Heroic dungeons 5.4

[Alltat]

I wish they'd go back to the old distinction between normal and heroic at level cap. I enjoy properly heroic dungeons (Cataclysm style), but they're not very PUG-friendly. I also enjoyed the easy zerging of WotLK heroics, where you'd steamroll through the place for the fastest possible valor gains. Ideally we could have both, with normal modes that give fast justice/valor and harder heroic modes that award random scenario-style loot.

Next expansion; 1-man "heroics" ;-)

Proving Ground says hi. All we need is a daily/weekly quest that awards valor depending on how well you do, and solo heroics are a reality. Getting valor for each new wave you reach in Endless would be quite entertaining.

[Eats Compost]

What i REALLY would like to see in the future? 5man and scenarios merged - you can enter in groups of 3-5, no roles needed (while standard THDDD comp is optimal). So this way they can do more or them during patches. Scenarios are really cool, and the scaling tech can make wonders for that content.

I think Blizzard's problem with dungeons isn't the 5-man THDDD comp being required. It's that dungeons require a lot of art and design resources, whilst scenarios require little (thanks to recycling locations and stuff). Making their player composition scenario-like doesn't fix the problem that stopped Blizzard from adding patch dungeons during this expansion.

This, combined with the short lifecycle of dungeons (see: getting canned as soon as people gear up from them, which is very quickly) made them see dungeons as a bad investment. A sentiment that I'm pretty sympathetic to. If anything, the biggest mitigating factor was challenge modes, which have an indefinite lifespan.

[George Costanza]

They are fun to tank as a dps . They are even easier when you tank them in 5mans as a dps, goes much faster than tanking them, and it's not like you are going to die in there, the monsters hits for so llow (30k on leather... seriously).

[jearle]

Personally, I don't like the philosophy that patch dungeons had in Wrath and Cata. Sure, ZG was really cool the first time around, but I was totally over it by the end of the first week. I think that the Timeless Isle is a much better way of getting gear that would have been about the same quality.

5 Man content where you don't have to think about mechanics or throw out some CC, stuns, silences, is really just pointless to me.
Why even have variety in a dungeon if all you're going to do is AoE everything down in a group.

Wrath dungeons even on launch were easily cleared in quest gear. Cata heroics on launch actually had some challenge to them when you were a fresh 85 in ~ 330 gear, but once you got full 346 blues they were no longer truly difficult and they nerfed them anyway.

MoPs 5 man heroics were as easy as WoTLK, but they gave Challenge Mode difficulty which scaled down gear and were harder but were really more about cutting corners on time then about difficult 5 man content.

Scenarios are designed for 3 DPS to complete so anything they design with this in mind will be extremely easy with a healer or a hybrid heals.

I'd like to see a game bring back difficult small group content that isn't immediately outgeared due to character progression.

Variety in trash packs with unique abilities to be aware of, necessity of crowd control and focus firing and boss fights that are still fun.

The end game small party hard/heroic/elite mode content should scale with player gear. With the scaling technology used in game today this should be easily doable. It doesn't have to scale exactly but it should ramp up difficulty based on the partys iLvL.

Take for instance MoP heroics which were suppose to be tuned for 450 ilvl (for math reasons, i know it was lower) this means your group should have a cumulative iLvL of 2250. If you enter the dungeon with a group of 500 gear players (Group iLvL 2500) the dungeon mobs and boss should scale up to meet that item level and close the 250 iLvL gap.

I know people want to feel powerful and have character progression and not have a 5 man take the same amount of time after they get geared so the scaling should not completely close the gap, but should still offer a challenge.

This would be the difference in a heroic taking 45 minutes at the beginning of the xpac and 10 minutes at the end of an xpac.

I am waiting for an MMO to do something like this cause as much as I love raiding, I do love small group content and frankly miss the BC heroic content as IMO it was the best small group content in the history of MMOs.

[alucardtnuoc]

I find it amusing to just go into a heroic dungeon to finish capping and just solo the place... on my ele sham.

[Tinykong]

My raid group does 5 mans to cap valor on alts, usually 4 raid players and one alt. We run 4 dps and a tank, and usually just pile all the trash on top of the bosses and just aoe everything down. Other than 5 mans like Shado Pan that have RP/scripted scenes, we can finish a 5 man in sub 5 minutes, Scarlet ones in particular.

[Luneward]

I really hate scenarios and the post BC heroics. Would LOVE some BC style heroic 5 mans again. Used to spend so much time in 5 mans with friends when i was not raiding.

Psst. They're called challenge modes. Just FYI.

[Eats Compost]

5 Man content where you don't have to think about mechanics or throw out some CC, stuns, silences, is really just pointless to me.
Why even have variety in a dungeon if all you're going to do is AoE everything down in a group.

Wrath dungeons even on launch were easily cleared in quest gear. Cata heroics on launch actually had some challenge to them when you were a fresh 85 in ~ 330 gear, but once you got full 346 blues they were no longer truly difficult and they nerfed them anyway.

MoPs 5 man heroics were as easy as WoTLK, but they gave Challenge Mode difficulty which scaled down gear and were harder but were really more about cutting corners on time then about difficult 5 man content.

Scenarios are designed for 3 DPS to complete so anything they design with this in mind will be extremely easy with a healer or a hybrid heals.

I'd like to see a game bring back difficult small group content that isn't immediately outgeared due to character progression.

Variety in trash packs with unique abilities to be aware of, necessity of crowd control and focus firing and boss fights that are still fun.

The end game small party hard/heroic/elite mode content should scale with player gear. With the scaling technology used in game today this should be easily doable. It doesn't have to scale exactly but it should ramp up difficulty based on the partys iLvL.

Take for instance MoP heroics which were suppose to be tuned for 450 ilvl (for math reasons, i know it was lower) this means your group should have a cumulative iLvL of 2250. If you enter the dungeon with a group of 500 gear players (Group iLvL 2500) the dungeon mobs and boss should scale up to meet that item level and close the 250 iLvL gap.

I know people want to feel powerful and have character progression and not have a 5 man take the same amount of time after they get geared so the scaling should not completely close the gap, but should still offer a challenge.

This would be the difference in a heroic taking 45 minutes at the beginning of the xpac and 10 minutes at the end of an xpac.

I am waiting for an MMO to do something like this cause as much as I love raiding, I do love small group content and frankly miss the BC heroic content as IMO it was the best small group content in the history of MMOs.

Challenge modes, I feel, do this pretty well. I would, however, like to see an untimed challenge mode that's more difficult; one that's hard to complete, not just hard to complete quickly. Think 5-man high-end Brawler's Guild bosses with item level scaling to prevent outgearing.

[PrairieChicken]

I think Blizzard's problem with dungeons isn't the 5-man THDDD comp being required. It's that dungeons require a lot of art and design resources, whilst scenarios require little (thanks to recycling locations and stuff). Making their player composition scenario-like doesn't fix the problem that stopped Blizzard from adding patch dungeons during this expansion.

This, combined with the short lifecycle of dungeons (see: getting canned as soon as people gear up from them, which is very quickly) made them see dungeons as a bad investment. A sentiment that I'm pretty sympathetic to. If anything, the biggest mitigating factor was challenge modes, which have an indefinite lifespan.

I think that is just excuse devs use to gate players from loot.

[clevin]

Psst. They're called challenge modes. Just FYI.

No one cares about CMs at this point. Sure, a few people found them fun at the start, but the people who wanted gold CM have that now and the ones who didn't care at the start have no reason to care now.

Leaderboard content like CM and Brawler's will always appeal to a few but a) WoW isn't an esport and doesn't really have much culture around being at the top of a leaderboard and b) once they're done, they're done.

What late expansion 5 mans brought in LK and Cata was a way to gear an alt while playing with a couple of friends. Now, you just mail your alt the right Timeless gear and you're done. And even though you can basically gear an aly by opening chests some people will STILL bitch about it: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/10137434201