Raid Mobs

[Tudounaozi]

I would really strongly vote against the raid mobs and those should be removed. Without the mobs, the raid can be shortened to like 50%, which encourages more players to participate and fully dedicate into. Mob drops can be added to boss loots.

A lot of people will say something against us but, if you want this community to grow, you have to be inclusive of those who are not able to participate in raids due to time commitment.

What do you think?

[Galas]

Blizzard tried this once. It was called Trial of the Crusade. People didn't liked it.

I mean. As a Custom vanilla+ mini-raid? They could do it. A serie of arena combats or whatever. It woul pretty easy to make compared with a more complete raid. But they can't change old raids.

[Balake]

Blizzard tried this once. It was called Trial of the Crusade. People didn't liked it.

I mean. As a Custom vanilla+ mini-raid? They could do it. A serie of arena combats or whatever. It woul pretty easy to make compared with a more complete raid. But they can't change old raids.

Honestly the bosses of Trial of the Crusade were fun.
My own theory on why the raid wasn't liked is an association of many factors:
-The tier sets were ugly
-It only had 5 bosses
-4 of the bosses only happened in one room, and the room had no beautiful scenery whatsoever.
-The game let you do the raid 4 times per week on the same character, so many people did it to cause it's a guild responsibility and got nasty burnout, exacerbated by the fact it's just one room of four bosses then another room.
-The faction champions fight is pvp in a raid, lots of people didn't like that.
-The northrend beasts fight is much harder than the three encounters that follow it.

-all of that came directly after Ulduar, which had none of these problems, and Ulduar is considered one of the best raids Blizzard has ever made and it has maybe less than half the trash vanilla naxxramas has.

I'm fine with trash being a sort of gatekeep to the boss, think like the anubisaths introducing AQ40 and cementing it as the real deal compared to BWL, but imagine if we had to do 5 of those anubisath packs to reach Skeram.

Each type of trash pack should have atmost 3-4 spawns in a raid, the lab packs in Patchwerk room for example serve no purpose other than to slow the raid down. Once you kill 3-4 of them, you pretty much prove you can do them and shouldn't need to do any further (in that lockout).

[Rokit]

There is a lot of rhetoric that will dogpile you for wanting trash to be made reasonable.

Tempest Keep is a great example of restrained raid trash. The pulls are puzzles (like BWL trash), and there are 1-4 of them between bosses. Molten Core, Temple of Ahn'Qiraj and Naxxramas have some pretty repetitive, excessive, and uninteresting trash. Especially in particularly infamous stretches (After Twin Emps, After Razuvious, etc).

Cleaning up trash in MC first would be a boon for the lower access raiders. I think there are a few cheap and easy steps to get there, with MC in mind.

• Remove trash that is not an encounter in and of itself (non-gatekeeping random Giants, random imp packs that are not near a boss)
• Identify 2-4 trash pulls that are nearest to each boss and link their pull / respawn behavior (a DB edit, "easy" and troubleshootable)
• Fold trash loot into boss loot tables as its own additional drop; increasing the items dropped by each boss (excluding Rag) by one.

There are a LOT of repercussions to doctoring the trash in vanilla. I would label them "Growing Pains" but others would call them "Unfaithful" or that it would punish people who had not yet gotten the opportunity to farm Naxx trash etc. Any changes to existing blizzard content will always earn some pushback.

[Kairion]

I think trash makes the places more feel like places that are alive and not purpose built for adventurers to get their loot in.

The only two stretches who are overbearingly annoying are the suppreassiongauntlet in bwl (which arguably is part of the boss encounter) and the aq40 piece between twins and cthun.

The aq40 trash is at the moment just not cleared by groups becauss its on one hand a complete pain and the other hand just not necessary. Much to the delight of most raiders and the dismay od people who need idols or trashloot off of these mobs.

I think its okey thinking about toning these places down to encourage people to actually fight these packs in the first place would be nice. But removing mc trash because someone doesnt have time for a 2-3h run is imho not warranted

[Gantulga]

The raid with a balanced trash/boss ratio and a model to be followed is AQ20.

[Alienns]

Making this game too easy will lead to Retail and will lead to fail.
I even don`t agree with raids scaling.
Now everyone know this game and how to play his class, not like no one when released, it should be even harder. Mobs lvl shoul be reverted to old Vanila. Give back lvl 63 elites in Burning Stepes, lvl 61 in Western Plaguelands, this ones are jokes.
What is the point having Naxx gear when mobs are reduces to the ground by Blizzard preparing game for TBC :(
New 40 man raid will be out soon, there is even more reason to bring mobs hp-lvl back.

[Elesion]

I think this is a great topic for discussion. I don't agree that trash should be removed entirely, but TWoW devs certainly have a bit of an unhealthy obsession with trash in raid instances. Both ES and LKH were at release filled to the brim with trash. While ES was mercifully toned down a bit, for LKH I don't think *anyone* was unhappy when Moroes died in the Opera audience for a few weeks, yet he was moved back to the stage adding another ~7 trash packs to a full clear. And the forced clearing of all the imps in side-rooms is one of the most disliked parts of LKH.

Each type of trash pack should have atmost 3-4 spawns in a raid, the lab packs in Patchwerk room for example serve no purpose other than to slow the raid down. Once you kill 3-4 of them, you pretty much prove you can do them and shouldn't need to do any further (in that lockout).

I think this is a great way of conceptualizing the problem. What does the 6th identical trash pack add to a raid? Outside of very specific circumstances (like the Anubisaths between Huhuran and Twin Emps where untangling their patrols *is* the encounter challenge, annoying as it may be) - pretty much nothing.

1) Trash should not respawn.
Outside of gauntlets like Suppression Room, pre-Fankriss, abom wing slimes, pre-Loatheb - what's the point of having trash respawn? A veteran guild will never run into respawn issues and if you're progressing and learning encounters it's just a massive annoyance having to re-clear trash after 2 hours. You've shown you can beat the pack, why should an unfortunate wipe or even just a person joining late set you back to having to redo the entire thing? - Sidenote: Custom content like LKH already does this.

2) Trash should not be designed or evaluated with skips in mind.
You know what's *not* in my hero/character fantasy? Pressing myself against a wall in a toxic slime trench in Naxxramas, trying to sneak around like a bandit, blowing Invis Pots to avoid the main mechanic of the game (combat). If trash is meant to be fought, the fight should be forced. If trash is not meant to be fought - why even include it? - Even Blizzard had its moments, there is zero trash between Heigan and Loatheb, Gluth and Thaddius. It's clearly not something that is "needed" for a proper Blizz-like raid.

3) Trash should not be too repetitive.
I don't want trash removed, not at all. But you can weed out some identical packs without losing anything. Lab packs in BWL are kind of elegant - you get a small one as an introduction, then 4 mid-sized ones, before 2 final full-sized ones. That progression should be kept, But you can take out 2 of the mid-size packs and nobody will miss them (maybe bump sand droprate just a bit in return to help fresh raids build a stockpile).

The raid with a balanced trash/boss ratio and a model to be followed is AQ20.

I respectfully disagree. AQ20 has a lot of repetition. Bug packs before first boss, Anubisaths before Ossirian, bug packs before Ayamiss. You do the exact same fight 6+ times. And it would be a lot worse if people weren't skipping a massive stretch of trash by swimming through the water. AQ20 has some good design to it. But trash I feel is not one of its strengths.

[Ovaron]

I only have issue with adds/trash - KT phase 1
Please, for the god of war, let us reduce the time/add phase somehow. Every week something is dying inside me.

[Tudounaozi]

Bump! So developers can see!