12.1 Mythic+ Dungeons: Is Season 2 Really That Bad?

[00:03] >> Well, there's the new one coming with a patch called Altar of the Fangs. Pretty patch called Altar of the Fangs. Pretty cool. Poison themed. Zul'jan is a boss. >> Then we have the rest of the Midnight dungeons.

[00:17] >> Wait, the ones with 1-hour-long intermission, mini games, and mini bosses harder than the actual real bosses? >> Oof, rough. I don't know. And what else?

[00:31] >> Temple of what now? >> Sethraliss. [music] just thought I was reliving a BFA nightmare. So, the same type of dungeon like the previous ones just worse, more boring, and banned from MDI

[00:46] Battle for Azeroth? >> Um, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait, wait, wait. There is also King's Rest. >> So, the hardest dungeon they ever made. dude. >> No, no, you're right. The actual worst

[01:01] >> No, no, you're right. The actual worst dungeon ever made was Ruby Rough season so far, man. I'm not so sure about this one. Wait a minute. That's seven dungeons. What's the last one?

[01:13] What's the last one? What's the last one? It's not Ruby Life Pools, right? Right?

[01:30] so most people would like to believe. This season wouldn't be the first season we ever had that brought back some absolute stinkers of dungeons. We remember the Grim Batol's and the Grimrail Depot's days like they were 35

[01:45] years ago because we aged so much during that season. Time flowed at a different rate somehow. But, we also had the Corrupted Wake and Halls of Attunement and Atal'dazar that were brought back and actually improved with a lot of the

[01:58] skill checks, difficult mechanics, and pug killer systems actually removed. Also, bit of Sauron this season was actually kind of cool. I totally understand you being very defensive about the choices so far, but let me

[02:11] tell you two things. One, we already have changes announced by the devs to the season 2 dungeon pool with likely more to come. And two, we are getting even more quality of life changes to Mythic Plus that will make the season

[02:26] probably even more enjoyable than the first one. At the very least, the devs are aware of the criticism because earlier last week, they went on to say that they heard us and have changes already lined up. End quote. Every

[02:40] dungeon gets a full creature review. We look at health, damage, ability packages, cast frequencies, enemy placement, and how each pool contributes to the dungeon as a whole. So, what are these changes then?

[02:59] currently available to test yet since the devs want these to be on a weekly rotation likely to concentrate testing on specific ones before they can move on. As such, being in the first week of PTR, we could only play the new Altar of

[03:13] the Sands. Great dungeon, by the way. Maybe one of the best so far. With that being said, let's check out the first dungeon starting with the leftover midnight ones. Maw and Disorder has a few things that would not translate well

[03:27] into Mythic Plus and it wouldn't be the first dungeon to get a decent overhaul on certain mechanics from its release date to its Mythic Plus version. Likely, the main issue is the RP section after the first boss and before the second

[03:42] one. The so-called cantina event had you perform a series of waiting tasks like servicing clients with the requested foods, cleaning up vomit off the floor, as you do in Silvermoon, manhandling rough customers, and dancing. Might have

[03:58] also alternate to the point where you could end up doing three different jobs in one run, making the encounter a little bit tedious. Either way, as fun as this can be on heroic and regular mythic difficulty, it does not feel

[04:12] great in mythic plus environments where your brain is just trained to be on alert and always on the go. Blizzard has increased the progress contribution from each individual player to get this event done quicker. They also drastically

[04:28] reduced the penalty from failing one of the jobs, as well as making the jobs not switch anymore. If you get to be a waiter, that's all you do in this entire run. Personally, I feel like this is kind of half-cooked or half-assed.

[04:44] Initially on the beta for midnight when we tested this, this here section was just a mini boss period and no actual event, and I honestly think they should just go back to that instead of putting any type of event since any type of

[04:58] downtime kind of just takes people out of the loop, especially for classes and or specs that want consistent back-to-back chain pulls if possible. At least let that be a choice rather than just forced upon the player. But, we'll

[05:12] event still running at a shorter duration. Past the second boss, there comes a phase with a lot of casters, which now has fewer of them, as well as certain castable abilities removed from

[05:26] corrupted warlocks, trained fell hunters, and fell caster neophytes. How many? We don't know. Are they replaced or simply the count of enemies reduced We don't know. What spells will be removed? We don't know. Will you guys

[05:43] test this? Why? Yes. Yes, we will. And all findings will be posted on our channel, socials, and streams. But, hey, to keep up with all of that, all you need to do is just hit the like and the subscribe button cuz

[05:56] we want our channel to be bigger, man. Sup? For Den of Neltharion, it's a similar issue with Mother Ro when it comes to its RP. Particularly, well, actually, every boss has RP. These will be shorter now. A unique mechanic

[06:10] this dungeon brings is in its winter side with the wind or blizzard, if you will, blowing against your path, pushing you back, and dealing damage. All of this was addressed as pacing and effects, which have been adjusted. We

[06:24] can assume the winds either barely push you back or the intervals in which they spawn and are active will be just spread apart. The Sentinel of Winter no longer grants absorb shields and the channel is for a fixed duration now. Avatar of

[06:37] Starvation's effigy will now have a 5-second cast time before affecting players. Avatar of Determination's pulverize also will not stun players anymore. Honestly, these last ones I did not even know existed. Props for the

[06:50] devs doing a bit more than surface-level checkups on the mechanics. Blinding Veil has a number of changes as well. First of all, the number of casters has been reduced in individual packs. To be fair, I felt overall that

[07:03] the board. Now, with everyone's interrupt having a larger cooldown and all, while healers having infinite cooldown on theirs, the fact that we are reducing them even more means I can play warlock again. On the plant dino boss,

[07:19] the amount of roots that spawn will be reduced. These were not the worst mechanic ever. It made kiting the boss over them very obvious and clearly the way to solve the issue. There were a bit too many, for sure. One small step and

[07:33] you would be instantly rooted and eaten by the boss. The path to dodge them was very narrow. So, this is a good change. On the last boss fight, the ads have less HP and also the second mechanic where the boss draws orbs in has been

[07:47] made less of a potential wipe mechanic if failed. [music] Void Scar Arena is one of the very few dungeons with actual routing options, which has kind of been addressed by making the starting points left side be

[08:00] melee focused while right side will be caster focused with a mini boss at the end of either side to give us a buff when defeated. If this turns into actual routes based on your comp, I am officially surprised. The first boss has

[08:14] been apparently fully reworked. I don't know what triggered the drastic response, but I imagine the biggest offender would be the black hole mechanic that literally made everyone stop doing whatever and push them to run

[08:27] away. Most of the time not even fast enough. I'm looking at you priests. A bunch of ads across the dungeon have been updated and redesigned to incentivize diverse pathing while also the mini boss pinball before the last

[08:40] boss also addressed. That is something that was granted annoying, but also unique to this dungeon. I hope they didn't hammer it too much because it would suck to be yet another generic clear the mini boss guards to open the

[08:53] door to the last boss, which by the way has had its mechanics adjusted also. has had its mechanics adjusted also. [ __ ] so much [ __ ] changed already. And all of this addressed the Midnight Dungeons. Let it be known in the future

[09:06] because I talked with some people in our circle that complained about the dungeon pool that sometimes a little faith needs to be placed in the devs. Sometimes. Moving on to the absolute bombshell and

[09:20] not in a good way, King's Rest has also had its RP sessions sped up, which were almost everywhere in the dungeon. The Council fight will also have a fixed spawn of the bosses instead of random the way we remember.

[09:33] I feel the randomness was what made the fight interesting since their abilities would overlap differently each time. Their mechanics were very vanilla on their own. So, another fight we need to see first before we make our call.

[09:46] Before the last boss, however, Shadow of Zul was a lieutenant that was actually harder to fight than all of the bosses in the dungeon. It's heal checks were actually crazy back in BFA. And now it has been adjusted to fit modern mythic

[09:59] plus design standards, aka simplified. The last boss was also reworked with whole new abilities. I hope the raptor mount is still a part of them. That was actually an interesting gimmick of this encounter. And the spears, but uh

[10:14] Temple of Sethraliss, the nuclear bomb of the season with actually the most towards it have been addressed. The first dual boss health based instead of timer based. And

[10:28] wrong one, it just makes them take less damage. I mean, yeah. But also, this feels like a bland mechanic now. I'm not arguing for Temple to be difficult, but the reflect damage was at least unique. The bigger worry was Merektha, the snake

[10:44] boss. Well, snake snake, not talking snake. The intermission where she summons her ads and burrows all around knocking you away if you stand in her path ends when the ads die and not after like 45 seconds or something. The mini

[11:00] game in the gauntlet after the third boss has also been addressed where we won't have to have one player carrying the snake eye to open the door. The last boss was also changed to require the input of everyone to enable

[11:14] the fight and not just the healers. I imagine they put healing orbs on the ground and we have to walk over them to heal the boss. Also, throughout the dungeon, there were rogue Sethrak that used cheap shot when you walked into

[11:28] making runs tricky. That's not going to happen encounter as well and the mini boss taking the eye to the door was unique and that has been removed as well. And although I understand the mythic plus

[11:44] consistent, I cannot help but feel that they might just become a little bit too bland. Maybe bland [music] is better than insanely annoying. Lastly, the new tronic bomb that was Ruby Life Pools and the one I'm still worried about. The

[11:59] first part of it apparently way too crowded so they removed some packs. Some mob abilities were reworked to not clutter the screen with cast bars, particularly the tectonic slams from the Earth Shapers. The first boss now does

[12:13] her ability slower and gives more time in between them. This is a great change. This boss definitely felt like a doozy, especially for the first one in the dragons that were just flying around now are going to be on the ground, removing

[12:26] the risk of people accidentally pulling them as they were flying above head. nowadays? The third boss now puts a marker on the player before it casts. I assume the rolling meteor on the ground while

[12:40] Kyrakka, the last boss, no longer does the fire dots that drop puddles on the floor. This is actually incredible. That ability was a pain to juggle. Across the dungeon, pack compositions and abilities have been simplified, changed, adjusted,

[12:55] and maybe even removed somewhat. Honestly, I think we are in a good spot here, but I want to see how the rest of the abilities scale cuz uh it was rough the abilities scale cuz uh it was rough back in Dragonflight. [music]

[13:13] of the next season and calling it DPS nerfed seems as good of a description as any. It ties in first with the health changes and the damage changes announced. Actually, it ties in fully with these two. They announced about 2

[13:27] weeks ago that the damage all enemies do will be increased by 25% but also everyone's HP will be 25% higher. Tanks are already rocking easily over 1 million health on the PTR. This of course will turn into yet another stat

[13:42] squish at the very latest at the end of last Titan, but that's a problem for future WoW. Present WoW has to deal with the fact that the healer change might not accomplish what they really want. The issue of healer burst healing being

[13:55] problematic happened once again and to solve that the health bars are bigger but also damage intake is bigger. Likely easier than nerfing all healing easier than nerfing all healing abilities done by 25% either way we

[14:08] might get rid of the burst healing but on paper this is just sounds that healers will have to sweat once again to keep people up since now they have essentially been nerfed by 25%. [music] Yeah, they won't have burst healing the

[14:21] but that just means that they need to mash the healing buttons better, faster and stronger now. Not sure how that is supposed to make their lives better and to remove some stress away from their roles because yes, [music] this is

[14:36] a goal that they have mentioned for tanks as well. Increasing everyone's health means DPS players will have to work more to kill packs especially with a reduced amount of burst damage that DPS players lost because the burst

[14:50] damage has also shifted into damage outside cooldowns. This makes combat likely slower in turn giving DPS players time to target swap to the actual dangerous mob, interrupt more spells, handle more mechanics and overall not

[15:04] drool on their divine storm button for 33 minutes. In theory, I support this. translates into an easier life for healers because it sounds like we are just going back in time to previous

[15:17] versions of mythic plus. Damage checks are better than survivability checks and I support that. However, if mobs need more damage to die, then it is even more important for DPS players to not focus on doing other things than DPSing

[15:30] because that will just make the dungeon harder to time. Or worse even, healers might need to optimize DPS once again. But, this is a weird criticism because it just means that no solution will ever improve Mythic Plus at this rate. It's

[15:45] hard to improve Mythic Plus by not making it all about maximum DPS when the encounter is timed, and what beats the timer is just more damage. You only need enough tankiness and healingness to survive. More than that does not time

[15:58] the dungeon faster, but you can never have enough damage. By that logic, anything that makes players not have to do damage to do other things will naturally make the encounter harder to time. The only way this can change is if

[16:13] we actually design mechanics that require other stuff than DPS to time, like a friendly boss add that needs to be healed to finish the encounter, or the boss breaking its weapon on the tank the tougher the tank is. As long as

[16:28] mechanics that reward more HPS and more tankiness are not introduced, it will tankiness are not introduced, it will forever be a DPS game. Which is why we ranked all melee DPS based on their DPS in this DPS tier list

[16:40] because we were bored and wanted to look at the DPS. You should look at the DPS, too, because fun is not fun if your DPS sucks. sucks. Facts.