Regular dungeons are harder than heroics now

[Tradu]

The real problem is that dungeons give shit experience and are a terrible way to level a character from 100-110. Blizzard put way too much emphasis on questing in Legion and kind of doesn't seem to care at all about the leveling dungeon experience.

That started in WoD. They gutted kill XP, rare mob XP and the XP for completing dungeons in WoD and in Legion they added treasures to the list of gutted XP sources(just so they could spam them literally everywhere)

- - - Updated - - -

Drop some gold into 845 BoE's and dam near all classes can solo the leveling dungeons. I had a warlock in my group who was decked out in full BoE 845 gear at level 103 doing over 1 million dps.

Got to love ilvl 845 level 100 BoE gear.

Also Soul Capacitor on the specs that can use it. Something is very very broken with how it works with the damage/level scaling in Legion. When I levelled my druid I got Capacitor explosions that were like 3-4 times bigger than what I got in HFC when I did dungeons during the first few levels.

[Relapses]

That started in WoD. They gutted kill XP, rare mob XP and the XP for completing dungeons in WoD and in Legion they added treasures to the list of gutted XP sources(just so they could spam them literally everywhere)

At least WoD had the XP potion. Legion is just... eh. It seems, like others have mentioned, that the game is intentionally designed to discourage players from even bothering to run dungeons while leveling.

[Tradu]

That only applies to suramar. And ofc your first char needs to still fulfill the "friendly with all reps" requirement. I have some alts that skipped x zone thanks to rested xp and order hall xp missions and they still get WQ in those zones, except many suramar quests you have to indeed unlock.

There's a few others that require having done specific quests(which appear to unlock account-wide-ish), like in the Ley-Ruins of Zarkenar in Azsuna or the Munitions Testing stuff in Highmountain. It's also beneficial to have done the quests at Thorim's Peak/Thorignir Refuge while levelling, because it unlocks the dragon that flies you up there, saving you a pretty annoying trip up the mountain.

[Zka]

I noticed this too. I healed some random normals during levelup and sometimes I got groups where everyone was 109-110 while I was much lower. These ones were very hard to heal. Then the very same dungeon was facreoll easy if everyone in the group was around my level.

[Puri]

Well, that's been the case since ever for all xpacs starting from wotlk.
There always was one point where you would overgear the "heroic" version and just aoe everything down, while at leveling you had to pay caution to the mechanics, it has nothing to do with the new scaling system. The player's itemlevel while leveling is usually set between narrow boundaries.

[Deleted]

So the scaling system is awesome, but an interesting by product of that is that now that most heroics LFD groups outgear the hell out of heroics, they feel much easier than doing regular dungeons.

I started grinding some dungeons on my 101-109 alts and my experience has been that things are much more difficult by comparison to my average heroic run. My average heroic run - and I'm talking solo LFD queues - has everyone averaging 860 ilevel, sometimes the occasional 880+ dps obliterating everything, to the point where some bosses aren't even getting to some mechanics.

Meanwhile I hop on my level 108 druid tank and everyone's scaled, plus I think there are genuine new people still, people asking about mechanics. Trying to teach dps to dps extra heads on Serpentrix because we can't just burn the green head and stuff like that...

I'm okay with dungeons being challenging, but I think it's not ideal to have a sense that once you enter heroics, the challenge decreases immensely.


For example, many deaths and wipes during the 101-109 dungeons, but as soon as I hit 110, groups are just melting shit and no fear of death at all anymore.


I don't know the answer here either - I don't want heroics to scale as well or have a fixed ilevel because I want gear progression to show, but I also don't want heroics to be faceroll while regulars arent/

Totally agree with you. Normal are just a pain, that's why when i ding a fresh 110 alt i can't wait to get 810 ilvl and rush in heroics.

[schwarzkopf]

Normals are harder because there's no ilvl requirement.

Also - because they force alts that have no place in a dungeon - into dungeons just so they can pick herbs.

[Tradu]

How much "some" gold are we talking? I have seen people place ilv 835 BoEs for 70k on the AH. I am not that crazily interested gearing an alt at that expense ^^

Most of the armor pieces are around 10-30k on my server, usually. Necks, cloaks, rings and Six Feather Fan are a bit more expensive.

[Deleted]

Depending ur role dungeons is the fastest way to level.

I leveled a DH tanking and got 2 bar's a run, So that's 2bar's of XP every 10-15mins.

Which has to be done 10 times for one level making it 100-150 minutes which is double the time a level takes while solo questing

[Deleted]

So the scaling system is awesome, but an interesting by product of that is that now that most heroics LFD groups outgear the hell out of heroics, they feel much easier than doing regular dungeons.

Sooo if oyou outgear contents its easier then when you are at the appropriate level/ilvl? Nothing new to see here, that has been the way since wow alpha.

I don't see it as a problem at all. HC dungeons are pretty much irrelevant now, and M+ still offers a challenge. HC dungeons have been a cakewalk in every expansion after the first raid was done and people were equipped. It wasn't as bad in BC because people got gear much slower, but pretty much since Wrath HC dungeons were only difficult a few weeks.

[TickTickTick]

100+ lev dungeons might seem harder now cause people just farm treasures in WoD for fast 90-100. I know LFD has required ilev, but people barely meet the criteria, as opposed to bis gear from WoD at the begining of Legion.

[Delaios]

It's just very rare to encounter players that are overgeared in normal dungeon runs. The bulk of the players doing normal dungeons are leveling players (almost always equipped in level appropriate gear) and level 110s that lack enough iLvl for heroic dungeon queues. For a level capped player in high gear there's little reason to do a normal dungeon. Doing a heroic dungeon will award more AP, more bloods and a higher chance of obtaining useful loot. On top of that you're also much more likely to end up in groups with other overgeared players, resulting in a faster run.

There aren't a lot of scenarios I can think of in which overgeared players end up in a normal dungeon:
- A level capped player is targeting a specific dungeon for a world quest or a profession and queues up for the normal and heroic version of the dungeon
- A level capped player is helping/boosting another player
- Someone just started leveling an alt that has HFC gear
- Someone bought a bunch of twink gear of the AH (I've seen people advertise 850+ BoE rings with only a level 101 requirement)

[Kelzam]

I see no actual problem to solve here. Normal mode dungeons during a given expansion's leveling range are always harder than the level cap's Heroics end up being because almost no one that outgears Normal modes then still runs them. Occasionally someone at a higher level might help a friend through them. Most people are in quest greens appropriate for the dungeon with a smattering of blues and most characters wearing the previous expansion's raid gear that trivialized Normal modes at launch have already passed the content . By a month or two into the expansion, everyone is already way beyond the required gear level for a Heroic dungeon, and now we have Mythic and Mythic+, which it's still quite possible to outgear. Normal dungeons eventually seeming harder than Heroic dungeons because content becomes obsolete as time goes on is the logical conclusion to the progression path. We have content that is still challenging in Mythic+, so there really doesn't seem to be a problem to fix here, especially since Heroics becoming obsolete happens organically.

[aziras]

This pattern has repeated itself in endgame through the timeline of every expansion in the past.

In the very beginning of an expansion the conditions are:
* Many players levelling are going through on their mains, well geared from the previous expansion
* Many players playing classes they know well
* More good players in the normal dungeon pool because they are naturally levelling through it

After about a month or two, the bulk of the good players have moved through and levelling dungeons and "beginner endgame" start to change composition:
* More of those slower to level
* Alts
* Ungeared alts or re-rolls without gear from previous expansions
* Hardcore players getting boosted by their friends (so they are not in the queues)

These parameters progressively get worse as the expansion ages. In Legion it is further made more difficult by some new additions:
* Level scaling: mixing levelling characters with those at level cap trying to close the iLvl gap to heroics (making sure that everyone in a group is usually at/below iLvl of quest-gear for their level)
* The WQ gear-catchup system in Legion: Which prevents people from doing a big jump in iLvl when hitting max level, but rather give them daily small progressions.

Especially that last one is a nasty one. For a player who is skilled at the game, knows how to optimise the gearing of a new alt, but does not have a group of friends to run a few mythics to kick-start the process there are not that many options.
If you do not go out and buy BoEs, then you have to spam normals on day1 to get iLvl to do heroics. Then do heroics to get iLvl high enough to spawn WQs that give 830+ gear. From there on you can LFR, world-boss your way up and fill with WQs.

In practice this means that an experienced player is only in the "bracket" for normals a day or two with a new alt before they passed on to mythics or parked the alt. On my alts I have been able to "run through" normals on my alts in a single evening. Typically only doing the ones needed to unlock class hall set (8 bosses) and then being high enough ilvl to do heroics.

Combine that with the point that very few players would be doing normals if they have the option to go heroics and you get a pool for LFD that mainly contains of players that are poorly geared and playing at below average skill level.

[Sanguinezor]

As a person with 12 Max Level alts.

Dungeon leveling is awesome.
For Pure dps classes... I supplemented with quests, but other than that I was afk or doing some profession quests.

Dungeon leveling is the best way in my experience to level.

There is no "difficulty", but scaling helped greatly.

[Deleted]

As a person with 12 Max Level alts.

Dungeon leveling is awesome.
For Pure dps classes... I supplemented with quests, but other than that I was afk or doing some profession quests.

Dungeon leveling is the best way in my experience to level.

As a person with also 12 max level alts, with the 12 class halls completed, normal dungeons have been a nightmare for me.
I only play DPS, and the problem with dungeons start once i reach level 110, i am really very far to 810 ilevel and i have to do quests in normal dungeons for the class hall campaign.
It has been taking me 40 mins-1 hour wait to enter those dungeons, it is by far the worst thing i have had to do in the expansion.
Luckily with my 13th alt i changed tactics, i did leveled it to 110, did WQs until reaching 810 and only then i queued for dungeons, because the queue for heroics is a very different issue, and it did wonders.

[Caifas]

Well, that doesn't seem to be much of an issue. You did point out the reason for why that happens - people doing normals have the apropriate gear, people doing heroics overgear it. As far as I remember, during the first week of legion heroics were decently challenging(not hard, mind you, but harder than normals) since most people had just reached 110 and their ilv wasn't much further than 810. The same logic aplies to mythics lv1. The first one I did I was ilv 830 and hadn't even finished my Order Hall campaing. And people on the group were around the same ilv, only 1 guy had done the dungeon before (it was the Arcway, so no normal/roic). Now, 4 months and 50 ilvs later, I'm pretty sure I could solo the damn thing. So the problem extends past heroic dungeons. Its just how dungeons work.

Now, scaling makes some interesting things. Recently, while leveling an alt, I met a Hunter in a HoV that was fully twinked. Seriously, the guy had 870s on him. He probably averaged 855-860 ilv. And he was 104. So, of course, he was a monster. Thing is, he did waaaaay more damage than anyone on his ilv should do. He was pulling 1kk damage (acording to my lv 107 scaling). The game simply was not prepared for someone on the lv 104 scaling bracket to have so much gear. I asked him and he confirmed - every time he levels, he is actually LOSING dps, and when he reaches 110 he will just pull as much as a regular 860 pulls. So, on the rare occasion you find a super twink, normals are trivialized like no heroics can be. Bosses were literally melting in 5-10 seconds.

[Deleted]

He probably averaged 855-860 ilv. And he was 104.

How? you can buy crafted gear of that level and equip it in a no 110 char?

[Sansnom]

My average heroic run - and I'm talking solo LFD queues - has everyone averaging 860 ilevel, sometimes the occasional 880+ dps obliterating everything, to the point where some bosses aren't even getting to some mechanics.

For example, many deaths and wipes during the 101-109 dungeons, but as soon as I hit 110, groups are just melting shit and no fear of death at all anymore.

I don't know the answer here either - I don't want heroics to scale as well or have a fixed ilevel because I want gear progression to show, but I also don't want heroics to be faceroll while regulars arent/

You already mentioned that your average heroic runs are with people in 860 gear, which greatly outgear the content you are running. While I imagine your regular dungeon are with people in the expected gear level.

It should be no surprised that your heroic groups are much faster.

[Caifas]

How? you can buy crafted gear of that level and equip it in a no 110 char?

Yup! If you have the moneyz, you can twink up your character with very strong gear. Don't know what is the best piece you could find, but I'm sure the guy I saw had 870s, and I found some reddit posts linking to armories with lv 101s with 860s.

So if you're rich you may want to own low level dungeons.