The mess that is leveling dungeons

[Fabinas]

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.

So what Blizz has done is to create a style of leveling that's inferior in almost every way, and doesn't at all fit into their claims of making leveling a better experience.
This definitely needs a lot of work.

Just some breadcrumb quests to lead you there.

[Raetary]

imo, dungeons are fine.

i just wish bosses has a bit less hp.
they take so long to kill.

[therealbowser]

I don't have a problem with people speaking different languages, it just sucks for everyone involved when no one can communicate.

I find that even when google translate is made use of to attempt to communicate with players like these, they do not speak to you. The rare occasions they do, they tend to be angry or talk to eachother about you in derogatory ways.

I don't like stereotyping but I have yet to run into any exceptions from people on LA realms.

[Shakou]

Isn't that the point? they nerfed dungeon exp so it wasn't viable to do that alone?

Everything I hear from friends about dungeons is actually positive, you see their basic mechanics, you see people dying from ignoring it. It's great, especially for new players giving them that little dose of whats coming up

Eh, It should be viable to level from dungeons alone. BUT it should also be challenging content.

It is because this content hasn't been challenging for most of the game that faceroll ez mode insta gratification has bled into the rest of the game, where we now have epics dropping from normal dungeons and kids that think they're awesome because they can do a dungeon without a tank. Well that's cool, but I can pull literally the entire instance and live and be done with it in like 5 minutes, I don't do it to show off I do it to get through the unchallenging content faster but that makes people mad.

You know how I can tell a child hasn't been disciplined? When I'm doing my daily heroic and I queue as tank and get kicked out of the group just for being really geared and doing every mechanic perfectly, and they suck at the game and get mad because you're better than them. Happens frequently, and if it's not that they insist on walking faster than me and pulling before I can even get to things.

But silence penalty guys amirite? Gonna fix this community for gud!

What's worse is this bs people do when they load in before and start pulling and then wonder why other people load in slower...World of lame angry kiddos whose self esteem is based on a dps meter instead of how quickly and/or efficiently with zero bullshit whatsoever they get through content.

If I have to suffer because other people suck, the game needs to be harder. I say we ask for a 30% buff across the board to all dungeons, but increase the rewards and especially the experience gains.

[therealbowser]

On topic, I am not currently playing -- coincidentally because of my disdain for these leveling changes -- but the primary issues are not 'how hard' it is, but rather how 'tedious' it is, how 'efficient' it is, and whether or not players are still running them.

There are a lot of people that do not enjoy questing exclusively; I'm among those people. I like to mix dungeons into my leveling experience to make it less repetitive. Or sometimes I'm just in the mood to do group content because I'm bored of soloing; same deal.

If dungeons are no longer a viable way to level, that's bad. Period. There isn't anything redeeming about this. They need to provide similar experience to questing, and a significantly superior experience if you include doing a dungeon's first batch of quests. If it fails to do this -- especially the latter -- people are going to stop running dungeons.

If dungeons require more time to get through, that's a-okay with me. I just ask that mob experience be increased in relation to how much longer it takes to defeat them. I don't feel that this is unreasonable.

If dungeons are genuinely harder, that's a harder question to answer. See, if it's too hard we end up with a Cataclysm problem; people get burned out and quit the game. If it's too easy, then the dungeons are a faceroll and all mechanics are ignored -- technically not a bad thing, but it's boring and trivializes, well... everything. You need a balance. Hard enough to not require special mechanics (IE if you miss an interrupt you don't have the boss fully heal/wipe the group, likewise crowd control might help but is never required for leveling content). I mean, these aren't mythic+ dungeons... these are leveling dungeons.

Naturally, all of these issues effect how many people are even running them to begin with, and if it's low enough, it impacts everyone, making the situation even worse.

My two copper... everything I am hearing about the leveling changes just makes me more and more disappointed.

[Deleted]

If you do each dungeon once to benefit from the quests, and open world in between, you'll be leveling at a very decent speed. And you'll still find yourself doing dungeons regularly.

Baffles me that people haven't figured that out yet.

Spamming non challenging dungeons for years has been alienating the playerbase for sure.

[Felfaadaern Darkterror]

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.

So what Blizz has done is to create a style of leveling that's inferior in almost every way, and doesn't at all fit into their claims of making leveling a better experience.
This definitely needs a lot of work.

I did like when quests outside led to the dungeon. This made sense, lore and story-wise. While leveling, this is exactly how I played it, doing each dungeon once as the capstone to the quests outside. When the story-quests and dungeon were done, I moved on to the next zone. I think this is the experience (especially for new players) that Blizz should be working to encourage and enhance.

[Jngizu]

If you do each dungeon once to benefit from the quests, and open world in between, you'll be leveling at a very decent speed. And you'll still find yourself doing dungeons regularly.

Baffles me that people haven't figured that out yet.

Spamming non challenging dungeons for years has been alienating the playerbase for sure.

I don't know pre-60 as I haven't leveled there yet with the new system (currently on a DK). But a huge problem in TLK (I guess BC too) are group quests. Not being able to get the achievement in a zone because there is a group quest and no one is doing it fucking sucks.

As for dungeons, I've been spamming them since 65 as I got bored of questing. By doing them only once, the XP is pretty good. Not sure how well that works with queue times as a DPS though. I do feel like some are a bit overtuned though.

[bigbleach]

Unlike other threads, the focus of this thread is to highlight the state that leveling dungeons are in. As of now, they are extremely inefficient and not worth the time. Now, I am not here to complain about their difficulty, but rather the problems and lack of attention they seemed to have gotten as of the latest patch.

1). Most people who do LFG don't go in with the mindset of doing a challenge

I expect this to go away with time, but most people still haven't learned about the changes do dungeons. Also, a lot of people don't know simple things like rotations and CC, and many will just pull and lose their patience. Not to mention, often times the LA realms have players you can't even communicate with (must be a mess in the EU)

2) Classes lack abilities to adequately respond to mechanics.

Some mobs that heal will heal for large amounts, making it neccesary to interrupt. While I have not leveled all the classes, Prot Pallies don't an interrupts until 35, and Balance druids do not get Solarbeam until 80. Brewmasters lack mitigation to be able to take huge hits in dungeons. While these are a couple of examples, there are more that could be added.

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.

IT ISN'T CHALLENGING! At all... buy some heirlooms, you still 1 shot stuff. I'm leveling a survival hunter right now and I literally 1 shot with flanking strike and throwing axe leaves the mobs with enough health for 1 raptor/mongoose strike to kill. My pet is completely useless. There is basically no excuse to not have heirlooms, basic ones cost like 500g. I get at least a level every dungeon. I've yet to find it any more difficult than leveling a character from 100-110., just my 2 cents

[Deleted]

The horror I can't just sit in a capital city and spam dungeons.

I think its a nice change people will go out in the world and explore for a change.

I remember the whinning when Legion xpac came out and people cried about mob scaling while lvling. Give this a few months people will forget there was a time when mobs didn't scale or DG was brain dead.

[bigbleach]

On topic, I am not currently playing -- coincidentally because of my disdain for these leveling changes -- but the primary issues are not 'how hard' it is, but rather how 'tedious' it is, how 'efficient' it is, and whether or not players are still running them.

There are a lot of people that do not enjoy questing exclusively; I'm among those people. I like to mix dungeons into my leveling experience to make it less repetitive. Or sometimes I'm just in the mood to do group content because I'm bored of soloing; same deal.

If dungeons are no longer a viable way to level, that's bad. Period. There isn't anything redeeming about this. They need to provide similar experience to questing, and a significantly superior experience if you include doing a dungeon's first batch of quests. If it fails to do this -- especially the latter -- people are going to stop running dungeons.

If dungeons require more time to get through, that's a-okay with me. I just ask that mob experience be increased in relation to how much longer it takes to defeat them. I don't feel that this is unreasonable.

If dungeons are genuinely harder, that's a harder question to answer. See, if it's too hard we end up with a Cataclysm problem; people get burned out and quit the game. If it's too easy, then the dungeons are a faceroll and all mechanics are ignored -- technically not a bad thing, but it's boring and trivializes, well... everything. You need a balance. Hard enough to not require special mechanics (IE if you miss an interrupt you don't have the boss fully heal/wipe the group, likewise crowd control might help but is never required for leveling content). I mean, these aren't mythic+ dungeons... these are leveling dungeons.

Naturally, all of these issues effect how many people are even running them to begin with, and if it's low enough, it impacts everyone, making the situation even worse.

My two copper... everything I am hearing about the leveling changes just makes me more and more disappointed.

They are still pretty fast. I leveled a few characters with my brother spamming dungeons, it wasn't much fun in wotlk and cata. They take a little longer now, I will admit that, but its no more tedious now than it was then. People not knowing how to deal with mechanics ( simple ones, very simple ones ) is why we have this problem today. So many people never learned them. Have you ever been in a facebook group for wow? Its sad... and depressing. How many people are so bad and unwilling to learn anything about this game.

[Count Zero]

I think the problem is that leveling dungeons weren't *supposed* to be such good xp and now that they've reined that in (they still seem to be definitely worth doing once, for quests) it feels painful for some.

As much as I took advantage of dungeon leveling before I do prefer if the most efficient way to level is to quest (although of course I would argue there needs to be other methods, even if they're slightly less optimal, for the sake of variety).

[Razorice]

Tested 2 characters 1-60.
One ONLY questing 15-60.
One ONLY running dungeons 15-60.

Running dungeons 15-60 too 4 hours longer than questing 15-60.

[SirCowdog]

So a bit of an update, now that I've leveled two characters a pretty significant amount under 7.3.5(one to level 100, one currently at 45)

Avoid Mauradon and Dire Maul like the plague. Not worth the time at all. Quests are also BADLY under-tuned. Dire Maul especially. For some reason DM quests are worth 1/3 of a normal open world quest, and boss kills are worth almost nothing. Something is out of whack.

But to add to that, people just don't know WTF they're doing. Setting aside all the normal shenanigans(DPS queuing as tank/healers), people are just REALLY bad at dungeons. Probably as a result of too many years of facerolling their way through without any challenge. They never learned how the dungeon encounters actually work! I have had so many run-ins with complete and total idiots since 7.3.5 that I've given up on dungeons entirely while leveling. Their DPS is downright shameful, and their ability to tank is pitiful. (Healers get a pass, I haven't had any trouble with them so far).

[Shakou]

Their DPS is downright shameful, and their ability to tank is pitiful. (Healers get a pass, I haven't had any trouble with them so far).

I highly doubt that, I've been tanking dungeons and raids since vanilla, healers are and have always been bad most of the time and that is what causes wipes most of the time in content that is not really challenging, not people ignoring mechanics that are easy.

Leveling has to be worse than max level where healers literally afk half the time.

This is a really bad issue because healers rarely get called out for being bad, because most dps are too oblivious to even know when the healer is shit. Tip: most of the time if your tank is out healing your healer, your healer is shit.

[Soluna]

Unlike other threads, the focus of this thread is to highlight the state that leveling dungeons are in. As of now, they are extremely inefficient and not worth the time. Now, I am not here to complain about their difficulty, but rather the problems and lack of attention they seemed to have gotten as of the latest patch.

1). Most people who do LFG don't go in with the mindset of doing a challenge

I expect this to go away with time, but most people still haven't learned about the changes do dungeons. Also, a lot of people don't know simple things like rotations and CC, and many will just pull and lose their patience. Not to mention, often times the LA realms have players you can't even communicate with (must be a mess in the EU)

2) Classes lack abilities to adequately respond to mechanics.

Some mobs that heal will heal for large amounts, making it neccesary to interrupt. While I have not leveled all the classes, Prot Pallies don't an interrupts until 35, and Balance druids do not get Solarbeam until 80. Brewmasters lack mitigation to be able to take huge hits in dungeons. While these are a couple of examples, there are more that could be added.

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.

Avenger's shield is an interrupt also in its own way, and prot pallies get that very early. The dungeons might not be efficient af, but they are fun now. That's all there is to it.

[SirCowdog]

I highly doubt that, I've been tanking dungeons and raids since vanilla, healers are and have always been bad most of the time and that is what causes wipes most of the time in content that is not really challenging, not people ignoring mechanics that are easy.

Leveling has to be worse than max level where healers literally afk half the time.

This is a really bad issue because healers rarely get called out for being bad, because most dps are too oblivious to even know when the healer is shit. Tip: most of the time if your tank is out healing your healer, your healer is shit.

That's a fair point. I was simply saying that so far I haven't had an issue with healers in leveling dungeons. Whether that's caused by the dungeons being under-tuned, or me just getting lucky, I don't know.

[Haywire5714]

They are still pretty fast. I leveled a few characters with my brother spamming dungeons, it wasn't much fun in wotlk and cata. They take a little longer now, I will admit that, but its no more tedious now than it was then. People not knowing how to deal with mechanics ( simple ones, very simple ones ) is why we have this problem today. So many people never learned them. Have you ever been in a facebook group for wow? Its sad... and depressing. How many people are so bad and unwilling to learn anything about this game.

If you're spamming dungeons then it absolutely is more tedious then it was back then, because back then the que times were shorter, xp was appropriate and the dungeons were at a decent enough difficulty so that players had to remain active, but weren't overly punished for making mistakes like they are now (especially in cata dungeons, dire maul, strath etc). The "enemy hp to player damage ratio" was also more in line back then.

To address your second point, you're correct that people don't know how to deal with mechanics and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that because these are leveling dungeons. If you were making this argument for mythic+ or raiding then I would acknowledge that things shouldn't be made easier in order to appeal to this caliber of player, but leveling dungeons have always been accessible to the vast majority and it's important that they stay that way. Most people (probably yourself as well) argue that it's important for the game to teach these players how to play by making the game more difficult, but I would argue that a large portion of the playerbase has no interest in improving at video games and they just play to have fun. Dialing up the difficulty does not trigger a positive response from these players as they will not strive to become better, they will just unsubscribe and that is not in Blizzards best interests.

Now I'm not trying to argue that things should go back to how they were pre patch because the state of the game back then was just as flawed as it is now. I'm hoping that Blizzard can create a middle ground here because the game is absolutely not appealing to the vast majority of players right now.

[bash the fash]

Nope the way leveling dungeons were they were utterly useless for any purpose other than standing in your capital and leveling.

Tanks and healers learned absolutely nothing because as they were the dungeons were soloable by a DPS in looms. Now they have to be played the right way but if some mobs need CC\interruption abilities (that aren't available at that level) to make the dungeon work right Blizz does need to address that. Otherwise though I'd say dungeons are in the best state they have been as a leveling\learning experience in a very long time.

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.

Nobody uses CC in level 110 dungeons either bro.

[Mercane]

Nobody uses CC in level 110 dungeons either bro.

Nothing lives long enough to matter. So why bother?