End Game

[Dvaldin]

So, after hitting 85 and entering end game, waddaya think? Personally, I think it's a huge improvement over the former expansion's end game, at least right now it is.

[Maeleena]

LFD and Cata do not mix. Meaning LFD and anything difficult do not mix. LFD is great for lolcontent, but not for anything that requires the people in your group to have more than two neurons firing at the same time.

[Ninurta]

I think its a little early to be really rating it against the other expacs. But it is looking promising.

Almost all of our 25 man raid group s ready so looking forward to getting in there by this weekend we will be ready.

[Renascido]

LFD is useful only for dungeons, and dungeons arent the end game content....so I dont have how to vote yet...since my guild still didnt started to make raids...

[Deleted]

I like it so far but although I appreciate the reasons why heroics are hard, it would nice to have an in between stage so that you could gear for them instead of getting pwned by the first 3 mobs in the dungeon if someone decides to break a cc.

[Deleted]

LFD is useful only for dungeons, and dungeons arent the end game content....so I dont have how to vote yet...since my guild still didnt started to make raids...

This,
OT: I like it so far=)

[Koekiemonstr]

I like it so far but although I appreciate the reasons why heroics are hard, it would nice to have an in between stage so that you could gear for them instead of getting pwned by the first 3 mobs in the dungeon if someone decides to break a cc.

The inbetween stage is called normals!

[Diurden]

The biggest problem with the LFD tool is it doesn't take group composition into account. So you get stuck with 3 melee dps with no cc and your doomed to fail.

My smoothest heroic groups by far have had a rogue, hunter and mage.. makes everything so much easier with all that cc and interrupts

[Deleted]

LFD is useful only for dungeons, and dungeons arent the end game content....so I dont have how to vote yet...since my guild still didnt started to make raids...

Well Heroic dungeons are end-game content, as they require max level AND certain gear level.

[Odayaka]

LFD and Cata do not mix. Meaning LFD and anything difficult do not mix. LFD is great for lolcontent, but not for anything that requires the people in your group to have more than two neurons firing at the same time.

This. I don't run randoms on heroic content. Normal dungeons, sure, but I will only run heroics with my guild. I'm too scared to run heroics with a pug. D:

This is a good thing, however. It requires people to put effort into things they want to do. If you're not part of a guild, you can always put together a pug group on your server and make sure the people in your group know somewhat of what they're doing. This is what was done in BC and it worked out fine.

Personally, I like Cata and I wouldn't change a thing about the dungeons right now, except maybe the amount of trash in Grim Batol. It gets annoying clearing 20 trash packs before a boss... then 20 more.

[Gnomity]

I'm pretty happy with it - The heroics become a lot easier when groups have gear (avg ilvl ~253 for my heroic group now), and raids are challenging in a fun way. Only done Omnotron and Halfus, both of which are interesting fights but not very hard once everyone learns the mechanics and responds to them appropriately. In general I'd give it 4.5/5 stars.

it would nice to have an in between stage so that you could gear for them instead of getting pwned by the first 3 mobs in the dungeon if someone decides to break a cc.

They do have one... The Normal 84-85 dungeons are a great place to get "starter gear" and make it a lot easier in heroics than a lot of questing blues/greens. Also, you identified the problem right at the end of your comment, people need to learn not to break CC (as a fire mage I'm painfully aware of both CC and how easy it can be to break it)

[Beowyn]

Get ready for a ride, the end game content would be on par with the "harder" bosses in ICC. Each fight is well tooled and provides a good challenge for players.

As far as heroics being "end game" it depends on the player but they are tooled well and have more then one mechanic. making them some of the hardest encounters for a heroic/instance so far. These are great and once you get some basic gear they will help you pick who SHOULD be going with you to raid.

I encourage everyone to take their main tank/healer and rotate all your dps (always bringing at least 2 cc) and see how well they perform in CC control and not getting one shot by simple mechanics.

[Dvaldin]

Nice replies.

Back in the vanilla days (oh no! not another vanilla mention!), we didn't have the cross-server looking for group tool. Without that, it made the servers a more closely knit community. That's one of the downfalls of the LFD. Don't get me wrong, I think it's a great tool to a certain extent.

In Wrath, you could get your daily dungeon run accomplished with basically anyone. That model is not really feasible at the moment. It's more important currently to have a decent group, and the BEST way to do that is returning to the vanilla and BC models and make friends on your server. You'll find you can generally tolerate it more when you wipe if you at least sort-of know the people you're wiping with, but it falls on you to make that happen.

Put another way -- meeting people and making friends in the game should be the FIRST order of priority, particularly regarding end-game. That's really the most important thing. Not gear. If you find a decent group of friends who play, you'll have a better experience. WoW isn't a solo game. It's not meant to be one. though it does offer some soloable content, such as the daily quests and fishing, for when you just want to chill. The LFD is great for low level dungeons, and it's my belief that's primarily what it was intended for, i.e. to make it easier, particularly for new players, to find groups to run things like razorfen and stockades, but by the time you reach end-game, you should have met at least a few people. I think the designers wanted to push that. Just take a look at the latest guild design with gaining guild levels and reputation. It's made the entire guild situation MUCH more relevant. There are some really nice benefits that go along with being in a guild now. And it's a bigger deal if you decide to /gquit. I love that design.

So, work on those social skills. Go outside the box and meet a few folks. It'll enrich both your playing time and your life as a whole, and you might even get a few pieces of gear along the way.