[Unfurth]

Just posted by blue.

In the upcoming patch we are adding a new feature to the Icecrown raid instance that allows the raid leader to change the instance's difficulty setting on a boss per boss basis. The way the raid leader chooses to switch is the same as now, by right-clicking on the character portrait. The difficulty settings can be changed from inside Icecrown Citadel, with some restrictions. For example, you cannot change the difficulty in combat or during certain events specified by our design team. To enable the ability to change the raid difficulty to heroic, you must first defeat the Lich King on normal mode, as doing so unlocks the heroic version of this raid instance. There is no heroic version of trash; meaning changing the difficulty will only affect boss difficulty.

We chose this particular functionality because we didn't want to use the Trial of the Crusader method, and have four versions on a raid of this size. We felt the Ulduar method of having to know a certain trick to do on the boss was difficult to communicate and tied too heavily to achievements. We might eventually convert Trial of the Crusader over to this new system but Ulduar and Naxxramas will likely never change.

Source:
World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> Icecrown Raid Difficulty Functionality

[Bishoptwo]

I'm going to assume they are going to have some type of "gated" or Ulduar Keeper like set up to prevent people going straight to Arthas turning it to heroic and working on him first.

At least I would hope they have something set up like this. Would be kind of disheartening to see guilds go straight to Arthas and kill him on Heroic before any other Heroic modes.

[Zothor]

Source: Bishoptwo I'm going to assume they are going to have some type of "gated" or Ulduar Keeper like set up to prevent people going straight to Arthas turning it to heroic and working on him first. At least I would hope they have something set up like this. Would be kind of disheartening to see guilds go straight to Arthas and kill him on Heroic before any other Heroic modes.

Don't see any reason this is more likely than guilds going straight to Yogg +1 and not bothering to do Flame/XT hard modes on the way... I think the counter difficulty will probably address this itself :P

I honestly suspect that Heroic Arthas will be the hardest fight of WotLK, potentially including Yogg + 0.

[TomHuxley]

The largest impact here IMO...the inability to farm the regular version on a separate raid lockout from the heroic version (Toc/ToGC). I don't know how many guilds do this, but it's a nice source of emblems and normally there are useful upgrades that people still need due to RNG/attendance/etc.

Of course maybe the devs want you to have to commit to one or the other per boss, and that's fine too. I'm curious whether the heroic loot will be done more like Ulduar (totally different items drop from heroic mode) or ToC (same items with their stats boosted one ilvl).

[Frae]

Source: TomHuxley The largest impact here IMO...the inability to farm the regular version on a separate raid lockout from the heroic version (Toc/ToGC). I don't know how many guilds do this, but it's a nice source of emblems and normally there are useful upgrades that people still need due to RNG/attendance/etc. Of course maybe the devs want you to have to commit to one or the other per boss, and that's fine too. I'm curious whether the heroic loot will be done more like Ulduar (totally different items drop from heroic mode) or ToC (same items with their stats boosted one ilvl).

Well it is more like Ulduar, there isn't a heroic Ulduar and it works just fine, but instead of pushing a button, or something, The bosses will just either have or not have their Heroic abilities. I don't see the big deal. Sure I like running 4 ToC instance a week, gives me something to do, but I could not imagine running something as big as Ulduar, and this is bigger, four times a week.

[swelt]

More like Ulduar... and thus will have the same problem with ulduar. That is: if you want to schedule progress time on a particular hard mode, you still need to leave time to farm the rest of the instance. That makes learning the hard mode of the first boss really annoying, as you constantly have the clock hanging over you.

[Aggathon]

Source: Frae Well it is more like Ulduar, there isn't a heroic Ulduar and it works just fine, but instead of pushing a button, or something, The bosses will just either have or not have their Heroic abilities. I don't see the big deal. Sure I like running 4 ToC instance a week, gives me something to do, but I could not imagine running something as big as Ulduar, and this is bigger, four times a week.

I am sooooooooooo glad that they are doing this because if I have to farm another instance 4 different times each week I'm gonna flipping scream. I HATE TOC BECAUSE OF THIS IT HAS BURNED ME OUT SO MUCH AND I !_#@$(*!$!#@$!$! <insert seizure here>

[jaydee]

Source: swelt More like Ulduar... and thus will have the same problem with ulduar. That is: if you want to schedule progress time on a particular hard mode, you still need to leave time to farm the rest of the instance. That makes learning the hard mode of the first boss really annoying, as you constantly have the clock hanging over you.

You can always extend your lock out period if you're stock during progression. You'll lose a turn in farming a boss for loot, but you can't have everything.

[Pyrea]

I think I remember reading somewhere that heroic mode is only available after you have completed normal mode. Also no normal guild will be able to clear 24 normal mode bosses and 24 heroic mode bosses in a week. we are talking about 4 time the amount of ulduar bosses if there would be 4 IDs.

[Aggronaught]

IMO TOC designed sucked....they are right having to clear the same dungeon in 4 different difficulty is rather lame. I liked Ulduar set up. This sounds even better.

[swelt]

Source: jaydee You can always extend your lock out period if you're stock during progression. You'll lose a turn in farming a boss for loot, but you can't have everything.

That's exactly my point. You are given three options:
- Allocate a set and limited amount of time in your weekly raid schedule to experiment with a given hard mode before going on to farm the remaining bosses.
- Focus entirely on hard mode progress and forgo the advantage that farming the instance conveys
- Ignore hard modes until you've farmed normal to death for all except optional bosses

I'm not talking about the cutting edge, world first guilds here. I am sure they can simply tack an extra day on their raid schedule at the start so that they can spend hours and hours on hard modes and still farm out the rest of the instance for the loot. But as a 3 night raid guild, this was a real issue in Ulduar. Trying to schedule in time on hard modes for FL and XT was a drag. Those of your raiders that were less motivated by the hard modes were asking when we'd be moving on, those of your raiders that were driven by the challenge wanted to stay all night.

When you are struggling with hard content it's always easy to think "well if we just had one more set of Arthas drops this would be easier". That puts a lot of pressure on the raid leader to make a judgement call: can we do this with our current gear or do we need more of an advantage. Week in, week out you end up second guessing the performance of your raid. It's not a pleasant position to be in. I remember our first XT-002 hard mode kill, I had a bunch of officers on my back suggesting we call it but I felt we could do it... we did, and it was a big morale boost for the guild. If they'd been in charge, we'd have just wiped for no measurable bonus for an hour or so and moved on knowing we'd failed... a big morale hit.

The answer imo is to get creative with the structure of the instance. There should be some bosses which are optional (think ignis, razorscale, iron council positions in Ulduar) which provide entry level hard modes. This allows you to clear the instance and then later come back to try those bosses on hard mode. In that early phase of the instance when you have just started getting the last boss on farm, this gives you an easy next step for progression without stuffing up your raid schedule. Does anyone know if such optional bosses have been included in ICC?

[Pyrea]

Ulduar and ToC were two extremes for hardmodes.

Ulduar hat a certain gimmick to each encounter, kill order, beat a timer, leave some adds out, press a button. You could skip, say, flame leviathan hardmode if you dont want to do it to get to the interesting bosses like thorim or mimiron.

ToC you simply changed to hardmode. You needed to down beasts to get to jaraxxus, if you couldnt beat a hardmode you got stuck in progression. Northrend beasts acted as a Brutallus or Vaelastrasz, a gate keeper boss halting progression.

ICC appears to have the best of both worlds:
a non static boss order, non gimmick hardmode triggers, if you cannot beat a hardmode you can ignore it and move on to something else. This can only really be a good thing in my opinion.

[Spinks]

Source: TomHuxley I don't know how many guilds do this, but it's a nice source of emblems and normally there are useful upgrades that people still need due to RNG/attendance/etc. .

TotC gives out an insane number of emblems. That's the reason people are so reluctant to run Ulduar these days. I guess that was the point (get everyone into T9 whether they want to or not) but not surprised they want to cut down on that.

Also, no one needs to run an instance 4 times a week on the same character.

[Xianth]

When they first mentioned the ToC model I thought it would be good, at the time we had a lot of raid reserve casuals in the guild who never got to go to ulduar because all the main wanted a few hard mode pieces. Fast forward to now and we're forced to run an instance we don't need loot from TWICE (double alt/main mix runs, 13 mains raiders for out 10 mans) just to get enough badges to BUY the heroic tier loot from the tribute of the last boss of the heroic instance! phew. Really, the more instances the more you feel like you should really do them, especially if your guild is serious about raiding.

The icecrown model will essentially be the ulduar model but with a more obvious selection mode. This has distinct several advantages because:

- As mentioned, there's less forcing you to do the normal run parallel to the heroic run, especially just for badge reasons.

- Last normal loot pieces can be picked up at the same time as working on hard modes. Again, no need to run the easy version again.

- Bigger variety of loot; more important for our 10 man guild really that there's a variety of items rather than a shit item ranked up to "heroic" power and another wasted drop slot.

- As raid comps can change to absence, you can skip a potential brick wall hard mode that doesnt favor you comp on a specific day and work on later ones, or even one which is just way harder than the bosses after (like beasts)

- Half the amount of badges will be less of an issue because you won't be buying the mid level of tier loot with them and there is the weekly raid for 10 easy badges and less time spent than toc.

- The instance in general having much better scaling difficulty of hard modes like ulduar, i'd imagine the lich king and later hard modes will be pretty nails and not doable in just ToC fresh gear. It would be nice to tie the lich kings hard mode to the hard modes for the end of each wing or something, just to give the fight that special "algalon" feeling.

[deadwrong]

the message i am getting here is that Blizzard are still haveing a tough time trying to tune content for as much of the playerbase as possible.

if we look at the major patches released in WotLK, they have completely changed their method of heroic content delivery each time:

3.0 - Naxx - 25 player was the heroic
3.1 - Ulduar - triggered HM's were the heroic
3.2 - TotC - seperate heroic instances for both 10 and 25
3.3 - ICC - switchable heroic modes within 10 and 25 instances

it's clear that Blizzard's goal is to allow as much of the playerbase to see as much of the content as possible. i thought that 3.2 was the version which met this requirement most but also agree that having 4 versions of the same instance is a bit overkill.

i feel that the 'difficulty' of the individual encounters (and associated HM's) will be key to this new way of content delivery working or not. the balance needs to be there to allow the PUG'ers who have geared up in TotC10 to get a look in, whilst also presenting a challenge to the more serious raiding community.

i did think that the gap between TotC normal and heroic versions was too large. the same pugs who cleared normal once a week certainly didn't get a free pass in heroic version - keen to see how / if this is addressed.

anyhow - looking forward to it either way!

- DW

[Horaxe]

I think you've hit the nail on the head. They're tuning, trying to find the right balance.

Essentially though, I think the 4 lockouts works for toc, since the instance is so small. We get all of the lockouts out of the way in a few hours, that wouldn't be possible in an instance the size of IC, Uld, or Naxx.

[Tonytony]

they need to get rid of the lockout entirely. change it to where if you have loot from one lockout period from this particular boss, then you can't get loot from the same boss anymore on a different try.

let's people clear raids on their own time, whether it be with pugs or whatever. lockouts are kinda dumb, you have people wanting to play your game and you're restricting them from doing so? what the hell is the point?