effect.

Things I don't agree with/have wrong conclusions:

The history of tuning in Chromiecraft

Reducing player damage achieves the same as increasing npc hp (and also makes tanking easier because of flat threat values, but that is besides the point)
Only reducing player damage does not address the healers healing more because of wotlk so I don't understand how ubrs was the best tuning wise.

I also don't understand what you mean by "change of scripting" with the current system. CC devs don't change the scripts at all for tuning. Only damage, healing, HP is changed.

Anetheron - Carrion Swarm

Making that ability not stack with the tuning healing decrease would mean it is not blizzlike.
Moving from 25% to 75% healing reduction only is an effective 66% healing reduction, which makes it easier to "just clump up and have all healers get hit by it" (exaggeration)

[NinesCC]

I also don't understand what you mean by "change of scripting" with the current system. CC devs don't change the scripts at all for tuning. Only damage, healing, HP is changed.

This is badly worded on my part, I wrote this in a period of two weeks and a lot of mistakes I missed on the editing. Also English is not my native language, so my apologies. I didn't meant to imply that there is change on the scripting right now with the current method, I just wanted to reference that it was a clever and simple approach. I will modify the post to reflect that.

Making that ability not stack with the tuning healing decrease would mean it is not blizzlike.
Moving from 25% to 75% healing reduction only is an effective 66% healing reduction, which makes it easier to "just clump up and have all healers get hit by it" (exaggeration)

I think that again I am not explaining myself correctly. What I meant is that the 75% healing reduction from Carrion Swarm stacks with the 25% healing reduction of the tuning and it's unnecessary. Honestly this isn't a huge deal, but I just wanted to point it out as a problem with the current approach as mechanics like these should also be considered when tuning. Does that make sense?

[Tereneckla]

I understood you correctly with Carrion Swarm. My point is that not letting it stack with the tuning would effectively nerf the spell

[NinesCC]

Maybe I am not understanding. If they stack, the healing reduction of carrion swarm is around 81% total instead of the original 75% Blizzlike value? So it would be considered a nerf for having Blizzlike value? Or are you referring to the times you are healing without the debuff? because that is actually a good point I didn't consider. If thats the case, it can easily be worked around the damage done instead.

[Tereneckla]

I am talking about the healing done compared to the baseline value people have in raid.

25% to 75% is a 66% reduction.
25% to 81% is a 75% reduction.

[andovcr]

hi Tereneckla - could you explain this to me like I'm five?

Carrion Swarm: The Carrion Swarm is a 75% healing reduction debuff that also stacks with the 25% healing debuff for a 83% total healing reduction. Again, this just makes life harder on the healers or requiring extra healers.

I am talking about the healing done compared to the baseline value people have in raid.

25% to 75% is a 66% reduction.
25% to 81% is a 75% reduction.

are you saying by having them stack, it's just a consistent experience? Normal, non-tuned heals are reduced by 75% and also tuned heals (already reduced by 25%) are also reduced by a further 75%? Or something else?

[Superbolide1]

i just read nines thesis(y, i haven't before, too many english words make my brain go hana banana).<:derp:1000603811758485535>
wdym UBRS had the best tuning<:whutda:1232398644775485491> , sowy nines<:sadcat:1000604550320894003> , u are factually wrong<:wesmart:1000605721123098674> , i have no proves<:catok:1000604511242567710> , neither doubts<:chunky_pepe:1206046113380048916>
Big numbers , make dopamine go 📈 , small numbers , small peepee complex <:whutda:1232398644775485491>

[ishidinho]

I remember how happy I was when I read the following the fist time.

Raids will now come with two modes from TBC onwards. ‘Normal’ will be with their original values, whilst ‘Heroic’ raids will offer a tuned challenge for those up for it with enhanced drop chances (gear remains the same).
(source: https://www.chromiecraft.com/en/outlands-14th-december/)

Best solution we can get, in my opinion.

[Sn1krDudle]

I personally would love a normal and Heroic option for at least TBC raids. I believe having easier and harder options would allow more players access to content. I'm a pretty casual raider and most people in my guild are the same. Spending hours bashing our heads against tuning and bugs honestly hasn't been fun. These are people that don't have the time to be BiS gearing multiple toons for the right raid comp and don't actually have the desire to at all.

A 'normal' mode would give casual raiders a chance to try the content and have fun doing it without feeling like they have to dedicate hours of figuring gear/strats out on top of IRL stuff. I know my guild has a lot of people who are not only new to CC but are new to WoW and don't have 20 years of experience. It has sucked watching them hit the wall of tuning and since they don't know their classes in and out, they give up and have been leaving the server. Having the option for 'normal', blizzlike numbers would allow casual guilds more opportunities to give new raids a bash, which in turn means more people testing the content. Its not newbie friendly at all at the moment

It makes me sad seeing this happening as I think CC has a great community that is friendly but most of these kind of casual players don't stick around when the content is beyond their skills or requires a huge time investment for them. Or they have to wait months until it gets nerfed enough for them to try the content

[naritafu]

We have tuning because we're playing in a WotLK Client. We need tuning for the content to be challenging and enjoyable.

Removing healing tuning will make the game incredibly boring and paladin tanks may actually have mana problems.

I agree magic spell damage that targets raid members beyond tanks should not be modified (or modified more gradually at least), non tanks do not have dramatically more health than they did in TBC to meet higher spell tuning and this creates one shots.

Physical damage largely directed at tanks should be increased to meet with the increased defensiveness of WotLK Talents and Spells.

The major cause for guilds wiping are bugs. NPC spell crit bugs, pathing bugs, MC bugs, timer bugs, ect ect. I think the good folks in this thread are well intentioned but the suggestion to make massive changes to tuning is off the mark.

It feel like the comment about Karazhan is being used here to imply no raids should require thoughtful comps, use of consumes, or properly itemized gear sets. This comment is specifically and only about Karazhan, an opener raid to TBC. IMO raids should become more challenging as the expansion goes on, and IIRC the devs have stated this intention as well.

Specifically regarding Archimonde, the hardest boss we've had to date, the raid needs to make a series of mistakes for the tank the be KO'd. Are all defensive measure being taking, debuff measures, are melee attacking in front and parry hasting the boss, ect. Raids should be challenging and the highest level content should require you to open the deep toolbag the game offers to find solutions.

TLDR - Healing and Physical Tuning should not be changed, Spell Tuning should be changed more carefully. Bugs cause wipes, not tuning.

[Krateozshael]

As i agree with the point of tuning some Things accordingly to WOTLK talents, often times those tuning numbers are exceeding heavily the damage numbers we do know.
For Reference:

https://de.classic.warcraftlogs.com/reports/6GAVD8BCTwRgF7xJ#fight=9&type=damage-done
This is a Rage Winterchill log of my collegue from TBC Classic. When taking a look at it, the raid dps is about 32k with the boss having 3.9 million hp.

https://legacyplayers.chromiecraft.com/viewer/3132/base?history_state=2
This is the same boss from a CC log with raid dps being 47k but the boss having 9.6 million hp

Dps wise we are doing quite exactly 50% more damage, while the boss having 140%!!!! more hp.
Doesnt add up, right?

Thats the main complain of those smaller Guilds and "less skilled" players (dont want to attack anyone here). The tuning is beyond being 'blizzlike adjusted', causing people having artificially a harder time in the raid. Yes they are beatable but not by guilds that are not standing on the server for mutliple years or dont have optimized comps.

[Zelfie]

"Dps wise we are doing quite exactly 50% more damage, while the boss having 240%!!!! more hp."
ooooooof.
240% more hp does not equal 240% more fun.

[NinesCC]

The major cause for guilds wiping are bugs. NPC spell crit bugs, pathing bugs, MC bugs, timer bugs, ect ect. I think the good folks in this thread are well intentioned but the suggestion to make massive changes to tuning is off the mark.

I never suggested massive changes, all my suggestions are very specific. If by massive you call adjusting the global values then yeah, but that's a single line of code as far as I know.

It feel like the comment about Karazhan is being used here to imply no raids should require thoughtful comps, use of consumes, or properly itemized gear sets. This comment is specifically and only about Karazhan, an opener raid to TBC. IMO raids should become more challenging as the expansion goes on, and IIRC the devs have stated this intention as well.

I am not implying anything, the post is very direct on the issues.

[ishidinho]

We need tuning for the content to be challenging and enjoyable.

1. Enjoyment is a personal feeling. I personally enjoy a relaxing low challenge.
2. To provide a challenge was never a goal for CC. CC wants a blizzlike, authentic WotLK experience. If blizzlike, raiding with WotLK talents below level 80 implies a low challenge.

[bigdeekpumper]

I agree 100%.
And i'd like to add that kiting Azgalor to the night elf camp shouldn't be the main strategy to kill that boss, and if it currently is there's something really wrong about the tuning.

[IskrenPlashkov]

Hello everyone!

This is Avrora the guild leader of Solaris. Last night we had a conversation with our officers and some core raiders on this topic.

We share most of the sentiments expressed in this discussion. Particularly regarding spell dmg. None tank character hp has barely increased if at all since TBC and spell dmg should take this into consideration. Spells should be excluded from the overall dmg increase new raids get. Imho they should remain unchanged or maybe receive 10-15% increase at most. Anything more will cause issues like Azgalor RoF, Icebolts and others. Moreover spells should absolutely not be able to crit. Icebolt hurt plenty before this, and https://www.wowhead.com/tbc/spell=42783/wrath-of-the-astromancer can crit to this day. We can all agree thats bs and nobody enjoys getting 1-shot through defensive cd with no counterplay.

The topic of AA dmg and health pool increase is a bit more nuanced. There are good and bad instances for how current tuning works. Right now most I'd say most are good, with some veeeeerrrryyy notable exceptions:

Bad hp increase

Simply making things take longer to kill without any existential threat to the raid is very poor game design. TK sentinels , hawks are some of the most recent and egregious examples of how blanked hp increase leads to very very unpleasant raid experience. Literally nobody enjoyed smacking these peniatas for prolonged periods of time and their hp nerf could not have come soon enough.

Good hp increase

On the opposite side of the coin are the instances where increasing the hp of an NPC can make the fight more challenging as the mechanics need to be executed for longer (up to a realistic point of course). Recent example for this is actually Rage Winterchill. There is a lot to be said about his spell dmg increase however tripling his hp actually creates a soft enrage for the fight. IF people start dying from icebolts this puts the fight on a timer and raiders have actual incentive of doing good dmg AND survive the Icebolt and D&D. At the end of the day even the most broken and bugged mechanics can be circumvented if the boss dies fast enough :)

Bad AA increase

Far and beyond the worst offender in this category is Archimonde. He used to melt tanks back in the day too but even full BiS tanks right now struggle with him (it used to be much worse in his first version on PTR). Dont get me wrong, Final tier raid bosses should be difficult but it is clear why people, especially on the more casual side of raiding, are unhappy with him right now. With the risk of repeating myself from the last 2 raid reports we did his AA might need an additional 10-15% nerf. This will still put the tank AND his healers on notice the whole fight, but given how long and especially RNG dependant it is should be the right call. Otherwise a lot of people will feel simply shafted by tuning and frankly bad luck.

Good AA increase

As stated by Nines and others in this thread tanks are much more durable than they were in TBC. To compensate for that and not make healers die of boredom boss and NPC AA needs to be buffed accordingly. Imho most of the other bosses and trash do adequate physical dmg so dont see much need for changes there.

Effects of bugs

There is an important aspect of raids that I think a lot of people here are missing. As a veteran from the trenches of progression raiding and PTR tests it is clear bugs, even minor ones, can cause the tuning to seem unreasonable or damn right impossible. I am excluding major bugs from this statement. Those simply make the fight impossible or force you to take unconventional routes to cheese it somehow.

So when we are talking about potentially nerfing an encounter we must only view it in its bug free state, else the data we have will simply be polluted and therefor the decision taken likely to be inaccurate.

General thoughts on tuning

History has shown that we will never fully agree on the best tuning for any given raid. Luckily we dont have to reinvent the wheel as Blizzard already implemented a solution - Heroic raids.

Chromie already had implementation for mythic raids so putting this to practice shouldnt take that long at all. Let the more casual portion of the server decide on the difficulty for normal raids and keep current tuning for the more hardcore and challenge oriented people. Keep something important in mind however - you have to make it worth while for people to play the higher difficulty. Nines hit the nail on the head - right now we are playing mythic mode without any of the mythic rewards. No sane person will keep taking the long road if the destination is the same as taking the short cut. More dropped items, mythic points, extra slots in items, etc. Whatever is picked - as long as there is something it works.

I know that the new mode isnt for everyone and that is ok. But before some people say heroic mode will be only for Solaris, I urge you to log on PTR and check BT. I bet in 2 weeks tops people will get bored of untuned content and will want to try the hard version :).

Alternative path forward

I know that implementing above suggestion comes with the major drawback of adding extra work on devs' plate which will delay BT and future content releases. If we do decide to keep the existing approach in trying to find the golden middle ground that satisfies everyone it is paramount that more guilds participate and raid testing. After each Hyjal test we provided feedback from casual raider point of view as well, but at the end of the day this was entirely subjective. Other guilds are likely to see things differently and prefer even easier tuning which is why this conversation should happen before the raid is released.

NO NUKES FROM ORBIT !!!

This is where we disagree with Nines, particularly with his proposed solutions for Anetheron, Azgalor and Archimonde. Adds are already easily kiteable and nerfing their hp to such an absurd degree will make them as mechanic barely noticeable - dots alone will sometimes take care of them.

https://www.wowhead.com/tbc/spell=31340/rain-of-fire and https://www.wowhead.com/tbc/spell=31344/howl-of-azgalor is bullshit combo but as long as RoF dmg is lower than average player hp, nobody should realistically be dying from this. And this is coming from somebody who absolutely despises that fight, just ask my guild.

Last but not least requesting #7107 to be reverted is frankly ridiculous. Not only does this go directly against the core purpose of the server, but makes no logical sense either. By that logic, let us remove all mechanics to make fights easier...

Before I go I gotta call Nines out on his final statement too. While communication with playerbase leaves things to be desired it is evidently false that devs simply released the raid and forgot about it entirely. Archimonde alone has been receiving changes on a weekly basis. No raid group has killed any Archi iteration more than once.

I'd be cautious of opening more lines of communication with the playerbase - its much better to properly utilize the ones we have already. Put the guild representatives to good use and make sure we got proper reporting of coming changes (at least list the important ones) and when they will be hitting live server.

I know this has been a wall of text so thanks to everyone who actually went through the whole thing. Let me summarise the post for everyone else:

1. Spells should be tuned very carefully. Either no tuning at all very small buffs - 10/15%. Definitely no spell crits!
2. AA / HP can receive blanked tuning, but exceptions should be made for specific encounters if needed.
3. Refrain from nerfing tuning until a fight is bug free and we can properly asses it.
4. PROPOSITION: Implement heroic raids to better suit the preferences of the playerbase. If so make sure to give good rewards for completing the harder version!
5. There is big need for more guilds testing raids on PTR!
6. Dont nerf hyjal to such an extent that mechanics become meaningless and bosses become pushovers. Even casual people will very quickly become bored of such content.
7. If we want meaningful change we cant accuse server staff of things they are clearly not doing or requesting them to revert bug fixes.

[Riddian]

Nothing in that description of the server implies that raids will be tuned close to retail Heroic difficulty.
I strongly believe people who claim this difficulty is blizzlike for tbc raids need to take off their rose-tinted goggles and realize outside of a few bosses and Sunwell the main difficulty of TBC raids where artificial because of the general playerbase lack of raid experience and overall player skill.
Sure the steep progression hike can be fun and all when you have all the pieces but on a server where the primary purpose is fixing the core having X amount of shamans and a tank with a shield block value set or other creative strategies for a reliable Archimonde kill will turn many people away from the server. We have already seen plenty of guilds that either disbanded or have stopped raiding as their own guild and are instead raiding are other guilds or the very successful Teatime raid.
And not only does this tuning demand a lot it also makes it hard to replace players, tanks in particular.
A decent player can still do enough damage to clear Hyjal in a mix of heroic/tier 4 gear, for healers its mainly a question that non-geared healers run out of mana too fast, but I dread for groups that have to bring in an undergeared tank.
Riddiana, Navigator of Horizon

[NinesCC]

It is not my opinion that adds cant be slowed, rooted, frozen, feared and stunned. Thats just a fact. The values you presented as original have already been debunked so I'm not going to repeat what was already said.

You are 100% wrong, that is exactly how my guild does that fight right now, we kill zero of the adds and just CC them and burn the boss, just like Striders in Vashj can be CC'able in this server. Also get serious, throwing terms like "debunking" makes it hard to take you seriously. If you want to contribute, present the evidence, that's how the project works.

Here I agree with you. Silence is very oppressive. However assuming people have enough hp to survive the first RoF(which they should if they are raiding hyjal) they will only die if healers dont top them up before next RoF cast AND it hits same player AND said player has no personal def cd up. Now I'm not saying people still dont die to RoF because they most certainly do, but to claim the fight is comp reliant is a bit of a stretch.

Show me a video of you killing it with no paladins. My guild has btw and I have video proof (that I can upload if needed) and it's a quite different fight without them. You like presenting your opinion as facts, which is not how it works.

You are correct on this one but again, there is nuance. The specific problems you mentioned in the original post were concerning hyjal bosses so I assumed the context in question was Hyjal only. That being said the overtuned bomb dmg can easily be avoided by melees moving out when the cast starts or simply staying out. This is what most guilds do as they gotta kill Sanguinar in the meantime anyway. It is because of this I believe nerfing bombs wasnt exactly top of the dev's to-do list.

The bombs are not supposed to one shot people, they are supposed to stun and deal some damage. Again you are advocating for custom content. My point in all this is that things with tuning get forgotten and you have proved my point.

After all being said please dont view me as some no-nerf fanatic. In fact im all aboard 10/15% hp nerf to azgalor and his adds. It is just I am a firm believer any changes need to be carefully though through and most importantly not too drastic, otherwise we would quickly find ourselves asking for changes in the other direction.

The server says Testing when you log in, so if they need to test they should but doing that, instead of no changes for 3 months is not nice when the values are inflated and problematic and making people quit the server.

[IskrenPlashkov]

@Riddian I advice you to read through the entire thread again because nobody claimed current tuning is blizzlike. In fact the call for nerfs in the original post was motivated from the desire to return the raids to their blizzlike values or close to it.

I am not one to speak on server staff's behalf so even if they claimed the server is blizzlike their actions sure do prove otherwise. We didnt have wrath talents in vanilla and tbc so the "server is blizzlike" ship sailed on day 1 of release. In addition all PVE content so far has been released with various degrees of tuning, as their original values would simply provide no challenge and would quickly become stale, forcing people to play elsewhere. Which is why me and others have argued against nerfing raids simply on the bases of not being blizzlike. Surely a balance can be reached if staff went overboard with tuning but moving the pendulum straight to the other direction is not the solution.

[IskrenPlashkov]

@NinesCC I guess my stupid can't typo baited you into proving my original poins, which was

Nerfing their hp when they are already easy to deal with would make the entire mechanic obsolete.

Show me a video of you killing it with no paladins. My guild has btw and I have video proof (that I can upload if needed) and it's a quite different fight without them. You like presenting your opinion as facts, which is not how it works.

Sure bro, let me get on that right away, trying to prove an argument that you are already agreeing with...

[shaszun]

Regarding Azgalor without paladin with improved Conc aura. We did it last week, because the paladin that used it had to tank the adds. We also killed the doomguards till the boss was 30%. I would say it was one of our best attempts so far. Ofc this fight is a bit of RNG with doom and it can spiral down the shit hole very fast.

[amed80]

Just want to fix a misinformation at the top

Lesser Doomguards: Instead of 63K health

their original HP is 144-145k and i don't believe it ever had less HP than that.

They feel overwhelming i believe is not because of their HP but instead of the HP increase in the boss which imo like most other bosses are over tuned because people wanted more "challenging" raid , i still disagree with this behavior on tuning as i believe should mimic the TBCC experience instead of focusing more on making it challenging but i guess i am in the minority with that.

I still don't know why there is that big of increase on boss/mobs AA and abilities when there is already nerf on the healing in general.

Tuning shouldn't end up making the fights much longer than it's suppose to be.

[NinesCC]

Lesser Doomguards: Instead of 63K health

their original HP is 144-145k and i don't believe it ever had less HP than that.

My source was wowhead btw, but even if that is true still unnecessary for them to have 463k. Thanks for the correction.

[amed80]

Yeah , just saw that on wowhead and still couldn't figure out which version did Doomguard had that health 😅
For their current health , i feel it's not too much as you are suppose to kill only the first 2 and the rest will be tanked by the OT , this is not possible here as the OT will be overwhelmed because of how long the fight it takes and there will be more Doomguards than usual which lead to people trying all kind of CCs to stop them.

This is a problem because i don't know why if the adds have x3 HP why does Azgalor have x4 ? why even each new raid boss gets extra x0.5-x1 than the previous raid in the first place ? Azgalor should have had his health at x3 and that should be the most HP increase for every future raid boss.

Players don't gain that big of a boost with each release and what ever increase in gear they have , the base stats of the new bosses already made to counter that (they have more base health and damage in than previous raid) so adding more and more tunning to raid , it will make it just frustrated to deal with.

[clovaek]

For what it's worth, we (the lions den) thought TBC at 70 started off well with heroics and mythic raids giving a decent challenge.
We lost a decent chunk of raiders during Karazhan, which gave us no new endgame challenge and either bored or made them doubt if they'd want to continue investing time in the server.

SSC was a pretty good release, but ultimately caused us to lose even more people due to it being fairly easy. We called it quits pretty shortly after this.

Many of us also felt that content was rushed to release far too quickly. Bugs and incorrect mechanics being ignored for releases reduced the experience drastically.

[Apathyxia]

I will add to this to stress that the hasty releases of broken content brought us in TLD to the point we did not want to continue. As much as it's nice to have new content, it's even less nice to face content that was not ready for release.

Another big reason is the schedule of raid and content releases. There is absolutely no reason to release a raid under Christmas, for example. This just creates a feeling of FOMO as many have plans during holidays. We in the guild, in any case, would have preferred to have working raids with all mobs including trash having proper immunities and mechanics, as well as tuning, even if that would have meant a little longer wait for the release.

We would have wanted more transparency of the state of the development so we could have not been in the dark and think "Raid X releases on day Y, it's going to be a good experience". I know there were some checklists somewhere on GitHub what was still worked on for a certain raid, but then seeing all of the boxes weren't even ticked on the release just left it lacklustre.

Further, the decision to basically silence one of the most knowledgeable and the biggest bug reporters for the server due to disagreements how certain things should work, made me personally feel like the future releases are going to be even worse.

[Anwyyn]

Adding to the point of getting Mythic raids again, I'll just echo what Nines said.
Personally haven't met yet a single person who is against our current Mythic raid system implemented for Gruul and Mag. (Yes, maybe there is someone, but at least I can say the majority is not against it).
What makes the current system work imo:

• Optional. The group is able to decide if they want to do a harder mode if they want to, or not. No one is essentially obligated to do it.
• Gives a substantial reward. Mythic points is imo the best reward available from any other that could have been imagined. The possibility to run some content for a fair number of weeks till you can get that "hard to get" piece of gear you are looking for is really comforting for people who have being unlucky with drops and rolls. Plus, think it has been proven by the constant Mythic Gruuls pugs we are having around every week, that is non content killer, but instead will make content be more alive.

Now, in my head (maybe I am wrong ofc) it shouldn't be hard to implement. As Nines proposed a couple of months back, and what all what has been said before this post; We have already tasted mythic quality tunning, back with SCC, TK and now with Hyjal. So why don't we get those tunning values back, and call that mythic and give points for it, while others can run the detunned version we already have for SCC and TK, and maybe a reduced version for Hyjal.
I love challenges and I do really want to do the hardest content available, but sadly composition and gear from a guild can be a limitation for my desires, or even the same Guildies who are just willing to have a chill time clearing content without having to do their 150% best version of themselves.

[Anwyyn]

Adding to this, I can understand the point of how easier content can make some mechanics simply don't occur, which breaks the concept of testing. But here is my counter point, first you are still having people testing the harder version so reports shouldn't stop, and secondly I can think about Nightbane in Karazhan, the fact that the boss has HP reduced, opened the possibility to find new buggs like what happened if the dps is too high that the boss will enter into landing mode while still flying around.

[krutoj87]

I agree with this. I joined CC shortly before SSC was released and I really liked the optional hardmodes of Gruul and Mag. Especially since they worked as a bad luck protection. If you never saw DST drop, you could buy it with mythic points if you accumulated enough. Especially for heavily contested items this was a great feature.
Unfortunately the decision to not continue doing mythic modes in upcoming raids was already made at that point and I personally didn't like it and didn't really understand what the reason behind this was. Because basically everyone I talked to about the mythic mode seemed to be in favour of it. And as it's optional you can just do the normal raids if you don't want to do the hard content.

I think the optional mythic mode with mythic points you can turn in for gear pieces was a good design decision and I hope it will be brought back.

[Krateozshael]

Only thing that i can imagine is hard to do is switching perhaps between mythic and normal. For Gruul and Maggi it was easy cause the raids are only 1 and 2 boss raids. But BT with having 9 Bosses it become tremendously harder to justify saying "i want to raid whole raid in mythic and not being sure to kill certain bosses vs we do everything the easy way". It has to be toggle off- and on-able to switch between both difficulties while being in the same ID. i dont know if you are able to implement that.

[Cooties-cc]

Damn, I'm always late to the good stuff, man. I probably have nothing of real value to add to this gigachad length thread, but will probably point out some stuff that might be on micro value. I'll try and glaze over stuff quickly if can be, but might be a little scatterbrained.

• At a glance observation : All of this probably should have been addressed earlier in the content cycle. At least, to this degree of a breakdown, since I don't think Hyjal was the start of [most] the issues, just the tipping point. Most likely just hindsight, but there are only 2 major raids left (BT + SWP) and the discount baby raid ZA. It seems to me to be a bit of a late pitch to request many changes to the way tuning is done (modes, approach, etc) when there is little left to be used on. Come Wotlk release, all content is back to client based designs, which means tuning is no longer used. I'm just not so sure the juice is worth the squeeze.

That being said, there still seems to be a reasonable desire between the hard and easy raid challenge camps. This doesn't seem to have much middle ground between what's desired, which defaults to the previous designs of Mythics. Now the staff to my knowledge has made it rather clear: mythics are fully dead and buried, never to be resurrected (even if you have a pet cemetery). I'm still not fully sure as to why, if there was something beyond my understanding that they don't want to waste the time coding/changing a raid to that + normal version. Leads to speculation beyond that, which I won't really touch. The redesigned version of them, if they do return, was more than likely enough to satisfy both camps for what amount of content remains.

• Personal small scatterbrained opinions on mythic/normal/etc versions of the raid. I do think mythics with the point system is about all that should be given for the increased difficulty. There is no need to add extra crap to the NPC vendor outside points to spend on gear. No extra things like a new title/mount/etc. Strictly keep it raid earned to raid bought items, and no swapping points between raids (t4 for t4, t5 for t5, etc). I would however say, that if mythics did come back into the fold, only they should give the raid achievement to players. Normal mode would be the baseline "easy" version and still have all the same loot dropped, but no achievement for killing the last boss. Only until the next raid was released, would normal modes give the achievement. This gives slightly more rewards to the HC players without really giving them anything (cause achievements are sorta worthless anywise outside to gloat over others who don't have them lol). Think of it like a AotC from retail or something.
  This is also to say, BRACE YOURSELVES, that there should also be a LFR version added alongside the 2 other modes. In this mode bosses only dropped 1 raid item (no tier) + badges, you got no achievement, glaives from Illidan would be removed from the loot pool (same as bow from swp, and maybe bear runs in ZA), it shares a lockout with normal/mythic, and players received zero tuning while content was actually NERFED by something like 20%. It would fully satisfy the ultra casual crowd without stepping over the more serious players one bit. Of course, there are always the limitations of the client/game to make things possible, but it's a suggestion I've given a couple times as a 3rd option.

I did see that Shael brought up tbcc wclogs and compared that to our LP logs with content tunes. Surprisingly, this was one of the ways I suggested back I think in TK about how raids could approach initial tuning. It was something really simple as a starting point that didn't overwhelming need guild PTR testing to implement. If the WCLogs data could be condensed into boss only damage (generally ignoring adds in the fight), you could then get a rough estimate of where boss HP should stand (on most bosses). Taking Shael's links as an example, the tbcc raid posted (assume it's avg of many raid logs) had done 3.69m hp over 111 seconds, which came to about 32,982.9 dps. If a 1m51s kill time window is the desired result for our server, we simply just insert our avg LP raid dps to find a more correct starting HP pool for the boss. This means if the LP log of 47,655 raid dps is avg, the boss would need ~5,289,705 hp to get a avg kill time of 1m51s. Currently, the boss has 9,674,593 hp, and kill times range into ~3.5+- minute mark kill windows. It's pretty far off the mark for a "normal" boss kill experience. Of course this doesn't account for -healing or +boss-dmg ranges, or unique things like Kael's fight overall.

Lastly, I hope, is that the main takeaway from all of this boils down to : Does the boss mechanically work correctly? That's all that should really be achieved with raids in PTR testing or doing it on live. It does not matter if the boss "feels really easy" or is "an unkillable pos". If the boss works to it's fullest extent script wise, the goal is reached. Anything beyond that is personal opinion on the matter of "entertainment". This, to me, seems to be often lost in translation when dealing with raids/raiders. A perfect example that has already been brought up was the Soul Charge fix with Archimonde. Since the boss was not mechanically working with soul charges, the tuning was overdone to compensate for the broken nature of the fight. Once fixed, the fight became very noticeably harder since the tunes were not reduced for the mechanic working correctly. This lead to frustration over the boss and viewed negatively that they could no longer kill the boss (not everyone), however, a core mechanic was corrected which was the whole point of the boss fight (server goal wise). This may seem like it was a tuning issue, but really the tunes were a scapgoat for the core issue of the script not working.
Going ahead with raids, it might be better to invest a little more time into dynamic re-tunes to bosses that get scripts corrected on them. I'm not sure if that's happening or not already, but if a fix is done, often it means [most] fights get harder due to overturned compensation of broken scripts. To what degree is the uncertainty part, but if high boss clear percentiles by guilds were done one week, and a fix was done the next week, leading to a fraction of guilds doing the same boss clears, there's probably a tune issue due to fixed scripts.

[NinesCC]

Hey Cooties :)

• All of this probably should have been addressed earlier in the content cycle.

I reported this 372 days ago. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1CkpIDYQixYlnFH8Me-AEyXP9gHikHgigy5i6G6Jai0E/edit#heading=h.2jad6ayraj2y

Also I want to make clear that my guild is not a "casual" guild by CC standards, we skipped week 1 on Archimonde because we already knew its state and it frustrates a lot of players going into live testing. Our guild has been clearing Mount Hyjal ever since every week, so my observations are not coming from a guild that can't handle the content.

The main point here is that some spells are over scaling and making fights unbalanced between damage, reaction times and player HP pools, like Archimonde two-shotting a BiS tank on a Parry Haste because the damage done is higher than the HP achievable. The expertise values to remove Parry Haste from a tank at the moment are unachievable so this is a clear example of a fight being unfair due to oversights on the tuning.

[Anwyyn]

Another example of post where this topic was dicussed earlier: #6498

[Anwyyn]

It is interesting to see how does that post aged. Some people who were against all this, stick on that idea, others have changed their minds, and basically all the problems we see now are just the reflex of what we could see back on SCC (time that post appeared). So now we are just facing a critical point where all these got into a point where an important decisions has to be made for good or for bad.

[Cooties-cc]

Hope this is quicker than orig post, but gonna follow up on some stuff cause I somehow enjoy this stuff.

Also I want to make clear that my guild is not a "casual" guild by CC standards

I was assuming this was for Shaels comment, as nothing I said afaik said you guys suck aren't hardcore or higher level. I only went between camps I see post overall from subjects these tend to draw in.

I reported this 372 days ago.

I actually don't know where that doc is linked into, so that could be a problem? If it was posted on Discord in some channel, that's never going to get seen. If it was in the Bug-report section, that's also long gone. I did also check the PTR tuning reports, but I think that was only "recently" created too, as well as not even being part of the main hub (highest traffic) people come here to post on. Problem I was pointing out when said "probably should have been addressed earlier" was I didn't see a super early post in Discussions that was a massive overhaul raid tuning suggestion, with as much insight that was given in the start of this thread. This is why I said it might be hindsight, since perhaps we needed this much content to happen to give you a thesis to put it all into perspective. It's not an attack of something like "well, you didn't speak up, so it's all your fault". I see all the posts you make, but it also draws me into the next part I wanted to touch up on too.

Another example of post where this topic was discussed earlier; By Anwyyn

I actually was super curious about how many tuning/feedback threads in discussions there have been for raids, and to what degree has the staff been engaged with them. I found a little interesting info around it.
Starting with the earliest I could find, the first 3 raids we had (MC, Ony, BWL) were actually started by Staff (I think this is older Honey account?). In which just by starting them, it shows more transparency about getting feedback on the raids. They also interacted up to ZG/aq20 , but seems between aq40 and world bosses for TBC, they [any staff] didn't really do much interaction in Discussions posts. Could be an issue of no players were making direct ones more clearly, or perhaps most was posted in discord or such. That is to say, until Mythics happened...

#5925 This one really seems to me to be the segment in raids themselves that broke the camels back. The comments from the team appear sour over the reactions, which at the time were mostly negative ofc. I also think (really not sure) Diablo at the time here, was just a helper, not staff. The thread overall was more suggestive alternatives, rather than on topic feedback of the system. Could have been viewed as a shit flinging debate. From that thread, the next time a staff commented was here, in which they were asked to make a ticket about an issue, and here , where it was to be taken into consideration (reasonable response). Since then, tuning wise or raid difficulty wise, everything has been requested to be pushed into the PTR review section (not very viewed by the "general public"), or make a bug ticket about the issue. Not a public forum post to talk in depth over problems.

In ending, I think staff should perhaps go back to being the 1st ones to initiate a raid tuning/feedback post in Discussions. Similar to how they create a channel in the discord for when a new raid starts, they should also include a new Discussion for the raid, and link it as the 1st post (and pin) in the channel as well. This could help direct a core response issues over many things in the raid (not just bugs) away from discord, and into the discussions thread. This would also help cut down duplicate posts about the same raid problems into 1 central discussion. Of course, bug reports can still be made, and be directed to the correct section, since discussions aren't really the format for bugs. Even if staff do not follow up with comments being posted over time, the fact they started the thread gives the public some form of staff interaction about raids.

[NinesCC]

It's all good Cooties! I just wanted to clarify some things, because while I know you know, some people who read this might not.

I actually don't know where that doc is linked into

I used to give these reports in the Guild Representative Channel as well as the Testing channel, as there was no place to put them like now, of course because of the nature of Discord, posts just get buried. The people on the CC-Engineering discord were also aware of these reports since I started doing them back in January 2023.