Naxxramas caling: Community Poll

[Qixel]

There's a lot of people not raiding Naxx with opinions on how the people raiding Naxx should do so, but my personal view is that it's hard to know if it's justified long term while the bosses have as many increased difficulty modifiers as they currently do.

At the moment, I would say 35-40 is absolutely fair. Once all the mechanics are working properly, that assessment may change.

-Engie

[Dragunovi]

Even though they're not, its their future too. They should have a say in it too.

[Sebastian]

What if result of this poll ends up to be *no scaling at all* with 50 votes, but other two options that favor scaling each with 26 votes, will you enable scaling in that scenario or not?


As much as Im aware there is only one raid group venturing into Naxx at this point and that group is struggling with raider appearance, forcing that group to raid naxx with 40 players can have negative effect on other raid groups if their members decide to go up raid tier and join other 'stronger' group.
~Bringing server together~ might end up splitting them up.
Some time ago, there was pretty much only one raid group that did '40 man' content, and second one starting at the time struggled for months to get enough players to start clearing MC. Imagine if they had to get closer to 40 players online for a raid, while other group still remained with 40+ of their own players. Having scaling enabled at that time made it easier for those players to form a new group and raid together.

This is a small server with grown-up playerbase with limited 'online time', scaling is not punishing groups that wants to raid with 40 players, and I dont think anyone is specifically going to a certain raid with less than 40 players because it might be easier to clear or there is less competition for loot that way. On the other hand not having scaling will punish a raid group that struggles to keep their raider attendance and if they dont, it will punish those players who have to sit out that raid night because raid leaders had to secure full group and invited more players that it was needed.

[Sebastian]

Even though they're not, its their future too. They should have a say in it too.

its not, 100% of players are allowed to vote, not 100% of players will get to level 60

[Sebastian]

.

[Mina]

Even though they're not, its their future too. They should have a say in it too.

By the time another raid touches aq40, I bet they wont have a problem filling it up to 40, and not even talking about naxx

[Dragunovi]

Even though they're not, its their future too. They should have a say in it too.

By the time another raid touches aq40, I bet they wont have a problem filling it up to 40, and not even talking about naxx

We don't know what'll happen by then, nothing is certain.

[Merikkinon]

No scaling, I'd rather Naxx be something the server comes together to defeat rather than a farm for 25 or so people in each guild that can make it

I am not even close to 60 on any toon, but the principle here is what I stand behind. Naxx needs to be the big one, unaltered.

[Davebert]

I vote no scaling, but only if all scaling is removed from all raids. Why is Naxxramas special just because it came out last? Everyone should have to struggle through the raids, with or without a full group.

- daave

[Davebert]

Level 60, Rogue. I truly believe that the raid should be made without scaling because of the simple fact that the raid will be done with 40 people.. There are guilds here that don't look out for the newbies that are just now reaching 60 its taking them weeks-months to even see their first MC based off this simple fact. I do believe that the raid will have to be tweaked a little bit but at the same time TABC will be the first guild in and out based on their gearscore they easily out gear the beginning stages of the raid. That being said they also aren't very welcoming to new players looking to join the raid scene which kinda blows for people that are fully geared MC not allowing them into BWL and things like that even if there is a slot open they don't want to invite them because of 2 reasons and I'm pretty sure the NUMBER 1 reason is because of the scaling that's already implemented. NUMBER 2 because they don't want to waste their time on someone who may or may not have knowledge on the fight and most likely don't feel like reciting what that person is to do each and every raid. So in short no scaling will allow more players into those raids as well as help the newbies get their foot in the door.

TABC has a public MC, Tuesday at 19 ST. If you can join discord, you can join us. :)

[Xerron]

I vote no scaling, but only if all scaling is removed from all raids. Why is Naxxramas special just because it came out last? Everyone should have to struggle through the raids, with or without a full group.

- daave

this.

[Paladin276]

I vote no scaling, but only if all scaling is removed from all raids. Why is Naxxramas special just because it came out last? Everyone should have to struggle through the raids, with or without a full group.

- daave

Sure. If thats the consensus. even scaled MC or BWL aren't any easier or harder, especially with the gear a lot of the raid teams already have. Not to mention the MC raids I've seen have had either full 40 man teams or something close to it. BWL is seeing similar numbers.

[Braisusenpai]

LvL 60, Druid. No scaling, not just for Naxx, for all future content. Making it easier decreases the challenge and the satisfaction of finally clearing a raid. With the challenge comes the fun.

[Suwuxiv]

I vote no scaling, but only if all scaling is removed from all raids. Why is Naxxramas special just because it came out last? Everyone should have to struggle through the raids, with or without a full group.

- daave

Yeah I agree with this. If people really want a challenge let's make it a challenge across the board. If there's to be no scaling in Naxx, let's make there be none for all other raids, too.

The whole point of scaling being added to begin with was, and quoting here:

We have been thinking about this because we need to be aware that even if we have the best community, we are not that big, and letting our level 60 players do PvE content without needing to set up the raid meeting MONTHS before the actual date is the best we can do to make everyone happy.

Which is literally what the current Naxx raiding group (TABC) wants to use it for. It's not to make the raid easier, it's more to make raiding doable in the event we have absences. Turtle WoW is still a low population server and now with three raiding groups the player pool of available raiders that are capable of doing Naxx is slim.

[Suwuxiv]

.

[Neltharion]

Naxxramas is supposed to be the end of the line of vanilla WoW, make it challenging, as of it would require a real army of veteran heroes in order to achieve it. No scaling.

[Qixel]

I'm in favor of removing scaling if we don't cherry pick it. If Naxx shouldn't have scaling, neither should AQ20/40, BWL, Onyxia, ZG, MC, WSG, AB, or AV.

Scaling was added to combat our low server population. We're either big enough now or we're not. Let's not pick and choose when to apply our ideals. Turtle is a community server, so since everyone can vote on it, everyone should be affected by the outcome.

[Totalmxo]

Ranthos - level 60 mage


I think 30-40 scaling is a good idea like others have stated. One player made the hypothetical of 70 naxx players and 30 cant raid isn’t exactly ethical and makes gearing not really worthwhile if you have no raid to go to with it. If the difficulty level is still there regardless of player count then why does it matter at the end of the day? Maybe have the first clear be no scaling then after the first full clear implement a scaling system to it. That way purist can clear it how they want to and then the scaling people can get it after the first clear. After the first clear if purist don’t like it then just don’t start the raid with any less than 40 people lol.

[Spacestr]

Spacefreeze - 60 mage

I actually prefer that we let the raid scaling stay as is (20-40 for 40man). Naxx is a numbers game, let it scale. People will need to perform better with how scaling works in Naxx. 20 would be unable to progress, but that's the point of Naxx. You still need as many players as you can get in order to defeat it. Even with scaling, it gets more difficult with fewer people.. so why not?

[Axoc]

Vierna/Tobon here.

Support for scaling. Voted for 30-40 but any scaling is good and ideally we would "keep" the 20-40 system. The only reasons I've heard for no scaling are the difficulty being "reduced" and concerns about gear inflation. I'm not part of the Naxx team on this server but have raided Naxx on multiple pservers before.

Gear inflation is a non-issue on a PvE server.

Difficulty being reduced is EXTREMELY valid *from a certain point of view*. If difficulty is "getting 40 people to all watch the videos about the fight & do what they need to do when they need to do it", then yes scaling reduces difficulty. Scaling however increases personal responsibility, which increases difficulty in its own sense. These are just two different design philosophies (retail Mythic raiding for example has a heavy emphasis on personal responsibility, whereas true vanilla raiding had a huge emphasis on "get 40 people to do the same thing").
Anyone who was around when Morrgoth was trying to start the Schmettersling raid group can remember how miserable it was trying to get enough people to down *Luci in MC*, one of the easiest raid boss fights in the entire game, much less get enough people to stick around through 3 raid tiers of progression for Naxx.

Yes, times have changed and the server pop has increased since then, but the issues seen at MC back then will be the issues seen in the future at AQ40/Naxx except worse, because every raid team in vanilla has major attrition issues. This can be seen just looking from now to when Schmettersling began - how many of the raiders from back then have stuck around, across all raid teams? Things are picking up because of the xpac, hardcore, etc but attrition is an issue that we haven't seen the full effects of yet as both of those releases are fairly recent.

IMO, it's too early to cut out scaling, BUT I would like scaling removed *eventually*. A good method would be that just like raids were rolled out over time, there should be scaling removed over time, eventually resulting in a raid scene without any scaling at all.
Failing that, scaling should be removed from all raids at the same time, not just Naxx.

[Velite]

It seems that many people are reading this poll and mixing up "convenience/accessibility" with "difficulty". There are several important things to understand when it comes to the relative difficulty of a raid on turtle wow:

***
Important to note is the distinction of original difficulty: I say "original difficulty" regarding a 40 man group doing a 40 man raid. A 35 man group doing a raid scaled down to 35 preserves this original difficulty at least, if not making it more difficult than attempted at the full size. Of course, bringing only 35 people to a 40 man raid will mean it is more difficult than 35 people to a 35 man scaled raid, but the solution to that problem is to bring more players; As turtle wow has a player shortage, that is why scaling was created, and I will try to convey that scaling attempts to solve this problem when you can't bring more players. I know some people will say that the original difficulty of Naxx is that it forces you to bring 40 people, and that remains the case on Turtle, as you will want to fill that 40 people to finish the raid. Scaling does not eliminate this area of improvement, but attempts to preserve the original difficulty of having a capped raid size.

***


1) A scaled raid requires the same amount of healers and tanks as a full raid. You cannot do any fight with less tanks as a 40 man vs a 20 man MC/BWL. And, considering that spell damage remains the same regardless of scaling, a fight like patchwerk will still require 4 tanks and 12 healers regardless of difficulty. What lower scaling means is that you are taking more dps, but the HP of the mobs has also scaled down. However, because the tank/healer ratio remains the same, the dps requirements to beat fights INCREASE as a result of downsizing the raid, as the HP of bosses decreases per each less player, but the ratio of DPS to Healers and Tanks does not increase (it in fact decreases, giving your raid less total dps on average). Considering as well there are many mechanics in vanilla that "pick a random player", these mechanics are much more difficult in a smaller scaled raid. Each person counts for more, as is noted in the difference between Vanilla 40 man raiding and TBC 25 man raiding; for each player that dies in a smaller raid, the fight becomes more difficult. So in short, a smaller raid size does not necessarily make the raid less difficult, and with the way scaling currently works, the Meta will remain to have a 40 man raid.


2) Cross faction Exists. When most people are discussing the "original difficulty of Naxx" they are forgetting paladins and shamans are raiding with eachother. Cross faction and raid scaling were implemented for the same reasons: Turtle wow is a low population server split between two factions, so mixing them and not requiring the full 40 for people to progress raiding was a smart decision. Unlike stated in point 1., Cross faction DOES make the raids EASIER. So long as 1 paladin and 1 shaman exist in a raid, the raid composition can already be stronger than in a standard meta Horde/Alliance raiding comp. Now of course we can't ask for diplomacy to be removed, as it's an integral part of Turtle Wow and most of the community agrees it should stay, both because it has improved many specs, but it's also allowed horde players to raid easier considering the alliance majority of the server. Regardless, many of the arguments presented against scaling can be said for cross-faction, and nobody wants that removed, when that has more of an effect on the "original difficulty" of Naxx than scaling does. In short, if you wanted to preserve the original difficulty of Naxxramas, it would be more effective to remove diplomacy than to remove scaling.

3) Accessibility vs Difficulty. I've stated before that a downscaled raid does not necessarily make the content easier, in most cases the content becomes more difficult for that size of raid to complete it, than the full scaled version vs a 40 man group. What a scaled raid means however is that, since the difficulty is more or less a constant trending harder, the minimum required amount of players to complete the raid is brought down, which allows players to start raiding without having to fill the full 40 roster. This is important on a low population server like Turtle, as it allows more groups to progress the raiding content when there is a shortage of raiders, instead of waiting for more people or giving up entirely. And with the fights in Naxx being so tightly tuned, you don't want to stop at 30-35, you want to continue recruiting for more people up to 40: especially for fights like 4 Horsemen/Patchwerk/Kel'thuzad, the latter being a fight where many people will die regardless of how good your comp is, so having the full 40 is required for success. Scaling exists to make raids accessible, and this is true of Naxxramas as well. I wanted people to understand that much of the points they have said address the accessibility of raid groups attempting Naxxramas, not the difficulty of the content itself; One can argue the point that the raid being more accessible will make the content easier as more people will get loot, but I haven't heard that argument yet. Most people are just saying Naxx will be flat out easier without explaining why, so I wanted to make this clear.

With that out of the way, I wanted to convey my opinion of what scaling should be for Naxxramas. I believe the scaling should start at 35 people. I also believe this should be a retroactive change to all raids, as while Turtle remains a small server, it has at least grown to encompass several 40 man groups, to the point where it is no longer necessary that a 40 man should scale down to 20. I believe 35 is a good middle ground, as it does not compromise the original difficulty as much, but accounts for a handful of people being late/absent as not a hindrance to progress; as such, it is more of a convenience than an easy mode (take that for what you will). In time, I believe the scaling can be adjusted given feedback. At the end of the day, whether the raid scales down to 20-30-35-40, the content was designed to be started by 40 BWL geared raiders and completed by 40 Naxx geared raiders. The optimal group and almost required for completion remains as such.


Laughadin - 60 Paladin

[Qixel]

I know you've not raided here and do not understand the community as a result, but we've been raiding Molten Core since scaling allowed it, back in July of 2019. The progression team as a whole moved on to Blackwing Lair and AQ40 eventually, but there are still members of the progression team that help newbies and alts to gear in Molten Core to this day, like Astrld who runs an open invite raid every tuesday. There are other groups of players who raid Molten Core regularly, and this extends to other raids as well.

But none of this would have been possible if scaling was unavailable to "the newest raid". Molten Core would not have happened in July 2019, and indeed we may still not have had a single raid. It's asinine to suggest that scaling is fine on old content but not current content when it's always been fine before. To reiterate, scaling was added because the server did not have the population to support full sized raids reliably. This is either still the case or it is not. If scaling should be removed from one aspect of the game because the server is large enough now, it should be removed from all aspects of the game.

[Casualnerdity]

No scaling.
If the raid doesn't scale, there is more incentive to try to get more people into a raid, instead of having 4-5 different groups going in with "just enough" like I've seen happen in MC and BWL. Those people will have to be geared as well, which would help stimulate dungeon runs, which have been lacking for later timezones in recent months.

Additionally, how would the dev team dynamically change the mechanics of fights that require X number of roles? I was under the impression the scaling was for hp and damage done, with no change to the timings or scripting of debuffs and abilities.

I have a raiding 60 and two non-raiding 60s.

[Velite]

You still want full 40 in raid regardless. In every raid it is always the most optimal to have a full raid. Nobody is running under capacity out of choice, you run with what you can get that day.

Scaling does not change any raid mechanics, only mob HP and the auto attack of mobs.

[Darkhens2]

As others have mentioned, I've voted for no scaling to recreate the difficulty of naxx. What I'd like to further point out is that the no scaling should be applied to all raids so that new and/or existing raid groups stay together, gear up together and continue playing together.

Henry

[Gheor]

My take is also no scaling, but I will also toss in another opinion.
If new players is our concern then just one raid should be scaling and that would be Molten Core.
Remove everything else, MC is the starting raid for everyone and the one thing I have to come back to even after more than an year.

There's enough progression to get ready for 40 Man BWL and forward in MC, ZG, AQ20.

Remove scaling from MC above.

-Kratos

[Hazlema]

I understand the want for no scaling but from a practical standpoint it would be a challenge to get 40 people to raid. Server pop is not huge, sometimes it's difficult to get 30 people.

[Axoc]

I was under the impression the scaling was for hp and damage done, with no change to the timings or scripting of debuffs and abilities.

This is how it currently works, yes. Raid has to bring the same number of tanks/heals as normal and DPS have to carry more weight individually.

[Saetahn]

This isnt a matter of difficulty really , I feel like its more about server pop. I'm still a leveling player as an example and I would still like to be able to take a shot at Naxrammas with other casual guilds etc, if there's just 1-2 guilds on the entire server big enough to even run the raid then its just kind of sad you know? You can still have a difficult raid , but just have less players needed in order to actually attempt it.

[Felbrood]

Well in my opinion naxx should be scaled only when new raid hit server, since it last tier for now, here enought people to do it.

[Paladin276]

A thought,

A few people have tier 3 now, at least the first set bonus. The druid tier 3 in particular will be a net increase in DPS due to the fact that regrowth now grants rage to the warrior s that it's thrown on. It might not make a huge difference, or seem like it will, but it may be an edge the raid needs. Not toentiom Smultron has a set bonus now and the warrior bonuses are crazy good.

Why don't we try this first before we keep or remove scaling?

[Xerron]

A thought,

A few people have tier 3 now, at least the first set bonus. The druid tier 3 in particular will be a net increase in DPS due to the fact that regrowth now grants rage to the warrior s that it's thrown on. It might not make a huge difference, or seem like it will, but it may be an edge the raid needs. Not toentiom Smultron has a set bonus now and the warrior bonuses are crazy good.

Why don't we try this first before we keep or remove scaling?

yeah i hear that 2 rage is a gamechanger

[Drax]

About the Druid T3, it will really matter on MT and mana users.
When it starts being OP on Warrs is when Execute Phase starts, because you want as much rage as you can muster to execute.

[Doonis]

I believe that there should still be scaling for Naxxramas, because there are raid groups that are barely able to get 20 or 30 people for raids like Molten Core and other raid groups that aren't even able to put together a viable party composition to attempt a scaled down 40-man raid.

Additionally, for players who are only able to play during non-peak times for the server due to time zone differences or scheduling conflicts, any group that fits their schedule might be unable to get a full 40 people together for an unscaled raid.

For these reason, I think leaving the scaling at 30-40 would be a benefit to more players ang guilds.

- A level 60 warrior

[Toirto]

- vargash 60 shaman

I think making naxx take more time will give more time for game development so I'd say not having scaling is good for future content.
Though I guess that having scaling in Naxxramas would still fit the server RIGHT NOW as most raid groups
don't hit exactly 40 people quite often.
(I voted no scaling)