Feedback: Midnight Season 1 Dungeon Testing December 10 - December 16

In Development Midnight Beta Test
1

Greetings!

Midnight Season 1 dungeon testing continues on Wednesday, December 10 at 4:00 p.m. PST (7:00 p.m. EDT / 1:00 a.m. CEST) and runs until Tuesday, December 16 at 10:00 a.m. PST (1:00 p.m. EDT / 7:00 p.m. CEST). Please note that this schedule may be adjusted if we encounter any technical issues during testing.

During the test period you’ll be able to acquire and customize Mythic Keystones by talking to the Keystone Vendor in Stormwind, Orgrimmar and Silvermoon. The nearby Dungeon Teleports NPC will assist you with transportation.Throughout beta, all Midnight dungeons will be available for testing on Normal and Heroic difficulty. Seasonal dungeons will rotate with each new test period.

For this round, the following seasonal dungeons will be open for testing on Heroic, Mythic and Mythic+ difficulty:

  • Pit of Saron

  • Skyreach

  • Seat of the Triumvirate

  • Algeth’ar Academy

Provided that the items equipped on your character are at least item level 226, they will scale automatically to a higher level as needed to support Dungeon testing.

Dungeon Updates

Pit of Saron

  • Adjusted creature pack composition in some areas of the dungeon

  • Quarry Camps

    • Additional props spawned near each camp

    • Added a sixth camp near the ramp towards Scourgelord Tyrannus

  • Ymirjar Graveblades

    • Addressed an issue where the Graveblades could randomly attack the wrong target while riding a dragon

  • Plungetalon Gargoyles

    • No longer targets players out of combat with Plungegrip

  • Deathwhisper Necrolyte

    • Minions now spawns at 1 health and die immediately when the Necrolyte is defeated

  • Dreadpulse Lich

    • Improved visibility of Dread Pulse activation

  • Glacieth

    • Cryopatch’s damage increased by 25%

  • Forgemaster Garfrost

    • Improved visual for Saronite Sludge

  • Ick and Krick

    • Death Bolt

      • Cast time increased to 10 sec from 8 sec

    • Shade Shift

      • Periodic damage reduced by 17%

    • Plague Globs

      • Now leaves Blight on the ground

    • Shade of Krick

      • Health increased by 25%

      • Shade Bomb now displays a cast bar and a raid warning for the final 10 sec before detonation

  • Scourgelord Tyrannus

    • Ice no longer blocks line of sight

Skyreach

  • Ranjit

    • Four Winds

      • Renamed Chakram Vortex

      • Redesigned the mechanic for improved visibility

    • Spinning Blade

      • Renamed Gale Surge

      • Now only inflicts damage to target players instead of all players within 4 yards of impact

    • Coalesced Wind

      • Visual updated

  • Rukhran

    • Sunbreak

      • Cast time increased from 0 sec to 3 sec

    • Sunwing

      • Now turns into a smoldering egg when defeated

      • No longer resurrects defeated Sunwing when spawned

      • Now loses 10% health every 2 sec

      • Added visual on smoldering eggs that are within radius of resurrection from Blaze of Glory

    • Blaze of Glory

      • Addressed an issue where the resurrection radius is larger than the visual

      • There is now a warning text after a Sunwing is resurrected

Seat of the Triumvirate

  • Ravenous Umbralfin

    • Piercing Shriek

      • Removed

    • Melee damage increased by 16%

  • Dark Conjurer

    • Call From Beyond

      • Renamed Summon Voidwalker

  • Rift Warden

    • Void Expulsion

      • Now targets 2 players, reduced from 5

  • Shadowguard Champion

    • Relentless Pursuit

      • Initial damage reduced by 25%

    • Battle Roar

      • Renamed Battle Rage

      • Now increases Haste by 50% instead of Physical damage done

  • Dire Voidbender

    • Abyssal Enhancement

      • Cast can now be interrupted

      • Cast time increased from 2 sec to 4 sec

      • Ability cooldown increased

      • Now periodically blast 2 random players with void missiles

      • Improved aura visual on the caster

  • Void-Infused Destroyer

    • Eruption

      • Now prefers players not targeted by this spell for 30 sec

      • Knock-up potency reduced by 40%

  • Grand Shadow-Weaver

    • Void Infusion

      • Now prioritizes players without this debuff

  • Zuraal the Ascended

    • Coalesced Void

      • Health reduced by 15%

  • Saprish

    • Phase Dash

      • Added visuals to Void Bombs that will be exploded on impact

  • L’ura

    • Improved lighting in the room

    • Reduced overall visual intensity of the encounter

    • Cinematic removed after L’ura is defeated in Mythic+

    • Disintegrate

      • Added ground visual to each beam

    • Discordant Beam

      • There are now additional visuals on active Notes of Despair that needs to be silenced

Algeth’ar Academy

  • Corrupted Manafiend

    • Mana Void

      • Debuff duration increased from 4 sec to 6 sec

      • Damage on expiration increased by 25%

  • Vile Lasher

    • Now casts Vile Bite. Inflicts Physical damage to target player and causes them to bleed for 8 sec.

  • Algeth’ar Echoknight

    • Astral Whirlwind

      • Number of astral projections reduced from 2 to 1

  • Crawth

    • Deafening Screech

      • Debuff duration increased from 6 sec to 8 sec

    • Gale Force

      • Pushback reduced by 20%

  • Echo of Doragosa

    • Overwhelming Power

      • Now increases Haste by 7.5% per stack instead of damage done

      • Now inflicts Arcane damage every 1 sec

      • Addressed an issue where Arcane Rift spawns on 4th application instead of 3rd

    • Astral Breath

      • Renamed Astral Blast

      • Now inflicts Arcane Damage to target player and applies a stack of Overwhelming Power

Thanks for testing and sharing your thoughts with us! We’ll be reviewing your feedback closely and will continue to post updates throughout the beta as changes roll out.

3 Likes
5

Beta servers are now available. Sorry for the delay.

6

Greetings,

The following adjustments have been made to M+ dungeons.

Seat of the Triumvirate

  • Addressed an issue where Merciless Subjugator’s Chains of Subjugation fails to cast.

  • Zuraal the Ascended

    • Improved visuals of Coalesced Void’s missile visual

Skyreach

  • Various improvements to ground targeted visuals

  • Ranjit

    • Addressed an issue where Coalesced Wind is damaging and knocking back all players instead of the player triggering it

  • Rukhran

    • Addressed an issue where Sunwing doesn’t melee attack while channeling Burning Pursuit

  • High Sage Viryx

    • Scorching Ray

      • Initial damage reduced by 33%

Pit of Saron

  • Ick and Krick

    • Reduced the duration of Ick’s Blight to 2 minutes from 3 minutes
7

Id love to test some of this out but you broke the in game click casting with the most recent built yesterday and now I cant use middle mouse button and button 4 anymore when party frames is on raid frames visual/mode.

:person_shrugging:

8

Overall, I think the changes made this week are very good

Seat seems like a very forgiving dungeon now, as almost all the important interrupts are removed from the dungeon. Great job on the trash after the 2nd boss, it is much more telegraphed that the enemies have an important cast. It feels like one of the easier dungeons in the pool now, which isn’t something I would’ve predicted.

Skyreach seems particularly difficult since all the bosses are fairly involved now – Nothing wrong with this, it will just be the “boss gauntlet” dungeon this season since the trash isn’t anywhere near as punishing as the bosses.

Algeth’ar Academy is the same as it ever was. I do think that there is something missing on Crawth. He doesn’t seem to do anything punishing at all ever and is probably the last remaining “target dummy” boss in the pool at the moment. Probably an unpopular opinion, but after doing the first gigantic pull over a hundred times now, I kind of wish that there was something different about the routing and trash in the overgrown ancient area.

Pit of Saron feels nice now. Slightly worried that curse dispel is slightly overbearing here, but other than that, the dungeon feels forgiving and fine. As a healer, line of sight sucks on Forgemaster, but there isn’t really anything you could do to make that more forgiving, I’m assuming?

9

I didn’t know if the damage/knock back to all players was intended, but I was telling my buddy that this boss was about to be one of the biggest pug killers of the season after running one yesterday. Good change!

10

Algethar’s has an excessive amount of bolt slop.

11

As usual this is from a healer pov in +12s

Every dungeon seems reasonable with easily telegraphed interrupts. It’s actually quite easy to explain to players who have not done any dungeons yet what they should kick or do.

Luckily, bolt casts do nothing anymore. You can let every single one go off, and it barely does any damage at all (and this is coming from a healer doing 15s atm).

Skyreach

Extremely difficult now. I think you guys turned the tuning knob a little too high on this dungeon after tuning.

  1. The first boss is actually difficult to heal now compared to the first iteration. I think it takes a lot of coordination on higher key levels to not make this feel overwhelming for healing. It’s a lot of priority healing very quickly while having to move. I think the difficulty should be the movement and not the unavoidable healing – For example, make getting hit by the avoidable damage the scary part of this fight rather than the ticking damage.
  2. Second boss is fine. Most people who have not seen the boss yet, are extremely frustrated by the tank frontal not having a telegraph, but if that’s intended as part of the difficulty, it might be complained about for a bit. Maybe it’s worth it to telegraph the frontal?
  3. The third boss has completely illegal healing checks. This is by far the hardest healing boss in the entire pool at the moment. The throughput check here is through the roof, even if you just do the boss as intended it’s absurd. It should follow the same principle as the first boss: getting meleed by the bird should be the big damage, not the unavoidable damage. This would equally mean having more than 1 bird (not doing the mechanics correctly) would still be difficult to come back from, rather than impossible at the moment.
  4. The last boss has too much hp on the adds flying off the platform. I do like that the throughput requirement is higher, although it might be slightly too much. Overall, this boss isn’t particularly mechanically punishing like the other bosses

Other outlier bosses:

  1. Crawth still feels like he does absolutely nothing. There needs to be group-wide ticking damage between deafening screeches if you want healers to do something here.
  2. Ick and Crick: I think your nerf didn’t go through. The blight lasts almost the entire fight length and it’s an absurdly frustrating boss to play now with almost no room to stand.
  3. Overgrown Ancient will be complained about just like it was previously since a poison dispel still eliminates almost all of the tank concerns on damage intake. I think if Lasher Toxin hit the tank for “chip” damage (like a hit every 1s or every 0.5s) instead of a huge hit every 3s, it would make this less frustrating for both healers and tanks.
1 Like
12

In a +15 AA, this accumulated big hit one shot our tank. Literally 600k damage. Poison Cleanse was changed from 45 seconds to 2 mins in TWW 11.0.5. We also lost Totemic Recall in Midnight I am not strongly against either change, but the current encounter design is unacceptable for Shamans.

13

I didn’t find it particularly challenging as an rsham since you would do totem → slink → totem (pray to god you don’t get a 4th set of active lashers, which would be like a 4m boss at this point).

edit: thinking back on it, it also might be because vdh is massively overturned defensively.

I 100% agree with you on the huge 3s tick time. If it rotted the tank (like I mentioned previously with a much smaller tick interval), both tanks and healers would actually have something to react to in real-time. It’s challenging to predict a nondescript dot that will tick you every 3s with no visual. With a lower tick rate both tanks and healers would have tools to counteract that (more self-healing/throughput healing spam on the tank).

14

Ick & Krick in pit of saron needs reverted to what it was the first week of testing, the puddles last for 2 minutes and if you aren’t running multiple ranged the fight is just fried after the first chase phase.

1 Like
16

Subject: Comprehensive M+ Seasonal Feedback: Inverted Difficulty Curves, Visual Noise, and The “Leaver Culture” in Beta

Testing Context & Perspectives This feedback is based on extensive testing of all dungeons mentioned below across multiple roles and specs. My observations come from completing these instances consistently with:

  • Demon Hunter: Both as Vengeance (Tank) and Devourer (DPS).
  • Warrior: As Protection (Tank).

Having tested the same encounters from the perspective of active mitigation, high mobility, and high-burst threat management, I can confidently report on the mechanical consistency and pacing of the current build across different playstyles.

The Testing Environment & Feedback Bias As a competitive player myself, I enjoy a challenge. However, the current M+ environment in the Beta is becoming counter-productive for genuine testing. We are seeing a “leave-at-first-wipe” culture that prevents gathering data on later bosses.

Furthermore, there is a noticeable shift in tuning toward extreme lethality and frantic pacing. While the first week of testing felt balanced—focusing on bug fixing and mechanical flow—this build feels tuned almost exclusively for high-end coordinated groups. It seems as though the tuning is being heavily influenced by a narrow pool of high-profile feedback, which may not account for the broader player experience. The reaction windows are becoming so tight that they feel less like tactical challenges and more like mechanical stress tests.

1. The “Inverted Difficulty” Trend

A recurring issue in this build is that initial bosses are consistently more lethal and punishing than final bosses.

  • The Wall: In instances like Skyreach or Algeth’ar Academy, the first encounter acts as a massive wall. This prevents gathering testing data for the rest of the dungeon.
  • The Standard: Ironically, final bosses like Scourgelord Tyrannus are the “Gold Standard” of design—well-telegraphed, fair, and rewarding.
  • Recommendation: Do not increase the difficulty of final bosses. Instead, reduce the lethality of the initial encounters. A dungeon should build momentum, not kill it at the entrance.

2. Skyreach: Visual Chaos and the “Repel” Trap

Initial Trash and the Repel Mechanic:

  • The Arakkoa Casters: These mobs use an ability called Repel. Unless experienced beforehand, there is no way to understand that this is a global damage ability that will knock the entire party off the platform.
  • Visual Ambiguity: These casters lack a distinct visual model to differentiate them. They run directly into melee range, making it incredibly difficult to pick them out and prioritize interrupts when the screen is filled with nameplates and spell effects.

Boss 1: A Claustrophobic Nightmare

  • Overlapping Mechanics: The simultaneous spawning of tornadoes and ground swirls leaves zero room for rotational execution. If the boss uses a knockback while the tornadoes are active, it results in an unavoidable death. This is a regression to design practices where difficulty is tied to overwhelming the player’s screen rather than mechanical depth.

3. Pit of Saron: Healer Stress and Design Regression

General Tuning: Visual clarity has improved, but the raw damage profiles are putting healers in an impossible position unless the group is perfectly coordinated.

  • Forgemaster Garfrost: The Saronite Impact and area saturation are too tightly compacted. If a class lacks a teleport/blink, they lose all DPS uptime just trying to survive.
  • Ick & Krick: This encounter is a massive healer stress test. The channeling damage from the clones, combined with constant unavoidable aura damage, is nearly impossible to sustain. The platform fills with persistent ground hazards too quickly. As a melee player, passing through these zones to reach a clone often results in taking lethal damage mid-air or mid-dash.
  • Scourgelord Tyrannus (The Success): This fight is the best-developed encounter in the rotation. The pacing is perfect. However, the knockback/leap combo acts as a heavy mobility check; while manageable for high-mobility tanks, it may be a point of extreme frustration for tanks with less explosive movement if they do not save a specific charge for this moment. This should be the benchmark for all encounters.

4. Seat of the Triumvirate: Zuraal and Mechanical Fairness

Boss 1: Zuraal the Ascended

  • The Spawning Conflict: Slimes (adds) currently spawn randomly, often appearing directly inside the lethal “denied” zones created by the boss.
  • The Melee Risk: This forces melee players (or short-range hybrids) to enter lethal ground effects just to stop a slime before it reaches the boss. Logic-gating these spawns to avoid active “denied” zones would make the fight fairer without reducing the intended challenge.

5. Algeth’ar Academy: Pacing and Utility Checks

Boss 1: Overgrown Ancient (The “First Boss” Wall)

  • Artificial Difficulty (Bleeds/Poisons): The addition of lethal bleeds and poisons through the lasers encourages the use of specific racial abilities. Reintroducing “dispel-or-die” mechanics that certain healer kits cannot handle creates artificial barriers rather than tactical depth.
  • The Massive Pull: This initial pull creates a performance gap where only certain classes shine. As a high-burst DPS, the initial threat generation is so high that it is easy to rip aggro from the Tank, but the lack of defensive kits for certain specs makes this an immediate death sentence.

Trash Update: The Draconics and “Astral Projection”

  • I want to highlight a very positive change in the trash leading to the final boss. The Astral Projection mechanic used by the Draconics is now much better handled. The way they teleport and spin/cleave through their projections is much smoother and more predictable than in earlier versions. This iteration feels balanced and tactically sound.

Final Thoughts: (Bájenle dos)

The current build feels tuned for a world where players only react to automated addons. The acceleration of timers and the saturation of lethal ground effects are becoming excessive. To the development team: (Bájenle dos)—dial it back. Difficulty should come from understanding and executing a tactical dance, not from overwhelming the player’s screen with noise. The pacing from the first week of the Beta was a much better baseline for testing.

Sinceramente agradezco este tiempo en la Beta. See you in the next build.