With this season just getting started, I wanted to pump out as much feed back as I could to hopefully get some good changes out.
The new seasonal affix is just not fun in it’s current form. The reasons why are:
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The sleep bubbles that come out from the normal guys are sometimes hidden under the floor textures and literally impossible to see. This needs fixed ASAP as tanks are getting stunned for 6 seconds back to back. Maybe add a diminishing returns aspect to the sleep cuz 2 back to back 6 second stuns from sleeps that you literally can’t see is almost a guaranteed whipe when it’s the tank or healer that gets it.
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The normal guys are fine damage wise, but the mini boss is just un-fun, and requires way too much to pump into them to make them worth the stats they give. It’s almost always going to be better to skip this mob then waste CD’s to kill it. The only caveate to that is if you have a healing reduction like mortal strike that makes his shield and healing somewhat ok. But even then, it’s shield is just way too big, too frequent and just uninspired. Additionally, the bat is just not a fun mechanic either. it being CC able is great. However, most every class has AOE built into the single target rotation and because the miniboss chain shield and stands still, CCing the bat in a place that wont get the CC broken is almost impossible. Especially in places like upper kara where you’re on a bridge with limited places to move anyway.
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The rewards for killing these, the stacks, are not very impactful to people playing classes that don’t benefit from haste as much. Classes like Shadow priest are absolutely loving it, but classes like WW monk don’t play any differently and the affix doesn’t change any way you play the dungeon. It’s almost like a single sprinkle on a sundae. Sure, it’s nice to have, but I’m not going to buy the sundae for the spinkle and it’s not going to make me enjoy the sundae any better.
My suggestions for fixing the seasonal affix would be to make it so that instead of flat secondary stats, we all just gain primary stats. That would make all classes feel the impact of gaining these stacks and have positive benefits to all classes instead of just some. Additionally, rework the miniboss to make the shield have a longer cooldown between casting it, reduce the healing she does, and remove the bat. It’s just not a good addition at all. As mentioned before, bring the sleep bubble up to the top layer of the textures on the ground as well.
For the dungeons themselves:
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Lower Kara - Needs tuned badly. Kind of hard to comment on anything with real substance atm because of the tuning.
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Upper Kara - 1 shot party kills in lower key levels is bad. Make flame wreath damage scale with key level and start out lower. Remove all mini bosses and seasonal affix mobs from the walkways. This feels bad. It’s not fun, it’s not intuitive, it’s not skillful. It’s a crap shoot on where sleep bubbles are going to go and if you’re going to get pelted with a billion bat vomits all at once because of the sleep bubbles that take up 50% of the path wandering aimlessly. Make the falling portion when you get shrunk happen way faster. This takes up so much time just idle and falling. Treat it like a cinematic and let us skip it.
On the curator, fix the visual indicator of the blue swirls. The swirls are not the correct size of the actual AOE and it causes a lot of confusion and frustration in pugs. The last boss, remove the portal over top of the last platform it blocks view from overhead and makes it impossible to see anything. Super frustrating. -
Mechagon junkyard and workshop - Both of these feel fine
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Tazavesh - Both of these feel fine
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Iron Docks - The ranged non-caster mobs at the start of the dungeons are shooting through walls and can’t be LOS’d to group them up. Specifically the first or second pull and then when you’re pulling the room with the miniboss in it. That should be adjusted.
First boss of iron docks, the arrows need to have an indicator of where they are going to land and the damage is a touch too high. Iron star interaction and tank interaction is big good! really like things like this where you can pull a ton of trash into the ironstars and let them get mowed down. 2nd boss seems fine. 3rd boss - Omega cat - The damage needed to stop his ravage of a target needs to be tuned down. It’s currently too high and things like bop and immunes are needed to break it. This will not scale well with higher tyranical keys especially. Additionally, provide a shield or visual representation of how much damage is needed still to break it. Last boss, damage is slightly over-tuned, but doable. The biggest thing is there is no way to proc the knockback early or late and so it sometimes will just launch your group together with quaking to just 1 shot the whole party. No way to outplay or anything. Maybe give us a way to make him throw us back early or late so we have some player agency in this and allow us to play around the quaking. -
Grimrail - First boss - damage is way too high and too much. Trash in the train car its self has too many AOE’s that are not visible. I found myself standing in a flame patch as the tank and had no clue because the textures are not visible, same with the flame thrower. These textures need to be clearer. Cannon boss is just bad. Theres no way to spawn the adds you need when you need them so it’s a crap shoot on if you’re going to take 5 minutes on the boss or 10 minutes. the volume of valuable mobs needs to be increased to make this a viable dungeon on higher keys. Last boss - this boss needs a visual representation of where the lightning breath is going to go. There is currently none. I dont mean a small tinge anywhere, I mean literally nothing that says where it’s going. This needs changed. The frost traps are great! they give a big blue spire of light showing where they are. Add swirlys or something that show where the big blue bad is going too and that makes the boss 100% more doable.
In general, I will say that it feels like these dungeons are made for single target ranged classes more than AOE classes and melee classes - less warriors, who are only good to deal with the mini-boss from the seasonal affix due to shattering throw and mortal strike. This also feels like the meta will shift to be rogues again as there is no way for non-stealth classes to skip trash without pots/etc. I would like to see things that give us real choice in how we play the dungeons going forward when considering seasonal affixes.
-ADDED 11:39 PM 8/3/22 -
- just did a workshop on my survival hunter. Need to remove the blue texture colors of the legs on king mechagon and other mobs similar to that (skolex, etc) when resonating arrow is used. On King Mechagon, 2nd phase, resonating arrow makes it so the legs of king mechagon are visible through the platform and are so big and blue you actually can’t see any mechanic (quaking or swirlys or lazer, etc). Just disable the visibility effect for mobs/portions of mobs that are underground. There’s literally no need for it. Noticed this same thing on legion timewalking in eye of azshara’s 2nd boss.
