Cata heroic difficulty vs MoP heroic difficulty

[Angarin]

At the start of cataclysm alot of people hit 85 very fast, within a couple days, I know I hit 85 within a week. I was very shocked between the heroic difficulty of wrath and cataclysm. Trash pulls made almost every healer go oom waiting for them to drink. Having to CC was something new to alot of people. I think the dungeon I had the least success in most pugs was grim batol because of basically every boss had some mechanic besides forgemaster that could generally just one shot someone from 100% to 0%.

In Mists of pandaria this is not the case, not even in the slightest. Tanks are soloing heroics basically, dps/healers run the whole dungeon without a tank. Given even in tier 12 gear (nobody ran regular cata heroics unless they couldnt run troll/hour of twilight come 4.3) you still needed a healer & usually a dps or 2 to down most of the bosses in most 5 man heroics. Alot of people have horrible memories in the 4.1 troll heroics. Then 4.3 came and the heroics were just faceroll. Sure you had a mechanic or 2 to abide by, but if you made a mistake you weren't highly punished for it. This is pretty much the case in MoP.



Whats your preference in the two? Mine is cataclysm, yeah its less pug friendly, but when I killed erudax for the first time (I was in a pug) I felt awesome. I remember the first heroic dungeon my paladin (my second 85 only within 2 1/2 weeks of cata release) entered was deadmines. That one was a rough one for alot of people as well. The first thing I said was "Well we'll see how this goes, I haven't had much luck with this on my dk yet." No matter, we cleared it, I was exstatic.


When MoP came I wasn't very impressed with the difficulty. I RaF granted my monk to instant 80 then leveled straight from there to 90 on MoP launch. When I hit 90 I was MW main, and let me tell you...damage was extremely low. I was confused, was I in a good group? Maybe this heroic is just easy. So I queued up for a few more with randoms. Same thing, I was really confused. I knew they wanted to make them more casual friendly but to this level?


Regardless, lets hear your opinions. Alot of people have mixed feelings about this and its been on my mind the past couple weeks.


Note: I did not include wrath heroic difficulty level as its relatively close to MoP, even at launch, and I don't personally know alot of people who did BC heroics nor were they playing at the time of current 70. That and I felt they were fairly close to cataclysm launch 5m heroic difficulty.

Additional Note: This is launch specific speaking. Within the first day to the first 6 months or so. As I said after tier 12, people basically just facerolled cata heroics if they had a good tank/healer/dps.

[bnut129]

I don't really care to be honest. Heroic 5mans are such a short lived section of the current gear model that I just can't be bothered to care about something that was irrelevant to me the first day MSV opened.

I'm sure others feel differently but that's my take on it.

[Darsithis]

I preferred Cataclysm's difficulty. I like challenge, which is why I like heroic scenarios.

[Sills]

I preferred cataclysm's difficulty. It was a nice change of pace from the wrath 5 mans where you would just spam AoE everything down. I like to have to be paying attention while I play. Gotta make sure you get interrupts off, spellsteal where appropriate and CC. Love it.

[Tragan]

I also preferred cataclysm's difficulty, however that being only with guild mates or people I knew on my server. The difficulty seemed to make an unfortunate majority of players not want to deal with it, making the LFD tool almost worthless.

[Hexotic]

Lol, seeing an awesome trend. After wrath people complained, so the heroics were changed to the cata model... Which really upset people and they complained about the cata model... now blizz moved onto a slightly different model, and people start to say they liked cata better.

Looking at this, it seems people just dont like change. Then again, if blizz didn't change a thing, people would complain about that too.

My personal preference is for Mop Heroics. They were a good introduction into the gear for Pandaria, and are a nice little stepping stone. Not too hard but not too easy for fresh 90 players.

[ChadBroChill17]

Wait, the level 90 versions of the MoP Dungeons are Heroic?! Since When?
I thought that they were regular modes. My mistake, they are just so easy....

[Illusions]

Wait, the level 90 versions of the MoP Dungeons are Heroic?! Since When?
I thought that they were regular modes. My mistake, they are just so easy....

They are lvl 90 versions actually, Blizz said so. They didn't intend the dungeons to be hard, which they aren't. For challenge, you have challenge modes and you should compare the difficulty between Cata Heroics and CM, even if they are quite different.

I prefer both, actually. I like a challenge that I can get from LFG, yet I also want easier content for when I want a breeze.

[RickJamesLich]

Cataclysm's heroics pre-nerf hands down where better. Felt like there was actual progression to your character before you hopped into raids.

[Jaojin]

Wait, the level 90 versions of the MoP Dungeons are Heroic?! Since When?
I thought that they were regular modes. My mistake, they are just so easy....

Your not mistaken. They said so themselves that "heroic" mop dungeons were not meant to be heroic, and that challenge modes were meant to be the new heroic. S'like comparing a raid to a dungeon.

If you want real discussion it should've been: "Cata Heroic vs MoP Challenge Mode"

Stop saying that MoP heroics are the same as the old heroic dungeons... they were never meant to be.

[Angarin]

Your not mistaken. They said so themselves that "heroic" mop dungeons were not meant to be heroic, and that challenge modes were meant to be the new heroic. S'like comparing a raid to a dungeon.

If you want real discussion it should've been: "Cata Heroic vs MoP Challenge Mode"

Stop saying that MoP heroics are the same as the old heroic dungeons... they were never meant to be.

Guess we know what you voted for

[Azrile]

I think the difference between the two is if you join with a full pug or if you joined with friends who weren´t idiots.

As much as people say Cata heriocs were hard, they weren´t hard, the only difference is that DPS needed to do very specific things. In almost every WOTLK, and certainly in MoP heroics, DPS can basically just dps the boss and things will be fine. There are a few mechanisms that can make things a bit annoying if all 3 dps are morons.... but generally you need a geared tank, an awake healer and 3 dps who can do a semi-decent rotation for dps. DPS can kill themselves by standing in fire, but there is nothing that is required of a dps that can cause a wipe.

Think back to Cata heroics. Almost every boss has mechanisms that require some type of action on the part of the dps. Think about the bosses that gave problems. Like the guy that spawned the elemental add that chased a dps.. how many wipes happened because the dps (melee) allowed the elemental to blow up on top of the tank? How about the last boss where dps needed to first run to the void spot to avoid death, but then run to the door and pick up the two adds and burst them down in time. Or the last boss in BRC where a dps had to kite the adds. Think about the dps needing to stand in the front of the adds to prevent evolution. You see what I am getting at.. Cata heroics were ONLY hard because dps had to do things besides dps.

It is the sole reason I love Mop and WOTLK heroics.. I am a tank, and I am well geared. There is literally NOTHING the dps can do to cause wipes on bosses... they can do bad dps, or die to fire and make things take longer... but that is about it. Sure, they can still annoy me.. like by not dropping bombs off the wall while the swarm are coming up.. or not throwing landmines on the boss to bring down the shield... but even then, I can do it, it just takes longer.

In Cata. There were simply too many mechanisms that even a well geared tank could not overcome if DPS messed up.

to sum it up.. MoP/Wotlk heroics = LFR (tanks do the mechanisms, dps just has to dps) Cata heriocs = real raids (dps are responsible for much more regading mechanisms).

[shokter]

Probably the only thing I liked about Cata over MoP was the Heroic dungeon difficulty before they nerfed them. What frustrates me is the lack of middle ground between the two. Blizzard always seems to yank the dials to opposite extremes when making adjustments. I think I wiped maybe 3-5 times in all of the random dungeons I did in MoP (all of them to the boss with the shell and bombs and adds in Siege) while in MoP I'm fairly sure I wiped in every single dungeon multiple times. Cata was great fun gearing up through heroics...MoP was mindless. Challenge modes filled the niche in the devs minds I think, however the reality seems to be they aren't widely used. As melee I have had a tough time breaking into them, and honestly, never had much interest. So the fault may be mine...but I still think its theirs.

That is the only thing Cata had over MoP.

[Rucati]

I preferred Cataclysm's difficulty. I like challenge, which is why I like heroic scenarios.

lolwut? Heroic scenarios aren't a challenge, they're easier than MoP heroic dungeons.


OT: It doesn't make too much of a difference since you don't really need to do heroics for anything anymore since you get better gear from doing dailies/LFR.

I suppose I prefer the MoP version, simply because they're faster and heroics were never fun to begin with. I enjoyed BC heroics, Wrath/Cata/MoP heroics are all pretty boring, they're just pull all the mobs and AoE them down. I suspect you picked Grim Batol as your example because it was the only one you couldn't do that in. I don't remember CCing mobs in any Cata heroic aside from Grim Batol, though I only did heroics with my guild who were all decent players. I suspect doing Cata heroics with random people would have been rather annoying, not too sure though. MoP heroics can be cleared in like 10 minutes at most which is nice, since they don't really give much of a reward they shouldn't take very long.

[Steelangel]

I really hated the Cataclysm heroics initially. Every pug I was in was half-terrible. After about a month or two, they became much more enjoyable. I really did like having to pay attention to what was going on. I really don't like the MoP heroics overall. Great artwork and design (except Niuzao Temple, which has terrible boss design) but just not compelling to me.

Patch 4.0-4.1 challenge modes would be AWESOME. Stick everyone in 346 gear and see what happens when you amp up Siamat or that stupid first boss in Grim Batol. I'd never stop running those.

[Quill]

CMs are the best. I really hope we'll see such content again - and maybe with fresh instances throughout the expansion instead of 9 to last 2 years, and maybe some more melee-friendly content mixed in there instead of all ranged-friendly. Also some harder bosses to go in with the punishing trash packs, Nonetheless, getting 9/9 will be something I'll be really happy about and will remember.

I wouldn't mind some Cata dungeons on CM-mode, so I can re-live that experience of running them on heroic back in the day. The cata heroics were very fun if you had a good team. Would love Challenge Mode-Grim Batol. The third boss would evoke many tears.

[thigan]

Heroic Dungeons are short lived, so why do I care too much about them? Instead if I want a fun experience I try Challenge modes. This will be the state of the game for a long time because we as players failed the expectation of a challenging content+LFG tool, maybe not you but overall the playerbase did. The matchmaking makes challenge a nightmare of PR for Blizzard. You want challenge, start gathering friends then do challenging content, from heroic scenarios to Challenge modes and organized Raids.

[Steelangel]

I don't remember CCing mobs in any Cata heroic aside from Grim Batol, though I only did heroics with my guild who were all decent players.

You didn't CC the hunter trash in Halls of Origination or CC the stupid healers in Vortex Pinnacle? By the time everyone was in 390+ gear they were stupidly easy, but back at 346, I find no CC hard to believe.

[Zogash]

I skipped Cata, so I can't really talk on this issue, but BC heroics were the best I experienced, especially the likes of Heroic Shadow Labyrinth and Heroic Shattered Halls. Those were the days man! I loved sheeping/pigging/turtle-ing on every trash group - made me feel like I had a purpose as a pure DPS class. Nowadays, my mage feels so replaceable. I guess that's why I only tank and heal now.

[announced]

i prefer difficult dungeons, but ones that can be done quickly if ur group is gear'd enough and smart. like challenge mode style.

a lot of mop heroics piss me off just because they have bosses that have some bullshit mechanic that takes forever to get through.. (i.e mogushan palace kings, the elevator, shadopan monastery, temple of the jade serpent, stormstout brewery, siege of the nizao temple,)

the rest of the dungeons are alrite, but i do prefer cata heroics.. much more dangerous.