Hey,
I think that I would really like to see Shadowfang Keep, Hour of Twilight, and End Time come back for m+.
Some things I didn’t like about ToT and GB
Throne of Tides: Removing the elevator had everyone excite and then rather than leave it at that you guys added these annoying fish heads that stun and at high enough key level one shot you. I think this is just an anti-fun measure to try to slow players down despite having to already do a million mile walk back to the down stairs. I think it was a bad move and worse, when I found out this version of the dungeon replaced the old one in time walking, I liked it even less.
Grim Batol: What can I say that hasn’t already been said. Miss 1 kick, wipe. Too many tank busters in constant quick succession. Well, I guess there is one thing, the healing absorbs. These seem to be quite popular for blizzard and I might be more agreeable with them or just see them as another part of the dungeon but the absorb % is oppressive and overcaps player HP bar, so that’s annoying buuuuut it’s also a curse.
Picking things that so few classes can interact with like bleeds or curses is what I would call “anti player” or “anti fun.” It becomes too comp restrtive when these mechanics are too oppressive. Theyre needs to be more ways to interact with them than that, because at a sufficient key level out healing these is a pipe dream and they overlap very potent damage.
Changing the dawn breaker curses to be slows so they could be removed with tigers lust and similar things or immunities was a good idea I think but also decreasing the frequency of these curses would also be good. There’s only 3 classes in the game that can interact with curses and I don’t like anything that becomes too comp restrictive in being 1.) overly abundant, and 2.) oppressive/highly potent.
So what would I like to see from the return of these 3 cataclysm dungeons?
I would like to see a move away from stacking bleeds and highly potent curses. Wouldn’t it be better to have a curse that slows haste by a lot? Like say 20% haste and movement speed debuff until cleared? Or maybe it cycles down, so it starts at 20% and goes down by 4% for each cast the player makes? Not every curse needs to be lethal and without a way to interact with it or play around it. Similarly, I think bleeds shouldn’t stack. Bleeds don’t need to be made excessively lethal because key level damage increases will do this to the bleed dot damage eventually and at the moment dwarves, paladins 5 min bop/bubble, and evoker cauterize are the only forms of counter play here and when they can stack too high even typical defensives can feel ineffective against them. I’m of the opinion that any dot or heal absorb that overlaps group damage is already baseline extremely lethal and adding stacking bleeds to them is problematic. Bleeds ignore armor last I checked making there additionally little or no compensation for armor type, so there’s really no angle to look at them except evoker/dwarf/paladin having a solution for them once in a while.
End Time:
The trash section for Tyrande could really benefit from being modernized so it’s easier to intuit where to go and maybe ads should only spawn while players are within the light rather than between (because again this might become too oppressive depending on what the redesign for the cat riders goes and I’m already going to imagine it involves bleeds.)
Echo Of Jaina could stand to have the priest heal totem nerfed or changed. Even in timewalking while leveling, at that awkward point where your gear isn’t relatively good to your level and stuff isn’t just falling over anymore, these can make the trash go on forever and ever and ever and ever and ever (did I say forever?) I’m not saying they need to be removed but I can already imagine so many problems with them analogous to old school fish sticks.
Murozand: I would modernize these mechanics because even though I’ve done this dungeon so many times, whenever I go back here after a few years, I have no clue what’s going on or what means or does what. Make it more intuitive / easier to understand what Glippity Time Glorpodot means/does.
Hour of Twilight
I’m actually solidly surprised this hasn’t been a m+ dungeon. It’s simple, straight forward, and I would have said maybe it needs more trash to feel longer but if rookery can exist then maybe Hour of Twilight is fine just the way it is for trash packs.
Arcurion needs minion boulder swirlies updated. They’re a blue-white that almost matches the snow. Decrease the spawn rate of servitors. It seems like if you let thrall sit in the ice even a little too long they spawn very quickly and then thrall isn’t able to kill them at all. This might be a bug though. I am watching him hurl fireballs at one and it never dies. It seems like his ability to kill them is not working? They do spawn very quickly and I’m afraid with how long the ice tomb would take to break on thrall it would be problematic with how fast those spawn.
Asira Mark of silence looks brutal. I kind of like it though? I wouldn’t cut it out off the rip I’d like to see how it plays and see how challenging it is. If the mark of silence is consumed after the blade hits the player I think it could be fine. If the mark of silence persists indefinitely idk that seems real tough and oppressive for casters/healers.
Smoke bomb looks cool, gives tank something to do While the arena is big enough to get out of it at one far side or the other, I do think the smoke cloud radius needs reduced for m+.
Blade Barrier seems like it’s just a dps check like the oasis boss in streets and I think that’s fine as long as thrall is able to help in some capacity. But as I’m reading it, if I understand it, it’s not a typical absorb but rather you have to do damage over a certain amount in order to break it and that this is supposed to be accomplished in combination with thralls totems that increase damage and stack to this effect. I hope the radius of these can be increased.
Trash leading to Benedictus is fine with me but I think we should be allowed to heal thrall.
Benedictus himself is really cool but I do have memories of dying to the “find the orb” mechanic because of their very very unfortunate spawn place. If a player goes off the platform and it spawns there before they die, then I think it would auto brick the key. I remember it leading to many wipes unfortunately back in the day.
Shadowfang Keep
I actually don’t care about anything except that gargoyl pack. Anyone that has run this before knows exactly what I’m talking about and if you don’t you should run this in cata classic if that’s still a thing because oh boy you just won’t know if you weren’t around back a decade or so ago. That gargoyl pack is pure evil and I don’t even know how you fix it to be less obnoxious without removing it but holy moly I already know I will be on these forums like “the flipping gargoyls!!!”
Honorable Mentions: Zul’Gurub & Halls of Origination.
I’m not gonna talk about zulaman because we can all guess it will appear or that the new zone of zulaman in midnight will have entirely new dungeons outright, so skipping it.
Zul Gurub would have waaaaaay too much trash. Like this dungeon would need an hour long timer unless the % requirement was too low and even then it would have too many skips for all the trash probably and way way way too much back tracking and walking even if you didn’t do that. I think it could be remedied by just dropping Mandokir wing entirely. If not Mandokir and Cache of Madness. I think Cache is really cool but again it’s way way too much trash to do the whole way around. I think last bosses mechanics in high keys would be…painful but could be ammended to be more agreeable if duration is simplified either mechanically or numerically.
Halls of origination: I really want this dungeon to be cool but then I remember some of the silly stuff that would happen and getting lost here so idk. It might be considered a mega dungeon by todays standards so maybe you could split it in half with the desert part and the internal titan facility part.