Update: I've posted a followup to this article.

Every once in awhile someone asks if I'd like to go back and do Zul'Gurub or Blackwing Lair just for fun. Yes I would, if it was fun. I'd love to go and redo old raids for a bit of nostalgia and to blast through it because it's easy now, right?

?? ("skull") Bosses

It is easy for people in raiding gear. Unfortunately, Blizzard's ?? Boss mechanic gets in the way if players are slightly lower level or undergeared. The problem is in the Hit system, which normally I love, with current content it creates a good separation between PvP, Raiding, Heroic and normal gear.

A ?? Boss is effectively 3 levels above the max player in attendance. At level 60-63, Hit calculations didn't scale very far, but now with 70-73 you need a lot of Hit gear (see this Hit chart). If you're not max level, or you're not "properly" geared in Hit rating for a level 73 Boss, then you're just along for the ride or the trash mobs (unless you're a healer of course), you're going to get a very large amount of resists / misses on the boss.

An Example:

One of my guildmates, Xandar (a Paladin) recently just switched to a tanking spec. He's been doing well with in normal 5-man instances so far, but he has 0 spell hit rating and only 51 melee hit rating, so he's going to have significant troubles holding aggro on a level 73 boss. That's all fine and well with current content, just give him time to collect gear for heroics and maybe raiding. But why should he be so limited on old content?

Soooooo.. and this is typically how it goes. People DO run the older instances, they bring along a mixed group of raiders and non-raiders alike. Maybe they have a good time. Some of the undergeared folks don't mind gettiing "run" through an instance whether or not their own attacks are as useful. But I've heard the frustrations from others when they encounter an old boss with resist, resist, resist, miss, miss, miss: it's more insulting than anything else the game can throw at them. They feel like failures at content that's old and supposedly easy.

Old content is broken

Onyxia, Ragnaros, Nefarian, Hakkar, C'Thun, Kel'Thuzad: These old bosses could be a great opportunity for casual players to catch raiding content that they were never able to do previously. But old bosses should be level 70, so they aren't completely trivial yet playable by all. They shouldn't be 73, which brings the Hit rating system into play.

I understand that Blizzard tried to use the ?? Boss mechanic to keep a bit of challenge, but it's so gear focussed that it just creates the widest imbalance between players. Raiding content is for geared raiders, even if it's old content. =(