Very recognizable! After a gruesome 3,5-hour Stonecore run back in December 2010, I stopped tanking in PuGs for the longest time, and only did so with people from my guild. I don't remember exactly when I got back into it, but I suspect it must have been shortly after the Troll instances were reintroduced.

So true. It's the reason why my prot warrior girl has been shelved since the beginning of Cataclysm, or rather, several weeks into Cataclysm.

You should come back and tank the Hour of Twilight dungeons; they are a lot shorter and the boss mechanics are, let's say, fewer -easier to remember then, but still can wipe a fail group. Odds are, you'd probably enjoy 4.3 dungeons and LFR a lot more than 4.0.

I agree with Not Impressed. And it's not just that the dungeons are easier - I think it's made people relax more. I've seen more light conversations and have actually have FUN groups (rather than ones that are merely tolerable and efficient). Yes there are still bad groups. Yes we do still get "that guy" of various sorts, but overall, I've found the newest heroics to be more fun. And it's not just me - I think the number of more relaxed groups in this patch are rather telling.

This was my experience at the start of the expansion too. My guild could not clear any of the dungeons. -_-
I still have never done most of them. I do not plan to either because they were not fun at all.

The new 5mans are much better though.
They are a LOT more fun. The Raid Finder is also a lot of fun. You should give it another chance.

It took them losing a couple million subscriptions, but the developers finally figured out that the product they wanted to make in Cataclysm wasn't the product that the majority of their customer base wanted. Kudos to them for eventually getting the clue, but if they'd listened to Beta and early release feedback they wouldn't have gotten into that mess in the first place.

@Sara
I'd have to agree. It is a relief after the Troll Heroics. Jindo is still a pug-breaker.

I have seen more forgiveness and relaxness in HoT heroics. Someone usually yells out "POWAH!" during Benedictus' speech.

I had a 5 year old as a healer once. We kicked the person who wanted to kick her. We had a lot of wipes, but we finished.

@TonyKP

Personally I think Blizz were in a bit of a 'damned if they do, damned if they don't' situation with Cata. At some point I just don't think it's possible to keep such diverse groups of players as the casuals and the hardcore playing together, they somewhat managed it in Wrath by delivering casual content whilst promising to make things hard again in cata but that couldn't last forever.

I think either way, if Cata had continued in the same vein of Wrath or gotten hard as it did they would have lost players.

@vincentmagius

That's me. I have tried, but I simply can't help but yell "POWAH!" when Benedictus says that line. And I doubt I'll ever stop.

How 4-5 mechanics a bossfight becomes 18, is beyond me. Heck if you were level appropriate to BWL I'd wonder if you could actually clear it.

It comes back to player complaints and the short memory most have.
In Wrath, they remembered the "go go go" mentality (that never left in Cata...) and the ease of the dungeons in late wrath. They forget the Skadi gauntlet in early wrath, and how many groups wiped or did the glitch run. Loken killed plenty before gear made it "just bunch up and I'll heal through it".

Factors that made this happen;
1) Gear scaled way higher than anticipated
2) Dungeon Finder added a lot more people to the heroic dungeon mix
3) First daily quests, then DF, gave geared raiders a reason to re-enter the dungeons, and they didn't want to take time when they didn't "need" to.

I don't think the Wrath dungeons were "too easy" by design. I think them fixing the gear scaling (fewer tiers, fewer sets per tier) would have been fine, but they also made the dungeons "tougher", mostly through "interupt or die" type deals. People lamented the lack of CC in Wrath dungeons, but that was because most folks lamented the long cc chains of BC.

So yeah, IMO at least, the "fix" for Cata dungeons would have been fine by fixing the gear escalation rather than making dungeons with overly intricate death mechanics.

This hundreds of times over. I was in exactly the same boat as a protection paladin, and I had enjoyed tanking through Wrath. After reaching the same types of pugs for a few days straight I decided that rather than tank and deal with poor DPSers, I would take a queue time hit and be a good one myself. I switched to my hunter.

I trapped, misdirected, managed my pet; I think at one point I had 4/5 mobs in a 5 pull CCed myself with Freezing Trap, Wyvern Sting, Scare Beast, and kiting/pet tank. It was a lot more fun for me, and I felt just as useful as when I was tanking. I'm glad I made the switch, and I'm enjoying it.

Same here, although I never did anything but dps. I couldn't stand wiping all the time and quit for about two months.

And interesting to hear that there was plenty of griping about hard dungeons in the beta that went ignored. Blizz claims they read the reports, but time and time again we hear about reports that clearly explained problems that weren't fixed until long after the patch was released.