Delves: What is the intention of them?

Community General Discussion
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Howdy all,

What is going on with Delves? One week, it’s too easy, and this week, it takes too long as a group. Where is the sweet spot?

It really feels like Blizzard isn’t testing its own content (IK, that’s not true), but nothing seems to feel balanced. I enjoyed delves when they were harder and could one-shot you (last week) because they went at a decent pace, and you had to manage CD.

Now, it has just turned into dungeons 2.0 with a key requirement to get personal loot. It’s not fun to me, and I’m sure many other people. At this point, I have to budget too much time for something that isn’t challenging or enjoyable. It’s like riding a loot escalator. I couldn’t imagine playing this content more than once on a character.

Does anyone else feel like this? I am sure healers and tanks are loving this snooze fest right now though.

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what did you think they were going to be? they were advertised as solo player casual content. To most of the people that want that it means zero fail condition, this is why they are and will remain piss easy for the rest of the xpac. we also can extrapolate that blizzard knew it wasn’t going to be good content because of the heroic gear incentive for something you can walk through in less than 10 min. after all you don’t want the centerpiece content of your new expansion to have nobody doing it like torghast.

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Oh, but it is true.
At least certainly not enough. Not to the extent a Billion dollar company should invest into testing.

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They’re about perfect now for solo.

Groups can hit up some m+. Get out of delves

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why would they do that when it offers better rewards for a quicker and easier content…

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I love playing delves with my wife. Its fun, low stress, and something to do together.

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what tier are you doing if it’s taking too long as a group? as in long to kill things or?

I only do delves solo. I see no benefit to doing it as a group. Solo also feels enough like the Horrific visions that I’m enjoying them myself, though I feel that even though i’m barely 590 on my lowest geared character actively running delves, I should not be able to complete t8 delves with averaging 1 death per run. I should have more than that tbh.

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Solo… at your appropriate ilvl.

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Minus tuning issues for specific specs and classes, I think they’re working as intended if you’re doing the tier recommended for your ilvl. And if you feel like you have enough skill to push higher than your recommended ilvl, go for it.

I think maybe there’s a bunch of people who can push higher tiers than recommended for their ilvl, and if you’re a solo casual player like me, you might think “okay that’s what I should be doing too”, but then get discouraged when you try and definitely can’t. I know because I tried that too lol.

But I’ve just been sticking to the tiers best suited for my gear and skill level and slowly making progress and getting more gear and everything has been fine for me. There’s nothing wrong with going at your own pace as a solo player, don’t feel pressured about it. I’ve really been enjoying slowly making my way through delves and exploring and finding all the treasures. And unpopular opinion: I actually really like Brann. He’s my new delve buddy.

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The intention is to give casual players who like solo or playing with one or two friends gear progression.

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It’s only easier because you don’t have to rely on other people. With Delves you can do it if you know what you are doing. With Mythic + everyone has to know what they are doing.

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Because delves cap out lower than M+, and delves are limited per week.

If delves are too easy for people, move on to keys that give better loot. Or stay in delves and complain, I guess.

Lets not just ignore the importance of crests, for which M+ blows delves away.

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So, as to testing, this was one of the least-tested endgame systems in the Beta, for one big reason:

You could not test them on the premade character server. Because Delves are part of the outdoor world, that server did not HAVE a world you could explore. You had to play on the leveling server, level up, and then playtest them. For those of us who had beta, wanted to focus more on Delves possibly, but did not want the story spoiled pre-launch, this was a bit of a no-go.

The funny part I found, is that many of the people who basically consider Delves “beneath them”, were among the most vocal last week about anything changing them: Because it impacted their season-start gear farm.

I have not done anything with a group for Delves, but the solo balance sweet spot seems to mostly be in-line right now. Maybe not perfect on all classes yet, but what I have tried (Prot Warrior, Frost DK, Ret and Prot Paladin, and Destruction Warlock) have been manageable without too much issue overall (T8 on all of them).

Anyone who sees Delves as just a stepping stone for Week 1 or 2 of the season, go do your M+ and Mythic Raiding. You are not the target audience, your opinion here does not matter. It is like PvE-only players making PvP criticism.

For people who are soloists, semi-casuals (Delves do get a little challenging at the T8+ range), low M+ or Heroic-max Raiders, who are looking for another option for gear (and some unique stuff at that), take some time and figure things out, they are fun, but you may need to adjust your spec a little, as CC can gain a lot of value to help mitigate pack pulls.

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Well thats not true. There was an npc on the premade server you could talk to and get sent to them. I did them up to 8 on a premade.

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what’s you point? the loot is still better. you would need a plus 10 done to get hero pieces which you can get to drop from weekly maps and vault for doing 8s.

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your 3 weekly maps and hero piece from 8s says otherwise, also you would need to do 10s to get a hero piece as a regular drop. i wonder which route is easier…

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Blizzard acknowledged that scaling in the first week of availability was bugged, with more players actually reducing enemy difficulty rather than increasing it. I think their current difficulty is probably much more in line with Blizzards intentions and expectations for the endgame pillar.

Playing as DPS is entirely viable in delves, just set Brann as healer, and any mechanic you don’t have the tools to counter, you can just heal back from with his pots.

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Well the highest gear and crests arent available from delves like they are from M+, so theres not much to compare.

If delves are too easy, do harder content with better rewards?

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If you watch BlizzCon | The War Within: Deep Dive Panel | World of Warcraft
you’ll see the intention. and it is meant to be a progression vein separate from Dungeons and Raids. But listen to Ion’s words and you’ll notice

  1. it isnt what they built (4:20. “the vibe here is unraveling mystreries, exploring…these are not dungeons. dungeons are abt killing a series of bosses.”)
    umm…a dungeon-guantlet is exactly what they built. if there are mysteries, I have no idea what any of them are. and certainly exploring is not on the cards when you are getting attacked by 5+ mobs, or have to move to the next candle, or not drown

5m: “Some delves may have a final boss, but others you may be exploring and transversing the delve, flipping switches, solving puzzles…we can vary the gameplay, the feel of the experience”

friends, i’ve not played every one. but every one I have played is Torghast underground. it is a pathway, mostly on rails, killing mob grps, henchmen and then taking forever to kill elites only to have a main boss with millions of hp and attack patterns at the end. other than the one that drowns you or the one that you cant move or you’lll die from the dark (outlaw rogue? not move?) there’s nothing in released delves matching Ion’s description of variety, slowness, exploration. certainly, not the gauntlets they built

Delves are starting to remind me of Bioshock Infinite - where the first hour of the game promises a world of dancing, interactions, depth of experiences with some FPS. and then once you get attacked at the play its just “hallway, shoot, hallway shoot, big bird, shoot, shoot shoot” whatever game they had in their minds was clearly gonna take too long to make and they made the simplest thing they could finish - a gauntlet of rooms and hallways with zero personality, nothing to do besides killin, and no character development at all. what Ion is promising is WQ+ what they delivered was Torghast underground.

theres a lot of fighting abt delves. Tallie will certainly have a “s#!tshow” ep on it. but we all need to go back to what ION promised. how he described it at Blizzcon. and if you listen. what he says they are making. what they envision making. is not what they delivered. its not even what the streamers played on Beta. love delves, hate delves, hate ppl who complain abt delves, love your 619 DH/Prot Pally, love Blizz, Hate Asmon…not of it matters.

watch what Ion describes. its not what is delivered unless you consider a child’s crayon drawing of a mountains, moon, and sky to be the same as Ansel Adams photograph of the Tetons. you can still like it, but its not the same.

youtube com/watch?v=xPqZ7LSGjSU

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Beta only goes so far in testing. Live is the true test unfortunately. But it seems the tuning is pretty close to good now. We are at the point where mechanics matter and, if followed, you can finish a given tier with an ilvl right on the line of being high enough. That’s how it should be.

Overall, delves are meant to be a way for solo players to enjoy something other than questing and to also provide a gear track for those players since the tend to not engage as much in dungeons or raiding. It’s new, so it will get better, but it’s in a good place right now for being the first iteration.