I’m not arguing about absolute difficulty, but relative difficulty.

It’s not really about giving rewards to random players (although that will happen as a result) but it should be a bonus also for ‘good’ players who don’t want to wait for 4 other people in their guild to be on to get their heroic done.

You may feel bitter that there are people worse than you who will get the same stuff, there are no doubt people better than you who feel bitter that stuff is dumbed down to your level.

If the people know each other, the tank knows exactly where the heal is going to stand and how the healer is going to react when something happens. He knows exactly where to pick up the adds that spawned and how he can turn the boss without endangering the healer.

The healer knows exactly how the tanks plays. If he’s going to pull the next pack back or if he’s going to charge into it. How far away he can stand without getting out of range.

And for a DD it’s very valuable if you know how fats your tank builds up threat. And if your tank is able to create AE threat or not. And if you have to swap a target if your tank swaps target or if he’ll return to your target after hitting another mob or not.

And the mage knows if he has to cancel his fireball to counter spell or if the rogue will have enough energy to interrupt the mob.

That’s all stuff that increases the efficiency of a GOOD premade group that knows each other.

And even 5 amazing player will be more efficient after a few runs then on their first heroic they play together.

Maybe the 15% was just added to compensate for the fact that a group which doesn’t know each other will be less efficient then a premade. Scary theory but maybe, just maybe that was the idea of the buff.

But no, they want to make the losers, unskilled, M&S, whatever you want to call it, stop crying and keep playing the game.

The point of my post is that *some people* (not necessarily me) might feel that they ARE affected by this even if the dungeon buff doesn’t help them much. The reason for this is that their carefully customised character with hard won gear is being dragged back to being merely average when the heroic dungeon gear and achievements are being given out for free to everyone else.

In addition, because we don’t have a major patch now, we effectively have a gear reset between patches, which is a first in warcraft’s recent history – there is no way for your non-raider to improve over heroic dungeon/rep gear. Everyone’s gear will be the same.

The problem is not the “horrible community” that Stabs mentions – the problem is that you can’t differentiate your character from everyone else’s. Talent specs are so narrow now that unless you have some title or fancy mount, the only way of doing so is your gear and achievements (and the latter is not even visible unless people look you up). People identify with their toon, and want to be rewarded for doing stuff that is difficult.

However, and this is the tragedy of modern WoW, it doesn’t and the reason it doesn’t is because of WoW’s horrible players. The truth of the matter is WoW players on the forums at least treat everything that doesn’t directly benefit them as some kind of heinous slap in the face and are immensely bitter that asocial players are being boosted. And of course the various types of LFD abuse will rise, with heroics becoming easier expect to see people afk and expect to be carried.

Another elegance of the design is that people judge others on the meters. This gives 15% more damage, or even greater if one takes into account higher threat too. So that guy who was mocked for doing 6k dps will become acceptable on 7k dps without anything changing except this buff.

I have to say though that as a blue-geared DK who dinged 2 weeks ago I’ve had very little problem with heroics. I see a lot of people bail in disgust at the slightest set-back – maybe they are the ones who have been complaining. But if you don’t leave your group you almost always get the heroic done in the end.