ICC 5-mans, how hard do they hit?

[Shawaam]

The reason for these instances to drop easy attainable gear is that blizzard wants us all to be able to raid ICC. Though, on the other hand, why should you raid ICC when you haven't even been in Naxx, Ulduar and ToC? It's laughable that these raids are more or less useless now.

[Amgyn]

uhm.. i still do naxx and ulduar... they are far from useless.... easy badges, off-spec gear... 'starter' gear... you try to be a fresh level 80 tank or healer, where nobody will even take you to 5man HTOC :P

[Deleted]

The reason for these instances to drop easy attainable gear is that blizzard wants us all to be able to raid ICC.

Exactly.

Though, on the other hand, why should you raid ICC when you haven't even been in Naxx, Ulduar and ToC?

Why not?

It's laughable that these raids are more or less useless now.

Why?

[Gron]

Well t9 is already welfare. Do you really expect some 5 mans that drop 219/232 to require 258 gear?

With Vault of Archavon "free" Tier 9 epics, badge gear, I guess most people will be in 245 gear doing them.
Would be surprised if they delivered the same bad + easy 5-mans they did with WOTLK.

[Lafleur]

Pretty hard I hope!

[Bakis]

Though, on the other hand, why should you raid ICC when you haven't even been in Naxx, Ulduar and ToC?

Be glad ppl arent forced to do old content if they dont want too. Naxx was a gigantic misstake, most boring crap ever. Personally I geared two alts to toc25 gear and none of them ever set foot in Naxx, I simply refused to.

[artrax]

i did it with an enh shammy as a tank using frost shock.

[jangkun]

Hey a little away from op but does Quel'Delar rest/part drops randomly from any of the 3 new 5 man or only from Hall of reflection?

Oh and I think and wish these H will be a little harder than currents one

[Skoro]

I've done all the new dungeons on normal and heroic. From what I've seen, I'd give the following rankings of difficulty compared to other dungeons:

Forge of Souls: 5 on normal, 8 on heroic

Pit of Saron: 6 on normal, 9 on heroic

Halls of Reflection: 6 on normal, 10 on heroic

As a comparison, I'd give Nexus a 1 on normal and on heroic, Old Kingdom a 2 on normal and a 5 on heroic, Occ a 4 on normal and 6 on heroic.

Now to go into detail of my impressions on heroic.

Forge of Souls
Part of the difficulty of Forge of Souls arises from people actually having to pay attention on the trash. More than once when we were rolling through a few trash would pop spell reflect and 2 seconds later we have 1-2 dead dps. I'm not sure but I think there's a damage redirection mob thrown in there. Then the bosses... They aren't hard but they still require having 3/4 a brain. The last boss, for example, has a damage redirection to a random person, a mimiron laser barrage-esque beam of pure death, unattackable adds, and pools of pure pain that he leaves in his path. All of this means stupidity = ouch.

Pit of Saron
Pit of Saron requires a little less attention on trash, but the bosses are much tougher. Garfrost isn't THAT hard but if you don't get behind the boulders periodically it puts stress on healers. Ick and Krick is the essence of raiding, and by that I mean GET OUT OF THE BAD STUFF, STAY AWAY FROM THE BOMBS, RUN WHEN HE CHASES YOU, AND WHATEVER YOU DO DON'T STAND IN THE NOVA!. Tyrannus has a damage redirection (seems to be a recurring theme) to the tank, an enrage/knockback in which he needs to be kited over frost patches (Think "Anub'Arak Phase 2"), and his dragon occasionally targets random people to try to freeze them.

Halls of Reflection
The key here is add control. The first encounter is a pain in the ass. It is essentially VH except the adds come from all around the room, not one central spot, making them much harder to control... And they have abilities that will frustrate you very much. For example, some can fear, some can stun, some can slow, etc. A good strategy for this part is to run behind one of the bosses and around the corner to LoS them and make them come to you. When you finally get to the first boss, he may seem easier due to his lower health pool but there's a reason for this: He fears (the fear does damage too), has a damage & healing reduction up for nearly half the fight, a dodge-reducing strike, and a dispellable magic effect that stuns someone for 6 seconds if not removed before the duration ends (3 second duration). Once he's down, 5 more waves of adds and then the next boss. This boss hits the tank hard, has a dot that splits between all party members that you DON'T want to dispel (as dispelling it causes all remaining damage to release immediately), causes a void zone that increases shadow damage taken, and lowers the max hp of everyone for 10 sec. Now the first two bosses are down... But wait! What's that big-ass skeleton standing in the center of the next room? Let's go kill i- OH JESUS HE CLONED US! Once he's dead, continue forward and begin being chased by the Lich King. At this point, all you have to do is make sure the adds all die before the Lich King reaches you, run forward to the next wall that Jaina destroys, rinse and repeat.

TL;DR Version
Forge of Souls: stay out of the bad stuff and watch damage reflection.
Pit of Saron: read the caps part and GET OUT OF THE BAD STUFF, STAY AWAY FROM THE BOMBS, RUN WHEN HE CHASES YOU, AND WHATEVER YOU DO DON'T STAND IN THE NOVA!
Halls of Reflection: Control adds best you can and make sure people don't die.

Now to answer the actual question: They hit fairly hard compared to current heroics.

[Executia]

Obviously queldalar q item will drop from all 3 new ICC 5 mans

[Deleted]

Darn. Pre-nerf MgT is pretty much what I was hoping

MgT wasn't "hard" per say, it just required all classes to be able to cc. I had a T6 geared druid and did the instance more often with my T4 warlock (3 CCs at the same time) than with my druid. dps or skill didn't really matter unless the whole group was grossly overgearing the instance (ie there wasn't much skill without cc could do).
Now that every class has CC (except warriors), MgT would be easy with whatever group makeup.

[Pozz]

MgT wasn't "hard" per say, it just required all classes to be able to cc. I had a T6 geared druid and did the instance more often with my T4 warlock (3 CCs at the same time) than with my druid. dps or skill didn't really matter unless the whole group was grossly overgearing the instance (ie there wasn't much skill without cc could do).
Now that every class has CC (except warriors), MgT would be easy with whatever group makeup.

MgT wasn't hard even without "cc'ers" and those classes that lacked cc mostly has ways to "cc" a mob shaman kiting with frostshock springing to mind. People was just way too picky and brainless people had issues getting through it.

[Deleted]

If I had to rank them, it'd look something like this:

Easiest

Wotlk Normal Dungeons
Wotlk Heroics/ToC Norm
ToC HC/Pit/Forge Normal
Halls Normal/Pit HC/Forge HC
Halls HC
TBC Heroics

Hardest

So basically, they're harder than anything in wotlk heroic wise, but not as difficult as tbc heroics, and MGT.

[Pozz]

If I had to rank them, it'd look something like this:

Easiest

Wotlk Normal Dungeons
Wotlk Heroics/ToC Norm
ToC HC/Pit/Forge Normal
Halls Normal/Pit HC/Forge HC
Halls HC
TBC Heroics

Hardest

So basically, they're harder than anything in wotlk heroic wise, but not as difficult as tbc heroics, and MGT.

Well I guess by TBC heroics you're thinking of timed Shattered Halls, pre-nerf Shadow Lab (why did our healer just die instantly? Oh, an assasin ), pre-nerf Old Hillsbrad, MgT and to some extend Arcatraz and Black Morass. Else I'd probably set the rest around ToC HC difficulty =)

[GrkSiNNer]

You cant have 26000 unbuff thats for sure.

but the 5 mans are still easy and fun.

[Shirahadori]

Pit of Saron can be pretty rough for people who don't know anything about the fights on Heroic mode. The rest is rather easy, although Halls is annoying as hell when people don't listen.