Joining the chorus, Infernos are either over-tuned boring damage sponges or the barrier of entry isn’t high enough. The current tuning is clearly causing player hostility and exclusion (read any other post on this issue) which is against your player agreement and H+ design is the root cause.
If you want it to be a catch-up from 346 and ~370, the HP buff needs to be 50% at absolute most (and probably don’t have it on literally everything) because as it is, it’s not only boring but as geared players no longer need to run them regularly they’ll get astronomically worse. A full group of the entry-level 346ers is likely going to get bled dry on every pack and turn every heroic into a 1hr+ slog at best and a wipefest with deserters galore at worst.
If you insist that the 100% stays, then up the gear requirement to at least 359. This would basically defeat the purpose of a catch-up (unless you want all new/returning players to do a month of Molten Front and JP/VP farming just for permission to enter the “catch-up system”) but at least it would be less of a slog and cause less friction between players.
Or if you’re feeling enthusiastic, design mechanics like the good Betas and Gammas had where you could get damage increases to offset the increased health by hitting/avoiding certain mechanics, rewarding player attention and skill rather than player tolerance.
I can’t speak much on the hostility part as I have never been kicked from a group doing an Inferno dungeon, but I do see many players entering these runs unprepared. Most players these days don’t have gems or enchants (I don’t care much about flasks). Some players do come in fresh from heroics, which is a problem in many cases. You can purchase upgrades through the AH to improve damage/survivability, but many players choose not to do so.
My question would be what is it designed for? The bosses drop 346 iLvl gear (which I never understood since LK saw them drop raid-level gear), but the fragments can be used to purchase, what, 372 (or 378) gear. So, theory would state that it isn’t designed for players just coming out of heroics.
The problem with ANY gear requirement is that players can ‘cheese’ it by having items of high iLvl in their inventory (or even wearing them) that don’t even apply to their spec/role. For example, I was running a regular heroic and the Hunter in the party had healing gear on, they had tanking gear on.
BoEs: Kinda? Depends on your server I guess and how long you’ve been playing for as to whether crafted/world drop 359+s are reasonably affordable or whether that requires swiping (legit or not).
Designed for: I would have assumed catch-up, since that’s what Alpha, Beta and Gamma were in LK (even if Alpha kinda failed at it). At the very least, the purpose seems to be to eliminate the need to do BoT/BWD/To4W (H or N). Bosses still dropping the 346 items is likely a combo of laziness/lack of dev time and/or not wanting a shard shortage like in LK.
Gear cheesing: I can’t think of a simple resolution for that, but that sort of behaviour is also what vote to kick is for isn’t it?
I would agree. Although, you don’t have to purchase gold much these days to afford gear, since you get an abundance of it from running regular heroics (100+ gold per run)
Why wouldn’t a 346 iLvl geared player be running Firelands? Simply because they’re not geared enough - as a result, most don’t even try to get into those runs. It’s common sense that they need to put more time in and get better gear (or find a guild to carry them, I suppose) before signing up for runs.
I, too, would have assumed that their intended use of these dungeons would be a catch-up mechanic. I’d be interested to see a group full of 346 iLvl gear (not anything higher) complete these.
Unfortunately, there is no actual solution for this. If there was, we would have gotten it over a decade ago, when we had actual competent developers working on this game.
In terms of the vote-to-kick system… The majority of players don’t read the reason to kick someone, they just agree or disagree. I tried voting to kick a Balance Druid who was only doing a maximum of 4k DPS, and it took several attempts, and even more times me saying things like, “How is it possible for an 85 to do only 4k DPS?”
Therein lies the problem for most games today: players don’t want to do the work to prepare for something (i.e. communication, gearing, etc.)