Feedback: Mythic+ Testing - June 25th - July 2nd

In Development The War Within Beta Test
1

Greetings!

The War Within dungeon testing begins on PTR realms this week. The test period will begin Tuesday June 25th at 10:00 PDT (13:00 EDT, 19:00 CEST), and end Tuesday July 2nd at 10:00 PDT (13:00 EDT, 19:00 CEST). Please note that the test period may be adjusted in the event of technical difficulties.

The following dungeons are available for testing on Mythic and Mythic+ difficulty:

  • The Stonevault
  • The Dawnbreaker
  • Ara-Kara, City of Echoes
  • City of Threads
  • Grim Batol
  • The Necrotic Wake
  • Mists of Tirna Scithe
  • Siege of Boralus

Some notable dungeon changes for this test:

The Stonevault

  • E.D.N.A - Adjusted ability timing for the encounter
  • Void Speaker Eirich’s Entropy duration reduced from 2 minutes to 90s

Siege of Boralus

  • Scrimshaw Gutters’ Tooth Breaker haste reduction reduced from 35% to 15%
  • Ashvane Sniper’s Ricochet’s additional target damage reduced by 50%
  • Ashvane Invader’s Stinging Venom Coating now has a 3 seconds cooldown
  • Hadal Darkfathom no longer patrols.
  • Viq’Goth no longer spawns additional Demolishing Terrors.

Affixes will rotate daily on beta realms to expedite their testing, there are new affixes ready for testing this week:

  • Xal’atath’s Bargain: Ascendant
    • While in combat, Xal’atath rains down orbs of cosmic energy that attempt to empower nearby enemies, increasing their Haste and Movement speed. If players disrupt these orbs, they claim this effect for themselves.
  • Xal’atath’s Bargain: Frenzied
    • Non-boss enemies become frenzied at 30% health remaining, increasing their Haste by 40%, but increasing their damage taken by 20%.

At +12, the following affixes replace Xal’atath’s Bargain affixes:

  • Xal’atath’s Guile
    • Xal’atath betrays players, revoking her bargains and increasing the health and damage of enemies by 20%.

During the test period you’ll be able to acquire and customize the level and dungeon of Mythic Keystones by talking to the Keystone Vendor in Stormwind or Orgrimmar, and the nearby Dungeon Teleports NPC will assist you with transportation. During testing, players will have their item levels scaled to an appropriate level for the active Keystone level. We look forward to hearing your feedback!

3

Haste buff mobs get is way too big while damage taken increase they get is way too low.
Swap values around (make it 20% haste and 40% damage taken) and it will be in a good place. We want more kiss, less curse after all…

You posted this just 2 weeks ago:

And today you release this Xal’atath’s Bargain: Ascendant affix that does exactly opposite. Really?

This is very bad affix. Scrap it immediately. Not only it contradicts your design principles that were posted not so long ago, but it also requires a lot of AOE stops etc, not every class has those, which will just create another meta around classes with most AOE stops. Also why does a mob get 10% buff from an orb, but player intercepting it only get 1% buff? This makes no sense, change it so value is same for mobs and players if you intend to keep this stupid affix… But it would be much better if this was deleted and replaced with nothing.

Also delete tyrannical and fortified, they have no place in this new system. Key level scaling will take care of difficulty.

Death penalty affix in keys a low as +7 is way too harsh punishment that makes no sense and should be deleted or moved to +15 or higher were it belongs. This key level range is already such a nightmare and doesn’t need any extra things that would only create more toxity and contribute to players leaving keys en masse.

5 Likes
4

Overall im excited for these key changes… My current concerns

Timers: what are we balancing timers around?
12+ Keys: will we get damage under control so that healers can provide triage. That alot of damage increases… Please dont overscale damage. Healers want to be able to heal!!!
Sub 12 keys: Will mobs have enough HP to feel fun.

1 Like
5

The Xal’atath’s affixes just feel weird. Especially with Ascendant, at low-ish levels, you’re playing a frantic chain of AoE stops on top of the dungeon mechanics. As others have pointed out, it’s literally the opposite of a bunch of principles for affixes, but also it’s just … a lot of overhead at low levels which very much feels like you’re just battling the affix.

Then weirdly, you hit +12 and it all goes away and smooths out. Just with a lot more numbers that bite into the other issues (like mechanics oneshotting).

1 Like
6

Ara-Kara 5, total pug group.

Arguably, most of them didn’t know the mechanics so that added a touch of difficulty to the run. However, the first boss’ damage didn’t seem to be that crazy compared to the original testing week, which felt better. That said:

  • The Xal’atath affix (ascendent?) was weird. I wasn’t sure what to actually do, so I didn’t really do anything (I was healing) and still got 19 stacks every time.
  • The last boss: Either it wasn’t working on the original testing week or you added mechanics. The poison Mechanic is quite frankly unnecessary and severely overtuned. It ticks for almost 1M per tick and has a 2M hit on dispel + 5M if someone is standing on top of you and their wave smacks you. This addition was not a good addition.
1 Like
7

You guys way over buffed Anub’zekt, second boss of Ara-kara. +4 Fort his dots were ticking for 400k-1 mill dps. That plus tripling then number of root casters was excessive.

I know it was too easy last m+ testing but you massively overcorrected.

1 Like
8

The new affix causes me to have stutter every time they get cc’ed. Graphics are down not really sure what’s causing it but it freezes for about 1-2 sec before I get control again.

Also, feels a bit nutty if it goes off. Even a few and the mobs just start hyper mode attacking/casting.

This makes me fear for the 40% haste coming next.

2 Likes
9

It’s going into the right direction, but the orbs need to be designed in a way where they don’t add nameplates.

Also not sure why tyrannical and fortified are not only kept, but stacked at a certain key level. Keystones already scale numerically, stop adding multipliers on multipliers.

5 Likes
10

What I didn’t notice is that per orb we get 1% haste/movement… but if you don’t get the orbs each orb gives enemy mobs 10% per.

That means they can get up to 200%…

That’s kinda intense. Is this intended?

3 Likes
11

After testing new affix all I can say is that it should be immediately scrapped and Blizzard should get back to drawing board. It simply not working well in a pug nature of M+, in a group I was in (we did a +4 necrotic wake) we had full instant wipe every single time that affix popped, mobs/bosses get 200% haste/speed and delete whole group out of existence instantly and they get this buff for free. Meanwhile players have to waste tons of AOE stops, dispels, interrupts (which they could have used to deal with actual dungeon mechanics instead) just to get that miniscule 20% buff? Are you for real Blizzard? This is not what we call kiss/curse…

Not even mentioning how this affix causes nameplates, cast bars and visuals OVERBLOAT when it happens, reducing player awareness, taking focus away from everything else but affix, removing dungeon immersion and so on, its plain bad, no questions, scrap it and add something passive and non impactful instead, something that can be completely ignored if players choose to…

In the end we were unable to even finish the dungeon because:

  • affix is overtuned
  • dungeon is overtuned
  • dungeon and bugged and angels get stuck in the air making you unable to get back to necropolis after wipe

Non affix related: incoming damage in dungeons is massively overtuned and must be nerfed across the board by a lot in order to make things doable.

3 Likes
12

On high key levels they’ll both always be there. Will basically be no affixes.
Great changes aside from the nameplates.

On a sidenote though, has anyone noticed how nothing is living more than 10-15 seconds a pull? Bro I want my keys to be 25-30 minutes, not 5 minutes LOL

1 Like
13

Not my experience, I had completely opposite where things live for way too long and deal way too much damage to the group at same time… Everything just oneshotting you and you cant kill anything. Such a mess…

14

Tried to do some testing but Ascendant is just awful and in uncoordinated groups it’s basically a wipe if no one has an aoe interrupt to clear them. Even a few going off makes packs exponentially harder.

Xal’atath’s Bargain: Ascendant is super bad. It’s a worse incorporeal. You lifted it straight from Razageth without addressing that on razageth players determine where the orbs spawn and more importantly, don’t need interrupts/stuns for the boss so they are off cooldown. In dungeons though they are used frequently so there isn’t many, if any, to spare. Especially new dungeons where you decided to add even more things to interrupt even though feedback has been too many things to interrupt isn’t fun and definitely not pug friendly.

This also goes against your design goals for affixes. This goes back to play the affix not the dungeon. The orbs are now #1 priority above all else. Not because you’ll get some haste, but because otherwise the buffed mobs will destroy you.

The orbs give way too much haste to mobs, haste can make mobs insanely difficult. It places WAY too much importance on stuns/interrupts so they don’t cast at all, otherwise you die. You’ve been told this time and time again and yet keep slapping it in affixes. Oh look at that, both affixes give mobs haste… A nice litmus test for balance here is giving players the exact same amount of haste. If players are suddenly destroying everything in sight then it’s too much. If you’re going to keep this terrible affix either give the mobs the same 1% that players get or give players the same 10% the mobs get.

Talent wise you’re forcing players into picking up AOE stuns/interrupts. Being forced to pick any talent never feels good. Also, unless you’re going to make sure that every single spec has the same access to aoe stuns/interrupts this is going to create yet another season of exclusion where classes that don’t have many or any are excluded. Time and time again you design affixes that exclude classes/specs, so either balance needs to account for utility(currently doesn’t), or stop designing affixes that favor some classes/specs, or provide the tools to deal with the affix in the dungeon.

The +7 death affix, are you going to make sure that shaman ankh doesn’t count as a death? Because it’s really easy to die, anhk, and die immediately to a small wind gust for a 30s penalty just for using our class ability. Not sure if soul stone counts as a death or not, but that probably shouldn’t either since it was pre-planned. Otherwise you’re going to need to do some work on those abilities, a short invincibility on rez and/or healing way more health.

Finally, why are +12’s mechanically easier than +4s? Should it not be the other way around? I get wanting higher keys to have consistent runs, but you can keep it consistent by just giving them both affixes. Sure having to deal with the orb haste buff and the frenzied haste buff would be insanity, but higher keys shouldn’t be easier mechanically. So either remove affixes for everyone and let the key scaling determine difficulty, or keep everyone on the same playing field mechanically. If the 2 affixes combined make +12’s too hard then maybe the affixes need changed.

Personally speaking, I’d remove all affixes. They serve no purpose that can’t be accomplished through dungeon design. They don’t keep things fresh except maybe a single run the very first time you do it. They take away from the dungeon, play the affix not the dungeon. And they often promote excluding certain classes/specs due to your lack of balance. I’d gut the timer as well since it promotes toxicity in so many ways.

I’d so much rather have the +12 affixes at +2 because then it’s entirely dungeon focused difficulty. Granted I’d rather not have them at all, but not having to blow up orbs or worry about taking mobs to 30% without stuns ready lest they explode the group is still better than what we currently have.

4 Likes
15

I had an enhance and arcane mage doing like 1.5-2mil dps on 6-7 mobs. We hit the second boss of Ara in like literally 4-5 minutes. Was on an 8, not sure how scaled we are.

16

On further thought, although on paper I like the fort/tyran part of things it got me thinking about the possible builds I had not being viable considering both affixes are active.

This kills a good bit of build variation/creativity because you’re going to have to bring one or more talents that you can take or leave depending on if fort/tyran.

This kinda just goes back to full circle where there will most likely be a best build type world rather then the openness that was created with the new talent system.

3 Post Edit

Just played with the other new affix. The enrage one… what are you thinking. Like can we just not give mobs massive haste. Both of these new affixes are really really bad.

This one even more then the other. Some pulls as a tank you can’t even kite. The machine gun casters just going crazy. Like… come on guys… this is your best?

This isn’t engaging or fun.

At this point I’d rather you just keep the damn affixes the way they are in the current season on live.

Big thumbs down from me on these.

2 Likes
17

After doing some more testing you guys messed up tuning this week and I don’t know how.

Keys weren’t exactly a cakewalk last testing period and you added mechanics upon mechanics and everything just hits harder.

First boss of Grim Batol having only 1 safe lane is atrocious when you have to deal with the puddles and Ascendant.

Ascendant itself makes last testing’s affixes look fun and that is amazing you guys pulled that off.

20 name plates once a minute requiring multiple aoe stops(something you said you didn’t want to design keys around) is something I don’t get how it gets past internal testing. It ruins visual clarity, you’re not playing the dungeon, and is massively punishing if you fail and barely rewarding if you succeed.

If you can’t make affixes that aren’t either massively punishing, or atrocious to play around, just remove them.

7 Likes
18

Some feedback based on playing a few hours of beta this afternoon:

-Grim Batol first boss visuals for the dragon’s paths are very bad, it’s very hard to see which dragon will be going first. Also, while there is a safe lane,it’s going to be very hard to get to it every time because the mechanics come so quickly. So it’s unclear whether the fight is intended to be such that everyone could make it to the safe zone in time. That would require a lot of movement abilities and will be hard for slow tanks.

-Dawnbreaker first boss. First, there’s not enough time between void zones spawning and the boss’s beam mechanic for a tank to move the boss. This is punishing if you have a lot of melee in your group because then the void spawns will be close to the beam and you will lose uptime. A bug on this fight: The +2 affix orbs are spawning in the air on this fight, which means ground effects cannot target/disrupt/clear them.

-Dawnbreaker generally: mobs are frequently pulling through walls. Very frustrating dungeon to pull as a tank. I can’t tell if it’s bugged player abilities or the walls are fake. Either way it’s very annoying.

-Dawnbreaker lieutenant who spawns the purple orb that moves toward terrain and explodes upon collision. Seems quite overtuned if it goes off anywhere close to players.

-Dawnbreaker second boss. Again, needing to position the orb so it goes up the path is an interesting mechanic, but will be very punishing for pugs. Also, there is an important bug: If you pull the boss into the main circle with friendly NPCs, and then you have a full wipe (everyone dead), you can get locked in combat for a minute or two while the boss fights a friendly NPC.

1 Like
19

Tried a +3 NW tonight and I don’t know if my two friends and I are out of practice or what…but everything was hitting far harder than it feels like it should have at a +3 (only +21% damage/health). I felt like I was getting chunked hard in there too on my BDK. Are things supposed to hit this hard this low?

EDIT: We also went and did a quick M0 just to get a feel for key vs non-key…did Ara Kara and it felt like what you’d expect for an M0 for 90% of the dungeon…but the poison on the last boss is ridiculous. A monk in the group was getting one shot - consistently - before he even had time to react to his own poison or waves coming at him. The spray around you is absurd. Can’t imagine this on a tyrannical key. :joy:

2nd edit: forgot to include…as several others have said…Xal’s ascendant bargain is pretty busted as is. Far too many orbs pop up for pug groups to reliably deal with the majority of them. If the kiss/curse intent is to account for players getting a number of buffs and trash getting a number as well…the numbers need to be tuned. As someone already said, even one going off can hurt. Half a dozen is downright devastating. This is going to heavily incentivize bringing classes/specs with access to aoe stuns/disorients/etc. on a short enough cooldown to be up for each sequence.

1 Like
20

I tried a couple dungeons… ill be honest the dungeons still feel extremely overtuned compared to healing and hp. Its tough to give good feedback on dungeons till we get healing macro enviroment in bettershape.

The requires looking at healer tuning, Health bars, Monster damage profiles, Defensives, Stops, Leech and Avoidence (was a start). We need to touch so much more… attrition healing has not been achieved.

1 Like