Hum, while I have no personal experience in vanilla, I felt it prudent to drop in and just repeat something I've seen Vixin of Life in Group 5 say fairly frequently (and she's bounced around guilds in top 50 world for a good long while) -- she always comments and says that current boss fights are much more difficult (at least on release and heroic) then the old vanilla fights were, and even BC.
Probably it depends on each individual's definition of what makes something difficult, and whether or not you count only normal, or only heroic, or the overall, or just the race to world first.
I've always been a middle of the pack raider, I was content to remain where I was at rather than try to guild hop up to the really good guilds (our best was like in the 1000s or 2000s). So for me, the difficulty was primarily those old timers in the guild who emmm, could not move. Or change targets fast enough. Or hit the right cooldowns. And, of course, the unending parade of tanks . . . but for the top guilds, there are still really, really difficult encounters. That one heal-boss in the Cata Rag raid, for instance, had numerous top guilds stuck for weeks. Healers were stacked to hell -- Vixin put up a blog about what it felt like to be held back by her class for the first time in memory (http://lifeingroup5.com/?p=2445 it's a good read), though she was eventually rotated in and was part of the first kill. But you know. Stuff. I certainly never saw fights at that level of difficulty. I wanted to, but we were slow, and nerfs.
*coughcough* to demonstrate the perspective of a top raider in wow.... yeah I'm copying from her blog:
just sayin'.
Probably it depends on each individual's definition of what makes something difficult, and whether or not you count only normal, or only heroic, or the overall, or just the race to world first.
I've always been a middle of the pack raider, I was content to remain where I was at rather than try to guild hop up to the really good guilds (our best was like in the 1000s or 2000s). So for me, the difficulty was primarily those old timers in the guild who emmm, could not move. Or change targets fast enough. Or hit the right cooldowns. And, of course, the unending parade of tanks . . . but for the top guilds, there are still really, really difficult encounters. That one heal-boss in the Cata Rag raid, for instance, had numerous top guilds stuck for weeks. Healers were stacked to hell -- Vixin put up a blog about what it felt like to be held back by her class for the first time in memory (http://lifeingroup5.com/?p=2445 it's a good read), though she was eventually rotated in and was part of the first kill. But you know. Stuff. I certainly never saw fights at that level of difficulty. I wanted to, but we were slow, and nerfs.
*coughcough* to demonstrate the perspective of a top raider in wow.... yeah I'm copying from her blog:
Quote:It’s with no small amount of reluctance that I admit to all of you, that some of my darkest, hardest weeks have been spent in this tier. I struggled, so much, on HM Baleroc, knowing that if I had been a holy paladin, the fight would have been that much easier. (Bear in mind, this is pre-nerf; the fight is fundamentally different today). Night after night of attempt, of me not measuring up, of trying to find the absolute perfect rotation to keep my soaker targets alive (bless them, they even took survival talents to try and help me out), of having a healing lead constantly leaning on me to step up my game, of feeling absolutely and completely broken down, of trying to squeeze every bit out of a mana pool that seemed to evaporate in the blink of an eye, took its toll on me both mentally and physically. And I tell you, I have never, in all of my raiding days, been so thankful for our first kill.
just sayin'.