When I started running heroics, most of them went fine – wipes were only because we were goofing off and/or it was 4 am, with few exceptions. For me it’s anything involving vehicle controls (Oculus, TOC) or FoS. Because everything else was so easy and tank-and-spank, I had no idea that there was something else I should be doing. Between all the spell reflecting, aoe, and the tactics for Bronjahm, I quickly declared it a horrid place and I never wanted to do it again.

And of course, with lfd, I got into that every single day for a week. But after practice and some research, I finally got it down and I was so excited! Now I love that place, and PoS, and HoR because there’s some kind of challenge. There’s suspense.. can we do it? Are we gonna die? Is the Lich King going to hit me for 100000 damage? OMG we’re gonna make it! Yay! It’s exciting.. If I didn’t want the excitement I’d stick to real life.

That’s why I want to raid. I find all the mechanics completely crazy and odd and creative and I want everyone to work together and figure out how to beat it. I don’t want to kill this super epic character in 30 seconds.. it’s just weird and uneventful.

I use the 5-mans as segways into learning how to raid correctly on my alts. I try to figure rotations and such out on my own, so having the 5-mans nerfed isn’t helping me learn how to dps properly for raids.

My main is a healer. On her, I’m glad the 5 mans are easier because I basically just want to get in, get my frost emblems for the day and get out. However, my alt rogue is a different story. I’ve heard a lot of people say rogues are easy to learn. And to a degree I don’t disagree. But it just sucks that a 2 minute boss fight, where I could have broken out all kinds of “kewl moves”, has been reduced to 30 seconds and I can barely get 5 stacks and a Eviserate off.

Somone above stated that they wished there were hardmode 5-mans. I know this would never work logistically, but for fresh 80s, I wish it was a possibility.

~~Mort~~

At one point, I ran into a mage who did not know how to sheep, since it had never been needed in the heroic Wrath content she’d been doing.

While I’ll admit that shorter heroics can be nice, short doesn’t equate to not requiring much for strategic or thoughtful behavior. Overall, though, the teaching needs to start much earlier than level 80.

Even the low level dungeons are too easy. I remember back in the day dungeons were pain. God help doing strat -baron or scholo as a fresh 60, I lost count of the fail groups I got for those places. After a Disconnect and somone leaving we 3 manned the entire purple side mara. What’s worse is that at 45 as a Demo Lock with a couple heirlooms I know I could solo it. I’d probably find it easier as either of the other 2 lock specs. The main reason I’ve gone destro is that everything dies too fast, even bosses. I’m looking forward to 58 just because there might be a challenge in the TBC instances at least briefly as they are better tuned.

@Amanal

They are making it easy. As weeks go on there will be a stacking buff as I understand it.
.-= Echo´s last blog ..The new LFG system =-.

What use is an Instance that people blow through in 15 minutes to spend on class mechanics and learning? This is like saying lets go back to Uldaman to teach the tank what to do.

I would add to this that Alts probably know the fights already, it is the gear they are after, the warrior may have a different perspective on the fight but the fight mechanics remain unchanged.

Players probably learn the most when put under the greatest stress, and that isn’t heroics anymore. The biggest stress on a raider is wherever the guild he plays with is playing the progression game. As such anything that will speed his getting gear shouldn’t be a bad thing.

Now if Blizzard made say ICC easier then perhaps it is dumbing down the game for the worse. However, in making the high end raids available without the gear grind, is something a new player will benefit from and enjoy. Players mostly want to join 9 or 24 of their friends and have fun.

This is just a variation on the concept of “Whaaa Blizzard makes getting gear too easy, I want noobs to suffer as I did, they get it too easy… whaaa”

One big change that was missing, a send me forward in time chat with Chromie in Culling of Strathholm so we could miss the game monologue.

“seeya at the repair bot”

Not for every one. I didnt do any heroics until well after being mostly nax 25 geared – I started with getting pvp epics from wintergrasp and by honour.

http://blog.cold-comfort.org/timetoemblem-ratios/
.-= Gravity´s last blog ..Woo more stamina for us! =-.

It does get annoying that some instances are very easy now, and stuff that would have got you kicked a year ago just gets a chuckle. However, there does need to be a learning curve, too, and there needs to be a reason for the playerbase to do heroics, since they’re the main way that your average starting 80 can gear up. No one running heroics = big gear gap for that fresh 80 (roughly the distance from Naxxramas to Icecrown, to be precise, remember when you had to raid to gear up for the next raid? Lets not go back to that).

So the plus side of the current system is that everyone has access to and a reason to run heroics, and new 80s (or alts you’ve left by the wayside) have a way to gear up without too much effort (although it isn’t 0 effort, because it does in fact take several days worth of play time running heroics to actually exhaust the badge vendors for one spec, and you have to gem and enchant it all, and hope you get the right weapon drops from the 232 heroics). The downside is that everyone is atrociously overgeared for these places, trivializing the encounters. That new level 80 is going to learn some bad habits, and nowhere is he going to be forced to unlearn them or wipe/get kicked (unless its really, really bad).

Heroics don’t play the same role they did in BC. In BC, they weeded people out so only the best could break into the raiding game (until late in the xpac when Blizz significantly relaxed this). By the time you could clear heroic Shadow Labs and Shattered Halls, Karazhan, Gruul and Mag might not seem quite so bad.

The goal in wrath is to get more people raiding. Heroics become less of a weeder, and a place to learn the basics. (this is what the normal level 70 instances used to do for people). No, you don’t learn how to become massively skilled, but you do learn that there are tanks, healers, and dps, and roughly how you match up to others. You learn basic boss mechanics (Keris–>Hodir, Volazj–>Yogg, UP Gormok—>Real Gormok, etc etc) and how not to stand in fire (maybe). Sure in the 200s, you could stand in front of dark smash all day in UK, and most healers now could keep you alive and you’d be none the wiser.

However, if you go to the 232 instances, you better believe if you pull that crap you will probably die. Pull too much aggro in HoR? You ded. Stand in Ick’s poison nova? ded. Stand in the ae fire on the pit pulls right after Ick? Still ded.

When wrath came out, the progression (and learning curve) was easy 200s (say, UK, Nexus), hard heroics (Halls of Lightning), Naxxramas.

Now, the progression is 200 heroics, 219 heroics, 232 heroics. Heroics still teach new players, just the curve is adjusted and the old hard heroics are part of the easymode crowd. Different pixels, same effect.

So are the 200 heroics too easy, allowing noobs to get easy eipcs? Perhaps. But the noobs are still going to be too busy wiping to Halls of Reflection to ever get raid invites, until they learn how to do it right.

If not, teach them yourself or don’t invite them to your raids. Its not like there weren’t scrubs signing up for Naxx and Maly when Wrath started.