Is Blood Furnace the hardest heroic dungeon in TBC/the game?

[Mamushi]

Anecdotally found the main issue in Durnholde to be the 3 draknoid packs before the last boss, The melee have a 5k+ MS and the casters do a 6k voidbolt.

This in of itself isn't a big deal but the casters can also apply a 30 second debuff that increases damage done by 50% and damage TAKEN by 50%, getting this on the tank typically yields instagibs if you attempt to facetank anything not CC'd for it's duration.

[Edit] - Thrall has ~130k on Hc and can comfortably tank 1-2 melee mobs in the packs before the 2nd boss, his HP resets once he leaves combat so your healer shouldn't be wasting mana on him either.

Thrall can also tank the drakonids at the end as well as the last boss for a bit if your healer needs mana, but I would recommend bringing moonkin as DPS for that dungeon since you can Hibernate one caster, root a melee mob and cyclone another melee mob in the last pack with 4 mobs so you only need to deal with 1 mob at a time.

[Unholyground]

Definitely arcatraz that place is a nightmare

[ellieg]

I have a faint memory of a quest of some sort. What was it about?

Also people not being attuned and not being able to enter heroic mode. A guy neutral with the dragons once suggested we go run Durnholde 2-3 times and started insulting everyone because we weren't really up for it

The quest is the attunement for normal BM. Like a 10 min walk around the place (which you can simply stay at the quest givers location while the npc walks around), then a quest to rescue thrall. Then you can finally enter BM.

[Dhrizzle]

I have a faint memory of a quest of some sort. What was it about?

Also people not being attuned and not being able to enter heroic mode. A guy neutral with the dragons once suggested we go run Durnholde 2-3 times and started insulting everyone because we weren't really up for it

The quest was attunement to enter Durnholde, it was a slow boring tour of the Cavern with an NPC talking. So if someone saw a quest it meant they couldn't enter the dungeons for a while.

[Kralljin]

And it was justified, to a point. The beginning of Cata is when it all went downhill for WoW, and they never recovered.

I frankly disagree with this notion, it implies that the goal of Cata Heroics was completely misplaced.

Before Wotlk, it simply was not the MO of the game that you AoE everything down, with Wotlk, it became that, you no longer worried about anything in regards to trash, it just became

Tank charges in
Presses AoE threat ability X
Dps unleash AoE abilities
Rinse and repeat

While Cata heroics were severly overtuned, they were partially set up by Wotlk Heroics because of how damn easy they were, especially by the end of Wotlk where people still waltzed through heroics for Emblems despite wearing ICC gear.

Just to put it into perspective:
Wotlk Heroics dropped Ilvl 200, were already a joke with 187 Gear (which is 5man Normal Ilvl) and you could buy 264 pieces for Emblems, including mandatory Tier set pieces, meaning that people stomped through completely undertuned content despite wearing gear that is like 50-60 Ilvl above the gear that actually drops in there.

I think the way cata heroics were handled was wrong, but it needs to be underlined how much Wotlk enabled a playstyle that was frankly previously not possible at such a scale (meaning not everyone could as easily do it) and in comparison to how things were previously done, simply degenerate.
The people who either got too used to the Wotlk style or did not know anything else got punished hard.

In my opinion, the blame stil lies with Wotlk for enabling this style of play, Blizzard attempted to get everyone into raiding, created an extremely easy difficulty (10man) and turned heroics, which were more of a "challenging" side mode in TBC, into a stepping stone towards that very easy raiding difficulty.
It also severly diminished any side activities that previously served some form of alternate progression, after all, why bother crafting, PvP'ing / grinding rep for any item when you just spam some heroics that are a complete joke since launch for equivalent / superior items?

Cata tried to restore Heroics to some form of their original state in TBC, which i think was a noble goal, the issue was that the overall structure was still next to identical as in Wotlk, thus Cata merely became a hardmode version of Wotlk.

[The Oblivion]

every single heroic ive done in BC has been pull, aoe down, move on. same as normals. not 1 lick of CC has been used in any of the hellfire, auch, or coilfang dungeons. i havent touched caverns or tempest keep heroics

[Rageonit]

In my opinion, the blame stil lies with Wotlk for enabling this style of play, Blizzard attempted to get everyone into raiding, created an extremely easy difficulty (10man) and turned heroics, which were more of a "challenging" side mode in TBC, into a stepping stone towards that very easy raiding difficulty.
It also severly diminished any side activities that previously served some form of alternate progression, after all, why bother crafting, PvP'ing / grinding rep for any item when you just spam some heroics that are a complete joke since launch for equivalent / superior items?

But thing is, it worked. By making it so accessible (though arguably too easy for many), they achieved their highest WoW subscriber numbers, ever, exactly at that point. Maybe it would've looked completely different if, instead of trying to turn back to TBC style of HC design, they continued the WotLK trend and introduced a new difficulty level (known today as Mythic ). Maybe then the reaction of casual players - which was justified, IMO, especially for people who started to play during WotLK - would've been more favorable, and wouldn't result in huge (if not enormous) drop of MAUs. We're talking millions here; back then, they still published subscriber numbers.

[inafume]

I haven't gotten to level 70 yet to be able to see if it's still the same, but the one reason I hated BF back in actual TBC were those trash packs that had the 360 degree cleave (as a rogue, it was annoying). I don't remember the rest of the instance being bad.

[callipygoustp]

Arcatraz and Mana Tombs are the two I remember people having the most difficulty with.

Remember all three of the Hellfire dungeons were pretty easy.

[kail]

I have no intention of playing TBC in the modern era, but it was The Black Morass for me.

I vaguely remember taking ages to get attuned for Karazhan because you either couldn't find group, or you failed super hard.

-It was extra tedious because you either cleared the wildlife around the portal beforehand, or you had to deal with it later. Bonus points if Random Joe got in Medivh's range prematurely.
-It was stupid hard because the portal guardians were tough as nails and portals appeared in a random position around the Dark Portal with no warning. When the guardian spawned with a /yell, it was already too late, because adds kept getting out and slowing you down.
-It was unfair because the time between the portals was barely sufficient to get done with one before the next came up, that is, with a decently geared group. If you had a shit dps, portals would eventually overwhelm you in a spectacular domino of frustration.

Bosses were not too bad, the 18(?) waves were total garbage though.

BM becomes the easiest if the group understands that you can take a break between portals easily and the beacons take an entire set of portals for free. Bosses could be tricky with the air dmg and the last one stuns the entire group but beyond that it's not a hard gear check or CC requirement like the other HCs mentioned.

[Kralljin]

But thing is, it worked. By making it so accessible (though arguably too easy for many), they achieved their highest WoW subscriber numbers, ever, exactly at that point.

I can also point out that Wotlk was the first time their subs started to flatline, whereas the actual meteroic rise took place during Vanilla / TBC.

It's very silly to look at a graph, see its peak and simply conclude that every decision leading to it was the correct one, especially the ones that happened near its peak.
I somehow doubt that this graph would have looked much different if Wotlk hadn't been such a massive shift in design and followed a more TBC esque style.

Maybe it would've looked completely different if, instead of trying to turn back to TBC style of HC design

Or maybe, they could've just put a bigger emphasis on the elements that casual players enjoyed during TBC, such as:
Professions
Reputations
Cross PvP / PvE gearing via Battlegrounds

Rather than pidgeonhole everybody into brainless heroics until the cows come home.

And that puts even aside the fact that by the time Cata rolled around, WoW was 6 years old already (at which point you naturally lose players) + Wotlk wrapped up one Warcraft's most iconic characters, simply looking at a certain issue and concluding that everything would've been different if not for that one issue is silly.

[NoiseTank13]

And it was justified, to a point. The beginning of Cata is when it all went downhill for WoW, and they never recovered. The difference in difficulty between WotLK heroic AoE fest and Cata dungeons was just too big. Hardcores rejoiced, everyone else was leaving the game. You want to make the game harder, that's fine, but you don't jump from 1+1=2 to advanced physics overnight, and for many casual players it felt just like that. It was a mistake, and I think Ghostcrawler realized that too.

Pretty much.

I know people heralded the return to difficulty as the 'savior' WoW needed, but it was absolutely destructive to people who formed relationships during WotLK, especially those that 'healed' or 'tanked' during WotLK only to get kicked in the teeth so badly, so repeatedly that they up and quit, causing a chain reaction.

The harsh jump in difficulty was too much of a system shock, and an incredible failure on Ghostcrawler's part. An overcorrection in steering that caused the ship to flip.

[bash the fash]

Durnholde and Shattered Halls are significantly harder

[Ringthane]

Heart says Shadow Labs, bad bad memories.

I'm surprised it took someone this long to mention that one. Between that one and Shattered Halls... Tanking in BC was not so much fun.

[anon5123]

Blood Furnace is a goddamn nightmare. You'd better have 3 CC classes or you're gonna wipe a lot.

Even as a bear tank with ~70% armor reduction, mobs in there were just whacking me for like 3-4k every hit. It was insane. And the second boss requires AT LEAST two CCs or else you're just gonna get pounded before the healer can even heal you back up.

It's very strange that we have heroics like BF where the trash mobs hit harder than raid bosses, and then heroics like Mechanar where the mobs hit like they're swinging wet noodles.

[Shaetha]

He was a Lead System Designer, without ability to make large executive decisions. I believe hard heroics were a part of his design for Cata, and the decision to make them easier came from the management that saw the analytics of players leaving due to content being too difficult. Nothing he could have done about it.

Makes more sense than a Lead System Designer making executive decisions about every aspect of the game, doesn't it.

The community doesn't seem to understand that the lead system designer is doing the same job community managers are doing, but it's between the executives and the developers.

[Bakis]

Not even close dude. Shattered Halls & Arcatraz were generally considered hardest. To my knowledge nothing's changed with the re-release.

These are the ones I remember as well cos of the effect if fucking up was so severe.

[Asrialol]

I seem to recall Alcatraz being the most loathed dungeon back in the days. Now they're all a cakewalk of course..

The infernal in Arcatraz was always fun with his meteor ability. People struggled with that one!

[Makabreska]

Wasn't for me back in the noob days. I run it comfortably, while not being able to finish Shadow Lab, Shattered Halls or MGT on normal even. Slave Pens were on farm due to how fast you could done them, and Botanica, because 5 bosses. Not sure I ever stepped into Arca. Ahhhh, these were the days.

[Lucetia]

With all the hard hitting mobs, the summoners and the stealthy bois would everyone agree that Blood Furnace ist THE hardest heroic in TBC or maybe in the game? The event itself is terrifying and can get out of hand in no time. Perfect cc and even voice is needed imho to make it through.

What are your thoughts about it?

Blood Furnace is one of the easiest heroics, even back in the day. The pulls are never that big nor do you really need CC. There isn't really any "Event" in there that you call it as everything is self-paced If you are trying to rush it for some reason then there's part of your problem.

The only heroics that were "hard" back in the day were Shattered Halls, as the pulls here can get overly messy. There were some parts in Shadow Labs that were tricky. Arcatraz had a lot of terrible spots in it too. With Magister's Terrace being the last one that was tricky and required CC in some areas just so you could control pull size.