Dragonflight Season 4 Dungeon Changes Ahead

Community General Discussion
485

Many of the affixes cause meaningful adjustments to be made, but they’re also very static and easy to plan around; this is an apples and oranges argument, you view an increased challenge reactively as not fun, I view it as very fun, I would likely quit M+ if it was a static hp/damage increase with all 8 dungeons being exactly identical for 6+ months at a time, and many others would too.

Barring bolstering, which on fort weeks breaks the game and on tyrann makes it effectively fort/tyrann, only a few of them are issues. Sanguine is just poor design, albeit not as bad after the most recent change, and some of the affixes not being interactable by all classes is the only other issue.

486

This is my main concern. I can play at a level where this doesn’t affect me when I SoloQ in M+, but I have friends that aren’t. I mainly play horde, some of them play alliance. It would be tragic to just completely bar me from playing with them at a level where they are comfortable.

487

Are we going to see raid difficulty changed to match these?

488

Be quiet :heart:

489

I do like an increased challenge, that’s not it. I feel like most affixes aren’t really a challenge at all, they’re more like a different brand of mosquito. As you say, only bolstering actually makes a key significantly harder.

Most of them are incredibly easy and to me raise the annoyance/frustration factor. For example, some like afflicted and incorporeal are group-finder affixes meaning they don’t make the key any harder, just forming the pug group harder.

Others are basically invisible to melee but I’m playing Arcane and I’m constantly having to move. I start to feel like “I wish I could get just one burst window in” by the end of the key because there is always something to stun, kick, dodge, cc. The affixes as they are now are really unsatisfying for hard-casters like entangled, spiteful, I would name volcanic but actually that can be stutter-stepped pretty easily. sanguine falls into this category as well because the tank is usually running around like a chicken with their head chopped off.

IMO when playing melee half the affixes don’t matter at all, they are literally just mosquitos buzzing in the ear – they aren’t dangerous or some kind of challenge, they’re just annoying. My opinion!

490

I am surprised, these changes look like an improvement…

(clarification needed)

Season 4 changes will apply to all eight of the Dragonflight dungeons.

Are the M+ dungeons for S4 only Dragonflight dungeons? A problem I’ve had recently is being unable to learn the non-Dragonflight M+ dungeons in a non-M+ difficulty. (Please add lower difficulties for any non-Dragonflight M+ dungeons)

There should be a smaller range of keystone levels to find groups for, and more meaningful progression between each level.

What do you mean? Is it not still 10% scaling between levels?

(concerns)

The “Initial Upgrade Level” of items is EXTREMELY important in how people decide what content is worth doing. Please revise. Examples:

  • In current season, M0 is very weak because end of dungeon loot is Adventurer 4/8, which has no more upgrade potential than Heroic dungeon loot (which is Adventurer 1/8). On top of that, it is inferior to the 3 Veteran pieces per week from Emerald Dream outdoor content. But what it does do right is that M+2 end of dungeon reward is Veteran; the jump in reward quality encourages people to step into M+, which is particularly important when an M0 dungeon awards ~4 pieces of gear per dungeon while a M+2 dungeon awards ~2 pieces of gear per dungeon. Your chart shows M0 as Champion 1/8 and M+2 as Champion 2/8; this is not good incentive to do M+2.
  • Similarly, your chart shows M+5 is Champion 4/8 while M+3 is Champion 3/8. Not only is it 2 tiers of difficulty for 1 level of same-bracket rewards, but it is an extra affix as well. So it is relatively not worth doing M+5. People will do it for score or because they are ready to upgrade their key higher, but it will be very unpopular.
  • You show M0 Great Vault rewards in the same upgrade bracket as the highest end-of-dungeon rewards. This is absurd. Great Vault rewards should be in the same upgrade bracket as their own end-of-dungeon rewards. Then it feels less bad when your Great Vault does not give you the item you want; you can still go get the equivalent by grinding the same level of dungeon. Get rid of the Mythic upgrade level.

It looks like M0 dungeon will drop gear equal to normal raid? I think this hurts raid participation a lot, unless you don’t open M0 until after raid opens (start raiding in Heroic dungeon gear).

(existing related problems that need fixing)

Still need a premade groups UI updated so people can properly filter by key level.

Give people some small amount of M+ score for doing LFG and M0 dungeons so it’s easier to verify you’re not inviting someone who has no idea what they’re doing (learn in LFG).

M0 lockouts are lame; no one wants to be limited by what dungeons they’ve already done that week. Especially when the 4x M0 dungeon quest causes people who don’t need M0 gear to spam the same M0 dungeon, while people who do need M0 gear have a harder time getting a group for a different dungeon.

Overgeared players joining LFG ruins the intended experience; game is too easy and they usually rush through as fast as possible, making it impossible for appropriately geared players to contribute (and extra unfun if you are on a low-mobility class). Even if they don’t rush ahead, stuff dies too fast, which makes certain damage profiles very unfun to play. Heroic won’t be as bad as currently because you can’t overgear it as much, but it will still be a problem. Cap ilvl in LFG. Bosses should last around 45 seconds (they can still be easy; don’t make the mechanics too punishing).

The satchels system (“Call to Arms”) is broken because of how binary it is (it also brings many overgeared players into LFG). If tank and healer satchels get turned on and tons of them queue, it can overcorrect, giving them long wait times (it should not exceed the demand), and sometimes even cause satchels to be activated for DPS (which will cause another overcorrection). It also causes the problem that it feels bad to tank/heal when satchels are not active, because you are rewarded so much more if you wait until they are active. Satchels should be more of an always-on spectrum that rewards players proportionate to how long the other players have been waiting. Example:

  • @ 100 gold per minute other players waiting (probably shouldn’t use gold, but this is just for example)
  • 3 dps queue at about the same time, no reward for them
  • 1 healer queues 5 minutes later, 1500g reward
  • 1 tank queues 2 minutes later, 2300g reward

And if someone joins an in-progress dungeon, some added compensation for whoever fills the slot based on how many bosses are dead. Joining an almost-complete dungeon after 10+ minutes waiting (for no satchel) is infuriating.

491

Every melee thinks range has it easy, and every range thinks melee have it easy; we deal with affixes as you do, and have to avoid/plan for them as well, including losing uptime to entangle etc.

They keep the dungeons fresh week after week, and they’re supposed to be minor annoyances that, if not handled, cause wipes.

We can just agree to disagree here, I promise you M+ at a higher level would die completely with the removal of affixes, but better affix groupings/management would lead to better play-rates on every week, instead of the current dead weeks we sometimes run into.

492

They aren’t.

493

You mistake me. I play just about everything. I am speaking from experience, as recently as last night I was running some low 20’s on my noob paladin and noticed that the affixes were basically nothing for that toon.

To me they are the reason I think about quitting dungeons, they don’t keep anything fresh for me.

Sure thing, I respect your opinion but I respectfully disagree. I’m not pushing 30’s my range is more like 25-26-failing 27’s. Also I think there are better solutions than what we have now, like what if the seasonal affixes were the only affixes, and they rotated? Awakened for a month, then Encrypted for a month. That sounds way more fun to me.

494

this please

we were doing AV to level alts and our attempt at the ledge skip was unfortunate and hilarious

part of the fun of AV (especially once the timer was increased) was the multiple routing options.

depends on the encounter tbh

i remember doing heroic lords back in SL, and i swapped melee halfway through and from the complaining my melee guildies did i thought melee would be awful. turns out it was a good deal easier than range lmao

495

Looking at raiderio for afflicted week (like last week) and a ton of specs that can’t handle it are popular.

For keys 20 and up:

Most popular tank by far is DH that cant help.

Top 4 most popular melee dps are ret, DH, rogue, and warrior. That is 3 out of 4 can’t help with afflicted

Top 4 ranged are Hunter, warlock (top 2), mage and evoker. So 2 out of 4 can’t help.

This is specifically looking at afflicted weeks.

496

So now even Blizzard employees cannot count. Mythic dungeons start at level 1, just like levels in every other game which was ever made start at level 1.

Keystones start at level 2 (+2). But here they say Mythic0 because they either cannot count and think it goes 0,2,3… or they are so lazy that they cannot be bothered to write the word “Level”.

M0 = Mythic Level 1.

I would at least expect the official creators and publishers of the game to be able to get this right!

There is no level zero, because zero means just that… ZERO!

497

So…raiding, in particular normal difficulty, is even more worthless now? Why bother raiding normal when m0s drop the same quality loot.

I like the idea of m0s being relevant, but holy crap this whole reward system needs a rebalance so bad. Puggable, endlessly repeatable content should NOT reward more/better loot than organized loot locked content.

3 Likes
498

Heroic change is nice I guess? Will be good for alts.

Don’t really care for untimed dungeons. Will be interesting to see how many ppl actually use this.

Squish is nice to skip into the higher tiered gear faster, but getting the item you want is very low chance still, so it’s more about vault ilvl still. The difficulty scaling steeper will hurt a lot of ppl. I’m concerned ppl will just give up and well see a decline in m+ numbers. Feels bad going from +2ing a key to the next key massive increase in difficulty and failing to progress. It’s demotivating to pushing keys.

These changes don’t exactly get me hyped for s4. Pretty disappointed you didn’t try anything with affixes when that’s been the biggest complaint in m+ for a while now, perfect time to try something and nothing. Changes fees minimal and boring.

499

Fated raids will also drop increased item levels like other S4 content.

500

that’s…not at all the point. Fated s4 normal mode will drop higher ilvl compared to current s3 normal, yes, but proportional to the new m0, it will be the same ilvl. Normal raids drop champion track gear, and m0s in s4 will also drop champion track gear.

Normal raids, and even heroic raids to an extent, have been useless for a long time largely due to how absurdly rewarding/easy it is to just spam low m+ keys for the same quality loot, now you’ll be able to get the same normal raid quality as an m+10, with no timer, in an m0.

2 Likes
501

absolutely.

in fact, i’d say they should remove all timers…

1 Like
502

Thing is… why keep M0 on a weekly lockout if M+ does not have it?
That’s a head scratcher to me.

2 Likes
503

Because keys above M0 are random.

1 Like
504

Because they adjusted difficulty multipliers and not actual code for that portion.