Going to necro this thread because I am among the deluded few who still has an active subscription to retail, though it is more because my laptop doesn't run many other games more than anything, as I have little love for Warlords of Draenor.
Tonight I tried my hand at Challenge Mode Dungeons for the first time ever in my WoW career. I played VERY casually during Mists of Pandaria, the expansion where Challenge Mode was first added and missed out on the opportunity to do them back then. That is something I have always regretted after discovering the ton of really awesome transmog sets I missed out on (and now they are no longer available in-game, QQ). So I figured that I would at least try and get them done in Warlords of Draenor, so that I would be able to enjoy some cool weapon transmog items in the future. (Because these ones are also very likely to be made unavailable to anyone who hasn't unlocked them during WoD)
I didn't really know if CM runs was something that people regularly pugged for or anything and I just kinda started advertising for a full CM Gold run in Trade Chat. After about 15 minutes of posting in trade, I was whispered by a dude from the guild "Shadowstalkers" on my realm Argent Dawn. Unfortunately I failed to screencap our conversation, but it went something like this.
"Hey we need a Rogue for a full CM Gold clear, do you have 2-3 hours available?"
"Sure, but I've never done any kind of CM content before, is that a problem?"
"Not a problem at all, what's your item level?"
"710 in my Combat Gea-"
"Actually it doesn't matter, we just need you to cast Shroud of Concealment and Sap."
"O-Okay..."
I got invited to the group and it turns out that it was a group consisting mainly of alts from this Shadowstalkers guild and the average item level was actually pretty fucking low. The reason they were running it on their alts, was because you can only unlock the transmog weapons on a character who has completed the Challenge Mode: Gold meta achievement. So even if you had done it on your main character, any other character on your account would still be unable to receive the transmog gear unless they did the meta achievement again. Anyway, I didn't really know what to expect. They just told me to bring the best buff food and flasks possible and stack a ton of invisibility potions.
The next ~2hr 45min of playing World of Warcraft is probably the most fun I have ever had in this game. Challenge Mode really lives up to its name, it is a real challenge. Every player in the party needs to concentrate and stay on their toes for the duration of the run. Spells and ground effects are deadly and the dungeon monsters hit like trains, to the point where if you somehow draw aggro for more than a second and aren't a tank, you will most likely die. The dungeons are mostly the same as they are in their normal, heroic and mythic versions in terms of mechanics, but new monsters are added to some dungeons and some bosses have different mechanics to look out for. Going into that blind was super fun and the encounters I had done so many times on heroic/mythic became fun again because all the timings were so tight and new spells were thrown into the mix.
Playing a Rogue in CM dungeons is also a treat, because you are an integral part of the group. You aren't just an expendable faceless DPS anymore as Rogues have a ton of tricks and tools that really help secure great times for CM dungeons. Shroud of Concealment, Sap and Distract allow you and your group to skip a ton of trash if you know how to do it right (Which was explained to me on the fly as we were doing the dungeons). I can say with a lot of certainty that the group of alts I was playing with would not have made the gold score timer on at least half the dungeons, had I not been there. Of course Rogues aren't MANDATORY, but boy do they make the runs a lot more smooth and easy.
In the end we managed to complete the Challenge Mode Gold Meta achievement with relative ease. Turns out that the Shadowstalkers were actually Mythic raiders and so even though their alts were a bit undergeared, their personal player skill more than made up for it and I am now the proud owner of the Challenge Mode transmog gear.
Though you can't see it in this still image, these blades have a really cool unique animation to them. They look cool enough on their own, to be fair.