Naxxramas

[Skandranon]

In a 40 man raid, at least 1/2 the people there are doing jobs that require basically no real skills, just a monkey-like attitude. Even the other 1/2 is not completely comprised of "great" players.

For Molten Core and even some of Blackwing Lair, you're correct.

Anyone who's fought the Twin Emperors knows it's not true of all 40-man raid content, though.

You are not addressing my main point. I do not complain about the fact that it is more difficult without raiding to get upper-end gear. My point is that it is competely *impossible*.
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It isn't impossible, but I agree that it's the next closest thing. I have no problem balancing out casual epics with additional time requirements, but Blizzard has taken the concept of timesinks to an entirely new level. Exalted with CC without going into AQ20 is a month or more of grinding texts. Epic weaponry out of the 5-man places requires running them for three to four months. Even Exalted with AV, which used to be a reasonably brief two to three week grind, is all the way up to month-and-a-half or more. Dungeon 2 is at least not horrifyingly timesinky, but you have to get the Dungeon 1 set first...so it's a significant matter of time to put it together, as well.

You can get gear that's almost as good as Molten Core gear without 40-man raiding (you may have to do some 20-mans). The problem is that much of it isn't hard - just long, and I'm not sure why Blizzard thinks that tons of people are going to go for that.