Current raiding is fine, the difficulty level of 5 mans/questing/trades are bad

[Grogo]

So tell me Grogo, at what point is it difficult enough? when you have to have a full group just to quest at all? A game already tried that and WoW nearly put them out of business.

There has to be some sort of minimum level thats at least not a laughable joke. I do know this, at what point is it too easy? The current point, right now at this point of time it is much too easy and because of that, not fun at all...how could it be?

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5 mans have always been easy. They only ever require minor amounts of cc while still in dungeon/leveling gear.

I disagree. Vanilla and BC were a much better level. How can you even compare then to the current reality. Come on dude, lets keep it real.

[Captiosus]

3. Threat needs to be a thing again.

Ugh, no.

I usually keep two active MMO subs and right now that's both Warcraft and SWTOR. I mention this because in TOR the melee tanks (Jedi Guardian, Sith Juggernaut) both play very much like vanilla WoW warriors. To maintain threat you practically have to constantly tab target, apply sundering strikes, use hilt bash and force sweep (equivalent to thunderclap) every cooldown, and manage your damaging abilities to strike a happy balance between threat management, DPS, and talent linked mitigation abilities. I'm fairly decent at it but you know what?

It just isn't fun. It's tedious to the nth degree. It's why my Guardian is on the shelf. It's why I got to 60 on a Vanilla WoW warrior and went back to DPS. The skills needed aren't really that hard and with WoW's addons the skill curve is lessened... but, again, it wasn't fun. Micromanaging threat, having to pay attention to damn near every skill you have bound, having to be nearly flawless in your rotation to maintain threat or risk losing mobs (and subsequently being blamed for a bad pull).. No thank you.

The changes to threat and the rise of active mitigation takes some of the tedium off of the plate of tanks and makes it easier for them to be the meatshields they're supposed to be. Threat shouldn't be a separate "thing" for tanks.

Edit:

I disagree. Vanilla and BC were a much better level. How can you even compare then to the current reality. Come on dude, lets keep it real.

Blizzard disagrees with you.
Sub numbers disagree with you.
Financial numbers disagree with you.

So to quote "The Dude": That's just like.. your opinion, man.

[mistahwilshire]

I disagree. Vanilla and BC were a much better level. How can you even compare then to the current reality. Come on dude, lets keep it real.

Easy (then) vs. Really Easy (now).

Pretty comparable.

[Tiev]

Ugh, no.

I usually keep two active MMO subs and right now that's both Warcraft and SWTOR. I mention this because in TOR the melee tanks (Jedi Guardian, Sith Juggernaut) both play very much like vanilla WoW warriors. To maintain threat you practically have to constantly tab target, apply sundering strikes, use hilt bash and force sweep (equivalent to thunderclap) every cooldown, and manage your damaging abilities to strike a happy balance between threat management, DPS, and talent linked mitigation abilities. I'm fairly decent at it but you know what? .[/i]

It's a lot of fun.

[Duridi]

Just read a bit through the comments in this thread... Call me weird, but I enjoy stuff like threat mangement, resource management(mana) and limited CC. I find it fun. I like organizing, and these are aspects that made teamwork feel organized and that there was a thread through it all, keeping it together.

None of the above works in the current game though, which is a heavy shame in my opinion.

[Aydinx2]

Having to do LFR with the worst the community has to offer is fine?
People are being scared away from tanking due to LFR and it's fine?

[Raeln]

There has to be some sort of minimum level thats at least not a laughable joke. I do know this, at what point is it too easy? The current point, right now at this point of time it is much too easy and because of that, not fun at all...how could it be?

Fun is subjective though. What is fun for you, may not be fun for the majority of the playerbase.

I disagree. Vanilla and BC were a much better level. How can you even compare then to the current reality. Come on dude, lets keep it real.

BC heroic dungeons were more difficult primarily because there were few catch-up mechanisms for gear. The majority of the playerbase was essentially stuck wearing normal dungeon blues with perhaps a drop or two from Karazhan (those that did raid). The relative few that had common success in BC heroics found themselves collecting badges for a very long time before they were able to buy anything from that vendor.

[Grogo]

Easy (then) vs. Really Easy (now).

Pretty comparable.

Normal then, way too easy now. Not comparable at all and you know it.

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It used to work like this: (5 mans)

Release of 5 man

Go in, have to be on the ball to succeed in a timely manner

Not ready? Didn't go well first time in? Take some more time to gear up a little better to bring down difficulty

As you geared up it became easier, as you got into raid gear, even easier

Meshed together - gear - skill - time

[Varabently]

5 mans have always been easy. They only ever require minor amounts of cc while still in dungeon/leveling gear.

This is simply not true. In TBC, the 5 man heroics (Arcatraz, Shadow Labs, Shattered Halls for example) were anything but trivial until you had raiding gear. Even in full 141 (Tier 6) gear, they weren't as easy as MOP heroics are now. You can immediately hit 90 and run heroics and they are a cakewalk. On my monk I solo'd the first boss in one of the heroics with ease. I think I had 510 ilevel or so. That's ludicrous.

Even in Wrath, the heroics were relatively easy, but you could still wipe on some of them. It's pretty much impossible to wipe in MOP heroics unless you are trying really hard or playing with people asleep at the wheel. Remember the Oculus heroic? I recall wiping on that because people didn't understand how to use the drakes correctly. There WERE some challenges in 5 mans in prior expansions. Blizz attempted to revive that in Cataclysm but was shouted down immediately when people hit 85. Those heroics didn't stay difficult for very long and that's a shame.

[Captiosus]

It's a lot of fun.

Sure it is. The same way smashing your head into a wall is fun. Some people like that kind of thing. Most people don't.

Running around like an idiot trying to contain all of the mobs because you have limited abilities to keep threat - and the fact that tanks get tasked with yet another resource to manage - is idiotic. It's a relic of the Holy Trinity MMOs and its one reason why the MMO market is greatly diminishing. Us MMO old farts are tired of the same, bland, EverQuest style design.

Again, threat should not be an additional "thing" that only one subset of one particular class type should be forced to deal with. BTW, there's a common complaint between WOW and TOR right now. Care to guess what it is?

Tank shortages.

[Nobleshield]

huh what where is cc needed in raid now?

Garrosh trash. The irony is that a lot of encounters in SOO would benefit greatly (not that CC is *required* but CC would help out a lot) from CC (Siegecrafter, Paragons) but they are immune. Go figure.

[Raeln]

Normal then, way too easy now. Not comparable at all and you know it.

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It used to work like this: (5 mans)

Release of 5 man

Go in, have to be on the ball to succeed in a timely manner

Not ready? Didn't go well first time in? Take some more time to gear up a little better to bring down difficulty

As you geared up it became easier, as you got into raid gear, even easier

Meshed together - gear - skill - time

You need to take off your rose-colored glasses.

Almost no one ran strat/scholo 5-man at Vanilla release, they ran them as 20+ raids instead (until Blizzard removed it and retuned them). After that, they were pretty enjoyable dungeons that did not require warriors to even be protection spec in most groups. I had a lot of good times there.

Jump forward to TBC, prot and heal specs required but it was all about gear. Get lucky enough to have a tank with some raid gear? heroic dungeon suddenly a lot easier. I'm not going to really say they were all that fun. There was several anti-fun things revolving around them - like the frustration of finding people with keys and them not realizing they didn't have the key on that character until they tried to zone in.

There is something to be said about TBC heroics though - people seemed to prefer to just farm Karazhan for badges rather than TBC heroic dungeons toward the middle/end of the expansion.

[Cptcaine]

1. Upping difficulty level in 5 man dungeons, bring back CC as well, meaning you have to use it to get through it.

Yes, please. In my experience ZA/ZG were the best dungeons. Sure a bad group was not fun, but the good groups more than made up for it.

[ComputerNerd]

CC is still needed in raids so I don't see why it shouldn't be needed in 5 man's and when you outgear 5 mans you won't need CC, whch is cool.

Raids are typically 10-25.
A dungeon cannot have even represent half the current classes, assuming no duplicates.
Remember the fuss kicked in the likes of magisters terrace when there wasn't a warlock and a mage present ?
That is why CC sucks in dungeons, when a group simply does not have the tools that are expected.

Questing HAS to take into account those players who are experiencing it for the first time.
Always this complaint about difficulty from the view of an experienced player who keeps forgetting that they do not represent everyone.

[Rabiddog]

If you want CC and/or harder dungeons go do Challenge modes , expecting a randomly put together group to apply team work will not work in most groups. Also calling MoP heroics when you are doing them after 2-3 tiers of gear is not the way to assess the difficulty , they were of reasonable difficulty when we were first gearing when MoP came out , as we get more gear its understandable that those dungeons will be faceroll and that is why there is Challenge Modes.

[Raeln]

Sure it is. The same way smashing your head into a wall is fun. Some people like that kind of thing. Most people don't.

Running around like an idiot trying to contain all of the mobs because you have limited abilities to keep threat - and the fact that tanks get tasked with yet another resource to manage - is idiotic. It's a relic of the Holy Trinity MMOs and its one reason why the MMO market is greatly diminishing. Us MMO old farts are tired of the same, bland, EverQuest style design.

Again, threat should not be an additional "thing" that only one subset of one particular class type should be forced to deal with. BTW, there's a common complaint between WOW and TOR right now. Care to guess what it is?

Tank shortages.

Considering that the tank role was pretty much baked up for MMORPGs, it's no surprise.

I'm looking forward for the tanking role to die off, myself. It is difficult to explain using story, tanking abilities don't translate to PvP, and it's always been a thorn in the side for anyone trying to put a group together (or try to shorten queue times).

On the other hand, I tend to get amused at watching a "supposedly intelligent" raid boss be distracted by a tank yelling at them after a DPS lands a barrage of huge critical hits. Also like how an "intelligent" raid boss can't figure out it's the healer with glowing yellow or green hands that is keeping that tank alive. Ahh, scripts.

[Jarlathe]

I don't really like long duration CC, it doesn't really add skill, just time. I do like short duration CC, like daze, stun, interrupts,silence, etc. I do enjoy complicated pulls, even if it is only like that one section of Stonecore, it gives you a reason to pay attention. Bosses that can kill you are nice too, more one shot mechanics that aren't easy to outgear, which ultimately are still going to be ignorable when the boss dies in 12 seconds later in the expansion.

No. Just no. One shot mechanisms are not OK. They are horrible. For those of us that do not have stellar internet connections they can prove to be the end of any hope of heroics/raiding. Now, a mechanism that will drop you to a point where you must pot/HS/heal yourself before the healer has a chance to get to you might be ok. But even as a healer that can get to be a PITA. Give me fire or ground effects that I have to move out of fast, or lose health at a steady tick, but please, for the love of god, never let us see a boss like Corborus again. Hell, High Priestess Azil was a good example of a one shot down right. You had a second or two to get out of the way of the falling rock.

Wotlk: "dungeons too easy make them hard!!!!"
Cata: "dungeons too hard make them easy!!!"
Mists:"dungeons too easy make them hard!!!"

... guess whats comin in WoD.

You know it. As much as some people want to go back to the BC days, it's never gonna happen. The cat was let out of the bag in Wrath, and she's never going to go back in. No matter what Blizzard does, people will not keep subbing to the game with BC like heroics. My case in point is just look at the amount of subs shed during early Cata.

[Raeln]

Raids are typically 10-25.
A dungeon cannot have even represent half the current classes, assuming no duplicates.
Remember the fuss kicked in the likes of magisters terrace when there wasn't a warlock and a mage present ?
That is why CC sucks in dungeons, when a group simply does not have the tools that are expected.

Questing HAS to take into account those players who are experiencing it for the first time.
Always this complaint about difficulty from the view of an experienced player who keeps forgetting that they do not represent everyone.

This is why CC needs to be an independent role, not just tacked on to DPS.

Bringing a DPS to also CC fails.

Bringing a CC class to CC allows the game to be built to support classes that do nothing but CC/buff/debuff. See: Archon in Rift or enchanter/bard in EQ1. They weren't there to blow things up. They were there for CC and to make everyone else blow things up better.

[Ranaas]

dunno why ppl want to have CC in 5man dungeons while we (nearly) never use them in boss encounters , even the hardest ones.

I agree they need to improve 5-man experience. but it should be done by giving the bosses more HP , giving them more 1-shot abilities (non-personal) so they could be used as a training tier towards lfr/flex

[Raeln]

dunno why ppl want to have CC in 5man dungeons while we (nearly) never use them in boss encounters , even the hardest ones.

I agree they need to improve 5-man experience. but it should be done by giving the bosses more HP , giving them more 1-shot abilities (non-personal) so they could be used as a training tier towards lfr/flex

I disagree.

5-mans should be made into their own form of endgame. They should not be considered "training grounds" for raiding - if anything raiding needs to be de-emphasized, especially in reference to 5-man content.

1-shot abilities are not fun - that was the reasoning behind the stamina increase in TBC and Wrath, to reduce the likelihood of being 1-shot. What we ended up with is health pools that are so big now that they just seem... weird. Oh sure, it's just a number but something is lost between having 4k health and 800k health. Especially with percentage-based self-healing in a game that wants to continue to claim to support PvP/world PvP.