Are Legion dungeons really the solution?

[styil]

When I look back at Wrath dungeons (and to a lesser extent, post-launch Cata dungeons) and what made them successful, I don't think an "endless challenge" was on the top of my list.

For me it was overcoming the initial obstacle that posed a challenge, then going back after you've made some character progression and overpowering the dungeons. Going back at the end of the tier or end of expansion seeing the fruits of your labour and having a sense of accomplishment. And that's what made it fun and meaningful and made me want to spam dungeons; knowing how far you've come since the start. Things like pulling an entire group of mobs rather than a couple at a time, killing bosses faster, surviving mechanics that would have killed you before, being able to obtain achievements easier, killings things before they did a certain mechanic, etc. were all satisfying feelings. The dungeons were a physical manifestation of your character progress. Plus you were rewarded handsomely for it.

I think the main problem with WoD (and to a lesser extent, MoP) was that the initial obstacle was far too easy to overcome (exacerbated by design decisions such as ilvl inflation). As a result, the feeling of character progression (in dungeons at least) and subsequent empowerment was missing. When there never really was a challenge in the first place, and when there weren't any notable rewards (in WoD), people didn't return. And with no new post-launch dungeons to provide new challenges to overcome, things got stale fast. However in MoP, Heroic Scenarios filled in the void that was missing, and WoD's Mythic Dungeons attempted to address the reward issue.

Now in Legion, there is an obstacle that can never (or almost never) be overcome. Although your gear may get higher, the monster HP and damage just gets that much higher. So you are constantly pushed back to where you were at the start (relatively). Going in with that mindset leads it to being a very different experience than what Wrath and Cata offered. The feeling of progression and empowerment is diminished. This system not only devalues character progression (you'll most likely never really "overcome" the content), but it also devalues the gear rewards (the gear rewards will never help you really "overcome" the content as its difficulty effectively never ends).

We already have the Legion dungeon model on a smaller scale with raids (4 difficulties rather than more), and if there's one common theme with the feedback on raids at the moment it's that we have too many raid difficulties. The sense of progression and excitement is diluted when players run the raid on several difficulties, and the ilvl inflation devalues the gear.

Now I'm not going to sit here and say that every single player feels that way, but I do feel that there are other players out there that liked that feeling of progression and empowerment, rather than an endless scaling challenge mode (considering how few people actually did those). I suspect that there are people out there that like the feeling of "completing" the content then going back and overpowering it, rather than something open-ended that can never really be "complete". Then you've got to remember that these Challenge Dungeons are beyond Mythic difficulty; they are premade and therefore not a feature that will be done by LFD players. So I suspect that many people will simply be shut out from this feature.

Do you think that Legion dungeons are really an endgame solution for everybody or are (yet another) feature for the top few % of players? Is it fair to assume that most of the playerbase will not even consider Legion Challenge Dungeons as an endgame feature for themselves? What will Legion offer for the rest of playerbase at 110?

[Wildmoon]

I didn't really feel that WotLK's dungeons were challenging at any point so I didn't feel that much empowerment at least in dungeons. I also don't think 4 difficulties for dungeons is a problem because you will ignore half of them before you know it. I don't know how other people feel but to me, spamming easy dungeon for currency is extremely boring. I want to get better gears to tackle harder content.

[Kathranis]

Wrath dungeons were worth running because they were short, easy, and you could use Valor to buy tier gear.

[ceall]

They definitely won't be for the top x% of the playerbase. The really high ones might be, but that's their purpose. They'll be introduced as a complementary to mythic raiding or even replace it for some. Also remember, they also give gear. So it's kind of an alternate progression for ppl who like small group content more.

I also think it's good for players and feels like a bigger accomplishment, if they can overcome higher ranks. At some point those mythic+ dungeons may become harder than mythic raids (I'm guessing here), but that'll be for top notch players.
Rolling over dungeons may be fun the first time you do it, but then they become boring. I mean look at today, mythic dungeon bosses get blown up before the legendary explodes, and if they don't, the explosion kills it.

[Flaks]

Wrath dungeons were worth running because they were short, easy, and you could use Valor to buy tier gear.

This is all it comes down to.

It allowed a non or minimally raiding crowd to essentially end game gear.

THATS how you keep dungeons relevant.

5 mans were never really for heroic/mythic raiders outside of expansion launch and the fact that that's all blizzard did with them the last couple of expansion shows either ineptitude or laziness on their part.

[styil]

They definitely won't be for the top x% of the playerbase. The really high ones might be, but that's their purpose. They'll be introduced as a complementary to mythic raiding or even replace it for some. Also remember, they also give gear. So it's kind of an alternate progression for ppl who like small group content more.

I also think it's good for players and feels like a bigger accomplishment, if they can overcome higher ranks. At some point those mythic+ dungeons may become harder than mythic raids (I'm guessing here), but that'll be for top notch players.
Rolling over dungeons may be fun the first time you do it, but then they become boring. I mean look at today, mythic dungeon bosses get blown up before the legendary explodes, and if they don't, the explosion kills it.

Let's not kid ourselves. With an (effectively) endless difficulty there is no greater challenge. The baseline difficulty is the same. The only things that change are your gear and the monsters' HP and damage. Doing 100 damage in a level 1 dungeon, 110 damage level 2, 120 level 3, ... while the boss' HP goes from 100 to 110, 120, ... doesn't provide additional challenge.

The Legion dungeon system is effectively Proving Grounds. Doesn't matter what item level you do it in, the base challenge will always be the same (though it has some slight imbalances, but that is another problem). And I don't think that 2 random affixes a week will add much to the experience (just like random affixes in D3 including maps, pylons, rift guardians, etc. don't add much to the experience - in fact they make the experience worse). Now imagine if Proving Grounds gave 650 gear if you joined at 635, all the way up to 730 gear if you joined at 715. Does that make sense? I don't think so. And neither does Legion Challenges.

I suspect that more people will start realising this when the expansion is actually live and they are actually doing the dungeons (which by then is obviously too late). So there isn't much we can do about it till 8.0.

[Taeldorian]

Wrath dungeons were worth running because they were short, easy, and you could use Valor to buy tier gear.

This. I'd also like to point out that most of wraths dungeons (and BC's) were visually appealing and actually fun to jump into. I'd get excited when id get the caverns of time dungeons, and the culling of strat for wrath. I loved those dungeons, and many others too.

Cata had some really fun and interesting dungeons as well, primarily the hour of twilight/well of eternity dungeons that were added later, those were extremely fun. In MoP I disliked 90% of the dungeons, most were either the same thing (mantid, bugs that didn't really feel like a threat and were boring), and WoD had some decent ones but they were quickly forgotten about.

I personally feel like dungeons play a giant roll in an expansion. The dungeons cata had, the dungeons BC had and the dungeons Wrath had all kept me interested for a long time. That's just me though.

[clevin]

What I'm afraid of is that they're doing this so they don't have to create 5 mans post launch but get to say "see, the launch 5 mans are still relevant!!" That misses the point of them, though.

5Mans are endgame content for people who don't raid or don't raid much. They're there to provide something to do for smaller groups, people who view them as something to do for gar and again, who don't raid, etc. Ever since MoP, Blizzard seems to have forgotten why they exist and Legion looks set to continue this. It's not about running the same content over but harder. At some point that's boring (and we have CMs for that mindset). Legion isn't Diablo - or it shouldn't be. New 5 mans should come with patches so that people who do them as endgame get fresh content (JUST LIKE raiders do) and so that the story can be continued in those instances too.

[TheWindWalker]

The L̶e̶g̶i̶o̶n̶ d̶u̶n̶g̶e̶o̶n̶ WoW Raiding system is effectively Proving Grounds. Doesn't matter what item level you do it in, the base challenge will always be the same

Makes about as much sense whether you agree or not.

[nazrakin]

When I look back at Wrath dungeons (and to a lesser extent, post-launch Cata dungeons) and what made them successful, I don't think an "endless challenge" was on the top of my list.

*snip*

WOTLK dungeons were never considered difficult, there were endless complains about how dumbed down they were compared with TBC. Then Blizzard tried to go back to the TBC style difficulty in Cata and there was a flood of complaining about them being too hard, so they quickly nerfed them. In MOP Blizz tried to satisfy both sides by making the dungeons easy while also introducing Challenge modes for people looking for difficulty. As you mentioned, the issue there was that the reward structure was awful, which meant that no one cared to do them -- which is the real reason WOTLK dungeons were so popular, the valor allowed you to buy raid gear. Mythic+ is an attempt at satisfying both sides by having scaling difficulty and scaling rewards.

However, unlike proving grounds or current CM, Mythic+ does not scale down the player. In fact, it revolves entirely around "empowering" yourself to progress further so that you can overcome the next challenge. Each week you'll start back at level one, so even that sense of overpowering something that may have previously been very challenging to you is still there. The point of the affixes is to bust up the monotony of doing the exact same dungeon in the exact same way everytime. You likely will have to mix up your strategy based on the combination you've got and its something they could continue to add to as the expac goes on. So they could add affixes late in the expac that change how you approach the launch dungeons.

All that said, its not a solution for everybody. There is no such thing as a solution for everybody. Raiding, arenas, battlegrounds, dungeons, -- none of this stuff is a solution for everybody.

[IxilaFA]

Let's not kid ourselves. With an (effectively) endless difficulty there is no greater challenge. The baseline difficulty is the same. The only things that change are your gear and the monsters' HP and damage. Doing 100 damage in a level 1 dungeon, 110 damage level 2, 120 level 3, ... while the boss' HP goes from 100 to 110, 120, ... doesn't provide additional challenge.

The Legion dungeon system is effectively Proving Grounds. Doesn't matter what item level you do it in, the base challenge will always be the same (though it has some slight imbalances, but that is another problem). And I don't think that 2 random affixes a week will add much to the experience (just like random affixes in D3 including maps, pylons, rift guardians, etc. don't add much to the experience - in fact they make the experience worse). Now imagine if Proving Grounds gave 650 gear if you joined at 635, all the way up to 730 gear if you joined at 715. Does that make sense? I don't think so. And neither does Legion Challenges.

I suspect that more people will start realising this when the expansion is actually live and they are actually doing the dungeons (which by then is obviously too late). So there isn't much we can do about it till 8.0.

You're simplifying it. Increasing a boss' damage by 10% can dramatically change the way the fight works. You can find examples in Mythic raiding all the time. Iron Reaver Barrage can be soaked by players in Heroic but in Mythic it one shots. For Xhul Heroic you have a group of players soak Black Holes, in Mythic you need one person who can cheese it.

Besides you don't know that increasing the challenge rating is just increasing the damage. For one, you get new affixes at different thresholds such that some of the trash pulls completely change, and boss abilities that can be ignored are one-shots if handled poorly. We don't yet know how high up the affixes go and how many you can get at one time. We also don't know that boss abilities don't change at higher levels. Something that hits one player at Level 1 might hit three players at Level 30. This is an assumption but it's an easy enough way for Blizzard to go that dramatically changes the fight.

[Shelly]

Regarding BC dungeons, they weren't really all that hard. The problem was that threat generation for tanks was extremely limited which required crowd control for everyone but paladins since your AoE did piddly threat that couldn't keep up with a healer and was on rather long cooldowns. Also there was no bonus to any of your "attack" stats which meant that as a tank you did piddly damage and had to rely purely on your threat multiplier which very often wasn't enough.

Regarding LK dungeons, probably some of the best they've ever done. Very few stinkers; violet hold, the one where you rode a dragon and while beautiful I did get tired of Utgarde keep and Nexus since you have to run them so many times while leveling up. That said ToC was interesting and the Frostmourne Halls trifecta remains amazing and actually rather makes me wish they had done those dungeons as a raid instead and pushed back ICC a few more months.

LK had frost badges for tier gear which provided an amazing catch-up mechanic and way to quickly gear up alts. This actually fed into ICC being such a highly PuG'd raid - even taking gear score leprosy into account you could basically count on someone able to enter with a full set of normal tier complete with the set bonuses that often added huge amounts to your DPS, healing and survivability.

That was basically the system that they had with MoP LFR and even if they just passed down the fugly LFR sets they should have been given the tier bonuses to better synergyze with PuGs and getting into HFC normal.

Cata dungeons weren't all that great. They were often difficult and had a lot of stuff going on but very few were all that visually interesting and the gear they dropped was also visually unappealing. This has remained a trend in MoP and WoD, much to our chagrin and has helped make those dungeons become irrelevant just that much faster. In BC they had a lot of new models and even used recolors of prior tier gear, in LK they had quite a few really neat weapon models (Skull Clad Cleaver anyone?) and as the expansion progressed also introduced strong recolors in Frostmourne Halls of the prior leveling and dungeon gear. Cata didn't really get any interesting models until the End Time dungeons and by then it was too little too late since the expansion really peaked in Firelands.

Anyway the Legion dungeons are a really good solution. I hope it's tied to badges or other currency that can be used to pick up the base-level tier gear which will help more intermittent-players become closer to raid-ready. They could become a great catch-up model if done right but frankly though they keep talking about trying to make the game more casual friendly it just feels like the entire of WoD was just a big gift to the hard-core raider by making sure they'd only ever have to leave their safe-space to go to the raid.

I really hope they'll be able to make the world compelling again.

[Coffeh]

Wrath dungeons were worth running because they were short, easy, and you could use Valor to buy tier gear.

This. And it was just a great bonus that they were fun. There were so many of them, and had such incredible variety. I know most people hated Violet Hold and the Oculus, but I really appreciated dungeons that were out of the norm.

Sometimes I think Blizzard just has no idea why people loved their game.

[Jinpachi]

Easier to organize and coordinate with smaller groups. I see no problem with the 5man plan for legion.

[IxilaFA]

This. And it was just a great bonus that they were fun. There were so many of them, and had such incredible variety. I know most people hated Violet Hold and the Oculus, but I really appreciated dungeons that were out of the norm.

Sometimes I think Blizzard just has no idea why people loved their game.

Meanwhile one of the most common complaints during WOTLK was that the 5-mans were too easy and took no skill or thought to complete. Just because you found them fun does not mean everyone else did. Most people ran them for valor so they could get tier gear.

The only 5-mans I enjoyed in Wrath were the last 4 they released in patches because those ones actually offered a little bit of a challenge.

[SirCowdog]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't all the normal difficulties for dungeons still exist in Legion? Are we just talking about the challenge mode? Why is it a bad thing to have the option to play in a mode that scales up with your equipment or level if that's the type of challenge you're looking for? Can't you still go back and steamroll the other difficulty settings if that's your jam?

[Coffeh]

Meanwhile one of the most common complaints during WOTLK was that the 5-mans were too easy and took no skill or thought to complete. Just because you found them fun does not mean everyone else did. Most people ran them for valor so they could get tier gear.

The only 5-mans I enjoyed in Wrath were the last 4 they released in patches because those ones actually offered a little bit of a challenge.

That's fine, but just because you didn't find them challenging enough doesn't mean everyone else didn't either. Or, more to the point, that definition of 'fun' means something different to everyone. But how did Blizzard then respond? Made Cata 5 mans more difficult, and that backfired horribly.

People say a lot of things. They don't always know what they want. In fact, they rarely do.

[Grandork]

Let's not kid ourselves. With an (effectively) endless difficulty there is no greater challenge. The baseline difficulty is the same. The only things that change are your gear and the monsters' HP and damage. Doing 100 damage in a level 1 dungeon, 110 damage level 2, 120 level 3, ... while the boss' HP goes from 100 to 110, 120, ... doesn't provide additional challenge.

The Legion dungeon system is effectively Proving Grounds. Doesn't matter what item level you do it in, the base challenge will always be the same (though it has some slight imbalances, but that is another problem). And I don't think that 2 random affixes a week will add much to the experience (just like random affixes in D3 including maps, pylons, rift guardians, etc. don't add much to the experience - in fact they make the experience worse). Now imagine if Proving Grounds gave 650 gear if you joined at 635, all the way up to 730 gear if you joined at 715. Does that make sense? I don't think so. And neither does Legion Challenges.

I suspect that more people will start realising this when the expansion is actually live and they are actually doing the dungeons (which by then is obviously too late). So there isn't much we can do about it till 8.0.

Lol, wut? They don't scale linearly you idjit. The farther you go, the harder it is. Since you liked so much Pre Cata dungeons, let me give you an example of Ozruk.

Before he was nerfed, Ozruk had 2 sure kill skills, the Shatter and the Rupture, after nerf only his Shatter would kill, after even more nerfs a tank could use his defensive CD and survive the Shatter. Imagine if Ozruk was a boss in this mythic +, on Level 1 he is the nerfed form, on Level 2 he is stronger, on Level 3 he is pre second nerfed, on Level 4 he is stronger, on Level 5 he is pre first nerf, on Level 6 he is stronger and on his enraged phase, all cds must be used. On Level 7 even his Ground Slam and Paralyze will kill you. On Level 8 stacking more than 2 Elementium Spike debuff will kill you.

The whole point of Mythic+ is that you need to survive the boss autos as a tank and the healers needs to be able to deal with huge blows to the tank and the force AoE that some bosses will have, any mechanic that can be avoided will HAVE to be avoided at higher difficulties, thus meaning that you will have to fight them perfectly if you don't outgear them, much like Mythic Raids.

[Fynzie]

Dungeons have been shit since Wotlk, at least we can hope now

[chooi]

Let's face it: WotLK Heroics were trivial from the very beginning. The only reason they were so popular over the whole expansion were Valor points that allowed everyone to get some raid gear. I doubt that many people still actually enjoyed them after running them for more than a hundred times, though. People enjoyed the Valor points, not the dungeons.

Mythic+ is a good approach for any sorts of players: casuals, hardcore, more or less skilled, everyone in-between.

Everyone can tackle the difficulty they are able/willing to play on and will get rewards for that respective level. It's a fair and timeless system.