The mess that is leveling dungeons

[Jastall]

I don't think it's a mess. Blizzard did slow down leveling too much, but actually having to heal in leveling dungeons is nice.

[Charge me Doctor]

3) There is little reason to even do them

The XP from mobs is not enough to justify doing them. The amount of XP you get from completing them and the amount from quests is just not enough compared to the time and effort put into doing it.

Now this is something I know people don't agree with, but what if you want to level tanks or healers through dungeons? I know many people who have done that, or at least level to 90 and go through draenor and Broken Isles by questing only. I think leveling dungeons are great practice for tanking and healing and now they are not worth the xp.

Again, if you want to use dungeons as leveling tool you simply do them once to finish a quest chain in their location

[Raziella]

Mildly off-topic but... unlike in the Americas where it's weirdly hip to be monolingual (even in South America), most people in Europe are at least bilingual, and often speak three or more languages.

How many bilingual people speak Portuguese, though?

You get infracted for talking about this on the official forums for some reason, but once they started combining battle groups, several groups got majorly hosed by being lumped in with tons and tons of players they can't communicate with.
Pretty hard to push the "it's an MMO, be social" rhetoric when you physically CANNOT communicate with the people you get matched with.

And I also agree with the dungeons vs player skills concern; these dungeons are no longer balanced around the current skill acquisition rates, and can be a HUGE pain depending on what classes you get lumped with.

[NomCarver]

Grinding dungeons wasn't a feasible way of leveling prior to the introduction of LFG. The optimal path for leveling now is to quest in the world. I would have thought that killing player's incentive to rely on LFG to grind dungeons while sitting in a capital city would have been hailed as a positive change by many. But I guess there would be a minority that actually enjoyed mindlessly queuing up for dungeons to clear mobs with no difficulty with a bunch of anonymous strangers who may as well have been AI characters.

Many people keep mentioning parking yourself in a capital. You can still quest while in que. However there is no reason to do dungeons because the xp and rewards are not worth it. So you are left tanking/healing only at max level before you even get a chance to do your role.

[Charge me Doctor]

They don't really give that though.

Not anymore, but before 7.3.5 i got to all my pre-110 toons and removed their herlooms, run through dungeons to replace these gear slots and after running stratholme 3 times mine 53 paladin became 55. It's just ridiculous

[Otimus]

The optimal way to level should be a mix of both, not either or. But if it is either or, both should be equally viable.

That's the problem with Blizzard. They don't understand how to make things equally useful, or equally viable.

From the sound of things (I haven't done any low level dungeons yet), they sound demoralizingly useless to the point I think any new player would just be put off of doing them unless a veteran said "Naw man, they get better at max level!", if they even stay subbed that long.

[NomCarver]

And it's really good, because dungeons are supposed to give you gear, not 2 levels worth of xp. I'm really happy that now i can use them properly to get good gear to make leveling process better.

It doesn't work like it does in Draenor or Legion though.

There is not enough reward for doing dungeons at all, other than.. err fun? If you have to put a lot of effort into something you should at least be rewarded with a good chunk of xp and some good loot to help with leveling. The loot in dungeons is rarely useful now, especially with heirlooms, and the dating of some loot really shows.

[Dartz1979]

Leveling 6 new allied races to 20 to 120 is gonna take forever with the new change to exp... I don't think blizzard thought the leveling process through to well yes when you get to 90 it goes faster but for gods sakes why make 1-90 so damn slow... and yes the heirloom nerfs was well needed but now only seem worth wearing when turning quests in.. anyways... imho they should have just left it as it was... we don't need retail starting to be like classic or any close to that.

[Charge me Doctor]

It doesn't work like it does in Draenor or Legion though.

There is not enough reward for doing dungeons at all, other than.. err fun? If you have to put a lot of effort into something you should at least be rewarded with a good chunk of xp and some good loot to help with leveling. The loot in dungeons is rarely useful now, especially with heirlooms, and the dating of some loot really shows.

If you put on heirlooms you basically say that "i want faster leveling experience and don't want gear anymore", dungeons always were for gear, you won't be able to properly level when undergeared (thanks to cata quest rewards give you adequate gear most of the time), when you powerlevel your gear gets outdated really fast, so you have to run through couple of dungeons to grab at least a good weapon (in case of non-casters) for your current level, so you won't spend 20 seconds beating one mob.

Dunno about Draenor, i'll gladly skip this content because of garrison and how questing was paced there. In legion i didn't noticed that (frankly, i've only played in 7.3.5 from 108-110) and because of artifact weapon dungeons feel very trivial. But legion gives you a lot of quests that make you go into dungeons, so there is that for incentive to do them.

[Splatter]

I've done 1-60 with the new system so far and love it. Questing is fast and flows well. I've cleared six zones and done a few dungeons to level. Dungeoning is definitely slower than it used to be but you have to actually heal and do boss mechanics. Its not just a mindless spam one button aoe fest. Its the way dungeons should be. New people don't learn anything otherwise and get to max level completely clueless and struggle to learn to play the game they have been playing all over again.

I really enjoyed doing a dungeon every few levels as a break from questing and an opportunity to do some healing in a group environment. I like that questing is a better option to level as well. I only have two complaints with the new leveling system. Mobs need to hit harder, a lot harder, it is still practically impossible to die. I have no toons left on my main server/faction to level so I am stuck doing opposite faction alts on a different server

Its definitely an improvement on what used to be "the mess that was dungeon leveling"

[TripleZero]

The entire dungeon system should be redefined for levelling, the random dungeon queue is basically pointless, instead the game should guide you to complete each dungeon once for the quests and to make it worthwhile the quests should get a hefty exp buff.

But in general i have to say the levelling is alot better this way than it was before.

[shoc]

Many people keep mentioning parking yourself in a capital. You can still quest while in que. However there is no reason to do dungeons because the xp and rewards are not worth it. So you are left tanking/healing only at max level before you even get a chance to do your role.

Questing while in queue in the previous system almost always resulted in your quests becoming redundant by the time you zoned back into the world. Even though the new scaling means that this will never happen, players aren't going to quest if spamming dungeons is the mathematically optimal means of hitting max level quickly. Spamming dungeons is probably the most boring way of hitting max level, so now that questing is the most optimal form of leveling, there's actually an incentive for players to do quests instead. I think that's a great change, there will be people out in the world to interact with, to group up with to complete group quests, etc. World Quests in Legion showed how awesome seeing people out in the world could be, compared to the isolation that made WoD Garrisons so damn shitty.

Dungeons aren't useless, too. There's a good chance that you'll get a rare item that is appropriate for your level that will be superior to what you can get from quests. I think that's great, because it motivates players to run dungeons for loot instead of experience, which was the case prior to the introduction of LFD. It's also still worth it to run a dungeon at least once, because completing the dungeon quests is still going to be a hefty source of EXP.

[Marrilaife]

Levelling through dungeons only worked up to wotlk, afterwards it only worked for old content, but never for the current expansion. Since Cata Blizzard was telling us "questing > dungeon spamming" by giving us around 4 (yes FOUR) levelling dungeons for the whole expansion level bracket, the rest of the dungeons always restricted for "end game", I think in MOP it took them several patches to allow few more dungeons on normal to be accessed below current level cap. I loved levelling through dungeons in TBC and WOTLK and then Cata came and I was puking with Vortex Pinnacle and had to resign that levelling solely through dungeons is not allowed anymore (pathetic xp and small variety forcing you to grind the same 1-2 dungeons forever).

Only reason why it worked again in low level content was because 15-50 was a breeze (50-58 was bad due to too few dungeons in that bracket), xp flow was super quick pre 7.3.5, dungeons got fragmented into small pieces each giving completion bonus, and loomed up chars were overpowered to the point of ridiculousness.

There is a reason why I don't do daily heroic nowadays despite it rewards 30 essences towards my next legendary, but I enjoy mythic +15. The first one is a clown town while the second actually feels like a dungeon. Low level dungeons for quite some time resembled the joke that is current daily heroic (people outgearing it by 50-100 ilvls easily). I'm not a player who looks for grueling hardcore experience in dungeons (that's why I don't do high key pushing), but I still want to spend more time in combat than running between packs, and I want the optimal pace to be "pull pack - kill pack - move to the next" instead of "chain pull everything run to the end with mobs on your tail", it's horrible and I hope levelling dungeons will finally stop supporting this kind of abomination.

The only concern I have is with spacing the abilities of classes across levels, many of these were fixed across the years, but you shouldn't generally let a dps spec spend half their levelling process without their aoe spell or a dps cooldown (which was often the case).

[Svad1287]

Mildly off-topic but... unlike in the Americas where it's weirdly hip to be monolingual (even in South America), most people in Europe are at least bilingual, and often speak three or more languages.

Well, we do share realm shards, with the russians, who have a tendency to not want to communicate in english... same with a few from the portugal and german realms aswell, but the russians are in the clear majority.

[CasualFilth]

I would argue that nobody learns anything well while below max level. Without the character's full arsenal of talents and abilities, attempting to learn how to play a class at low levels can reinforce bad habits that will be difficult to break later. I would have just left low level dungeons as the mostly mindless button smashers that they were. The leveling experience should be a fun and happy place. Wait til they have to go to LFR to break a player's soul.

I agree with this so much. Moreover, the dungeons are still not that hard compared to pre-7.3.5, and you can reach max (say) 80 by doing 2 Northrend zones fully questwise, 90 with 2 Pandaria zones etc.

[Hctaz]

I actually agree. From my own experience leveling a tank currently: Other than the first time through the dungeon for the quests, the XP per hour simply doesn't justify the length of time it takes to complete the run. You're better off questing.

Maybe this is intended? What baffles me is that the quests in the zones outside the dungeon no longer lead up to them. They haven't since Blizz moved all the quest NPCs into the dungeon itself. This makes the dungeons their own separate experience, especially if you queued for random dungeons.

I'm okay with questing being the more lucrative version of leveling tbh. Dungeon farming over and over and over just shouldn't be optimal. It's super repetitive. You're right about the quests being weird though. I miss the old days before LFG came in tbh. Mainly just for leveling. Being asked to go find a band of adventurers to go into this scary cave was kinda cool. They claim to have made these changes to better the new player experience, but having a disconnected leveling experience doesn't help. Connecting the experience, story, and world all together was a big reason they made these changes to leveling, but they've completely overlooked how dungeons fit into that role. A queue system kinda sucks for low levels because it disconnects the world and story a little as well... but many of us are not new, so it doesn't really matter. If I were a new player, I don't think I'd be very happy with how WoW handles the dungeon content.

I think they should remove the quests from inside of the dungeons and incorporate them back into the world. Have a quest chain lead up to your faction physically assaulting the outside of the instance, and then a breadcrumb quest would tell you to queue up to the dungeon. They could even make it make sense. "Darn <adventurer>, it seems we'll need to establish a small squad of specialized fighters to assault the inside. Go handle matters elsewhere while we look for a suitable group for you."

Then you're shown the actual place in the world, and given a reason why you queue up.

[Haywire5714]

Leveling only through spamming dungeons and never leaving your capital was utter nonsense and the symptom of broken game design.

It is fine now with only having to do each dungeon once to benefit from the quests.

In my opinion leveling players shouldn't even have access to the LFD tool, the zone storylines should bring them there as it used to.

Your personal opinion on how leveling should be lacks any regard for how other players choose to enjoy the game. If Blizzards goal is to appeal to as many people as possible then ideally feedback like this would be taken with a grain of salt. The safest and most profitable thing Blizzard can do is make all leveling avenues in the game enjoyable and adequately rewarding for the vast majority of people. Whether that be through increasing xp, decreasing challenge, removing certain features etc is for Blizzard to determine; but in my opinion a solid leveling system at this very moment (based on feedback from the forums since 7.3.5) would require these changes:

- Xp reward needs to be appropriate for both dungeons and open world questing at a minimum. Ideally the leveling speed would be similar to pre patch, as to reduce the amount of power that has already been taken from the players (as it stands gear is weaker, health & damage are increased and xp is reduced which is an overwhelming loss of character power)

- Content should require the player to be active for an appropriate amount of time (8 - 12+ seconds) in order to achieve adequate gameplay while not being overly punishing and overly tedious. As it stands open world is probably in a decent place, dungeons should have their health and damage reduced slightly and xp massively increased.

- *For Next Expansion* Players should have more customization when leveling. A mix of the old and new talent trees would suffice (current talents which give the player abilities to press that modify your gameplay, alongside passive bonuses that you can put points into as you level)

I would argue that nobody learns anything well while below max level. Without the character's full arsenal of talents and abilities, attempting to learn how to play a class at low levels can reinforce bad habits that will be difficult to break later. I would have just left low level dungeons as the mostly mindless button smashers that they were. The leveling experience should be a fun and happy place. Wait til they have to go to LFR to break a player's soul.

If your goal is to make the leveling experience a "fun and happy place" why would you leave it the way it was? Obviously there were many people (myself included) who hated that system. Why does it have to be one extreme or the other? Why is it so difficult to imagine a system that all calibers of players can enjoy (but not necessarily perfectly satisfy)?

I also want to address this "teaching players how to play" meme that people keep spouting. I often see this used to justify harder leveling content, but in an effort to appeal to as many people as possible this argument is completely flawed. There is a large amount of players out there that have no interest in getting better at video-games and are perfectly satisfied with being bad or mediocre. Turning up the difficulty will not trigger a positive reaction out of these people. Rather than striving to improve they will simply unsubscribe which is obviously not in Blizzards best interest.

Now to counter this you would probably say something like "does that mean Blizzard should just make everything easy to appeal to everyone?" and my response to that is no of course not. All of the content in this game is designed for specific portions of the player base which Blizzard dictates; in order to not rock the 14 year old boat it is important for them to maintain this balance. Unlike raiding, mythic+ and whatever else, leveling content has always been accessible to every caliber of player. Unfortunately Blizzard tampered with this when they implemented the patch which as you very well know, caused a lot of people to be real fucking pissed when it never had to be that way.

If enough players exist that show interest in learning how to play, then ideally there would be a system to help them with that; but it would by no means be mandatory. Now do I personally believe that a system like this is in Blizzards best interests to implement? It's hard to say, but arguing for or against it would take a while so I'll save that for another time.

[sopeonaroap]

Mildly off-topic but... unlike in the Americas where it's weirdly hip to be monolingual (even in South America), most people in Europe are at least bilingual, and often speak three or more languages.

When you drive 300 miles north you are still in an english speaking state in the USA, you're in another country in most of europe.

Just a cheap shot to call it "hip", there is no need to speak multiple languages when your country is the size of some continents

[Osmeric]

Now people will probably fall into the recent leveling style of expansions do the zone then do the dungeon once to knock out the quests, can't really see a problem with that.

People will probably mostly just skip the dungeons.

[Spiral Mage]

Having just done one, the EXP seemed fine for the time put into it.