Which expansion had the best 5 man dungeons and difficulty levels..

[Grogo]

Which expansion had the best 5 man dungeons and difficulty levels? (Poll coming in 2 mins)

[Calz]

Maybe I have my nostalgia glasses on, but I recall TBC 5man dungeons being quite challenging in the beginning (Specifically Shattered halls, shadow labirynth, Arcatraz?)

[wych]

TBC easily.

There was real progression, 5 mans on different difficulty levels and AFAIK the most dungeons we've ever had on launch

[Deleted]

Vanila, TBC, early Cata and CM. Basically any period that forced you to work as a team and required effort from all 5 players.

[Ciddy]

I vote Classic for best/most fun dungeons. I really loved how Classic had those massive dungeons with multiple wings where you could easily get lost. BRD, Maraudon, Dire Maul, Blackrock Spire, SM, and so on. Some of the dungeons in Classic WoW were so big that they actually felt like raids. I loved it.

Difficulty levels...probably BC. BC introduced heroics and did a pretty decent job with them, I thought. Sure, you eventually got to a point where you outgeared them and pretty much nullified any difficulty they had, but that's inevitably going to happen in any expansion. I think they were a good challenge when you were at the appropriate gear level.

Wrath's heroics...I think we got to a point where we could roflstomp them way too early, aside from maybe some of the ICC stuff (particularly Halls of Reflection). I will give Wrath some points for awesome looking dungeons though. The art style and theme for Wrath dungeons beat all other expansions, I think. We had stuff like Nexus and Oculus, and they were beautiful dungeons.

Cataclysm: I liked the "let's make heroics hard and require CC again!" idea....except I played a fury warrior. No real CC (aside from an AoE fear that I could glyph to make slightly better but still far less useful than CC from other classes). Nothing like waiting 45 minutes in a dungeon queue, then getting "lol sorry bro we gotta have CC for this" before a kick. Someone didn't think that all the way through. I had a pretty difficult time gearing up my warrior when Cataclysm started. I think that was an example of Blizzard's overreacting to criticism about how simple Wrath's dungeons were and going too far in the other direction.

MoP: .....not really. The few dungeons we even had in MoP were forgettable and boring. I felt like MoP didn't have enough of an emphasis on dungeons.

WoD: Little bit better than MoP, but still not enough emphasis on dungeons, IMO.

[Roiids]

The most fun dungeons for me were scholo, BRD, strat in Vanilla. But as far as challenging i would say TBC.

[Grogo]

I really think most people would be ok with more challenging and epic 5 mans (and questing really)

Is there anyone here who thinks the current is fine? If so, why?

[Crtarel]

I found wraths dungeons to be the most fun

[Eace]

WoD has the best dungeons, while the start of Cataclysm had the best difficulty level.

[Donald Hellscream]

the best five mans? Wrath while they were not difficult later on in the game they were miles more interesting than TBC with their 5 different art styles spread over 15 dungeons.

given the title I assumed you meant past expansions but if I am allowed to include WoD aswell then WoD have the best dungeons.

[khalltusk]

All expansions had some good dungeons,

TBC - First Heroics and a lot of them. The reputation system gated us for ages while doing them and having attunements for things Like kara put through them did make us take our time doing them. Yes a lot of re-used textures and mobs between them but they were great for their time.

Wrath - Much better textures IMO Halls of lightning and Old kingdom being the two best looking in the expac. Easier than TBC heroics and a better reputation system.

Cata - Good initial dungeons two rehashed ones and a cut down raid made into a 5man.

MoP - Some really good looking dungeons but no new ones for the entire expansion :/

WoD - Some good dungeons but like MoP and to an extent cata not enough of them.

All in All I am voting for Wrath mainly for the themes I loved them and the amount of dungeons with the reputation being a nice little grind. I did enjoy WoD dungeons but I felt little replay in them with no badges or depth to the amount of dungeons.

[I Push Buttons]

Cataclysm. Not only were they a challenge on launch, but they remained relevant the entire expansion. And they released five more dungeons later, which I loved. And they remained relevant because you could get into raiding solely through dungeon gear the whole way through... 346 dungeon gear was fine for the 359 raids... 353 dungeon gear was fine for the 378 raid. 378 dungeon gear was fine for the 397 raid. You didn't need to sludge through old raids or LFR (which didn't exist yet) to get into the most current tier. This was on top of the fact that they were also useful outside of gear the whole way through... You could grind rep in them, during a time when rep actually gave you something useful... 359 epics you could buy with GOLD from each faction... And justice/valor which you could use to buy justice and valor gear which DID NOT REQUIRE REP.

I don't know why they moved away from this system... Back in the day people said it was because it put too much emphasis on dungeons and queuing and everyone just afk'd in cities... Well... They have done that since then and continue to do that anyways... So that's a bullshit argument.

If I could have my way, the dungeon system in future expansions would be:
- Vanilla style dungeon sets.
- TBC/Cata style ilvl relevance (not one ilvl right at the beginning that instantly becomes irrelevant and continually becomes more irrelevant throughout expansion).
- Cata style reputation grinding (if you choose... or if dailies if you choose that... or grinding mobs if you choose that... limiting people is stupid).
- Reforging back.
- Justice/Valor and gear vendors back.
- More difficulty, Blizzard entertained the thought of Mythic dungeons... I am all for that. The argument that CMs are the mythic dungeons people want is retarded. One daily quest per day that gives a bag which has a random piece of gear with random stats on it is not a valid gearing avenue.

[Pony Soldier]

Everyone should be saying Burning Crusade. They were the most interesting, we had SEVERAL of them and I remember them being pretty challenging. They were no pushovers like they are today. You had to actually strategize and make use of crowd control spells and the tank needed to know how to pull. This is something that has been lacking since WotLK and is now pretty much obsolete as everyone just pulls everything without a thought. The other thing that makes them the best was the fact that each one actually felt like what a dungeon should feel like and not some quick challenge mode. The dungeons were much bigger and more complex which is part of why they were so fun and interesting. They had so much detail to them. Even for raids I would still say BC had the best. Karazhan is still my all time favorite raid in the whole game. I love how it actually feels like a true dungeon and it's maze like design. It's an example of how dungeons and raids should feel. Not some 5 minute run through a hallway.

WoD I'd say has the next best dungeons. While much smaller compared to BC the amount of detail they put into them is just awesome. Like my favorite one, Grimrail Depot. This one brings so many unique things to dungeons like the fact that you fight on a damn train. This is the first time we're ever seeing trains in WoW (at least I am) and we get to fight on it while it's moving. Not to mention one of the bosses requires you to collect mortar shells and to shoot them at the boss. Then the awesome cutscenes with your character like you're some captain of a 5 man squad. It's just so cool.

[Pariah]

I usually go after the nostalgia people rather hard but BC really did deliver rather well in the 5 man dungeon department.

[DonVadim]

Cataclysm overall was not that good, but revamped zandalari raids in the form of dungeons were really good. Also 4.0 heroic dungeons were somewhat challenging and well designed. However, 4.3 dungeons were a boring piece of crap, the same as dungeons from latter expansions.

[Tiosav]

As I remember, and I may be wrong in BC you could not outgear the mechanic, 5 mans were challenging even in t6.
WOTLK AOE tanking and spam heal even in green gear. (Nice looking ones too)
CATA ones were really fast outgeared.
MOP... fish in the balloon(so evil), evil rats.... HC easyer then Normal... !?!?

[shise]

Obviously TBC, dungeons were for real, you had to use CC, tehy'd last at least 30 minutes and you would have a hard time with drops, which is lovely. Made them worth it so much.

[rarhyx]

fun wise wotlk especially the last 3 (lore atleast)
challenge wise bc and cata

[Drilnos]

Hard to figure how TBC is at the top of the list here. Heroics were gated behind rep, they were harder than Karazhan and dropped worse gear, they were a dead end in progression, the rewards structure encouraged running some (read, one) of them more than the others, there were no support structures for group building or replacing members, they were all composed of copy-pasted art.

I suppose if you subscribe to the school of "harder = better" then it eclipses the others handily (save for the ones with challenge modes, one of which got my vote), but it was hard for all the wrong reasons.

[Linesk]

I thought Cata dungeons had a good difficulty level, but Wrath dungeons were the most fun, to me.
I know Wrath dungeons were suuuuper faceroll, but it was actually fun racing through them spamming aoe. Plus, that was a time when you pretty much had to do your daily heroic, so it helped that the dungeons were fast and not at all tedious.