I keep hearing how long the new Cata dungeons take and I want to know if that's the general consensus, or if they just take so long before being properly geared. So, what is your experiences? I loved the WotLK style half hour dungeons, but that won't be the case here, sadly. Anyone have some experience in all of the new Cata ones? (Or most?)

 

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Cata is not even two months old.

Ok?

 

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Clearly your expectations are too high siujoey.

 

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In a guild group, most cata heroics are in the 45-minute range. I'd guess that drops to close to 30 minutes once everyone is in raid gear.

 

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Excellent, that's what I wanted to hear!

 

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Which pretty no one you are grouping with is in raid gear so they take like 2 hours.

 

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If you complete them, they take anywhere from 45 minutes for a fully raid geared group that plays together a lot to 2+ hours for those groups who are nominally geared and are using the LFD tool. PUGs can be highly frustrating as it takes 5 non-fail players who know what they're doing and understand that you can't AOE the CC'd mobs. Rather like WotLK was back when Naxx was where progression raiding was at, except moreso.

If everyone is geared adequately and more importantly has done the place at least once or twice before and knows the patterns to avoid mistakes it's about a half hour run on normal, 45 min or so on heroic. Now if people are new, it can bog down fast. The basic combat theme from beginning to end in the Cata content I have tried is everyone will move their ass quickly or die relatively fast coupled with usually at least one channeled death AOE that must be interrupted or prevented and some people still are getting used to it or need to experience it once to learn it.


Heroic simply raises the bar since not moving in time instead of simply getting you mostly dead in average gear is a pretty much an insta gib even for raid geared tanks. The internet being what it is in the US compared to smaller countries, lag can and will cause deaths on heroic since timing things when a monster is channeling something can be a semi-random outcome. However, generally speaking if people move, it's easy, if they don't, it can quickly be a wipe that hopefully they learn from and you move on.


For example, the Worgen druid (tank/resto) I have been playing casually from level 1 just got up to doing regular stonecore and not a single person other then me had ever been there. Druids have minimal tools for pulling with all the casters in Stonecore so between me having to mark and explain what to look for, who needed CC and had to die first it was close to an hour's run on normal. It made from some exciting fights that I certainly never saw falling asleep in WotLK areas but it's still amazing that as old a game as WoW is now, you will still see things at the end game like hunter pet running wild into other groups, or people running away from a tank to die out of line sight, or the time tested and proven method of WotLK success where everyone picks a target at random and blasts away.

 

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