We’ve had essentially the same M+ formula since Legion, and it’s got me thinking, what can be done to improve it?
The current version has some pretty glaring problems (notably how it inevitably turns into a survival check, the loot system doesn’t work for the people who want to be there, while being far too powerful to ignore for those that don’t on top of being overly rewarding of failure). On top of that, the design is honestly pretty lazy, and uninteresting (generally you should gain mechanics as you go up in difficulty, not remove them) So how can we fix all this?
My thought is to borrow some ideas from Horrific Visions. Bring in a version of sanity as a re-skin of the timer, where getting hit by avoidable damage from bosses/lieutenants will drain your sanity, if it reaches 0 you die and have to be rezzed by an ally giving you half their current sanity. Important to note here is that this type of sanity loss will not scale with key level.
If the entire party reach 0 sanity, you are kicked out of the dungeon, and it resets itself. To offset this, all keys are effectively always resilient, and key levels get re-worked (but more about that later)
To compensate for how this would impact difficulty, mob damage done scaling is reduced from 7/10% exponential, to a flat 12% linear. Same damage on +2, same damage on +12, with lower keys doing slightly more damage (max difference at +10, which would do about the same damage as a current +11), and higher keys doing far less damage. Mob HP scaling unchanged from current,
To re-work key levels, we borrow from Masks. Essentially the idea here is to allow the leader to chose what extra challenges to add to every run. Have there be 9 masks per season, that can change or be rotated in/out between seasons, where you get 1 for simply completing any keystone, then the other 8 come from completing each individual dungeon with at least 1 mask active. Only the person with the key has to have unlocked a mask to activate it, but everyone unlocks any mask can earn from that run and don’t have.
Your keystone will still have a level, and be for a random dungeon, same as it does now with resilient. But when you go to put it in, you have to choose which masks to activate, and each key level will have a minimum number of masks required (current thought is you have to add a mask every odd key level, so all 9 are always active on all +19s and above).
For loot, you’ll now have a maximum number of runs that can award gear on a given track per week, and if you run a higher key than you have rewards available, it will give the next highest reward it can (much like how visions do it). To allow this to work, all M+ loot is now completely untradable.
Currently thinking (keeping the same 2 items per dungeon run randomly distributed), 4 dungeons for myth at +13 or higher (5 masks), 8 dungeons for hero gear from +5 or higher (2 masks), 8 dungeons for champion at any key level at all. Once you’ve completed all those runs, any loot you would get will be warbound veteran, with an upgrade to warbound champion at a certain rating (currently thinking 2500).
Vault ilvl is still determined by key level and matches end of dungeon drops, but not subject to the lockout restrictions (so you can still do 8 +13s for 3 myth options in vault).
TL;DR:
- Borrow sanity from visions, but reduce incoming damage at higher key levels.
- Borrow masks from visions, so instead of having fixed extra mechanics per week, you can pick and choose per dungeon (so your weekly myth vault key is now pick 5 of your choice out of a possible 9).
- All keys are always resilient
- Allow myth from end of dungeon, but add a lockout to how many attempts per week at each upgrade track, and remove gear trading.
- More warbound alt gear if you grind.