I tanked a few Heroics on my Feral Druid before I canceled for Rift, and i gotta tell ya, i didn't mind tanking in WOTLK, screw Cat though, It simply wasn't fun.

Hell, DPS itself wasn't even fun either, Cat in general just isn't fun..

the instances are long and stupid.

Hell the instances in Rift are Hard and Long, but surprisingly it's actually fun. Probably cause you can switch and out of different specs for different parts of the dungeon that it makes it interesting.

Not really sure, Cataclysm just blew though.

 

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Are people seriously so forgetful?

WOTLK heroics used to be as long when people were wearing green and ilvl187 blue at the start.

It just got to 10-15 mins at later part of the expansion when people outgear it with much better gear.

With a large portion of players in their ivl346 or higher gear, most Cata heroics take less than 30 mins to complete. With 4.1 patch, most people will be at 353 or higher, and will easily cut down the instance time by another 5 mins or more.

Even at this point, most heroic instances are cleared in exactly the WOTLK manner now, i.e AOE fest.

My guild was rushing for realm first level 25 guild earlier this week. We chained run Heroic HOO killing 6 bosses (out of 7) at 20 mins max per run.

Game content needs to be challenging at the beginning of an expansion. This provides the players sense of achievement when they grow their characters.

During classic, it was the "hell, i spent 5 hours in BRD -- you guys having it easy"
During BC, it was "hell, i spent 5 hours in shadowlab -- you guys having it easy"
During WOTLK, it was "hell, I spent 5 hours in occulus -- you guys having it easy"

Why the hell would you expect to run heroic instance at the beginning of an expansion at 10-15 mins each?

Also, the Call to Arms reward will be BoA. Since most people have a alt heal or alt tank (or alt spec) somewhere, everyone can benefit from this change.

 

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I might just have to find a reason to start running heroics in bear mode again, even though I won't be properly geared or gemmed to be a good bear tank. Hell, just for the mounts and perks alone it will be worth it so I can get more bling! I'll be one of those crappy alt tanks that you guys are griping about...such sweet justice!!


/smartass mode off

 

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Hardly, the last two I attempted the groups could not even get past the first mob's and disbanded!


Cata heorics are like more like the last two ICC 5-mans only harder and to the day Cata was released the player base was still struggling with completing those particularly the last one. Or have you forgotten how many times you got that last one doing random and watched people leave as fast as the were porting in because the knew it was a fail waiting to happen?


Cata Heroics are flat out too difficult for the random pug player base in WoW to complete, it is as simple as that.

Not even close. Average wait time in WOTLK for DPS at prime time was 15 minutes and if you got a group that was under-geared (ie. appropriately geared) for the instance, they would normally take around 45 minutes. Total time to do an instance with all appropriately geared players? 1 hour.

I think Cataclysm dungeons take a wee bit longer unless the group grossly over-gears it.

 

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BRD had like what? 12 bosses? blackrock spire was REALLY long which is why players broke it into UBRS/LBRS because we couldn't stand doing ALL of it at once. not only that most groups never did all of BRD because it was just so big with so many bosses it was hard.

the fact of the matter is this, myself, the majority of the posters on these forums, and all my friends have the same opinion of cata heroic dungeons and that is that they were too hard, especially with the changes made to tanking/healing. does this mean everyone playing wow feels the same way? maybe not, maybe we're the vocal minority on this but I highly doybt it basing it if on nothing else... the fact they are trying to find ways to get players to play classes they don't want to play.


an example. I used to heal offspec in wotlk if for nothing else so i wouldn't have to wait in the 15 minute queue.. which looking at queue times now would be a godsend. BUT they changed healing enough to make it not as enjoyable, too difficult, and just plain out not worth it. If I queue now i have a 15-20+ minute wait as a healer. in wotlk it was 5 minutes at the very slowest of time when I queue'd as a healer.

I understand where blizzard coming from too in the sense that people were face rolling instances and that needed to change. the problem comes from when they say let's make the instances hard.. oh and just because that might not be enough let's make it so tanks can't reallyhold ago anymore and that heals really only have a 3% chance that their heal will be enough to keep the tank alive before the next enemy hits him.

that's the problem. as a healer i used to not have to worry about healing agro. but then they removed all my threat reduction skills/talents and gave tanks less snap agro abilities/talents to help with it. that's poor game design.


they could have made it so that instances were harder by adding in new strats(and they did) and by having mobs hit harder and have more health. and i think they did all these things. they could have left healing the way it was only made spells cost more so that you couldn't just heal nonstop. but they didn't, they not only made spells cost more but changed the mechanics of everything so not only are you running out mana in a fight, you don't have enough mana to keep up the tank + yourself + 3 dps. tanks can't hold agro as well for whatever reason. there's really no need for this, they deisigned the game to have a tank.. a character in which to hold agro so the dps can nuke things, yet at the same time ruined the concept of this as aoe threat is dismal anymore. i understand they don't want a tank to go in and spam aoe threat and have people aoe mobs down anymore, but at the same time aoe threat is how you keep 3-4 mobs on you so that dps can focus fire one down and not lose the other 2-3 mobs to the healer because of healing agro.

it's pretty simple, they screwed up and don't want to admit it so they're putting in a "new shiny" that will clearly be labeled a failure.. so much so it already has been labeled such and will have to prove us wrong. but all we'll see is undergeared tanks, underskilled tanks, etc. etc. and seeing as on heals i have such a long wait it tells me that tanks are the only shortage we have out there.

 

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I wonder if we are all playing the same game.

I have 3 tank classes (Pally, Druid, DK). I usually do at least 2 random heroics (RH) per day, mostly as tank, but I do queue as healer for my pally/druid some days.

Over the last 4 months, I must have done over 150 RHs or more with total random strangers -- players with ungemmed, unchanted gear -- DPS doing less than 6K DPS, healers with 70k mana that OOM even on regular trash pull, and tank with 120K HP.

At Cata launch, the only 3 instances that I will even called them hard are Stonecore and Grim Batol(due to the very unforgiving mechanism), and ShadowFang Keep (people just can't interupts).

During first month cata, it's quite often that I have to sit through 15-20 players in these instances, and yet still unable to complete the place after 3-4 hours.

Four months down the road, with the nerf bat across the board, only Stonecore and Grim Batol can even be considered hard.

As a healer, the only fight that I OOM is Lost City last boss -- when you get players doing 6K DPS or less each.

Fortunately, there isn't really many new players in your RH player pools. Most of the time you met someone's alt who have done the instance and have some experience with the fight. Even my recent encounter with the 120K HP tank, he knew how to use his survival cooldown so that I (the healer) can keep him up.

I can only conclude that either you guys are extremely unlucky, or are just exaggerating much.

This vnboard forum seems to have transformed to a place for people who have lost interest with the game, or have quitted the game to hang out to bash whatever Blizzard is doing.

It's really that hard to move on to a new MMO or a new game genre eh?

 

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Calm down Sparky. People post here cause they care and it's a hobby they are still at least vaguely interested in. I didn't see a sign before I came onto this board that said "if you don't subscribe to the game, you cannot post." And how boring would it be if everyone agreed all the time?

And to your other points, you said yourself you have had 3-4 hour dungeons at times. You get it, not sure why you are even arguing that everyone should stop bashing the game when you obviously see the problem. 3-4 hour dungeons are un-sat, period. No way do I have that much time to waste dorking around a dungeon that isn't that overly interesting anyway.

And the point everyone is trying to make is that Blizzard is so out of touch with reality and its playerbase that they cannot see the forest for the trees when it is their JOB to see the forest or the bigger picture. They are fruity crazy (think late middle ages European royalty inbred crazy) and make the most ridiculous changes, just poking around and hoping for the best while genuinely wondering why people are not playing the game the way they want to.

 

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Definition of discussion: an act or instance of discussing; consideration or examination by argument, comment, etc., especially to explore solutions; informal debate.

I think it would be a bit boring if everyone just praised every thing Blizzard did, don't you think? A lot of us sunk a lot of time and money into this game and I would like to come back for the next expansion if they fix the current issues. If you like the game in it's current form: good for you! If you don't: that's OK too.

The facts are the dungeon queue times have gone up significantly since WoTLK. Since they are offering rewards to certain roles to join the queue, we can infer that A) less people are playing and or B) the hassle of running the dungeon isn't worth queueing. I don't know what else you can conclude that would work in Blizzard's favor. Even when Icecrown came out, my healer queue was 3 minutes or less and tank was instant.