WoW's Top 10 Worst M+ Dungeons (response to Max's recent stream)

Gameplay Dungeons, Raids and Scenarios
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Hey everyone,

This is a forum thread addressing the recent video/stream w/ Max, Dorki, Growl and Dratnos. The reason I’m making this thread is because I want to push back quite strongly against a lot of the comments made against some of the dungeons they voted as “top 10 worst” and give a different perspective so that WoW devs aren’t locked into only the streamer’s opinions (which for this topic, I disagree with a lot of what was said).

For those who don’t know what I’m talking about, here’s the stream in question:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00qqc81Cr5Q&t=0s

Before we get into this, here’s some background about me, so you can have perspective. The reason I’m putting this here is because a lot of the comments that also disagreed with Max, Dorki, Growl and Dratnos were dismissed as “key too low” or “casual M+ opinions”.

Allow me to provide some context on my own experience, since I do not believe that I fit into this “key too low” category. Certainly, I have not gotten title, but I have previously missed title range by less than 20 points (S2 of DF), which put me in the top 0.1-0.2% of M+ players. Note: I am not showing off, I am using this to state that I disagree with these streamers and it is not because I am “a casual” or that my keys are “too low”.

Stats about Me (Brainard)
  • Specs played: Arcane Main (almost exclusively playing Arcane)
  • Started playing in S4 of BfA (raid only, turbo casual)
  • Shadowlands:
    • Season 1: did not push (still turbo casual at this point)
    • Season 2: did not push (still turbo casual at this point)
    • Season 3: Finished top 10 Arcane Mage World in S3 / US 3rd (3547 io; pushing +25/26 keys)
    • Season 4: did not push; took a break because Shadowlands was dead at this point
  • Dragonflight:
    • Season 1: did not push
    • Season 2: Finished top 19 Arcane Mage World in S2 / US 6th (3540 io, pushing +27/28 keys)
    • Season 3: Finished top 19 Arcane Mage World in S3 / US 8th (3586 io; pushing +27/28 keys)
    • Season 4: not planning on pushing (playing MoP remix mainly)

Note: because I did not play in Legion or in BfA (outside of S4, where I didn’t do any significant amount of M+), I will not have an opinion of BfA and Legion dungeons that were thought of as “bad”, which seems to include Tol Dagor, Siege of Boralus, King’s Rest and others.

Controversial Takes From That Stream

Click here to see some of the controversial takes from that stream

The most inflammatory take from that stream (for me at least) was that they hate dungeons that have “gimmick” mechanics that kill mobs for you (i.e. chains from Neltharus, weapons/Goliath Orbs from Necrotic Wake, spotters from Siege of Boralus (although I never did this dungeon), Exploding bugs from Plaguefall.

The argument that they are making boils down to: the mobs are dying due to something happen in the dungeon that is killing your enemies, but not by your actual damage/performance, which feels bad because it feels like you are playing the dungeon more than playing your character.

I want to push back heavily against this take by giving a different perspective on the issue. Mechanics that kill dungeon mobs more efficiently than players do serve several purposes:

  1. They allow certain difficult parts of the dungeons to be dealt with more easily (i.e. Hunters with the giga bleed in Neltharus mass-dying to chains, giant first big pull in Necrotic Wake)
  2. Having giant pulls where the damage comes from dungeon elements rather than your character prioritizes your defensive usage, not offensive usage. The reason you normally cannot pull all those Hunters in Neltharus isn’t because players don’t have the damage; it’s because they will kill everyone within 20 seconds if they aren’t dead by that time.
  3. Having such a large amount of damage come from your dungeon elements rather than players equalizes the playing field for that one dungeon. You could run specs that were traditionally seen as “bad” in S2 of DF in Neltharus and still time with significantly more ease than other dungeons (i.e. Uldaman or VP). Why? Because chains did way more damage than an Aug/Shadow Priest/Fire Mage ever could in those massive AoE packs. This allows under-represented specs to perform well in this dungeon, and quickly became a fan-favorite among pugs (like me) for that reason.
    • Note: Unlike what Max, Dorki, Growl and Dratnos were saying: these 3 points hold true at ALL levels of ladder; including +28s (which I did in S2), and I wager they hold true at levels beyond that as well.
  4. I firmly believe that Neltharus (post-chains nerf) is now in a significantly worse and less fun spot that it was before, with those damn Hunters one-shotting people without permanent defensives like mages and Shadow Priest. The reason for this entire thread is to prevent something like this from happening again (i.e. Necrotic Wake; do not listen to these people in isolation Blizzard, they do not speak for the M+ community as whole).

The Most Egregious Takes: The Comparisons

Click here to see some of the most egregious takes from that stream

In the short time I have been playing WoW (since S4 of BfA, M+ since S1 of SL), there have been some egregious dungeons (I’ll make my own list below). However, the most insulting thing from that video was seeing some of these comparisons:

  1. Dratnos’ list: Necrotic Wake being ranked worse than Uldaman (which I would rank top 3 worst dungeons of all time). Absolute madness of a take.
  2. Dorki, Dratnos, Growl’s list: Spires of Ascension being ranked the worst dungeon of all time, worse than Theater of Pain, worse than Vortex Pinnacle, worse than Uldaman. I didn’t like Spires all that much, but there is no universe where I would rather go into a +28 Uldaman or VP over a +28 Spires. Absolute madness.
  3. Dorki’s list: Court of Stars ranked #9 worse dungeon. Need I say more?
  4. Max, Dartnos, Dorki, Growl’s list: Barely mentioning how catastrophic Theater of Pain was, from locking you in (mobs literally being split platform to platform or in seperate wings; you could not chain pull large pulls outside of the 1st pull in Abom wing), the SUPER tight timer with 30 seconds of RP right at the end when the timer matters most (similar to Halls of Valor with God-King Skovald’s speech), the RNG of the mini-bosses in the Xav wing (some being SIGNIFICANTLY easier than the other), etc. This dungeon was #7 worse on Dorki’s list, #8 on Growl’s list; not even mentioned by Max or Dratnos.
  5. Neltharus Post-Chains Nerf: Among everyone I play with, we unanimously think that Neltharus is now significantly worse with the nerfed chains compared to the old chains. This is clearly a by-product of Blizzard listening to Max’s stream, and is the reason for why I’m making this post today. This was such a bad change, and I can’t blame Blizzard for it since they were listening to their community (streamers).

My List of Top 10 Worst M+ Dungeons

Here is my list of top 10 worst dungeons. Note that I did not play in Legion (started in S4 of BfA) and did not do M+ in BfA, so I truly don’t know how Shrine of the Storms and Siege of Boralus were.

1. Vortex Pinnacle
  • Explanation: The only pinnacle here is the pinnacle of disappointment. The dungeon started with these giant shield mobs that you couldn’t hit for 60% of their uptime due to the frontal shield and giant AoE circle they would do that you had to get out of. The dragon mobs hit crazy hard with their giga-DoT. The dungeon was extremely linear, with only ~3 different possible routes available, and the last boss suffered from the same problem as the last boss of Brackenhide: infinitely respawning adds that you MUST focus or you will die. This dungeon actively made Season 2 worse, all the way up to +27/28 (the keys I did in S2) and probably beyond.
2. Theater of Pain
  • Explanation: This dungeon was an atrocity. The dungeon was super tight on time, had 5 bosses, Xav’s jump would almost one-shot clothies and the duel mechanic was a giant waste of time, the lich boss was bugged for mages where if you invis’d sometimes your soul wouldn’t get trapped by the hands and you would die. There was ~30 seconds of RP right before the last boss that you were begging to fight as quickly as possible due to the tight timer. In addition, the mobs were completely split by platforms or wings so the only pulls you could combine were the first 2 in the Abom wing and the 1st pull into 1st boss. Also, there was a captain mob that reduced AoE damage dealt to archers which would destroy your clothies and healer that required a Blood DK to do high keys with (to MC the captain). Not every group had a blood DK; ask me how I know.
3. Uldaman: Legacy of Turds
  • Explanation: This place was so bad it killed one of my push groups early in S2. Bromach’s totem hits way too hard, the three Dwarves’s shield throw ability would one shot clothies on +28 tyrannical if not topped off (i.e. if one of the other dwarves decided to shoot you randomly), the fourth boss phased so quickly into immunity mode and the snakes before the third boss would demolish a tank so quickly; I’ve seen bears die through incarn on those things, something I never thought possible. Timer is extremely tight and last boss AoE knockback hits super hard, especially if you just used a defensive to survive the DoT and didn’t have a Priest and Mass Dispell your group. Terrible dungeon; I would much rather take pre-nerf Halls of Infusion over this place, any day of the week.
4. Temple of the Jade Serpent
  • Explanation: Requiring a lock for double dispell to survive a boss should be banned, permanently. Theater of Pain had a similar problem on high Tyrannical with the Lich boss’ DoT, but this was required much earlier than in S3 of SL’s ToP. The LoS water elementals at the beginning also felt really bad, the second boss was extremely inconvenient having to swap from one to the other (especially for Arcane since my ramp up took longer than the swap timer) and the trash in front of the 3rd and 4th boss would somehow demolish tanks like I’ve never seen. There was one ability cast by Minion of Doubt called “Dark Claw” which would just destroy tanks harder than any boss I’ve ever seen. Worse dungeon in S1 of DF by far.
5. Halls of Valor
  • Explanation: It’s insane to me that this dungeon was one of Max’s favorite. Hyrja was such a garbage fight that required you to have a healer that knew what they were doing, otherwise you were dead after you ran out of defensives (after the first storm). Fenryr’s bleed paired with the AoE soak you had to do (Claw Frenzy) would one shot clothies if you weren’t topped up and the fixate + interrupt made some casters unable to do consistent damage in the best of scenarios. God-King Skovald is a meme time-waster boss fight and Odyn’s rune crap on high Tyrannical would kill you in 2 seconds without a defensive if you didn’t find your rune in time. Just one bad boss after the other. The RP at the end of the dungeon (Skovald’s presidential speech) was also so annoying Blizzard had to nerf it (should do the same for Theater of Pain tbh). Also, Stormforged Sentinels were there, which birthed the Inspiring affix; you have to take points off for that one.
6. Darkheart Thicket
  • Explanation: The second boss would destroy the tanks through immunities at the start of the season. The Tainheart Stalker would always jump to someone and one-shot two people on Entangling week since people would try to get out of Entangling and be in range of their jumps. Lastly, Shade of Xavius was such a high movement fight for range near the end, makes it so hard for Arcane if your group sucks. Also the cat bleeds birthed the Grevious affix; you have to lose points for that.
7. Karazhan (both upper and lower)
  • Explanation: It’s one shot city, everywhere, all at once. This dungeon was praised by Max for being non-linear, except that I got lost like holy hell. I never released in that place; not because I didn’t want to run back but because I would keep getting lost. Also, Medivh’s fight was the #1 pug killer in the world. Having a Havoc DH get the flame circle that you can’t leave otherwise you kill your whole group is the easiest way to end a key. By the way: that flame circle’s giga DoT went through immunities, including Ice Block. Ask me how I know. I still don’t know how the horseman fight works and Moroes was impossible to see that giant one-shot frontal that one of the adds would do (Blizzard had to create a new animation just for S4 of DF for that one ability).
8. Mechagon Workshop
  • Explanation: Now I’m getting into the area where I don’t think these dungeons are that catastrophic; just not great. I didn’t play in Legion or do M+ in BfA, so I don’t really have 10 “worse dungeons ever”; most are ok, Mechagon’s biggest problem was the 3rd boss with all the crap that was happening at the same time, the fact that the 1st trash pull was safest when done with only the tank using the hammers and linearity of the dungeon, with very little pull diversity (similar to VP in this regard, although VP was much worst imo).
9. Shadowmoon Burial Grounds
  • Explanation: This dungeon was just boring, especially the third boss, and the last boss was really buggy (sometimes the purple wall would kill you even when you are clearly in the safe zone. Also, the last boss was hard for ranges that required being able to sit there and cast (i.e. Arcane). Getting that laser to hit you when you put down your run was really bad.
10. Mists of Tirna Scithe (on high tyrannical only; fun on Fort weeks)
  • Explanation: This is just due to the sheer number of tyrannical MoTS keys I broke on that first boss. On high tyrannical, the only difficulty is that first boss. If you get past him within ~5 minutes, you time the key. If not, gg and reroll. Also the AoE undodgeable fear is really annoying to deal with without tremor totem.
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My top 10 worst M+ dungeons ever:

  1. Seat of the Triumvirate
  2. Tol Dagor
  3. Vortex Pinnacle
  4. Spires of Ascension
  5. Kings’ Rest
  6. Siege of Boralus
  7. Halls of Infusion in S2
  8. Shadowmoon Burial Grounds
  9. Theater of Pain
  10. Dawn of the Infinite - Murozond’s Rise

Honourable mention: Temple of the Jade Serpent, Necrotic Wake and Throne of the Tides.

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I truly and honestly believe they need to make nexus into a m+. That dungeon is annoying a f on regular difficulty. It’s long, if the tank is bad, the hallway with the frozen enemies wipe you. I want to see that dungeon become the m+ communities nightmare.

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Wait, but why?

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It’s one of the most hated dungeons.

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lmao, hating on uldaman because they lacked the skill level at high tyrannical for bromach.

Also hating on hyrja because they needed a healer who knew how to play. Tragic.

Edit: the takes are actually yours?

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The takes are mine, and I have timed uldaman on +27

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Worst 10: (in no particular order.)

SMBG: Bonemaw exists

Azure Vaults: Trash feels like forever.

Court of Stars : RNG prof buffs.

Mists of Tirna Scithe: The maze

Tol Dagor : The last boss had a chance to overlap his dots based on RNG.

Algethar Academy (s4) : Only Vexamus is worthy.

Streets of Tazavesh: So’azmi RNG spawns of portals.

Junkyard: The bots.

Motherlode: Popularized death skip strategy.

Atal’dazar: Only Yazma is worthy.

Maw of Souls: Tiny platform for Helya (But really, had to be picky for tenth.)

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I think the problem with them isn’t that they exist / that they contribute, it’s moreso that their existence tends to warp the strategy of the dungeons around them. If, for example, you had an area of a dungeon and just that area could use the mechanic and being good at the mecahnic could save you time, that’s awesome.

When people work out how to bring mobs that weren’t particularly intended to interact with that mechanic into the picture the dungeon devolves into a game of “How many mobs can we cheese into one spot without dying” and THAT sucks.

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The correct answer is Seat of the Triumvirate.

It covers all 10 spots because it’s that bad.

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I’ve never done it but I’ve heard that

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Max is a giant man child who gas lights pugs when he makes a mistake in order to save face on stream. Can’t take anything he says seriously with more than a grain of salt.

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i am a full member of the spires hate club.
a lot of legion and bfa dungeons appear on people’s lists, but if they weren’t recycled into a SL or DF season i cant judge them. feel more confident saying which dungeons are my favorite than making an absolute statement on which dungeons are the worst

the boss would be pulled away so ranged could stand there safe of the ghost horses that would cross the arena with small gaps that were meant to be passed through. there was a soak. some beefy bdks (as they were the only tank at that time) could/would try to solo soak it. midnight would do charges as well, but if you did the first strat it could usually be safe spotted. i think thats it?

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Generally speaking this is probably the worst mythic plus dungeon every designed.

After you got to about 10 you started to pretend this key didn’t exist, never existed and whoever asked you to run that key with them would be blacklisted for eternity.

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Amen.

Every week, all weeks. It was so bad that it was hard to find a pug that could finish a 7.

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Seat had a ton of mobs with constant teleporting all the time. Seat was the beginning of the boring design and awful mob density that was so common in BFA M+. Seat was the easily worst mythic plus dungeon and Seat is the easiest thing to put number 1 in the ranking (anything).

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ill give a shot at the list but disclaimer i’m only including dungeons from SL-DF (and ones that returned)

  1. spires of ascension
  2. uldaman
  3. SBG
  4. theater of pain
  5. Murozond’s Rise
  6. HoI
  7. TJS
  8. throne of the tides
  9. halls of valor/dos (tie)
  10. Vortex Pinnacle

i struggled to fill this list out honestly, especially once i got to spot 5-6
i dont like dungeons with a lot of rp, lots of unmountable walking and/or backtracking (spires, rise, dos, throne, hov, etc).

i share most of the streamer’s gripes with spires.

sbg was unhealthy for s1 m+ and the middle 2 bosses were very bad.

uldaman is my nemesis key and i dont find it fun.

i remember disliking workshop a lot even though my impression would likely improve were i to do it again. it also loses points because gimmick obstacle course which rise also has, though rise at least allowed a teleport whereas workshop banned lock summons in the entire dungeon. I’ll also put HoI in this category though its less egregious. HoI has decent enough bosses (khajin is great) except for the last boss, which has been majorly improved going into this season. its a buggy dungeon though.

i originally had neltharus in TJS’ place but i couldn’t defend it, nelth is passable though i wouldn’t call it good. TJS’ bosses were terrible imo. the trash was okayish? iirc they interacted badly with affixes though, and the sha scaled monstrously compared to other tyran bosses of similar key level.

and dungeons that feel long or that they drag automatically lose points in my mind (spires, ulda, top)

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Yeah, I think that list is fair for SL-DF and I would have Spires for the number 2 worst M+ dungeons if it’s SL-DF. SoA is a classic example of how you should not design dungeons. The graphics in SoA caused a lot of problems to many people such as extreme FPS drop. Trash mobs had a 75% damage reduction aura to all mobs. The affixes had a very awful interaction with SoA such as the golem with inspiring affix and you have to do them. There are 3 minibosses before the last boss and you can’t cleave them because they get healed after one of them dies and you have to kill them one by one. The last boss was 5 minutes or longer fight. SoA was such an awful M+ dungeon and SoA didn’t have many things to redeem.

Uldaman is a bad dungeon but Uldaman is not as bad as other dungeons from BfA. I would place Throne of the Tides in the top 5 worst dungeons from SL-DF because you can’t pull big in a normal group and affixes have bad interactions with the dungeon. Throne of the Tides is extremely unfun without VDH because their crowd controls make Throne of the Tides a bit tolerable. The gauntlet is full of garbage. If Rise isn’t in a dungeon pool, I would place Throne of the Tides at number 10.

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My list of 10 M+ dungeons I hated doing (in no particular order)

I also near exclusively solo pug as a healer. I might have a slightly different selection than others with dedicated groups because of that.

1+2: Kharazan both wings

Horrible mess of an instance. One shot city. Every week they would absolutely rip numbers out of these boss encounters like halving add health or 40% less damage to something or even deleting mechanics entirely like the horseman dispel that you could barely even see unless you all had a weakaura that told you who it was. It still annihilated pugs. Medivh was a miserable disaster of a boss. I literally gave up trying to get a 20 done of this dungeon.

3: Nokhud offensive

Trash is way too busy. Every mob is casting or channeling or fixating something all the time. Common occurrence of NPC tank that W keys the pack away from you and the casters get swift stabbed to death before the first boss. Bosses in general not fun. Got screwed over a lot by monkey dps using movement abilities to steal orbs from me on second boss cuz they wanted to look good on meters. Fourth boss grounding spear could unavoidably kill you outright without a defensive on tyran weeks.

4: De Other Side

This dungeon takes forever. That’s my biggest gripe. Too long with lots of mindlessly walking from one boring pull to the other. The dealer boss used to be pretty gross and it had to get nerfed so many times. The last boss kills itself if you manage to coordinate a bunch of pugs to jump into the right portal and not get slammed. Hardest part was not falling asleep.

5: Grimrail

I didn’t like the boss gimmicks. The tight corridors on the train always messed with your camera so you had to play while looking down at the floor a lot so you could see where you were standing. The last boss was dumb because nobody knew you could stand a certain way to manipulate the static pool placement so they just made big swirlies for it which made the mechanic actually intelligible but also trivialized the fight outside of how you had to stare at her to tell what direction she was throwing her one shot spear.

6: Spires of ascension

Ventunax was frustrating to heal because the leap could outright kill clothies on tyran and the dot was unnecessarily steep imo. Pug specific issue of getting wiped because nobody kicked dark lash and if you’re a priest with no kick you have to just watch your party die. That happened a lot to me personally so I mentioned it. Lots of downtime in devos fight where you’re doing nothing and holding W to not get pulled off the ledge. You had to sit there and wait for her to get speared before the dot stacked too high for your dispels to keep up and became a problem. Other than that, a pretty lame overall setting to fight through.

7: Halls of valor

I didn’t really have much problem with the concept of these fights they just felt overtuned. You couldn’t get touched by anything or you’d explode. Really dumb how they didn’t mess with the numbers for Odyn’s rune mechanic because you could die in moments without a defensive so you had to find your rune near instantly to survive it. Sometimes you got screwed by being corralled away from the center and your rune is on the other side of the room so you just died. Oh well.

8: Shadowmoon burial grounds

Boring boring boring. Nothing here was at all challenging to a group that even kind of knew what they were doing. Bosses felt like they took forever. I’ll never understand why they put this dungeon in the M+ rotation.

9: Vortex pinnacle

Lots of walking in a straight line to the next pull like previous entries in the list but the trash was very annoying. The giant shield mobs were especially bad since you couldn’t hit them most of the time and you had to run out of their big aoe thing. Wasn’t a fan of any of the bosses, especially the dragon one because of constantly having to run around to not get debuffed in a way that wouldn’t be obvious unless you had your addons telling you that you were hasted.

10: Temple of the jade serpent

The entire dungeon is just watching out for people getting randomly dookie’d on by random crap. Doing this without a decurse would probably be miserable or undoable. The whole key was just a quick time event of whack a moling people’s health bars in a not fun way. The water elementals at the start were terrible. I hate when mobs are so busted you need to LoS them to live because pugs will never be able to do that. You’d commonly just get some NPC tank W keying into all of them and going “HEALS???” when people died for it. Caused a lot of disbands until the season went on and people started to learn and I also got enough rating to distance myself from people that wouldn’t learn

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Lots of people seem to dislike Spires of Ascension; which I get but I do think Spires is so pretty and beautiful that I think it made up for the really long 3rd and 4th boss fight and the 3 mini bosses at the end (at least for me).

Spires might be the most aesthetically pleasing dungeon they’ve ever designed

Also, no one commented on my XMog, and now I am sad

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