Anyone else feel this way when going to Tier 7 and above?
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Some are tricky but mostly manageable. I play them as frost though.
Yes, everyone, lol. They’re incredibly unbalanced and favor something like a Fury Warrior. Squishy casters that do no damage outside of their big cooldowns and don’t have the HP or defensives to pull a lot of mobs during those burst windows, which basically describes mages to a tee, will have a terrible time.
It’s basically Choreghast but worse because you don’t have the anima powers and you have to do it every day instead of just once a week. The scaling is also completely broken and the HP of the mobs and the boss is less than double that of a solo run if you do a delve with a full group. So even though they were advertised as solo content you have every incentive to do them as a group. Absolutely dismal state of affairs, atm.
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I love it! Use sheep, slow, all the tools in the kit. Kite stuff around and don’t get hit. But some of the mobs hit like a super truck! So got to use ice block and alter time effectively. I’m a long live the delves kind of guy at this point. I wish we had acces to pvp talents in delves as well cause some of them would make it a riot.
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They feel like a slow slog, but at the moment I am putting that mostly on me. I only started TWW late last week, so my ilvl is still rather low (565-571 for my first four at tier 8).
I may have already used polymorph more in delves than I did in all of DF’s outdoor content. Now if Brann would not keep breaking sheep the way he did in one delve.
I can’t say I will ever love it but at least I didn’t mind it until I tried it on my Fury Warrior who is 20 ilvls lower than my Mage and experienced the difference first hand. I knew Fury was basically as close to an easy mode as you can get in WoW but this was ridiculous. At no point did I ever feel the least bit threatened and could constantly pull with no need to rest between pulls or wait for cooldowns. It’s night and day if you do it in a group too vs solo, x10 easier and faster with a group.
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I admit I have no comparison, just me vs the game as a mage, and maybe that’s better for me, so I can have fun with it.
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Ive been enjoying them and have done up to teir 8 solo as a sunfury mage.
Waxface was difficult though.
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You have no option but to play frost for them to make it a bit more bearable.
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First time playing mage, I’ve been playing as fire and at first they were kind of difficult but once Bran gets leveled it gets easier, I just let him dps/tank for me and hope for the best.
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Got high explorer today from a solo t11 kriegval’s. 601 ilvl, 27 brann. Given the ilvl recommendation for t10 was 623 and t11 was an “unimaginable challenge” it feels like mage was a good class for it imo. Ton of defensives, great damage. Used frost for the double block to mitigate the firestorm damage, and respec’d Brann to the cheat death curio for the last boss. Used arcane for 9+10 but he gets like 135 mil health at 11 which ends up giving 4+ firestorms
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You just need to spec appropriately and squeeze out every square inch of your kit.
Alter Time is great for unavoidable AOE and Blink resets. Use Slow, Cone of Cold (talented helps), and Nova to kite mobs. Polymorph to CC in troublesome packs (especially those with 2 casters!). Spec Displacement if you need to kite melee a lot. Mirror Image is a GODSEND, especially against Waxface to make him use up one of his wax abilities on an image instead of you.
Some fights aren’t even supposed to be a DPS check either. In Skittering, you just need to alternate Blast Wave and Supernova/DB on the spiders the boss summon as they start casting the shield. Otherwise boss is a cakewalk.
They are hard though. That’s the point I believe.
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So I did two level 8 for max great vault loot. What I do is just wait for cooldowns to expire every major pull.
During this downtime I look for treasure and XP.
Its slow, but steady and gives good results.
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Yea slow and steady gets it done. Use all the tools in the mage toolkit and you’re fine. If you want to run alone, it’s totally doable and I think it’s pretty fun. Boss fights can be tough, but get mirror images at the right time, alter time at the right time, keep the barrier up, all that stuff.
Plus Delves have been SO GOOD to me on gear. Main hand, off-hand, neck, both rings, legs, back…all from delves at level 4 Champion. I just wish I could finds more coffer keys! Guess I need to do these radiant echos.
No
I main a resto druid and mostly have done delves on that character. It’s very challenging.
By comparison, my mage (which has about ~20 lower ilevel) is comparatively very easy. I’m not saying it’s faceroll… I definitely screw up and die on a regular basis, but I have the tools I need to complete the delves without it being terribly exacting. On my druid, sometimes a single global used on the wrong spell = death.
done all delves now at Tier 8 solo mostly on frost spec (especially for bosses, using a specific build that uses ray of frost and all the defensives/cd reduction for defensives). Mirror Image —> Mass Barrier works wonders for bosses, you basically get free tanks for the full 40 seconds.
Lately I have been playing around with Fire spec Frostfire Hero talents and while not as crowd controlling as Frost, it is impressing me with how well it does at killing stuff faster than frost while also being able to keep some of these sweet slows.
I’m biased but I think mage is excellent for solo delves. So many great defensive tools with strong on demand burst damage. Spell steal, curse dispel, 2 hard stops and an interrupt, mobility for days and than of course a slew of defensives, it’s more than enough. we certainly can’t go full aggro and have to play each pack individually, but it’s all do able.
Delves at high levels feel like puzzle solving, you just need the right strat plus load out but it can be done.
Except for Zekvirs Heralds. I don’t think they can be soloed at this point and certainly not at tier 11.
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I have for the most part enjoyed running them on tier 8. The mobs are hard enough that they are not being mowed down the way outdoor mobs are treated.
A few bugs have reared their heads thus far. I think it was the one with Waxface, where an air totem is used, that carried totems would sometimes disappear. It would happen right after picking it up and then blinking. It would immediately disappear. I think I also had a different totem, a light based one I think, once disappear due to blink in a different delve. It was not due to either running out of duration or coming into contact with another totem.
A few of the underwater air bubbles seem a bit hit and miss on their collision detection for restoring air to the character. At times I’m adjusting camera angles and jumping around yet left wondering why it is not restoring my air.
One NPC corpse remained as a targetable mob the entire time I was in the room, and it would keep me stuck in combat until I left the room. I don’t remember in which delve that was encountered.
Overall they are fun, but at this point I want to nuke exploding sporebits from orbit.
The bosses are definitely harder than the mobs for mage. I’ve been trying to solo Zekvir ?? and I cannot figure out how to get that down. Managed to solo ? after a few attempts, but in ?? I just run out of defensives. I know it’s doable because I saw that Xaryu did it on arcane and I had to try, but I couldn’t find anywhere to watch the full attempt. If I go easy and let Brann take aggro, he dies. If I rip aggro I just run out of defensives eventually.
My biggest pet peeve so far has been Brann who is not only incredibly inconsistent with the utility he provides (healing, cleansing, interrupts, etc.) but is also downright sabotaging me by constantly breaking my CC with his stupid AoE that he spams all the time. I feel like delves would be so much simpler if they got rid of Brann altogether and tuned down the difficulty to compensate because his AI is just a disaster.
Aside from Brann’s jank AI, delves clearly weren’t designed with classes who have no access to self healing in mind because basic attacks and unavoidable damage are just too high and what little healing Brann provides is just not enough to offset that even with optimal cooldown usage. I’ve often found myself just sitting there and waiting for my cooldowns in between pulls. It doesn’t add to the difficulty, it’s just annoying and needlessly time consuming.
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