Classic Level 60 instance difficulty

WoW Classic WoW Classic General Discussion
1

I’m curious as to what everyone thinks on this topic. How would you rate the non-raid instances in level of difficulty at level 60 in Vanilla Wow.

I’ll list them for reference

Blackrock Depths
Lower Blackrock Spire
Upper Blackrock Spire (technically it’s a 10 man raid but I’ll include it as well as it felt more like running dungeons than true raid)
Dire Maul North
Dire Maul East
Dire Maul West
Scholomance
Stratholme undead side
Stratholme Scarlet Crusade wing

The order I remember from my personal experiences is
Blackrock Depths
Lower Blackrock Spire
Stratholme Scarlet Crusade wing
Dire Maul East
Dire Maul West
Upper Blackrock Spire
Dire Maul North
Stratholme undead
Scholomance

Of course the apparent difficulty can be very much affected by the quality of the group, but this was my order by how much trouble I recall having back when I was 60 in Vanilla.

Edit: not sure why it’s posting on an old characters I should be under Doranos-Lightbringer but it seems to be stuck on an old alt.

2

Scholo is the hardest for me, then Strat undead, and then UBRS.

Nothing else sticks out to me as that challenging.

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3

Yeah, I remember General Drakkisath being extremely difficult unless you had a hunter to kite him to previous rooms while you killed his adds.

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4

1 brd
2 dm east
3 strat undead
4 dm north
5 dm west
6 scholo
7 strat live

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5

Rather than rank them, I’ll just list some of the challenging aspects of each.

Blackrock Depths
Finding a group members that were looking to do the same parts of the dungeon as you: many people only wanted to run the prison section for the Ony quest chain, some just wanted to do incendius for the FR bracers, still others wanted emp runs. With the lack of AOE in vanilla, the lyceum was particularly painful (luckily I ran with a rogue who would stealth kill and loot the flame wardens). Remembering to put the loot to FFA during the lyceum was also tricky.

Lower Blackrock Spire
Finding a group for LBRS was often challenging because people didn’t generally like running it. Navigation was often tricky here, especially when attempting the shortcuts through the dungeon. In terms of fights, the troll area was probably the trickiest with the likely possibility for runners to bring adds.

Dire Maul North
Captain Kromkrush and the final area was probably the trickiest (fears would often lead to adds).

Dire Maul East
Mostly easy, except for the tree gauntlet towards the end - this would trip groups up pretty often.

Dire Maul West
Navigating was sometimes difficult. I feel like west was less popular than east and north so a lot of people weren’t that familiar with the boss fights - many of which would result in wipes if the mechanics were ignored. The last boss (the elf, not occulthar) also hit like a truck… and you were lucky if no one left the group after Occulthar thinking the dungeon was over.

Scholomance
Scholomance was very tough. The mob density in this dungeon meant adds during trash happened a lot, leading to wipes. The trash itself was also pretty intense. Again, many of the boss fights were doomed if you were unfamiliar with the mechanics - even the mini bosses before Gandling were no walk in the park.

Stratholme undead side
Strat UD also featured some pretty heavy mob density. Tanks had to be very careful not to overpull - and the patting gargoyles and invisible shades made the trash sections tough. The early boss fights weren’t bad, getting to them was tougher. The abomination gauntlet was a group killer as it was easy to accidentally trigger before the group was ready and was punishing for groups that weren’t using resources carefully or lacked the DPS to keep up with the waves. Rivendare was tough for groups that didn’t have a lot of lvl 50-60 gear.

Stratholme Scarlet Crusade wing
Live Strat had some tough trash pulls towards the beginning and it was easy to get overwhelmed with adds. The hardest part was probably the last few hallways with the battlemages that would wreck face if not properly CC’d.

I guess TLDR is that many of the instances were difficult because of navigation and trash more than boss fights. I always felt like it was an appropriate challenge and rewarded people who ran them often enough to be familiar with the layouts, patrols, shortcuts, and other minutiae that go unnoticed in today’s zergfest 5-mans.

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6

Is brd really that hard or is it the length you have issues with?

7

Getting a group on horde side for brd and lbrs was easy since both are part of the ony quest chain. DM west and scholo had some of if not the hardest trash pulls. Whole groups will be wiped if targeting wrong mobs first, high aoe spell damage.

8

Honestly BRD isn’t a lvl 60 dungeon IMO

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9

Agreed. It’s the length that makes brd annoying. I’m not looking forward to farming hoj.

10

I think it’s legitimate to include it on a list of level 60 dungeons because I do not recall ever completing it in a group with more than one person under the level cap. Like all vanilla dungeons, BRD had a crazy level variance from start to finish. While the beginning portions may have been appropriate for lower-50s, by the end it was most definitely appropriate for level 60.

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11

The last parts of BRD is just as much as a level 60 dungeon than others IMO. It’s just so massive the level ranges span across 10 whole levels. There are some items in there that are for sure great for level 60s it’s just not very popular because in order to get those items you have a LOONNNGG run ahead of you. You can complete all the other ‘level 60’ dungeons pre 60 as well they just aren’t as long.

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12

I hated DM, though it was more just dungeon atmosphere then anything. The only dungeon I truly hated in more or less every aspect was Gnomeregan.

13

If anything in BRD the emperor was the hard part for Pre lvl 60,s his whole room to an extent. Wasn’t he unnder lvl 60 tho? Compared to the other high end dungeons. I do however remember in classic finishing BRD Pre 60 and getting my war a sweet 2 hand axe. Speaking of BRD are they going with the 5 torch prenerf version or the 3 torch nerfed suppression room.

14

Scholomance was a pain in the butt.

15

The supression room was in BWL. The lyceum in BRD, to which you might be referring, was only ever 2 torches as far as I recall.

16

It’s funny, I never even heard of this strat until I played on PServers. In Vanilla we’d always just end up tanking him and his adds… it was pretty messy but didn’t usually kill runs.

To rate the dungeons? The harder ones that I remember are Live Strat, DM:W, and DM:N (mostly dealing with clowns who couldn’t figure out what to avoid for tribute runs). Most of these had some painful trash and/or bosses (Prince in DM:W could hit like a truck, most of the Scarlets in Live Strat), but that was really it.

The easiest? BRD. You could kill 4 or 5 packs, jump down to Incendius and do a lava jump to the Lycaeum. Kill the Emp in like 30-45 minutes. Add a few more pulls into it and you can get some people MC attuned too. The toughest part was getting a group to get the key, Ony attunements, farming patterns, etc.

UBRS was a different beast because it was a 10-15 man (depending on the patch); the hardest part was finding someone with a damn key (or enough tanks on my server, see above). It wasn’t easy so much as it felt a little more forgiving of mistakes in some ways. Usually with 10+ people there was enough of a cushion if CC broke early or enough people to catch a runner that they weren’t a problem like they could be in Scholo or Live Strat.

Oh, and LBRS was really bad so no one would ever run it… that made it tough I guess? No one knew where to go or how to do bosses since most people ran it once or twice and never did it again; bad loot (until much later on), long dungeon, big pulls. It wasn’t hard once you got into it but getting people was hellish.

Forum Mod Edit: This post has been edited by a moderator due to masked language as it is in violation of the Code of Conduct.

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17

You guys got past Deadmines?

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18

Your comment about UBRS being 10-15 reminds me of a few things…

Early on, most people did the later dungeons with more than 5 people (brd, strat, scholo, lbrs) which made it extremely difficult to get the dungeon quests done (because they couldn’t be completed in raids) and also made it even less likely that you would get the loot that you wanted unless you built the group to make you the only person who needed a particular item. LBRS was usually done by 10-15, and UBRS was almost always run with 15. I was bummed when they instituted the hard, lower caps on the instance runs as the larger groups made these dungeons feel a lot more epic (and not necessarily easier - I recall a 30 person group wiping in BRD).

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19

Most dungeons werent hard insomuch as their mechanics, it was hard to get people to coordinate or even stay until the end.

Exactly once in my Vanilla career did I ever have a group willing to stay from the very beginning of BRD all the way until Emperor, and even then we didnt do a full clear of every single boss or area. It took many hours.

None of the Vanilla dungeons really stood out in difficulty for me other than UBRS and Scholo. Everything else was just kind of time consuming.

20

Yeah I know that was BWL they both just work the same and I forgot the name of it :slight_smile: . Private servers had 2 but back in the day I remember having to run around the whole room not just half of it so maybe was 3?