I am a solo player and I love challenging solo content. Currently completed most of the delves in T8, some on T9 T10 and T11.
Wanted to share some experience and feedback. I play only warlock, so it’s mainly from warlock perspective, but there are general notes as well. Haven’t tried them in a group, but heard that hotfixes made group play really hard. Even though I’m a solo player, I don’t like this change. I was a raider once and being forced in solo dungeon content to stay competitive is not fun, especially if you are playing a healer. Let raid players enjoy raids without struggling with our solo player content. If anything, I would prefer if there was some boe recipe, pet or transmog drop in delves so solo players could ah it and earn some money. Putting good gear there does not look fun for group players.
Long story short: delves are possible to do solo, but I don’t like it. Now a bit more on what’s goind inside them.
- Encounters.
Overall, all delves are pretty similar. There are some clickable objectives, some packs of mobs, heralds, sometimes ambushes and usually boss in the end. You can get some powerups, but they are pretty meh. Many high tiers setups require to use unconventional tactics (like click the objective + use invise pot), evade-kiting of packs, safespotting, this is not fun and looks like glitch-abusing, not like an achievment.
a. Mobs
The balance looks really strange. Melee attacks are alright, you can even facetank some telegraph slams, but casters will send you to Gnomegalla in a second. In every delve there are some casters and usually they hit way harder than elites and boss. Technically, you can skip most of them, but sometimes it’s really time consuming. I don’t understand what is the design here, solo player could not be expected to kick/avoid all the casts on short cd. Fortunately, most of the mobs can be controlled, so warlock can use fear as an interrupt. Most of the packs can be sepparated, not sure if it is intended, usually I didn’t bother, but ex. if a mob is feared and he ran away, you can usually engage the pack and he will not join the pack even when fear ends.
b. Ambushes
Ambushes may be a bit rough, but you can just run away from them and engage them at your own pace, not sure if it is intended.
c. Heralds
Heralds are tough, especially Tala/Velo team. Unless there is some hidden mechanic I didn’t found I believe they are tuned incorrectly. They are immune to crowndcontrol and can kill you in a single cast on higher tiers, this cast has no cd and the only way of approach is to burst mage in a single kick cd. As usual, casters are deadly, melee is ok. Fortunately usually you can skip them and as far as I saw so you get nothing for killing them. Even if they guard an objective you can click it (or zerg it if it’s a mob) and evade the encounter. Or just die and accept -1 life loss, we have 3 in T11.
d. Bosses
Bosses are different, but overall I saw a couple bosses with interesting mechanics (adds you need to targe, aoe you need to run away from, etc). They are fun and I like them. There are some bosses who spam aoe attacks and sometimes do a weak melee hit. I don’t think it’s intendend, but neither pets nor Brann recieve any damage from aoe. These are really boring fights when pet/Brann tanks and you slowly kill them with 0 risk involved. And there are Ab’enar and Waxface. These are bosses with a lot of unavoidable aoe damage and they are not fun. I can burst them in T8 but I don’t see the tools to deal with them and I don’t want to approach them in higher tiers. I assume that class performance on this bosses wary a lot, with decent selfheal or big burst damage they are trivial, otherwise they are unkillable. Don’t like the design.
e. Powerups
Most of them do not look too impactful, so I usually don’t bother. There are some nice one like shield or bonus hp, which may be useful if you struggle with a boss, but they are pretty rare and overall it does not look like looting is worth your time. Some of the rares guarding upgrades are way harder than bosses, so it’s hard to justify it.
Overall design look strange. While you are delving it feels like you are doing group content solo, so you constantly need to cheese it a bit (casts which looks like they are designed to be interrupted on 6 second cd, insane unavoidable damage without heal/tank in a group).
- Gameloop.
So, what we gain from delves? We gain Brann experience and gear and some other loot. Currently all of the systems don’t look good.
a. Brann
Brann gets experience only from bountifull delve past lvl15. It would be an ok method to timegate levelling (even though I don’t see any reason to timegate him, you can’t take him out of the delve, anyway and delves are close to zero gold per hour, so getting advantage to farm them more efficiently will not break anything), but we can reset bountiful delves. This leads to a weird and unfun optimal way of Brann progression: clean the delve / reset, rinse and repeat. I tried it once and looks like it works ok. I think that either this loop should be somehow fixed, or Brann should be allowed to gain level in normal delves as well, as I told earlier, I see no reason why timegating is needed here. If we are talking about Brann on his own, not about levelling, he looks ok. Personally I like healing potion mechanic of healer Brann as it leaves to player decision when to use the heal without making it overpowered, but I heared that many don’t like it. Dps Brann is a beast and pretty often you want him if you need healig as well. Damage prevented is damage which is not needed to be healed and he interrupts ok (unfortunately, as expected he interrupts first cast on sight, not a scary one).
b. Gear.
Gear progression feels bad. Fist week with two crafts is enough to get full 603. Upgrade material for Champion/Hero track gear you get from delves can’t be farmed there. After you got your 603 you can only hope for treasure map drops or vault-rulet, which is not fun. It does not look as a gameplay-loop to me, even if you don’t do any other form of content to outgear it (I do not), it’s hard to justify your time there after week 1 when you got your full 603. I had feeling that there is a bias toward heavy versatility gear in delves, but it may be observation bias. If it is true, it is good, as versatility is needed in solo content, but usually is less desirable in group one (overall, gearing for versatility/leech makes them much easier, at least on warlock).
c. Other loot.
High tier delves (at least solo) are one of the least efficient activities you can do in the game. You will get more gold per hour farming goats outside of Dornogal.
Overall it’s really hard to find motivation to go there past week 1. It does not look good for a new endgame system.
- Bugs.
Unfortunately there are many. Nerubian web can be hidden under terrain and it still summons spiders when you stand on it. At least once I was in delve and it was not working at all (there were no progress for web burning when you burned it). I had to do T9 twice, because my first run, for some reason, didn’t give me an achievment, even though I finished it with max life. Monsters sometimes evade on plane sight in underwater delves (I haven’t kited them and engaged in position, still sometimes you need multiple pulls to finally engage them). Air totem disappears from time to time (you pick it, go away and after some steps it teleports back to pickup location). Air totem before Waxface spawned ~ 50% of the time (I don’t think it is intended).
This, more or less, summarizes my experience from three days of delving. I like the concept, but don’t like execution at the moment at all.
