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

In Development The War Within Beta Test
21

We need to be scaled to a much higher ilvl than what we’re currently scaled to, at least for anything past a 7. I can barely give meaningful feedback about deaths adding so much more to the timer because I’m dying to literally everything that looks at me, and I’d certainly never be able to give meaningful feedback about +12 keys where Tyrannical+Fortified and Xal’atath’s Guile are all active at once, because I know with absolute certainty that I’d get one-tapped by anything as it currently stands.

I’m getting one-tapped by Blightbone’s Heaving Retch in an 8 right now with current HP values and I’m genuinely threatened by the Zolramus Siphoner on Nalthor the Rimebinder as any cloth class right now, which is genuinely unheard of. I’ve done this place on a 24/25 during SL seasons 2/3 which isn’t even close to as high as the highest Necrotic Wake keys that have been done during that expansion and I’ve never been afraid of the Zolramus Siphoner adds, be it on a Priest or on a Hunter. At the moment I genuinely cannot tell if the dungeons are overtuned or if it’s a product of us being literally LFR ilvl doing what used to be the equivalent of a +18 (or higher) key.

On the topic of Necrotic Wake, the angels that take you up to Zolramus (after the 2nd boss) have a high chance of getting stuck in the air and never coming down. This full pug group I was in bricked an 8 NW because we had all five angels get stuck in the air so nobody could go back up to wipe to Nalthor a seventh time.

EDIT: 7 Grim Batol, also a pug group. Went reasonably smoothly until Erudax took us a very large number of attempts. More on this crapshoot of a boss in a bit.

Timer seemed mostly forgiving up to a point, but every boss except Throngus was miserable and there are way, way, way too many casters throughout the dungeon, to the point where I felt like a liability on my SPriest despite the spec’s good damage. Ascendant took up the lion’s share of our required stops and that affix had some incredibly cursed overlaps at times (especially on Throngus, ironically) to the point where I’d have preferred to do this on a 12 and not a 7 because of how many stops this affix requires.

  • General Umbriss: Shadow Breath has a fine visual to some extent, but I think it needs another 1-2 seconds added to its cast time since if you’re caught in a bad spot you genuinely cannot fix that mistake on many classes. Wasn’t too awful otherwise, though, but getting Ascendant stops while running from breaths wasn’t very fun. Our tank was getting absolutely annihilated on this fight.

  • Throngus was a very straightforward boss on his own. There’s a decent bit of damage going out whenever he casts Forge Weapon but nothing unmanageable. My only issue with this boss isn’t even a thing past a +12; in our run, we had Xal’atath’s Bargain: Ascendant activate while our tank was kiting the boss during Molten Mace, a large number of the orbs spawned inside pools of lava so I couldn’t get them with Psychic Scream, and enough of them went off because we couldn’t stop them that Throngus proceeded to get quite a few stacks, Usain Bolt his way over to our tank, and melee them for 44 million with 14 million more of it being eaten up by Will of the Necropolis. Like, our horrific ilvl scaling notwithstanding, this boss would’ve unironically felt more fair on a 12 than he felt on a 7 because of this dumb and bad overlap. This boss, however, is cool and fine.

  • Drahga Shadowburner+Valiona was an absolutely miserable boss. Between the Twilight Buffet hitting very hard and these adds spawning a tad too frequently (and double adds spawning far too spread out once Drahga mounted Valiona) this wasn’t a very fun boss to play as a ranged. Moreover, having a Death Knight on this boss is extremely cursed since Abomination Limb will actively get your party killed by gripping adds into melee. I believe we had one of these adds fixate the tank during Abomination Limb which resulted in the four non-tank players getting nuked from orbit and our tank having to solo the last 11% of Valiona’s HP.

  • Erudax was a horrible, horrible boss fight as well, and it didn’t need to be that way. The Void Tendrils have a really nasty tendency to get obscured by the boss, who is enormous, which makes trying to navigate around them/through the boss to get to the safe area of the Shadow Gale very frustrating. Crush was doing far too much damage relative to our tank’s HP (it was hitting the Blood DK for literally 95% of his HP every time) as well. But by far the worst thing about this fight was the fact that the Twilight Hatchlings would leave a debuff on players for a decent amount of time that would increase the shadow damage they’d take from Erudax’s already pretty spicy mechanics. There’s a very weird, very specific window where killing them is relatively low impact, but if you kill them too quickly or too slowly the end result is that everyone’s getting obliterated by one of Void Surge if it’s too early or Abyssal Corruption if it’s too late. Abyssal Corruption in particular was disgustingly painful, even without the damage taken multiplier. If these adds didn’t apply a debuff when they die this boss would be a lot more tolerable; as it stands, there are comps that would just passively kill them too quickly and cause major issues.

22

Stonevault +2

First group I’ve been in (I exclusively PUG) that actually stayed together to complete the dungeon.

First: Bargain affix i’ve noticed has less time between spawns than shadowfury is on CD, so it made it so that I could only contribute to every other round.

First Boss: Homie does a LOT of damage. Honestly, I think the largest portion was the fact that pretty much all the pillars were getting broken at the same time (no PUG coordination). It feels like this fight doesn’t allow the healer to breathe for a second. Also, as demo, reducing my mobility for no other reason than just cause, this fight had a lot of moving requirements to dodge said spikes and reposition to hit said spikes. The time between EDNA’s abilities is quite small, making for frequent repositioning.

Second boss: This boss is something else. On the 4th attempt, I figured out the dance. That said, things I noticed:

  • Pretty sure the frontal glowy redball metal daddy shoots out has a wider “hit” radius than the actual animation, cause it would kill me simply for passing by.
  • The giant metal box will 1 shot you if you are traveling through the warlock gate as it passes through.
  • The puddles are a bit large for that small of a fight area.
  • Orbs were kind of annoying to worry about with all that was going on. Frankly, I am not sure that I agree with the Bargain affix proc’ing during boss fights.
  • Camera angles were crazy, I had to zoom much closer to my character to keep from horrendous graphics clipping.
  • I learned not to be near the fire wall that goes up at the section you walk in, because if I was near it, I couldn’t place my ground AOE anywhere but the ceiling for some reason.

Third boss: Let me just say, the second half of this dungeon is MUCH easier than the first half of this dungeon. This boss felt like a vacation compared to the first two. Kept us on our toes and took forever (we were a demo lock, MM hunter, and fury warrior… getting those crystals down to prevent the shield was a feat of strength). Overall, I thought this fight was pretty smooth and relaxing after what we’d just been through.

Fourth Boss: Not going to lie, we wiped on this one pretty fast the first time until we realized that you had to go to the portal. Healer was struggling and when the boss died we had only 2 people alive. Couldn’t really tell if the intention is for the entire group to get near portal at the same time? Or if it is intended that one person goes to portal, it collapses and spawns elsewhere and then another person is supposed to go it at the new location. the dot that needs to be removed by the portal though hurts like a mofo when you factor in the other unavoidable mechanics.

2 Likes
23

Ascended probably needs to be handled differently, whether that be less orbs and they’re soaks, or more frequent and less orbs like explosive orbs. Something that doesn’t make it a job for a handful of specs (many are tanks like gorfiend and balance range bear shout) out of the 35 or so in the game now.

Also weird that this one effects boss fights, specifically Ara-Kara’s second boss.

That dungeon, Ara-Kara, City of Echoes, is actually such an over tuned with how powerful those poisons are on the last boss. The uninteruptable volley hurts a lot, and a dispel phase mechanic to stagger the waves is just sadistic. Not seeing really anyone with clears on it in dungeon finder, and only clear I have is a blood dk soloing the last 20% of the fight in a group with severe pumpers.

24

Please, Blizzard. For three seasons in a row now it has felt like everything in every dungeon nearly one shots you or does one shot you without a big cooldown up.

Just stop.

Just for the love of the game stop.

Whatever your baseline metric is for the amount of incoming player damage needs to be, drop it by 30% at a minimum.

4 Likes
25

  • Blightbone boss (necrotic wake) could use a frontal indicator (heaving retch ability) where you can clearly see it.

  • Repulsive visage cast in mists of tirna scithe first boss fears everyone and there doesn’t seem to be a counterplay for it. maybe it shouldnt fear when people turn around or something

26

Necrotic Wake
Post-second boss, went up and somehow something from the middle of the instance pulled and snapped to us (I guarentee we were not in combat before flying up)

Upon wiping and releasing downstairs, the kyrians that were supposed to fly us up were stalled mid-air and never flew back down

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shaman tremor totem works on the group, as all other fear breaking abilites

28

lololol… if this goes live like this, boralus and grom batol won’t see me EVER. These dungeons need major tuning. They are laughably hard

1 Like
29

Regarding Ascended, can we move away from “periodically occurring” affixes? How about handling it like Encrypted, where some packs are visibly marked and, upon engaging said packs, Ascended triggers after a few secs. Or something.

Would make it a lot more predictable and therefore remove a lot of the cognitive load.

30

Expecting a very large tuning pass to almost every single dungeon next week or the week after. Biggest offenders are Stonevault just literally all of it, Dawnbreaker, Siege of boralus first area (2nd area is mostly fine), Mists last area too much wombo potential, City of threads 2nd boss needs massive tuning just straight hard damage reductions and slowed down spell cycles, city of echoes last and first boss need damage nerfs or longer spell cooldowns that allow you to kill adds in a timely manner without losing a lot boss uptime or just spawn the adds next to each other no matter what. Grim batol again every trash mob just needs hard nerfed damage wise or WAY longer spell cds, warlock heal absorb and just the raw dam from mobs needs nerfed

31

Stonevault:

E.D.N.A -

  • The beams should probably only target 2 players. This feels very much like Chrono Lord Deios but if you had 3 orbs to coordinate instead. It would have been a nightmare with 3.
  • The beams should also work like the tank beams from Terros. Give us a full line.
  • The rocks should not be able to stack on top of each other.

Ara-Kara:
Ki’katal - Cultivated Poisons does way too much damage to hit every second. In a 7 it was doing 1.4M dmg per tick every second without having even been hit by it.

Winged Carrier - Why in the world does dashing strike do 900k a hit in a 4? WHY?

Siege first boss - Add a ring to indicate his extendo arm melee range or remove it entirely.

Generally: You’re just turning M+ primarily into a survival game at this rate instead of a dungeon time trial. The damage things do is just unreal. If this is your tuning goal to have us on the brink of death at every waking second, I’m not sure I’m going to make it far into TWW. It’s actively making me start to hate M+ and that’s why I play.

1 Like
32

think they are only looking for mechanical outliers, we are scaled to 580 average ilvl, that is heroic dungeon loot, it is expected not to have an easy time with that gear in a +2 which still compares to +12 DF S3
giving us low gear makes us more vulnearable so unreasonable one shots are easier to find in beta testing

33

Only if you are running keys under 4. 4-6 keys your ilvl scales up to 587, keys 7-9 you scale to 597, and 10+ you scale to 613 so its all relative. They gotta tone down the damage and get us away from 1 shot city. And for some reason so many of the new bosses have pulsing AOE that is just ripping everyone to shreds, 1st boss of Ara-Kara is a huge offender. In a 10 Shrill was hitting for over 1 mil every .5 seconds and then you barely recover from that and another pulsing aoe with ground swirls occurs and then not 10 seconds after that you are back to shrill again.

It is an absolute nightmare for healers. They accomplished the goal of toning down healing but have not let go of the ultra high damage philosophy. Healing is reigned in, time to loosen up on the damage output and let healers actually breathe a little bit. We don’t need to be constantly needing a fresh change of underwear every waking second of a dungeon.

4 Likes
34

First: Xalatath’s Bargain seems to have just stopped working? Like since Friday morning, I haven’t seen it work once in a key. (I’ve been mostly spamming 2s).

It’s been said multiple times, so I’ll just hid the dead horse one more time-- I can’t even complete these dungeons on a +2 with some of the bosses tuning. I see that Prot Pally’s WoG is doing 300K healing on a tank with 6m health… that’s absolutely useless. How am I supposed to survive 1.5m auto attacks with 4m smashes that hit within each other, and survive the following auto? I switch to Blood DK after hearing all the rave reviews, and it’s certainly better, but even some of these big tank smashers take me 100 to zero immediately with their auto attacks…

I am sure Blizzard knows this; tuning is way off-- but we can’t really test it if it’s brutally hard that PUGs will drop immediately when they see the healer and tank simply can’t compete.

(EDIT: After realizing these +2s are representing old +12s, I want to reinforce that tuning may not be the problem, but our ilvl scaling perhaps. Although I still stand by Prot Pal WoG being useless. This testing reminds me when we tested Tazavesh, and I couldn’t even get past the first boss it was so hard.)

Looking forward to the next wave.

35

There are an incredible amount of one-shots and close to one shot damage events in these dungeons and I think it’s a little bit too much.

The new affix, Ascendant, is an improvement over the old affixes although I’m still not entirely happy with it. These dungeons have a consistent need for stops, stuns, interrupts and their AoE varieties. Having to ‘reserve’ your already limited number of stops for this affix is perhaps the intent but this just means I’m having to make the decision of whether we want to die to the thing that’s casting now, or die to the mobs having a billion haste soon. Missing/wasting a stop is already pretty punishing, this compounds that feeling. Especially if you end up running with comps that are lacking in this department.

-75 Seconds

The orbs also spawn way too spread out, meaning not only do we often have to reserve one of our stops to get them all, but multiple, and then likely an interrupt or stun afterwards to catch a straggler.

There are also too many of them, to the point where when they were dealt with, we would get a momentary stutter. We’re on pretty decent machines, that probably shouldn’t happen. Halving the number of orbs to 10 but giving you 2% Haste per orb instead of 1% may help this. It would also be nice for them to stack a little tighter.

The affix also introduces a number of visual clarity problems, I’ve posted details below on specific examples, but it can also be true for a number of trash packs and also goes against your philosophy you posted two weeks ago of ‘reducing visual noise and nameplate clutter’. Did your entire philosophy change in two weeks? Because whilst I thought the affixes you put out a few weeks ago were questionable, the philosophy itself was along the right lines.

Also, for the purposes of testing, maybe having a few days or a week where Augmentation is disabled or made effectively useless might be an idea. I’ve no idea how much data you have of what specs people are playing but I’m worried that these dungeons will only end up being doable if you play Aug, our experience doing some of these keys with an Aug versus without is night and day in terms of survivabilty and mitigation.

EDNA (first boss) states in the dungeon journal for Mythic difficulty that ‘up to’ 3 beams are supposed to go out, but in our experience all 5 players were being targeted. This behaving as intended would likely improve the boss.

My mage friend had some difficulty using his blink ability on the ship.

Speaker Shadowcrown’s seems to enjoy chain casting unkickable casts when inside pools of bad. Perhaps this is just a tank skill issue but still pretty annoying.

The ascendant affix also bugs out on the ship and hovers in the sky next to the boss.

The ‘Dark Orb’ mechanic on Anub’ikkaj’s and his lieutenant trash does an exceedingly high amount of damage even despite having it travel very far away from the group. I’m talking basically the maximum and it still chunked the entire group for the majority of our health pool.

Orator Krix’vizk has major visual clarity problems. A purple floor with a purple boss with purple mechanics on top of a purple affix which clutters the tiny available playspace.

I think changing ‘Shadows of Doubt’ to only impact one player might make it a bit better. We had numerous cases where it was extremely difficult to see orbs if they were travelling through the boss, but there’s barely any space to play with, especially if there’s a Terrorize overlap that there isn’t exactly many places to go with the mechanic. I was also hoping maybe you could pixel-stack with it, but that just stuns you.

The Lingering Influence pool is maybe ticking too fast compared to what the intent seems to be on the dungeon journal, if you get caught being too slow, it’s fair to have some damage dealt to you but receiving multiple ticks in less than a second was pretty gnarly.

Ice Sickles on Fangs of the Queen is probably a bit overtuned.

The trash minigame/find the spy sequence is probably not going to be received well. The premise is potentially fine although doing it four times is perhaps a bit too much. Taking 40-45 seconds just running to the next guy and then another bit of time after you finish waiting for the spider lady to open the door is just not it.

The last boss has some visual clarity problems. If somehow you find yourself inside the encroaching void zone, which is already bad enough, good luck seeing the tentacles when trying to dash to safety. The tentacles in general can be obscured by the boss and whilst I haven’t done it alongside the Ascendant affix, I can’t imagine that helps things.

The angels go on strike if you wipe in the necropolis. One of them does cross the picket line, but their service is pretty slow when there’s a 4 person queue.

This has been true since the first day of the Shadowlands Alpha, so I don’t hold out hope. But inside the necropolis still has some issues with ground-targeted abilities.

Unkickable, practically unstoppable mobs at the beginning of the dungeon are probably overtuned. If you stun/stop them they immediately recast and their damage is tremendously high.

The big Sniper-filled pack before third boss should be looked at, they can all ‘Shoot’ one player in quick succession and you’re not having a good time, maybe a longer cooldown should be added to this ability. Alternatively, although it is probably a lot more work, but it would be cool to see a new ‘Reloading’ casted ability (which then could be stopped?) after they fire a few shots each, and if you successfully stop the cast they should revert to using a sword, dagger or bayonet instead, as a sniper probably would do in a close-quarters situation.

Viq’goth’s demolishing tentacle’s knockback combined with the debuff is a nasty overlap. It basically instagibs people before they hit the ground. Desyncing these would be nice.

2 Likes
36

we are 613 at 10+ which is what i’ve been testing

1 Like
37

Just did some dungeons, the scaling felt pretty rough for our group.

As far as the new affix goes it was fine. They can be a little too spread out requiring multiple things to deal with them. My biggest critique was on mist caller. That fight is pretty cognative heavy for lower end groups and the affix on top of that was pushing it over the top to being too much for that specific fight.