After doing (mainly tanking) M+ for ages, I find the current trash count (enemy force percentage) design is kinda flawed or annoying.
As a tank, I am pretty familiar with the optimal route in every M+ in general. But sometimes, I still need to check and calculate because of different affix like teeming or A/B obelisk rotations to decide skips and best route.
In my opinion, the trash mobs in M+ should be redesigned:
There will be reduced amount of trash in M+ compared to normal/heroic/mythic version. Only mobs on the main route between bosses will be there. Mobs outside main route will disappear in M+ when you put in M+ key.
A group has to kill all of these mobs to reach 100% enemy force. We can’t skip any trash. This will remove the need to calculate trash or route.
Some people consider knowing trash count and best route/skip as a tank’s skill. But it is not fun and unnecessary to start with. It also puts burden and pressure on new tanks when there is already shortage of tanks for M+.
It is not to diminish the function of shroud, shadowmeld, death skip either. But these abilities or racials shall not be necessary in a dungeon where the goal is to kill enemy fast not to skip enemy.
Group can still choose how fast and how big they pull with their personal skills, but they don’t need to skip anything or calculate trash count.
Addon like Method dungeon tool or raiderIO weekly route should not be necessary in first place. Calculating percentage shall not be a main focus of M+ dungeons.
So, basically, every week and every clear is exactly the same, the only difference being how much you pull? If that doesn’t sound boring, then nothing is.
I don’t want a route prescribed to me. I want to make informed choices on what trash to skip: with one group a certain pack may be easier than with another. Like, if I have a DK in the group, then having two hard undeads in a pack is fine - the DK will just control one. If I don’t, I may decide to skip that pack and pull another instead. If I have a way to take certain mobs out of the pack with sheep, paralyze, MC, DH prison, control undead, etc - then I can use that to my advantage to combat some of the affixes like bursting or bolstering. If I only have One True Route, then I can’t plan the run and the route tailored to the group. I have to tailor the group to the route. That’s not fun.
Yeah, knowing the layout and having an effective route of maximising speed and clear speed while minimising the pressure on the healer is very much the tanks job.
If you think of the tanks role, the tanks role in combat is to control the encounter, and their role broadly is to ‘‘control’’ the dungeon, this includes controlling how the dungeon is done.
I mean you’re talking very broadly here and in my experience at least far from every dungeon is problematic when it comes to %, dungeons like Temple of Sethraliss and Kings Rest are much more static and less open ended than say Underrot or Freehold, but whats your tanks raiderio, can’t see any history on your priest.