Instance difficulty

The instance difficulty are settings that increase the challenges and rewards for dungeons and raids. There was no other difficulty setting other than the base "normal difficulty" until The Burning Crusade introduced the "Heroic" difficulty. Warlords of Draenor introduced the Mythic difficulty for both dungeons and raids.

Normal

The base difficulty of any instance from dungeons, raids, and scenarios and the only difficulty available for dungeons and raids introduced during vanilla World of Warcraft.

Follower Dungeons uses this difficulty.

Heroic

Introduced with The Burning Crusade, Heroic difficulty increases the difficulty of dungeons and raids from its normal difficulty. Dungeons usually unlock this difficulty by the time the player reaches the expansion's level cap while raids also require reaching a certain item level.

Mythic

Introduced in Warlords of Draenor, Mythic difficulty is the hardest possible difficulty available for dungeons and raids. In addition to requiring the expansion's level cap, dungeons also require a certain item level to use this difficulty. Raids remain the same, requiring the level cap and a certain item level.

When first introduced it was only used for raids, with patch 6.2.0 expanding it to all Warlords of Draenor dungeons as well.

Timewalking

Main article: Timewalking

Timewalking is a unique difficulty added in patch 6.2.0, allowing players to queue up for a randomly selected dungeon from a previous expansion. The difficulty scales down the character's power and gear relative to the dungeon. Loot obtained during this difficulty has the Timewarped tag, which scales up to an item level appropriate for use at the player's level.

Certain raids have been introduced to this difficulty, allowing those to scale their power down to the raid and venture forward as if the raid was the current raid tier.

Dungeon difficulty

Dungeon difficulty is a setting that increases the challenge and rewards of a 5-man dungeon instance. Dungeon difficulty includes Normal, Heroic, and Mythic, each with progressively increasing difficulty. Dungeons will unlock their "normal" difficulty as the player levels up to the expansion's level cap. At an expansion's max level is when players can start participating in the "Heroic" difficulty of each dungeon and later, the Mythic difficulty unlocks after reaching a set item level.

Some dungeons are only available in Heroic and Mythic difficulties.

Challenge Mode

The subject of this section was removed from World of Warcraft in patch 7.0.3.

Main article: Challenge Mode

Challenge Mode was an advanced mode for 5-player dungeons designed for players looking for the ultimate test of coordination and skill. In challenge modes, players are tasked with trying to complete an existing 5-player dungeon as quickly and skillfully as possible. Legion merged it with the Mythic+ system.

Mythic+

Main article: Mythic+

Mythic+ is an endlessly scaling challenge for dungeons on the Mythic difficulty setting. Parties compete against a timer while dealing with weekly-rotating affixes that encourage different tactics. Mythic+ compares to Challenge Mode but replaces it with a greater emphasis on difficulty and solid execution rather than pure speed. Players receive gear proportionate to their difficulty, or keystone level, and rank according to the Mythic+ Rating achieved throughout the PvE season.

Titan Rune Dungeon

Main article: Titan Rune Dungeon

Titan Rune Dungeons is Classic's spin of the Mythic+ system, introduced in Wrath of the Lich King Classic. It increases mobs and boss encounters HP, damage, and adds an "affix" that is designed around the dungeon's theme.

Raid difficulty

The raid difficulty setting determines the difficulty of the encounters in raids and is controlled by the raid leader. A variety of options are available depending on the raid and when it was released. These can be separated into three main periods: Fixed size, until 3.2; 10 man heroic, until Mists; and post-Draenor, the current system. In the past, raid difficulty was often associated with raid size and the quality of the loot involved.

Current system

There are four types of raid: Raid Finder (aka LFR), Normal, Heroic, and 20-person Mythic. The three lower raid sizes are flexible and can accommodate raid groups from 10-25 people; Mythic is the only difficulty requiring a fixed size of the group. These difficulties are present in all raids from Warlords of Draenor onward. Each type of difficulty comes with its own quality of loot.

Players can fight for the Ahead of the Curve and Cutting Edge achievements in the Heroic and Mythic difficulties respectively.

Legacy raids

Legacy raids are available in four sizes: 10 man, 10 man heroic, 25 man, and 25 man heroic. These reflect the changes made in 3.2 during Wrath of the Lich King to enable more flexibility over the fixed raid sizes in the original game and The Burning Crusade.

Early history

Until Wrath of the Lich King, most raids had a fixed size, without any variable difficulty or other settings. In Vanilla, different raid instances had different sizes: the four most famous of which held 40 raiders. However, Upper Blackrock Spire had 10 people, while Zul'Gurub and Ruins of Ahn'Qiraj had 20. Similarly most of the raids in The Burning Crusade had 25 people, with the exception of Karazhan and Zul'Aman, which had 10. The smaller size raids were sometimes considered to be easier, due to their lesser requirements and lower gear requirements.

Fixed raids would start to change with Wrath, and the raid leader could change the difficulty of the encounters in a dungeon as a new setting. Each raid was designed to be fought in both 10 and 25 man raid sizes and each size of raid was originally considered a different difficulty as the bosses had different health, stats, and loot. Prior to patch 3.2.0, the 25-player versions were considered "Heroic" with associated quest being labeled accordingly, i.e.  [30R] Heroic: Archivum Data Disc. This was on top of optional "elite mode" triggers to adjust the difficulty of individual fights, especially in Ulduar. With patch 3.2.0 introducing actual Heroic modes to both raid sizes in Trial of the Crusader, the original difficulties were renamed to simply 10-player mode and 25-player mode.

3.2 and introduction of 10 man heroic

At the time of the formal introduction of raid difficulties, all newer raids beginning with the Crusaders' Coliseum can use the 10-player heroic mode and 25-player heroic mode settings to access harder versions of the raids, However, each of the four combinations of raid size and difficulty dropped a different quality of loot.

Raids	Old	New
	Dungeon Difficulty setting	Raid Difficulty setting
10 Player normal Raid	Normal	10 Player
25 Player normal Raid	Heroic	25 Player
10 Player heroic Raid	-	10 Player (Heroic)
25 Player heroic Raid	-	25 Player (Heroic)

Note: If a heroic raid mode is selected, the previous raids which did not use this new feature will still be launched in the selected size (10 or 25-man).

Patch 3.3.0 brought new changes to dungeon difficulty settings, allowing them to be changed for each boss in the raid if desired. Therefore a combination of normal and heroic encounters could be fought.

In the upcoming patch we are adding a new feature to the Icecrown raid instance that allows the raid leader to change the instance's difficulty setting on a boss-per-boss basis. The way the raid leader chooses to switch is the same as now, by right-clicking on the character portrait. The difficulty settings can be changed from inside Icecrown Citadel, with some restrictions. For example, you cannot change the difficulty in combat or during certain events specified by our design team. To enable the ability to change the raid difficulty to heroic, you must first defeat the Lich King on normal mode, as doing so unlocks the heroic version of this raid instance. There is no heroic version of trash; meaning changing the difficulty will only affect boss difficulty.

We chose this particular functionality because we didn't want to use the Trial of the Crusader method, and have four versions on a raid of this size. We felt the Ulduar method of having to know a certain trick to do on the boss was difficult to communicate and tied too heavily to achievements. We might eventually convert Trial of the Crusader over to this new system but Ulduar and Naxxramas will likely never change.

Standardization

In Cataclysm and Mists of Pandaria, loot would be standardized between raid sizes; 10-man Heroic and 25-man Heroic gear would be of equal quality. A third raid difficulty, Raid Finder would be introduced with its own lower quality of loot below 10-man Normal, starting in Dragon Soul and continuing through Mists of Pandaria. Finally, in Siege of Orgrimmar the first flexible system was introduced in between Raid Finder and normal mode.

Warlords of Draenor did away with separate 10 and 25-player modes and restructured the difficulty names. Normal Mode was renamed to Heroic Mode while Flexible Mode was renamed to Normal Mode, with all three difficulties scaling between 10 and 25 players. Meanwhile, the old Heroic Mode was updated into a fixed 20-player Mythic Mode for those seeking the greatest challenge.

Composition

Lead Encounter Designer Ion Hazzikostas suggests that Mythic raids will be composed of 2-3 tanks (mostly 2), 4-6 healers (mostly 5), and around 13 DPS.

Patch changes

• Patch 6.2.0 (2015-06-23): Mythic difficulty introduced for dungeons.
  
• Patch 6.0.2 (2014-10-14):
  • Raid structure was overhauled and applied to Siege of Orgrimmar and new raids going forward.
    • Flexible Raid difficulty was renamed to Normal and the scaling system was integrated to Raid Finder, Normal, and Heroic modes.
    • Raid Finder (25) is now Raid Finder (10-30).
    • Normal (10-player) and Normal (25-player) are now Heroic (10-30).
    • Heroic (10-player) and Heroic (25-player) are now the new difficulty Mythic (20).
      
• Patch 3.2.0 (2009-08-04): Introduced raid difficulty settings (10-player and 25-player with Heroic variants) and dungeon difficulties renamed to "5 Player" and "5 Player (Heroic)".
  
• Patch 2.0.3 (2007-01-09): Heroic difficulty introduced.
  

See also

• Elite mode
• Heroic Elite