Grimrail Depot, difficult or player skill?

Community General Discussion
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For the last couple of days, I have been using timewalking dungeons to level my alts (SL dungeons are boring) and one thing I have noticed is the number of wipes in Grimrail Depot. People constantly fail at an alarming rate to the first and second bosses. In all my runs I don’t think I have seen a run without at least one or two wipes, which brings the question: Is Grimrail Depot actually difficult, or has the average player skill sharply decreased over the years?

Last night, I was leveling my healer and after the first wipe to the first boss, I tried explaining the mechanics in very simple words: “Let the orc charge into the goblin to take him down.” yet the party members, especially the tank, kept taking the orc to every single spot except the one with the goblin. I repeated, hoping that they would read the chat again only for the tank to say something along those lines: “Mhm this is much more difficult than how it used to be. We need to make a plan!”
I repeated for the third time, come on you typed in the chat so you got to read this! The tank said: “I have a brilliant idea, we take the boss to the corner!”
This is not a silly story, nor it’s portrayed differently. The guy literally had current mythic+ gear and they were upgraded too yet failed to a simple mechanic and to read the chat. To add, the other party members went on with his idea and we kept wiping, again and again. Seeing these wipes, I intended to leave this farce and wait 30 minutes rather than wasting my time and sanity with these people, but I gave them one last chance and I said: “Just… Just stay close to the goblin!” only for the tank to say: “I think this might work”
At last, we made it through, but I realized one thing, these people are not hopeless players, these are the definition of hopelessness because during the second boss they kept charging toward the cannon, standing right in front of it, and in the fire. I left with the only regret being not leaving earlier.
While other parties’ performances are better, it doesn’t mean they don’t wipe to the first or second boss as well. They have their own share of struggling which really makes me question whether the player skill has decreased over the years, or a good number of the playerbase are hopeless DPS-addicted players.

Though I’d like to say that the second boss AoE mortar attack does seem to be a bit overturned (Quite difficult to run out of it as a caster without dying) but I’d like to hear what the forum community’s thoughts are.

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Lots of people hate that one, including myself

Both, maybe… not the easiest of dungeons and in my humble oppinion, the rampant usage of add-ons (can’t blame them tho’, raids and such are designed in mind of those) somewhat dulled the reflexes… and over the years, dungeons/raids became easier, simpler.

See, this is usually a problem; people DON’T read guide anymore, not even the adventurer gudie that summarize what to do, or done a little research… the overall mentaility is: Fake it 'till you make it

To be honest I wouldn’t say the player’s skill are the major factor, instead the lack of communication
Not saying ‘hi’ is one thing, totally ignoring the chat-tab is another. I know a lot of players who simply turn off the chat tab, or switch to a custom made “Dungeon/raid tab” when in a raid or dungeon
The other part is, they belive it is emberassing to not to know everything, way more emberasing to admit it
Nothing to be ashamed of in my humble oppinion, its not a crime against humanity to not to know something and ask
Sure the community sometimes a bit toxic and impatient, but I rather ask “everyone know what to do? If not, I will explain, it takes 2 min to write, way less than wipe after wipe” 8 out 10 times the response is “okay”
Some bosses are dificult, some dungeons have actual mechanics and require strategy
Foreign concepts these days

I think some of the older dungeons sometimes were longer and more difficult than some of the curent raids… I honestly belive, player skills are decresed a bit, including myself, the last thing I would call myself skilled or good player (years flew by, brain became older, slower, not the game’s fault per se) and the add-on dependence soemwhat dulled the reaction and skills - never used one, just the TRP, and for that often been almost stigmatized
Pride is a mayor factor here, most of the players are ashamed to admit, they never been there “hurr durr old content, must be a joke” mentality and most of them belive it is some unforgatable sin to not know what to do, worthy of a kick, so they remain silent, instead saying “first time here, not had time to watch a video or read a guide, someone could explaine what to do?”
Yes, the one side of th coin is, you are suposed to do your homework, the other, the others won’t die if they would help with a few words
Players are always in a hurry, don’t have time to such things, rather kick and wait a few minutes, insted spending those minutes to explain what to do
Both parties are guilty
Both parties are innocent

The best is, in my humble oppinion, in older content, just ask “Everyone knows what to do? If not I will explain, it took less time than wipe after wipe.” or simply don’t ask, because people are ashamed to admit such things, just start explaing “okay, at the next boos is tricky, look for this, do that”

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Because content you can queue up for has become so easy over the years that no one takes dungeons as anything other than loot piñatas. Get in, blindly swing your bat around, get rewards. And that carries over into more difficult content until you see people doing 15s that don’t even have any place in doing 10s.

So yeah, many people expect to be carried by gear. Whether it’s heirlooms for leveling content or handouts for endgame dungeons, people expect that a higher item level will let them skip having to actually play the dungeon.

I’ve hated leveling dungeons for years now because they are too easy. DPS pulling mobs, tanks running in a straight line for the boss without looking what the group is doing, healers DPSing while the group is dying. When content is too easy, it fosters bad habits and breeds laziness. Bad habits carry over into “real” content. And because bad players (or players with bad/lazy habits) have never failed they put the blame on their team rather than looking at themselves to see what went wrong.
And because it is so easy to get carried to KSM, they will take that as proof that they are playing well and it is the people who cannot carry them as the outlier, the bad players.

Anyways, this hits the nail right on the head:

The best thing Blizzard could do is severely increase difficulty of leveling dungeons. Make it easy to wipe again. People aren’t playing worse because they’re old or because of addons. People are playing worse because the game allows them to do skip out on paying attention. It is too easy, make it harder again.

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It’s definitely harder compared to the other WoD timewalking dungeons. It has one shot mechanics, meaning you can’t just rush everything.

Borka’s Mad Dash is close to oneshot the tank if he has no mitigation/immunity active, as well as oneshotting any poor soul that didn’t position properly.

The mortars during the fight with Nitrogg are also a oneshot, and their marker on the ground isn’t the most noticeable with everything else going on. We eventually managed to kill him with all 3 DPS dead by the time he was out of his cannon. As the tank (paladin) I just figured my best bet is just to move nonstop to avoid the mortars and have the healer (druid) do dps as I’m pretty self sustainable.

Still keep in mind that people don’t really know the dungeon either. They’ll focus Borka instead of having him die around the same time as Rocketspark, which extends the “enrage” mode. Also it’ll probably take a few wipes until your group learns to use the cannons on the 2nd boss.

Personally I wouldn’t mind if other dungeons were made a bit harder. I wouldn’t mind feeling like I actually have to press Ardent Defender/Divine Shield/Blessing of Protection/etc. on a regular basis.

I agree, most of the time when I read the adventure guide I feel like an idiot for learning stuff that I won’t have to use and then forget 2 minutes later. The low difficulty is the reason why people don’t read any guides. Why bother reading when there are so many encounters and you can just wing it 90% of the time until you get to that one encounter where you just can’t?

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Haven’t wiped once in there so far in TW. I however hate the camera in there. I have no idea who thought it would be a good idea to make dungeons where the camera is the biggest problem.

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as a ranged my problem is the camera setting. sometimes im almost blind and i cant see whats happening.
Tesla “proudly wiping EVERY time at 2nd boss in grimrail depot since 2016”

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^^ This is what I’m dreading the most.

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People don’t read anymore period. If it does not come in moving pictures the attention span is 0. If it comes in moving pictures with a dull monotone explanation the x button is pressed instantly.

WoD dungeons were easy but since there are new players who never done it before it will be a learning curve.

In the dungeon leveling experience players are not faking it they just assume they can out dps the mechanics or solely rely on the tank healer to get them through it. Their main aim is get it over and done with and get the xp and move on to the next.

In S4 I am curios to see how the dungeon plays out with the narrow spaces for trash mobs and the most interesting bosses will be 3rd and last boss coupled with affixes. Though I still have reservations that this is going to be doable as a m+. Have not gone to ptr want it to be a surprise.

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I don’t think it’s hard, but because all the other dungeons require 0 strategy people dont expect to be one-shoted. It’s really easy to avoid it most of the time but people probably don’t know they will be one-shoted.

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It’s TW and people expect it to be faceroll. They don’t expect to actually have to do mechanics. From next week, they’ll either learn the mechanics or give up on M+.

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Literally opposite for raids :rofl:
As for dungeon they just changed focus in m+ after legion from harder boss to more abilites on trash packs

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There’s a reason why it’s always been one of the most hated dungeons.

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A big issue is that some mechanics are one shots even for tanks and we only did the timewalking version of it. i can’t even imagine how it will be in m+. a tunning pass is required before the m+ start.

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What mechanics are one shots for tanks in tw? I did it on my DK as tank and I never died despite standing in pretty much everything and pulling 2 wagons of mobs.

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I think those mobs whos name I forgot who put down a barely noticable circle on the floor, then in a few sec BOOOM 3 player dead :thinking:

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yup, that one.

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GD is annoying cause the space is cramped and your camera wobbles/goes crazy when you move(and you have to move a lot because of all the ground crap) due to the walls and ceiling.

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Thank this game’s awful, toxic community for voting for that dungeon out of spite. Now we, including those who voted for it, are stuck playing it for 4 months.

Toxicity and spite can only be massive self-owns, and that’s what WoW’s community did to itself.

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To play the Devil’s Advocate for a second, I am not sure this was just a toxic community vote-trolling. One thing I’ve noticed, everyone on the forums is a 3,5k+ score quasi MDI candidate. People who run dungeons semi-competitively will approach a dungeon like GD from a completely different perspective and mindset than someone who just PUGs dungeons for fun.

What the normal person sees is a short 3 boss dungeon where you just take a straight line and don’t have to faff about with skips that at least one person in your PUG will screw up anyway.