The addition of fortified/tyrannical as a baseline scaling affix had sound reasoning in the sense that smoothing out the difficulty progression for more casual players was a reasonable thing to do - however, in an expansion where the dungeons were very clearly designed with an infinitely scaling system in mind (evidence of this can be seen in the massive sweeps of nerfs we’ve seen to dungeons), this change feels like double jeopardy. The dungeons were designed to be inherently harder than Legion with more “mandatory” mechanics and BFA dungeons require much more thought be placed into group composition. This has resulted in 2 major detriments to the M+ community:
1.) Meta compositions (think DH/Boomy/Rog) that cause a lot of players a hard time getting into groups if they aren’t FOTM or overqualified in io or ilvl, or both.
2.) Rampant depletion of keys due to players simply leaving a group when something goes wrong.
In both cases, a system that was once enjoyable and accessible at low levels of gameplay has become stressful with a barrier to entry that is not proportionate with its rewards. High level players aren’t as affected because they often have access to multiclassing viable alts and the capability to deal with BFA dungeon design, but most players aren’t at that level which leaves the majority of the community holding the bag.
Challenging content is a good thing, but in a system that scales infinitely, why the need for this double jeopardy of fort/tyr on all keys when BFA dungeons were designed to be inherently harder? All this is without mentioning the unfun synergy of fortified with the overwhelming majority of affixes affecting trash, not to mention we end up with a total of 4 affixes by +10 in BFA instead of the 3 we had in legion. Imo it needs to be reassessed in some way, either removed entirely or added back to >+10s with a lesser modifier.
Far easier if you can to do a 11 or even 12 to up to 13. There are weeks where raising a 9 is pure hell simply because if you get the wrong dungeon good luck getting a competent group for it. Some are lucky because they simply can beg their friends for a key.
I only raise it from a 9 on certain weeks. On bad chain of affixes I try to do a 11 or higher so I don’t have to bother raising next week and even the one after that.
This should be repeated, timers feel oppressively tight, leading to tanks making massive pulls and kiting rather than actually tanking and using odd skips and shroud to avoid the harder trash pulls instead of being efficient and smart with pulls.
Shrine could drop the entire last boss’ room and feel complete because it’s entirely too long of a dungeon and the checkpoint for death is so far from the third boss that any death loses a good 30s in just running time doing nothing. This needs to be totally redesigned and shortened. The bridge is probably the one spot that just feels unnecessary in its length for a gap between the second and third bosses. The swim at the end is an extra “f u” to the group since only a few people have swim speed and it’s once again unnecessary. Giving us a teleport instead of these runs could be an easy adjustment but that’s really just side stepping the poor design of this dungeon.
Waycrest is one of my favorite dungeons but sanguine is entirely unbearable on any week due to the narrow corridors… reducing mob density could help give us some room to use the chambers for dropping pools instead of having to fight in tight halls, but the maggots dropping pools is the real issue and it could just be as easy to flag all maggots as not dropping sanguine pools.
King’s Rest has been tuned a bit better but the bezerker bleed still hits like a truck and basically means death over a single stack. Maybe make it not stack? Also another unbearably long dungeon for running due to poor checkpoint spacing… maybe just add 1-2min to the timer? Idk how you’d honestly shorten or reduce the trash in here without minimalizing it.
AtalDazar has the colossi on the living side that everyone skips - maybe retune those so the dead side isn’t as preferable for every week?
Freehold enforcers are unfairly brutal on the tank… can we get the toss to target random melee? This way the stacked melee groups will be less optimal at least for one dungeon and takes pressure off the tank role that is already in short supply.
Tol dagor has been tuned down a bit better but we still have some situations where the third boss is basically unwinnable if the kegs drop at the wrong moment in the wrong spots… especially on tyrannical where you have to keep the kegs managed for far longer - if she happens to call for them right before she casts her spells there’s little you can do to survive since the explosions will also one shot everyone except the tank… can we return the damage down a tad so one explosion isn’t a wipe on tyrannical but stacking a bunch will still be lethal?
Underrot feels a bit more balanced overall after the various tweaks but the second boss’ room is still filled with trash and still is the single longest clear that cannot be skipped in that dungeon… can we get a slightly different positioning or perhaps assortment of trash? All of these are annoying to deal with and have more abilities combined that we have to deal with than any other bosses… I know this is nitpicking but spending 10min clearing a single room to fight a single boss feels like bad pacing for the dungeon and I’d much rather fight a bit more trash later on than have to dance around the boss to grab these dumb flowers and bugs… it’s not the difficulty but rather the “fun” factor which goes right out the window with this tedium, we still need the % so it’s not like I’m asking for the dungeon to be straight easier.
Temple feels better overall, but even with the cyclone strike animation mostly fixed it needs a better broadcast it feels. I’d also like to see the heart guardians tuned a tiny bit, they hit like a truck and stack an increasing damage debuff - again a tank specific problem that begins to become a serious issue on fortified weeks (bridge to last boss) and tyrannical weeks (last boss adds) which can’t be slowed or even pushed around… if we could kite them that would make a huge difference…
Not trying to be nit picky, if things don’t change at all that’s how it is, but there’s some room to take pressure off the tanks and healers and make m+ overall more enjoyable for everyone and still present challenges.
I’m a little confused - you’re saying doing an 11 or a 12, with the third affix attached and increase in difficulty, is easier than doing a 9?
While I’m pretty confident that is objectively untrue, I also don’t think that’s a good counterpoint to my points about why people push keys because the people that believe and only do higher keys to get a 10 are a smaller audience that are doing a significantly less amount of keys than the community I am speaking about that only does higher keys to actually push them multiple times throughout a week. While the people you are talking about may try and get their one key over 10 in a week, the people I am talking about are doing this dozens of times per week.
No, not easier but more convenient. I prefer tackling the extra difficulty especially on easier weeks so the one after that where it might be far more annoying I don’t have to.
Oh I know, I was just replying to that specific part of your post, nothing more
I agree with most of your points, my only worries with what people were suggesting were infinite 385s which meant raids are a joke after a week because of influx of M+ gear. While yes +15s week 1-2 were very difficult, in reality if blizzard implemented 385s for +15 that means +12 would be 375 lets say and +14 380, or something like that. This means if you spent enough time, you’d progress your gear from first doing 12s and then 14s to a point where +15s would feel as easy as now except very early on because you’d be so geared in a week or 2 of grinding M+. If gear from M+ is same ilvl but somewhat time gated just like gear from raids, it would be okay.
I think the first step and most obvious step should be buffing weekly M+ box to 385, its very confusing why it is 5 ilevels below mythic raid gear.
Reduce the amount of trash and total health/damage by 5%.
Create a surrender button that allows the team to forfeit the dungeon without a penalty.
Create a penalty for leaving a mythic plus early. Adding an icon next to the player name in the LFG window for that week and a debuff so others and the group leader knows that they leave early. If the player D/C randomly have a separate icon. This system was used back in the day in StarCraft rank system. If I recall it was dropped, or leave(?).
Or if someone leaves the dungeon early everyone gets a 20% damage buff as long as the time is depleted. Or if the key is depleted allow someone else to fill their spot and prevent the first person from getting gear.
The entry level to mythic+ is really hard and players are more scarce at those levels them +10 and above. A system to motivate higher key runners to run lower keys.
Also this game has no tutorial to get into higher content. People don’t even want to read their spell book or the dungeon journal, add something so these people know what an interrupt or a dispel is, where it tell you that you have to do these things, you know like hey don’t stand in that swirley you will die. Everyone is trying to run +10s and have no idea what they are getting into. All this welfare gear is giving people the idea that you can just waltz in there because it is the only place to get an upgrade and then they face reality and ruin a key. We need to bridge the gap between people that know how to play the game and the ones that don’t.
My biggest problem from a healer standpoint is that fortified is so much more difficult then tyrannical because some of the adds that you can not stun can not interrupt, they are physical ranged damage so you have to find corners or outcrops to Los them to get them to move as they stand in things like sanguine. Balancing fortified to bring it on par with tyrannical would be a big deal. Cheers
Obviously I would not want them to remove the ability to downgrade keys. Sorry if that wasn’t clear. I know there are a lot of potential oddities, but all I care about it is removing incentive for leavers from the game, as now it seems many think its better to actually leave keys than just complete semi-unsuccessful ones.
I feel like a way to target keys needs to be implemented to be honest. Let’s be serious, while the rewards of M+ gear-wise are fine (in my opinion) there is a substantial amount of players that do M+ for score from raider(dot)io. While this isn’t technically supported by blizzard, it does the community harm by not acknowledging that it exists. Perhaps once you get to a certain level of key (maybe anything above a 12 or 13 or something) the key could be universal, or you could even use Diablo 3’s rift system in that you can do any dungeon on any level of key that you’ve completed it at.
Leave this accessible to only high keys so that it’s purely for those who are pushing score. I’m not even talking about myself here as I haven’t been too invested with score this season. The deleting of keystones was a decent fix for this, but the bottom line is some dungeons some weeks are so undesireable that people simply won’t do them. This was the case in legion as well (think blackrook hold with necrotic and the bats, or really any high tyrannical week). You will never achieve a point where all dungeons are equal across all affixes, and this is a good thing, so the ability to do what dungeon we want during affixes needs to be implemented.
Personally I like doing hard dungeons on “hard” weeks, this is why I don’t really care about score, but I’m an anomaly here. I don’t know what the solution is, but the system as it is right now in terms of facilitating score sucks, and needs to be addressed. While score isn’t supported by blizzard, it is a form of progression that a lot of the community enjoy, and blizzard should facilitate it.
I agree with the targeted keystone idea, only because the dungeon balance in this expansion in regards to affixes is completely horrible.
I’ll give you an example of motherlode/shrine. Both of these dungeons were cake walk last week on “Tyrannical Teeming Volcannic” while this week on “Fortified Sanguine Grievous” both of these dungeons will leave you in the hospital for chemotherapy. Its absolutely absurd how these dungeons flip from being completely free to borderline cancer in just a reset.
Seeing them implement nerfs to the last boss of shrine today was a step in the right direction in doing an overall dungeon balance, something i think we all agree kings rest could also use. But the biggest issue i think remains is the affix rotation. These “hard” weeks are basically just AFK weeks, like who wants to run keys on sanguine grevious fortified week if they get a shrine key out of their box, as opposed to if they got an atal dazar during the week in their box. Its just hovering over the uninstall button levels of frustrating getting what is statically proven ( not perceived) difficult key on a crappy affix week.
I think that if white mobs ( non elites) didn’t drop sanguine puddles, and sanguine puddle sizes were altered on the size of the mob, dungeons like shrine and motherlode wouldn’t be such cancer on sanguine. I guess what I’m trying to get across, is we need to not only balance the dungeons in according to numbers, but to balance them in how they interact with the affixes. Because we all know, affixes and their interaction in dungeons was not tested.For example, infest and bolster was not tested properly, especially if you have ever done that crap in waycrest manor or alliance variant of siege or even as simple as kings rest. On the fortified bolster skittish week on Kings Rest, they put infest in the kings room that just bolster and make those already insane packs give 20% hp and dmg, like who thought that was a good idea.(yes i know you can CC them somewhat, except for the teleporting infest skeleton in the king pack, but its just ridiculous it was designed to be like that)
My M+ team hit the holiday break right after the changes were made but one thing we did notice in KR was in tyr keys on the council fight the axe DOT seems overtuned. First one is fine (you have defensive for a reason) but we had a couple of times where one person would be focused by the dot and by the third time there aren’t enough externals/defensive in the party to save them.
I think visually you could clean up a few bosses, especially those the face a particular direction and fire something off.
I’m not necessarily speaking for myself, but I can certainly see why people have issue seeing where cyclone strike is facing in ToS, the hindering cleave in SoTS and to some extent the last boss in KR. These mechanics generally aren’t a problem when presented in raids, simply because of the shear size of the bosses in a raiding environment. Shrinking them down to player size causes a vast majority of these issues because things becomes visually cluttered.
By no means do I want mechanics easier, just visually easier to see. A good example of this is making the cross fire animation on the last boss in TD a lot easier to see in 8.1. You could probably look at doing some visual clean up of the second boss in SoTS because that boss is an absolute mess to visualize. Not a fan of eye strain. Even if it breaks immersion, I think most people would prefer rainbow tornadoes for example to make it easier to dodge, as opposed to ones that blend in with the background because they are barely visible.
Tyrannical and fortified are redundant affixes and they make balancing dungeons are nightmare. They do what the key level should be doing for increased difficulty. I just don’t get it.
Sanguine is in need of a Nerf. - Less healing, less area, less damage.
Last boss in siege is bugged still. Having to dismiss my pet multiple times and have it not be able to attack anything on the last platform is getting really old.
Shrine bosses need a health nerf. Second boss in shrine: The tornado’s do too much damage and the fast movement they do intermittently is very difficult to avoid. Sometimes tornadoes cover the ward you need to stand in.