With the new content update, two new dungeons(Rumble's Grotto and Shadowcaster's Crypt) have been released, and Ascended Secluded Valley was revamped. While these dungeons have great potential, I think they need some tweaking. Let's go over them one at a time:
Rumble's Grotto
This place is actually pretty fun right now for the most part. Enemies are tough, but beatable, and well-tuned and well-geared parties can tear through packs quickly and consistently. The first two bosses are challenging enough to be interesting, but not too strong.
The one main problem with this dungeon is Rumble himself. He's not particularly challenging OR fun to kill, and bogs down runs with his constant self-healing, which he will do several times as he changes phases. Self-healing seems to be a theme with these Level 45 dungeons, and unless there is some kind of hidden trick to them(that isn't an exploit), I think a lot of self-healing bosses could do without all of the self-healing, as it prolongs fights unnecessarily. Rumble is the worst offender in this case, as his fight alone is longer than the other boss fights combined, and then some. I would suggest either to combine some of his 'phases' and have him heal less often, or remove his healing altogether.
A lesser issue is that of the spiders in the troll-holes. They are actually more deadly than the regular bosses in Rumble's Grotto(even though they are just default Crystal Spiders with boosted damage and HP, this goes to show you how deadly these things are in close quarters!), but offer minimal reward for their risk. In fact, almost all groups opt to skip these optional bosses, as one glimmering gem isn't worth the time or effort to kill them.
Fix these two issues, and you go from having a good dungeon to a great one!
Shadowcaster's Crypt(Also referred to as Bochdaen Tomb)
This place, in my opinion, is the more fun of the two dungeons, and the more rewarding, with four regular bosses instead of three for the same amount of time and effort(Hi, Rumble!). There's actually very little I'd like to see changed here, as the monster packs are plenty fun, and the boss fights are varied and interesting, for the most part. The recent patch changes to the end boss help a ton, kudos!
Two things to suggest, though. Firstly, the spectral witch boss, again, has a healing mechanic which serves no purpose except to prolong the fight, and isn't at all interesting or fun. It was a surprise the first time, but the mechanic quickly lost its lustre. I understand that her max HP is lower to compensate for this mechanic, but she still heals too much. I'd rather see her only heal 50-100k HP and do something cool like start throwing shadow balls everywhere or something!
Secondly, our good friends Mr. and Mrs. Jazzhands, the optional skeleton elite bosses, again, are far more difficult than most of the regular bosses, and again only drop one glimmering gem, which means they are skipped by groups entirely, without fail. If they were worth killing, they'd be a great extra challenge!
With minor changes, this dungeon goes from a great to a fantastic one!
Ascended Secluded Valley
Ascended Secluded Valley(ASV) has become the real talking point of late as players continue to max out on gear from the other two dungeons. Firstly, let me start off by saying something positive in that I absolutely love what you guys did in buffing the regular enemies to have special attacks, making them an actual challenge, as an Ascended dungeon should be. I'm glad you could make it work!
However, there are three critical issues with ASV:
Firstly, monsters and, specifically, bosses, have far too much HP in the dungeon, which doesn't actually add a level of difficulty to the dungeon, but instead frustrates players by requiring a certain level of gear to even be able to attempt bosses due to enrage timers. Gear check fights don't even belong in WoW raids, and they certainly don't belong in Eldevin. There's a reason why enrage timers were removed entirely from games like Diablo 3. Slow groups are already punished by completing things slowly. They don't need to be double punished.
This is compounded by the fact that the bosses aren't actually much different at all from their non-ascended predecessors, they just have overtuned HP and enrage timers to create the illusion of difficulty.
Secondly, the rewards for clearing ASV are not commensurate with the increased difficulty. Bosses here need to drop more than a single gem/loot item.
Thirdly, the relic rewards do need to be looked at. I understand the concept of limiting relic gains per day to maintain the exclusivity of fabled weapons, but having no relics drop at all normally in the dungeon and only gaining three relics per day is too extreme, especially when these weapons currently available will inevitably be made obsolete by the time the Level 50 update comes around! I would perhaps be alright with something like three relics per day if we were already at the Level 50 cap AND had access to other Ascended dungeon quests, but currently this amount is far too limiting with only one dungeon available for a reward that will get replaced with new content.
ASV needs a significant overhaul to be made into a real dungeon:
-Monster and boss HP needs to be decreased significantly, down to slightly-above-normal-dungeon levels.
-In lieu of increased HP, boss encounters need to be made more difficult in other ways, like giving the bosses abilities that require player skill to defeat.
-Bosses need to drop significantly more loot, and possibly relics.
-The daily relic rewards need to be increased to five per day at the least, and can be re-evaluated once the Level 50 patch comes out(and when more Ascended dungeons come out).
Hopefully you guys can take some of these suggestions into consideration! Cheers.
Edited by huhbum, 21 April 2014 - 20:31.
