Ascendant Serpent still needs to be looked at in regards to the amount of adds spawning and those adds dying as the serpent dies. I recently finished a key and those adds remained alive and there were a lot more than 3 hatchlings. I would consider taking another pass at this creature.
More feedback:
Testing was conducting on multiple +12 runs.
First area:
How are you going to place mobs that barely move in one corner, easily pulled, and then another set of those same mobs on the top of the totem stairs? Those shadewings/drakes are fairly annoying and barely move and we end up just ping ponging back and forth if that corner group gets pulled along with the totem group. Not to mention that some of their casts are uninterruptable - super fun and engaging.
Totems aren’t tracked as far as I could see - no UI tracker for the totems like the prisoner tracker in MC. This needs to be addressed.
The three pack of berserking trolls. How kind of you to put these together and patrolling. These things are a menace at higher keystone levels. My suggestion is to reduce their potency and/or remove that enrage.
The amount of melee denial is insane in this first area. Well, the whole dungeon, really, but this first area is atrocious. Poison AoE, Bleed/Poison AoE, more puddles, more slows - what happens when you don’t run a group with dispels? Just take it raw? I’m being a bit facetious here, but do you hate melee? This place is just the worst for classes like Arms. It’s not “hard” per se, it’s just increased friction when it doesn’t have to be and we’re all taking so much damage by just existing.
How does this information escape you? You just had a very strong Mistweaver season. Do you expect or want another? What if you’re a priest main? What about all those poison dispels? Do you want/ expect players to reroll dwarf/dark iron for racial? I just really disagree with all of the melee unfriendly ground denial and poison. I get it. It’s thematic. It’s a whole thing. But my goodness, tone it down.
This first area just has so much going on that some of these mechanics could be removed and you would still end up taking forever / being denied space and uptime.
First boss:
Tanking this and DPSing this seemed fine. It could be a bit more informative for tanks- like hey, don’t go to this pile, drag him over here, etc., that type of clear indication on screen / UI. Some sort of way to tell the group, “Hey, dude is eating fresh meat, move him” something. This isn’t a big point, but it could help others.
Second Area:
The High Evolutionists on top of the other surrounding mobs make this place crazy. I would consider toning down the Evolve and the just the raw damage of this area. There is, once again, so much going on and so much area denial that it is very difficult to have melee uptime.
Also, why have the pack of mobs already in it’s evolved state/ empowered state as you start the pull before the second boss spawns? This is no bueno. Don’t do this. Just have that pack like a normal pack if you’re keen on keeping that.
Second Boss:
This boss is very “meh”. It’s whatever. Mechanics are easy and the only pain point is once again relying on the group to do a mechanic and not get one shot at higher keys. I’m not sure how many times it took to explain that you use the extra action button and then you run away and if you’re ranged, you come in to use it and then get out. Otherwise we all just sit there and die and eventually it bursts, etc.
I actually really hate this dumb root mechanic. I’ve hated it ever since you introduced it to the game. Not once have I ever found that mechanic to be engaging or interesting. IMO, it’s a dumb mechanic.
The add phase reminds me of the second boss of Temple. Which is probably where you got the idea of the adds going under and just roaming around. I guess since you shifted that boss away from doing his timer burrow, you had to throw in another friction point. That’s what it seemed like, anyway.
Last area/Last boss:
Miniboss area is just a huge time sink and shouldn’t exist. Also, the poison wall at the top doesn’t work. I imagine that it’s supposed to block us off and force us to kill the serpent. Currently, that does not work on PTR.
Also, why not add a buff to these mini bosses? Something like Fellowship added? You kill this big time wasting mob, but you get some benefit or lasting buff or large % increase - something that makes it worth doing and not just annoying.
It’s basically all the same feedback. Some packs feel really stuffed full of mechanics and I would suggest changing that. Why does every pack seem to have multiple mechanics going on? Can it not just be a simple melee pack with a caster? Or something that doesn’t require constant beam dodging and ground dodging and poison dispelling?
This is especially true to the last pack before the final boss. Why do you have those mobs together? I would consider shifting which mobs are in this pack. And on top of that, why are you so keen on putting a big disgusting pack -right- before a boss? You’ve done this consistently now. It’s either a mini boss or a very lethal pack right before a boss. This forces a group to use major CDs and CDs that are better used on bosses / saved for bosses. Personally, that is just not good game design for M+.
The last boss is actually a lot of fun. Simple and clear design.
Soak beams.
Clear debuff with red line.
Dodge stuff.
Repeat.
Kill boss.
I do believe the rate of ground denial is a bit too fast. That needs to slow down a lot. We were moving constantly from those dropping and from axes.
But other than that, I think you need to take a pass at this dungeon and hopefully get the data to suggest some things need to be changed.
Thank you in advance for reading my feedback.