Cata raiding….
What have you thought about T11 raiding?
too hard? too easy? just right?
Brutal? unfogiving? punishing?
trivial, faceroll, /afk?
I admit the jump from Heroic 5 mans to an actual raid was quite a big shock at 1st. Then getting used to mechanics, how to handle abilities, and getting used to raiding with your guild again made the bosses drop. However, looking back at T11, some of the fights are just right for getting introduced back into raiding, while others just punish and spank.
I think overall Blizzard did a good job, with this tier (normal). It punishes those who do not pay attention, do not know their class well, and hurts those who refuse to gem, enchant, reforge as needed. For those who do their homework, the fights can at time be trivial and faceroll worthy (magmaw, halfus, Omno), while others give the right amount of thrill of the kill feeling (Atra, Council, Chim).
Where Blizzard messed up a little is even in the faceroll fights, there is not a lot of wiggle room for complete and utter failure, one mistake will pretty much cause a wipe. There is not a lot of “opps, we made a mistake, recover!” in this tier.
For example, look at Chim, if your healers cannot heal someone above 10k…prob gonna a wipe. V&T – you dont aviod flame teleportation or improperly handle blackout….wipe. Don’t get me wrong, raids/raiders who cannot handle these should probably wipe, but it just seems perhaps a lttile harsh on the initial tier of raiding.
With the endbosses of T11, I think they hit the nail head on. These fights should be punishing much like when LK 1st came out. They need to have complex mechanics and lots of awareness needed. Furthermore, they should wipe if you make a mistake. Give casuals bosses prior to endbosses, and see if they can adjust to the endbosses.
I cannot comment on the Heroic versions of T11, as I have not done any, but if they are like the normal Heroic formula, going to be punishing (as they should) to those who cannot handle it.
Random thoughts
A couple of nights ago in SR, the issues of Heroics was brought up, someone asked why should we even bother. That internally made me *facepalm* I immediately said, “why not?”.
Only 7 bosses in Firelands. *fingers crossed* I hope we will get 7/7 fairly soon. It only makes sense to get in there. Also in the Heroic Version of ragnaros, it is different then the normal version, I would like to see it.
Talking to another officer, are all of our raiders even capable of the mental aspects of progressing Heroic versions? That made me step back. I think we can, but who knows. Some of them in passing have mentioned that they would like no part of Heroics? If so that makes me sad. If we get 7/7 soon, what are we going to so…sit around and knit?
Orangeslice > Other Sodas 
I agree, I think they got the difficulties just about right.
I think the main issue for our group, or any group on a similar schedule (like our Crits raid for example) is time spent raiding. Does the fact that we only raid two night a week mean we can’t do heroics? Hell no! It just means we won’t get to them as soon as other raids do … maybe not even in time to really work on them before the next tier. That is fine .. as far as I am concerned, in both instances, our goal is to see the content while it is current and relevant, with people that we like to raid with.
I’m not in any huge rush to see heroics, but I agree that if we down everything on regular, what else is there to do? Might as well start working on one of the fights on heroic … if you remove potential to progress, then yeah … we’re all going to find something else to do. If you’re lucky that will just be alts, if you’re not … it will be something other than logging in.
Time spend raiding does end up a factor. Someone pointed out the other day that people were in blues while killing the end bosses the first time… which is not totally accurate but I am sure they had some blue slots… but the point is we aren’t world class. And one big differentiator is time raiding. If I stopped raiding on alts and raided only with one team for 4-6 nights a week then I might be a heroic level raider. I don’t consider myself that level. But that does not mean we can’t push to that level, at least within the constraints of our schedule. Those big name world first raids and many heroic raids run the same team 6+ hours a night for most of the week. We are talking more than double the amount of time the crits raid runs. It is no surprise they get things down far faster… even not counting the large skill gap. Of course the time invested is a part of why there is a skill gap.
With heroics I think it is ultimately based upon how well we did in regulars.
Personally I’d like to get the regular fights on farm _before_ we tackle heroics.
And it kinda does that automatically. You have to down the endboss before starting them and usually by the time you clear the end boss the first few are on total farm mode.
We will be doing heroics. If not clearing the firelands it could be sinestra… but there will be heroics.
I quit Cata before I even got to any raid. Most of the people I played with seem to have done the same.