Originally Posted by
RoKPaNda
I'm going to have to jump on this. Some Kara gear was definitely useful for H. Arcatraz or H. Shattered Halls, but that's really the only point I agree on. Zul'Aman wasn't difficult, even before the nerf. Roughly a month or two after ZA released (definitely before nerfs) I rerolled on a different server, got level cap, was in mostly blues with a few epics from heroic 5-mans and I tanked ZA no problem with a guild of casual players.
Your progression is off too though. I think you have the wrong ideas about it. If you're talking about before they removed attunements, as a group, then yes raidwise you had to progress that way. Not because the content couldn't be done without a full set of gear from the previous tier, but because the attunements required you to do things in a certain order. After attunements were lifted? Not so much. At that point groups in Kara/ZA/Heroic gear were killing bosses in Hyjal/BT and I think one or two in SWP as well.
Attunements served to make content last longer than it should have, and the only real impact it had on players was a negative one because if anyone wanted to switch mains, either due to a desire to or due to the guild needing their alt, it was a seriously major pain in the ass for the entire raid team. Either a night of progression raiding was lost to do it, or people had to be on an extra night for at least that week just to get one guy's alt attuned. We did it though, if we really needed that person's alt class, and then we had to carry that person for a couple weeks in the current content until they caught up on gear from the current content. As a raider at the time, I was glad to see attunements go. Those were such a pain in the ass.