Cata not so MB friendly

[thefunk]

or otherwise get too excited and spam random keys

I can't count the amount of times I've reverted to button mashing every key in desperation to avoid the group wipe. I'm tempted to paint my OHSH*T button in red (the druid battle rez) as I always forget which one it is in the heat of the moment...

Personally I'd prefer Blizz carried on designing the game for solo play and it's up to us boxers to find a way to 'beat' the design, so to speak, rather than having a load of kill quests, tank'n'spank instances and sub cancellations galore. I'd quickly get bored.

[Multibocks]

What should we be doing? Pre-Heroics?

[Iceorbz]

What should we be doing? Pre-Heroics?

You would do normal level 85 dungeons till your pretty much geared up through them. Just like we did in burning crusade, people ran normal "70" instances for a bit, till they could get enough to do heroics. Maybe many people have forgotten that Shadow Vault, Mech, Bot, Arcatraz, Steamvaults, Shattered halls were all available for us, to do in non heroic modes and were geared towards level 70's, and later magister's terrace dropped and that was not for fresh geared 80's similar to our ICC instances. Instead the WoTLK model was ding 80 in level 76 quest greens-- and never do a single normal instance ever again. The keys kept people bound to normal instances at least for a bit; which then allowed them to get the gear they needed (blues) to clear through heroics. I mean really, I hit 80-- didn't even change gear and went and cleared heroic UK 5 box...
It's ok that you like the game easy man! There's ton of people out there like that. I however, want more instances like the last few that came out and less crap like UK.

[Multibocks]

You would do normal level 85 dungeons till your pretty much geared up through them. Just like we did in burning crusade, people ran normal "70" instances for a bit, till they could get enough to do heroics. Maybe many people have forgotten that Shadow Vault, Mech, Bot, Arcatraz, Steamvaults, Shattered halls were all available for us, to do in non heroic modes and were geared towards level 70's, and later magister's terrace dropped and that was not for fresh geared 80's similar to our ICC instances. Instead the WoTLK model was ding 80 in level 76 quest greens-- and never do a single normal instance ever again. The keys kept people bound to normal instances at least for a bit; which then allowed them to get the gear they needed (blues) to clear through heroics. I mean really, I hit 80-- didn't even change gear and went and cleared heroic UK 5 box...
It's ok that you like the game easy man! There's ton of people out there like that. I however, want more instances like the last few that came out and less crap like UK.

But people DID run normal instances in Wrath before doing heroics. You joined the boxing party late into Wrath, maybe blizzard can roll you back to 3.0 and you can really see what heroics were like tanking with 21k health. Trash packs could kill you. I understand you want a harder dungeon, but quit acting like Wrath heroics were easy when it launched. Do I need to dig up all the stupid threads were people could only do UK and part of Gundrak. Jesus it's like I'm talking to Nostalgia Man.

"Duuuuuuude, you remember Shattered Halls man??"
"yaaa that shit was soo hard"


Walking uphill both ways in snow and all that.

edit: More on track with the thread, Skywall looks super super easy with a boxing group. All the bosses, unless they are undertuned were a cakewalk.

[Iceorbz]

But people DID run normal instances in Wrath before doing heroics. You joined the boxing party late into Wrath, maybe blizzard can roll you back to 3.0 and you can really see what heroics were like tanking with 21k health. Trash packs could kill you. I understand you want a harder dungeon, but quit acting like Wrath heroics were easy when it launched. Do I need to dig up all the stupid threads were people could only do UK and part of Gundrak. Jesus it's like I'm talking to Nostalgia Man.

"Duuuuuuude, you remember Shattered Halls man??"
"yaaa that shit was soo hard"


Walking uphill both ways in snow and all that.

edit: More on track with the thread, Skywall looks super super easy with a boxing group. All the bosses, unless they are undertuned were a cakewalk.

The only instances I did was UK, Nexus, DTK, Azjol Nerub, and the Violet Hold. (Normal) Everything else was completed on heroic. As soon as I dinged 80, I had never set foot into a normal instance. From the time I hit 80 on my paladin, she has never done a normal instance other then the new ICC ones.

People do not do normal instances at 80, at least no one I have played with, nor do I recommend to anyone to do normal instances. I didn't join the boxing party late into wrath, not sure where you got that from. Dinged level 80 and also completed my heroic multiboxed that same day (UK). 3-28-2009

My shaman on December 8th, 2007 were only level 63 (from a mana-tombs screen shot). Even so, getting to level 80 in March is not really "joining the party late". I had to get home from deployment before I could continue leveling. I did however, have a warrior at 80 -- he also -- never did a normal instance after level 80 his first heroics were completed on Dec 14th 2008.

[Alemi]

Even so, getting to level 80 in March is not really "joining the party late".

Not to defend his point, but - yes it is. That was 2 weeks before the Ulduar patch. By the point you dinged 80, there were 4 bug/class balancing fix patches. To your point, however, I never did regular dungeons - except when farming the stupid defense trinket from Loken.

I'm not one for nostalgia, but I do look forward to BC/vanilla difficulty again. Wrath just wasn't as challenging, imho.

[MiRai]

What should we be doing? Pre-Heroics?

I'm sure you remember that we needed a certain level of rep to obtain the keys to open up Heroics for most of the duration of The Burning Crusade. And yes, I would say that is the point of the "normal" dungeons [or pre-heroics], to gear you up for heroics. Heroics then, in turn, gear you up for the first raid tier. And when you hit your first raid you're wearing mostly blues, with a few greens, and maybe an epic.

The line is between normal dungeons and raiding is currently very skewed and dumbed down. I hope Blizzard can find a mix between BC and WotLK.

[Slats]

They have made it clear a few times in different interviews and possible posts they want the progression to be:

Ding 85
Run Normal Dungeons to get the gear required
Run Heroic Dungeons to get the gear required
Raid the first Tier of content.

I suspect CC will be required while we are in the first Tier of raid content (in the heroics) as we go up in Tier's we will outgear it and then brute force all the content and complain its 'ez-mode' and Blizzard sucks at making hard content.

When ICC 5 Mans came out everyone was whinging that they where not gonna be boxable, only the elite only the best could do it. Now a fair majority are clearing these. I too think 'heroic' difficulty should be Halls Of Reflection style hard. Perhaps not so AoE centric or chaotic but I enjoyed that challenge and only recently got co-ordinated enough to heal and dps and tank my way through Heroic mode myself.

There is nothing in Cata that says - the sky is falling.

Northrend had tonnes of collection quests, this is nothing new. We got through it.
Instances where harder at the start and got easier, this is nothing new this is just WoW Formula.

I think the main change here thats going to help boxes is the changes to Hero/Victory and Honor/Conquest points, meaning we are going to at least always have the last tier of gear no problems. So taking breaks from the game wont be a problem you'll always be able to catch up nice and easy.

Well those are my thoughts on it all. We'll be just fine. Even if click gets changed, we will adapt and find a way.

[Zub]

Lets call them Bravoics.
Not quite Heroes yet, but quite Brave already

[Toned]

if you've 4/5/10 boxed ICC 10 and 25 you should be able to do any heroic in cata...