And they need to be addressed going forward. I know Blizz has announced that they’ve got things in mind, but quite frankly what they’re proposing will make things better but not by much. A lot of what’s wrong with M+ can be broken down into the affixes, dungeon design, and player power/agency.
Affixes
Too many of the affixes are terrible. The only decent ones are the CC orbs, and kill the big add. All the others are bad. Tyran, Fort, and the extra death timer deduction are all lazy. Tyran and Fort are literally just add more numbers to drag things out and add nothing a higher key level doesn’t. Extra death timer is either a nothing burger or salt on the wound and also adds nothing to the key. RNG gather the orbs are terrible because RNG is terrible, and can absolutely go sideways given a boss fight (looking at you Mists of Tirna Scythe). It’s good that it’s being reworked, but I don’t hold high hopes yet. The dispel affix is terrible because it’s one more annoying thing healers have to mange, AND while most classes can handle it, it still leads to some classes getting absolutely shafted.
I’d gladly take some of the older things that Blizz got rid of like necrotic or bursting over Fort and Tyran. At least those can be played around as opposed to just bigger numbers on every enemy. Hell, I’d even take the single add CC affix because more classes can handle it than the dispel mechanic.
Dungeon Design
The way dungeons are made are also a large factor as to the state of M+. Long story short, Blizz min maxed it and made it annoying. From trash packs to boss fights, Blizz has made it a point to make things a giant pain for the players. Starting with boss fights, there are few fights that are mechanically engaging, and most of the “challenge” is sourced from bad scaling.
My favorite bosses this season are Chopper Redhook (Siege of Boralus 1st Boss) and Stitchflesh with Chopper Redhook pulling ahead for a very specific reason I’ll get into in a bit. But first, the reason why I like these bosses is because they are mechanically engaging and there is a large degree of control allotted to the players. For the most part, if things go south, it’s your fault. For Redhook, you can actively EOD the bombs on your own and you can control outgoing damage by killing the adds while it is strictly up to the players to run Redhook or the adds into bombs. For Stitchflesh if you know how to aim hooks, you can manipulate the fight to how you want it, and do really cool things. The only reason Redhook pulls ahead of Stitchflesh is because of the unavoidable DoT and AoE damage on Stitchflesh.
Unavoidable damage and especially unavoidable AoE damage have infested M+ to its core, and all because Blizz wanted to dictate how healers played. Instead of making dungeons more interesting or just letting heals dps, Blizz decided to just make them zug heal and call it engagement and a job well done. Not only does this strike me as incredibly lazy, as it is my firm belief that 80% damage taken by the party should be optional and only as a result of a true mechanics failure (more on that later), but it also restricts the kind of comps you can run. I remember fondly the days of Legion where 1 tank 4 dps was a thing, but now every comp requires a healer just to heal unavoidable bs. It is conceptually boring, and it’d be more fun if we got actual mechanics like Ansurek p1 pops or portals. And this is just the bosses. We haven’t even gotten to trash packs.
Dungeon trash has evolved. Almost every pack has a tank buster, unavoidable damage, or double cast which kinda turns into unavoidable damage, or a mix of or all of the above and sometimes more than one. Blizz has said that they’re rolling back the tank busters, but that’s the least of the issues on the list. They should have rolled back unavoidable damage/double casts because dancing around the group’s healthbars is way more healer stress than just pumping the tank.
The worst thing Blizz did when it comes to trash was mess with caster/ranged trash. For one, they basically ignore the tank. Hunter-type trash basically means unavoidable damage for the group. Caster trash presents a different issue in that every single one of them has the filler cast and the deadly cast. One person cannot cover both kicks with even the best kick in the game alone, and usually there’s more than one caster. Scaling makes it worse as both casts become deadly. And to add salt on the wound, Blizz changed caster AI so that micro cc/pseudo kicks don’t trigger the CD for a spell which means less options. At this point it’s not even a true mechanics failure as opposed to just not having the resource to manage the mechanic. More on resources later.
No dungeon captures everything I find wrong with Blizz’s dungeon design more than Grim Batol this season. Blizz just sprinkled AoE unavoidable damage on all the bosses in there. Umbriss is basically a crappier Hymdall with unavoidable AoE damage and more focus on space management. Throngus is basically a mildly different flavor of himself with unavoidable AoE damage. Dragha literally just got unavoidable damage and AoE damage tacked on. Erudax also got unavoidable damage and AoE damage tacked onto him, and his add mechanic got changed into more tank/healing pressure because of the debuff. Borderline every pack has more than one tank buster or caster or both. Trash is teeming with unavoidable damage be it AoE or DoT. The sad thing is the dungeon isn’t even hard; it just becomes tedious. There is a lot the players can do to mitigate the ick in this dungeon, but it’s all been filtered because…
Player Power/Agency
Got absolutely shafted. It has gotten sooooooo bad in this regard. First Blizz nerfed everyone’s AoE, but not equally. Then Blizz nerfed all the AoE CC. Then Blizz buffed caster AI to not CD from micro CC/pseudo-kicks leaving us with less options. Then Blizz nerfed Prot Pally’s avenger’s shield bounce silences because it was too useful after they nerfed everything else. Then Blizz nerfed DH sigils because it was too useful after they nerfed everything else. And now here we are, in this hell of a M+ meta. If I had to guess what’s next on the utility nerf chopping block, it’d be sin rogue’s AoE silence garrotes that they can spam.
All this tinkering has resulted in is a meta defined by basically an excel spreadsheet of resources from which classes got less things taken away from them by Blizz. Gone are the days of bring the player not the class. While the old strat of giga pull and stun and bung still had class favoritism, more classes could pull it off as opposed to what we have now. There were less required pieces back then. All it took was a tank made of stern stuff and dps that knew timings well. Now you need specific specs to either do 10M dps, silence everything, and/or both.
THE END
All this has culminated into a season of M+ where even Blizz admits they went a little too ham going into the design. Healers are scarce because few people want to deal with all that all the time. Tanks are clenched because everything hurts. And DPS can’t get into groups because people are sticking to meta specs. Most people aren’t happy, and things need to change with M+.
TL;DR: Blizz needs stop min maxing every little thing when they design dungeons and just let players vibe. Loosen the reins, sip on a cold drink, and let the good times flow.
Edit: Because I thought these responses were funny.
Since when did structured use of the English language instantly denote the use of AI. Are we truly at that point already? Would you have me type this post in morse code or bang rocks and sticks together for “authenticity?” Or do you prefer grunts and zugs?
Good thing there’s a TL;DR.
