Nokhud is not even that bad, but JADE TEMPLE is the worst dg ever made, even kings rest was easier, that !@#$ should be illegal
The maximum weekly reward should be obtainable as before for completing M+15. Rewards for completing a dungeon (from M+15 to M+25 gradually increasing the ilvl of items in the final chest) should be changed.CAP Valors should definitely be released. This will help lower ones to break through higher (both by increasing movement on lower keys and upgrading items more freely).
I don't like Thundering. It's just a bad affix. Things I don't like include...1.) I don't feel the buff. It's not like haste, where you can feel your casts or attack go faster. Between fluctuating trinket procs and w/e else, it's just another "proc" that you don't really feel. Players like to feel powerful, it makes things more fun and lets you get away with crazier combat. 2.) It's random. Just earlier today, I did a 16 Nokhud Offensive and after killing the storm elemental boss, Raszageth suddenly yelled "MARKED BY LIGHTNING" at the very last second of combat. So we all had to sit there and break our stupid debuffs before flying off. I can't count how many times she did her stupid affix at the absolute most useless times.3.) It's burdensome. You could argue that adding another obstacle is a fun challenge, but for a lot of people, it just feels annoying. The worst feeling is being forced to choose between stacking in a mechanic and getting yourself and your partner nuked, or suffering a stun. Of course, the right answer is to break it early. But then what was the fun in the affix? Yay, I ran to my partner to instantly clear a damage buff... How fun. An example of a fun mechanic would be something more like Dreadlords, which were extra little bosses with mechanics. They were unique and interactive. Same for the relics, those were extra bosses and you really felt their buff. Thundering is just "Hug Your Friends Sometimes: The Mechanic." Yawn.There's a lot of ways they could change Thundering to make it less bad, but even the changes I've heard other players mention still don't sound amazing. Like letting the group control when Thundering happens... okay so group-wide CD management for a lukewarm buff. Meh? I don't know the answer, I'd be interested to see what people here have to say about Thundering.
Rewards scaling up to 20 is a good thing. It's was far too easy to "complete" a 15 for a mythic raid level piece of loot in the vault and spammable end of dungeons awarding heroic raid level quality loot. Raid gear for most people became quickly replaced by dungeon gear and vault options - and in previous tiers 15s at the start were far easier than heroic end bosses. For me personally, my progress in M+ matches nicely with my raid prog, and the rewards are similar. It increases the incentive for people to push M+ keys, although the disparity in difficulty is a very noticeable between the dungeons themselves.Take your highest key, and for you a SBG and COS are probably doable 2 key levels higher. It's nice to get easier concentrated primal focus/vaults this way, don't get me wrong, but I do feel that some classes having to make a hard choice between ST and AOE essentially make some of the other dungeons extremely challenging. The 4 DF dungeons are the harder ones, for sure, although the last pack in TJS (and boss benefitting massively from double dispel on Tyrannical) are notable mentions.Academy in particular requires sustained AOE on tree, and strong ST on bosses 2 & 3. RLP requires massive ST on 1st boss (unless you take a hunter), and the trash in the ring above isn't exactly something to look forward to (although having a purge and knowing to hit the mobs with the bombs helps a lot).For our group(s), Thundering is essentially "juice with it for 10 seconds on trash" and "insta-clear on bosses". Even then there have been some hairy moments trying to do the boss mechanics while thundering is up. Odyn and Azureblade come to mind. It does not help that one debuff is a grey orb, and the other is a white tornado. Who came up with that colour scheme, seriously? Combined with other ability vomit from players and mobs (evokers and their abilities obscuring worse than others), it just feels horrible to play around. It's painful to manage/time the affix without the use of weakauras, and the most popular one (that spams a mark) is pure degeneracy.The affix itself doesn't lend it self to creating any unique strategies, it's just something extra you have to deal with, and for that reason it's kind of boring. Encrypted was far better. I hope next season affix affords more player agency in how to deal with it.
The scale up to +20 is really nice in my opinion. With my guildmates we're up to 17-18 now, so it's good we still have challenge and rewards to look up to.Thundering affix... meh... no mana regen mechanic... and as said by other, no feeling on the buff, not like a haste buff for example. The colour scheme of the debuff is also not clear enough, makes you want everyone use a WA to be sure, but I guess it goes with the whole philosophy right now of same colour scheme for the damage of bosses and the ground where they stand...On dungeons imbalance, I think it's clear for everyone, and Blizzard should fix that now that holidays are over. I don't think they'll make SBG harder so it will be the way to get higher keys for the whole season, but I really hope they tune the tree boss in Academy, the Tempest boss in Nokhud. They just feel so much harder than others on the same level difficulty. Last one of CoS could use better graphics, mostly for the smoke lines, maybe a little nerf to the aoe damage.
As a Healer, there are two kinds of mob packs I dread: those fire elementals in Ruby Life Pools and the shas in Temple of the Jade Serpent. It's just too much damage too often, and we all know pug dps won't wait for anything. Some will even refuse to interrupt casts. It all ends up taking a huge mental toll on us healers. We feel like crap for not being able to save people, and the stone might break because of the deaths.
My issue with Thundering is that it's not equitable.1. There are far too many interactions where you need to get rid of it fast and the odd man out is the only one that gets to keep the buff. In my opinion, the goal should be to get rid of it as fast as possible and the buff lasts longer if you drop it faster. IE, 15 seconds duration, but the damage buff starts when you clear it. Clear is fast and maximum uptime.2. The +Damage aura doesn't apply to pets, so pet classes get less benefit. Seems like such a obvious oversight and yet it's still not fixed. So Demo Locks, BM Hunters, and SV Hunters are getting screwed.
Thundering is garbage and the relative difficulty of dungeons is all over the place. You +2 a SBG even with some random wipes and it turns into RLP? Might as well drop it back now and save some time. And don't even get me started on thundering. It's bad enough that the graphics are hard to see but now people are using different add-ons to spam various text or symbols above their heads which then further obscure the actual graphics and don't even necessarily match up with each other, such fun and interesting gameplay! I like the dungeons, there isn't one that stands out as bad except maybe the minigame in CoS, but the tuning is all over and the affix needs to be a lesson for the future.
I strongly dislike having Court of Stars in the M+ season. That dungeon is too easy for those who know all the tricks in there while being quite confusing for someone who have only done a couple of runs.The other dungeons are a lot easier to learn just by experiencing them but you pretty much have to watch videos to understand how to run Court of Stars.
They are right about needing to prepare - too many one shot mechanics if you make a mistake. Plus, the healing can be meh one minute and blow all cooldowns the next pull. I think they need to smooth out the spikes. Mechanics are fine except when crystals spawn way across the room with your mostly melee team. It also feels like you need to min/max AoE then ST the next pull. It's like they decided since we have easy swapping, let's make em swap everywhere, bwahaha. It'll be interesting to see if they tweak things or leave em be.
I have to agree the balancing of these dungeons is way out of whack. SBG is effectively a guaranteed upgrade, my worst run of it was still timed with something like 35 deaths. Then you have things like Azure Vault's obnoxious walk backs and tight timer, Nokhud's elemental boss and the infamous Algethar tree that just brick entire keys and they really need a second pass before we do another tyrannical week.
Thundering should not punish players for clearing early. The damage buff should remain when you clear the debuff
TJS, NO, and AV could use some nerfs.AV has so many mechanics going on in the trash that it is bad for a Mythic +.I feel that RLP is way too punishing and the time on AA is too short also.
It's a bad season. Temple of The Jade servert has no business being an M+ dungeon. Neither does SBG. On top of that, the seasonal affix is absolute ass, one of the worst they ever made
Dungeons are good, players are bad. I've seen tanks decide to try to pull 3+ packs of mobs full of nasty abilities and casts that need interrupts on the first pull, then be mad when their group wipes. So, a friendly reminder, if you're in a PUG, you should use PUG friendly strategies, it will save you time vs trying to do some risky maneuver you saw on stream that nobody else is prepared for.
Totally agree, the dungeon difficulty in addition to the scaling up to 20 is absurd. At this point there's no reason to make Cos / Shadowmoon brutally harder ( at least by much) and rather rework them for later seasons. A lot of the dungeons just need a bigger timer / small reworks to boss mechanics or specific mobs or mob count.
One funny thing for the players at the low-mid level: +10 gives the same end of dungeon reward as +13. This is kinda ridiculous. If you can't really do +14s your next best option is... doing +10 in hopes of getting some upgrades. Why is that one such a huge jump?Also for Academy I am just glad that you can get to the tree as the first boss. Might not be the optimal route, but seeing as that one is the only realy boss in this dungeon it's good to see if you can get him out of the way or not.
It’s painfully obvious this content was rushed out before the holidays, then the entire company took weeks off. Not a single gameplay update aside from this stupid trading post that nobody asked for.
Thundering isn't particularly fun, the impact is decent but instinct makes you want to remove it too quickly I think it's a pretty big flaw in the design. I feel the buff should be applied when the debuff is cleared and last longer for how quickly you clean it.As for dungeons yeah it's a mess. Honestly even the 4 remaining ones outside of the M+ rotation are problematic, I am NOT looking forward to run Azure Vault next season for instance it will be horrible.I hope devs react quickly enough and make the hardest ones a bit more accessible.
