Why do I like to heal?

Spinks made a post a couple of days ago in which she outlined, to put it simply, why playing a healer in World of Warcraft sucks (at least in raids). I found myself nodding in agreement at every single point - until it suddenly hit me: If I agree that there are so many problems with healing, why do I enjoy it so much anyway? After all I have two high-level priests who are both holy; my paladin's dual spec is prot/holy, my druid's feral/resto, and I'm also levelling a shaman who's currently "only" enhancement but I'd rather like to heal with her later on as well. Am I really that much of a masochist?

According to Spinks, "a lot of people play support classes because they like feeling wanted", but I don't think it's quite that simple for me. Don't get me wrong, I do like being popular. While daily random whispers from strangers asking me to join their raid are something I could do without, it's still preferable to having to jump through three different kinds of hoops to get a group spot as dps. One observation I made on my very first day of playing WoW was that while questing and exploring had been very engaging and fun so far, I could easily see it becoming boring if I wasn't going to start interacting with other people soon. I'm quite happy to go off and do things on my own, but just having the choice between grouping or soloing is a very powerful factor when it comes to my overall enjoyment of the game. "Well, I guess I'll grind some more leather because nobody needs a hunter for any heroics" is not a lot of fun.

However, I wanted to be a healer in WoW right from the start, before I even knew that they were needed for group content and hard to find. I had never played an MMO or an RPG before, so I had no idea about the "holy trinity" or anything of the like. I had just read the manual and the introductions on the official website, and thought to myself: Okay, there are classes that can heal themselves and others, and classes that can't. Why in the world would anyone want to play a class that can't heal? I couldn't help picturing my character stumbling through the woods, heavily wounded by a fight against evil monsters and desperate for some help. In my naivety I didn't think there would be other options to regenerate health on your own, such as food, potions or bandages.

As I started to level up I was gradually eased into what it actually meant to be a healer. I didn't mind standing at the back in my sissy robe; that's what healers do, isn't it? I didn't mind that I wasn't the best at killing monsters; that's not what healers do. I only ever started to feel bad about playing a healer when I got it rubbed into my face that I was somehow inferior - because I couldn't solo an elite or take on so many mobs at once, basically whenever people tried to turn things into an unneeded (and unfair) competition. Why does everything have to be a competition?

I think it really comes down to having a peculiar preferred playstyle. In real life I'm a very mellow person and I think it shows in the way I play. I much prefer the process of creation over destruction; defending and protecting is more fun for me than crushing enemies. Before I started to play WoW I was heavily into The Sims 2, which is really all about creating and building - if you were just looking for ways to kill your Sims, you'd get bored quickly. When I was mostly into real-time strategy games I'd also always prefer to slowly build up a big base with lots of defenses, create lots of units and then see what happens - even though that strategy is usually inferior to attempting a quick rush, I always found it much more fun.

Hell, it works for non-computer games as well! For several years I casually played floorball once or twice a week, and my favourite position was that of goalie. A goalie is actually a lot like a healer, because while you definitely need one, people rarely want to be the one. Most of my fellow players seemed to perceive it as un-fun to be mentally leashed to the goal posts and to have to watch helplessly when the game moved to the other half of the field. And if you let the ball through you'd feel guilty, even if it was due to utter fail on the defense's part. (Sound familiar?) Nonetheless it still felt satisfying to me.

The things I like most about WoW are exploring, having fun with friends and making my characters progress. "Pwning" NPCs or other players is not high on my list of priorities at all. Maybe that's why I never really managed to get into PvP. I like dungeons and raids because they provide a lot of the three things I really like about WoW. The fact that there are big bad monsters in the way that need to be stabbed to death is more of a side effect really, and I'm quite happy to let other people take care of the task of disposing of them. And I think that's why I like to heal.

(Cue comments from healers who feel completely differently about their job but are no less into it. But hey, this is my view.)

The ten-man dilemma

Blizzard's decision to make all raids available in both ten-man and twenty-five man modes in WOTLK has been very popular. Apparently it's enabled a lot of small guilds to see content that they previously wouldn't have been able to access due to lack of numbers. Good for them.

However, for me personally this change has largely killed ten-man raiding.

As a member of a twenty-five-man raiding guild the way these things were handled in BC was pretty much perfect for me. We'd have three twenty-five-man raids each week, and on what were officially non-raiding days I was free to goof off with some friends in a ten-man, be it Karazhan or Zul'Aman. It was fun because they were completely different instances, so it was a change of pace in more than just numbers. As an added bonus a lot of the loot in ZA was just as good - if not better - than many drops from Mount Hyjal and Black Temple, so it also served as a nice source of extra gear. And once you had all the drops you needed, there were still the badges. Awesomeness!

When the expansion hit, my guild decided to give people plenty of time to level to eighty and the first official twenty-five-man raid wasn't scheduled until January. Of course many people were eager to have a peek at Naxxramas before that anyway, so we started off by doing the ten-man version as a sort of preparation. So far, so good - but then we started to raid the place on "heroic" mode and suddenly the incentive was gone. Where's the fun in spending three days a week raiding a certain content, and then doing it all over again with only slightly smaller numbers and without getting useful loot or emblems that you can actually use to buy upgrades? I suppose we could have used the ten-man to get achievements that were too hard for us on twenty-five man, but I feel a bit "meh" about achievement raiding, so... the ten-man raids just died. Recently we've been trying to get ten-man Ulduar going again, but it's hard to motivate ourselves.

Also, in an interesting turn of events it's now starting to look like the ten-man raids might also start to hurt our twenty-five-mans. The raid force has been feeling the pain of the summer doldrums, with raids being cancelled due to lack of available warm bodies and progress grinding to a halt. However, there's a small group of people who are really into running Ulduar on ten-man... and interestingly enough they are available to run ten-man several days a week, while being mysteriously N/A for the main raids. Gosh, I wonder if they just don't feel like doing the same instance twice a week?

It seems that there's no way to win really, if you focus on "heroic" mode, normal will feel redundant and if you focus on ten-man, twenty-five-man will feel repetetive. I really liked being able to do both and it feeling different enough to be fun either way.

Praising Chillmaw

"TFA anyone?"

If that phrase doesn't sound familiar to you, you probably don't spend a lot of time in Icecrown. TFA stands for Threat From Above, a daily quest given out by the guys from the Argent Tournament once you reach champion level and defeat the Black Knight.

When I first found out about this quest I thought that it was a bit stupid. A daily group quest? Aren't normal group quests annoying enough? Who'd want to do them every day?

However, I soon had to realise that the reason group quests are usually annoying isn't because they require a group, but simply because considering the sheer amount of quests in Azeroth and the fact that many of them consist of long chains, it can be hard to find someone who is online at the same time as you, not doing anything else and just happens to be on the same quest as you.

Now a daily group quest with good rewards, that's something else! People can and will do it over and over again, every day, for weeks and months. I don't know how it is on other servers, but on Earthen Ring groups just for this quest are forming in general chat roughly every five to ten minutes, unless you're online at a particularly quiet time.

In many ways, it's a pugger's dream. Not only are there groups available to join at any time, but group composition doesn't really matter. You need a group, but you can team up with anyone. A tank and a healer can easily take down Chillmaw on their own, if slowly. However since he doesn't hit very hard, a dpser (even in cloth) can tank him just as well with a dedicated healer. A tank with a good dps at his side should be able to survive long enough to kill him even without healing. And a group of nothing but dps can just nuke him down really quickly.

Basically you get all the good points of a pug without the downsides. You can meet a lot of different people, but since the quest is so easy you don't have to worry if they play terribly or act like jerks, you don't have to hang around. Annoying druid trying to kill-steal the bombadiers from the group in front of you? Make note to avoid him in the future. Nice rogue offering to help the healer with the scourge killing daily afterwards? A good addition to your friends list.

I really have to hand it to Blizzard, implementing a quest like this was a great idea. If you're a player who runs solo a lot of the time but would like to meet other nice players without risking too much frustration, joining for "TFA" is simply an opportunity unlike any other.

On heroic trash

Most people seem to agree that heroics in WOTLK are considerably easier than they were in BC. My comparison of WOTLK and BC heroic bosses seems to support that idea, though the most notable difference definitely lies in the way we handle trash. In BC nearly every pull required people to carefully follow a kill order and liberal use of crowd control. In WOTLK you just charge in and aoe everything down.

Why is that? Did Blizzard just fail completely while tuning instance trash, making all the mobs no more threatening than a wet towel? I don't think so.

Actually I only see two things that Blizzard has changed about heroic trash pulls. First off, they seem to have abandoned the concept of very large (six to seven mobs) elite trash pulls that contain multiple mobs with disruptive abilities. Think of Blackheart the Inciter's room in Shadow Labyrinth or a large portion of Magister's Terrace. They don't make 'em like that anymore.

On the other end of the scale, they also stopped adding single or paired mobs that can't be crowd-controlled but hit like a bunch of trucks. BC had a lot of those: the Coilfang defenders in Slave Pens, the bog lords in the Steamvault, the talon guards in Sethekk Halls... the list could go on. Whether that's a good or a bad thing is debatable.

However, if you compare an average WOTLK heroic to a BC one, most trash pulls are actually pretty similar in their setup: three to four mobs, and usually at least one of them has some kind of mildly annoying ability like a fear, stun, knockback, silence etc. So what's different?

Why did we use crowd control back in the day? Why didn't we just aoe things down like we do now? The way I see it it was due to three reasons:

1. The tank didn't have a sufficient amount of aoe aggro abilities to tank all of the mobs at once. Paladins were really the only ones who could get away with taking on four or five mobs at the same time, druids were limited by swipe hitting only up to three targets and warriors had to tab through all of the mobs to sunder each one individually. Often that barely created enough aggro to keep them all off the healer, but starting to aoe after two seconds would have been unthinkable. If you tried to tank too many mobs at once, even a well-geared tank would struggle quickly, since he was too limited by the global cooldown on his single-target threat attacks.

2. There simply wasn't as much aoe. It's easy to forget that every class having a spammable aoe ability is actually a very recent development. I remember when you could only use volley on every other pull, and when shadow priests, cat druids and rogues had no aoe whatsoever. Often you simply didn't have any options other than to take down every mob one by one.

3. Sometimes you CC-ed a mob because it had a particularly disruptive ability, but this usually happened only in conjunction with point 1 (since you had to crowd-control something anyway).

I actually had a couple of heroic dungeon runs in BC that were very much like Northrend heroics are now, with all the trash just being aoed down. The reason is that it didn't happen that often was that you needed a decently geared paladin tank (and they weren't quite as popular yet back then), and at least one mage or warlock for continuous aoe. Now that any tank can easily produce lots of threat on multiple mobs at once and every damage-dealing class has the ability to aoe, it's only logical that every instance turned into "that kind of run". And it's got little to nothing to do with the mobs themselves.

I remember when druid and warrior tanks were complaining that people preferred paladins for heroic runs because of their superior aoe tanking. I also remember dpsers of various specs clamouring for more aoe abilities so mages and warlocks wouldn't dominate so utterly in aoe situations. Both got their wishes and now people bemoan "the lost art of CC" and that everything is "aoelol". Just shows that you've got to be careful what you wish for.

Save the island shoveltusks!

Generally I like it when Blizzard does little things that make the world (of Warcraft) seem more alive. Friendly NPCs having conversations, hostile NPCs fighting each other, that kind of thing. Anything to give us the impression that all these characters have a bigger purpose than standing around until we kill them or need them to buy our vendor trash.

However, there's such a thing as taking it too far. Case in point: Feeding the Survivors in Howling Fjord. The other day I did this quest on my Alliance priest and unfortunately it has become no less annoying since the first did it on my troll.

The premise is simple enough: Bring us six pieces of island shoveltusk meat. There are plenty of island shoveltusks around this village. Go!

Except... there aren't really. Now, Blizzard creating too few mob spawns for a quest that requires a certain minimum amount of kills isn't something new. The heinous twist in this case is that there should be plenty of shoveltusks around, theoretically, it's just that they keep getting killed by an omnipresent army of worgs.

Okay, worgs eat shoveltusks too, I get it. It's only natural, right? Well, not to this extent, in my opinion at least. Seriously, a shoveltusk barely has time to enjoy its new-found life for a few seconds after it's spawned before it will be attacked by a worg. Travelling in herds doesn't seem to help either, as the worgs will just systematically take them down one by one. It's frightening and frustrating. It's bad enough when you have to compete with other players for the few spawns, but to be in constant competition with NPCs even when you're the only player on the whole island is depressing.

It's not that I don't like a challenge, but the way this works is simply unfair. Most of the time you can't even run in to "save" the shoveltusks (so you can then kill them yourself, ahem), as their fighting is scripted and they'll often die after two or three hits from the worg no matter what. I'm a healer, I should be able to save people (and animals)! In practice I just spend a lot of time running in circles, crying out as I see yet another shoveltusk die only a few yards away from me, and then aggroing the worgs that just killed it. Woohoo. The whole quest just feels wrong. Surely it should have been about saving the shoveltusks from extinction by an unnaturally high number of predators? I don't know.

There was only one quest in BC that filled me with a comparable amount of frustration: I Was A Lot Of Things... You had a better chance at saving the boars in that case, but on the other hand they were only useful to you if they just happened to stand in the right spot (which they often didn't). Shoveltusks, the new shadowmoon tubers? It seems the answer is yes.

The Violet Hold pug of fail

I suppose I had it coming: After all the smooth and pleasant heroic pugs I've had lately, I was bound to come across a doozy sooner or later. I just didn't expect it to be Violet Hold: it's probably one of the most-pugged instances on my server due to how easy it is - and yet we ended up wiping three times before the group disbanded because we just couldn't stand the thought of having to clear all the way to the second boss yet again (VH is really cruel that way).

I was on my hunter by the way. As soon as we got started I noticed that both our tank's gear and our overall dps was definitely on the low end of what's acceptable, but I still figured it should be fine for what we aimed to do. Our first boss ended up being Erekem, and he took forever to die because people were randomly dpsing the adds instead of the boss, but fortunately our healer didn't run out of mana and we made it in the end.

The run continued relatively smoothly until it became apparent that our second boss would turn out to be Xevozz. There's a reason I described this guy as having a "medium to high" wipe factor. As soon as the Azure Saboteur ran towards Xevozz's cell, our healer started to spam party chat with "KITE" in all caps, only occasionally interrupting it with attempts to be a bit clearer like "you've got to kite him". Our tank just stood there. And took damage. And we wiped. (Though I survived through a cunning alteration of kiting and using deterrence until feign death was off cooldown again.) When asked whether he had done this fight before while people did the collective corpse run, our tank replied with "no".

And... he really couldn't have mentioned that beforehand? I realise that Violet Hold isn't an instance that lends itself to stopping and sitting down for a calm discussion of boss strategies, but he could have reacted to our healer's attempts to tell him what to do in some way. "Kite him? Where? I haven't done this before!" Or anything. I know if I'm new to an instance I want to know how things work and will ask about it. Our tank however just quietly stood in the same spot until he died. Have people become so used to easy tank and spank fights that the mere idea of having to do something else is beyond them? It's a depressing thought.

Anyway, everybody decided to be gracious and accept that even tanks need to learn somehow, so we decided to give it another go. The healer made a point of repeating again that the boss needed to be kited, visually illustrating this by running up and down the supposed kite path. I helpfully added that it was important to avoid the purple spheres... seeing how they are the whole reason for the kiting tactic after all.

We cleared up to the second boss yet again at our tediously slow low-dps speed. Spheres were summoned, the tank started to kite. Things seemed to go alright until one of the orbs got a teleport spell off. Confused by the sudden and unexpected change of location our tank just stood there and died. Wipe number two.

Our healer rolled his eyes and left, but through some miracle we managed to find a replacement right away. Our tank seemed genuinely confused about what had just happened to him, so I explained, emphasising yet again that staying away from those spheres was vital, and to be ready to run if they should get a teleport off.

We gave it yet another go. After another twelve portals we got ready to face Xevozz for the third time. The tank kites. No teleports, good. The tank kites some more. Where is he going anyway, we're getting quite far away from those spheres? Oh no, they are going to cut us off... I wish I could have shouted "nooo" or something, but pugs don't generally use voice chat, so I just had to watch in quiet horror (though I typed out some frantic warnings in party chat which were of course ignored) as our tank continued to "kite" the boss in a wide circle right into the two spheres, and we wiped for the third and last time. Then one of the other dpsers got bored and left, the tank resigned and the healer expressed frustration about having been saved to a heroic run that was just a waste of time and left.

Usually I try to stick it out to the bitter end, especially on my hunter (as I had only actually died on one of the three wipes), but having to re-clear all that trash every time had worn even my spirit down by then. Plus I was starting to get a little frustrated by the tank's repeated failures as well, though I also couldn't help feeling sorry for him as he was clearly making an effort. I left with the impression that the first healer's emphasis on kiting without actually explaining why had led to some miscommunication, which was why that last attempt ended with the tank running the boss in merry circles, completely oblivious of the orbs he was supposed to be running from.

Does this kind of experience leave me wary of pugging? Not really, but it does leave me wary of people who can't communicate, both the knowledgeable and the ignorant ones.

Reviewing WOTLK heroic dungeon bosses

Yesterday I took a look at Burning Crusade's heroic dungeon bosses, today I would like to do the same for Wrath of the Lich King's big bads. Then we can make some comparisons.

Utgarde Keep

Utgarde Keep

First boss: Prince Keleseth
Wipe factor: low to medium
The summoned skeletons can pose a problem if they aren't picked up properly, and dps suffering from tunnel vision can let people die to frost tombs.

Second boss: Skarvald & Dalronn
Wipe factor: low
The randomness of the attacks has the potential to cause minor issues, otherwise the fight a straightforward tank and spank.

Third boss: Ingvar the Plunderer
Wipe factor: low to medium
Tanks need to learn to avoid his smash, people mustn't stand near spinning axes and your healer has to be careful not to get locked out of his healing spell school. Since the boss's overall damage output is fairly low however, there is a bit of room for error.

Utgarde Pinnacle

First boss: Svala Sorrowgrave
Wipe factor: low
The only real danger consists of people not killing the channelers quickly enough, but this part of the fight isn't on a very tight timer.

Second boss: Gortok Palehoof
Wipe factor: low
The sheer length of the event with the four sub-bosses can put a strain on your healer's mana if they aren't very well geared, otherwise there isn't much to be worried about.

Third boss: Skadi the Ruthless
Wipe factor: medium
The gauntlet is reasonably challenging since you have to keep fighting for quite a while to acquire the necessary amount of harpoons. Skadi's whirlwinds can also be deadly.

Fourth boss: King Ymiron
Wipe factor: medium
Most of the fight isn't too troublesome, but a badly timed combination of a spirit fountain spawn in the wrong place and a stun can quickly wipe the whole party.

The Nexus

The Nexus

First boss: Ormorok the Tree-Shaper
Wipe factor: low to medium
People have to remember to not stand on the spikes. Little adds can molest the healer. He also hits quite hard once he enrages.

Second boss: Anomalus
Wipe factor: low to medium
The aoe damage is considerable and the frequent target changing something that some parties struggle with.

Third boss: Grand Magus Telestra
Wipe factor: medium to high
This fight is very chaotic, and if your dps doesn't have the focus to quickly take down her split personalities, all the random effects can quickly overwhelm people.

Fourth boss: Commander Stoutbeard / Commander Kolurg
Wipe factor: medium
His whirlwinds are devastating and the fear can easily cause line of sight issues or pull adds.

Fifth boss: Keristrasza
Wipe factor: low to medium
This one basically comes down to whether people remember to keep moving or not.

The Oculus

First boss: Drakos the Interrogator
Wipe factor: low
Keep an eye on the bombs. That's it.

Second boss: Varos Cloudstrider
Wipe factor: medium
The conical lightning strikes can be hard to predict correctly for some people.

Third boss: Mage-Lord Urom
Wipe factor: medium to high
The final bit of the fight where you have to kite him around the ring is quite tough, as it's all too easy to get caught in a frost bomb and then be too slow to move out of his aoe.

Fourth boss: Ley-Guardian Eregos
Wipe factor: high
People are forced to use vehicles that they don't really necessarily "get". A recipe for disaster.

Azjol-Nerub

Azjol-Nerub

First boss: Krik'thir the Gate Watcher
Wipe factor: medium to high
If you make it to the boss himself you're golden, but the packs of mobs linked to him are quite tough, especially the skirmishers with their random aggro table.

Second boss: Hadronox
Wipe factor: low to medium
As long as people don't stand in the poison for too long and do decent dps, this fight is very straightforward.

Third boss: Anub'Arak
Wipe factor: medium
People need to be quick at taking out the adds and avoid being pounded at all costs. The latter has zero margin for error if you're not the tank.

Ahn'kahet: The Old Kingdom

First boss: Elder Nakox
Wipe factor: low to medium
Switching between dpsing the elder and his guardian add shouldn't be too hard, but the small bugs can easily kill your healer if not taken care of.

Second boss: Prince Taldaram
Wipe factor: low to medium
You need sufficient dps to get him to let go of whoever's blood he's trying to drink and the victim can't be healed. The aoe damage from the floating orbs of fire can be a nuisance as well.

Third boss: Jedoga Shadowseeker
Wipe factor: medium
A dps check similar to the previous fight, not killing the worshippers will likely result in tank death unless you vastly overgear the instance.

Fourth boss: Amanitar
Wipe factor: low to medium
The deal with the mushrooms can be a bit confusing and cause issues for people who use aoe attacks by default.

Fifth boss: Herald Volazj
Wipe factor: medium
The difficulty of the insanity phase differs considerably depending on the classes in your party. Some dps classes are likely to die, but as long as your tank and healer survive they will find the rest of the fight all the easier for it and should still be able to finish him off.

Zul'Drak

Drak'Tharon Keep

First boss: Trollgore
Wipe factor: low
Tank and spank with a bit of aoe damage.

Second boss: Novos the Summoner
Wipe factor: nil
I'm not sure how one could wipe on this fight unless your tank or healer was afk.

Third boss: King Dred
Wipe factor: medium to high
His damage output is quite high even on a well-geared tank, which, combined with a fear, can quickly lead to a wipe.

Fourth boss: The Prophet Tharon'ja
Wipe factor: nil
I don't think anybody understands what this fight is really about, but considering that you spend a lot of time in the form of a self-healing skeleton there isn't much that could possibly go wrong.

Gundrak

First boss: Slad'ran
Wipe factor: medium to high
His poison aoe has to be avoided at all costs. Snake adds spawn quickly and can take down the healer quickly if not taken care of.

Second boss: Drakkari Colossus / Elemental
Wipe factor: low to medium
The constant need to keep moving can pose a challenge. Aggro resets are dangerous.

Third boss: Moorabi
Wipe factor: low
People only hate this guy because of the difficult achievement linked to him.

Fourth boss: Eck the Ferocious
Wipe factor: nil
This guy isn't ferocious at all.

Fifth boss: Gal'darah
Wipe factor: low to medium
He hits quite hard and his whirlwinds will often kill melee. The rest of the party shouldn't have much trouble though.

Dalaran

The Violet Hold

Random boss: Erekem
Wipe factor: low
Easy as long as your dps remembers not to kill the adds first.

Random boss: Ichoron
Wipe factor: low
Using the crystals to kill off the small elementals makes the fight completely trivial.

Random boss: Lavanthor
Wipe factor: nil
Tank and spank the doggie. Nothing more to it.

Random boss: Moragg
Wipe factor: nil
Another tank and spank with a small amount of random damage on the party.

Random boss: Xevozz
Wipe factor: medium to high
Everybody needs to be aware of the need to kite and avoid the spheres. Still there's a considerable chance of having line of sight issues.

Random boss: Zuramat the Obliterator
Wipe factor: medium to high
Early in the expansion people would just give up if they got this boss, due to the massive amounts of shadow damage he puts out as time goes by. With everybody being better geared and doing more dps it's not quite as bad anymore.

Third boss: Cyanigosa
Wipe factor: low
Unless someone pulls aggro after the reset or stands in a Blizzard, nobody should die on this fight.

Ulduar

Halls of Stone

First boss: Krystallus
Wipe factor: low
People standing too close to the tank might die, but even a tank and healer alone can finish him off quite easily.

Second boss: Maiden of Grief
Wipe factor: low to medium
Shock of sorrow can cause issues if the tank gets stunned.

Third boss: Tribunal of Ages
Wipe factor: medium to high
Towards the end the constant stream of adds becomes quite overwhelming, the random damage on the party doesn't help either.

Fourth boss: Sjonnir the Ironshaper
Wipe factor: medium
Tank and melee have to remember to run out of his aoe, adds will go for the healer.

Halls of Lightning

First boss: General Bjarngrim
Wipe factor: low to medium
He hits quite hard but doesn't have much in the way of annoying abilities. Pulling him with adds can cause trouble if your group isn't highly geared.

Second boss: Volkhan
Wipe factor: low to medium
People standing near to golems when they get shattered can lead to troublesome deaths.

Third boss: Ionar
Wipe factor: medium
Running from the boss when he disperses is usually manageable, but people also have to watch out for static overload.

Fourth boss: Loken
Wipe factor: high
Similar to the Murmur fight, running in and out of the lightning nova can pose considerable difficulties. There's also a lot of extra damage in addition to it.

Caverns of Time

The Culling of Stratholme

First boss: Meathook
Wipe factor: low
The person getting constricted by the chains needs healing up quickly, but otherwise there are no special abilites to watch out for.

Second boss: Salramm the Fleshcrafter
Wipe factor: low
The summoned ghouls can be a nuisance, especially if they explode.

Third boss: Chrono-Lord Epoch
Wipe factor: low
He does something not completely unlike Warchief Bladefist's blade dance, but it does a lot less damage.

Fourth boss: Infinite Corrupter
Wipe factor: nil
If you are fast enough to engage him, you can kill him easily.

Fifth boss: Mal'Ganis
Wipe factor: low
He has a few random spells that he casts on people, but they do very little.

Total number of Northrend heroic instances: 12
Total number of Northrend heroic bosses: 53
Average number of heroic bosses in a Northrend instance: 4

Total wipe ratings for bosses:
low: 14
low to medium: 14
medium: 9
medium to high: 8
high: 2

Compared to the BC heroics, there seems to have been a strong shift towards making the bosses easier, with only half as many bosses in the medium to high and high categories and only two rated as truly fearsome.

Looking at the BC list, most bosses that were rated as highly wipe-inducing were so because of massive damage output and sometimes the ability to summon multiple adds that couldn't be easily taken down with some aoe. For some reason these appear to be mechanics that Blizzard seems to want to move away from in five-mans. Whether that's a good thing or not is debateable - a challenge is nice, countless wipes due to the smallest mistake snowballing into something big are not.