How hard is Challenge mode?

[Teodas]

Greetings!
Well as the title says, i want to know the dificulty of challenge modes. i have been trying to get into a group for some time, but one thing i have noticed is that people just do not look for people to pug(at least not on my realm)... they go with guild members, real life friends, game friends... i don't realy know.
so... as i only started playing at the end of WotLk, the most dificult 5-man content i ever did where Cata 5-man heroics at release, and even knowing i was a new player learning how to play (my dps was crap back then), i could most of the time perform the roles i had as an enhancement shaman, like interrupting and hexing stuff.
i now play as a destruction warlock and im thinking about returning to the game so i can get those golds before it's too late. so i come to ask you how hard is it. how hard compared to Cata heroics? my biggest achievment with this character was defeating the green fire boss, since i have no raiding group and never tryed gold proving grounds... is cm harder than that boss? ty for your time and sorry for my noob question and sorry again for my poor english skills

[Tripping]

http://openraid.org/

There should be a lot of groups on there for you.

As for the difficulty, if you learn the dungeons for CMs etc, have fairly optimised gear and know the basics of your class you will be alright. As a DPS it isnt hard to make do, just chain stun and interrupt. It is much harder for both tanks and healers, as they are the pace setters.

Because you have to chain pull and pull multiple packs in CMs, they are harder than Cata heroics. Just stay on your toes and it will be fine. Start off maybe doing silver runs until you get used to the playstyle, then advance into gold groups!

Good luck with them! They are hella fun

[2about]

Not really hard at all.

If as you said, you've done green fire boss you have enough knowledge about your class. Go get consumes, look up strats about all the CMs, a few vids, so you are familiar with various tactics... where to invis etc... you should be fine.

[Jonexe]

They're harder than Cata Heroics; but you can make them easier.

Having people getting optimized gear for their spec, having a good group set up, and having people willing to fail multiple times until you finally get gold is absolutely key.

For instance, taking all melee DPS is going to hinder you a lot. You need to make sure the classes and specs you bring help each other, cover as many buffs as possible, and don't overlap abilities too much while leaving others open (IE lots of CC and no stuns). You also want gear that's well optimized. You need to do some research to find what the gear break points are for you spec at the 463 ilvl; which could be different from what it is at your current ilvl. Having certain trinkets, and lots of gem slots, will help significantly. You really also want people who are willing to try and try and try. You're not going to get golds in one or two runs without a lot of luck. Practice is basically required. That's why most people don't take pugs. If your people aren't willing to do that, you'll likely never get golds.

You can, in theory, get all golds without any of the things listed above. But every little tiny percent of optimization (buffs/gear/etc) gives you that much more of a margin to make mistakes, and still get your times.

[Ktperry]

Whats up with people saying you need optimized gear.
You only need optimized gear if you're going for realm best time.
Thats totally not true, i have 4 characters i've got gold, i've never swapped any piece of gear, on 2 of them even was using legendary meta + cloak.
I had runs where all group wipe, shaman ankh and ress us all, and we still manage to get it time.

Most important advice is - be patient, it will take a few wipes here and there, but you'll get there.
Also communication, when to pop that stun or some healing totem/tranq etc.

[Senka]

I wouldn't listen when people say it's easy. It's like a Heroic raid. Almost everything hits extremely hard. Mess up and you'll die, and then that attempt is sometimes over. By comparison, everything else in PVE will seem easier because of how you have such constraints set on you with the ilvl scaling in Challenge Mode. That said, you don't have to optimize a TON. If you want to, that's cool and will help, but it's definitely not needed. Everything besides gearing will make a bigger difference.

That's why it does take either good communiation or good planning. It also does, like others said, take a lot of persistence and patience. If anyone ever gets really upset by sudden deaths, then they're not ready for Challenge Mode.

[Porra]

Whats up with people saying you need optimized gear.
You only need optimized gear if you're going for realm best time.
Thats totally not true, i have 4 characters i've got gold, i've never swapped any piece of gear, on 2 of them even was using legendary meta + cloak.
I had runs where all group wipe, shaman ankh and ress us all, and we still manage to get it time.

Most important advice is - be patient, it will take a few wipes here and there, but you'll get there.
Also communication, when to pop that stun or some healing totem/tranq etc.

As for everyone dying, then having the Shaman ankh and ressurect, I call shenanigans. Although, it is true gear isnt a huge thing. If you have anything from Siege is super easy with all the extra secondary stats from sockets.

PS - Clicked on your profile and your Pally has no CModes completed =P

[Mikael123]

I started doing GM runs through openraid, with my warlock who I had hardly played since I reached level 90. I think I had 12 gem sockets and no where close to BiS gear and still quite often ended as number 1 on dmg done. With a little knowledge of how best to pull and when to use invisibility potions it was fairly non problematic to get gold. But it's important that every member has patience, because you can easily have 10 tries in a dungeon before you manage to get gold.

[facerollin]

People who struggle with SoO normal can do challenge modes, they're a joke now with 20-26 sockets.

[Ktperry]

As for everyone dying, then having the Shaman ankh and ressurect, I call shenanigans. Although, it is true gear isnt a huge thing. If you have anything from Siege is super easy with all the extra secondary stats from sockets.

PS - Clicked on your profile and your Pally has no CModes completed =P

http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...abbii/advanced

http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...nella/advanced

http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...inter/advanced


You can call it whatever you want, pm your btag, getting 3 more people going to any CM of your choise, wiping in mid run, i'll come on my shammy AnKH and we'll still make it on time, deal?

Also this is the strat, in Scholo if you dont reset combat after Lilian, you run pass students and then have your shaman Ankh or lock using soulstone before that
Pally is next to do them, got mage also.

[ryklin]

you have to be able to play the game to some extent, but not so much as a main you do in heroic raids

I'd say the difficulty is a little bit below normal endbosses (excluding yogg, lei shen, nefarian since they were a bit harder than most other end-bosses on normal)

for instance I've done them on 6 classes
and I personally think I'm only even not totally awful at 3 of those
the hardest part is knowing how to approach 'em
my first 9 took MUCH longer than all the others
I've even gone in on an alt with guildies who had never done them and just my knowledge alone got 'em done for us in maybe 4-5 hours

and destro is a great class (probably 4th best spec to be playing if we consider melee as a bad choice and exclude arms)

imo, they're not even harder than cata heroics were if you were wearing questing gear instead of normal dungeon gear (if you ran to them because your ilvl was too low to queue), I'd say they don't quite compare because it's a time trial though (so healers have to manage mana, and chain-pulling is the norm)

but yeah if you were good enough to be the guy leading the group in a pug for a cata dungeon, you should be fine (can not stand in shit, press soulshatter, and use your interrupt and aoe cc cancel casts)

[Deleted]

Got it on 5 characters myself. First was done near the beggining of ToT ... was hard'ish, second in that time period too, was piss easy.... wont even comment on the ones i did during siege, cuz it felt just like a normal dungeon

[Blur4stuff]

it's fine once you get used to the ilvl drop

[Deleted]

As for everyone dying, then having the Shaman ankh and resurrect, I call shenanigans.

I've wiped in a few and still made the timer, back in the start of the expansion there were even a few dungeons that were made easier by intentionally wiping on sections where you'd normally use an invis pot to skip the trash so you could use it somewhere else.

Either way it's not needed nowadays, most dungeons if done properly even in pugs will be left with 2-3+ minutes to spare.

At the end of the day challenge modes are 100% about experience, everything else (gear/class/consumables/professions) doesn't matter in the slightest for a basic gold run as long as the whole group knows exactly what to do.

[Wiredmana]

Honestly depends on the four other people you have with you. Overall the expected skill for gold is about medium to decent. You don't need to be awesome, just don't get hit by stuff because it'll one or two shot you.

[Warcrafter]

It's pretty easy if everyone knows what to do Just watch videos and use openraid or ask guild etc

[Bluesftw]

if a blind man can do it , you can do it ;]

http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/10368817583#6

[Olrox]

They're harder than Cata Heroics; but you can make them easier.

Having people getting optimized gear for their spec, having a good group set up, and having people willing to fail multiple times until you finally get gold is absolutely key.

For instance, taking all melee DPS is going to hinder you a lot. You need to make sure the classes and specs you bring help each other, cover as many buffs as possible, and don't overlap abilities too much while leaving others open (IE lots of CC and no stuns). You also want gear that's well optimized. You need to do some research to find what the gear break points are for you spec at the 463 ilvl; which could be different from what it is at your current ilvl. Having certain trinkets, and lots of gem slots, will help significantly. You really also want people who are willing to try and try and try. You're not going to get golds in one or two runs without a lot of luck. Practice is basically required. That's why most people don't take pugs. If your people aren't willing to do that, you'll likely never get golds.

You can, in theory, get all golds without any of the things listed above. But every little tiny percent of optimization (buffs/gear/etc) gives you that much more of a margin to make mistakes, and still get your times.

This post is exactly the right words (not how I'd have written them in terms of the format, but still) minus the bit about gear.

Ignore anything you hear about optimized gear, looking for trinkets, shit with maximum sockets.

Ignore that shit because it will put you in the wrong mind-set; you'll keep wasting time looking for gear with sockets, you'll agonize over not keeping old trinkets with primary stats on them, you'll over-analyze people that are probably skilled and dedicated enough to run with you but they're not optimized so you'll skip them and then you'll take someone with gear but no patience.

Trust me. I did every single gold with at least 30-60 seconds (some cases, like Shado-Pan we had WAY more than one or two minutes) remaining and didn't struggle with any of them (by struggle I mean use more than one hour to learn it) aside from having some whoopsies on Stormstout Brewery - I did ALL of this in my SoO raid gear and the ONLY old piece of gear I busted out was my darkmoon card trinket and it was not even close to necessary; I was doing a pretty strong amount of DPS on my DK.

The rest of what the guy I quoted said is spot-on; you need two things - people who KNOW THEIR CLASS AND ROLE like the back of their hand; they need to be very skilled with their character in terms of squeezing all the utility and damage/healing/survivability out of it that they can. Additionally, you need to be able to put in the time; you WILL fuck up and you WILL have to reset a bunch.

When I did them, we did it over 4 days; three hours for three of the days and half an hour on the fourth to wrap up since we bungled hard on Stormstout (so essentially, we did one an hour on our FIRST time doing them and we used videos for reference)

So as long as you're willing to wipe and at least briefly discuss why you didn't make the time, then you'll probably get it.

Additionally, if you can get the same folks for the whole thing, you'll go through it much faster assuming you all get along and play well together.

Also - the "bring fewer melee dps" thing is very true - we only had one when I did it and I would've brought none if I could've but I am one.

It's perfectly doable with melee but with 3 melee for dps it's a pain and you miss out on some nice stuff.

[Cwimge]

As people have said, all it takes is patience. you take no durability loss on death so the only gold you ever need to spend is on pots. That said, my first experience with them was quite poor (couldn't even make bronze time on SM) and, on my server the pots are expensive, so for a, frankly mediocre set of gear you need to ask yourself how much you want to do them.

Not hard, just tedious and quite possibly not worth the current looks

[Wilderness]

They aren't hard, but it can be time consuming. Unless you are paired up with an experienced tank and healer then there's definitely a learning curve for them on at least a couple pulls in each one. Just make sure you've watched a video or read up on each one before you go and you'll be all set.

I've found them to be fun though, and I agree with people who say you don't need optimized gear, particularly as a dps. However, optimizing your gear does help, so if you can run through a ToT LFR or two for a weapon you can add the socket too (if you have done up to that part of the legendary cloak line, which you may not have considering your OP in which case the weapon doesn't matter) or SoO LFR to get an item or two that has sockets vs ones that don't then it will make it easier. Don't wait to start trying them because of gear though, I'd just work on getting more optimized gear whenever you have a bit of spare time.