Quazii released a HoV guide video today ( check it out here if you want https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOW0FLAm1mA ), and after a basically flawless run with a non-pug group that had 0 deaths until 2 people died in the final seconds of the last boss, they only had 1:34 left on the +20 timer.
Any single group wipe, or 2-4 more deaths where DPS would have been down for half of some trash pulls and they wouldn’t have timed. There is ZERO wiggle room on this timer. You either have a 100% flawless run or you don’t time it on high keys.
If Blizzard wants timers to be this difficult, fine, that’s okay. I’d be perfectly fine with that IF IT WAS CONSISTENT across all dungeons. When you can +2 just about any SBG with a lot more deaths, group wipes, slow DPS, etc. on the same key level, it’s obvious that there’s an imbalance in timer leniency and it’s really frustrating.
Azure Vaults is another dungeon that has a massively strictly timer than other dungeons.
People have been running things for over a month, and we know blizzard has all sorts of data on key completion, time, etc. Why do you think they aren’t adjusting timers and leaving these obvious massive disparities in key completion difficulty in the game for this long?
You are using one person’s video and using it to establish universal truths. The HoV timer is tighter than some of the others, but it’s not to the point of it requiring absolute perfect runs.
Since you are using a streamers annecdotal experience let me share with you some of mine.
Timed a +17 with 21 deaths including 2 full wipes.
Timed a +18 with 12 deaths including 1 full wipe.
Those runs were nowhere near perfect and wasted minutes with death penalty, run backs, and trash uptime.
We are also only 5 weeks into a ~6 month long season. People are still gearing up through +20 end of dungeon drops and vault rewards. We are still ~15 ilvls below cap.
SBG is obviously the outlier among the dungeons and should be buffed.
You’re right, I should’ve supplied more data. It can definitely look like I’m biased based off of one person’s video and only basing my point of view on one run. Here’s some more context to why I think it’s a massive outlier in timer difficulty:
Here’s the number of completed +24 and above runs per dungeon:
All data is courtesy of raider.io, and yes, I’m looking high level keys as I stated in my original post. Looking at this data objectively, I think it’s hard not to say that HoV has the tightest timer out of all dungeons especially considering none of the trash or bosses are particularly mechanically challenging.
When the dungeon with the lowest amount of +24 runs is ~60% LOWER than the next lowest (AV), there’s an obvious problem.
Again, I’m not arguing for buffing/nerfing timers. I’m advocating for CONSISTENCY in difficulty.
You are inferring that it’s due to the timer and not with mob/boss scaling. Hyrja and Fenryr actually scales very hard. Fenryr’s soak mechanic specifically becomes an issue with higher keys and the charge needs to be cheesed or people need defensives.
Out of all the dungeons I would actually say that HoV leads to the most deaths due to frontals and casts going off.
Instead of looking at bleeding edge keys, +20 would be a better filter because that’s what dungeons were scaled for with top achievements and rewards.
I’m not denying that HoV is one of the most challenging this season, but I dont think we can come to the conclusion that it’s due to the timer and not other factors.
If anything your data shows that HoV is more inline with the rest and SBG and CoS need significant dungeon buffs.
Yeah I think they can tune down the bottom just a tad and buff the top. I feel like AA and NO have trash and bosses that feel like what they should be at a given key level.
Blizz has already made it pretty clear that’s not going to happen. Their philosophy seems to be to buff dungeons before releasing them (meaning they will buff dungeons on the PTR to season 2) and only go down after release. It’s safe to say that SBG and CoS won’t be buffed, however HoV and AV are likely to be nerfed.
Yeah I know that’s their philosophy, but I disagree with the only nerfs no buffs ideology. It’s like how JY was a complete joke in Season 4, but they never touched it.
I don’t doubt they will nerf HoV and AV with all the bickering happening. I can agree it can use some tuning, but to say it needs to be a near perfect run is what I disagree with.
The part that really surprised me was that it was a joke in BFA and they didn’t buff it while they had a chance.
Relative to other keys I could see how people would get that impression. Things will assuredly get easier as more gear becomes available, but even at a 420ish ilvl, there’s going to be a stopping point of HoV while SBG is well above it. SBG will easily hit JY territory if they don’t bring other keys in line with it, and as I mentioned it’s not going to go the route in buffing SBG. If you’re used to doing 20’s as your end game, buckle up, you might be doing 25’s this season.
Personally i think AV and HOV need a timer extension and RLP needs to be nerfed to the ground an ideal world is one where the dungeons are not as imbalanced as they are now
Bear in mind there’s increasing scaling on keys now. Even if HoV gets made easier in some trouble areas, it’s not like people are magically going to start doing 60-75% more damage, which is what it would take to jump up many keystone levels.
The timer is definitely part of it though. Anyone doing high keys is saying that you need to combine packs in HoV to beat the timer. That’s not true of any other dungeon and if it is true, it means the timer is too tight.
This dungeon had 7 minutes taken off its original timer and trash count was not really changed at all. It could do with reduced trash count more than longer timer, since 38 minutes is long enough for a dungeon already
The other option if messing with trash count could be problematic, is to just do a blanket HP nerf. If you reduce the HP of all trash by 15%, that certainly affects how tight the timer is. Even another option is to reduce RP time at various points.
Honestly I think the most egregious thing about the place is the lack of checkpoints. You ever time how long it takes to run from the start of the dungeon back to any of the bosses?