Wow, Dungeons are Hard!

[Shynx]

i wonder why he went through all the trouble of writing that post when they are planing to nerf half of the dungeons to the ground oO

[Triggerfish]

As someone who never enjoyed 5 mans to begin with this expansion has been seriously deficient in fun (for me at least). For me the only reason to do a heroic is for valor points for raid gear. So to be competitive within my guild I feel burdened to do the daily heroic as often as possible. The heroics are generally longer (although not that much with a premade group) and god help me if I am in a position where I have to use the LFG finder (I play a pure dps class as my main). So I can easily piss away an hour and a half (on a bad day) on something I really didn’t want to do in the first place.

Personally, I would rather snooze through the 8-10 minute queue and 8-12 minute instance WotLK provided than snooze through a 40 minute queue and 30 minute instance Cata offers.

Yeah I know it will get better as the player base gears up but still when you start feeling burdened to do something you should be enjoying something is wrong. At some point – in a month or so I will have no use for the daily heroic, until the next tier is released anyway

[ChocolateThunderz]

I remember when I first dinged 85, did my first heroic, and LAUGHED when we wiped. Laughed. I was happy, and it was awesome to finally have a challenge. I really hope they don't nerf them to hard, with the current changes they won't be faceroll, but they'll be way too easy in my opinion.

[Yanim]

I've never hated pugging more than in Cataclysm.

totaly agree.

[fonzatron2000]

Dungeons are hard? I hadn't noticed.

[Deleted]

Because as they said, ...

I actually did read the posts, it would require an expansion worth of work ? no it doesn't, that 's what they already do each day, changing/fixing classes and encounters. Besides that, there have been big milestones in WOTLK where they could have done that, they even introduced more dungeons along the way.

Hm you tell me I didn't read blue posts but did you actually read the OP from GC ? He talks about the iLvl and how just a number like that isn't enough to let people go in HCs and that it can be cheated. GearScore and how it was used and abused by players should have taught them that just a number wasn't enough to do the job.

I never asked them to redesign and change everything in WOTLK in one night, but they got 2 years. It's very long and that makes a lot of work power when there's multiple teams working on an expansion.

[Garaya]

Well to be honest its a good thing that heroics are getting nerfed. I have done all of them already and i think they are fun to play because they are hard, but easier dungeons > easier farming. This should make the dungeon finder more popular than running guild runs in heroics.

[TankGoat]

Games arnt all about max dps and attention , sometimes casuals want to play casualy

No, our small 5-man guild are very VERY casual. We want our heroic go as smooth and as easy as possible.
So we CC everything we can and relax while chatting on vent and doing a 1on1 fight, and I, as a casual, think this is casual enough.

And heroic is not hard.

I laugh at how 'you need CC now, until you outgear it', in that case, gearing from heroics outgears you for heroics, because I can't remember the last time I marked a target for CC in a heroic.

hummmm is't it the point of doing heroic for raid? I mean, when you "finished" heroic you'll have entry raid gear, at this point of course you ARE outgearing it.

[Deleted]

Whatever you do - it doesn't matter, there will always be some % of WoW population, that doesn't like the changes. In fact, I am one of those, who dislikes the changes they are making to heroics on PTR atm. If you didn't read the news - short baseline is they are nerfing almost every single hard encounter in heroics. It was really hard to do first boss in heroic shadow fang keep for achievement - you needed at least 2 classes that could interupt all of his spells.. It was fun on Ozruk, it WAS. Now it will not ever be the same, if the changes go live. Even these minimal changes will make the heroics LOL'ed by people 330+ item level. Please, Ghostcrawler, don't do it. I rerolled from dps to healer, just to have those additional moments of adrenaline in game, when you see the tank falling under 35% and you are almost out of mana..

P.S. Out of topic maybe, huge thanks for such a wonderful and challenging achievement as it is "Headed South" in Lost City of the Tol'vir heroic. It's my (healing) favourite.

[Aqir]

Someone give me a lifeboat, I'm drowning in the tears of nabblings.

On a more serious note : Keep the content hard for us that is doing heroicraid's and once next tier is out, neffy can slip and break his back and give out free loot in a fruitbasket for all i care

[Aevis]

Fair play to GC & all the blizz staff they are doing an excellent job @ monitoring the whole game, whilst making new content & listeneing the the endless QQ that will always be around as long as this game is.
Is wotlk Hc's were /faceroll.. a bit like a secondary profession imo, something to fill a void in time whilst not raiding. Even Raids got nerfed 3-4 weeks after release because ppl QQ'd to much about the amount of dmg XT did (example). At least now HC's are Achievable, and slightly challenging in PuG's, but not impossible, i have done 50+ pugs & cleared hc's probably 40+ times, for those that have no luck whatsoever in PuG's (From a healer or tanks perspective) look at your own gear, chants, gems etc like GC said, makes a huge difference at least until your full 346, by which time hc's are a lot easier.

During wrath, or to be more specific, after UlduarNERFs and just before TOTC, i quit this game due to blizz caring TOO much, and being swayed by the masses of QQ they must have got about original difficulty of content patches, which ultimately led to their early demise (Just to allow the non-raiders to experience it in PuGs)

After returning to this game, i am pleased by the steps blizz are making to restore this game to it's former glory.

Also ppl haven't got L2Play issues, they have L2FORGET ABOUT WOTLK issues, and some ppl who maybe percieved as noobs maybe just haven't got the gear, or are not cut out for PVE.
So i say this, ppl who think this content is WAY to hard, go play pvp you'll probably be better at it.

[Niter]

I love his posts, they are often so fun to read and laugh about.

Seriously, this guy is the lead designer, head of a design team, working on the 3rd expansion of this game and he's still making all thoses mistakes ?

I could not agree more with most of your views.

Sincerely, Cataclysm feels to me like a rushed work. Of course, it took them a lot of time to revisit the Old World and change it drastically, but that is pretty much the best the xpac has to offer. I like having a lot of different alts for roleplaying purposes, trying new stuff, knowing every possible spec, so that is the joy of the expansion for me so far.

However, I felt levelling from 80 to 85 way too fast, and it is not that I like the grind or stuff like that, but I like the stories, I like the different paths, knowing more stuff as I level my characters. And it is flawed, if you got two level 85s you have seen it all. Even TBC has a lot more options and a lot more to do in a non-instanced world. Another thing that feels stupid to me is that at lvl 85 the way your character plays changes drastically to some specs. That is BAD.

Wrath had several mistakes, but they were made by the developers themselves. Anybody who saw how heroics were in LK beta should know that they were harder, and they were not largely nerfed prior to being released, but what really changed was the gear. I felt that WotLK and Cataclysm REGULAR dungeons are not that different, but heroics change everything. Problem being that in WotLK you had a few heroics you could do that you knew you could take less experienced players and instruct them. In Cataclysm there is not enough content for newcomers or inexperienced at level 85 until they are trying heroics. At that point they might be too fresh. WoW is a game you play solo until you reach endgame, and then we wonder how people can be so bad at the game?

I think that Ghostcrawler is arrogant. He states that they are not, that they make mistakes and try to make them right, that they are not so proud and things like that, but we can clearly understand WHEN he and other developers are arrogant and proud. PvP is the best example by far. Frost Mages have been obscenely powerful for several months, and they are very common. Do they change anything about it? No! Feral Tanks are not that great, sub-par when it comes to AoE tanking, health and armour. What do they do? They nerf Ferals for the sake of PvP, barely fixing anything in PvE. What about the Shamans? How long is Enhancement supposed to feel like it is the most neglected spec ever since it fell from being incredibly powerful years ago? And Ret Paladins? They were never fixed, they were ridiculously overpowered for some time, then nerfed, overhauled again but this time they are not performing the best. What about the healing? Healing might be more interesting as a whole to some, maybe the majority, but it definitely feels too similar. It is everybody with a couple of moves that are used the same no matter what healing spec you got. Resilience never fixed anything, and it could THE STAT to make PvP more equal. Instead of nerfing abilities that work for PvE and cause problems in PvP, why not so simply add an extra effect to Resilience? As in a Feral Cat dealing way too much damage through Bleeds could simply be countered with Resilience reducing the damage from Rake and Rip even further. Done. Frost Lance spam is doing a lot of damage for the kind of spell it is? Fine, make Resilience reduce the damage taken from the spell instead of nerfing it for PvE (actually, it seems they are buffing the spell further... Oh boy).

I like that heroics are harder once more. It is not like TBC though, which I think is a step in the right direction. However, I feel that almost all of the trash should just be trash mobs and that is it. Some packs should be dangerous because that adds flavour, but when you are doing the same heroic for the 20th time and still CCing a lot of things, it gets old very fast, and it makes the dungeons look less interesting. Some mobs should be the one you watch out for, that is nice. Also, CC has one problem that most people do not realise. When you used to CC everything, you get used to play in a controlled environment all the time. Then you come up against a pack that you cannot CC, and things fall apart. It should not be so counter-intuitive like this. Bosses should be the ones demanding, not their stupid little pawns.

Story in Cataclysm is so far kind of dumb. WotLK had a rehashed Naxxramas, but very few players played it when the content was not dated. I, myself, never really cleared it, I got to 4 Horsemen before I had to quit for some time. However, it was new for the most part and it had a lot of flavour, it fit perfectly WotLK story. But in Cataclysm most enemies are nobodies or resurrected stuff. It works mechanically, the fights are fun, but that is not enough flavour to me, it does appeal to me at all seeing that they are failing to bring new lore to the game.

I like WoW very much, even if I criticise it a lot, but it makes me sad to think that levelling is not challenging as it should, that they have not come up with ways to make party play more core to the game without LFG channels for elite quests and stuff like that. The game is more and more polished every new patch, but those fundamental mistakes as far as gameplay, balancing and learning curves go, are always there, and that is a problem that the developers should address sometime soon.

It is my belief that the increase in difficulty was a good idea, and I am for it, no doubt about that. But what keeps me wondering is if they did not try a change that is so huge, and in several parts of the game, too abruptly. Plus, it is a ridiculous lie to say that most people playing the game now started back in Vanilla or even early TBC. No game can keep the number of subscribers this high and increasing consisting of a majority of veterans. I have played WoW since 2006, June or July, I cannot really remember. And it many newcomers start at every point. In WotLK what I felt was a lot more 'ordinary people', mums and dads playing with their kids and all that. I understand that such people might feel like slapped in the face after two years playing a game that was a lot easier, and now they see it like it is not designed for them. I would be pissed off too!

WoW is a fantastic game, and made a lot of things right. It is very far from flawless though.

[Perryn]

i wonder why he went through all the trouble of writing that post when they are planing to nerf half of the dungeons to the ground oO

The encounters getting nerfed are largely the encounters he mentioned as being significant causes of wipes more than others.

That said, I wish they'd have left them alone. As others have said already, they're a -lot- easier in 346+ gear and with people knowing the mechanics better, DBM and similar addons being updated and people getting accustomed to the playstyle, so they'll be night pointless even later in the expansion, even without the nerfs.

But oh well.

[Orodoth]

What GC says is common sense. It doesn't take a rocket surgeon to figure out things got harder, and its not wrath anymore. Some people need to just accept the fact their beloved loot-fest is over, and take a little more time to dig around on forums, learn their class, and for Pete's sake, watch a tank spot video every now and again!

[Geckomayhem]

Sounds like they have taken a good stance on things. Of course, for those of us with very little time to play who are still slowly levelling to 85, by the time heroics become viable, there should be a lot of people around who "outgear" them, and the awareness of fights should be so extensive that the struggles people have faced over the last month will be fading to distant memories.

With iLevel 359 gear becoming trivialised in the next tier, for those wanting a challenge (read: fun) it becomes an incentive to do other things in the game and not just run heroics over and over. If heroic difficulty progressed with each tier of the game, newly level capped players would find it impossible to defeat the content, and it would take away the fun factor.

One thing they could potentially do is to scale dungeon content with the average item level of all five party members. Meaning that if everyone was in Tier 11, the bosses would have twice as much health and their mechanics would be that much more punishing. I'm not sure if that sort of scaling is even possible, but for future content it sure would be good to see scaled party (and even raid) content implemented to some degree.

A way to balance that when you have a vast range of average item level gear between players is to scale gear back or provide percentage-based buffs and debuffs to average everyone's gear out. Then it would be a matter of knowing the mechanics, reacting situationally for the sake of the other four people in your party and not facerolling your way through yet another dungeon run because you now outgear it. There would be no more outgearing content.

[ahahouha]

Sounds like they have taken a good stance on things. Of course, for those of us with very little time to play who are still slowly levelling to 85, by the time heroics become viable, there should be a lot of people around who "outgear" them, and the awareness of fights should be so extensive that the struggles people have faced over the last month will be fading to distant memories.

With iLevel 359 gear becoming trivialised in the next tier, for those wanting a challenge (read: fun) it becomes an incentive to do other things in the game and not just run heroics over and over. If heroic difficulty progressed with each tier of the game, newly level capped players would find it impossible to defeat the content, and it would take away the fun factor.

One thing they could potentially do is to scale dungeon content with the average item level of all five party members. Meaning that if everyone was in Tier 11, the bosses would have twice as much health and their mechanics would be that much more punishing. I'm not sure if that sort of scaling is even possible, but for future content it sure would be good to see scaled party (and even raid) content implemented to some degree.

A way to balance that when you have a vast range of average item level gear between players is to scale gear back or provide percentage-based buffs and debuffs to average everyone's gear out. Then it would be a matter of knowing the mechanics, reacting situationally for the sake of the other four people in your party and not facerolling your way through yet another dungeon run because you now outgear it. There would be no more outgearing content.

you have clearly missed the point that outgearing content and,thus,becoming stronger than your environment is a core philosophy of the rpg game^^

[Deleted]

WTB nightmare difficulty already, Heroics are a joke as is.

[Carni]

They are already not hard in full 346 lvl gear. They will become zerg fests in 359 ilvl

Can you say...zomgheroicsforpointsletspullthreegroupsatatimesoitgoesfaster!

That space is eViL...seriously I didn't put that there...i even edited to try and remove it!


On a side note....I would love to see some harder stuff... Also like to seem some harder heroics....

[Carri]

I think what people forget is that the game is meant to be fun for everyone, and its always possible to get better whereas its not possible to dumb yourself down and make yourself a worse player in order to make heroics fun. If you can't do them at the moment because of pugs then your choice is to either hope you get lucky or join a guild for guild runs, if your pugs always go badly then perhaps the problem is you. If you are just not ready then go run normals to learn the fights and get the gear then at least you know what you're doing and possibly then you can be the one to explain to your group 'hey guys this works better this way' etc. Ofc you always have the chance of asshats who don't listen but that's not the games fault.
Its not right to expect blizz to dumb down content just because you cannot do it when alot of others can. By doing that its just ruining the game for ppl who are willing to put in the effort to do things how they are meant to be done or to learn their class and tactics well enough to put them into practice effectively.
Things will get easier with gear and just over time because you will find less and less ppl in the dungeons who are clueless about what to do, as a healer I have only had problems in pugs when ppl are to ' OMG DO FAST PLS KK' instead of taking 2 minutes to explain a tactic to a player new to the instance, cc is always going to be helpful and most definately should be used if players are in lower gear. If you cannot be bothered to use cc at least when you are not overgearing something then just uninstall cata tbh because if you cannot even cope with that you will never go any furthur in this expansion.
To those casual players out there who don't come on alot of time, really the best option for you is to join a casual guild or community, there are plenty available and when you do get on make a point of saying to ppl hey do you wanna go do a heroic tomorrow evening etc. I do this all the time in guild with alot of our players who have less time in game and we have been coping fine since the beginning.
To those who are focusing mainly on the 'pugs make this suck' aspect remember that this is intended to be a social game its not meant to be single player, it is to your benifit to make friends and join guilds. Esp with this expansion due to all the actual game perks of being in a guild aside from the social and raiding aspect.
Love and hugs!

Edit: I understand alot of things can be solo in wow but if you're looking to game in instances and raids etc this is where I mean it is a more social game and is easier if you choose to interact more with others on your realm guild etc.

[darkspiel]

Read it. Nice insight, but not a necessary read for those who are capable of enjoying the game without QQ.