Full Melee team viable in expansion?

[Ualaa]

What kind of CC options to DK's and Rets have?

My druids bring Entrapping Roots (which is useless against ranged mobs) or Cyclone (which is fairly a very short CC) to the table.

Can we heal through extra DPS, or is it just not viable?

If Cataclysm heroics are anything like the early Burning Crusade heroics, I doubt we'll heal through it until 6 months or so into the expansion (whenever the 2nd tier of raids comes out), when we can purchase the first tier of raid level gear, for badges.

[Shodokan]

What kind of CC options to DK's and Rets have?

My druids bring Entrapping Roots (which is useless against ranged mobs) or Cyclone (which is fairly a very short CC) to the table.

Can we heal through extra DPS, or is it just not viable?

If Cataclysm heroics are anything like the early Burning Crusade heroics, I doubt we'll heal through it until 6 months or so into the expansion (whenever the 2nd tier of raids comes out), when we can purchase the first tier of raid level gear, for badges.

It might not even be doable with first tier of stuff with a lot of setups normally ran, who knows if a lot of the encounters are even doable without like huge perseverance.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

I remember when people said "No way a 5-boxer can clear heroics, there's just too much movement and skill required." Then we did that. Then they said "Well yeah, but not with no tank." Then we did that. Then they said, "Yeah, but not without a real healer." Then we did that. Then they said, "Yeah, but not with melee DPS." Then we did that. Then they said, "Yeah, but not with all melee." Then we did that. Then they said, "Yeah, but not in current end-game content." Then we did that.

I'm seeing a pattern here...

[Shodokan]

I remember when people said "No way a 5-boxer can clear heroics, there's just too much movement and skill required." Then we did that. Then they said "Well yeah, but not with no tank." Then we did that. Then they said, "Yeah, but not without a real healer." Then we did that. Then they said, "Yeah, but not with melee DPS." Then we did that. Then they said, "Yeah, but not with all melee." Then we did that. Then they said, "Yeah, but not in current end-game content." Then we did that.

I'm seeing a pattern here...

I'm not saying it isn't doable, i'm saying that the skillcap between doing them at current gear level and outgearing it is severely different.

[Ualaa]

Well.. heroics throughout Lich King... we could basically reach 80th level.. and run most of the heroics somewhat successfully.
As in, in utterly crappy I-Just-Reached-Max-Level-Questing gear, down six or seven bosses and be able to kill trash in almost every heroic up to a boss... giving us a lot of attempts at the boss before trash respawned.
I remember a lot of guild members getting both the normal and heroic achievements, for a lot of dungeons, at the same point.

Looking back to Burning Crusade.. sure Slave Pens was one of the easier heroics.. but just about anything else was basically impossible in the gear you'd have as a fresh 70th.



I'm hoping Cataclysm is closer to BC then WotLK, in terms of difficulty. As in, not doable with fresh to 85th level gear, but doable and challenging with level 85 initial crafted/normal mode 85th dungeon loot.

I'd like to see crowd control as something which makes a fight a lot easier, but not something that is absolutely essential...
I remember quite a few heroics in the BC era; they would need a mage or hunter, with a rogue/warlock as a lesser choice because of humanoid mobs. If you were a Shaman DPS, they would not take you.
I'd like to see pretty much all group compositions be viable - which I define as sufficient to clear the content, even if it takes a lot longer.

Pretty sure they'll all be doable, initially even, given the right classes. Hopefully, they'll all be doable initially, given the wrong classes (assuming a Tanking class and some kind of Healing).
Down the road... that might not even be a requirement.

[Boylston]

From a solo perspective, I think that heroics should have hard-modes to them with better/different loot mechanics if you acheive a harder kill. Would be nice to be able to use quest gear and start to tackle heroics to gear up for raids, then to do the same heroics in a harder fashion for raid-level gear as well.

[Mokoi]

you can probably outgear any heroic with any team.. 5 resto druids, probably if you have patience.

heroics at gear-level? probably not.

[crowdx]

I actually would like to see requirements for heroics, similar to BC with the need to buy a key from the appropriate faction with a level of rep. This meant people had to work their way to getting into the heroic and faction rep was worthwhile.
Being able to fully gear a toon in a couple of days running random dungeons really spoiled the game.

[Mooni]

Shodokan-
I have good speculation and bad speculation. The good is if you're running DK 4 Ret, you could just set up movement keys for one of your rets to prance a few yards away, taunt, and cast repentence. That'll teach 'em.

The bad speculation is I used to farm BWL for ore, and if anyone wanted to come along for the achievement for killing Nefarian they were welcome to jump in. I was just doing it to cover repairs. Last week a holy paladin joined us.
Well I only tried it once since 4.0.1, which was last week. It was horrible. It took 4 tries to get Chromaggius down, and at the end of the Nefarian fight only 2 stood (a pet-less hunter and the holy pally). It was horrible, horrible.
The chromaggius fight, he kept switching his vulnerability to something useless that I didn't have. I brought an elemental shaman, arcane mage, shadowpriest and hunter. So naturally he would just switch between frost and fire vulnerability. The poor mage was doing 900dps, which is mathematically untenable for a mage spamming arcane blast.
Nefarian? Somehow he hit the tank for 47k. This is a kingslayer tank. He proceeded to one-shot people every so often throughout the fight, but since I only brought one tank I was so busy mage-tanking and shaman-tanking and pet-tanking that I couldn't scroll back and see what had happened. They gave him an iWin button.
If this is how raiding is going to be in cata (and I'm just talking a slightly buffed level 63 raid boss here) the dungeon bosses are going to be pretty rough too. I guess we're seeing that with Kai'ju Gahz'rilla etc already.

[naPS]

I've run most of the new instances in the beta on heroic, and they're not that bad. I think there's a lot of talk about everything being rough and tough and requiring CC, but I just haven't seen it in practice.

However, there are some very annoying new mechanics that are going to be a challenge to overcome. A few of the bosses in HOO require some large group movement and several different mobs to be targeted by different people at the same time, and the mobs all have the same name, so it could really get interesting.