Unintended outcomes of the Dungeon XP Nerf

[u/Deathtonic]

1. Monster Skip Runs [ More than just end game dungeons ]

2. Hard Reserving of low level gear [ Not just Cruel Barb ]

3. Less Tank and Healers leveling [ You see them say it every day on reddit since the nerf ]

4. Tanks and Healers charging for their services for low level dungeons [ Not just end game ]

5. Less dungeons begin ran [ Meaning harder to find groups ]

6. Less social interactions [ Dungeons were the group activity, questing is primarily solo ]

7. Some dungeons being skipped entirely [ Alliance have no reason to run Shadow Fang Keep since there are no quests and no mob XP ]

There are more issues than just these, I normally just run a dungeon 3-5 times now trying to convince people to do that will be drastically harder.

why would cloth users help me do Scarlett Monetary Armory?

Will people just Skip SM Cath because you have to clear all mobs?

We have never had to ask these questions before and this is why people are so passionate about it, we are supposed to be playing this version Forever.

Just make Boosting a lifetime bannable offense.

[u/mholtz05]

Also a great way to meet new people. I remember tanking a slave pens back in the original TBC forever ago, got picked up by a group of guildies that needed a tank. They were an awesome group, ended up joining their guild and raiding with them.

Sure I could have spammed in trade, or found a guild a different way, but grouping for a dungeon is such a more natural way to meet people.

[u/ForsakenLemons → u/mholtz05]

Met quite a few people i still speak to now in 2019 classic from spamming dungeons and chatting and with one joining their guild. Never had that with quests.

Totally mad they dont think its the most social aspect of the game.

[u/deathbivouac → u/ForsakenLemons]

In nearly 20 years I’ve had far more negative interactions with players in the open world than I ever have had in dungeons. Almost consistently it’s a net negative to run into another player outside of a group quest that requires multiple people, thanks to mob tagging and respawn rates. Sitting at some shitty bonfire for a buff ain’t gonna change that.

[u/Dicond → u/deathbivouac]

Exactly, in dungeons there is a motivation to work together toward a common goal. In the open world, there is motivation to compete, whether that be PvP or questing and fighting over tagging a mob. I don't understand the reason behind the dungeon xp nerf to this degree.

[u/Trzlog → u/mholtz05]

Blizzard simply does not and has never understood their own game and their players. Dungeon groups (and eventually raids) are how I socialized in vanilla. In older MMOs, it was partying up to grind mobs. WoW got rid of that and gave us dungeons. Now they've taken dungeons and given us what? Nothing.

[u/CtrlAltHate → u/Trzlog]

Remember the famous line "you think you do but you don't"

The wow team has always been bad at responding to player feedback like they can't accept players giving them solutions/advice

[u/presb → u/CtrlAltHate]

It’s a shame that guy is nearly immortalised with that one quote when he has given WoW so many good unique encounters lol. Great dev, minus one monumentally shitty take

[u/Fishy_125 → u/presb]

iv been seeing some of his breakdowns of bosses on tiktok, its actually great content and insight

[u/shroom_elemental → u/Trzlog]

I met my wife in Zul'Farrak in 2019 ... it's crazy that Blizzard thinks dungeons are not social lol

[u/DanielTeague → u/shroom_elemental]

"So how'd you two meet?" "Well, we were digging up multiple graves one night.."

[u/Albinofreaken → u/mholtz05]

In classic vanilla in 2019, I did SM with a premade of 4, they had just made a guild and needed more people, i enjoyed playing with them so i joined and that guild has been going all the way through classic and we cleared Siege of orgrimmar 25hc

[u/slapdashbr → u/mholtz05]

I met the guy who ended up leading our raid team thru naxx progression, because he was doing DMW for his new warlock's mount. dungeons amd raids are the group content that make this gake worth being an MMO

[u/SeoulDucky → u/mholtz05]

My run ins in the real world were with people I had done dungeons with. Didn't remember anyone else. After this really guts things. 

[u/BiggPapi87 → u/mholtz05]

There are still dungeons in the game this will still happen why are people pretending like no dungeon groups will ever happen again 

[u/AzuzaBabuza → u/BiggPapi87]

if given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of the game.

When dungeon spamming with optimal comps (eg: spellcleave) was 20% to 60% faster than optimal questing, many felt "forced" to do dungeons because it was faster. They hated it, it ruined the game for them. Spellcleave got nerfed as a result.

Now, dungeons are worthless by comparison to questing. Questing, even inefficiently, is dramatically faster than dungeons to the point of making spellcleave look like a joke (its around 300% to 400% faster to quest optimally). Thats not even counting the nerf to spellcleave, or the fact there's more quests in the open world.

(There was a thread that did the math comparing spellcleave to optimal questing but I can't find it at the moment. Those numbers aren't exaggerations)

The bigger the disparity, the more players will begin to care and change how they play. Why do a dungeon when they can quest and get 3x the XP? Many players who like dungeons and/or dislike questing aren't going to bother because of how bad the XP is compared to questing.

You may not care about XP or leveling, but most players do. XP is a big motivator for questing, mob grinding, and dungeons. Its not a matter of "hardcore min maxer wants to rush to 60 asap" (which they'll still do). Its "I want to get a reasonable amount of xp for the time/effort I put in and not feel like my time is being wasted".

There's no justifiable reason for questing to be multiple times faster than dungeons. 99.9% of people I've seen who against the nerf don't want dungeons to be 'optimal' or for players to feel forced to dungeon spam.

They just want it to be a reasonable way to level. If dungeons were around 75% as much xp as questing, people could just do the activity they prefer.

just to be clear: I am not a spammer, hell I rarely do dungeons unless I have quests (chronic pain and fatigue get in the way of doing more). I just stick to solo questing most of the time. This nerf doesn't do anything to make the game better for me, it just makes the game worse for others.

[u/memekid2007 → u/AzuzaBabuza]

When dungeon spamming with optimal comps (eg: spellcleave) was 20% to 60% faster than optimal questing,

When was this, because it was never true in 2019 or Anniversary. No Vanilla leveling speedrun has ever been won by spellcleave (or any dungeon group).

It's always overworld play and has always been overworld play ever since Joannasguide in 2005. Optimal dungeon clears are still gated by the lockout cap, and even with optimal clears leveling time is at minimum a full day /played behind just questing and hitting hyperspawns even for non-Mage classes.

Those optimal spellcleave clears are no longer possible due to targeted mage nerfs. Boosting of low levels directly through mob XP is no longer possible due to levelband XP nerfs (if a mob is grey to anyone in the group it gives 0 XP to everyone in the group) and those same targeted mage nerfs.

Most dungeon groups were not optimal spellcleave groups. Optimal spellcleave groups by definition only impacted 4 mages and a priest per run, and the targeted mage nerfs dealt with that already.

Why does a normal group of 5 players playing the game the normal way have to be punished because Mages were broken in Vanilla such that stacking 4 of them in a dungeon and playing perfectly let you level 80% as quickly as someone leveling perfectly in the open world.

Traditional comps aren't even half as efficient as the spellcleave groups that already no longer exist (and which weren't as good as just questing well was to begin with), and those traditional groups were nerfed by 76%.

The nerfs are so significant that even with the buffs to dungeon quest XP multiple dungeons in the earlygame (where XP rewards from single quests are proportionally worth the most) are day-one skips because they are significantly worse than just questing.

Healers are already not rolling healers because they can't level by healing anymore. Tanks are already not rolling tanks because they can't level by tanking anymore.

These changes create a boost meta where 60s sell quest runs because the mob XP doesn't matter anyway and traditional runs become HR runs because nobody wants a random to take their item when a second run chasing it puts them farther behind with no guaranteed reward to fall back on.

This should be obvious. It should be obvious why this will be worse at 50+, when finding the specific BRD run you need becomes a nightmare and god help you if you need HoJ or SGC and don't have guildies to carry you that don't need it themselves, or who just aren't willing to spend 20 ingame hours on Arena runs for you with literally nothing at all in it for them.

[u/nvmvoidrays → u/BiggPapi87]

because reddit outage, mainly.

[u/Jollypnda → u/BiggPapi87]

Because people like to be extreme. It’s similar to people saying if dungeon mobs gave slightly more xp there would be no one is the world running around

[u/Street-Bee7215 → u/mholtz05]

That will still be a thing that happens.

[u/mholtz05 → u/Street-Bee7215]

I spammed dungeons exclusively to level though, if I only do one run to do quests the amount of interactions like this will plummet.

[u/Laggo → u/mholtz05]

I spammed dungeons exclusively to level though,

you're the problem and why it has to be nerfed, you don't exist in the world to the other players in the game

[u/brnbabyburn → u/mholtz05]

I remember running... 27 slave pens? To get to 67 or something. Xp/h baby!