Are you kidding? ICC is one of the easiest raids in the game now. The only people who will have a hard time are the cry babies that quit playing on cata and never did any of the big boy raids.
I progged this raid on release and it was amazing. Took us a long time to do it, but let me tell you that I remember every single strat we used on every single boss after all these years. That should tell you something about ICC.
I did raid ICC back in the day - but it was my first real experience doing so in a mid-tier guild (for the time). We struggled on normal Lich King, for context. I barely understood any of the mechanics and just muddled through, relying on me being a healer to carry me (Resto Shaman, if you're curious). I'm still a bit hazy on the mechanics even now after reviewing guides, as it doesn't fully mesh with my memories - but I believe I'll adapt quickly. I just don't expect Heroic Lich King for quite some time, and my guild is 100% going to struggle. Which is fine. Its the final tier of Wrath. Will be nice to be genuinely challenged, to sharpen my own skills - ready for Cataclysm. Which I'm very hyped for, despite the nighsayers - it was the first expansion I properly raided on from beginning to end.
We farmed N until I was satisfied we could move on ie. Skill, a solid understanding of fights and of course hear checks. Collectively we took out server first on Saurfang, never again did I raid lead it was too taxing to organise so many. But man did we celebrate big time. I still have the character, video and gear on my character. The server spam was awesome and a big boost to moral on the server. Still playing @ 60 just can't let that go. GL everyone BTW you need a big bench.i had 40 geared raiders for one solid 25 team. If you are a leader be prepared it's hard to start with.
You can beat Heroic Saurfang's enrage easier by having a Ret paladin soulstoned and use Divine Intervention on a squishy marked target then bounce back up into the fight. This saves healers' mana when it counts. Heroic 25 Lich King is the only thing my guild didn't clear in the first release. It is a massive dps check to beat his gargoyles before they drop people off the edge. Good luck!
Apparently, warlock stacking might be the trick people will use because they were able to teleport out of the gargoyles in the PTR. Hunters can apparently also disengage to do the same thing. Blizzard might patch this out though.
I think people will definitely be more optimized this time around and it will be much easier since the strategies for killing the bosses are already known.
This is how it's gone and how it's going to continue to go, I remember it being incredibly difficult healing on my Hpal on release but I'm sure it will be much easier this time around, just like Naxx, Ulduar and TogC have been
I progged ICC for hundreds of hours back in original wrath. I am honestly not interested in it at all this time around. I am however very excited to level up more alts and do some easier content!
The best part of ICC is shadowsedge. It so LEGENDARY to get and was super happy I got it and never felt upset about not getting the Shadowmourn. I also really loved getting the Ring 💍 with rep. I also love the ICC heroics that basically felt like a raiding experience and getting you pre raid bis.
I still have fond memories of our realm first LK25hc kill... Watching this vid makes me wanna start raiding again but it also reminded me of how harder this bosses are. Going from TOC to ICC will be a huge slap in the face for some people.
I “raided” back in worlk when I was 12 and clicked my buttons while running at 3 fps lol. Bless my guildies for being nice enough to let me tag along thought
ICC was my first raid tier. Guild needed a lock so they geared me up asap and we went into ICC. I got lucky and almost completely geared in the first two clears. Haven’t played since TBC tier 1 and seriously considering coming back but it’s lonely af in that game now.
@@notafortnitegamer tbh it was so long ago I’m not sure lol but probably if that was “the” spec way back when. Legit just wanted to help my guild mates out.
This same situation is happening to my brother right now. He was lock threw classic/tbc. We've been playing HC. But his old guild got him back and gearing him up B4 icc patch :p
7:00 when i played vanilla classic in 2019 (first time ever playing warcraft) i was think that vaelestraz fight should have been done like that since he started with low hp, but oh well.
I do not remember much about my time in ICC when it was current content, but I will say what I do: I was playing a priest, a human holy priest, in a guild called Wrath Dynasty. We cleared ICC, I can't remember when, but I think my primary responsibility was group healing with Circle of Healing, Prayer of Mending, and Prayer of Healing, plus Lightwell because that's how I rolled. In the Lich King fight, I was also one of 2 or 3 that watched the plague dot and dispelled it to get it on the ghouls. This knowledge, and that insane knockback of his, was what I retained for years. It was so odd helping other guildies and people as time went on get the achievement for having that plague to a rediculious stack, and not getting knocked off the platform. Good times.
I remember how ICC seemed so hard back then, now after playing other mmos like lost ark i feel like those raids were actually so easy and the hardest part was to have so many people not screw up something :D
"the hardest part was to have so many people not screw up something" That's pretty much the only difficulty of raiding for most players (definetely not an issue for world first runners and stuff).
What a lot of people don't understand about ICC is guild dynamics prior to ICC and how ICC was launched. ToGC was so short that a lot of guilds actually started doing split raids, and that approach continued into ICC. You had a little over two months to farm ICC on normal before the LK encounter was even released, and despite the wings being staggered in release, a lot of guilds would split raid MOST of normal. This meant that come ICC heroic being available (which required an Arthas kill), pretty much all of your main core raiders would have around 264 iLvL and various amounts of the BIS trinkets (granted they were normal version). This is pretty different to all other forms of classic content that we've seen so far simply because people aren't going in over geared. In reality compared to the late 2009 release, we're actually going in under geared for heroic. It's going to be really difficult compared to everything else before it. What helps make up for it however is that there's no mystery behind the game, people know what classes will be good and strategies are pretty much are already known. People trying to shroud HLK strategies just haven't really done enough digging into what were some common and cheesy strategies employed on HLK. You use to be able to purposely die to the ghosts prior to being sucked down in the final phase, to which you could abuse things such as combat resurrections and soul stones. Why? Well, it didn't port you downstairs so you literally got 40-45 seconds of just beating on Arthas if you employed this strategy, which lowered the DPS check substantially. This is why Blizzard had a recent hotfix to 'buff' the encounter, because it sort of goes against the spirit of the game, despite people doing this before. HLK will still be hard regardless because the DPS check is high and there's just several ways one person can int the entire raid. Whether that be detonating shadow traps in P1, failing to pass the disease off to the ghouls, standing in defile too long, or simply being out of position when the Valkyrs came down. A lot of those abilities will be far easier because 90% of your raid or 100% of your raid will have rocket boots, and some classes can cheese Valkyrs by personally being out of position on purpose because of the class abilities they have (it's also a DPS increase because it's 1-3 less Valkyrs you have to kill). It also wasn't uncommon to have two disc priests to completely cheese the infest mechanic entirely.
ICC was where I left the game as it really showed how bad players, more accurately lazy players, can easily ruin a fun game. While I don't care for this much personal responsibility, when it exists, step up or step out. Having to explain the fight again after every wipe to people who simply refused to come prepared grated my last nerve. We were struggling with losing players after Ulduar, as everyone was, but ICC has quite a few Thaddius fights which, while easy if you know it, are impossible if one person doesn't.
I remember pugging ICC in the Firelands phase of Cata, and for LK we had to switch to normal because people were failing mechanics and we couldn't do it on heroic.
My guild back during ICC era focused on 10-man, although we did do some 25-man raids together with another guild, who also didn't have the numbers to do 25 on their own. My guild did end up clearing 10-man heroic and did all the achievements for the mount and such, although not until just before the end of the expansion. I know that some of our guild members weren't fully up to snuff, as I several times had to log my alts and do other roles for specific fights, simply to show other players how certain mechanics worked, but at the end of the day, we preferred having a certain guild atmosphere above the fastest raid progress. But it could be SOOO painful some times, when you felt stuck on a certain fight for ages.
Everyone is also forgetting that back in the day it was released over time week by week so people had 'clear gear' from the previous wing each week, making the raid easier as you progress through it. You also had to have somebody who cleared normal to do heroic. So we're talking about 4 clears, 3 clears, 2 clears, 1 clear of the respective wings, when you hit heroic for the first time... So you've gt gear and you've done all the fights multiple times. Now we're just walking into heroic going ooft this is hard on heroic on day 1. >.
@@lIIest Less than 2 hrs? I'd genuinely love to see that. I'm not sure if it is entirely doable though. We have one known kill so far on PTR and the rumor is it involved carrying over gear from the first PTR session, with potential 10 man HC gear as well.
@@JarrodShadowsonngwe also aren’t sure how they were able to do it. Blizzard fixed an issue where you were able to kill yourself right before getting sucked into frostmourne, take a soul stone, And continue dpsing LK while the rest of the raid was inside frostmourne. LK would just sit there like a target dummy during that time. Now, I’m not sure if that’s how they were able to do it, but other guild were taking advantage of this.
@@Sirkss I had forgotten about that fix as well. you're totally right. I wouldn't be surprised if that "clever use of game mechanics" was what made the enrage timer much more lenient.
I cleared 25H and all but LK in 10h on live back in the day as a feral druid, my second proudest WoW achievement after solo (plus a shadow priest on bosses) healing OG ZA bear runs back in the day on my shaman. So great to see this analysis of the fights I worked so hard on back then
@15:58 The comment at the end about them all wearing T10 - Lich king / Heroic Lich King, was not an option on release week back on the original Launch, I believe it was a full month before anyone was even able to try him on normal. So them having the T10 set isnt really that out of the question given how many marks your get each week from the raid and dungeons. So you could say it was planned by blizzard for them to have some icc gear before seeing the boss.
Some dates for reference - ICC release 2009-12-08, Frostwing Halls available 2010-02-01, Paragon world first 2010-03-26 7(?) weeks of normal mode partial clears, one full normal mode clear, 8 partial heroic clears worth of gear
I raided ICC back in the day, we never killed i ton 25 man HC and we got our normal kill when the buff was at 10% and that was still a major achievement and you pointed out, we had been gearing up for a few weeks prior to killing him, so week 1, no buff and 258 gear.....it's possible on normal but I won't expect the vast number of people to kill it
So far from what my ptr experience was. The hardest fight on heroics 25 are LK>>>>>>>>>>PP/Sindy>BPC>LDW>Saurfang>BQL>rotface>festurgut>VDW>marrowgar>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>gunship. As for 10man, every boss beside PP, BPC and Lk are free if you understand the general mechanic but 10man is just very forgiving vs 25
i cleared H icc when icc was live, it was my favorite raid. the dps checks will be hard for yall with no riad wide buffs, but i bet ya got enough folks that already know the fights to clear it as soon as ya can put out the deeps, shadowsedge on onyxia spriest world pvp and lev climbing and exploring
I was always on low pop servers with my friend. Took months to reach 60 in Vanilla about 2 months before TBC launched so no real chance to raid. Played TBC for like 3 months then stopped. Never got to raid. Rejoined WotLK like 1 week before TOC patch. Again low pop server with friend. Joined his guild and got in TOC right when I hit 80 as they were down a player. I played a Resto/Enhance Troll Shaman. Coming in with greens, I was 3rd on healing for the PvP fight and guild leaders took me on a power trip to get me items quickly as I was able to master mechanics pretty well. I was constantly 1 or 2 on healing throughout ICC. Sad part is only two guilds on server were even capable of clearing ICC 25 and took like the 10% to get LK on normal. Even "fully geared" with 25%, we only got Prof Putricide once and never got Sindragosa or LK on 25 man. Did manage to get both on 10 man. On a related note, I was the primary healer, no Holy Pally, for Hearald of the Titans. That was a true DPS/Healing check with minimal item level gear.
SWP and Ulduar absolutely took a stinky dump over the classic fanbase, no one remembers because WoW players have the memory of a goldfish but the stats for SWP after 2 weeks had insane amount of wipes
I'm surprised by Council being considered easy when I look back on guides and forums from the time. Having done 11/12 HC on PTR, we had more pulls on Council than any other fight including Sindragosa.
Sindragosa took us 3 weeks...(3 nights a week) we killed LK the second night. I will forever hate that fight. I really don't think it is that hard of a fight either.
I raid led it on 5 toons on 25 heroic every week. Mage, Pally tank, Rogue, Holy priest, DK tank There was definitely a struggle with personal awareness, even on normal but just like every iteration of wow classic, people know a lot more and it's far easier. Elitist Jerks, Shadowcraft, hunter spreadsheets not needed.
I was in top 50 guild to kill heroic Arthas 25 man and I can tell that even at that level, the fight was a slaughterfest. Normal was fine, just get used to what's what and get ready for a very long fight. But heroic is on the edge. Lose one DD and you will wipe if not ressed instantly. With gear and experience, we got to do it 24 man + buyer, but that took a few months. 10 man was way easier.
ICC hands down best raid so far. 10HC is punishing in the right ways. 25HC is punishing in different ways but can be a lot more frustrating. Overall it’s a fantastic test for who’s actually awake and good versus the sleepy parser who won’t move from the defile.
HARDEST raid I have progged on in retail. I still recall people using some augmented reality like addon to show where things would be on the ground; until it was properly banned.
I was in our 2nd raid group back in the day and we had all the bosses on farm except for heroic lich king and they straight up refused to even try him on heroic based on what raid 1 was going through
@@MegaReinart I agree it was fun. Easy? Not quite, and not necessarily due to player skill. My guild was playing on NA servers, but we had players from everywhere. Some people raided with a baseline 400ms ping... on bad days it'll get to 1.2seconds.. Dodging defile and the shadow trap (which launches you off the platform) with that much delay, was really rough. Hilarious though. 🤣
I agree with the boss order you put, but having killed everything but heroic LK, I can say with confidence that Sindragosa is much much more difficult than Putricide
Same here, 11/12 HC back in the day. I think Putricide is difficult due to the dps check at the end, the green goo flood was hard to beat. Sindragosa on the other hand, is a mechanics fight, as long as no one blows up the raid with caster debuff. Some good RNG helps for Sindragosa too, for example if the unchained magic goes on mages/hpallies (which most raids had a lot of). They can simply spam cast and just iceblock/bubble with no one near them.
nah, i predict a private server guild, whos done ICC 25 hc with a 30% boss hp / damage increase and no buff will clear it very fast. edit: then again, the private servers are actual 3.3.5 wotlk, classic wotlk is...classic wotlk.
People back then had months on end raiding 25 man icc normal befor they even reached lichking to unlock 25 man hc, so they where way way better geard then we going into we just know more now, have better addons and computers / internet, but there was 0 intention from game desing "originally" from going togc into 25 hc icc. If people go into 25 hc icc and guilds die to it they are just stupid since no one ever cleard 25 hc icc in togc gear befor they should progress frew normal then hc and not be so pridefull and be stuck in hc progression getting 0 loot
The fights themselves are identical. What's different is that players back then had 8 normal clears worth of gear before stepping foot into HC. We're going in with ToGC gear.
It wasn't a guild breaker back in the day, and with people much more optimized I doubt it will be this time around either. Yes a lot of the fights are tough as hell on Heroic, but it's such a good raid
I think its the personal responsibility bit. Players these days are used to just facerolling the raids. Naxx was a buffed post-nerf version, Ulduar was pre-nerf AND buffed, and TOGC got one major change (the Anub adds applying damage calcs after blocks), and after experiencing them all, there's not that much personal responsibility going on. ICC though, you can't go in with 'muh parse' mindset. I guarantee the rogue in my 10m guild is gonna wipe us on Deathwhisper because he's that tunnel visioned at times (he's died on Jaraxxus multiple times by giving him a prostate exam on pull instead of standing back), and bless his soul, we're gonna beat the shit out of him for it lol. Spreading for Bonestorm, knowing your stun/knockback rotation on Saurfang, stacking/spreading on Festergut and knowing what to do with slimes on Rotface (or the other way around?), and that's just a few off the top of my head. Will it break guilds? Probably not, but it will strain them, especially if they have players that really just can't get mechanics, like the mage in my old Wrath p1 guild that never survived the Safety Dance. Can't wait to bash my head against it and really test my ability as a healer.
Back in the day most guilds didn't do heroic. Having done 20 hours or so on PTR I would say this is defo harder than Ulduar hard mode. And Ulduar was a guild breaker.
@@keirbourne5323 I played ICC when it was current, and I saw heroic pugs every day. My guild who was fairly casual downed about half the bosses on heroic. ICC was piss easy outside a few outliars.
@@tauriasstormshield499 It was piss easy to 9/12 once you had a bunch of normal gear and partial heroic clears as well as the stacking buff at 10% and above. PP, Sindy and LK were never piss easy.
@@tauriasstormshield499 Check the dates on that raiding and I'm sure you'll find it was with 30% buff and plenty of ICC normal gear. Those things combined make players at least 50% stronger than we will be.
A friend of mine who was a hardcore raider in TBC used to give me shit that WotLK raids were baby tier ICC25 was a legit raid and I cleared main tanked it , idgaf what people say those fights were intense, even fucking Marrowgar was intense
That's not a pro-tip lol. It's fantastic for ret paladins and really nothing special for dk tank. There 2 much better stat'd options from 10m HC for dk tank. The weapon dmg and proc are much more valuable on a dps that will properly benefit from it
I had to quit wow for irl reasons just before ICC came out and when i came back it was already cata prepatch, so i missed ICC entirely back in the day. Been lots of fun on ptr, cant wait to actually get 2pc as i hear “divine storm go brrrr” 😂
We did every hc mode with 10M hc gear besides lichking. But we had 2 players, who werent that good, soit took a while. Still, especially the Professor encounter needs so much communication, randoms will fail there with no end. And Lichking normal mode will wipe guilds to death too. I dont think any not so good player will move out on point of the decay mechanic. Here it started with 1 player bad -> all others suffer too, like a navy seals trial test or something. :D I stopped after normal Ulduar (token introduction) and am thinking of coming back, because it was my fav raid. But I dont see this working with pug runs. Back in 2010 or whatever it was I rarely succeeded with my alt chars and it mostly stopped working at the bloodqueen, Sindra and we dont start talking about LK. Iiirc 1 random run succeeded, but that was it.
It surprises me a lot that people recommend that you kill Lady Deathwhisper before Saurfang. My old dad guild from retail beat Saurfang and Blood Queen but couldn't kill LDW. I guess it's simply because those two fights really benefit from gear as it's mostly DPS races but LDW has more personal responsibility which better gear does not help. If you can beat LDW early on, I would say that gear will really increase your odds in beating everything else in a timely fashion.
@@markjackson5333 I think he meant to do LDW on heroic vs Saurfang on heroic. Heroic Lady was harder than Heroic Saurfang for most guilds. Either that or his memory is completely messed up. Lol.
Personally I consider Deathwhisper significantly harder than Saurfang. Saurfang is basically just a gear check, whereas Deathwhisper is very complicated mechanic fight. Also, Sindragosa is a lot harder fight than Putricide, back in original wtlk I remember my guild had Putricide on farm but was never able to kill Sindragosa.
nah, tons of guilds already clearing it on 10 man heroic, few have done 25 heroic on PTR, They said SSC and Sunwell and 60 naxx were guild killers, but end of xpac/people burnt out did more damage to guilds than the content
I am not saying it will be super hard with the current player base but i also think people are underestimating Defile and the importance of passing the debuff to others properly.
the first reset is about to end and there are 21 kills, making HLK the least progressed boss in classic wow's history and after 3 ptr sessions which is more than any other boss too. Wille was right and the comment section was wrong
@@Rouqueuh bro literally two updates on PTR making it not possible to kill LK the way nota did and and Chinese. You have no idea what you’re talking about
Deja vu? I mean, didn't he said that for Ulduar, and what happened - ppl still play the game, guilds are not broken and even if they break, you can do anything with decent pug, especially GDKP.
I don't see how as when it first released it didn't seem too difficult until you got into Heroic and now you have all the data and tactics on the Raid with no need for progression to learn anything.
Our gear is not appropriate for heroic ICC. Back in the day, we had nearly 2 months of somewhat normal ICC farm before anyone could even do heroic because of the gating. Blizzard intentionally tuned heroic with this taken into account. Normal mode 25 man ICC gear is stronger than heroic ToTGC 25 man gear. And everybody is in tier 10 in that screenshot because they had 2 months of normal farm... I thought a channel committed to WoW classic would know this...
@keirbourne5323 GDKP is the name of the game. Swippers will get their full BIS within a month of it dropping like all the other raids that came before it. They gonna farm it like Molten Core.
I did raid ICC back then. Have been on 2.4 rating in arenas and felt like a pro until I hit icc and wiped over and over again. Also at this time I realised pve is not for me.
No. The patch notes state that Joyous Journeys will be on for the foreseeable future. They probably want people to be able to level to 80 with little issue until Cata prepatch.
i killed 11/12HC back in the day, and our guild disbaned at the lich king.... :D, i played on a smaller server on EU where only 1 Guild was able to kill 12/12, so im very excited what will happens this time
ICC is a very enjoyable raid when you find people that can do the mechanics. Otherwise, you'll find a lot of frustration.
I too enjoy being carried
@@PhenomRom how to tell if someone doesn't raid/didn't even listen to the video.
ok @@PhenomRom
Are you kidding? ICC is one of the easiest raids in the game now. The only people who will have a hard time are the cry babies that quit playing on cata and never did any of the big boy raids.
@@johnsmifthe original icc is hard this is the nerf version
I progged this raid on release and it was amazing. Took us a long time to do it, but let me tell you that I remember every single strat we used on every single boss after all these years. That should tell you something about ICC.
That you wiped a lot?
@@jameswatts-r4ceveryone did on release lol its not like they had years of prog
I did raid ICC back in the day - but it was my first real experience doing so in a mid-tier guild (for the time). We struggled on normal Lich King, for context. I barely understood any of the mechanics and just muddled through, relying on me being a healer to carry me (Resto Shaman, if you're curious). I'm still a bit hazy on the mechanics even now after reviewing guides, as it doesn't fully mesh with my memories - but I believe I'll adapt quickly. I just don't expect Heroic Lich King for quite some time, and my guild is 100% going to struggle.
Which is fine. Its the final tier of Wrath. Will be nice to be genuinely challenged, to sharpen my own skills - ready for Cataclysm. Which I'm very hyped for, despite the nighsayers - it was the first expansion I properly raided on from beginning to end.
ICC is easy what are you talking about...
@Donovanrideout1276 he said it was his first raid experience lol
We farmed N until I was satisfied we could move on ie. Skill, a solid understanding of fights and of course hear checks. Collectively we took out server first on Saurfang, never again did I raid lead it was too taxing to organise so many. But man did we celebrate big time. I still have the character, video and gear on my character. The server spam was awesome and a big boost to moral on the server. Still playing @ 60 just can't let that go. GL everyone BTW you need a big bench.i had 40 geared raiders for one solid 25 team. If you are a leader be prepared it's hard to start with.
You can beat Heroic Saurfang's enrage easier by having a Ret paladin soulstoned and use Divine Intervention on a squishy marked target then bounce back up into the fight. This saves healers' mana when it counts. Heroic 25 Lich King is the only thing my guild didn't clear in the first release. It is a massive dps check to beat his gargoyles before they drop people off the edge. Good luck!
Apparently, warlock stacking might be the trick people will use because they were able to teleport out of the gargoyles in the PTR. Hunters can apparently also disengage to do the same thing. Blizzard might patch this out though.
You can also bop and hearth out lol
They are valkyries. Also they will not patch out a 15 year old feature. It is not a bug.
I think people will definitely be more optimized this time around and it will be much easier since the strategies for killing the bosses are already known.
This is how it's gone and how it's going to continue to go, I remember it being incredibly difficult healing on my Hpal on release but I'm sure it will be much easier this time around, just like Naxx, Ulduar and TogC have been
I progged ICC for hundreds of hours back in original wrath. I am honestly not interested in it at all this time around. I am however very excited to level up more alts and do some easier content!
Wdym icc will break guilds xD it will be a GDKP fiesta just like any other raid tier from classic vanilla to classic Wrath
it means that this raid is easy af especially now 13 years later lol
@@keelhld94
The best part of ICC is shadowsedge. It so LEGENDARY to get and was super happy I got it and never felt upset about not getting the Shadowmourn. I also really loved getting the Ring 💍 with rep.
I also love the ICC heroics that basically felt like a raiding experience and getting you pre raid bis.
I still have fond memories of our realm first LK25hc kill... Watching this vid makes me wanna start raiding again but it also reminded me of how harder this bosses are. Going from TOC to ICC will be a huge slap in the face for some people.
I “raided” back in worlk when I was 12 and clicked my buttons while running at 3 fps lol. Bless my guildies for being nice enough to let me tag along thought
ICC was my first raid tier. Guild needed a lock so they geared me up asap and we went into ICC. I got lucky and almost completely geared in the first two clears. Haven’t played since TBC tier 1 and seriously considering coming back but it’s lonely af in that game now.
Let me guess, ur demo
@@notafortnitegamer tbh it was so long ago I’m not sure lol but probably if that was “the” spec way back when. Legit just wanted to help my guild mates out.
@D1rtkoba1n come back to the game, you are needed!
This same situation is happening to my brother right now. He was lock threw classic/tbc. We've been playing HC. But his old guild got him back and gearing him up B4 icc patch :p
7:00 when i played vanilla classic in 2019 (first time ever playing warcraft) i was think that vaelestraz fight should have been done like that since he started with low hp, but oh well.
I do not remember much about my time in ICC when it was current content, but I will say what I do:
I was playing a priest, a human holy priest, in a guild called Wrath Dynasty. We cleared ICC, I can't remember when, but I think my primary responsibility was group healing with Circle of Healing, Prayer of Mending, and Prayer of Healing, plus Lightwell because that's how I rolled.
In the Lich King fight, I was also one of 2 or 3 that watched the plague dot and dispelled it to get it on the ghouls.
This knowledge, and that insane knockback of his, was what I retained for years. It was so odd helping other guildies and people as time went on get the achievement for having that plague to a rediculious stack, and not getting knocked off the platform.
Good times.
We went 11/12 heroic twice during PTR and two normal LK kills. Very excited for progression racing and speed running at 0% buff this phase!
I remember how ICC seemed so hard back then, now after playing other mmos like lost ark i feel like those raids were actually so easy and the hardest part was to have so many people not screw up something :D
"the hardest part was to have so many people not screw up something"
That's pretty much the only difficulty of raiding for most players (definetely not an issue for world first runners and stuff).
I've been waiting three years for this moment to happen again! Icc is the greatest raid to ever be in WoW!
What a lot of people don't understand about ICC is guild dynamics prior to ICC and how ICC was launched. ToGC was so short that a lot of guilds actually started doing split raids, and that approach continued into ICC. You had a little over two months to farm ICC on normal before the LK encounter was even released, and despite the wings being staggered in release, a lot of guilds would split raid MOST of normal. This meant that come ICC heroic being available (which required an Arthas kill), pretty much all of your main core raiders would have around 264 iLvL and various amounts of the BIS trinkets (granted they were normal version).
This is pretty different to all other forms of classic content that we've seen so far simply because people aren't going in over geared. In reality compared to the late 2009 release, we're actually going in under geared for heroic.
It's going to be really difficult compared to everything else before it. What helps make up for it however is that there's no mystery behind the game, people know what classes will be good and strategies are pretty much are already known.
People trying to shroud HLK strategies just haven't really done enough digging into what were some common and cheesy strategies employed on HLK. You use to be able to purposely die to the ghosts prior to being sucked down in the final phase, to which you could abuse things such as combat resurrections and soul stones. Why? Well, it didn't port you downstairs so you literally got 40-45 seconds of just beating on Arthas if you employed this strategy, which lowered the DPS check substantially. This is why Blizzard had a recent hotfix to 'buff' the encounter, because it sort of goes against the spirit of the game, despite people doing this before.
HLK will still be hard regardless because the DPS check is high and there's just several ways one person can int the entire raid. Whether that be detonating shadow traps in P1, failing to pass the disease off to the ghouls, standing in defile too long, or simply being out of position when the Valkyrs came down. A lot of those abilities will be far easier because 90% of your raid or 100% of your raid will have rocket boots, and some classes can cheese Valkyrs by personally being out of position on purpose because of the class abilities they have (it's also a DPS increase because it's 1-3 less Valkyrs you have to kill). It also wasn't uncommon to have two disc priests to completely cheese the infest mechanic entirely.
ICC was where I left the game as it really showed how bad players, more accurately lazy players, can easily ruin a fun game. While I don't care for this much personal responsibility, when it exists, step up or step out. Having to explain the fight again after every wipe to people who simply refused to come prepared grated my last nerve. We were struggling with losing players after Ulduar, as everyone was, but ICC has quite a few Thaddius fights which, while easy if you know it, are impossible if one person doesn't.
I remember pugging ICC in the Firelands phase of Cata, and for LK we had to switch to normal because people were failing mechanics and we couldn't do it on heroic.
My guild back during ICC era focused on 10-man, although we did do some 25-man raids together with another guild, who also didn't have the numbers to do 25 on their own. My guild did end up clearing 10-man heroic and did all the achievements for the mount and such, although not until just before the end of the expansion. I know that some of our guild members weren't fully up to snuff, as I several times had to log my alts and do other roles for specific fights, simply to show other players how certain mechanics worked, but at the end of the day, we preferred having a certain guild atmosphere above the fastest raid progress.
But it could be SOOO painful some times, when you felt stuck on a certain fight for ages.
Everyone is also forgetting that back in the day it was released over time week by week so people had 'clear gear' from the previous wing each week, making the raid easier as you progress through it. You also had to have somebody who cleared normal to do heroic. So we're talking about 4 clears, 3 clears, 2 clears, 1 clear of the respective wings, when you hit heroic for the first time... So you've gt gear and you've done all the fights multiple times. Now we're just walking into heroic going ooft this is hard on heroic on day 1. >.
nah it is not going to be hard and will probably be cleared in less than 2h
@@lIIest Less than 2 hrs?
I'd genuinely love to see that.
I'm not sure if it is entirely doable though. We have one known kill so far on PTR and the rumor is it involved carrying over gear from the first PTR session, with potential 10 man HC gear as well.
@@JarrodShadowsonngwe also aren’t sure how they were able to do it. Blizzard fixed an issue where you were able to kill yourself right before getting sucked into frostmourne, take a soul stone, And continue dpsing LK while the rest of the raid was inside frostmourne. LK would just sit there like a target dummy during that time. Now, I’m not sure if that’s how they were able to do it, but other guild were taking advantage of this.
@@lIIestnobody is clearing herioc first week especially LK. 10man yes, 25 man idk
@@Sirkss I had forgotten about that fix as well. you're totally right. I wouldn't be surprised if that "clever use of game mechanics" was what made the enrage timer much more lenient.
aaahhh.....memories flooding back of my guild progressing ICC on Vent....good times
I cleared 25H and all but LK in 10h on live back in the day as a feral druid, my second proudest WoW achievement after solo (plus a shadow priest on bosses) healing OG ZA bear runs back in the day on my shaman. So great to see this analysis of the fights I worked so hard on back then
Been hearing this over and over since 2019
@15:58 The comment at the end about them all wearing T10 - Lich king / Heroic Lich King, was not an option on release week back on the original Launch, I believe it was a full month before anyone was even able to try him on normal. So them having the T10 set isnt really that out of the question given how many marks your get each week from the raid and dungeons. So you could say it was planned by blizzard for them to have some icc gear before seeing the boss.
Some dates for reference - ICC release 2009-12-08, Frostwing Halls available 2010-02-01, Paragon world first 2010-03-26
7(?) weeks of normal mode partial clears, one full normal mode clear, 8 partial heroic clears worth of gear
Deathwhisper will be more of a struggle for most than Saurfang.
I raided ICC back in the day, we never killed i ton 25 man HC and we got our normal kill when the buff was at 10% and that was still a major achievement and you pointed out, we had been gearing up for a few weeks prior to killing him, so week 1, no buff and 258 gear.....it's possible on normal but I won't expect the vast number of people to kill it
So far from what my ptr experience was. The hardest fight on heroics 25 are LK>>>>>>>>>>PP/Sindy>BPC>LDW>Saurfang>BQL>rotface>festurgut>VDW>marrowgar>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>gunship. As for 10man, every boss beside PP, BPC and Lk are free if you understand the general mechanic but 10man is just very forgiving vs 25
Killing Arthas is where it ends for me and most people. This was fun while it lasted, it was a nice trip down memory lane. Kings honor, friend!❤
Cataclysm is fun. Just saying.
Speak for yourself. Most of us are going to play Cata.
Cata is good. And you are a baby
Cata bomb xpac minus DS
Facts. This is where wow ends as far as I'm concerned.
LK 25 Hero did break me back in the days I quit raiding forever in Wow after weeks of wiping to him. Still good memories
Two words “personal responsibility”?
No no no…
The two words are
BOOOONE STOOOORM!!!
*bone storm
All the more fitting for The Lich King.
He exist to psychologically break people (and guilds)
i cleared H icc when icc was live, it was my favorite raid. the dps checks will be hard for yall with no riad wide buffs, but i bet ya got enough folks that already know the fights to clear it as soon as ya can put out the deeps, shadowsedge on onyxia spriest world pvp and lev climbing and exploring
People forget you can just put it on normal and move on.
I was always on low pop servers with my friend. Took months to reach 60 in Vanilla about 2 months before TBC launched so no real chance to raid. Played TBC for like 3 months then stopped. Never got to raid. Rejoined WotLK like 1 week before TOC patch. Again low pop server with friend. Joined his guild and got in TOC right when I hit 80 as they were down a player. I played a Resto/Enhance Troll Shaman. Coming in with greens, I was 3rd on healing for the PvP fight and guild leaders took me on a power trip to get me items quickly as I was able to master mechanics pretty well. I was constantly 1 or 2 on healing throughout ICC. Sad part is only two guilds on server were even capable of clearing ICC 25 and took like the 10% to get LK on normal. Even "fully geared" with 25%, we only got Prof Putricide once and never got Sindragosa or LK on 25 man. Did manage to get both on 10 man.
On a related note, I was the primary healer, no Holy Pally, for Hearald of the Titans. That was a true DPS/Healing check with minimal item level gear.
Right this will kill guilds just like Nax 40, Sunwell and Ulduar has..... lol. Okay then.
To be fair, Ulduar did break a few guilds. Not as many as expected, but a few.
SWP and Ulduar absolutely took a stinky dump over the classic fanbase, no one remembers because WoW players have the memory of a goldfish but the stats for SWP after 2 weeks had insane amount of wipes
@@Mitcheeta Because the runback is far shorter in SWP so garbage guilds could bash their faces against bosses they normally wouldn't be able to do...
@@tompatompssonwho runs back? Soulstone, DI, shammy rez.
Naxx, Sunwell and Ulduar did in fact break guilds
I'm surprised by Council being considered easy when I look back on guides and forums from the time. Having done 11/12 HC on PTR, we had more pulls on Council than any other fight including Sindragosa.
Sindragosa took us 3 weeks...(3 nights a week) we killed LK the second night. I will forever hate that fight. I really don't think it is that hard of a fight either.
I played Disc priest back in the day, loved ICC. Good luck to everyone playing retail.
This was my favorite expansion. ICC was so fun at release
I raid led it on 5 toons on 25 heroic every week.
Mage, Pally tank, Rogue, Holy priest, DK tank
There was definitely a struggle with personal awareness, even on normal but just like every iteration of wow classic, people know a lot more and it's far easier.
Elitist Jerks, Shadowcraft, hunter spreadsheets not needed.
I was in top 50 guild to kill heroic Arthas 25 man and I can tell that even at that level, the fight was a slaughterfest. Normal was fine, just get used to what's what and get ready for a very long fight. But heroic is on the edge. Lose one DD and you will wipe if not ressed instantly. With gear and experience, we got to do it 24 man + buyer, but that took a few months. 10 man was way easier.
ICC hands down best raid so far. 10HC is punishing in the right ways. 25HC is punishing in different ways but can be a lot more frustrating.
Overall it’s a fantastic test for who’s actually awake and good versus the sleepy parser who won’t move from the defile.
HARDEST raid I have progged on in retail. I still recall people using some augmented reality like addon to show where things would be on the ground; until it was properly banned.
I was in our 2nd raid group back in the day and we had all the bosses on farm except for heroic lich king and they straight up refused to even try him on heroic based on what raid 1 was going through
That’s weak minded
Dodgin defiles without rocket boots on EVERYONE is really no fun.@@PhenomRom
@@haywoodjablome7822its very fun and very ez mechanic
@@MegaReinart I agree it was fun. Easy? Not quite, and not necessarily due to player skill. My guild was playing on NA servers, but we had players from everywhere. Some people raided with a baseline 400ms ping... on bad days it'll get to 1.2seconds.. Dodging defile and the shadow trap (which launches you off the platform) with that much delay, was really rough. Hilarious though. 🤣
Demonology was so much more fun in wolk and cata than it is now ☹️, seeing footage made me miss it!!
I agree with the boss order you put, but having killed everything but heroic LK, I can say with confidence that Sindragosa is much much more difficult than Putricide
those were the two fights i was wondering who he'd give the #2 spot to.
Same here, 11/12 HC back in the day. I think Putricide is difficult due to the dps check at the end, the green goo flood was hard to beat. Sindragosa on the other hand, is a mechanics fight, as long as no one blows up the raid with caster debuff. Some good RNG helps for Sindragosa too, for example if the unchained magic goes on mages/hpallies (which most raids had a lot of). They can simply spam cast and just iceblock/bubble with no one near them.
nah, i predict a private server guild, whos done ICC 25 hc with a 30% boss hp / damage increase and no buff will clear it very fast. edit: then again, the private servers are actual 3.3.5 wotlk, classic wotlk is...classic wotlk.
lol wonder if the LK fight will be in Hardcore mode, if you know the fight you know what part I am refering to.
I'm pretty sure that won't count as a death :p
Og raider. This is the one I wanna see guilds break. No one but paragon could kill the LK before the buff. GL all was a blast of a raid
Thanks for the video mate. Though i think everyone in the real world knows its pretty fkn hard.
Always love the vids❤
People back then had months on end raiding 25 man icc normal befor they even reached lichking to unlock 25 man hc, so they where way way better geard then we going into we just know more now, have better addons and computers / internet, but there was 0 intention from game desing "originally" from going togc into 25 hc icc. If people go into 25 hc icc and guilds die to it they are just stupid since no one ever cleard 25 hc icc in togc gear befor they should progress frew normal then hc and not be so pridefull and be stuck in hc progression getting 0 loot
will be it somewhat harder than original 2010 fights? or is it at the same difficulty as it was
The fights themselves are identical.
What's different is that players back then had 8 normal clears worth of gear before stepping foot into HC.
We're going in with ToGC gear.
I remember only going to ICC once, we couldn't get past Lights Hammer.
Back then my guild broke at Sindragosa HC, we just had to many ppl who couldn't handle the tombs :D
It wasn't a guild breaker back in the day, and with people much more optimized I doubt it will be this time around either. Yes a lot of the fights are tough as hell on Heroic, but it's such a good raid
I think its the personal responsibility bit. Players these days are used to just facerolling the raids. Naxx was a buffed post-nerf version, Ulduar was pre-nerf AND buffed, and TOGC got one major change (the Anub adds applying damage calcs after blocks), and after experiencing them all, there's not that much personal responsibility going on. ICC though, you can't go in with 'muh parse' mindset. I guarantee the rogue in my 10m guild is gonna wipe us on Deathwhisper because he's that tunnel visioned at times (he's died on Jaraxxus multiple times by giving him a prostate exam on pull instead of standing back), and bless his soul, we're gonna beat the shit out of him for it lol.
Spreading for Bonestorm, knowing your stun/knockback rotation on Saurfang, stacking/spreading on Festergut and knowing what to do with slimes on Rotface (or the other way around?), and that's just a few off the top of my head.
Will it break guilds? Probably not, but it will strain them, especially if they have players that really just can't get mechanics, like the mage in my old Wrath p1 guild that never survived the Safety Dance. Can't wait to bash my head against it and really test my ability as a healer.
Back in the day most guilds didn't do heroic.
Having done 20 hours or so on PTR I would say this is defo harder than Ulduar hard mode. And Ulduar was a guild breaker.
@@keirbourne5323 I played ICC when it was current, and I saw heroic pugs every day. My guild who was fairly casual downed about half the bosses on heroic. ICC was piss easy outside a few outliars.
@@tauriasstormshield499 It was piss easy to 9/12 once you had a bunch of normal gear and partial heroic clears as well as the stacking buff at 10% and above.
PP, Sindy and LK were never piss easy.
@@tauriasstormshield499 Check the dates on that raiding and I'm sure you'll find it was with 30% buff and plenty of ICC normal gear. Those things combined make players at least 50% stronger than we will be.
With the amount of add ons available it should be really easy to learn these fights.
A friend of mine who was a hardcore raider in TBC used to give me shit that WotLK raids were baby tier
ICC25 was a legit raid and I cleared main tanked it , idgaf what people say those fights were intense, even fucking Marrowgar was intense
as someone who cleared icc25hc as a maintank in a top 100 guild i can say this is BS
Pro tip- Bryntroll should be prio for BDK tank not dps
That's not a pro-tip lol. It's fantastic for ret paladins and really nothing special for dk tank. There 2 much better stat'd options from 10m HC for dk tank. The weapon dmg and proc are much more valuable on a dps that will properly benefit from it
I had to quit wow for irl reasons just before ICC came out and when i came back it was already cata prepatch, so i missed ICC entirely back in the day. Been lots of fun on ptr, cant wait to actually get 2pc as i hear “divine storm go brrrr” 😂
We did every hc mode with 10M hc gear besides lichking. But we had 2 players, who werent that good, soit took a while. Still, especially the Professor encounter needs so much communication, randoms will fail there with no end. And Lichking normal mode will wipe guilds to death too. I dont think any not so good player will move out on point of the decay mechanic. Here it started with 1 player bad -> all others suffer too, like a navy seals trial test or something. :D
I stopped after normal Ulduar (token introduction) and am thinking of coming back, because it was my fav raid. But I dont see this working with pug runs. Back in 2010 or whatever it was I rarely succeeded with my alt chars and it mostly stopped working at the bloodqueen, Sindra and we dont start talking about LK. Iiirc 1 random run succeeded, but that was it.
Still being one of the top 25 heroic LK kills In the world, my realm first achievement for this is one of my proudest things.
94 min HC kill. What's your opinion on that?
It surprises me a lot that people recommend that you kill Lady Deathwhisper before Saurfang. My old dad guild from retail beat Saurfang and Blood Queen but couldn't kill LDW. I guess it's simply because those two fights really benefit from gear as it's mostly DPS races but LDW has more personal responsibility which better gear does not help.
If you can beat LDW early on, I would say that gear will really increase your odds in beating everything else in a timely fashion.
Don’t you have to kill ldw to get to saurfang? Or am I remembering wrong.
@@Klausenitzeryeah he's chatting shit lol you can't enter until he's dead
@@markjackson5333 I think he meant to do LDW on heroic vs Saurfang on heroic. Heroic Lady was harder than Heroic Saurfang for most guilds.
Either that or his memory is completely messed up. Lol.
Personally I consider Deathwhisper significantly harder than Saurfang. Saurfang is basically just a gear check, whereas Deathwhisper is very complicated mechanic fight. Also, Sindragosa is a lot harder fight than Putricide, back in original wtlk I remember my guild had Putricide on farm but was never able to kill Sindragosa.
Hi Will!
I'm going to wipe the raid a lot. :)
WTS Fish Feast. Whisper budget and gear score. LOL Just practicing!
nah, tons of guilds already clearing it on 10 man heroic, few have done 25 heroic on PTR, They said SSC and Sunwell and 60 naxx were guild killers, but end of xpac/people burnt out did more damage to guilds than the content
A lot of the bosses just don't feel complete without their heroic mechanics, namely DBS and Lana'Thel
ICC 25 (non hc) was easyer back in the day than Ulduar when it released. Those guilds that made it through Ulduar should be fine.
I am not saying it will be super hard with the current player base but i also think people are underestimating Defile and the importance of passing the debuff to others properly.
the first reset is about to end and there are 21 kills, making HLK the least progressed boss in classic wow's history and after 3 ptr sessions which is more than any other boss too. Wille was right and the comment section was wrong
ICC main reason for killing guilds will be because most the classes that u see in raid currently will be benched.
Yeah I dont think its going to be as hard as people remember.
If your guilds haven’t been on the PTR, chances are they won’t be killing much on HM and probably won’t even kill LK week one.
Technically no guilds killed hc LK during PTR. Two of the kills You might know of are already patched and are not possible anymore.
It is going to be hard, guilds will break, and most people won’t kill LK HMbefore 30%, or won’t kill at all
@@fatmitch1421wrong
@@Rouqueuh bro literally two updates on PTR making it not possible to kill LK the way nota did and and Chinese. You have no idea what you’re talking about
pumped to get the shirt off precious lol
Yeah. Its a push-over like all Classic content has been.
People are going to roll through there like never before.
Deja vu? I mean, didn't he said that for Ulduar, and what happened - ppl still play the game, guilds are not broken and even if they break, you can do anything with decent pug, especially GDKP.
People say this every time new content drops, if it breaks a guild then the guild was already broken.
I don't see how as when it first released it didn't seem too difficult until you got into Heroic and now you have all the data and tactics on the Raid with no need for progression to learn anything.
Super excited for this, unfortunately I still haven't been able to find a guild to raid with 😭
Do you not need to kill LK to unlock heroic, like it was back in the day?
no they removed that restriction for classic. so you can go straight into HC on day 1.
Our gear is not appropriate for heroic ICC. Back in the day, we had nearly 2 months of somewhat normal ICC farm before anyone could even do heroic because of the gating. Blizzard intentionally tuned heroic with this taken into account. Normal mode 25 man ICC gear is stronger than heroic ToTGC 25 man gear. And everybody is in tier 10 in that screenshot because they had 2 months of normal farm... I thought a channel committed to WoW classic would know this...
Pro blood dps tip: Dont put unholy frenzy on dragon you need to heal.
tip #2: play Unholy
@@brandonkruse6412 Unholy is a pussy spec. Blood is chad spec.
@@brandonkruse6412tip 3 play dual wield unholy cause classic is full of people who can’t fathom that you don’t want to play the meta builds😂
Tip #4: forget what you have heard about unholies, instead play frost. We are much cooler and also stronger(later on)
@@vishny1130 yeah look, frost is never gonna overtake UH . UH just gets stronger the quicker the fights get
when he said 2 words and showed marogar i thought he was gunna say "bone storm"
Proff, sind and LK are the only hard encounters
Eventually GDKP raids gonna clear it no problem after getting some gear
You forgot Lady Deathwhisper HC
deathwhisper and council are hard too with a capital H. and won't be made easier with gear.
@keirbourne5323 GDKP is the name of the game. Swippers will get their full BIS within a month of it dropping like all the other raids that came before it. They gonna farm it like Molten Core.
I did raid ICC back then. Have been on 2.4 rating in arenas and felt like a pro until I hit icc and wiped over and over again. Also at this time I realised pve is not for me.
Ill solo the retail version and live vicariously through the classic players, have fun guys!
You talk about Heroic week one but dont you need to kill the lich king to Switch to heroic ?
Nope that was in original Wrath but just like Sunwell in TBC classic they will release everything from start
Will the XP buff be removed when the patch drops?
No. The patch notes state that Joyous Journeys will be on for the foreseeable future. They probably want people to be able to level to 80 with little issue until Cata prepatch.
A raid that destroyed many guilds back in the day, including top raiding guilds, is going to do it again? You don’t say!!!!
It's the last raid in the last decent xpac, almost every guild is breaking up in ICC willie...
I felt like PP was harder than Lich King was for me.
Didnt you need to clear on normal to unlock the heroic?
Heroic Lich King the old guild breaker
Good luck everyone.
this will age incredibly bad
I know a version of the saronite bomb bug that still works. I wonder how many people will use it
i killed 11/12HC back in the day, and our guild disbaned at the lich king.... :D, i played on a smaller server on EU where only 1 Guild was able to kill 12/12, so im very excited what will happens this time