Be honest. How difficult is WotLK 5-man heroic?

[3DTyrant]

Not as bad as pre-nerf Cata HCs

[GreenJesus]

If you rate MoP heroics as 1, then WotLk would be... 0.5, I guess?

They're absolutely trivial stuff. The only way to wipe is doing something blatantly idiotic.

I don't know... In MoP I was soloing heroics in ret spec like 10 seconds per boss.

[Hofazius]

I don't know... In MoP I was soloing heroics in ret spec like 10 seconds per boss.

Yeah, don't think you can solo WotLK heroics as a Rogue like you could with endgame MoP Gear
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEGTLfj0Fu0

But to be fair, WotLK drops Item Level 200 (Heroics) to 277 (some 284 from LK Heroic). MoP dropped 463 (Heroics) up to 566. Thats a 26 Item Level difference, which is huge. In addition to that you had the legendary cloak.

So I think the ability to solo heroics at the end of an expansion is not an indicator for how dofficult they were at the beginning.

[MoanaLisa]

Technically, not difficult but you need improved gear to make them into a cakewalk.

[ryjkur]

With patch 3.3.5 tuning they are not that hard. They were hard in original WotLK launch I think.

[Flurryfang]

I think that since so much have changed between old Wrath and Wrath Classic, it will be hard to say before "normal" players get to try out the Heroics.


But i will guess, based upon how the normal dungeons perform, that we are looking at a 2-4 rating. These dungeons have very simple mechanics, very few 1 shot moments and an overall focus on tank-and-spank boss fights. No matter how good they tune them, the bosses are just too simply to be difficult in the long run.

[Elder Millennial]

Most were easy, especially the early ones. Some could cause wipes.

I remember Loken doing a number on most PuGs for a good while. Azjol Nerub was another one where the spiders would crush tanks. Etc.

[xenogear3]

I tanked Heroic Nexus with ilevel 187 or lower, and is slightly below defense cap.
The last boss hits really hard.
It is doable, but very struggle.
I don't think I can do HoL.

I can see why we wiped 14 years ago.
It is all about gear.

[meheez]

ofc its easy and the easiest of all classic probably, but...everything might get hard if you are new or rusty - that's what i've noticed xD

[HansOlo]

14 years ago, I was a newb.
The pug I joined failed most of the time, especially HoS and HoL.

Assume Cataclysm Heroics is rated at 10.
MoP Heroics is rated at 1.
What is WotLK 5-man heroic rated?

Back then I could go throu a whole dungeon, without looking up any guides. I could tank and I could DPS(never healed). I wasn't any particular experienced guy and with no raid experience either. It's wasn't hard.

TBC - 5
WOTLK -3
And in Cataclysm it went to a 9.

[Usernameforforums]

Easier than mop heroics.

[Mojo03]

By the time your in naxx gear (which is the easiest tuned raid they've ever done) the only thing slowing you down in heroics will be your run speed and it stays that difficulty throughout the entire expansion. So just imagine how boring they are in ICC gear.

Yes, I think Wrath is dramatically overrated and I'm happy for people to actually see why. Because there are all kinds of decisions that overly dumbed down the game like this that make it boring AF. Especially in endgame.

[Itori]

None of it was hard, even back when it was new and fresh. That was the whole point of WotLK. It was easily accessible. They added in special things that made them fun like the mounts for doing certain things.

[Telanu]

As a bear that started with TBC leveling stuff into the expansion I dare say those heroics were much easier when I just dinged 80 that the normal versions during the leveling phase.

[Akka]

I only talk about wearing fresh leveling gear.
Do I have to get a full set ilevel 187 before going in?

Absolutely not. They are trivial even in leveling gear.

[Kalisandra]

With patch 3.3.5 tuning they are not that hard. They were hard in original WotLK launch I think.

They were. The class tuning wasn't as good, and there were some bugs that made things harder.

An example of class tuning and design: Initially the Holy Paladins' Beacon didn't transfer over-healing. That meant that it was nowhere near as good for keeping a tank alive whilst also healing the rest of the party. The 'safe' move was to beacon yourself, not the tank, and concentrate on putting heals into the tank.

An example of an early bug:

This primarily affected raids, but sometimes caused problems in heroics. When Paladins judged a target, if they used the same judgement one of them wouldn't register, and the Paladin who cast it wouldn't get the mana return they should've got - and for Ret that was 25% of base mana per judgement and was vital to not going oom in seconds. It took months for this bug to be acknowledged and then tracked down and fixed. Fun if you had 2+ Pallys in your heroic, especially if it was a pug and they weren't paying attention to assigned judgement jobs.

Until it was fixed dipping in and out of the goo during Patchwerk fights was common (so the healers would have to heal you and you'd get mana from the healing) until gear got better and Judgement of Blood recoil damage got high enough to cover the mana demand.

Ah, the days of Ulduar, before they nerfed SoB's recoil damage, and a high-DPSing Ret would be taking tank-like levels of damage (and pulling tank-like levels of threat). Good Times.

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Absolutely not. They are trivial even in leveling gear.

And yet groups would wipe on various bosses in Gundrak all the time, until they were in full Naxx gear. And Loken, well he wiped a whole bunch of runs in the day, especially with Paladin healers (next to no mobile healing, no HoTs, no shields) until outgeared.

As I said earlier, they were very gear sensitive, so they became trivial quickly (and they took some nerfs, too). These days they'll never be hard because the mechanics are very simple by today's standards, so as long as players respect those mechanics until they outgear them, they'll be dead easy. ICC 5-mans excepted - they never got to the point where you could just ignore the mechanics.

[xenogear3]

As I said earlier, they were very gear sensitive

I agree.

You get faction reputation just by running normal dungeons.
The reward is ilevel 200.
For casual players, they only have time to run 3 heroic dungeons per day.
That is 10 Emblem of Heoroism per day.
There is a craft helm and a shoe.

It takes a month to get all a full set of ilevel 200.
A full set of Ilevel 200 should be enough to do all heroics.

I don't know if I should grind the rep/emblem or uninstall.
I did this before.

I wish the talent tree is the original WotLK launch, not 3.3.5

[Akka]

And yet groups would wipe on various bosses in Gundrak all the time, until they were in full Naxx gear. And Loken, well he wiped a whole bunch of runs in the day, especially with Paladin healers (next to no mobile healing, no HoTs, no shields) until outgeared.

Never seen either, both at the time and now. What I did see and experience and participate in, is boring faceroll in questing gear where I would just spam one key while watching something else on the second monitor because they were braindead easy. Blue gear was already overleveled for them, Naxx gear is ridiculous overkill.
I heard that people died on Loken, but that sounds like wrath babies not knowing how to play. Even in TBC gear we could just burn him mindlessly without bothering with dealing with the mechanics.

As I said earlier, they were very gear sensitive, so they became trivial quickly (and they took some nerfs, too). These days they'll never be hard because the mechanics are very simple by today's standards, so as long as players respect those mechanics until they outgear them, they'll be dead easy. ICC 5-mans excepted - they never got to the point where you could just ignore the mechanics.

I don't remember any nerf to TBC heroics (maybe the second set of instances ?), and it's precious to say they were "gear sensitives" when you can faceroll them in green.

I find also funny how now we get again the "they are mechanically simple", it's the same argument since Classic. Meanwhile, heroics in MoP or Legion were still faceroll despite supposedly "modern" mechanisms.
It's not about complexity of mechanisms, it's about them being comically undertuned (and WotLK being a pile of shit when it comes to design, with the entirety of the 5-man gameplay save maybe HoR being "pack, AoE, repeat").

I agree.

You're wrong.

You get faction reputation just by running normal dungeons.
The reward is ilevel 200.

For casual players, they only have time to run 3 heroic dungeons per day.
That is 10 Emblem of Heoroism.
It takes a month to buy all the Emblem of Heoroism gear.
A full set of Ilevel 200 should be enough to do all heroics, but not before.

That's idiotic. ilvl 200 is the REWARD for doing heroics, not the REQUIREMENT.
(and it's a grossly overtuned reward at that)

[Shurkien]

With todays knowledge they are a cakewalk.
I remember that we went into them as soon as we dinged 80 and rushed through most of them - and we all were noobs back then tbh

[Akka]

They were really easy.

The only 'difficult' ones were Halls of Thunders last boss (Loken) and Oculus simply because people don't mesh well with vehicle mechanics. Both of these dungeons aren't actually hard, and the only reason Loken was deemed difficult by random pugs (who overly emphasized it while recruiting for said group), is because everything before it conditioned you to think there was zero mechanics, whereas Loken could wipe your group if you didn't respect the one mechanic he had.

I did them all with a mix of PvP, BT, and Sunwell gear back in 2008 and none of them were difficult. WoTLK dungeons actually do have mechanics, and some of the trash could be nasty if it was tuned properly, but it wasn't.

Using your scale they would be right around MoP heroics. They aren't difficult at all. Whether the tuning they promised to shift them upwards (although I believe that's only at max level) changes anything, I don't know. Probably not though.

Agree with all this.

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I kinda feel it will depend on the type of server your playing on too..

Fresh Server probably a 2-3
Not Fresh Server 0

difference being not fresh server pugs are going to be Sunwell Geared and therefore already WAAAYY over geared for them. Fresh Server pugs wont be but will definitely be more than capable of doing said dungeons

You realize that Sunwell gear is ilvl 154, while normal 5-man blue gear is ilvl 187 ? (SW gear has more optimized stat, but still a whopping 30 ilvl gap, so blue gear is generally at least slightly stronger)
That kinda adds to the evidence that questing gear is enough, and that blue gear is already massively overgeared