Good day, SWTOR community.

I am a pretty new player here, but have played many other mmo-s. It is a second time I'm starting SWTOR, first time it just repulsed me by its clunky graphics, and some other issues. Anyway, after almost two years I decided to give it a second try, mostly for story reasons. Heard many times that SWTOR have the best story content among other mmo, and at this point I'm pretty sure of it (have 30 lvl operative). Story is good and quest series on planets are pretty interesting and immersing as well. Also have hopes on the next expansion.

But in the end I am end-game pve-oriented player, and if mmo have no serious challenging endgame content it just cant hold me for long. I am currently playing WoW for a ~1,5 years, and though it have crappy 10-years old graphics, boring quests and dailies, I am loving raiding there. Not a top-edge progresser though (mostly because of a guild in what I'm playing), but pretty descent, and considering myself a good player. Maybe not an super-elite, but never had any real problems with any of raid mechanics thrown at me (mythic level, what has been "heroic" before "Warlords of Draenor" expansion came in).

So the essence of my question is the following: how difficult in general operations content in SWTOR is in comparsion with WoW raids? Is difficulty heavily depends on class (mdd, rdd, heal, tank)? What about difference in story/hardmode/nightmare? Also maybe someone can compare rotation diffiulty from classes in WoW and SWTOR?

Sure some players here played WoW as well, and are able to answer me. It would be pleasure to see answers from wise people with good understandig of game mechanics from both games.

Sorry for my bad english if any, it is not native for me.

how difficult in general operations content in SWTOR is in comparsion with WoW raids?

I have no idea since I have not touched WoW for over five years but I guess that depends on who you play with. Content gets real easy with good players and real hard with bad players.

Personally I enjoy the endgame in SWTOR very much and enjoy OPS with my guild and a PUG here and there several times a week.

The current level 60 content (Ravagers and ToS HM) is the hardest there ever was in SWTOR and it still doesn't reach WoW's mythic difficulty. Nevertheless, seven months after the raid released there are only a handful guilds who fully cleared both raids since there aren't any guilds that are as hardcore as Method, Midwinter or Paragon.

But if you are not that hardcore, I think you'll enjoy SWTOR. The raids are way smaller, raids have only 4 to 7 bosses but the mechanics are very interesting, there are quite a few bosses that are not just tank and spank. With the upcoming Fallen Empire changes in October, it will be easy for you to get into the operations because they will all be scaled up so you can choose from ten operations.

Until then, my recommendation would be to finish leveling up and learning your class, and finding a crowded server so that once Fallen Empire hits, you can find a guild that runs raids. Any PvE server will do, so if you are not on one now, transfer now while it only costs 90CC.

If you want to, you can already do some of the operations now above level before they are scaled up (need to be at least level 50 for the earliest raids). We still don't know how difficult the operations will become with 4.0 so it's hard to tell whether you'll have to read guides and have good equipment, or can just get carried through. I'm looking forward to the changes but there are a lot of progression guilds who lost interest because they only want new raids.

Yes, I'm not super-hardcore guy, just want to enjoy group content with descently skilled players (more than anything - they must be able to learn). Well, even some wipes are essential part of the fun that comes from it.

Maybe I'm not understanding this full enough, but after watching and reading about some operations, I come to think that most difficulty comes not from boss mechanics itself, but from somewhat clunky and bugged game mechanics.

About server - I am currently on Red Eclipse, because couple of my friends are playing there too. It is good or bad server for op content?

Yes, I'm not super-hardcore guy, just want to enjoy group content with descently skilled players (more than anything - they must be able to learn). Well, even some wipes are essential part of the fun that comes from it.

Maybe I'm not understanding this full enough, but after watching and reading about some operations, I come to think that most difficulty comes not from boss mechanics itself, but from somewhat clunky and bugged game mechanics.

About server - I am currently on Red Eclipse, because couple of my friends are playing there too. It is good or bad server for op content?

There is a bit of truth to that - especially anything which requires precision positing as the server seems to struggle with keeping player positioning updated in real-time, especially if the player is moving (jumping or coming to a full stop seems to allow the server to update correctly).

The developers also have a history of doing a very poor job of addressing tuning and bugs in a timely manner (3.0 exploit allowed players to gain gear off the last boss without any combat was left in game for over a month, many tuning and encounter bugs go months without correction).

Don't expect day one hotfixes to new content like in WoW, though many bugs can be overcome by players and depending on perspective, may be something some enjoy (figuring out how to beat content even with bugs).

SWTOR also tends to use very tight enrages and very high damage to increase difficulty - and while I consider it more the illusion of difficulty compared to progressively difficult mechanics, it can still be a challenge to perform at near maximum performance while dodging circles, killing adds, or what not.

Otherwise, there are lots of unique mechanics, puzzles, and encounters in SWTOR that I think you'll find engaging and enjoyable as they are different than anything you'd find in WoW.

There are also gorgeous and impressive Operations zones, many filled with great story and interesting characters, though just like WoW, some characters never really die.

I do agree with Jerba that with the upcoming changes, as a new player you should find plenty of content to keep you entertained for a good while, especially if you find a good guild group.

Have fun

Thanks all for answers. I love story content in mmo, and while korean gaems have very poor stories, here in SWTOR it is definetely a strong point of the game, and I intend to have a full taste of it. Guild Wars 2 also have great story and lore overall, but now we are just waiting for expansion, and GW2 have no real end-game content to keep player in, aside from endless collections, which is not quite my thing.

Had read a bit about classes, and it seems to me that melee have some quite difficult rotations etc, especially with need to keep an eye constantly on buff bar to watch for various procs and stacks (WoW have really useful add-ons for that). But for rdd it seems they just spam a small list of skills, and having it easy. Sniper, sorcerer for example. It is true? For me it is usually easier to play melee than rdd, but here it seems not the case.

Yes, I'm not super-hardcore guy, just want to enjoy group content with descently skilled players (more than anything - they must be able to learn). Well, even some wipes are essential part of the fun that comes from it.

Maybe I'm not understanding this full enough, but after watching and reading about some operations, I come to think that most difficulty comes not from boss mechanics itself, but from somewhat clunky and bugged game mechanics.

About server - I am currently on Red Eclipse, because couple of my friends are playing there too. It is good or bad server for op content?

Mechanics are the biggest contributor to difficulty, yes, but some of the bosses are DPS or healing checks, and many bosses require careful use of DCDs from the tanks. So the bosses do require more personal skill than just clearing mechanics.

There is currently only one boss with clunky and bugged mechanics: Underlurker in Temple of Sacrifice. Every other ops boss is functional. There were issues with another boss: Torque in The Ravagers but they have made changes to improve the situation there. Soa from Eternity Vault was broken, but that was fixed a LONG time ago.

Had read a bit about classes, and it seems to me that melee have some quite difficult rotations etc, especially with need to keep an eye constantly on buff bar to watch for various procs and stacks (WoW have really useful add-ons for that). But for rdd it seems they just spam a small list of skills, and having it easy. Sniper, sorcerer for example. It is true? For me it is usually easier to play melee than rdd, but here it seems not the case.

Melee have a harder time because mechanics tend to break their rotations more frequently not because of having to watch for procs and stacks; procs and stacks were greatly reduced some time ago (late 2.x). And BW has added highlights/golden glowy around abilities that are best used at certain times, so one does not HAVE to watch buff bars. There is only one Advanced class/discipline that has a small list of skills: arsenal mercenary. (gunnery commando on the pub side)

SWTOR's biggest problem is awful engine. It's not for operations at all.

In 8 man fights you can get 20-30 fps on high end pc, 16 man isn't comfortable to play at all.

Unlike wow there are no addons to imrove your interface.

Targeting is super bad, sometimes it just hard to switch taget.

So the biggest challenge in swtor is fighting lags and your user interface.

Devs realized it long ago, so they barely waste resources on operations. This game is more focused on single player/story than endgame content.

Raiding in WoW is not fun. I really have better things to do than memorize 40 mechanics for each boss as well as the 200 trash mob spells I need to interrupt.

and others find ignoring mechanics and facerolling everything isnt fun for raiding either. If you prefer not doing mechanics, tactical flashpoints might be up your alley

I can't compare with WoW raids since I never played that game, but ops in SW:TOR are plenty hard. My ops group has barely been able to clear the first bosses in each of the level 60 hardmodes. We've attempted some level 55 nightmare modes as well, with varying levels of success.

My biggest gripe is the huge gap between storymode and hardmode. In the first month or so after 3.0 the new storymode ops provided an interesting challenge, but now it seems that all endgame content is either trivial or impossible. At least when we're all playing with our mains. On altruns we've had some tough times with Underlurker. Last Saturday we wiped four times before I (healer) and one of the DPS swapped roles, and then we beat it with only three people standing at the end. That was the most entertaining run I've had in a while.

To compare the difficulty lvl of sw:tor and wow is pretty hard, because the raids differ in a lot of aspects. But first i must admit that my active raid time in wow is a while ago and i just started to play again. So i am not talking of the actual wow content in particular, but about my overall raid experience of some years in both game's end contents.

1. Gameplay in general feels more active for me than in wow, because there is no auto**** mechanic and u always have to press a key during the whole time to achieve max dps/hps. And the animations are great!

2. Fights are not that complex ins sw:tor than in wow, but u have no addons (or nearly no) to track the mechanics, so its all to urself

3. Boss mechanics are much more diversified in wow than in swtor

4. Raiding in 8 man groups (swtor) is a lot of fun, because there is a lot of room for some talking and u get ur raidmembers much better known then in the bigger wow raids (10-20)

5. Raiding in 8 man groups (swtor) weights the players stronger, so if the performance is pretty differend a good player can push a group aswell as a bad player can decelerate the whole group. This is motivating and frustrating at the same time, but a very big disadvantage regarding player fluctuation.

6. WoW has 4 different modes, so every raidgroup will find the right one. Swtor raid content difficulty has varied every operation like the coulor of every lightsaber, so the raid groups needed to adjust their orientation just as often. This led to greater player and guild fluctuation as i ever have seen in wow. Trying to press the whole swtor raidcommunity in just too different modes dont satisfy anyone.

7. The release interval of new content is much too long. In swtor u have to wait over 1 year to get something new to raid. wow has the much better content management regarding to raids. Bioware/Ea (swtor) either doesent have the resources to care about raids or just dont want a viable raidcommunity. Most players get bored or frustrated at some point and leave the game/ur raid group and u will ALWAYS searching for new players to keep on raiding.

I dont know how it is looking for WoW but player and guild fluctuation is a very big problem in swtor mainly induced (for the raid members) by the points 6./7. And after playing since release now, without any noticeable pause, i dont see how this will ever change.

U can have alot of fun in swtor, since u will meet a lot of friendly people here, who dont care for raids, for dps for gear or for progression. Raiding sm is fun and u will find groups pretty fast, but it is not challenging and motivating at all. just a nice amusement for in between. Finding a stable riad group for HC will be hard, because most groups left/will leave. U can try to ride against the mills, but u will never reach ur goal.

So at all ... if u just want to play some casual stuff, swtor is pretty fine ... because its SW and the atmosphere is great. But DONT look here for stable raids/endcontent plz ... u will be disapointed.

So the essence of my question is the following: how difficult in general operations content in SWTOR is in comparsion with WoW raids? Is difficulty heavily depends on class (mdd, rdd, heal, tank)? What about difference in story/hardmode/nightmare? Also maybe someone can compare rotation diffiulty from classes in WoW and SWTOR?

Hey there,

WoW & SWTOR raids are 2 similar yet completely different beasts. In SWTOR, this current tier of Hard Modes (because there was no Nightmare RIP) was very dependent on class/group composition for world progression kills considering the first few guilds to full clear 10/10 ToS & Ravagers were comprised of virtually all Bounty Hunters. WoW does have a few fights where having a Druid Tank could benefit you more than a Warrior to deal with certain mechanics, like Tyrant Velhari, but SWTOR felt a little more imbalanced for this tier of content. Also this tier of content in SWTOR was a melee DPS' hell. It was very difficult to perform as well as other ranged classes because of all the mechanics, like Torque's floor vents, you had to deal with while ranged classes could sit back, relax, and spam their rotations. This is an issue mainly because melee aren't parsing higher than most ranged, which is a class balance issue. If you take all of this aside, the raids this expansion were actually a blast to learn all the mechanics for & execute properly.

The easiest way to describe the differences in difficulties from WoW to SWTOR would be Normal = Story, Heroic = Hard Mode, & Mythic = Nightmare, but this isn't exactly the case. With this last tier in SWTOR only Story Mode & Hard Mode were released for ToS & Ravagers, so the developers tried to make a "Hardmare" tier by merging Hard Mode & Nightmare Mode into 1 as what appears to be a failed experiment. In WoW when you go from Normal to Heroic you mainly see a difference in damage output as well as HP increases from NPC's & bosses where as in SWTOR when you go from Story to Hard there are 1 or 2 mechanics differences on boss fights, which is a nice change. Of course from Heroic to Mythic as well as Hard to Nightmare you see an increase in everything from HP to damage output as well as additional mechanics in an attempt to make the encounters truly a challenge, but overall the Mythic encounters I've seen in WoW are generally more challenging and unforgiving than SWTOR (and no I'm not even referring to pre-nerf Blackhand or currently Mythic Archimonde [which looks insane btw]).

Also, in regards to the rotations difficulties, I would argue that most rotations in WoW are very simple after they removed a lot of the abilities classes had, but both games are generally in the same boat as far as difficulty to execute the rotations is concerned. Both games have classes that are super simple, like MM Hunter & AP PT, to some more difficult rotations, like Demo Lock & IO Mercs. The only differences between how the classes play is in WoW you have an auto attack that goes by itself compared to not having that in SWTOR. Besides that, playing classes in each game feels very similarly.

Hope this post was informative & I didn't rant for nothing

Hey there,

 

WoW & SWTOR raids are 2 similar yet completely different beasts. In SWTOR, this current tier of Hard Modes (because there was no Nightmare RIP) was very dependent on class/group composition for world progression kills considering the first few guilds to full clear 10/10 ToS & Ravagers were comprised of virtually all Bounty Hunters. WoW does have a few fights where having a Druid Tank could benefit you more than a Warrior to deal with certain mechanics, like Tyrant Velhari, but SWTOR felt a little more imbalanced for this tier of content. Also this tier of content in SWTOR was a melee DPS' hell. It was very difficult to perform as well as other ranged classes because of all the mechanics, like Torque's floor vents, you had to deal with while ranged classes could sit back, relax, and spam their rotations. This is an issue mainly because melee aren't parsing higher than most ranged, which is a class balance issue. If you take all of this aside, the raids this expansion were actually a blast to learn all the mechanics for & execute properly.

 

The easiest way to describe the differences in difficulties from WoW to SWTOR would be Normal = Story, Heroic = Hard Mode, & Mythic = Nightmare, but this isn't exactly the case. With this last tier in SWTOR only Story Mode & Hard Mode were released for ToS & Ravagers, so the developers tried to make a "Hardmare" tier by merging Hard Mode & Nightmare Mode into 1 as what appears to be a failed experiment. In WoW when you go from Normal to Heroic you mainly see a difference in damage output as well as HP increases from NPC's & bosses where as in SWTOR when you go from Story to Hard there are 1 or 2 mechanics differences on boss fights, which is a nice change. Of course from Heroic to Mythic as well as Hard to Nightmare you see an increase in everything from HP to damage output as well as additional mechanics in an attempt to make the encounters truly a challenge, but overall the Mythic encounters I've seen in WoW are generally more challenging and unforgiving than SWTOR (and no I'm not even referring to pre-nerf Blackhand or currently Mythic Archimonde [which looks insane btw]).

 

Also, in regards to the rotations difficulties, I would argue that most rotations in WoW are very simple after they removed a lot of the abilities classes had, but both games are generally in the same boat as far as difficulty to execute the rotations is concerned. Both games have classes that are super simple, like MM Hunter & AP PT, to some more difficult rotations, like Demo Lock & IO Mercs. The only differences between how the classes play is in WoW you have an auto attack that goes by itself compared to not having that in SWTOR. Besides that, playing classes in each game feels very similarly.

 

Hope this post was informative & I didn't rant for nothing

I generally agree with this - and would point out one more fairly large difference.

In WoW - Mythic (hardest difficulty) raids REQUIRE 20 players, no more. no less. In SWTOR, a group of 8 players can take on HM (hardest current difficulty) or NiM (previous hardest difficulty).

The reason the hardest content in WoW requires 20 players is to allow the developers much more flexibility to design and tune content with certain assumptions (all classes and buffs / debuffs will be present), while avoiding issues that come with scaling the group size up or down and trying to maintain relatively equal difficulty between raid sizes.

It also reduces the amount of class stacking to cheese mechanics like we all saw with the BHs for Revan.

I'd also go so far as to point out the lack of encounter design or class changes in SWTOR to address the preponderance of BH stacking for Revan shows they either don't have the manpower, or don't care as much about raid content, as Blizzard.

I cannot imagine Blizzard leaving a Mythic fight unchanged for months (or class abilities unchanged) if every group completing the content was class stacking to the tune we had in 3.0 HMs.

7. The release interval of new content is much too long. In swtor u have to wait over 1 year to get something new to raid. wow has the much better content management regarding to raids. Bioware/Ea (swtor) either doesent have the resources to care about raids or just dont want a viable raidcommunity. Most players get bored or frustrated at some point and leave the game/ur raid group and u will ALWAYS searching for new players to keep on raiding.

I disagree with this point.

When I played WoW (for seven years), one of the biggest complaints was that in the two year cycle of a given expansion, the first year had several content updates where new dungeons and raids came out, but in the second year - specifically after the announcement of the next expansion - content updates STOPPED. So you had a year of good flow of content and then a year of NOTHING.

Furthermore, when an expansion came out in WoW ALL the old raids were instantly made obsolete; the ONLY reason to run those old raids was for achievements and nostalgia. In SWTOR with 2.x, the 1.x operations were still viable methods of gearing up and they were a modest challenge. Same thing goes for 2.x operations in 3.x. In WoW there was no "We have a bunch of guildies online, let's go do Molten Core and have some laughs." But in SWTOR that happens a lot (at least in my guild )

I disagree with this point.

 

When I played WoW (for seven years), one of the biggest complaints was that in the two year cycle of a given expansion, the first year had several content updates where new dungeons and raids came out, but in the second year - specifically after the announcement of the next expansion - content updates STOPPED. So you had a year of good flow of content and then a year of NOTHING.

 

Furthermore, when an expansion came out in WoW ALL the old raids were instantly made obsolete; the ONLY reason to run those old raids was for achievements and nostalgia. In SWTOR with 2.x, the 1.x operations were still viable methods of gearing up and they were a modest challenge. Same thing goes for 2.x operations in 3.x. In WoW there was no "We have a bunch of guildies online, let's go do Molten Core and have some laughs." But in SWTOR that happens a lot (at least in my guild )

Both games have had long periods of content droughts, something which seems to be standard for MMOs.

Interestingly though, if you look at SWTOR from launch and overlay the same time period in WoW, both games have had ~nine raid zones released in the same time period (not counting one boss / WB content).

I'd give the advantage to WoW though given the size of their raid zones tends to be larger than SWTOR (most have six or more bosses, a few have 12+ bosses).

As for content being obsolete in WoW, I'd say the same thing happens in SWTOR as outside of broken set bonuses (sets where old is better than new), the gear which drops in old content is irrelevant (just not to the magnitude of WoW).

I do enjoy running old stuff with friends in SWTOR, but a part of me would also like to be able to run obsolete stuff without needing a group just for mechanics.

and others find ignoring mechanics and facerolling everything isnt fun for raiding either. If you prefer not doing mechanics, tactical flashpoints might be up your alley

Never said I didn't enjoy mechanics, I just said I didn't enjoy a shart ton. By others do you mean "some" others? Raiding only became a mechanic fest because WoW set that standard in LK. By no means does raiding need to consist of 50 boss abilities that test your skills at memorizing a strategy guide.

I disagree with this point.

 

When I played WoW (for seven years), one of the biggest complaints was that in the two year cycle of a given expansion, the first year had several content updates where new dungeons and raids came out, but in the second year - specifically after the announcement of the next expansion - content updates STOPPED. So you had a year of good flow of content and then a year of NOTHING.

Yep. Cata and MoP last patch lasted a year. 6.2 is supposed to be the last patch of WoD and they haven't even announced a new expansion yet.

And the animations are great!

I just couldn't get past that. Name me one cool animation on operative. As a healer you just wave your hand, as a concealment you just stab and all the stab animations look almost the same.

As a sage you just cast with your hands and all the casting looks almost the same. Yeah, totally, great animations!

From what I hear wow animations look a lot more flashy

I just couldn't get past that. Name me one cool animation on operative. As a healer you just wave your hand, as a concealment you just stab and all the stab animations look almost the same.

As a sage you just cast with your hands and all the casting looks almost the same. Yeah, totally, great animations!

Caster animations in wow are more colorful but melee animations are terrible. At least in swtor mobs react to your hits. Attacks are more fluid and realistic.

I've always been curious with WoW raids how long a farm clear takes. Consider the 13 boss current stuff, is it an ~2hr farm clear or significantly longer?

I was put off by W* when I heard GA was like a 5 hr farm clear due to all the trash. I'd rather fight bosses on different classes in different roles than fight trash mobs all week.

I've always been curious with WoW raids how long a farm clear takes. Consider the 13 boss current stuff, is it an ~2hr farm clear or significantly longer?

 

I was put off by W* when I heard GA was like a 5 hr farm clear due to all the trash. I'd rather fight bosses on different classes in different roles than fight trash mobs all week.

Currently farming Heroic Hellfire Citadel on a weekly basis and it takes roughly 3-4 hours including AFKs, trash, loot, etc. As long as you're 1 shotting bosses clearing the instance should be a 1 day raid, but for most it might take more than 1 day to do so. Of course this time will go down as people get higher geared, but this is currently how long it takes my group.

Otherwise, there are lots of unique mechanics, puzzles, and encounters in SWTOR

Which sadly just don't exist outside of SWTOR Raids. Puzzles like with Operator 9 ? Nothing.

Operatioons / Raids are the ONLY place in the WHOLE game with meaningful puzzles - exceptions prove the rule, so to say.