346 to enter for 353= tiny window of interest

We did think it through substantially. We decided that the most useful approach to implementing these two new five-player dungeons, in terms of progression, was to make them Heroic only and in between the current Heroics and first tier of Cataclysm raids. Level 353 items are still going to provide noticeable improvements over Heroic gear. For end game progression it's a good step.

Also, one important piece of information to glean from this content preview is that we've focused a lot of Zul'Aman and Zul'Gurub itemization toward giving players items for hard-to-fill slots. There are scores of players out there who have run the current Heroics extensively and still can't quite flesh out their Character sheets with ilevel 346+ gear.

This is going to be a fun mini-tier (if you will) of content, but rest assured patch 4.2 will come hot on its heels. For those just hitting 85 and trying to catch up, these two new Heroic dungeons will be a good way for them to get more raid ready if they so choose. Otherwise, it's another tier of 5-player progression for those carefully jumping from normal, to Heroic, to Rise of the Zandalari.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/2514161

We did think it through substantially. We decided that the most useful approach to implementing these two new five-player dungeons, in terms of progression, was to make them Heroic only and in between the current Heroics and first tier of Cataclysm raids. Level 353 items are still going to provide noticeable improvements over Heroic gear. For end game progression it's a good step.

Some of us don't want to be shoe horned into running heroics on all our toons all the time. Some of us enjoy normal 5 mans more and thats what some of us run for faction rep. Apparently 3 dungeons over and over and over is okay with Blizzard.

Content needs to be more available to more people. You didn't think nor care about anyone but raiders when you created two new heroics with normal versions. It's astoundingly bad and short sighted.

Your explanation shows exactly whats important to you and thats only providing stepping stones for raid content even though a large part of your player base would like more; so if you're not a raider once again it's "we don't care about creating content for your enjoyment, only whats a stepping stone for those who raid".

Bad decision.

I'm kinda sad you only quote that section and not my last sentence:

Otherwise, it's another tier of 5-player progression for those carefully jumping from normal, to Heroic, to Rise of the Zandalari.

Don't tell me we only care about those interested in raiding when your proof is that we're adding more 5-player content. Even more 5-player content is coming in this expansion beyond Zul'Aman and Zul'Gurub, so these two dungeons will provide a great tier of progression for level-85 players throughout the life of the expansion, particularly for those who come late or don't keep up with content releases (believe it or not, that's a huge number of players). If you don't want to raid, awesome. Zul'Gurub and Zul'Aman will provide you with more content and better loot so you can continue to advance.

I don't think we're out of line to expect that you'd eventually want to advance out of normal difficultly 5-player content though. Maybe we just fundamentally disagree there, but there wasn't a good place to insert normal difficulty Rise of the Zandalari content. We had thought about it, but ultimately the jump from normal to Heroic is not as rough as it was earlier on in the expansion. You'll do fine in Heroic dungeons at this point if you're in the low 330 average item level range.