Dungeon difficulty
From WoWWiki
The Burning Crusade has bought with it 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 Azeroth 5 man dungeons. Heroic, however, is a little different.
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The differences between Heroic and Normal
In Heroic dungeons the enemies that you encounter will 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 70 to 73, because they are all balanced with level 70 characters in mind. However, Heroic dungeons are substantially more difficult than the Normal level 70 dungeons like The Steamvault or The Shattered Halls. Expect for trash mobs to hit well geared plate tanks for about 2000 damage per normal hit, or upwards of 4000 for some particularly strong mobs. Also expect bosses to hit harder, use their abilities more frequently, and often have new abilities.
Heroic dungeons also offer better loot; even dungeons that are lower level, such as Hellfire Ramparts, will drop blue loot on par with or better than loot from Normal level 70 dungeons such as The Botanica or the Shadow Labyrinth. Each boss will also drop one Badge of Justice for each member of the party.
End bosses in Heroic dungeons are guaranteed to drop one Epic item from their loot table in addition to the Badge of Justice for everyone, usually drop a Primal Nether, and also usually drop a second, Rare, loot. [1]
It should also be noted that Heroic level dungeons are not available for pre TBC dungeons. The only dungeons available with a heroic setting are those in Outland, Caverns of Time and part of the Shattered Sun Offensive.
Gaining Access to Heroic dungeons
To be able to access a Heroic dungeon as a party, each member of the group must have unlocked the heroic difficulty. This is typically done by obtaining a key from the appropriate faction but the heroic difficulty for Magisters' Terrace is simply unlocked by completing the quest that involves killing the final boss on normal difficulty. If all party member have unlocked the heroic difficulty, 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.
Badge of Justice
As well as increased loot quality, and the guaranteed epic, there is also a Badge of Justice which drops from each boss in Heroic dungeons - this is dropped for each member of the party. [2] They are used in exchange for epic quality items in Shattrath City.
Official Info
From Frank Pearce Interview at official EU (en) site:
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 Heroic Keys
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