What should 5 man Dungeons consist of?

[Haywire5714]

- How Much Trash?

I believe that Blizzard is creating 4 dungeons for leveling; these dungeons should be PACKED with trash. All of my favorite dungeons were great for leveling: Utgarde Keep, Shattered Halls, Drak'theron Keep, Lost City of Tol'vir, Gundrak etc etc. It's not important for the trash to be very difficult numbers wise, as exp gain should be the main focus; however some avoidable mechanics would be nice to make it more than just a faceroll aoe zerg.

The level cap dungeons should have much less trash; only enough to add depth to the instance as there is no exp gain out of it. Some examples of this done properly are Pit of Saron, Forge of Souls, Well of Eternity, End time, Trial of the Champion, Utgarde Pinnacle and probably a bunch of TBC dungeons (I don't have experience with many).

- How Difficult? (Keep LFD in mind)

The tuning of Normal Modes should and will be facerollolololololable upon release; nothing to talk about here really.
I think that the heroic mode bosses should have additional mechanics (1 or 2) that are avoidable but unforgiving (not Swifty one shot unforgiving). The numbers tuning however should only be slightly higher, or you'll end up with Cataclysm dungeons. The dungeons should be fun, but challenging enough to warrant full participation; and the difficulty of a boss fight should NEVER solely rely on 1 persons ability to play. Nobody wants to wipe because the healer only has smite bound, or your tank gets dick slammed by Ozruk all day long.

- How many Bosses?

What is this a raid? Just give me my fucking valor.

- What should the bosses be like?

I'm going to go with not annoying and not overly complicated for the typical LFD downs child.

Examples of annoying and/or overly complicated bosses for the typical LFD downs child:
- Oculus last boss
- Halls of Reflection entire instance
- Halls of Origination 1st boss & Purple Boss & Green Boss
- Utgarde Pinnacle Harpoon boss
- Violet Hold Orb Boss
- Grim Batol Last Boss and 2nd Last Boss
- Stonecore Last Boss
- Vortex Pinnacle No Mount boss

- How Long should it take?

45 minutes tops for a good group, preferably less.

[Deleted]

Cata heroics were easy before they got nerfed anyway? I don't see how that has anything to do with it.


Less trash more EXP from bosses.

5 bosses atleast.

About as complicated as the celestial bosses on timeless and they should never have immunity phases.

Should take 10 minutes tops if i'm blitzing through it with my guild. I'd like bosses to last longer than 5 seconds too HCs are a joke and feel like a waste of time even though we can clear them in less than 3 minutes.

[7seti]

I honestly think there should be two very separate difficulties.

"Normal" mode (will likely be called something else to distinguish it from non-max-level dungeons): MoP-era difficulty. In other words, easy-mode for LFG. Something a good group could run though in half an hour.

"Heroic" mode: 4.0 level of difficulty. Can't be done through LFG. Plenty of hard mechanics, with the reward being LFR-quality gear. That way players have a choice for gearing up: LFR, or this.

[Funky303]

there should simply be two 5 man Dungeons.

One with LFD and random queued people, and anotherone similar to heroic scenarios. Also accessible through LFD, but you have to have a premade 5man group. Both should take max 15-20 minutes, 10 if you're heavy overgeared.

CC should matter in the Heroic versions and bosses should hit kinda hard, but avoidable. But if you stand in the fire, your dead for sure.

I agree with OP that certain boss mechanics are fun to do them one time, from 2nd time on they're just annoying as hell (Oculus dragon flight, trial of the crusade mount phase etc)...

I kinda liked the three 5 man dungeons located in ICC, they were quite hard in the beginning, but also gave good loot and were challenging, but also short.

Since I played from day 1, I remember really awful long UBRS/BRD runs, who took 2-3 hours.. those times are gone for good.

[Nobleshield]

I pretty much agree with the OP, however given that leveling dungeons will still have heroic versions they shouldn't have tons of trash because that will get annoying on heroic. I'd like trash that makes sense, without being stupid. For example, if the dungeon is a fortress with several rooms, then each room should have a pack of trash, but there shouldn't be more than one generally per room.

I'd really love if they stole the way that Rift's expert dungeons were in the original game where the higher version opened an extra room or two that was blocked off in the normal dungeon that had an extra boss or two; that was IMO a great concept that actually made the expert dungeon different than the normal version. For instance, in one of the first dungeons (Iron Tomb, if you played then) there was I believe three extra bosses that weren't on normal that were located in rooms that were just empty or not accessible on normal.

Time-wise I'd say between 25-40 minutes is good to shoot for.

[Feali]

Shattered Halls HC

The perfect 5man dungeon. Dat gauntlet

[Simulacrum]

Cata heroics were easy before they got nerfed anyway? I don't see how that has anything to do with it.

Dungeons like the stonecore, blackrock cavern, or even lost city of tol'vir were all pretty difficult at the time, unless you had a holy paladin healing (those were so stupidly op at launch that it wasn't even funny). You needed the healer, the tank, and at least one dps to at least pay some attention during the instance run, which is more than can be said for any 5 mans since then.

Should take 10 minutes tops if i'm blitzing through it with my guild. I'd like bosses to last longer than 5 seconds too HCs are a joke and feel like a waste of time even though we can clear them in less than 3 minutes.

That's what scenarios are for.

I pretty much agree with the OP, however given that leveling dungeons will still have heroic versions they shouldn't have tons of trash because that will get annoying on heroic. I'd like trash that makes sense, without being stupid. For example, if the dungeon is a fortress with several rooms, then each room should have a pack of trash, but there shouldn't be more than one generally per room.

Trash isn't that bad, if it's more interesting than just "run into them and facetank everything", and killing them is somewhat rewarding. Like the trash before Ozruk, for example. Big room with lots of patrols and different mob mechanics, where you can get through it very fast if you pull properly and safely, but get the entire room at once if you do it poorly. Then when you outgeared the place (or if you had a very good group) you could pull the entire room on purpose and quickly aoe it all down for fun, and take pleasure in how those guys used to wipe you when that happened in worse gear/groups.

Trash is also the whole point of leveling dungeons. At least as long as it gives exp (I'm looking at you shadow-pan monastery of "fuck you to the players").

[Haywire5714]

Cata heroics were easy before they got nerfed anyway? I don't see how that has anything to do with it.

I said in the OP to keep LFD in mind; if you think that the Cata heroics were easy for the typical LFD group then you're wrong.

[Nemah]

While I always enjoyed TBC heroics as well as the Cata ones at release, I don't think those are right for the average WoW player anymore. I'd like to see heroics with a few "tough" trash pulls, that maybe require some CC, and 3 to 4 bosses with an otherwise quick pace. Regarding the pulls with CC I'd like to see a return to some of the cooler aspects of BC, where you could Mind Control or Spellsteal cool abilities from a trash mob that might give you a boost later in the dungeon. I feel like Blizzard has removed far too much "flavor" in an effort to make things more "consumable."

That also comes from a mindset that is very much pro-5 mans and doesn't like scenarios, heroic or otherwise, because they are completely mindless.