Posts with tag heroic-dungeons

One of the more volatile announcements that we've heard so far from Blizzard regarding Mists of Pandaria is the fact that Mists will not include any more 5-man dungeons. In an expansion where new content seems to be rolling out on a much faster, tighter basis than any expansion prior this seems a little bizarre to players, particularly those that enjoy dungeon-based content. Yet one of the things Mists has been doing consistently throughout the expansion is delivering a wider array of things to do. In fact, there's such a variety in endgame content that players sometimes feel legitimately overwhelmed by the sheer amount of it.

But just because we aren't getting any new dungeons doesn't mean we aren't getting alternate ways to obtain all that sweet, sweet gear we know and love. Patch 5.3 will see the introduction of heroic scenarios, slightly tougher versions of the scenarios we've already seen this expansion. In addition to valor, the heroic scenarios will offer raid-finder level rewards for players that choose to participate in them -- better than any gear you'll find in a heroic dungeon at this point.

While this may seem pretty cool for some people, it does make one wonder -- what's the purpose of heroic dungeons?

Hopefully this clears up everyone's questions about this process. If not, you can always check out the discussion thread on the official forums and ask away!

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It's open warfare between Alliance and Horde in Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft's next expansion. Jump into five new levels with new talents and class mechanics, try the new monk class, and create a pandaren character to ally with either Horde or Alliance. Look for expansion basics in our Mists FAQ, or dig into our spring press event coverage for more details!

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I have this habit of dealing with my insomnia by running heroic dungeons. Sometimes I tank (especially if the bribe for doing so is enacted), and sometimes I DPS. Either way, I have a reasonably solid set of gear for both, full of heroic DS gear. Lately I've noticed a strange trend: People constantly ask me why I'm there, inform me that my gear is too good for the dungeon, and otherwise give me a hard time.

Now, perhaps it's because I don't restrict myself to Hour of Twilight dungeons. This is because I don't need the gear from heroics, and so I might as well get to see dungeons I haven't gotten to see for a while. Now, if the confusion was just happening when I was DPSing, I'd be less baffled. I mean, if you're tanking your way through normal heroics to try and get geared enough for HoT dungeons and eventually the Raid Finder, sure, I could see being somewhat nervous of the dude in 410 gear who just dropped in. Really, I could get that.

What possible reason do people have to freak out when a tank in 410 gear shows up? Do you honestly think I'm running Lost City of the Tol'vir to take your gear? Is that actually happening?

In Mists of Pandaria, there are no level 90 normal mode dungeons. There are normal dungeons, but those are leveling content. Once you hit level 90, you're expected to be geared enough to start in on heroics, because those are tuned for players to be able to step in and run them. In order to explain how this all works, Ghostcrawler took to the forums to answer some questions.

Ghostcrawler - Why take away regular queues at 90?

There are no level 90 regular dungeons.

The Mists of Pandaria heroic dungeons are easier than the Cataclysm heroic dungeons.* Once we made that decision, we thought that having two versions of the level 90 dungeons (normal and heroic) didn't make sense because they would be very similar in difficulty and offer similar loot. We thought about calling them something besides "heroic," since heroic tends to mean hard to a lot of players, but we also needed to call them something, because some dungeons like Temple of the Jade Serpent have a lower-level and a level 90 version. We thought about calling them "level 90 versions" but figured "heroic" required less explanation. (We also could have dispensed with lower level dungeons, or made lower level versions of the level 90 dungeons, but we felt like both solutions were just to make the nomenclature of "heroic" more clear, which seemed like bad reasons.)

TLDR: Some Mists of Pandaria dungeons have lower level and level 90 versions. Others just have level 90 versions. In both cases, the level 90 versions are called "heroic."

* - If you like very difficult dungeons, Challenge Modes are targeted at you.

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And in case you're wondering, he also explains challenge modes in more detail as well as explaining why Blizzard has decided to tweak what you can queue for at 90. As always, even if you can't queue for something, you can always walk or ride up to the door and zone in that way.

I remember when that was the only way you could run a dungeon. I also remember when all my gear was "of the Bear." I'm old, is what I'm saying.

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It's open warfare between Alliance and Horde in Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft's next expansion. Jump into five new levels with new talents and class mechanics, try the new monk class, and create a pandaren character to ally with either Horde or Alliance. Look for expansion basics in our Mists FAQ, or dig into our spring press event coverage for more details!

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All of the Mists of Pandaria heroic dungeons are available for testing in the beta. While they are not easily accessed in the Dungeon Finder because of an extra-high gear level requirement, you can still test the heroic of your choice by entering it through the front door.

Blizzard has planned two changes to help players get into the heroics via the Dungeon Finder:

1. A higher level will be able to be simulated.
2. The gear level of 440 will be lowered via a hotfix.

The full text of Daelo's post is below.

Daelo

Currently for a player to enter into a Heroic Dungeon through the Dungeon Finder system requires an item level of 440. Currently, this is a more difficult bar to clear in the beta that it will be in the final live game.

We're going to work towards hotfixing that value down, but at the same time use some new magic we have to simulate a higher level. When that change gets applied, I'll edit this thread with the news.

In the meantime, you can actually go old school to test the dungeons. Form a group, then head in through the entrance!

I'm making feedback threads for them all, since they're all open.

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It's open warfare between Alliance and Horde in Mists of Pandaria, World of Warcraft's next expansion. Jump into five new levels with new talents and class mechanics, try the new monk class, and create a pandaren character to ally with either Horde or Alliance. Look for expansion basics in our Mists FAQ, or dig into our spring press event coverage for more details!

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Take a moment and picture this: There's a politician out there, a pretty sleazy politician, who is basically in a position of power to use that power to do whatever suits him or her best -- no regard for anyone that voted him into office, no real sense of caring for those he is supposedly serving. One day, someone comes up to that politician and says, "Hey man, I'll give you $3 million if you start taking an interest in your constituents and doing what is best for them, OK?" The politician agrees, takes the money, and promptly starts doing the right thing.

Is that politician in the wrong? Or is that politician simply learning that if he behaves badly, he'll get a bribe to start behaving correctly? What's to stop him from behaving badly again, if he thinks he's going to get another $3 million out of the deal? More importantly, if all the other politicians out there see this guy get a bribe to behave like a decent politician and all of those politicians decide to start behaving badly in an effort to get that bribe for themselves, are they in the wrong?

When Cataclysm launched, part of the intent between the fairly difficult heroic 5-mans and the fact that they dropped ilevel 346 blue items was that Blizzard wanted to slow down gearing. This worked; the roadblock created by early Cataclysm heroics for casual players did serve to slow down gearing. For the first time in years, full epic-geared characters were seen as more of a rare occurrence than a staple of your average AFKer in Orgrimmar.

Fast forward to last Saturday, where I decided to transfer my blue-geared death knight (who hit 85 and was subsequently forgotten in March) to my main's server to make use of her professions. On a whim, I decided to see how long it could take to gear her. By Sunday night, she had tanked Madness of Deathwing in Raid Finder, was in three-piece tier 13, and was one item away from being in full 378 or higher epics.

It seems clear to me now that the original Cataclysm model for gearing has failed, and the roadblocks originally put in place to prevent quickly gearing alts are no longer in place. That said, I don't mind it, and I don't think Blizzard minds it. Getting gear is fun, even on an alt that's only supposed to be used for running around Tol Barad picking flowers and mining ore. I like having four characters at 380+ ilevel, and it served me well when my guild recently needed me to main-change from my mage back to my shaman to heal. So yes, the original gearing model for Cataclysm does seem to have failed -- but is that really such a bad thing?

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OK, you can't pretend you didn't see this one coming after the healing and tanking editions. As I may have mentioned, I have less DPS experience than tanking and healing, but from that time in Azeroth, I have gathered that there are things everyone can do to make their DPSers happy bunnies rather than melancholy murlocs. Actually, being a murloc would be pretty cool. One of my GMs does an awesome murloc impression.

So, tanks and healers, and other DPSers, how can you keep your DPS buddies happy?

1. Mark your targets. Tanks, or whoever is experienced, or whoever is taking on that role in the dungeon, mark your targets. Telepathy is not a standard talent in any tree, and while sure, it's possible to click the tank and then use an assist macro, you can easily keybind or add a button to your action bars that marks your target with a skull, a cross, a moon and so on.

Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Light and How to Swing It for holy, protection and retribution paladins. Seasoned ret paladin Dan Desmond is here to answer your questions and provide you with your biweekly dose of retribution medicine. Contact him at dand@wowinsider.com with any questions, concerns, or suggestions!

This new series of heroics runs akin to the Forge of Souls, Pit of Saron, and Halls of Reflection trio of Wrath in that you must complete them in a specific order. In the interest of fitting all of these encounters in one post, I will need to truncate a lot of descriptions and irrelevant details. If you have any questions or suggestions for your fellow ret paladins, please feel free to drop a comment below!

Warning: This post contains strategies and brief descriptions of the new heroic dungeons in patch 4.3 that may or may not be spoiler-esque. As always with my columns, proceed with caution.

So you've dinged level 85 on your death knight. Now what? Patch 4.2 bought a lot of new things for level 85s of almost any PVE playstyle to do, so you have options to choose from. This week, we'll take a look at some of the best things you can do to get yourself geared up and ready to hit the next level of PVE play once you hit level 85.