If the Hyjal/Sunwell effect took place anywhere in Wrath, I’d say it was between Naxx and Ulduar.

Did we wipe a few times? Sure. But we downed the whole place and beat Saurfang with only one person getting the mark (and got the achievement for it). This past week we went in for the second time and one-shot Saurfang, again with only 1 mark.

Afterwards we assembled a huge force of 12 people and farmed 25-man ICC for rep. With judicial use of CC, the trash is very doable. That said, now that we know that both 10-man and 25-man yields the same rep, we’re going to stick to farming 10-man for rep from now on.

My point: ICC10 feels like it is tuned just about right. I actually feel bad for people who farmed nice gear from ToGC because they must just stomp the place. And, while I don’t know about the bosses in 25-man, as long as you have 12 competent people in the raid, the trash shouldn’t wipe any group.

I haven’t been able to try ICC25 because my server has a stupid habit where all pugs need to have the achievement and since I am currently unguilded due to my ever-changing schedule I haven’t been able to get it yet. (Side note: our server is seriously crazy about the linking achievement thing, we had people LFG the first week the raid was out asking for the achievement. Part of me wants to believe it was a joke, but the other part knows that it was probably someone who doesn’t know much about the game trying to get an easy pug going)

What Lodur is trying to say(corect me if I’m wrong) is that the increase in difficulty from 25man ToC(reg) to ICC 25(reg) is very significant, akin to the increase in difficulty from Hyjal to Sunwell. No where is it said that ICC25 is as hard as Sunwell pre-nerf. The comparison is made that 25ICC reg is much harder than 25ToC reg and that this difficulty increase is causing a division amongst players, which is somewhat reminiscent of Hyjal —> Sunwell.

The argument is, however, different. Currently, players are claiming ICC25 is either too hard, or too easy while for Sunwell, many people called it too hard, whereas others thought the difficulty was just right. And frankly, I disagree with both camps, I think ICC needs its difficulty buffed.

As it stands, the harder of the 4 fights is between Lady Deathwhisper and Deathbringer Saurfang. Both of these require something ToC25 didn’t(outside HM) and that was raid co-ordination. In ToC25, every player acting as an individual could succed while in ICC25, a group of pure individuals with no raid concern will not likely kill Deathwhisper or DBSaurfang or Gunship battle even.

Naxx80 didn’t come at all close in difficulty to Kara (particularly before Aran was nerfed).

The heroic version of ToC (ToGC) doesn’t mirror Hyjal’s difficulty (ToGC is a lot more difficult).

The trash in ICC doesn’t come at all close to the trash in Sunwell.

The bosses in ICC normal don’t come at all close to Sunwell pre-nerf, so it’s not really a good basis to compare.

There has been at least one successful ICC25 PUG on my server, so far.

I agree the jump in difficulty from ToC and ICC normal is rather steep. But if you’ve been doing the heroic versions, it’s really not. And it’s left to be seen how heroic ICC25 stacks up to SWP.
.-= Lume´s last blog ..3.3: The Fall of the Lich King… So Far =-.

Heroic 25-man Faction Champs can be tough for us because so many people have never PvP’ed in our guild, but we usually get it after a few tries (and sooner, depending on the make-up of the NPCs).

Other than the occasional hiccup on the champs, the only wall we’ve been hitting has been heroic 25-man Anub’arak. It’s easy as pie on normal, but we run into RNG, plus it’s so buggy (no pun intended), with Anub retargetting like mad during the burrow phase if its target happens to be on a rock, etc. We’re hoping, with the added gear from ICC-25, that we’ll get to phase 3 *every* time, so the healers get more practice (at this point we get there maybe half the time).

Given how easy ICC is (in both 25- and 10-man), we suspect that it’ll be REALLY tough in heroic. We can’t wait!

Oh… and the Gunship Battle? Best. Encounter. Evar. Jetpacks are win! (get a priest to levitate you and you can go faaaaaar!!! Just be careful not to overextend and fall off!). I love everything about that encounter, down to the slight tilt of the ship when it takes off, and the way the enemy’s ship “peels off” by taking a huge turn. Too awesome for words!

As for the bosses, in 25 ICC, we didn’t have too much trouble downing the first 3 bosses the first week. We couldn’t get Saurfang down before Tuesday hit, but we were below 20%. That’s probably just a matter of refining the strategy that works for us (our DPS seems to lag behind a bit as well).

In a 10 man ICC semi-pug, we couldn’t clear Marrowgar, but that was more a factor of our tank being undergeared than the difficulty of the instance. And we still owned the trash even with only 2 healers and an undergeared offtank.

Yeah. Not Sunwell trash, at least, not yet

What it comes down to is that Sunwell took a very, very, very long time for top end guilds to clear in comparison to ICC. I was in a top 100 guild back in Sunwell and it took us nights of wipes to get Kalecgos down and subsequently Brutallus, Felmyst, Twins and Muru, where as now it takes people one to two attempts to kill bosses in ICC. There were probably 200 guilds in the world that got Muru down pre nerf.
.-= Wrathy´s last blog ..Icecrown Trash Explained =-.

If you are raiding in a 25 man guild and you have cleared ToC 25 and a few of the hardmodes YOU ARE NOT A CASUAL GUILD

Bashen who posted above would be a casual player.

Right now I only raid twice a week for 6 hours. Clear everthing. I am not a casual gamer.