Quote Originally Posted by Billythepancake View Post
For a lot of people, sure, I agree. Now I'd say aurum Vale isnt too bad, but I've also invested 3000 hours into this game and have progged ultimate fights as well as do savage content. But I remember my first run of bardams mettle, or Aurum Vale, shit was rough, I could barely keep up. I kept with it because I like a challenge though (clearly, right?)
That's misconception.

Bardams Mettle wasn't hard. The only two reason that it "felt" hard because of two things: skill and gears. I remember that speed bum at the beginning of SB inside Bardams too, but that's because:

- A lot of people were trying new roles in a new expansion, as well as adjusting to new change in their class. Also the "hardcore" people stick with their static early on in order to reach max level quicker leading to a reduced number of skill players in the pool. All of this combines always make contents "feel" harder at the beginning of an expansion.
- Gears: the main culprit of why Bardam felt like a jump in "difficulty" is because of the Shire gears. "New" players were given a set for free, which over geared them for the first 2 story dungeon, but Bardam is where it evened/fall behind. This is most noticeable with tank, and adding the fact that most people in Shire Gear are new to the classes and/or potion jump, you get a fairly potent combination of making things harder than they actually are. I had to heal a tank in Castrum Abania one (the last story dungeon in SB) who was in full lvl60 crafted gears. It was harder to keep him alive than healing freaking omega.

Dungeons has consistently becoming easier and repeatly, that's a fact. Even by the end of 2.0 you could still see people wiping in Stone vigil or AV. I still remembered sleep/fluid aura were still used in order to salvage a pull. These days the only struggle is at the first few weeks for reasons mentioned above, after that you hardly see any a party struggle any more unless they are "really" bad. And CC skills has been neglected to extinctions