Observations on M+

Gameplay Dungeons, Raids and Scenarios
1

This season is a bit rubbish. I know, a unique perspective. But honestly, it’s kind of not fun.

There are two main problems. The first is that there are gear walls - moving from heroic to mythic gear is absolutely awful. The wall is largely created by affixes. The extra death timer is such a negative thing. It just punishes you for learning a dungeon. Worse, it’s a new punishment on a set of old punishments - you get less crests and no points. Most of the time you might as well walk out once you’ve had a handful of deaths. It’s hard to argue why you should stay.

(I also don’t know why the extra death timer is there given how many one shots, things to stun and interrupt and void areas there are now. You can’t honestly have all of this danger plus an extra penalty of dying. You can have one or the other, in my opinion.)

Secondly, the balance of the dungeons is terrible. They were terrible in the first season of DF as well, and I thought the lesson was learned, but clearly it hasn’t been. The gap between a Dawnbreaker and a Stonevault, for example, is faintly ridiculous.

(I used two new dungeons there cause I didn’t want to compare old ones. But the fact that there are old ones is awful, as well. I really don’t want to be doing Siege or Mists or whatever again. It’s such a bad choice.)

Also, some special shoutouts go to the changes to interrupts and stops. They’re awful. So are the fact that you have limitations on dispels. I mean, why is it that priests can’t dispel poison? What is the point of that in today’s version of the game?

I like this game, but I just don’t have the time to sit for twenty, thirty hours a week and play it. There’s some who do, I know, but I don’t mythic raid because I don’t have the time. M+ is starting to move into the same area, after being in a sweet spot last xpac. None of the things I have mentioned can’t be overcome, but time is not infinite, and I don’t know if I can justify this if it keeps being so unrewarding and so unbalanced. It’s just not fun.

4 Likes
2

While I agree Challenger’s Peril is unfun design, I disagree with the “learning a dungeon”. Mechanics do not change from Mythic 0 - +20 so if you want to learn them do them on M0.

The amount of 1 shots seems to be a bit of misinformation. There are indeed 1shot abilities, however these are mostly frontals or AoE on the ground that a player should have enough knowledge to avoid.

Stuns and Inturrupts have always been important in dungeons as well. If the Tank is pulling too many packs that have too many stuns and inturrupts needed, then that tank needs to rethink their routes.

Difficulty disparity in dungeons I can agree with. Going from Dawn (probably the easiest of the new) to SV can be jarring.

I really disliked how they didnt add all the new dungeons for M+ in the first season. Like why give us new content just to rip it away for many months? They arent even in the heroic dungeon rotation.

Limitations on Dispels have always been a thing. But it sort of balances itself out with group diversity.

2 Likes
3

Mechanics might not change, but who is to say that in lower difficulties, people don’t see mechanics due to being able to brute force down the boss before the mechanics matter, or they out gear them so much that the mechanics tickle and they don’t make the adjustments for higher keys

2 Likes
4

The wild thing is the number of stuns and interupts. It seems like when you interrupt a mob it no longer puts that action on icd for a lot of mobs. Once the 3 sec interrupt ends they immediately start recasting the problematic action making the team use their interrupts faster than they generate them. Oh you double interrupted one skill accidentally? Well better kill fast because that just might be what causes your group to wipe.

1 Like
5

This is the problem. You aren’t supposed to be learning the basic mechanics in key levels with the Challenger affix. You are supposed to have picked up those basic skills earlier on and work on mastery at this point in progression.

6

Yes, it is the problem, but it is a problem the system creates by not enforcing or encouraging people to build up in lower keys to learn. By this I just mean something like you have to time x dungeon at y level to get into it at z level. Like since the challengers affix starts at 7, make it so you need to have timed a 6 in specific dungeons.

It can still feel a little punishing, due to RNG BS, but I’d also be opening it to scale by key level, like 7 second for 7s, 10 seconds for 10s, etc.

7

Spells like web bolt don’t have a cooldown, so it gets interrupted for about three seconds. I think we were spoiled in previous seasons with mob spells that had long cds.

8

Then we should not say “Season is bad”, just because we can’t brute force our way trough a Mechanic anymore, nerfing said mechanic for example will only be a short sightet Solution to a non existend problem.

Yes it might help clear them on the difficulty someone might be stuck at, but guess what, they will will just come back anyways, might now be next difficulty or the one after that, but it will come anyways.

So people either just apedt and overcome and just “Git gud” or they will just bang there Head into a wall until said wall get’s moved just for them the follow said wall and starting hitting there head against that wall again.

9

Agreed, but that is what 90% of nerf calls for dungeons and "season is bad complaints boil down to. because this is what most, if not all, of them are used to.

10

I can just summarize what this person typed, “get good, I don’t struggle with it, I don’t care if 99% of the game struggles with it, they should just get better or quit”

There absolutely is learning going on in keys at all levels, there are things you can get away with in 5s that you will learn you’re not getting away with in 7s. To pretend like you can get your doctorate in doing m0s and have a clean understanding of dungeon mechanics up to 20+ is ridiculous.

I hope you continue to have all the success in the world at the game, and that Blizzard keeps making the game for Mythic raiders when theres 15,000 people left subbed to the game. That race to world first sure is exciting as it slowly unfolds over the first 2 weeks of a patch every 6 months, that’ll keep the game afloat.

1 Like
11

And it’s only exacerbated by lazy affixes like Tyran and Fort which should have been axed with the old affixes. Hell, I’d take the old affixes over Tyran and Fort.

Yea, Blizz really wanted to kill stun and bung.

12

After 1 month:
28.4% have KSM
7.1% have KSH

Historically we see 30-35% at the end of the season. This narrative of “omg it’s too hard” doesn’t work anymore now that we have concrete data points.

1 Like
13

I agree that M+ is kinda garbage right now.

Could I spend hours trying to pug my way to KSM? Sure, but that is horribly unfun and not worth doing in my opinion, so I gave up for this season after a few terrible pugs.

Imo, it is almost fine how it is design-wise, but if you reduced the incoming damage and player self heal/defensive power all by like 30%, then I think that would practically fix a lot of gripe from a lot of players. M+ needs to be made more fun for tanks and healers so pugging is a more smooth experience.

Not challenging enough for some? Cool no problem, just keep pushing your key until it is…

14

Not to mention there are other factors:

  1. season 1 tends to be the hardest out of all the seasons as we are starting fresh and don’t have gear from the previous season to boost us
  2. it is not uncommon to hit walls that you should stay at for a few weeks, not matter what season,
  3. a lot of M+ comes down to memory and refining as you move up
2 Likes
15

Mechanics don’t change, but the amount of damage they do does. Priorities change in high keys. Not all the time, not every pull, or every boss, but sometimes, and so you have to change. There’s no point in pretending like a 0 and a 10 are the same - they’re simply not. The idea that you don’t learn about differences from key lvl to key lvl is just not true.

I’d argue, in fact, that you don’t really start learning a dungeon until higher keys. That’s when you learn the ins and outs properly, and the extra death timer is simply a hindrence to that.

16

Mechanics are still mechanics. Nearly all of them boil down to “dont stand in that” “use _____ to get rid of _____” and “kill adds”.

Im not sure how that changes from 0-10+.
“But they do more damage” yes. And fundamentally they do damage. Its only natural that they do more damage as you go up in level where everything does.

Its not rocket appliances