Dungeon difficulty

Dungeon difficulty is a setting that increases the challenge and rewards of a 5-man dungeon instance at maximum level. As of Battle for Azeroth, dungeon difficulty includes Normal, Heroic, Mythic and Mythic+, each with progressively increasing difficulty. These settings have gradually been made available throughout the history of World of Warcraft, with the latest addition of Mythic+ in Legion.
==The Burning Crusade==
The Burning Crusade has brought a new dungeon system which incorporates a dungeon difficulty setting. The simple concept of the dungeon difficulty spans across two levels. Firstly there is the normal setting, in which players will experience average loot as would be expected in any World of Warcraft 5-man dungeon. Heroic, however, is a little different.
===Official Introduction===
From Frank Pearce's Interview for the Official EU (en) sitehttp://www.wow-europe.com/en/misc/fpinterview.html
Q: Dungeon difficulty setting?
:A: The dungeon difficulty settings will allow you to replay dungeons at an increased level of challenge, meaning you'll also gain access to greater rewards. For example, you'll be able to replay that same level-63 wing you just mastered later on at level 70, with level-70 monsters and level-70 drops. If it's a level-70 wing and you play it at the harder difficulty level, the content will still be level 70, but the loot tables will reflect the higher challenge that comes as a result of the monsters having more hit points and dealing more damage. Or you might get more monsters per pull...that sort of thing. We are definitely trying to provide a great deal of content for players, regardless of the amount of time they have to devote to it or how many other people they like to play with.
===The differences between Heroic and Normal===
It should first be noted that heroic mode dungeons are not generally available for WoW Classic dungeons. However certain dungeons did receive them in later expansions: for example in the release of Cataclysm, Deadmines and Shadowfang Keep gained heroic settings.
In heroic dungeons, the enemies that you encounter will not just be of increased level, but also an increased difficulty far greater than their level would indicate. All enemies in heroic dungeons will be in the range of levels from the level cap to three levels above. However, heroic dungeons are substantially more difficult than the normal dungeons. Expect the trash mobs to hit well-geared plate tanks pretty hard for some particularly strong mobs. Also, expect bosses to hit harder, use their abilities more frequently, and often have new abilities.
=== Gaining access to heroic dungeons ===
To be able to access a heroic dungeon as a party, each member of the group must be at level 70. If all party members are level 70, the party leader can set the dungeon's difficulty to normal or heroic via menu options available by right-clicking his or her own portrait, or queuing via Dungeon Finder tool.
===Rewards===
Each boss drops a loot on par with or better than loot from normal level 70 dungeons.
End bosses are guaranteed to drop one item from their loot table in addition to a second, , item.http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=52717687&pageNo=1&sid=1#2 They also usually drop a .
==Wrath of the Lich King==
===Gaining access to heroic dungeons===
In order to access Northrend's dungeons in heroic mode, each member of the group must reach the level 80.
===Rewards===
Each boss drops a loot on par with or better than loot from normal level 80 dungeons.
End bosses are guaranteed to drop one item from their loot table in addition to a second, , item. They also drop a .
===Patch 3.2===
Patch 3.2.0 brought the use of normal/heroic difficulty for 10 and 25-man raids in the Crusaders' Coliseum.
Players will find new options when right clicking on their own portrait.
Dungeons 	Old 	New
Dungeons 	Dungeon Difficulty setting	Dungeon Difficulty setting
5 Player normal Dungeon	Normal 	5 Player
5 Player heroic Dungeon	Heroic 	5 Player (Heroic)
Raids 	Old 	New
Raids 	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 be launched in the selected mode (10 or 25-man).
===Patch 3.3===
Patch 3.3.0 brought new changes to dungeon difficulty settings, which at the time were similar to raid difficulty settings.
:
:http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=20677335705&sid=1
==Cataclysm==
===Gaining access to heroic dungeons===
In order to access Cataclysm's dungeons in heroic mode, each member of the group must reach level 85.
===Rewards===
Each Non-Zandalari Boss drops a item with Item Level 346. The End Bosses will drops two item with Item Level 346.
Each Zandalari Boss drops a item with Item Level 353. The End Bosses will drops two item with Item Level 353.
===Justice and Valor Points===
Whatever heroic dungeon you complete via Dungeon Finder(at your level) you will receive some extra reward other that Experience and Money.
Killing each Burning Crusade Heroic Bosses you will receive 5 Justice Points.
Completing Wrath of the Lich King Random Heroic you will receive 24 Justice Points and 16 each boss.
Completing Cataclysm Random Heroic you will receive 70 Valor Points, and 70 Justice Points each boss.
Completing Rise of the Zandalari Random Heroic you will receive 140 Valor Points, and 70 Justice Points each boss.
==Later expansions==
As with prior expansions, reaching the maximum level was required for accessing heroic dungeons.
Mists of Pandaria would introduce the Challenge Mode variant of Heroic Difficulty. It granted rewards other than gear, it lasted until Legion.
Mythic difficulty was introduced during Warlords of Draenor in patch 6.2.0 and was subsequently rolled out to all of the dungeons in the expansion. Mythic difficulty is above and beyond Heroic, and on Mythic, bosses' loot contained gear of a higher quality than heroic loot. This difficulty would become available to all subsequent dungeons in further expansions.
In Legion, Mythic+ was introduced, further increasing difficulty over Mythic, and adding random modifiers (affixes) to dungeons in numerically increasing levels of difficulty. Unlike previous settings, a Mythic Keystone is required for each dungeon run. Loot dropped scaled according to the level of the keystone.
In Battle for Azeroth and Shadowlands, various changes were made to Mythic+ as a particular difficulty level to increase the challenge and rewards available to players, but these did not affect the structure of the existing difficulty system. For example these changes included seasonal affixes that were attached to Keystones over a certain level, and Valor was reintroduced as a way to increase the item level of rewarded items from Mythic+.
==See also==
==References==
Category:Game terms
Category:Instances