Dungeon Difficulty

[Carni]

After watching many videos on the new Dungeon content coming with Cataclysm I'm really quite curious to see what other people think on the matter of current and future dungeon difficulty. The question that seems to remain on my mind the most, is if blizzard will make the heroics in Cataclysm actually challenging? or will they nerf them to the point of face rolling (like they are now)

Personally I find heroics one of the most dull parts of gearing a level 80 character. Currently in Wotlk if you intend to pve the only choice you have to is mindlessly grind heroics. I like the idea of Heroics being stepping stones to raids, I do not however like the fact that 95% of them are mind numbingly easy.
In general before Wotlk I enjoyed heroic dungeons. Most of them required you to at least not completely suck. To me they were there for three important reasons.

Gearing for early raiding content.
(When I say early raids I mean kara, SSC, not BT and Sunwell. In other words not like now where you heroic until you can hit up ICC or Ruby sanctum.)
Learning your roll and what is generally expected of you.
(Your dps rotation, How to cc, ect.)
Learning the does and don'ts of pve in general.
(Let the tank pull, watch your threat, ect.)

A lot of you at this point are going to be thinking one thing, THIS GUYS A ELITIST LOL FUCK HIM. I'm not, I just like the idea of a game where you have to rise to it instead of it sinking to you.

Well enough of what I think, what do you think of current dungeons? To easy? To hard? Just right?

[Nymphys]

In the gear level appropriate to the instance (ie, 187 or below gear for 80 normals, 187-200 gear for 80 heroics - ICC 5-mans excepted), the dungeon difficulty is just about right.

Certainly, they're too easy with certain party comps, and at launch, a number of instances were too hard with certain party comps. Of course, within a few weeks they were nerfed, by which stage people were also starting to pile on the 219 gear, and from then on we've never heard the end of "OMG THEY'RE TOO EASY!" which entirely misses the point.

The dungeons are primarily face-roll now because at least a couple people in every group are geared well beyond the instance, if not everyone. Throw in a tank or healer who's actually at the right gear level for starting heroics or early 10-man raids, and suddenly the instance becomes very unpleasant as either 1) DPS pulls aggro and heals start going all over the place, 2) Tank pulls three rooms at a time and healer can't keep up, 3) etc.

At the correct gear level, the heroic instances and early 10-man raids (ie, Kara, Naxx) are just about right. As a healer, I miss DPS who actually had to try and save themselves when something went wrong rather than just relying on an overgeared healer to keep them up. Kara's a great example of this. If none of you were tier-4 geared, pre-nerfs, it was a very tip-toe instance, with EVERYONE having to be sure they were doing the right thing in the right place on every boss, and whenever someone screwed up you had to pull them up on it. Once it was nerfed to the ground, and we were rolling around in tier 6, every boss became tank-and-spank and nobody cared about boss abilities.

So.. For Cataclysm..

I like the way the instance difficulty looks. I'm sure the first few weeks are going to be fun and challenging as people actually have to play properly for the first time in two years. However, don't be at all surprised when four weeks in, and everyone's geared beyond heroics, the QQ will already start about how easy everything is and we'll never hear the end of it.

[MAGAmobile]

The current dungeons were not really hard at all. Even when you came in with northend blues and t6 gear, you could blaze through the instances pretty quickly (20-30 min was average). Now, a few fights were pretty hard like Loken at first, but they were dealt with within an attempt or two. The other bosses were far too easy and didn't require much thought behind them even if dps had 15-16k and tanks roughly around 28-29k buffed.

[Geckomayhem]

This... has been discussed to death.

The argument goes something like this:
Person A: "WotLK dungeons are faceroll. I hope that they don't nerf Cata heroics and that they will be like TBC."
Person B: "Dude, take off your rose-tinted glasses. TBC heroics weren't that hard and WotLK ones were a challenge at the appropriate gear level."
Person C: "Guys, just chill. It doesn't matter what we think, Blizzard are going to listen to the beta and PTR QQ and nerf Cata heroics regardless."
Person A: "They can't do that. Most players want a challenge, not heroics that can be cleared your first time through and then zerged every time after that."
Person B: "Your [sic] all still missing the point here. WotLK dungeons were hard at the start. Just look at Loken in heroic HoL in iLevel 187 gear."
Person D: "Lol, you guys are noobs. We were facerolling heroics in quest blues in patch 3.0.1."

And so on and so forth. The point is, it doesn't matter what anyone's opinion is of the current collection of heroics, or how hard or difficult it is to learn Cataclysm encounters. If enough people cry about the difficulty level upon release, then Blizzard will retune them - regardless of the fact that when we outgear them they will be like the first tier of heroics in WotLK now - AoE fests and no regard for boss tactics.

It is a pipe dream to think that all Cata heroics will prove to be an incredible challenge where you need to wipe over and over as you practice the tactics needed to defeat each boss. If they are a real challenge and Blizzard somehow miraculously doesn't tweak them to cater to all the crying about how they are impossible to clear in a pug, then people will still find things to moan about or rejoice about.

The bottom line is: you can't expect to please two people with different opinions, let alone hundreds of different approaches to such a humongous game. Either you play it and find enjoyment or you find nitpicky things to complain about. It's human nature, and it will never change.

[Shadowviper]

Current Dungeons are easy. We out-geared the place in freaking first tier of gear. Hoping cata keeps its difficulty its at now and that the boss just like scale with average gear lvl of the group as you gear up.

[Jiraya]

Right now a few of the heroic instances are 'slightly' overtuned as in tank gets hit for 80k+ from a non-evadable attack, but there is also some like HoO and Vortex that could use a buff in some places.

For me I like the challenge that heroics bring, or are supposed to bring, not as hard as raids but not numb easy, they are meant for PvE progression after all and what better way to prepare you for raids than heroics, right? Someone who is new to the game sees that heroics are pretty easy and then steps up to raids and see that the difficulty ramps up very fast could overwhelm someone pretty fast, especially tanks/healers.

I hope that the heroics in Cata are much more challenging than in Wrath, and I say this as a tank who in Kara/ZA gear lvled and did heroics and the only hard thing about heroics in Wrath was the leftmost add pull from the first boss in AN and Loken when you had a Holy Paladin, absolutely everything else was much easier than anything in BC, even Ramps. When at the start of the first raids you see people moving out of fires/focus firing/ccing/any good player move, give thanks to the heroics and the difficulty for doing a bit of re-educating the playerbase, even if it takes a little bit of spanking.

[Geckomayhem]

Current Dungeons are easy. We out-geared the place in freaking first tier of gear. Hoping cata keeps its difficulty its at now and that the boss just like scale with average gear lvl of the group as you gear up.

Dungeon bosses won't scale, but expect raid bosses to scale with tiers. They will still be 3 levels above us, but the second tier of raid bosses will be scaled so that they hit harder, have more health and even require more hit for DPSers to be most effective against them.

Also, we will always outgear heroic 5-mans in the first tier of raiding gear. The point of them is to prepare for raiding and to boost yourself through gear you get from Justice points. Raids are the next step up from heroics, though raiders will always have an interest in doing them (one would hope).

Not everyone raids, however. For casuals who are actually decent players, we can only hope that the heroics in Cataclysm will be worth our time and will test our skill and mettle. And that the rivers of tears that flow on the forums will not be enough to sway Blizzard towards catering to whiners and poor players. There is a difference between casual (what Blizzard deigns to cater towards) and unskilled. Let's just hope that Blizzard continue to realise this. They are, after all, gamers themselves.