Q u o t e:
So with raid testing in full swing, i think it's a good time to ask what the planned progression path will be concerning raids.

Will we be allowed to directly do heroic-modes or are we forced to do normal first?
Will there be any kind of gating?
Any Info on Sinestra? Try-limited? Time limited? Not limited, just hard?
Also, will there be heroic-mode testing in Beta?

Below is the basic progression map. Obviously your mileage may vary, i.e. If you're Paragon or Premonition you will be able to skip some of the below and/or mix and match at your discretion.

*Normal Dungeons/Crafting/Questing to get full set of 85 blues (non-heroic) to do Heroic dungeons.
*Heroic dungeons to get full set of 85 Heroic blues to do Normal mode raids.
*Normal raids to get full set of 85 epics (non-heroic) to do Heroic mode raids.
*Heroic Raids to get full set of 85 Heroic epics, which will presumably help a bit on Sinestra and the next tier (when released with patch 4.1.0)

*Badge vendors to help fill in gaps at all tier levels.

*No real gating to speak of for ship.

*Sinestra opens after Cho'gall is defeated on HEROIC mode. No timers or attempt limits, but she will pound you relentlessly. She has better than Heroic epic level gear (half a tier better).

Q u o t e:


Is the plan to have only one boss per content-tier to drop better-than-current-heroic-tier loot in order to prevent the stat-snowballing effect that occurred in Wrath with TOGC-25? And if so, does that mean that Ragnaros isn't the real end-boss of the Firelands raid and there'll be another heroic-mode only boss after him? Or is a heroic-mode only boss just a one-time thing like Algalon was in Wrath?

There is no set in stone plan. We'll do it if it's something really bad ass (story/concept wise), like Sinestra, Algalon, etc...

That doesn't mean that Ragnaros won't be SUPER hard on Heroic mode, because he will be.

Q u o t e:
One thing that I'm very curious about is where the intended difficulty level is for HC dungeons and normal mode raids. I've heard the expression that HC dungeons are meant to be harder then the WotLK ones, however that's kinda like saying you earn less money then Bill Gates; it doesn't tell you a whole lot. I thought I had HC dungeons figured out, suspecting where the difficulty was meant to be just looking at which ones got buffed, which ones got nerfed and which ones didn't get very many changes. And that difficulty level seemed quite nice to me, however the normal mode raids so far have been a lot easier then I thought they would be, they're even easier then the HC dungeons (at least from a healing perspective).

I was hoping that the normal mode raids would be somewhere along the lines of Ulduar, but currently it's more like ToC. Just considering how many PuGs that are charging in to raids and killing these bosses now before they know anything about what to expect from the bosses just suggests how easy it's gonna be to PuG when you all know the tacs.

I'm just asking because it would kinda help with providing feedback.

Normal mode raids are currently too easy (with few exceptions). You'll likely be seeing substantial buffs across the board in the next beta patch.

You will have to complete the Normal mode of a raid dungeon once before you can switch to Heroic the next week.