Hi there,
Let me start this post off with some background talk just to set the expectations a little.
I started playing WoW in 8.3.5, I was a complete noob with no idea what I was doing but I quickly got the hang of it and found Keystones as my favorite in-game activity. I started very late and had little experience so the best keys I timed were 16’s and 17’s, I believe had I of started earlier it would have been around the 20’s mark. In SL S1 I hated the expansion and simply didn’t play, but I came back in S2 as a Guardian Druid of all things. I managed to attained 2350 rating in M+ and felt really good about it, it was my first KSM and it motivated me to try harder after being told it was literally the worst tank spec in the game at the time, ouch.
In S3 I began playing as a FOTM player, I achieved 3.1k rating (Self correction, I thought I achieved 3.3k, that was the goal but it seems I must’ve burnt out lol, my bad) as a Destro lock and enjoyed myself thoroughly. In S4 I played SV Hunter and achieved 2450 rating before getting bored after just over a month and went back to OSRS.
In S4 Post, I decided to pick up tanking again as a BDK, I managed to get 2250 rating with only 2 weeks left in the pre-patch and was heading into DF relatively confidently.
I’m by no means an above average player or exceptional player, I would personally classify myself as relatively mediocre/average at best, but I do have an extensive knowledge of the dungeons to date and the class/spec I am playing, so I feel as though the following opinions may not be shared by the most elite of players, but they may be shared by the vast majority, seeing as myself, a mediocre player at best, attained a score of 1500 rating in the first week, putting me in the top 9k of all players globally - this speaks volumes as I don’t consider myself to be in that realm of players, there are far better players out there than myself.
I think we have a tuning problem, and I think I know the root of it.
Blizzard do NOT test their content, and it shows. Majority of the keystone testing players in beta’s are top 0.01% players, these players are the most dedicated and use these testing stages as practice and feedback opportunities, but the problem is, 99.5% of players aren’t as good as these guys, so if they say something is tuned well, chances are it’s still roughly 200% overtuned. I’m not 100% sure if Blizzard listens to these players, I don’t think they do, I’m fairly certain Blizzard just looks at analytics and make a decision based off that, but here’s an attempt at getting them to properly tune certain encounters.
Keeping in mind, dungeons are most likely tuned with stuff like full rank 3 enchants, full rank 5 crafted with concentrated primal infusions and embellishments and full tier set and so forth, but I digress:
All Dragonflight Dungeons:
Reduce damage dealt by 2%.
All Older Dungeons:
Increase damage dealt by 3.5%. (except TJS)
Specific Dungeons/Encounters:
Algeth’ar Academy:
Overgrown Ancient:
Reduce autoattack damage by 3%.
Reduce number of lashers spawned to 2 lashers per player.
Reduce waves of lashers from 4 to 2.
Reduce bleed damage by 40%.
Reduce autoattack damage by 15% (on lashers)
No changes to healing branch.
As an alternative to this, reduce Barkbreaker’s effect to 50%, so that it applies the debuff to everyone and they all take 50% increased physical damage as opposed to 100%.
Crawth:
Reduce aoe damage by 4%.
Ruby Life Pools:
Clutchwarden before Melidrussa:
Reduce health by 20%
Reduce Steel Barrage damage by 10%
Melidrussa Chillworn:
Reduce Whelplings count by 30%
Reduce Whelplings health by 15%
Reduce her absorb shield by 40%
Reduce the AoE damage dealt during the absorb shield by 5%
Kokia Blazehoof:
Reduce Blazebound Destroyer? Lava pool by 30% in yards.
Make Molten Boulder direction solely based off healer’s current position. (maybe)
Make Blazebound Destroyer?'s spawn position solely based off healer’s current position. (maybe)
The Azure Vault:
Leymour:
Reduce Adds damage by 4%
Reduce autoattack damage by 3%
Telash Greywing:
Reduce Frost Bomb ice spawn damage by 20%
Umbrelskul:
Reduce Dragon Spike damage by 15%
Reduce crystal shard health by 10%
Reduce Orb size by 5%
Reduce slow stack frequency by roughly 10%, just makes this less dependent on having to specifically run a dispelling class/spec and grants more variety to comps, the slow is an integral part of the fight and can’t be babied out, but this would be enough to give players a chance to get away from orbs in a ‘worst-case scenario’ ordeal, ie you’ve already used your movement increasing abilities such as Disengage or Stampeding Roar etc.
Azureblade:
Reduce Arcane Slash damage by 10%, it’s a huge hit already and extremely dangerous if the add happens to time an Illusionary Bolt at the same time as a melee hit and an Arcane slash finishes you off. I know it’s a tank buster but taking 400k unavoidable damage isn’t ‘fun’ when ideally you should be holding some form of defensive off for the phase.
The Nokhud Offensive:
Balakar Khan:
This one I’m iffy on, as I don’t yet have experience at a key level that has required this but I fear it may be a possibility in higher keys, so take this with a grain of salt:
I’m not 100% sure on the ability name, I’ve never noticed him casting it but I’m going to assume it’s Upheaval, in this regard it’s the pools of mud that spawn wherever the player was standing at the time and it inflicts ticking damage to every player. It gets quite painful in higher keys and is avoidable, but as keys get higher, so does the boss hp. My suggestion here is not to change the damage it deals or anything like that, just simply to reduce the size of the pool by a small amount, and when I say small I mean small. I don’t know the current span of it, but lets just say for the sake of detail, if it’s currently 10rds, make it 8.5.
With a good group with good coordination, this shouldn’t really be an issue, but 90% of players tend to pug keys and we all know how that typically goes.
Court of Stars:
Blazing Imps:
Reduce Drifting Embers damage by 45%
Reduce Firebolt damage by 12%
Note: I feel like these guys should be an annoyance if pulled (whether by accident or intentionally), not a key bricker.
Patrol Captain Gerdo:
Increase damage dealt from Arcane Lockdown by 12%.
Advisor Melandrus:
Change the Hue of Piercing Gale’s spell color to a purple-ish hue and increase its saturation so it’s much easier to spot when in the middle of a frost mage’s Blizzard or DK’s slappy hands.
Increase his autoattack damage by 15%
Decrease Slicing Maelstrom’s radius by 25%, it’s a small platform and if the baiters aren’t great at their job, this is devastatingly deadly right now.
Temple of the Jade Serpent:
Sha of Doubt:
Reduce Bounds of Reality adds health by 10%
Reduce Wither Will damage by 15%
Shadowmoon Burial Grounds:
Reanimated Ritual Bones:
Reduce autoattack damage by 40%
Void Spawn:
Reduce Void Pulse damage by 10%
Bonemaw:
Reduce frequency of Bonemaw changing positions.
Add a tank buster attack which deals 108,920 physical damage and applies a debuff for 6s that increases all shadow damage taken by 70% (this ability would occur shortly before Corpse Breath), dispellable.
This ability could be called: Shadow Slam and use the same animation minus the ground spell effect as Body Slam to minimize development time, the 108,920 damage would be Mythic +0 damage, and would scale with keystone level.
At a Mythic +15, this initial damage would be: 324,581, which is not enough damage to kill a properly geared tank for this keystone level, but the debuff applied would certainly introduce a whole new level of danger to the encounter.
Currently Bonemaw, within the groups I’ve been with, players all seem to agree that it’s a rather boring and dragged out encounter, with the only main ability to worry about being Body Slam, which is easily avoidable. There are no real risky situations to deal with so it’s mostly just a matter of dealing damage, him moving, players moving and dealing more damage. It leaves a lot to be desired.
Currently SBG is an incredibly free key, much like Court of Stars. I’m personally all for some increases in difficulty for these two dungeons.
I think Halls of Valor is actually perfectly tuned, if you make a diabolical mistake in Fenrir’s Den, it costs you the key, but if everything goes well you can end up with plenty of time to spare. The wolf trash mobs hit stupid hard on Fortified week with the Throat attack, but that’s already been addressed this week and I don’t think we really need further changes there.
All of the suggested changes above are relatively conservative. If I wanted to just make a whining thread I could’ve simply not written all of the above and simply put: Nerf by 90% waaaaaaaaah. But I wanted to write out a well thought out and fair thread and encourage thoughtful and constructive criticism with proper suggestions on where people may agree or disagree and propose different tuning changes.
There’s no point just making a post and telling Blizzard they’re stupid or having a cry about something with little to no feedback within the post, if I were them I’d simply ignore a post like that, and there are a fair few. I’m hoping this post will be different and actually taken seriously.
For the most part, the trash mobs are actually really well designed and balanced in all of the DF dungeons, Nokhud was pretty much the worst for trash with the Death Bolt Volley packs and patrolling Ohuna’s, now it’s much more pleasant. These are just minor changes that keep in mind that 90% of players don’t push higher keys and simply aim for either Keystone Master or Keystone Hero achievements and subsequently the mounts/titles. Not everyone is out here looking for the most challenging encounters such as trying to push a +28 keystone purely to see if they can do it. These suggestions are focused more towards the vast majority of players, and sure, overall it does affect the top 10k players in the world, but all it means in the grand scheme of things is they get to push higher key levels 
Interested to hear everyone’s thoughts on this. Post away!