I would like to preface this post by saying that i am not an amazing player. I only started doing m+ in Dragonflight Season 3. That said, i still managed to get all my portals in S3 and S4. I know there are many amazing posts detailing many issues of the current season but i feel like they are missing a pug perspective.
For someone who pugs 90% of the time, this season… it feels really bad. Its not just (in my opinion) overtuned boss damage, its the overlapping mechanics on many bosses. Take for instance the Mists dungeon. Not only do you have to do the puzzle and dodge lines, but you have to do it while evading the fox, doing the affix and taking pretty serious AOE damage. And you do this 3 times. This fight has killed half of my pugs and caused the other half to go over time limit.
There are a few fights of similar nature where 3+ mechanics overlap with the affix. While this might be acceptable in very high keys, dealing with this in lower tier keys just kills groups.
Finally, there is the issue of crests. It seems we cannot get Gilded crests unless we do keys in 9+ or mythic raiding. This is absolutely mental. Considering the current difficulty, it is likely that only a small percentage of people will be able to cross the mythic gear ilvl threshhold.
Is m+ geared to organized groups of high competency level? Because it is sure as hell does not seem to be for genpop. I think damage needs to be tuned but more importantly mechanics need a very serious reconsideration. If not that, then i think gilded crests and myth track vault should likely come from lower difficulty keys.
I’m sorry, but the fact that you are complaining about MIST and this boss in particular kind of invalidates your opinion. The “lines” are not happening constantly and are telegraphed very well. The foxes just need to be CC’d and it goes away. If your pugs are dying to this then they shouldn’t be in that key.
That’s how it should be.
For reference, I am a pug only player and have been since starting M+ in Shadowlands S1. The main issue is that people are rushing into key levels they are entirely not ready for. People need to get competent with mechanics in M0 or low keys before trying to push.
The reward system incentivizes everyone to do just that. You need to get into 7s just to get hero track drops at an appreciable rate(otherwise you might as well be doing delves), you need 9 for crests, and it pushed you to do at least one 10 no leaver else your losing out on a mythic track item every week.
Honestly at the current difficulty it feels like the entire reward structure needs to be shifted down 3 keys.
I’m not complaining about individual mechanics. Individual mechanics are very easy. I will even say that if the fight did not have the puzzle phase, it’d be a very easy fight.
But I am saying that when all 5 elements overlap, which happens often, people die, the fight goes south and wipes happen. In many cases my groups encountered 4 clones with pulsing damage, the fox, the affix and the lines. If the group is not on discord (99% of pugs aren’t) this type of overlapis very tough to manage.
Issue is how undertuned it is not over…people who should be in 2-5 keys instantly skip to 6. Even 8-10s are argubly doable in 605ilv without tier with specific exceptions like cot
I’ve definitely seen it done. But can it be done in a pug group? If you are telling me that you can reliably join a random pug and clear high keys, my only response to that would be that either you are extremely lucky to get good players or i am extremely unlucky to get bad ones LOL!
This has been and always will be the issue with pugging. People apply for/get into keys they have no business being in as they barely know how their spec works and have an even slimmer knowledge of how the dungeon trash/bosses work.
Then they’ll run here and scream “toxic!” when it all goes wrong.
5 and lower are empty of all but lfr players… it is legit easier to pug higher keys so long as you know how to spot someone trying to jump keys and get boosted.
What is it overtuned for? People seem to look at +2 keys with the eyes of DF season 3 and before… So they go in with 585ilvl and when they can’t facetank every mechanic, they call out for nerfes…
The Mist boss in particular… The arrows? 1 side step and you are clear, the fox is CC’able… As a warlock you have Dark Pact on a 1 min CD that should comfortably get you through (Given people don’t aimlessly kill the wrong copy), even if it did, you have Unending Resolve + Health Stone… And this is really given, that the healer does bare minimum.
People just need to stop trying to do keys they aren’t prepared for. Every Mist key I’ve had bricked was solely due to people not knowing what to do. Even had people go “What do we do here??”
But people have that “I MUST DO +9’s NOW!!” mentality… We are at week 3 and people are casually doing what was before +15’s… Ask yourself, were you doing above +12-15’s 2 weeks into a new season before?
started running on my resto druid alt and jesus these low key pugs are a struggle. wait 20 minutes for a tank for him to get punted off the ledge second pull in grim. no fix for it so it is what it is but jfc the struggle is real lol
Agreed. It is hard to figure out who to select in a pug group for a +3 vs a +5. The jump in damage from abilities that low key level players are not use to, meaning they will die.
I’m still running +5 and below at the moment (mostly to learn the new dungeons mechanics) before jumping in to high keys. That said, once the key starts it is 100% obvious who is actually paying attention and who isn’t.
Did a player bait a line in the right direction (at the wall)?
Are people interrupting? (Below a 4 it’s rare and it kills players)
With delves offering gear (and I’m not complaining about that part, I enjoy that option) we have players with gearing able to enter a keystone but without the actual knowledge to do the keystone.
We are just starting week 2 of mythic plus, we have several reoccurring keystones that players are familiar with. Original poster, if you are complaining about the boss in Mists you have other things to worry about as there are bigger problems in some of the other keystones.
FYI mists boss: solve puzzle, kill the “this is not like the others!” Image to get out of that phase. You don’t kill all the images. Also CC the fox. Bait lines to walls or sides (depending if ranged or melee).
Just to add to this for new players. Avoid CoT damage there that can’t be migrated is out of wack.
I do my dungeons on the week end so I haven’t seen the nerf but I would also recommend skipping NW on tyrannical. The third boss without spears is a overturned heals and dps check without much counter play.
The keys this xpac feel very fair imo. Mist is generally considered one of the easiest keys in this set as its very forgiving time wise and the mechanics are very simple. I think you may benefit from taking some time to learn the dungeons and just don’t get to worked up with pugs mechanics overlap as M+ is kinda a way for every one to see various levels of content and every difficulty. lower keys are kind of like LFR plus were in you get to actually see all the mechanics but don’t die immediately so its alot more achievable to someone who is not as sweaty to actually enjoy and feel rewarded. Just take your time breathe and learn the dungeons i promise once you get a grasp of the actual mechanics you’ll look back at most of them and be like “pfft”. ALSO the dodgeball mechanic in mist can kill the fox and the clone so ideally when she does guessing game everyone should go behind the clone and bait the dodge balls to one shot the clone. Technically there are only ever 2 mechanics in that fight once you understand what youre doing!
Depends on the tank. If you have a bear you might as well not even cc as the random moonfire procs will break it. I’ve resorted to snares and people just have to kite.
The fight however does have some painful overlaps if you are pugging. I’ll speak from a tank perspective.
People can’t multi task, what we call multitasking is in fact switching between tasks quickly but we still work on one task at a time. Its an extremely rare person who can has the ability to have different layers of the subconsious work on various problems and than hand the answers off to the conscious mind.
Yes most of the fight is very easy. Dodge the lines when they show up or kiting when the fox gets to close to melee. But the op isn’t talking about individual mechanics but the overlap of all of them occurring at once. The average person is not going to be able to handle 4+ tasks all at once. To recap: Solving the puzzle, while seeing that lines are going to pop and positioning the boss correctly, Dodging the lines, interrupting the cast immediately after, while determining the speed and angle of each of the balls and judging by other players positions and direction to know what you need to grab for the affix all at the same time. This is a massive amount of computing power and most people will suffer from cognitive overload.
The first time people experience this almost everyone fails. Its only after practice that they become progressively better because its no longer in the moment decision making but rather experience allowing them to make those decisions before they happen giving them more time to do things like solve the puzzle.
Its also why things like timers and CD trackers on mobs are important. If you have them you can see dodge ball is coming up in 4 seconds and pattycake has 5 seconds. So I need to position followed by an immediate interrupt. If you don’t have that you need to react instead of preemptive planning.