Delve feedback from Outdoor world player (Zek ? ? beaten)

Community General Discussion
1

I am firmly in the target audience for Delves, that Outdoor World solo kind of player, but only speak for myself. I was very excited for this feature, and waited until I clear just about everything about them before offering Feedback.

TL;DR: I love this system, and finally feel I have an End Game progress pillar built for me that validates how I like to play.

Delves instances

  • I love the variety of locations and really love the various stories that change them up. More of this! I hope we get outside delves, the same way we have plenty of dungeons that take place in outdoor spaces.
  • The underwater delves, while cool in concept, not so much in practice. I avoid them because the aggravation isn’t worth it. Plus the breath mechanic is so easy to negate anyway, so whats the point?
  • I love sporebits, a fun risk/reward mechanism I can use to blow up mobs. Always a pleasure.
  • I enjoyed the difficulty curve of the Tiers. I had no expectation of being capable of Tier 8 week one. I progressed over a couple weeks on several characters, starting as low as Tier 5 on some alts. I felt challenged and even now with Tier 8 there are times I struggle. I really think you nailed this.
  • I loved Horrific Visions back in BfA, and the difficulty curve of the different sub-zones, sanity/cloak progression, and finally the 5 masks to top it off. I hope this could be inspiration to add more depth to the whole Delve gameplay/difficulty loop. Something organic and interconnected instead of just the flat boring “choose a Tier from a dropdown menu”.
  • I LOVE LOVE LOVE Zekvir invasion concept. At first it added a level of tension, and felt great when it finally happened. And the first time or two it happened, I got a meaningful reward (map/gear I think?) Then I realized how rare it really is. I understand it shouldn’t be common, but became too rare for me to care. And most of the invasions only reward some boring currency for me, so I really stopped caring. Great concept though, and I do like it when it happens, just wished I cared about it.

Keys/Currency/Journey/Bounty

  • I like the Key/shards/echo gameplay loop as it is. Its nice variety, its self contained within the Delve system as a whole, and feels like a bonus (especially the 5x valor/shard rewards).
  • My only fear is this kind of loop is easily over-complicated, so I hope future seasons can walk the fine line as well as Season 1. I felt Horrific Visions entry was a bit convoluted, and hope this key loop continues to avoid that.
  • I honestly didn’t really care much about the Delver Journey experience bar. It just sorta happened silently, I didn’t feel engaged by it. Not offensive, but just… forgettable I guess. Feels like a space for some experimentation and spice.
  • The Delver’s Bounty maps are kinda uninspiring. Sure its exciting to get that extra chest, but I was hoping it would be more interesting to acquire. I would have found it far more exciting if the “map” item made my next Delve have a special encounter/boss I could take on, and if I beat that, I get the extra chest. Something fun to engage in.

Gearing

  • I am thrilled with how the gearing worked out for a player like me. Being on the Champion track, having meaningful vaults, I have never been more engaged.
  • I will be honest, I have no expectation for Hero track or Gilded crests from Delves. I don’t hate it, but Champion 8/8 is my end game now, and I am perfectly thrilled and content with that. I might get enough Gilded from Bounty chests for a single upgrade over a season, but I’m fine if I don’t.
  • I do wish Tier 8 awarded more than 3 Runed per, upgrading feels extremely slow for a Delve only player. At current pace for a Delve only player, I will never come close to hitting the Runed cap. I think that pace could be dialed up just a tad without upsetting the balance. Not a big deal though.
  • I understand limiting keys attainable per week, but to get a 3 slot vault, I inevitable have to run a couple non-bountiful Tier 8. That feels weird to me, and I don’t think any other End Game pillar has to do non-rewarding content for a Vault slot, but that might be a side effect of a solo friendly vault. Either way, not a deal breaker, I don’t always go for 3 slots anyway.

Brann Companion

  • I like the concept of a companion. He feels a little like a living “Titanic Research Archive”, just simplified.
  • I kinda wish he had his own small skill tree, or more ways to make decisions on Brann’s abilities. Let me customize Brann more.
  • The curios were nice, and upgrades were OK, but I eventually only ended up using a handful. Most go unused.
  • We meme on Brann for a reason. He tells us to not stand in webs, while he stands in webs and throws traps/potions in webs. I hope the next companion learns from Brann’s mistakes.
  • I really think it would be cool if we could switch up companions, even if cosmetically. Imagine I could use Reno or Finley or Eliza. Wouldn’t have to be complicated, not require leveling each separately, they should share XP and all that. Just let me choose would be cool.
  • What would be REALLY cool is if I could use an alt as a companion.
  • I genuinely think Brann is designed to stand in Zekvir’s fear. I’ve literally watched him run INTO it while Zek was casting. I know if he gets too smart, he will be OP, but he needs to do the basics, and not standing in bad things is pretty basic to me.

Zekvir

  • I finally beat the solo Zekvir ?? fight a couple days ago. It was very satisfying, and I loved it. I hope you keep this idea of a single pinnacle encounter moving forward.

  • I beat it without using encounter timers like DBM, because the fight was well telegraphed. This is great, keep this up as well.

  • Thank you for tuning this to be doable with Delve level gear. My greatest fear with Zekvir ?? is that it would require a DPS check higher than gear from Delves would grant. I knew I had all season to gear up and practice, and had no expectation of doing it quickly.

  • Concerning the two difficulties, it felt to me like it was missing a difficulty between ? and ??. The current jump from ? to ?? is nuclear, and the unlock requirement doesn’t properly prepare for it at all. I don’t know the right solution, but I would welcome a step up difficulty between ? and ?? that I could progress through.

  • Though I loved the challenge of the Zekvir ?? fight, it was very boring in practice. The entire dps fight could be summed up in 3 words: dodge, cleanse, interrupt. Zek has 6 mechanics alone that are just “dodge or die”. Having punishing one shot mechanics is totally fine. But for the absolute pinnacle fight of this end game pillar, theres PLENTY of ways to keep it a long, challenging fight, while also making it engaging, satisfying, and just plain FUN to perform, like these example:

    • Sikran- Decimate/Simulacrum (aim correctly)
    • Anub’arash- Charge/Binding Web (positioning web)
    • Ansurek- Froth/Nova (bounce over)
    • Rashok- Searing Slam (dont overlap)
    • Smolderon- Lava Geysers (bait)
    • Kurog/Lei Shen- (room division)
    • Any number of soak mechanics.

  • Zekvir’s main issue IMO is the inconsistency of the abilities. I’m not suggesting put the fight on rails, not at all. However raid bosses prove you can make challenging and fun execution fights that still have consistent timers on abilities. I’ve heard Zekvir does weird spell queuing stuff, whatever it was resulted in so many frustrating wipes that I felt were out of my control with little counter play. Some of these overlaps and timings just felt like RNG “you lose now gg go again”. For example, sometimes he would summon the egg far away. Sometimes he would follow me over, doing 8 seconds of nothing of auto attacks. Sometimes he wouldn’t move, wait until I ran over there, and then start casting heal, or then do the smash toward me, or target Brann with the smash and spin around the room, or simply cast the fear. It had no rhyme or reason, and changed every time. Dying because I failed, fine. Dying because of a weird sequence, maximum frustration. Unfortunately, beating it wasn’t so much a result of me learning the fight (its easy to learn), but more me getting lucky with these bad sequences. It deflated the win a little if I am being honest.

All in all, sincerely, thank you for Delves! You’ve reinvigorated me as a player!

7 Likes
2

The breath mechanic is literally just the candle / totem mechanic reskinned. All 3 are just “maintain buff that’s slowly losing duration or you die”. People don’t like the Water Delves because they’re thematically water levels and gamers are trained to hate water levels. That’s it.

IMO, Zek invasions should guarantee a map if you get him to flee without dying. Current random loot otherwise. That’d make them feel better.

I’d be fine with this. The map reveals an extra door (functionally, just have a door in a wall somewhere that’s normally uninteractable, but is automatically open if you have the Delve Map buff active). Door has a miniboss behind it. Drops a chest/whatever like Zekvir does when you die or get him to flee.

Yeah, this is poor design. It kind of skirted my attention for a couple weeks because of the amount of accumulated keys I had from before T8 Delves were available, meaning I was mostly Delve-geared by the time I ate through those + did one more week’s worth of Delves. But under normal circumstances, we’re looking at 4-6 Key runs per week, but 8 required for the vault.

Frankly I just don’t bother shooting for 8 anymore. I do 4. The most the vault should have ever been was 6. I get that they’re just matching M+ with this one, but M+ is functionally different, not having a real lockout.

3 Likes
3

Missed this. I just wanted to add that I think the cleanse mechanic in Zekvir ?? was very poorly designed and not intuitive at all to deal with.

You get a magic debuff that’s acting as a heavy-hitting DoT that’s going to kill you in about 3 globals.

To me, that’s doesn’t scream “THIS IS A SNARE, YOU SHOULD BE REMOVING THIS WITH A MOVEMENT OR ANTI-CC ABILITY”. It screams “YOU SCREWED UP, NOW YOU HAVE TO TRY AND SURVIVE”.

I did this fight as a Shaman and I was using Ghost Wolf as a regular movement ability to dodge 1-shots, which meant the cleanse effect of the relevant talent was almost always on CD.

Didn’t ever click that I should NOT be using Ghost Wolf for movement and instead saving it to cleanse the DoT, because to me it was just a DoT. I didn’t even notice it was a slow because I was ghost wolfing when moving mattered anyway.

I don’t dislike the concept, but if the concept was “remove the snare” then the mechanic should have been something like the Snare is an 80% movement speed reduction with no damage component (or outright root) and Zekvir always follows up with the 1-shot cone. That way it’s clear the intent is to remove the debuff to get away.

1 Like
4

Tbf, you don’t have to.

You can just do 4 bountifuls 1 day, the other 4 the next.

5

Generally the issue is that you don’t have 8 keys to actually benefit from 8 Bountiful Delves a week.

You have 4 if you do the bare minimum. 6 if you do your Echoes and maybe a world quest or three for extra Shards.

As people finish their Delve Tracks, buying the vendor keys will become more realistic, but those are account wide and you only get 3 (per week I believe?). So it only really helps for 1 character.

6

Yes, the 3 keys from vendor reset weekly.

7

I don’t like the requirement to get into Heroic dungeons being so high. The loot progression feels really bad. You notice it a lot more when you actually attempt to gear an alt up and not just screw around on it.

Getting my Disc into Heroics felt more difficult than it needed to be. Like why am I able to solo T8 Delves on my 555 Disc but can’t queue for Heroics???

8

They introduced this problem because they bumped up the rewards for Heroic to 580 ilvl but also bumped up the entry requirement.

Which just moved the weird gap from Heroic → M0 to Normal → Heroic.
Which is silly.

1 Like
9

“They moved one brick on top of another brick only to have to move both bricks”

Gotcha.

10

Ah, I see you’re a man of culture as well. From a fellow “faceless one”, I agree. I hope Delves takes all the good from Visions and continue to iterate on it. Perhaps create a way for us to make specific delves bountiful, instead of waiting for RNG to happen.

Definitely agree.

THIS. 8 is incredibly unreasonable, especially if the content is directed to a “casual” player.

11

I actually had the thought the other day that the “heralds” which show up in tier 9+ should also have the chance to invade the lower tiers where they essentially act like Zekvir currently and disappear/drop loot whether you defeat them or not.

And they have an RNG chance to drop a map (which could remain in 9+ delves where they show up as permanent fixtures that have to be cleared.

Then Zekvir could rarely invade, but when he does he has a higher chance to drop a map unless you defeat him, at which point the map drop is guaranteed.

Would help to add a bit of variation and allow for more frequent invading without making Zekvir feel overplayed.

12

If they don’t fix the absolutely pathetic AI for the companions, then at least they could make it so the gold gained at the end of the Delve is at least enough to cover the transmog cost for the new piece of gear I just got…25 something gold, really Blizzard?

1 Like
13

I swear these things works on some sort of pseudo combat system of thresholds.