Where are all the current Heroic Dungeons?

[SappedByALock]

You know what I miss? I miss the 5-man heroic experience. I felt like that was one of the high points in The Burning Crusade when it was first introduced. It was a challenge (well, sort of) to get the keys to unlock each and every dungeon so you could get better prepared for the raids. In my opinion, it was a highlight of my gaming experience since vanilla. It felt intuitive and epic when you did that group quest in Shadowmoon and you found out that you could unlock a side tier of content. When I play mists of pandaria, it's all about raiding and raiding and maybe a heroic scenario? I think that for every three scenarios they release, they accompany a dungeon with loot of similar item level to raid finder or something so I don't have to do just raid finder or raids. 5-man dungeons that are up to par item level and skill level would be great, and something else for us do. I look at the dungeon finder, everything else is great, but since when did heroic dungeons equal blues and low-end starter content. A 5-man raid would be fantastic you know? Have a super expansive dungeon with wings sporting different skill levels. Challenge modes are something for the hardcore players (make challenge mode only dungeons), the old, outdated heroic dungeons are for the new players, but what about the middle group? Have you forgotten about the casuals?

[Razorlor]

They've been replaced by heroic scenarios and LFR. Thought everyone knew this by now.

[Carebearr]

Hate to say this but I miss the Cataclysm dungeons like Stonecore and Grim Batol.

[SappedByALock]

Why should something be replaced when it worked before? 5-man content is its own content. Scenarios are smaller, dumber dungeons I guess. Raid finder is a dumber raid experience. Why not keep some things that provide a little challenge to better prepare for the actual thing! Raid finder and scenarios do absolutely no justice in preparation. Scenarios and raid finder are their own thing, why not add more content?

[ripponesan]

Not contributing to the subject, BUT OP you should consider using the "ENTER" key a bit more, cause they way it is presented i dont want to read your Posts.

[Deleted]

i would say that heroic scenarios and raids were meant to be the replacement for this expansion. to be honest although i enjoyed the lich king dungeons (those 3 leading up to ICC), there were too many in WotLK, and then half of them many players would refuse to run (see: occulus, halls of stone). i would like to see early cata style heroics make a comeback next time, but as a third difficulty level (so normals, heroics, actually hard heroics) just for the challenge of them

[Biomega]

Because people don't want to prepare for raids, they want raids adjusted down to their level. Anyone actually serious enough about raiding can get into a halfway decent guild and get their experience there. There is no magical escalator where you graduate from one form of content to another; that's just in people's heads. What's worse, the "entry level content" doesn't actually provide a new influx of serious raiders - every serious raider has been playing the game for years. I think the youngest raider (in terms of game experience) I've ever seen was someone who started playing at the end of WotLK. The archetype of new player just getting into things, then graduating through the system from one step to the next simply doesn't exist (i.e. doesn't exist in any numbers even closely relevant to wide-spread content changes). What does exist, however, is a veritable legion of the so-called "casual" players, which are slowly beginning to make up the bulk of the audience for any video game: people who aren't serious about the game, and never will be, and who want easy, piecemeal content to dip into every now and then. Raiding requires commitment and dedication - these people by definition do not have that, nor do they want it. As such, the only content they want and are able to handle is dumbed-down, simplified, random-matchmaking content where their individual performance doesn't have a measurable enough impact to threaten overall success, but their individual rewards flatter their abilities.

[SappedByALock]

My apologizes Ripponsan, the format is flawed because this is sent via Mobile.

[Feel The Power]

Have you forgotten about the casuals?

Hahaha WOW!!! Did I really just read that?

[SappedByALock]

Maybe every major patch they include a heroic dungeon and two scenarios that accompany the raid? I respect what Blizzard does with scenarios, but it feels way too simple. Maybe implement a dungeon design with multi-layered boss fights and wings and such. The only difference from a raid is the number of people.

[brirrspliff]

You know what I miss? I miss the 5-man heroic experience.

they were too hard for the average wow player, so they got replaced by the "heroics" we know today. sad but true.

[SappedByALock]

Maybe implementing more higher level content can offer a change in player attitude towards the game

[grimsanta]

I really do miss difficult 5-mans. It was probably my favorite thing to do in the game, which is why I really liked the first tier in cata (when heroics were still hardish).

In my opinion, what they should do for the next expansion is similar to what they are doing with scenarios and flex. Place the difficult content to a premade group only.

Gearing for the first teir should go like this:

1. Questing, limited normal dungeons for 90-94.
2. Open up rest, and majority of normal dungeons at 95.
3. At a certain ilvl, heroics open up. Heroics are fairly difficult, require CC and communication; thus can only be formed by a pre-made group and not LFD. Heroic Loot should be only a half-teir less than LFR, not an entire teir less. End bosses should drop LFR quality gear.
4. LFR
5. Flex.
6. Normal.
7. Heroic Raids.

[SappedByALock]

The PvE system that Blizzard has right now works astonishingly well for all skill types, I just feel like there needs to be more variety instead. More opinions will eventually equal greater player satisfaction.

[land]

Man, I really miss 5 mans too... I really liked the Hour of Twilight ones, quick/short/easy and was awesome to gear up alts... Don't like how 5 mans became a 1 time thing now, once ur 90 and u get all 463's then ur done with them (in terms of loot)...

[Biomega]

Maybe implementing more higher level content can offer a change in player attitude towards the game

That can only work if you're sure players will stay with the game regardless, i.e. five years ago when WoW was the only halfway decent MMO out there. Now people who walk into a heroic pull of old would just ragequit and play something else; there sure is enough out there. Face it, when cowclickers attract millions of people, the only way to get a piece of that action is to put cowclicking into WoW, too. Who cares if "hardcore" gamers leave? For everyone one of them there's five hundred casuals just waiting to subscribe. Not necessarily the best long-term strategy, but WoW's long term is over anyway; no need to try and bind customers to a game that is antiquated and already scheduled for replacement (i.e. Titan).

[hasekmpp]

Why not keep some things that provide a little challenge to better prepare for the actual thing!

[Rad1um]

I really do miss difficult 5-mans. It was probably my favorite thing to do in the game, which is why I really liked the first tier in cata (when heroics were still hardish).

In my opinion, what they should do for the next expansion is similar to what they are doing with scenarios and flex. Place the difficult content to a premade group only.

Gearing for the first teir should go like this:

1. Questing, limited normal dungeons for 90-94.
2. Open up rest, and majority of normal dungeons at 95.
3. At a certain ilvl, heroics open up. Heroics are fairly difficult, require CC and communication; thus can only be formed by a pre-made group and not LFD. Heroic Loot should be only a half-teir less than LFR, not an entire teir less. End bosses should drop LFR quality gear.
4. LFR
5. Flex.
6. Normal.
7. Heroic Raids.

In that logic there, how EXACTLY does someone WITHOUT a guild, gear for LFR????

[grimsanta]

In that logic there, how EXACTLY does someone WITHOUT a guild, gear for LFR????

Good point, my bad. Forgot to put justice and valor gear in there. I think justice could be used to get heroic dungeon quality gear, and valor for raid quality gear (as it currently is).

Justice points were completely useless this expansion.

[Biomega]

Gearing is very difficult to balance against difficulty. There's a reason they stripped Challenge Modes of loot and made the rewards all cosmetic - no matter how hard they are, people would feel compelled to to do them even for small upgrades if they dropped them.

There's several ways to deal with it. One would be to make the gear in LFR and hc-5 equal in ilvl, but different in type and optimization. For example, you could have trinkets and tier pieces be exclusive to LFR, and have the hc-5 stuff be semi-randomized the way hc-Scenario loot is. That way you have system that allows skilled people to gear fast, while still giving out the "good" pieces in LFR.

I think the most important thing is that the various difficulties and the progression paths through them are parallel, not iterative. Cross-over can happen, of course, but it's not the main purpose of the system. I.e. you have a path that goes norm-5 -> hc-5 -> norm-Raid -> hc-Raid and a parallel path that goes norm-5 -> LFR -> Flex -> norm-Raid. JP/Valor, scenarios, daily quests, reputation, and big quest lines are supplemental - they have loot that is a bit better than usual, but they aren't something you can grind quickly due to their inherently gated nature.

Alternatively, you could simply add a flex-like difficulty (but not variable size) to 5-man dungeons. You'd be doing normal mode 5-mans before max level, then flex 5-mans at max level while gearing, and have heroic 5-mans left for premade queues. Basically what Challenge Mode *should* be, i.e. not an AoE zerg-fest, but a smart, difficult, complex dungeon more reminiscent of mini-raids the way early TBC and early Cata did it. As for loot, either you follow the above (i.e. about on par with LFR, but less optimized) or you add alternative rewards, like crafting mats, flasks, etc., possibly in soulbound versions to prevent for-profit farming. Cosmetic rewards, as always, may be added here and there.