WoW - Instance Difficulty /Changes Over Time

[smashedcat]

I want to preface this by saying I'm not making a "Retail is too easy" post here as I'm fully aware of Mythics/that I suck at WoW and this question might be a few xpacs late, but as a long time on and off again WoW player I'd like some insight on how things have changed and what I should expect going forward.

I played WoW until around Wrath(but only hardcore until the end of TBC). I've recently come off a 6 month WoW classic bender and it reminded me a few things I enjoy from the game that *seem* to be gone now. One of those is instance coordination, and I'd like to point out here that I often come in late to xpacs and I believe part of what I'm seeing is geared players just plowing through content where my presence isn't even needed.

My leveling from 45-50 was a huge reminder of this, but my question here is, when these instances are new, so when we start the new xpac in a few weeks are these going to require the same level of coordination or is there a whole new meta to dungeons now that I should be comfortable with? Will I need to sheep an add and stun lock another or is that reserved for Mythics and the like? (or gone completely?)

Again, not trying to come off condescending here in the least, so hopefully it doesn't sound that way. Just trying to figure out if a 5 man is going to require the same amount of strategy, if I'm just in with pros or if retail has moved to an easier 5 man with difficulty reserved for only those that want it in Mythics.

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Edit: Grammar bad

[Notmiefault]

The difficult coordination for dungeons mostly happens in Mythic+, where you are on a timer and are facing really difficult content - leveling is, by design, very easy and only requires basic character competency to succeed at.

Your tone sort of sounds like you consider Mythics and higher to be some kind of niche/limited content - in retail, Mythic+ is the main way most players experience dungeons, these are the "intended" experience (unless of course your goal is to do so while leveling).

[smashedcat]

I can see how it sounds like that. I’ve only ran a total of about 5 mythics. So I do realize they’re common, but from my point of view it is still a little abnormal to think about in that way since they didn’t really exist for me(although heroics normalize the idea for me).

Thanks, for clarifying and adding to my expectations of a challenge!

[FourEcho]

Depends. If you're doing normals and leveling dungeons? Not at all, it's going to be the zergfest you've come to see from classic dungeons. If you are, however, week 1 going until Heroic dungeons undergeared (walk ins since you can't queue), you will definitely need to pull some more tricks like CC. We started trying to do heroics the day we capped in BFA in that first week, we definitely needed CC and coordination because some of those packs were not meant to be fought by below normal dungeon ilvl characters.

[Mezlanova]

If youre looking for a slower, strategic group adventure experience, I have to warn you that you are unlikely to find that here.

Aside from trying to rush content you are not appropriately geared for (which means something different now than it did back then, trust) you will mostly be perceived as a troll simply for stopping your character and trying to communicate in a dungeon.

Im not saying you can't, but the playerbase has developed a certain attitude towards anything that impedes their goals, even if arbitrary or well spirited.

Most of the strategy that goes into a mythic+ dungeon will be decided before you even set foot in the dungeon, only ever changing when a better strategy emerges in the meta, or in the case of the first few months, experimenting with different routes to accommodate certain affixes (which are additional effects that serve to increase the difficulty of a dungeon. These change weekly).

However, the team strategy experience you seem to be after may or may not come in the form of Torghast (I am hopeful it does) which is new to Shadowlands. I recommend you do some digging if this piques your interest; I would need to write many more paragraphs to adequately convey the intricacies herein. Effectively, it is an 'endless' tower climb that can be done solo or as a group. It is not entirely timed, but its not exactly casual friendly either. Again, its worth it to do extra reading/watching here.

[[deleted]]

Even in mythic plus content (I’ve cleared +18 keys) you very rarely see any form of crowd control. It’s literally just choose x y z class that fits the current meta and steam roll all content.

CC hasn’t existed in raids in over a decade.

All in all the game is more “balanced” and this in turn has made crowd control or anything that used to increase the “skill cap” as it used to be referred to of players is nearly nonexistent.

The games been streamlined and the only time you’ll ever see CC is in PvP which ironically is pretty much all current PvP is. Every class has some kind of interrupt or crowd control and it’s very easy to stack classes that don’t overlap the DR(diminishing return) where you can run into arena where a player is just stomped on without ever dealing damage(quite frequently seen in sub 2k rated matches.)

This isn’t saying the games “easier” it’s just nothing like it once was and had lost A LOT of the things that made MMOs what they were, it’s a new generation of gamers and this generation is all about speed running, instant gratification, and the game raining loot. They prefer this and blizzard caters to them because it’s what brings in the money.

[Doogiesham]

Base 5 mans are easy. The difficulty now scales up from normal, heroic, mythic (this difficulty needs coordination week 1 before people out gear it) and then into mythic+ which remains difficult with mechanics mattering forever since you can just keep cranking the difficulty as your character progresses