You should have tried healing at the start of Cataclysm. It was brutally difficult. It wasn't until the Molten Front gear started rollong in that it got easier. Early on, the Zul's were really hard, too. Gear inflation has made most heroics easy to heal, but don't forget the steep difficulty cur e at the start of the expansion.

@Kyle That's the issue tho. I really hate to make this comment but it really is "Blizz catering to the casuals." Now I'm by no way am an elitist nor do I hate casuals as I see myself as a somewhat casual player but the statement is true for this arguement. There was a post a little while back talking about how Epic items arent really epic anymore and they aren't. Like you said, you can face roll your way to 378 gear. and then when you get enough valor, you can just buy 397. I understand that Blizzard wanted more people to get into raids and see endgame content, but with the induction of the raid finder which is tuned for the casuals, they no longer really need to hand out gear like this so I'm wondering if they might make some epics epic again. It feels a little cheap being able to just buy all your gear over time. As long as the gear from RF is enough to get you into the actual raid, I would have no prob with Raid Finder being the highest ilvl loot I can obtain and let the raiders have the best gear. They deserve it.

We took a guild group of fresh 85's thru cata heriocs with the minimum iLevel required for heroics, and yes, they are still hard. You still have to CC. The healer was oom; we wiped on trash and bosses.

I am glad that Blizzard backed off here at the end of the x-pack to make it easier to get gear. I currently have 7 level 85's that all need to be decently geared enough for MoP leveling, and 2 more I'm trying to get to 85 before MoP.

We lost so many people at the beginning of Cata that quit because it was too hard. We went months without being able to do 25 mans, because it was hard to find people that cared to raid.

With the changes in 4.3, for the first time ever, we have been able to continue 25 mans during the holidays.

People can fuss all they want about 'catering to casuals', but at least there are now enough difficulty levels out there for everyone. Normal 25 man raids are still kinda difficult (we have hit the wall that is Ultraxion) for undergeared and/or underperforming raiders.