Why I won't run heroics in blues

In my last philosophy post, I went over how I find heroics boring now that I am in high-level epics thanks to the new emblem system. Someone in the comment suggested that I try running heroics in blues (or in low-level gear, generally) so that I can get the challenge I want and no one would need to suffer through the admittedly inadequate solution I proposed at the end of that post. There are several reasons I won't do this, and though I went over one briefly in a comment on that post, I feel the subject warrants more discussion. (After all, that was the post that seems to have increased my readership exponentially thanks to it being linked on WoW.com.)

My first reason is a rather simple one. I usually tank; sometimes I heal when I need a break from tanking or a change of pace, but 90-95% of the time I spend in heroics, I tank. (What can I say? Instant groups are addictive.) This alone makes running heroics in "sub-par" gear problematic. If I tank in blues, I won't be able to cause as much threat as I can in epics, so either the DPS will need to hold back and not cause nearly as much damage as they would be able to otherwise, or they will grab aggro and die. In the former case, the dungeon run will go more slowly than most people like because the DPS won't be able to cause as much damage, meaning I will be imposing my views on how heroics should be onto them, something a commenter said this method would avoid. Considering the mentality most DPS seem to have these days, however, the more likely scenario is that they would ignore my low threat and go all out, pulling aggro on every enemy and likely making the healer's life hell. Even if the healer can heal them through the damage, letting that happen would mean I would not be doing my job as a tank, and it would all be because of my gear.

But what if I could get past that problem by finding a group of like-minded people who also long for the days when heroics were challenging and satisfying? Even in that case, I still wouldn't run heroics in blues, because then there would be no sense of progress. The reason I ran heroics in the first place was because getting those epics through the new emblem system was satisfying. It was like progression, even though I wasn't seeing any new content; I still got the satisfaction of making my character progressively better. That's why I got caught up in the gear race to such an extent that I don't find heroics fun anymore.

Now, some people equate running heroics in blues to freezing one's experience bar at 60 or 70 and running old raids. Unfortunately, that metaphor doesn't work, because retro raiders still get to experience content in a progression-based way and get that kind of satisfaction. They can get better gear that allows them to go to new raids. Unfortunately, an artificial gear freeze like the one described above takes that element of satisfaction out of heroics, so I would only be running heroics for their own sake. There would be no progress, only repetition. That may have been enough for me back when heroics were still new, but like most people, I am tired of them by now, and I simply can't run them for their own sake. In fact, putting on blues and running heroics would be the exact opposite of progression. Doing so means making content artificially harder by undoing the progress I have made.

So that is why I won't run heroics in blues, despite the fact that it would make them challenging again. Now, I know someone is going to ask, "If you don't like heroics as they are, and won't make them harder for yourself, why run them?" Short answer: I'm not. The reason my priest alt is doing so well probably has something to do with the fact that I'm not running heroics anymore.