Our group: ~around 2.1-2.3k IO players, We’ve timed dungeons up to +20. We’re not amazing, but decent enough.
The problem: It feels ultra lame that the most efficient paths through many M+ dungeons involve killing yourself to skip mobs or prevent over pulling the dungeons. Some might say ‘death skips are a risk-reward gamble’ however at the upper key levels, these death skips are required or the key is binned anyway, so it’s a gamble of ‘do it or bin the key’, which is a no-brainer.
The other answer is ‘bring more rogues’ which … well that’s another problem we’re facing in the M+ community already that I don’t particularly feel like battling today.
The fact that throwing away up to 25 seconds + res time + food buff time is a better option than fighting some mob packs is saying one of the following things:
The mobs dot not give a reasonable amount of percent for the time spent
There is likely too much trash for a linear dungeon (hello Kings Rest)
There is not enough choices of paths through the dungeon
Particular mob packs or mini bosses are over-tuned (and / or don’t give a decent percent reward)
We’re not going to change the layout of the existing M+ Dungeons to include more paths, so realistically the tuning options that are available are:
mix up the variety of mob packs or individual mobs within the mob packs to smooth over the overall pack.
change the reward amount for the trash mobs that are commonly skipped to encourage people to pull those packs
soften the painful components of the trash packs that are often skipped (or the abilities that scale horribly at higher keys)
I don’t mind which method is chosen (likely a blend of the three above) but can we have an encounter designer sit and watch some streams of key runners and then perform a pass at smoothing out some of these dungeons?
Also of note:
For the love of all key runners, please do something about Eudora’s shot on tyrannical difficulty. How do you want us to solve that reliably? what’s the game designer intention there? die horribly regularly? or find some horrible exploit constantly?
Invis potions still aren’t a thing (except with non rogue groups and… when does that ever happen?) and aren’t an answer to rogue shroud. We need better answers to this monopoly that rogues have on M+ key groups, it’s just safer overall to take rogues.
The PTR changes to Shrine on the mini bosses are not enough, the mini bosses are the mostly unique element of that dungeon and need to be granting 2x or 3x the score so they become the focus of the dungeon. I honestly wouldn’t mind a dungeon with more focus on mini bosses and less mobs, it would feel different at least! Right now it is just not enough to offset the time spent.
Dungeons with multiple paths and boss orders are fun, Eye of Azshara was fun, Court of Stars was fun, Freehold is fun. Choice is fun, linearity is less so.
A personal request: we need another Court of Stars-esque dungeon where professions / race choices / classes influenced the outcome, that felt super good (and would definitely help in BFA where professions feel largely meaningless).
Is this really a problem though, outside of the higher end area non of the class stacking or death skips are required, no matter how you adjust mob tuning, it will reach a point in the difficulty level where skips, and gateways, class stacks, will become again more prominent. Changing things just pushes this level back, not removing it.
Killing yourself as optimal way to finish content is in fact sad
Hopefully blizzard will see the foolishness and well, increases mob % needed at those keys or simple diminish the amount of mobs in the parts where 20+ peeps skip.
And ya linearing may be great for balancing(if they balance, at all) so they prolly gonna sort it out, still, it is the most poor balance way that exists.
Using skips or selective mob pulling isn’t the problem, my specific problem is with death skips, as dying is the thing you’re supposed to… not do… in the entire game.
You could solve this problem by making death skips more painful (15 seconds per death) to the point where other options become better through efficacy… but that’s a horrible way of solving the problem.
Again this only delays it, as it just pushes the breakpoint of which is more time saving back, so for the sake argument, say the death skip becomes more time efficient at a +15.
Let’s say we adjust the the time per death bumping it up, it then makes it more efficient at a +18.
Thus, only moving the problem back, instead of actually solving it.
I’ve long thought that regardless of key level, if you have to skip stuff with whatever convoluted strat to make time, something is broken. It’s a very strange thing for a system to encourage.
You are completely correct in your analysis as to how the death penalty scalar moves the player tool around in terms of ‘it’s possible at a +10 but useless at a +15’.
Should there be a ‘hard solve’ to death skips? I can’t see a version of the game where people don’t have the option to exploit the death mechanic (and they would probably cry foul if it was taken away).
M+ (at higher keys at least) is all about efficacy for time spent, so to ‘solve’ this issue we need to make other options more efficient than death skipping. As key levels increase so does the amount of time spent per pack, which increases the value of skipping the pack if the pack is unnecessary.
A ‘better’ solution might include:
an item that is limited use per dungeon that shares usage with shroud (in a similar manner to how breses work), perhaps an engineering version of the warlock portal that doesn’t ‘move’ your character put instead teleports to the other side so there is still some risk / play around the positioning of it.
Some not-fun solutions include:
death penalty (seconds / death) increases with key level (super gross)
mobs never leave combat or path to their last target upon player respawn (ewww)
all packs have large pack linkages ( example, 5 packs indexed 1 through 5, all packs with index >1 are linked to all packs below their ‘pack index’, so pack 5 also pulls packs 1-4 when pulled, so if you pull the packs in sequence, you only pull the intended pack. (there is another version of this where packs can share indexes but achieve the same effect)
selected mob packs or varieties are ‘required’ to be killed to solve the dungeon (in the same way bosses are), this is super brute force and fights against the choice component of M+
pulling bosses pull mob packs near them unless killed (again, gross)
ironman mode (one life only)
I could probably continue to come up with non-fun solutions, but I’d like to solve death skips in a more elegant way.
I did a death skip in a 16 motherlode and it just didnt feel right. Im ok with using invis pots and stuff but running past mobs and dying only to have a druid rez you is lame, i agree.
Agreed, not mechanically speaking but due to how limited the pulls are in kings rest really makes me hate running it on a high level. You feel like you have no choice. Thats never good.
The only real solution is to adjust the amount of trash present and then make 100% completion require clearing everything.
Which…just takes away player choice and will be rightly criticized heavily.
All of this talk about increasing % for mini bosses, adjusting packs, etc., only kick the can down the road. Death skips will still be required again at some key level even with any change like that.
I agree that skips will be required, but the skip need not be a death skip if we have tools to accomplish the skip without dying. Shroud already accomplishes this goal, as does invis pots / mage invis / using warlock portals through walls (hi Motherlode).
Theoretically you could build your strat around invis pot cooldowns and use them to skip just as much as you do with shroud, however then you have to make a choice choose between damage pots or using the invis pot - one of the reasons rogues are so amazing is that you don’t have to make this choice, you just keep on trucking.
What they could and SHOULD do is to make monster worth time, we start with less time at the start of the dungeon, but each monsters is worth X times, so skipping monsters wouldn’t save you time but instead drastically drop it. Also make death more impactful like 20-30 sec a death. so people would avoid dying at all cost and stop skipping half the dungeon.
Making things easier is not tuning. That’s nerfing. And everyone will end up be doing even higher key as a result. If blizz want to make death skip undesirable then they should just break death skip.
He’s saying if mob X (on a scale of 1 to 10) is a 9 difficulty, and people are skipping it, then maybe tune it down to a 7 and place it where you have to fight it, maybe replacing a mob with a 4 difficulty.
That right there would make what you are doing harder. Previously the hard mobs you weren’t even fighting. Now you are fighting an easier version of the mob that is still more difficult than what you were previously fighting.
#1 solution to every woe in this post is to require more mobs to be killed to meet % requirements.
That way death skips wont be a thing since you basically likely needing to kill the pack that you’re trying to skip.
That or make it that the higher level the key, the less % that mobs give. so the higher level of key you run, the greater of number of mobs you must kill, however to compensate for the timeloss from having to grind more mobs, maybe the overall health of the mobs can be nerfed as well to balance it out.
That or maybe Blizzard can reward players for killing more mobs beyond 100%… So sure you can bypass the mobs and beat the dungeon with the minimal 100% required and get standard loot… but if you kill more mobs, and beat the dungeon with 150% or up to 200%, the reward you get and the end of the dungeon is even greater:
Either
guaranteed tertiary stats (150%) and gem slot (200%) bonuses on gear drops
guaranteed warforge (150%) or titanforge (200%) on gear drops
Or simply more pieces of loot, more gold, and more azerite are in the chest at the end.
So this can create an incentive to players to kill more mobs.
The only real fix is to remove the timer, which is a core feature of mythic+ or make it so you have to 100% clear a dungeon of all mobs. Both, in my opinion, would be recieved very negativly by the mythic+ community. Nerf mobs, make new paths, make mobs give more exp, etc., is only going to have the ssme result 5 levels higher.
This is the same effect with greater rifts in D3. With unlimited progression, you will eventually hit that glass ceiling. The only other thing I can think of is to put a cap on the key level. Which again, I believe, would be super unpopular.