M+ pack complexity

Community General Discussion
1

Do any other tanks find that there are packs in the 5 mans with too much going on? For example the pack before the 2nd boss in spires. It has:

Bleed dot(left side only)
Physical range with a disengage
A healer/big melee hitter with dispellable buff
Stacking magic dot
Interpretable hard hitting caster with dangerous dot(right side only)
Frontal attack with an aura that reduces aoe

I think packs like this are a bigger issue than the tank busters were.

2 Likes
2

I just grab the spear thingy on the first boss and stun aoe them. If you have two kyrian members then even better.

3

Lead - sheep the X , silence blue , tank grab the skull and run
Dps : wat??
Heal : you guys suck /quit
Tank : Oh well !!Cya losers :sunglasses:

5 Likes
4

I think it is fantastic. This type of thing is exactly what I want to see out of dungeons. I remember Magister’s Terrace trash being fantastic back in the day and wishing more dungeon trash packs were like this. I think part of the reason Vanilla aged so poorly was that you’d have a lot of mobs who would just cast cleave and maybe an AE fear and that was it. They were just annoying and hit the tank mildly hard.

Dungeon trash packs should have a variety of different threats that ask for the player to do things - kicks, stuns, dispels, kiting, etc.

The reason why Fort weeks are push weeks isn’t because Fort is easier, but because Fort has more of a skill-gap, with trash counterplay being more important to success. I think having a healthy skill gap is a good thing for the game.

6 Likes
5

I don’t remember Magister’s Terrace having a timer, though…

9 Likes
6

I want to have to do things. But that pack is just over the top.

If you compare the packs I wrote about to all the bosses in SL mythic dungeons. The pack has far more mechanics to deal with.

1 Like
7

This is fair. I think I’ll be using more cc next time I come to those packs.

8

I was just thinking that it should return as an M+ in Shadowlands.

Magister’s Terrace should have a comeback.

You can use CC to split the pack. You can also use the Spear you got earlier in the dungeon. Why isn’t trash allowed to be hard? This seems like a very raid-centric thought, when trash is a lot of the meat of dungeons in the first place.

9

M+ this xpac sucks.

Everything hits tank too hard

Multiple casters every pack

Target cap

Linear dungeon design

3 Likes
10

People say you can’t use CC because of the timer, but then two dps die to a mechanic wasting 10 seconds of penalty time plus run back time… a lot of groups I’ve pugged even 8s with would be better off using one or two CCs on key mobs. I’m not saying every pack but the really difficult ones

11

What’s bad to me is that the tank gets hammered by abilities that aren’t even casted or channeled in a lot of packs.
The melee damage is generally higher than any ability you can interrupt in a lot of packs.
If the goal was to make the trash complex and require group communication or cc, which I am ok with, then the big damage should come from those abilities that need kicked or stunned. Some packs this is true, but a lot of packs only have a meaningful interrupt here and there in the form of a heal or knock back. Some have interruptable casts that do sub 5% damage to the tank, meanwhile the tank just got chunked by white melee damage…

3 Likes
12

I agree with you but I would like to clarify my point. Complexity, difficulty, and depth are not the same thing.

For example:

Stitching assistant in NW before the second last boss are difficult. They hit really hard and when they chase a dps they can one shot them. The pack has great depth because you can have a player intercept their throw cleaver OR use it to hit a mob. But they aren’t complex. There are three things going on : The throw, interrupt, and fixate.

13

Its not just a tanks job, though. Its everyone’s job to control that pack. Team effort, and all.

14

I agree. But it’s also out of line compared to most other packs.

15

It depends on how you pull, I suppose. My group usually pulls the entire first platform together, on tyrannical weeks anyway, and that requires a whole lot more coordination. That said, I can see your point, for a single pack, it does have a lot going on.

Edit: I lied, we don’t usually get the pack at the top of the stairs, usually too hard to group them all up.

1 Like
16

Spires is a complete nightmare to heal on fortify week. Nearly every single pack has multiple spells that need to be interrupted, and even if you’re on top of interrupts they still hit like a truck. That place sucks.

17

The only issue I agree with. I do agree that a number of these dungeons are overly linear and require the use of invis pots to skip/avoid trash you don’t want to fight. I know casuals in heroics and M0s whine about routing around trash if it isn’t literally blocking your way… but how much game time is spent on non-timed vs timed content?

18

The particular pack in question, I’ve done with and without CC.

Problems with CC on that pack, in particular:

  1. You’re at the start of a new area and there’s very little room to pull back so as to leave space around the CC’d stuff, making it more prone to breaking with all the passive AOE everybody has in their specs, now (including tanks).
  2. You’re at the start of a new area and there’s very little room to kite, particularly to drop those bleeds.
  3. You’re at the bottom of the stairs which makes ground-targeted abilities harder to see and avoid.
  4. You’re at the bottom of the stairs which can cause line-of-sight issues not just for DPS but also for healers if the tank decides to try and kite UP the stairs instead of on the entrance landing.
  5. Non-interruptable abilities on non-stunnable trash (as was mentioned above by another poster).
  6. The best mob to CC is the Dark Praetor IMHO, but Mechanical mobs are immune to a lot of CC.
  7. Steps/small area/no room to pull back cause even bigger problems with Storming or Sanguine. But then again, that’s true for most pulls in this expansion’s claustrophobic broom closet dungeons.

It’s a problematic pull.

But hey, go Kyrian, get the spears, tank gets a free bleed remover (phial), everything’s hunky-dory.

2 Likes
19

I feel personally attacked! /s

But I agree with what you said.

20

It was more about how my life as a tank became much, MUCH easier when I switched covenants to Kyrian. And not just in Spires, either.

Covenants being a “meaningful choice” is such hogwash.