Heroics. Not just for heroes anymore

[garion55]

With all the changes this expansion one of the worst imo was changing the purpose of heroics. Not only did it have a negative effect on the playerbase but it wasted a lot of the Devs time and resources.


If cata had followed the previous two expansions the model would have looked like this


normal dungeons (333) > 10/25 raids (346), heroic 5 man (end boss 346) > heroic 10/25 (359)

but with just one small change

normals (333) > heroic 5's (346) > 10/25 (359) > heroic 10/25 (372)


that totally changed why we had heroics in the first place and has not benefited anyone that i can see. Heroics were always meant to be something on the side for raiders to do between raids, they werent used to gear up everyone to start raiding. ( and i mean at the beginning of an expansion not like middle wrath when everyone ran them for badges)

Why was this change made? My guess was a lack of content. Blizzard may talk about how they wanted to improve the playerbase, get them prepared to raid. Not buying it. You can take someone to a lava pit and teach them how not to stand in stuff. My guess is that they were just trying to increase the time it took to get raid ready. Normal dungeons to raid ready hardly takes any time at all, easier dungeons that can quickly be run over and over. With heroics being so long and time consuming its going to take the average player much more time to gear up. That means it takes longer to get players through the current content and gives blizz more time to release the next batch of content also.


The result of the change? Start with the devs time. How much time did they have to spend creating a Luck of the draw buff? Thinking about it, writing the code and testing it. They had no choice though you cant force the bad players into heroics and not give them a fighting chance to complete them. This buff would not have been necessary under the old expansion model since only good players would run heroics.

Dungeon finder and votekicking changes. With 5 good players in a heroic who want the challenge, there shouldnt be much reason to kick anyone other than just jerkish behavior. How much time was and is still being wasted on tweaking votekicking and messing with how dungeon finder works.


Premature nerfing. Its too soon in an expansion to be doing any kind of nerfs to a heroic. There were nerfs in BC but it was on crazy stuff like trash mobs one shotting geared, experienced players. If you put bad players in a heroic and its too hard they will scream nerf and blizz will eventualy capitulate. If you put good players in a heroic and its too hard those players will work twice as hard to figure out how to beat it. The devs have to think about nerfs this early though because you want to give the less skilled players a chance to finish the heroics. Previously they just left the instances hard and if the hardcore guys started complaining about a fight then you knew that it should probably be looked at because the hardcore guys wouldnt be whining for no good reason.


This was all valuable dev time that could have instead been spent trying to balance classes or fixing some of the many things wrong in this expansion like floating herbs.


Whats this change done to the playerbase? Probably the most damage of all. You can see the screaming on the forums. One side says they are too easy and the other says they are too hard and guess what? they are both right. Heroics have to be easy enough for the less skilled to finish yet hard enough to give the good players a challenge. So its a mixmash of both. Forcing the good players to carry the bad ones is leaving a sour taste in peoples mouths I imagine. The runs can very easily turn into 3 hour long wipe fests where everyone is screaming at each other. Thats no fun for anyone. This current system take all players good and bad and puts them on a professional stage and expects everyone to perform at a professional level. Its like benching half of the laker squad and replacing those players with thier dads and uncles, 30 years older than them, and expecting all the guys young and old to run up and down the court at the same pace for the entire game. It just doesnt work.


Good players want to zone in with 4 other good players and everyone play their role to the best of their ability and the instance be challenging. Having to deal with 1 or 2 players who just arent cutting the mustard just makes the whole run stink. And when the runs stink that gives people less incentive to want to try running them again which leads to tank/healer shortages and long LFD ques.




Hopefully next expansion blizzard goes back to the previous model and leaves the heroics for the heroes.

[Wilbot]

With all the changes this expansion one of the worst imo was changing the purpose of heroics. Not only did it have a negative effect on the playerbase but it wasted a lot of the Devs time and resources.


If cata had followed the previous two expansions the model would have looked like this


normal dungeons (333) > 10/25 raids (346), heroic 5 man (end boss 346) > heroic 10/25 (359)

but with just one small change

normals (333) > heroic 5's (346) > 10/25 (359) > heroic 10/25 (372)


that totally changed why we had heroics in the first place and has not benefited anyone that i can see. Heroics were always meant to be something on the side for raiders to do between raids, they werent used to gear up everyone to start raiding. ( and i mean at the beginning of an expansion not like middle wrath when everyone ran them for badges)

Why was this change made? My guess was a lack of content. Blizzard may talk about how they wanted to improve the playerbase, get them prepared to raid. Not buying it. You can take someone to a lava pit and teach them how not to stand in stuff. My guess is that they were just trying to increase the time it took to get raid ready. Normal dungeons to raid ready hardly takes any time at all, easier dungeons that can quickly be run over and over. With heroics being so long and time consuming its going to take the average player much more time to gear up. That means it takes longer to get players through the current content and gives blizz more time to release the next batch of content also.


The result of the change? Start with the devs time. How much time did they have to spend creating a Luck of the draw buff? Thinking about it, writing the code and testing it. They had no choice though you cant force the bad players into heroics and not give them a fighting chance to complete them. This buff would not have been necessary under the old expansion model since only good players would run heroics.

Dungeon finder and votekicking changes. With 5 good players in a heroic who want the challenge, there shouldnt be much reason to kick anyone other than just jerkish behavior. How much time was and is still being wasted on tweaking votekicking and messing with how dungeon finder works.


Premature nerfing. Its too soon in an expansion to be doing any kind of nerfs to a heroic. There were nerfs in BC but it was on crazy stuff like trash mobs one shotting geared, experienced players. If you put bad players in a heroic and its too hard they will scream nerf and blizz will eventualy capitulate. If you put good players in a heroic and its too hard those players will work twice as hard to figure out how to beat it. The devs have to think about nerfs this early though because you want to give the less skilled players a chance to finish the heroics. Previously they just left the instances hard and if the hardcore guys started complaining about a fight then you knew that it should probably be looked at because the hardcore guys wouldnt be whining for no good reason.


This was all valuable dev time that could have instead been spent trying to balance classes or fixing some of the many things wrong in this expansion like floating herbs.


Whats this change done to the playerbase? Probably the most damage of all. You can see the screaming on the forums. One side says they are too easy and the other says they are too hard and guess what? they are both right. Heroics have to be easy enough for the less skilled to finish yet hard enough to give the good players a challenge. So its a mixmash of both. Forcing the good players to carry the bad ones is leaving a sour taste in peoples mouths I imagine. The runs can very easily turn into 3 hour long wipe fests where everyone is screaming at each other. Thats no fun for anyone. This current system take all players good and bad and puts them on a professional stage and expects everyone to perform at a professional level. Its like benching half of the laker squad and replacing those players with thier dads and uncles, 30 years older than them, and expecting all the guys young and old to run up and down the court at the same pace for the entire game. It just doesnt work.


Good players want to zone in with 4 other good players and everyone play their role to the best of their ability and the instance be challenging. Having to deal with 1 or 2 players who just arent cutting the mustard just makes the whole run stink. And when the runs stink that gives people less incentive to want to try running them again which leads to tank/healer shortages and long LFD ques.




Hopefully next expansion blizzard goes back to the previous model and leaves the heroics for the heroes.

This Berry flavored Propel Zero water tastes like lemon lime.

[Deleted]

My guess is that they were just trying to increase the time it took to get raid ready.

Yea right, it took most people 1 day to level to 85 and be completely raid-geared ready. (with "most" people I mean the top of the playerbase)

[Ethes]

long story is long. But nevertheless heroics have been used for gearing up pre-raid since TBC

[njorde]

/agree.
x1000

[kliffharry]

In TBC, when Heroics first started, the itemlevel from heroic dropped epics were 110 and kara epics 115.

_IMO_ The items that you get from a 10 or 25 man raid should replace anything you can get from 5 man instances, just because it takes more effort to obtain it.

[Alskonda]

First I thought it would be a good idea to have the hc's and normal raids be equal. Then I thought it would suck because people would jump from hc dungeons to heroic raids. That would make zero sense and destroy the reason to run normal raids.

[paloalto]

The fun part is that people still insist that we ran heroics to get geared for raids since the start of TBC, which is so far from the truth. I recall plenty of normal Steamvaults groups forming for people to get ready for Kara. It's an odd step for sure, and I'd agree it's just an artificial extra step to try to draw out the content.

[klaps_05]

its always been quests > normal > heroics > raids, that have proved to be useful for 6years+

[Lucetia]

normal dungeons (333) > 10/25 raids (346), heroic 5 man (end boss 346) > heroic 10/25 (359)

but with just one small change

normals (333) > heroic 5's (346) > 10/25 (359) > heroic 10/25 (372)

Have you not played the other expansions? If so, you would understand what you said is wrong. Gearing has always been meant to go this way

Normal Dungeons -> Heroics -> 10/25 Normal Raids -> 10/25 Heroic Raids

The other thing is I don't fully understand what you meant from gearing.

Normal (316/333's) -> Heroics (346's) -> Normal Raids (359) -> Heroic Raids (372)

There is nothing wrong with that at all. With your example you simply wanted it, except without a tier of gear which would not work because then there would be no incentive to do it.

Normal (316/333's) -> Normal Raids (346's) -> Heroics (359) -> Heroic Raids (372)

The fun part is that people still insist that we ran heroics to get geared for raids since the start of TBC, which is so far from the truth. I recall plenty of normal Steamvaults groups forming for people to get ready for Kara. It's an odd step for sure, and I'd agree it's just an artificial extra step to try to draw out the content.

That's because heroics were the intended step between normals and raids. Just because people can skip "tiers" and still do the next content doesn't mean you are doing it wrong. That's like saying anyone who doesn't go from Quest -> Raids is doing it wrong, because it's completely possible.

[Selxxa]

Yea right, it took most people 1 day to level to 85 and be completely raid-geared ready. (with "most" people I mean the top of the playerbase)

Then.. that's not exactly "most" people, is it?

[Osmeric]

They blew WAY too much of their development budget revamping the world.

I figure they did this because the next expansion will phase the entire world into the Emerald Dream. Too bad the players had to pay for it now.

[Deleted]

Nowadays you level in normal dungeons, gear up in heroic dungeons, raid in normal raids until you're strong enough for heroic raids.

I think it's a great concept.

[Bamahut]

Yep took me a day to get to 85 and geared up for raids! To bad my fellow guild mates were not as quick as me!

[Ultima]

In TBC, how did you play this game exactly? I'm damn well curious.

Are you forgetting that you had do to Heroic Dungeons to get attuned to be able to even enter raids?

Or did you start the game in TBC Patch 3.0 where attunements were gone, raids were easier than heroic dungeons and Magister's Terrace provided better gear than Kara, and you have just extrapolated the game from that?

[jazen]

raiding is the new welfare epic. Trash runs for epics, guild runs for epics, soon to be pugs for epics. Cata was supposed to make them harder to get/more unique. That lasted about a week, now they are almost as common as wrath. I agree with poster, the gear progression is out of wack. Too few heroics/too easy 10 man content and a BH boss that could just as well have a loot pile by front entrance. I like most of cata, but end-game is pretty boring atm and I certainly expect next content patch to flesh it out a bit though.

[Jimmus]

Heavens to Betsy! Oh no! A heroic is hard? It's forcing somebody to learn how to play their class and manage their resources unlike being able to spam one or two abilities like back in WotLK?

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Xelestial]

@Jimmus- Really? Did you even read the post? 0/10

Heroics were always meant to be something on the side for raiders to do between raids

I agree with this. The heroics are ALREADY boring since you have to run them to death to actually begin raiding. They weren't this boring until T9 content in Wrath. There is a general lack of endgame content which is why I'm well on my way to quitting since I rarely actually spend anytime playing the game anymore.

In BC was pretty cool because heroics were difficult right until the very end. You only had to run certain ones in BC to begin raiding. You could go to Kara to fill out the rest of your gear too.

[Ultima]

raiding is the new welfare epic. Trash runs for epics

Stopping you there. PuGs have been raiding trash since TBC, stop being so misinformed. Hyjal trashed dropped "BiS" for Paladin tanks, Shadow Priests, etc. Naxxramas and ICC trash farming for epics and rep was very common also. Become a Vanilla QQ hardcore, rather than a TBC QQ hardcore, if this is your argument.

[Ethes]

In TBC, how did you play this game exactly? I'm damn well curious.

Are you forgetting that you had do to Heroic Dungeons to get attuned to be able to even enter raids?

Or did you start the game in TBC Patch 3.0 where attunements were gone, raids were easier than heroic dungeons and Magister's Terrace provided better gear than Kara, and you have just extrapolated the game from that?

That is actually something I miss pretty much. The thrill of getting attuned, getting a list of pre-raid gear that would actually be good. It taking 2 weeks of casual play or even more to actually get the items.

But unfortunately thats not there