I'm hopeful for more of a balance. In BC it was CC every single pull and it got very tedious after a while. In Wrath it was AoE every single pull and that got tedious after a while, too. What I would like to see is having to CC some packs, and then AOE some packs, just mix it up and keep people on their toes. I'm probably asking too much, right?

I hope that people realise that the threshold for tolerance of failure, or any mistake, in a CC heroic is much, much lower than it is on live. A lot of people will quit at the first sign of trouble and from my experience in BC it's usually tanks and healers. So I hope that those folks pining for difficult heroics are very patient because the number of heroics getting finished per game time is going to absolutely plummet.

And no, this is not me asking for easier heroics, I love my CC (I CC'd in Kharazan, as a hunter no less) but I think there's a lot of folk who don't remember the downsides of CC fests quite as well as they should.

The weird thing about all of the excitement over this is that heroic 5-man dungeons are something that elite players will run in appropriate gear for only a few days/weeks before moving on to the first raids. After that, If they run them at all, they will be steamrolling them just like they do to Wrath heroics. Who really cares how much of a challenge a trash pack in a 5-man in the first 3 weeks of the expansion provides?

For players for whom 5-man heroics are their endgame, this change will like be received poorly. Not being able to pug players means more idling, and less time playing. Complex trash pulls are fun on the first few trips through but will start to grate a little after a while. I would also guess that the reason many people stop short of raiding is limitations in their play time blocks. Multi-hour 5-mans will not work for those folks any better than raiding. Back to collecting pets for them I guess.

Same. I was the healer, so I was an additional step removed from the fight. Every single fight literally looked the same to me, and the pulls themselves happened completely without my input since I wasn't marking, pulling or CCing anything. If the tank and dps took their time about it I was left to twiddle my thumbs since a healer was only along for the healing and not actually an active participant.

The fear is that Cata is going to bring back everything that was bad about the BC heroics, but tack mana management on top of it with insta-kill mechanics that is designed to keep the dps on their toes, but will kill partyframe-hypnotised healers.

Bringing back the challenge is good, and necessary, but bringing back the tedium and frustation isn't.

matt has it right. I don't raid because while I can play lots of different times during the week, I can't block out hours at any one stretch. Except for the "Weekly Boss Must Die!" quest, heroics have historically been my endgame. If heroics take 2 hours, that's probably the end of my $15/month.

Don't get me wrong, I do support more thought involved in the pulls. As someone whose main is a tank, I would prefer to have to set kill priorities and call for CC. But I'm hoping that it's something most people pick up fairly quickly. They don't _have_ to bog the run down horribly once people get used to their jobs ... but we'll see how long said getting used to jobs takes.

I'm hopeful but skeptical.