Feedback: Midnight Season 1 Dungeon Testing November 18 - December 2

In Development Midnight Beta Test
1

Greetings!

Midnight Season 1 dungeon testing begins on Tuesday, November 18 at 12:00 p.m. PST (3:00 p.m. EDT / 9:00 p.m. CEST) and runs until Tuesday, December 2 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

We’ve made a number of updates to bring these returning dungeons in line with modern gameplay expectations while preserving what made them memorable in the first place. Below are some of the highlights:

General

  • Standard shoot and bolt spells will now attempt to spread their targets more evenly across available players.
  • Xal’atath’s Bargain affixes have had their tuning adjusted:
    • Ascendant
      • Cosmic Ascension’s cast time increased from 6.5 sec to 8 sec.
    • Voidbound
      • Dark Prayer’s cast time increased from 15 sec to 18 sec.
    • Devour
      • Now also snares the afflicted players, reducing their movement speed by 10%.

Pit of Saron

  • All creature and boss encounters have been fully reimagined for a modernized experience, including a complete pass on creature spawning.
  • The dungeon’s captive soldiers are now directly tied into the main objective.
  • Story scenes have been rebuilt to be shorter and meet modern standards while honoring the original story.

Skyreach

  • All creatures and boss encounters have been updated.
  • The wind platform after Rukhran has been updated.
    • Birds no longer deal damage to players.
    • The wind current can now be disabled by channeling on Coalescing Winds after crossing the platform.

Seat of the Triumvirate

  • All creatures and boss encounters have been updated.
  • All void portals now spawn after Zuraal the Ascended is defeated, and their locations are no longer random.
  • Story scenes have been rebuilt to be shorter and meet modern standards while honoring the original story.

Algeth’ar Academy

  • Crawth’s Deafening Screech no longer applies Sonic Vulnerability.
  • Crawth now begins casting Ruinous Winds at specific health thresholds.
  • Vexamus no longer gains energy when an Arcane Orb reaches it to prevent unfair overlaps with Arcane Fissure.

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.

6 Likes
5

Is there a specific realm for dungeon content like the raid one? I am on Halduron and cannot find the keystone vendor anyplace

6

Skyreach is insane. Missing telegraphs, extremely poor legibility of ground mechanics, more complex than ever (despite what youve said for months to justify the UI stuff).

Actually insane.

5 Likes
7

It’s the Xalath’s End Game Realm

8

Algeth’ar academy
Couple runs tank and healer 5~10 range

Overgrown Ancient
Still the worst thing in here even after multiple nerfs in DF to try and reign it in. The bleed dispel, treant healing, little add spawns pushing you around/popping up if not killed and tank hit are enough mechanics to keep the fight interesting but manageble.
But that poison on the adds is actually ridiculous.
The split second between the tank getting threat on the brand new adds that instantly sprout and them hitting the dps is enough to make the whole fight spiral. Having ran it multiple times its entirely a gamble on if itll go perfectly smooth because the dps have amazing aoe and perfect cc coordination, or everyone but me is dead while i panic spam nature’s cure/remove corruption on myself cause everyone else got whittled away by a plant slap right after they spawned. second add set needs a grace period or the poison needs to be removed so its just some hard melee damage til the tank picks them all up.

Crawth
Pretty much perfect tbh. The debuff doesn’t stack and the minigame is a hard required mechanic tied to specific health points. No risking your squishiest players to screech stacks to try and avoid the mechanics a few seconds longer, no burning down the boss so fast you dont have to do the mechanic at all, probably the nicest boss in here, which is refreshing after the tree boss.

Vexamus
Now that the overlaps are gone the boss is fine, not much else to say. I remember in DF it being better at some point to just let orbs hit the boss instead of trying to soak them because of the stacking debuff and orbs naturally hitting so hard; as long as the orb timing stays spread enough to avoid us reaching that point i think the boss is good.

Echo of Doragosa

Fine; feels like fewer puddles overall. The puddles dont seem to give stacks anymore so theyre not as likely to spawn more puddles. You can still play the game of getting stacks on purpose for a damage buff but it feels less important now. The debuff is fine, the damage going out felt about right tanking and healing. Good boss, but i dont remember it being that much of a struggle DF

Adds
The monotonous lecture sleep cast should probably be a highlighted interrupt, theres a couple little casts going off in each of those pulls but i dont think anythings more important then your healer being put to sleep.

The birds still do that thing where they get stuck if something got them incombat while out of range, forcing a wipe reset to get them down.

The Plant and fly combo in the Ancient’s rooms feel like they were designed with DF’s stop meta in mind. Pulling 1 pack at a time is real boring, pulling 2 is a mess with the bugs ramping enrage darting around and dodge circles from the big un-ccable plant. It feels like the enrage might be a little lower then DF but i’d like it to build up a bit slower so theres time to safely burn them if you dont have multiple enrage dispels.

The Drakanoid changes before last boss are interesting. I’m sure melee will appreciate not having to skirt the edge of the bladestorm to keep uptime on the mob now, but the projections feel like they last a little too long. The caster mobs are fine.

Everything in this dungeon feels like it has a little too much health; if thats what we have to get to keep a dps check meta over a defensive check meta for a season i’m okay with that, but the ratio of heals/total player health/damage income is already feeling on the low side. I’m not struggling to bad any particular pack but its already getting to the point where resto druid is devolving into regrowth spam instead of letting our hots work naturally, like SL, which isnt a good sign for the spec or mob damage

9

Seat of The Triumvirate

(finished a 12 but didn’t time it as an aff lock)

  • Overall, the trash is just overtuned. Hard to give feedback on the trash due to this. It seemed like everything was telegraphed pretty well (minus the third boss area)
  • The trash in the 3rd boss area needs to be much more apparent that there is an extremely important magic purge on the melee adds. It’s hard to tell at the moment.
  • Last boss is actually super cool, but also very punishing, might be a tuning issue at the moment.
  • By far the best bosses out of any of the dungeons, they are all super cool visually and are pretty clear on what to do.

Algathar Academy

(2 chest a 10 as a shaman healer)

  • Felt significantly easier than dragonflight in general, mostly because the bosses have almost nothing that can kill you. I think you guys did a good job making the final area more punishing with the new aoe slam abilities.
  • The bosses here feel like target dummies at the moment – the mechanics they do end up doing do barely any damage, or aren’t punishing at all. Probably just a tuning issue at the moment. As a shaman healer I felt like I had almost nothing to heal, and was just hitting dps buttons on every fight (didn’t feel like it was a shaman healing being too strong issue either).

Skyreach

(timed a 10 as a shaman healer)

  • Dungeon is just walking in a line, there is no deviation in trash routing here, kind of boring, but understandable.
  • Bosses besides the 3rd boss felt like target dummies.
  • 3rd boss (bird boss) will kill pugs at the moment. Needs to be a little bit more forgiving on not respawning the phoenix’s. Whether that be a longer cadence, or a much smaller rebirth zone (spawn + death), either will work. It should also probably be more apparent where the phoenix corpses are on the ground, maybe having a thematic indicator on each corpse?
  • The trash in the first area that knocks you off with a really long cast, needs to have a much more distinct animation. It’s hard to tell that there is a cast that will shoot you off the platform
  • Checkpoint after the 3rd boss didn’t work for us (we were sent to the start of the dungeon)
  • Honestly, the trash doesn’t really do anything in this place aside from some really high-value kick targets (which don’t spam cast). I think out of any dungeon, it had the most important interupts needed, but once game knowledge filters through the playerbase I think the trash in this place was the easiest in general.
10

Ran a couple dungeons, none ended up successful due to various d/c’s and such but wanted to give some of the thoughts I had:
Skyreach
First boss

  • The damage / pushback from the 4 walls coming out is very punishing initially in that if you happen to get caught by the wall initially you can get screwed big time. Really hurts melee.
  • The arrow for the shoot that returns is narrower than the actual projectile, so you can think you’ve sidestepped enough and then still get clipped.
  • The knockback from the circle spawning seems to be farther if you are further away from the boss. Can’t quite tell for sure but when I was closer it seemed like I was barely knocked away.

Second boss

  • A frontal cone indicator for the slam would be nice.

Third boss

  • Seems like the indicator for the birds being dead can be improved. Had some people just run active birds over them which cascaded into an issue.

Pit of Saron

First boss

  • The Throw Saronite circles go from brown to a slightly different shade of brown indicating when you can move and it’ll no longer change where the Saronite is dropped. This can be hard to differentiate, so having the circle change to a different color would be more beneficial.

Second boss

  • Felt like something was missing with all the various purple crystals that Krick sends images to. Would be cool if you could interact with them or do something else, otherwise they were just there to sometimes have an add.

Third boss

  • Really liked this boss.

Seat of the Triumvirate

  • Didn’t get to see much, trash just felt overtuned and people were falling over left and right.
11

I’ll second this as another resto shaman. For most of AA it felt like I had nothing to do. For both Crawth and Vex the only way for someone to die was to stand in fire or a frontal. That could be a 4 dps dungeon with it’s current tuning.

12

Greetings!

We have made the following update to Beta.

General

  • Pushed an update to improve the visibility of stacking nameplates. The client must be updated to apply this change.

  • Veeno the Second in Orgrimmar and Stormwind has been updated with Midnight enchants and consumables.

Dungeons
Seat of the Triumvirate

  • Merciless Subjugator

    • Addressed an issue where Chains of Subjugation cannot be cleared by spells that remove movement-impairing effects.

  • Umbral War-Adept

    • Addressed an issue where Shield Throw’s debuff cannot be cleared by spells that remove movement-impairing effects.

Skyreach

  • Addressed an issue where Waystone after Rukhran does not update the dungeon’s respawn point.

Pit of Saron

  • Forgemaster Garfrost

    • Addressed an issue with Throw Ore’s visual.
13

Seat of the Triumvirate

Couldnt get a group past 2nd boss but this is what ive been through so far because its pretty bad.

Zurral

The npcs rp fighting nearby look like they got pulled in by the adds spawning multiple times. We’d pull them wipe, clear that pack the next time, adds would spawn again, another set would pull in, repeat 4 times til the arena room was fully cleared. If this is intentional the boss shouldnt spawn til these adds are cleared too. If not move them farther back from the boss room pls.

His actual mechanics are okay, the puddles feel a little large since they come from the smash (controllable placement) and the adds (less controllable without some type of displacement into a stack). Fight didnt last to long so maybe they despawn before the room gets cluttered but again the with Rping npc nearby the arena felt really small.

The jump could use a raidframe marker, theres a lot of spell affects going on in the arena so figuring out who it is just on the circle visual isnt great. Could also add way more time between the jump so i can look to the person, read their name, figure out which one they are on the raid frames and heal them like that.

The adds could use some consistency where they spawn, a couple pulls they came from 3 different sides far away from eachother, their puddles were a mess and the dps took way longer to kill them. Then we got one where they all spawned closer, the i got a typhoon on one and the DH did some fancy kiting with the boss to get them all together; it was all much better for the dps and the puddle management. If they could always spawn in the same ~1/3rd of the arena like that itd be a much more enjoyable fight.

Saprish
Only got to really see him once. seems decently telegraphed at the start but not enough time to really get an opinion.

Mobs
I remember why everyone hated this dungeon during legion now.

The first room is a mess the aoes, the constant absorb shields (these need that spread bolt treatment getting 2 on the same person is a death sentence even with cooldowns) the adds jumping around, the slowing beams. All of it should do less damage and be more evenly spread out between party members when it does. Also i didnt get to really see it because meters dont have incomming damage break downs but something was just annihilating my tanks some of these pulls, im guessing its a melee swing of some type from the broken adds cause the Ethereals didnt seem to bad.

Second rooms trash wasn’t as bad, but it did get ninja pulled constantly, idk if it was convoke going off because of rp fights making them valid targets, or one of the dps trying to take away a leap, or frost orb or what out but with how tightly packed some of these pulls are it was very chaotic.

The portal tether could be clearer, tank tried to do a big pull since hero was back up and ended dragging the guy away from the portal which i think is what triggered its meltdown that then wiped us. Maybe change the tether color as you get farther to let you know its gonna snap.

The ray screech needs a change
Almost every other aoe interrupt done by a mob in game requires you be casting during the interrupt to silence you so you can make the strategic choice to stop for 1 or 2 seconds to save yourself from the silence later; these dont do that for some reason and they suck because of it.
Any mechanic where i can use my entire cc and utility kit but my only option still ends up being to sit on my hands for 4+ seconds wit cast desync because the dps don’t notice is a bad mechanic.

But yah trash could use some nerfs, maybe thin out the total trash in the first and second area to lower the ninja pull ratio, check through some mechanics to give them the bolt spread treatment, general damage tunning.
I’m getting the feeling across multiple of these dungeons that the mechanics are trying to prevent pulling in mass; which is weird cause Echo dome had some pretty large pulls when hero was up and i thought echo dome was the design goal.

14

Campaign Progress in Beta is bugged due to Nexus Point Xenas.

1 Like
15

So my comment is not going to be as useful as the others here, but how come the dungeon is only seen from the Alliance PoV now? That’s what the original story was, with how the Alliance and Horde both had their lore figure at the helm of the operation. Does it somehow not “line up” with regards to time?

16

For nexus point xenas, use your followers to kill the first two bosses, then run back and you can activate the bridge. Was finally able to complete it today after finding out all the consoles do is teleport you back to the entrance.

1 Like
17

I have managed to get my followers into the barrier, but I cannot get past it myself to finish the quest for the campaign.

18

You don’t have to go through the barrier. Just have them kill the bosses then activate the bridge to the final boss

19

The quest objective has me to grab the Console, which is far beyond the Barrier of the first boss. I literally cannot get to it.

20

You don’t need to activate them though. Only kill the boss