Are Scenarios The New Heroics?

[Kaiarra]

Why do I just get the feeling 'heroic scenarios' are going to just have every single mob using some cheap one shot mechanic you have to avoid or die - if that's not the case then will be pretty easy to take a tank or healer to make it a joke. Unless every mobs going to require an enrage timer forcing you to run 3 DPS.

I mean don't get me wrong I'd rather like the 3-man content as we normally have 3 people online, but maybe not 5; I'm just suspect of how Bliz intends to make the scenarios 'hard'. If it's just full of one shot mechanics it doesn't really sound that enjoyable.

Scenarios/heroics that scaled to group size would be more appealing to me, so we could just run it with whoever's online and wants to go.

[Waniou]

LFR: So how do tanks and healers fit into that? How do you adjust for gear differences? You are seriously proposing that undergeared players and new 90's who simply meet the minimum ilevel requirement should have less chance of gear than overgeared players who generally do better simply because of what they're wearing?

Normal/Heroics: Have a loot council distribute gear according to performance.

Not to mention, it'd encourage people to tunnel vision to maximise DPS rather than doing the fight properly.

[MoanaLisa]

It would be nice to have the option of doing scenarios with 5 people.

I completely support this idea. I suspect that they've wanted to experiment with scenario content and keeping the group size consistent makes that easier but I'd love to see scenarios for 5-, 10-, or even 40- people. Any size really.

One thing to note however since it's already happening: Having 5-man scenarios will cause some who are already proclaiming that dungeons/instances are doomed to just go that much harder on the topic.

[Firebert]

As if those heroic scenarios will not be accessible via the random tool.

Where does it say that, exactly?

A heroic difficulty for Scenarios have been added and are designed to provide challenging content for small groups of well-seasoned adventurers. Completing a Heroic Scenario awards Valor points, and a chance to obtain Raid Finder quality items.

I'm guessing that it'll have an item level requirement.

[Gimlix]

But get real people, Who ever uses dungeon finder after they dinged max level and got proper gear, almost nobody.
So i don't mind.
also waiting 20mins for 1 dungeon is insane.
Atleast scenarios has like 30 sec Que time, i like that aloooot!

[Nazmina]

Don't know why people call scenario's faceroll, I use a lot less brainpower in 5mans than in scenarios. In a 5man any damage I take is easily healed through even if I were to nom ground fire and stand in cleave ect. In scenario's I use way more of my abilites stuns,snares, cc, self def cds. When I play my ret or shadow in scenarios I can use off healing to great affect. I really like scenarios and Don't mind doing 2-3 in a row, whereas in dungeons I get bored after 1 if even that.

[rogueMatthias]

Yeah I reallly think they're replacing heroic dungeons.

If you think about it though, all the Hour of Twilight dungeons were practically scenarios anyway.

Who the hells gonna do non-heroic Scenarios though?


I'd imagine we'll get to the point that you'll run dungeons up till you hit max level. Then you'll have heroic scenarios for quick easy valor, or challenge dungeons if you actually want to be challenged.

[Firebert]

I'd imagine we'll get to the point that you'll run dungeons up till you hit max level. Then you'll have heroic scenarios for quick easy valor, or challenge dungeons if you actually want to be challenged.

This solves long DPS queues.

Clearly the bags aren't working.

[Flaks]

No.

They're not getting rid of 5 mans.

They've just decided to tarry away from their typical "3 dungeons at the end of the expansion" plan.

You guys are overreacting.

Scenarios are a nice device that make running instanced content FASTER, and the fact they're adding in a more difficult option for them further shows them trying to balance out the Hardcore and Casual crowd.

We have the least amount of heroic dungeons at the start of the expansion than ever before. AND they're not adding any more. Heroic dungeons are redundant/useless at this point whereas they remained useful throughout for the past two expansions.

Scenarios are without a doubt Blizzard's replacement for dungeons. If you can't see that then I don't know what to say. Its pretty dang blatant with how they're giving more rewards through scenarios while having reduced the rewards from dungeons and how they have way more scenarios than dungeons. The two also give similar rewards.

The only thing heroic dungeons are good for now is challenge modes and those have obviously not caught on like Blizzard hoped. Challenge modes should be the ones providing LFR level loot, not scenarios. And rep from either or both needs to happen.

The worst part about it all is that scenarios will be using the same fail loot system as LFR while valor/justice will remain obsolete meaning gearing is going to be the worst ever since 2006 (which it already has been so far in MoP).

[Sevyvia]

Are Scenarios The New Heroics?

Dear god I hope not.

[MoanaLisa]

When I play my ret or shadow in scenarios I can use off healing to great affect. I really like scenarios and Don't mind doing 2-3 in a row, whereas in dungeons I get bored after 1 if even that.

This is one of the great secrets of scenarios and is rarely mentioned. I generally play as a shadow priest. I can do the same scenario 3 or 4 times in a row and depending on the group composition, it's a potentially different experience each time in the case of what abilities I need to use. I expect that to be even more true in Heroic Scenarios if they continue to be composition neutral. I understand that this doesn't hold true for many classes, especially pures. But it's a nice thing purely from the standpoint of replayability for my character.

[Tribunal]

They came right out and said "5-mans will be back".

I could see the balance being more evenly spread between the two, but not tipping 100% in either direction.

[Apollet]

As others have mentioned, this can go a number of ways:

1) We have a situation where every mob has a silly 1 shot mechanics such as a 5 second cast touch of death, or a shock wave, or something along those lines. This is worst case scenario (no pun intended) because reasonable player will always avoid those mechanics and the scenarios will be just as easy as before while bad players won't be able to complete them at all and will rage quit the game.

2) Scenario mobs will now deal so much damage that a tank and healer is required, effectively making the queue's impossibly long. Might also severely limit certain role participation.

3) Scenarios are actually legit hard but since they award LFR gear, they will be nerfed after a flood of tears.

4) And finally, there's the situation where it can actually work. Here's my take on how it needs to work:
- Mechanics need to be tuned such that 3 dps can complete it with use of personal CD's. kiting, and off healing.
- Mechanics that require heavy healing or soaking damage from hard hitting enemies needs an environmental measure to avoid death. Think Bloodlord Mandokir. He would be a very appropriate scenario boss. He can 1 shot a dps, but they are revived and come back to full life with bonus damage and healing as long as they kill the dinosaur. Now, the boss himself would need to deal slightly less damage melee-wise, or there could be an environmental effect to help survive his melee damage.
- It could potentially work for scenarios to have one designated "off healing" class. Such as, it will always put a Paladin, Monk, Priest, Druid, or Shaman in a group of 3, regardless of spec, with the anticipation that the player will utilize his or her support abilities to help defeat the scenario. Think about a Ret Paladin popping wings and throwing out some large FoL's and word of glories.
- BUT, finally, the bosses and mobs need to be tuned in such a way that a tank or healer don't trivialize it. Enrage timers work very well in this case. You can't just have a shadow priest go holy to trivialize a boss. If it needs 150k dps to beat the enrage, then the priest needs to contribute his 50k to the other two dps's 50k to down the boss, instead of ignoring mechanics and cheesing it.

On a note of the last point, Blizzard could implement a +50% healing aura to hybrid classes/specs to encourage group play of the "off healer" designation.

[gonterf]

3) Scenarios are actually legit hard but since they award LFR gear, they will be nerfed after a flood of tears.

4) And finally, there's the situation where it can actually work. Here's my take on how it needs to work:

Hey, I'm interested to know what you think #3 would look like? How do you make something hard without either using mechanics that require people to pay attention (#1), or mechanics that require specialized stats (#2)? Or am I misreading you and your suggestions in this area are the ones under #4?

As a side note, I consider the challenge level of TBC heroics pre-nerf or the harder Cata heroics in the first few weeks of launch to be what I would consider 'appropriate' difficulty. Obviously I'm not playing WoW anymore, but I still dream Blizzard can bring that back. One of the biggest issues is that there's only one tier of heroic, meaning that once you out-gear it there's no challenge left to do but raid. Challenge modes fail to address this because there's no progression from one to the next. I'm watching this 'heroic scenarios' thing with interest, but my hopes aren't all that high.

[Airwaves]

Maybe with heroic scenarios they'll try to re-introduce difficulty that pre-LFD heroics used to have.

The only hard part was making a group with enough dps that can CC or manage to find a pally tank. Btw most of wrath didn't have LFD and it was faceroll before lfd was out.

[Deleted]

It seems to me they are replacing dungeons by scenarios, as their implementation effort seems way lower. They just use existing environment, and add a scripted story.

[Trassk]

What i think will happen in the next expansion, it will be all LFG heroic dungeons will be scrapped, and the only way you can do them is like challange mode dungeons now, much like the old days before LFG was invents, and they will still have Scenarions using the LFG feature.

pointless, so dam pointless.

[Deleted]

What i think will happen in the next expansion, it will be all LFG heroic dungeons will be scrapped, and the only way you can do them is like challange mode dungeons now, much like the old days before LFG was invents, and they will still have Scenarions using the LFG feature.

I think they are going to add scaling old dungeons to endgame soon (the unannounced feature). No idea if it will be raids only, but probably this includes all the old stuff like 5 mans you did while leveling up. Also no idea if it will offer any endgame loot. It should offer vp probably, and some transmog gear. And a satchel probably.

[Rivin]

There were no problems with tanks and heals back in WotLK times.

You must've played on a very high population server in Wrath if you never had issues finding tanks or healers for heroics. Sure, the daily heroic was always easy to get into, but any others? On my server at the time (I think it was medium population) it generally took around two hours of spamming Trade and Looking For Group to get a group together. For one heroic, usually.

It wasn't until the Dungeon Finder came out that those problems lessened, and even then DPS queues were still in the 30-40 minute range after the initial rush wore off.

[Deleted]

What i think will happen in the next expansion, it will be all LFG heroic dungeons will be scrapped, and the only way you can do them is like challange mode dungeons now, much like the old days before LFG was invents, and they will still have Scenarions using the LFG feature.

pointless, so dam pointless.

That defeats the whole purpose of having challenge mode dungeons.