Cata Heroic Dungeons still no fun

[Theotherone]

I'm finding the que times for healing are greatly reduced; I have yet to run into a 12 -15 min que for healing that I used to find at times.

[The Insomniatic]

I'm just sick of having tanks do Heroic: Halls of Origination, say "I'm doing Rajh first" - then either RQ'ing cos we disagree with him or he knicks off after Rajh, leaving us with no tank to do the other three bosses, which some of us need gear for. /sigh

Also, the sheer rubbishness of tanks coming through since CtA came out has been hilariously bad. I had a tank with just over 100k the other night, and he then votekicked me because I was pointing out his flaws!

Honestly, RDF has devolved not evolved.

[PimpJuice4]

Honestly, RDF has devolved not evolved.

i honestly think blizzard underestimates your average pug who queues up for random dungeon finder.the new heroics are a prime example

oh and i disagree with there whole "we want people to be more active community" or whatever that line was.and decided to prioritze same realm grouping.i happen to dislike the majority of people on my realm,id rather not be forced to party with them when i queue up

oh and i know one day i happened to call out this fail healer in my random and i just happened to notice that someone from my realm was in the group(he wasnt the person i was calling out for being fail though).but meh,i usually check to see what realm everyone in my random pug is from and i happened to not do it then so whatever.oh i guess there solution for "long" dps queues is pretty much failed now,i queued up for rise of the zandalar heroic(i never queue up random.was just wondering cuz someone said they had a 30 min queue now)and it said average wait time 30 mins,and its call to arms tank to

but meh,i never run them on my main and my alt that would run it would eather be tanking or healing and i know tanks and healers get shorter queues anyway.i know the queues for random heroic have gone down kinda though,unless i just havent noticed cuz i didnt really care before cta

[Dragaan]

It's been said a bazillion times already....but heroics are intended to be challenging, esp to newer players. Pugging heroics can be risky. If you aren't an amazing player/leader, I wouldn't count on most pugs being a success. Even for amazing players/leaders, if you get the wrong group of ppl you're doomed. If you're just starting out with heroics, use guildees/friends from your server and use vent.'

The group finder is still a relatively new tool. It's here for convenience, that's all. It's not supposed to make finding the optimal group easy. If you want a high chance of success, hand-pick the players for your group instead of using LFG.

[PimpJuice4]

are intended to be challenging

until enough people complain about them being hard.since thats how things get nerfed,but meh.whatever,im not a casual so i could care less about heroics.ive only been running them lately because heroics drop jp per boss,and i need jp for heirlooms for a alt

if i didnt need heirlooms for my alt.id never run heroics,and the new troll heroics have some upgrades for my main.but its not worth the headache of smashing face in random pugs when i can just do bastion of twilight,throne of the four winds or blackwing descent with my guild and get upgrades there

ill probably run them though when they get nerfed for the mounts though

[Questaoe]

5 man content being challenging or not does not equate to fun or rewarding. Thats a huge leap in logic. Part of a fun encounter is the challenge, but there is way more to it. Things like variety in each encounter, but thats another discussion.

To put it plainly and quite simply; tanking 5man content in cata is less fun than not. Tanks in general simply have too much responsibility in the majority of encounters.

When an encounter is laid at its basic roots, where the boss only needs to be burned down, and NOTHING ELSE, the tanks still have one step more responsibility than the DPS. Keep aggro, stay alive. If this is not done the whole party will probably wipe. DPS have one job in this situation; do DPS. If they die, typically means the boss can still be downed. Healers would be on par with tanks in this basic scenario.

Now start adding things like stay outa the fire, and keep the mob out of its circle of doom/self preservation. Staying out of the fire is for everyone, so thats even. Moving the mob out of the circle of no-no is almost always another responsibility for the tank. More often than not there is also the cone of doom the boss will shoot out of some sort that will be directed at where the tank was/is rather than randomly aimed at melee. This is another thing for the tank to look out for, and much less so, the melee. Casters and healers dont need to worry as much.
Another mechanic is the omg run to the circle of protect me from doom. Where the tank needs to often leave his role of sustaining TPS, while ranged can continue (and often do in pugs). This is another difficulty on some encounters for the tank.

What I am getting at here is that most of encounters, the difficulty of dps/healer is often one the tank needs to deal with as well, and the difficulty of the tank is more often not one the healer/dps have to deal with. Blizzard needs to take a step back and look hard at each boss fight, and count the number of things the tank needs to be keeping an eye on, and reduce it where imbalanced. This would make it more fun for tanks, and we would start seeing more tank queues and shorter queue times.

If anyone wants to argue any points I said, feel free, but just keep in mind, at the end of the day, it is evident by the game wide 12million player population in tank drought that tanking is generally less enjoyable in 5man content than healing and even moreso to dpsing, and that IS the fault of encounter design and its current dynamics with tanking.

[CyCy]

Tanks have always been in short supply period. We have always been the few willing to research our class grind the rep farm the mats and pay for the boe's to start running heroics. And we run heroics why? So we are geared enough to raid. That being said dps que times are BS how hard is it to spam tear for 5 mind looking for a tank or healer that's gonna que? If anything I think CTA really fouled up that option. Cause when I was running ransoms for rep and points I would broadcast if anyone wanted to go. Now as I see it if IM gonna pug im getting my 35 extra gold and corney pet.

Heroics on every expansion are hard. Gear is the obstacle and its when gear overcomes the content then we can watch movies and eat popcorn while tanking bosses. Nerfing instances are bullshit. I want it to be a challenge when the content is new. Maybe if the handing out of 85 toons to people willing to sit at the console long enough.....and it's not long enough for them to learn their class things would go a little smoother also. Christ I started yet another alt and vanilla instances can be 2manned nowadays..........Heroics aren't hard or not not fun. Its people who shouldn't be there in the first place ruining the instance for others.

[Stovan]

have had mixed reviews on my pally tank... some I can manage (SFK HC was a lovely run because the group i was with (tho a PUG) was happy that it was my first time, happy to explain things.... ) then last night - Grim Batol (my first time tanking)... first boss no wipe, lovely CC on the purple mob, no aggro issues nothing... move on to 2nd boss... argh.. my first time tanking but all i get is abuse when asking for help and wiping twice - that resulted in me being kicked rather than me being offered help.....

i have to be in the mood to tank from a PUG... and my guildies now know to avoid me if I am dfoing ;-) the abuse i pass on to them is phenomenal!!!!!

[Grindleguts]

In 4.0.3 when everyone had low gear and you had to cooperate and focus or fail, it came down to the dungeon's challenge itself. Now the challenge to overcome is the people in the group. One is consistant and can be beaten with skill, the other is RNG. CtA and same-realm grouping doesn't seem to do much or work, queue times are the same and 95% of the time I don't get grouped with anyone from my realm regardless. 5-mans are but a chore. When you go with guildies, it's no challenge, when you LFD, you make it or break it depending on random people. WotLK 5-man had the ups that they were over with fast

But really this is the price we will pay to have both accessible yet fairly challenging 5-man instances at max level. There is no solution. The idea there should be another difficulty level for 5-mans has been suggested at times, and even implemented (MGT in BC, ICC 5-mans in WotLK) but making them so hard as to be inaccessable for PuGs simply will not happen at this point in WoW:s evolution.

Biggest issue is to balance "fun" and "challenge" and as we know people have differing views of what is what.

[Rystrave]

Horror story: I qued for several randoms yesterday (in a 5 hour span) and all of them failed except one, the one where people said they had never done SFK before. So I helped them through it.

I had a lock complain about CC'ing, saying "Can't we just kill them? Use your interrupts and use cooldowns," and it's like reaaaaaallly? Use CD's on trash? Let's make this more work than necessary! Needless to say he pulled the group and ditched, and we wiped. Sigh. I don't mind using RDF if people are smart and know their place and what to do. If not, just say! Uuuugh.

[Theotherone]

Now the challenge to overcome is the people in the group. One is consistant and can be beaten with skill, the other is RNG.

Amen to that. Over the long weekend I started pugging heroic five mans to gear up my warrior tank and help my son, who's taken a liking to the game again, gear up his hunter. Talk about a mixed bag of players. I've been running mostly guild ZA/ZG's these days with the odd pug thown in. Most of the ZA/ZG groups are pretty well geared - at least most people have a clue. Not so in your 5 man random heroic.

What a mixed bag of gear. I'm not talking just quest greens or blues (we all have them, that's what the dungeon is for, to gear up), I'm talking about quest greens and blues that are not spec appropriate; most players have no clue what a belt buckle is, or an enchant or even what those silly gem slots are for on their 346/359 gear no less.

I had a Holy Priest spec'd into Evangilism, no Light Well with a hit gem and a spell pen gem and 65k mana wonder why in the hell we kept wiping on the first boss in Throne of Tides - hint, you're 4500 heals ain't cutting it. Or, my favorite of the weekend, the druid with no gems, no enchants, some dps gear, 67k mana who can't keep anyone up on the first boss in Vortex Pinnacle; his top three heals are Norish, Lifebloom and Effervescence ("everybody stand next to me and the tank, I have an AoE down"); while I'm contemplating whether or not to vote kick this guy, (I was 3 in dps as the tank with 6500k, so dps were pretty bad too) knowing full well that I'm gone after the first boss anyway, I wind up back in SW. Vote kick the tank, cause the healer and dps suck. I love that, and the dps wonder why more people dont' tank. I guess we're expected to be able to solo the instances.

[Grindleguts]

More nuisance, perhaps more tankers have experienced this.

After Nalorakk in ZA there are some tricky pulls with the scouts wandering about and being part of the packs. I usually Skull a single scout, Cross the flamecaster to get it quickly out of the way while trying to keep it silenced/stunned and mark another mob for whatever CC we have available.

Now it's happening every other time that as soon as the skull is marked (intended to get "1-shot" by any abillity doing 20k damage) a "helpful" dpser shoots some non-lethal shot on it, making him run for reinforcements while rest of the pack starts running towards said dpser. Best poss outcome: another shot goes onto the scout, another dpser manages to nail sheep/fear/root/cyclone on one of the mobs, flame caster AOEs for like 40k on group but I manage to pick them up and with radience/DP/AD we'll survive quite well.

The more likely case: scout makes it to the drum, summoning the 2 charging zerkers that stuns you (or whoever aggroes them, usually healer with HoTs), no CC lands, the flame caster does his 40k fire AoE and I do what I can to taunt, pick the 6 or so mobs up and CD CD CD CD trying to survive, the warr/dk does ROFLSTORM/HBHBHBHB because he gets the AoE rush, caster does a 2nd AoE killing the melee who had 2 mobs on him already and healer is oom. Just had to post this

Similar experiences?

[Theotherone]

^ Just about everyday I tank or heal in there. If I'm on my hunter I take it upon myself to one shot the scouts - explosive shot and if needed an arcane shot (just an intanst cast choice) usually does it. Where I find the most fails come is on the pull with the scout on the mound with the group behind it with a scout in it, most groups don't realize that there is a scout that pats up through the group - so three scouts on that pull. And that doesn't count the scout that pats from the right behind if you lolly gag on the fight.

[Daimoth]

The reward is not the points you gain, or the items that drop. The reward is conquering a challenge you didn't before.

Excellent point.

[Uranos7]

A lot of people still have the "old LK attitude" in Heroics.
I have seen people I know do things in Heroics they would never try in raids. I had a hunter from my server pull without even using misdirect. When I asked him "WTH?" he said "It's just a heroic."
The anonymity of the RDF allows people to be the Jerks they always wanted to be.

[Contravene]

Heroic Dungeons are not as hard now. I stacked PVP gear on my lock and just geared up in roics. Z roics are so hard that if you do not get a good pug tank you can't take them down.. Cusp of challenging because if you lose a DPS you don't take down the boss. That is how normal roics were when I posted this thread but that is the past.

My current advice on roic dungeons boils down to this
Jindo the Godbreaker is too over powered for pugs though. You can't miss a body slam at typical DPS of around 10K and you are wasting your time if you are in this dungeon without vote majority. Never enter Zul'Gurub if you don't not have 2 other people with you so you can control the vote. People can't be taught to get by the chain for the body slam. They either notice something is casting and are prepared or they just don't. No one teaches you to pay attention you either do or don't.

[klausi]

Jindo the Godbreaker is too over powered for pugs though. You can't miss a body slam at typical DPS of around 10K and you are wasting your time if you are in this dungeon without vote majority. Never enter Zul'Gurub if you don't not have 2 other people with you so you can control the vote. People can't be taught to get by the chain for the body slam. They either notice something is casting and are prepared or they just don't. No one teaches you to pay attention you either do or don't.

I killed him 10 times since monday on three different tanks and i had absolutley zero problems doing so, no death at all and this with four total strangers every single time (for the satchel). I mark all three chains with different symbols, assist on the ghost/chains and only start pulling the next berserker when the other chain is almost down. This way the players have enough time to move around.

But pulling only 10k dps in Zul'Gurub with +15% buff is almost impossible, frostburn formula alone should push your dps by about 3-5k (depending on how often you actually can use it) and while bombing all packs except those before the panther it should remain in the medium-5-digits-area. There might be one player every so often in your group playing below that but with the need of ilvl 346 to join it's rather enjoyable compared to normal heroic dungeons with crafted 339 pvp pieces or cheated boe gear everywhere.

[NewfieDave]

and it's like reaaaaaallly? Use CD's on trash?

I'd just like to point out that when I was healing heroics with the minimum queue-able ilvl, using cooldowns on trash was an important part of my success. Some trash pulls are more difficult than the average heroic boss.

If something is beating your face in then it doesn't matter whether it's trash or a boss. It's beating your face in; do something about it.