I read this on wowhead today and thought it had some very good points in it: https://www.wowhead.com/news=291429/what-is-wrong-with-battle-for-azeroths-dungeons
It’s an article written by Tettles who was involved with MDI in 2018 among other things. The 24 second ranged interrupt vs the melee 15 second interrupt is one of the best points to me, and has led to the 3 melee meta we see right now. Definitely good feedback that I hope Blizzard listens to. Here is the full text:
Mandatory Melee Kicks
It may come as no surprise to anybody that we have a triple melee meta in M+. You can read Sours’ article on Class Diversity in the MDI if you would like some more information on the delightful meta in M+. The issue with interrupts is a huge proponent to this problem as a whole, not just in the MDI. Many kicks in most of the dungeons are balanced around the 15-second melee interrupts in multiple ways. Good examples of these as solo interrupts (needing only one melee) are Tidesage Spiritualist in Shrine of the Storm, Feasting Skyscreamer in Atal’Dazar, or Refreshment Vendor in The Motherlode!! (I can list more, but I don’t want the list to be like 15 mobs). Even worse off there are many 2 and 3 melee interrupt rotations required such as Elder Leaxa in Underrot, the Coven Thornshaper in Waycrest Manor, and even Jes Howlis in Tol’Dagor. This puts ranged and the 24-second interrupt at a significant disadvantage in terms of pull size that is now possible due to the amount of power that short interrupts grants the entire group. The melee only meta also hurts players enjoyment.This problem came off the back of too many interrupts available in Legion without enough required kicks. In Legion, Arcane Torrent was an AOE blanket silence, most AOE stuns were way longer duration, and there were generally a lot less deadly must-kick casts. Battle for Azeroth made trash significantly more engaging, but they did it the wrong way. Now interrupts that we see in dungeons currently should definitely be balanced around the 24s interrupt timer which allows for a greater diversity of classes to see representation on the “mandatory kick” requirement. This issue persists heavily on live, but is only amplified by MDI events. If you have noticed it literally forces groups to run triple melee dps, and the only team that has consistently not played triple melee has played an elemental shaman which has a 12 second interrupt Wind Shear.
Trash Imbalance
There are a lot of mobs that are entirely too difficult, give too little count, or give too much count relative to their HP and difficulty inside of the instance. This was an issue that constantly plagued Legion dungeons. The dev team has been attempting to fix these, however, there are still a lot of mobs that are just too wide on the spectrum of too easy or difficult relative to the amount of mob count they give. Inside the MDI this trash imbalance is insane, and you see it heavily abused by Shadowmeld and multi-rogue compositions. Skips are mandatory and crafting the perfect route is so important to a lot of instances. The The Motherlode!! is a prime example of both sides of the “too much count” or “too little count” coin. With the Mechanized Peacekeeper and Mech Jockeys. Each Mech Jockey that you can get to pilot the Peacekeeper is 4.17% in a dungeon that is already annoying to do any of the trash outside of the first part of the instance. There is also an interesting interaction with the Peacekeepers that are already activated where Unholy Death Knight just will get the 1% count from the Mech Jockey that is already inside due to the on death effect when no other classes gain that. You are able to get over 50% of your trash count in The Motherlode!! from Mechanized Peacekeeper alone which are not actually dangerous mobs. In the Research and Development wing of The Motherlode!! (the part that nobody pulls trash in), the Venture Co. Masterminds and Venture Co. War Machine are rarely if not ever pulled due to the issues with how much count they give relative to their health and the fact that you cannot pull multiple of these mobs into one another making for incredibly inefficient pulls.At the end of the day, this significantly limits your pathing in a ton of dungeons due to the almost non-option of innovation because of how insanely overturned some mobs are relative to one another. There are a ton of mini-bosses that just are not done in any dungeon because their HP is entirely too high, you end up having to pull them solo, and they frankly just do not give enough count for how inefficient they are. The developers have stated that they are looking to do a trash rebalance, which is promising at addressing this issue, however, it has still been a major issue for 9 months at this point.
Affix Interaction Inside of Instances
Point and simple, the affix system was not designed to fit inside of Battle for Azeroth dungeons. To give credit where credit is due, the World of Warcraft developers have been aggressively patching and trying to make the affixes work inside the instances, but the affixes are still horribly designed for Battle for Azeroth dungeons. In the MDI you will see insane strategies that varies so much week to week depending on affixes. Players pray for nothing more than minimally impactful affixes as stuff like Bolstering or Bursting make the dungeons infinitely harder on the spot.Bolstering and Bursting are designed inversely of one another, but both of them are poorly designed. Bolstering and Bursting slow your pulling down so much, and even though Blizzard recently made less impactful mobs not be affected by affixes, this still does not solve the issues with Bolstering or Bursting. There needs to be a classification of mobs based on what they actually end up doing. Good examples of this are the Hounds in Waycrest Manor or the Initiates in Shrine of the Storm, where they do not actually do anything but are deadly solely because of affixes. Additionally, there was a huge player power level reduction going from Legion into Battle for Azeroth, and with the trash being stronger this makes Bolstering very annoying. Bursting is just flat overtuned. I understand trying to make it lethal, but this has gone too far.
Quaking, Teeming, and Explosive are incredibly gimmicky all in their own regard. Quaking with boss mechanic synchronizations can instantly kill people 100-0 with very little chance of recourse. Overseer Korgus in Tol’Dagor is one of the best examples of this. If you get an Explosive Blast line up with the quaking then you can get one hit. Teeming is gimmicky in its own way. Teeming completely changes your pathing in dungeons, bringing a little bit too much especially since affixes should just be a little bit on top of M+. Explosive LUL. Explosive is actually the worst affix in the game. This is due to the RNG nature of spawns, how much HP the orbs have, and on top of that, the fact that half the classes just do not have adequate tools to be able to deal with explosives feels awful. Explosive probably should just have 2 or 3 “hits” required in order to be able to kill them. This gives most classes way more opportunities to be able to kill explosives.
Overall the affixes should take a lesser role to the dungeons and the dungeons should be the main source of content. In the current state, affixes determine doable and non-doable keys and you look for the keys that are the most neutral and do less ( Volcanic, Raging, Skittish, etc). Blizzard has done a good job in making more “push weeks,” meaning weeks that top-level keys are doable, but all in all the affixes still sit too much in the forefront of what makes keys completable. In my ideal world, you would get rid of a negative affix row, remove Tyrannical/ Fortified, and add a kiss/curse affix row. Affixes feel like they are only created to artificially slow you down and they honestly feel really frustrating.
Checkpoints
Built-in dungeon skips are not reasons to not have checkpoints inside of instances. Underrot, Shrine of the Storm, and King’s Rest are brutal because of this. At a minimum, there should be a checkpoint after Elder Leaxa and after Aqu’sirr. I have heard that no run back should ever be more than two minutes, but it certainly does not feel that way. Runbacks and checkpoints should be a method to allow you to recover, not instantly make you want to leave the instance. You can watch any team who does the MDI and wipes prior to Lord Stormsong in the MDI almost immediately lose due to the strategies that are required prior to Aqu’sirr.Siege of Boralus
With the only dungeon that gets its own section, Siege of Boralus is so poorly designed that it is flat out not even in the MDI rotation. So the leading issue with Siege of Boralus is that it has 2 separate routes depending on whether you are Alliance or Horde. This creates a huge issue for player confusion, balancing, and fairness. The secondary issue with Siege of Boralus are the spotters. The Ashvane Spotter is the most ridiculous mob in any instance. It has a Sighted Artillery cast which deals damage to enemy targets which can be affected by Bolstering and raging by the way. Strategies in Siege of Boralus include wheeling around multiple spotters for 10+ minutes in order to be able to deal with the trash and bosses (Yes, that is right, Viq’Goth’s tentacles get damaged by the Sighted Artillery). Siege of Boralus is actually so tight on time relative to the trash you have to do and trying to balance the instance around Spotter cheese is horrible as well.Conclusion
If I were the developers working on World of Warcraft dungeons, I would honestly just put checkpoints at every single boss to not over-punish you for the use of Shroud of Concealment. On top of all of that, I would have a major affix rework with how a lot of the affixes interact with the instances. Bursting, Quaking, Bolstering, Teeming, and Explosive would all just be completely replaced with a kiss / curse affix system. The goal of affixes really should not be to just lug everybody down and artificially deflate the timer forcing groups to look for the most neutral week. Additionally, I would just delete Tyrannical and Fortified as these two affixes interact so poorly with dungeons that already scale on an exponential curve via the dungeon level. As for addressing the kicks, there is no real way for fixing that in the current moment without full re-designs of a lot of dungeons. That is just something the developers have to be mindful of moving forward, and I hope everybody enjoys double and triple melee metas in M+.Overall the dungeons in Battle for Azeroth were designed in order to fix a large number of issues that were apparent in Legion dungeons, however, they have created their own issues in the process. The devs go on to add 3 minutes to the timers in dungeons, but this is just a bandaid fix not addressing the real issues with the keys. In King’s Rest the trash just cannot be merged into multiple pulls, Tol Dagor has the issue of it just not being pug friendly with the skips required, and Shrine of the Storm just punishes you too hard for any mistakes made prior to the third boss. All of the issues with Battle for Azeroth dungeons culminate into instances that are not fun to play a large majority of the time.
