Watching gameplay from the new dungeons in The War Within and I’m sadly noticing Blizzard continuing their design philosophy of making trash mobs more and more complex, despite saying their goal with dungeons is to reduced the cognitive load.
Even now you are completely reliant on addons to quickly mark mobs, track group CDs, interrupts, etc or heavily outgearing keystones so you can ignore half the mechanics.
Blizzard even try to make new affixes that will encourage groups to bring different specs, but when you design content that requires endless amounts of interrupts and CC, nothing is going to change. People will simply play comps that can lock down large packs.
I have a VDH alt and whenever I play it, people comment how much smoother the runs are because they don’t have to spend all their focus on interrupts and CC.
I honestly don’t understand where your encounter designers have gotten the idea that designing every single trash mob like a mini-boss is somehow fun for players. Trust me, it’s not.
Edit: This summarizes the TWW dungeons and affixes pretty well. The sad thing is that this guy tried to avoid being negative, but yet he can barely say anything positive. The dungeons are harder and more complex, trash mobs have more mechanics and there are more one-shots than before.
I’ve not seen too much of it but agree with the principle.
The first pull of AA is fun because you can go “brrr” - there is one mechanic and it really matters.
I’m also very tired of packs like the mounds in Nokhud where its just an alphabet soup of abilities, half of them barely visible because ground effects and uneven ground don’t work.
Well at least from what I’ve seen so far it’s not less things to track than DF dungeons, and on top of that they are lowering the level for when affixes come into play back to +4 and +7, so you can no longer get weekly Myth track loot from vault without playing all affixes.
I feel like its been a bit too much in DF dungeons. Havent looked into the TWW dungeons, was hoping it would be a bit less stuff to keep track of. Idk if it is to counter pulling massively, but most of us dont play at that level anyways.
they could just make the mobs actually hurt the tank if they pull 500 mobs instead of having 23980472390472 casts to interrupt.
they want to prevent that good groups pull the entire dungeon if they don’t add a crap load of dangerous casts.
Currently pulls are mostly limited by how long you need to kill and how long you have aoe interrupts to keep you alive.
terrible design that excludes 80% of the specs in m+ basically.
If there’s one thing to know about the ethics of WoW’s m+ runs, it’s how needlessly complex they need to get rather than just advocating the simpler methods. I am sure, like always, a lot of these will blow up in the face of developers as usual and then tuning will have to be done again and again just to make them work.
it is not that the immortal tanks or now the vdh control blew up in their face already with the crazy numbers of vdh tanks
ockham’s razor, maybe the devs to change their approach.
also m+ clearly is fun because you can pull a crap load of mobs and mow them down diablo style.
So if they are worried that you pull so much and end the dungeon in 5minutes, why not add a ton more mobs to the dungeons?
Reduce boss fights (we have raids for that) and add more fun trash to dungeons that will waste time but not always requite 50 interrupts and ccs
IMO trash packs with a ton of stuff going on is not the problem.
Lets compare two pulls for example :
In this pull, all that alphabet can be ignored. All those “bolts” going on are funneled to the tank. The AoE bolt hits for peanuts. And you got unavoidable damage of the soul split or whatever.
The annoying part is the mob that places small orbs on the floor. That is annoying. But it has counter play : Either you dodge, or you stun the mob.
The 1 ability that 100% must be interrupted at all costs is the bird AoE.
So essentially, there are only 2 skills that matter there. And both have counter play.
The 1 mechanic that matters there are the skitter flies. If by chance 2 target the same person, its 1-shot. In higher keys, with out soothe its impossible to do on fortified.
No counterplay. Other than bring an OP Aug. Which IMO is not the solution.
Another very annoying pull are ALL the pulls of Neltharus. They dont do many mechanics. But ALL hit for a ton and you cant counter play them. Hunters for example… Those literally 1-shot people…
So… its fine to have a ton of stuff… in fact, if presented with a choice of a ton of stuff but that hits soft with counterplay… vs… only 1 thing to deal with but it 1-shots you, is random, and dosent have any counterplay at all… I choose the first option…
Although I do agree with the author of the video. If blizz deliberatelly puts mobs that have zero counterplay and do 1-shot mechanics… with the specific intention of preventing you from chaining multiple packs… I agree… it removes the fun from M+.
Results in you writing yet another dissertation that completely misses the point.
/ puts on anorak “well technically you can ignore some of them so its only half a bowl of soup. Or half an alphabet!!!”
Concerntrate on the sentiment rather than dissecting the example.
The mechannics of those pulls is still a lot dodge dodge dodge, interrupt, stun and ducking find your soul all the time. While the pack will not stay together because of the amount of channels, where some are not even stunnable. And that on a mount where you often do not get anything on the ground while there actually should be a swirly, but you know blizzard and hills. And somehow i need to try to stay in melee and heal.
But the pulls on the 1st boss of NO also have a ton of visual clutter. Swirlies, things to interrupt, ect…
However, in the end its just mini swirlies that are easy to dodge (a non issue) a ton of mobs casting “stuff” that does not matter.
And only 2 casts that really need your attention. You could install a WA that only marks in red those 2 casts and nothing else and it would be a “normal” classic pull.
But the #1 complaint from that are the unavoidable, random charges + bleeds. If a DD happens to get 2 at once (which happens) is a 1-shot. Randomly. Just like that.
And it feels bad.
What I wanted to say is that the issue are random 1-shots. That is what makes trash not fun.
In fact. Speaking of NO… I tried it in 14 last night.
Everything went super smooth. No issues in ANY trash packs. Everyone did their DD, healing, tanking… everything perfect…
Then we get to the last boss and people start getting 1-shot by 1.1M bolts from adds… and in P2 the spear 1-shots you if you don’t have a defensive. So first 2 or 3 were fine. Then… people started to die because they ran out of them.
Deplete.
THAT is not fun. Let me tell you. And there is not much clutter to mention on that boss.
And a 14 is not a big deal IMO. Its 6 key levels under what the pros do. We should be FAR from 1-shot situations… even on tyranical…
Every mechanic in a vacuum is easy. That is not the point. Just mini swirlies are not the problem on its own. But when there are tons of other mechanics on top of it while also having to hard focus on party frames because there are players completely getting wrecked on that pull, while also having to dodge big swirlies, cleaves and having to stun and interrupt on top of it.
That is maybe true, but it is basically the thing for all DF dungeons, and none of the previous expansion-dungeons. The big reason i really dislike the DF dungeons. Knowing i am 99,9% of the time healing. The amount of mechanics per pack need to go down. Not and swirlies and bigger swirlies and cleaves and frontals. Not to start about slopes and hills with all of this.
Lets agree to disagree then. Because I detested some of the “old” dungeons from past seasons. With significantly less mechanics… but oh boy… all those 1-shot abilities.
Quick examples of those are : EB and VP (but I could name a few more). Both disgusting with RNG 1-shots. But other than that, just zugzug and straight forward.
Quick examples of the opposite : BRH in S3. There is not a single mechanic there that randomly 1-shots you that has zero counterplay. And hence… it was the easiest dungeon in the whole season.
So for me, the common denominator in my disgust of a dungeon are random unavoidable 1-shots. With a lot of clutter. Or with out it. Dosent matter.
I understand you problem with 1 shots. But i can’t really have an oppinion about it since i never reached those keylevels. I am not good enough for that. And especially in the DF dungeons i am just reaching my skill level. Not by keylevel but by overloading. I had this talk with my friends too and it is for me basically impossible to have a run without dying. The dungeons are just too hard for me. And that is with pulling 1 pack at a time.
