Court of Stars requirements and tuning

#1 - May 29, 2016, 11:10 a.m.

The court of stars requirements are completely too much. With how reputation gains are right now you are likely to have around 835 ilvl. Having had just finished the rep grind and the quests needed to zone in I instantly queued. Once inside my entire group was ilvl 830+. So not only were we out gearing the entry level into heroics by 20 we had passed the point where the items dropped in the instance would be an item level upgrade. This makes it so the only reasons people would even look at doing court of stars is for their class quests, Glory of the Hero achievements, and mythic difficulty.

Now with these things in mind let's look at the tuning of the instance. The first boss melted before he had a chance to do his double sided attack a third time and only lasted about five seconds after drinking his potion, The second boss managed to get one lava patch ability off, and the last boss managed to get two duplicates of himself out before he died. None of these experiences really felt like bosses this is largely because of the fact that our group completely over geared the instance. I'd now mention the trash and how it made me feel but the fact is if the bosses were jokes then the trash barely even needed to exist it was so easy.

Now there are three solutions. The first being that you can tune the instance up to match the ilvl you will be going in at. This would require you to also give better rewards. The second option is changing the rep requirement. This could be done by either increasing the rep rewards from the quests in the zone and the world quests. Now the third option is treat this instance and the Arcway like you have every other instance since Wrath allowing us to queue for them regardless of the fact that we have done the quests leading into them. There are plenty of time gates on our class quests as it is, and I'm not even sure if they all require you to go into Court of Stars, so there is very little reason to hide these instances behind this rep wall like this.

I personally am a fan of number three.

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Game Designer

#30 - June 14, 2016, 5:16 a.m.

Seeing how this dungeon attunement experiment has played out over the past few weeks, there's no question that tuning and pacing are currently missing the mark. Even setting aside item level expectations, when it comes to Normal and Heroic difficulty, most max-level players use the random dungeon queue. Going from picking a random 1 out of 8 dungeons to a random 1 out of 9 or 10 doesn't feel like much of a reward. And early players to unlock them would have faced brutal wait times if they tried to queue for those dungeons specifically, due to the small matchmaking pool. That's of course a far cry from the excitement of earning access to a new Heroic dungeon back in Burning Crusade, for example.

But at the same time, closely tying these dungeons to the zone progression strengthens both sides of the equation. Each dungeon is situated in the context of the overall story arc of the zone (particularly important for Court of Stars), and the zone storyline offers access to meaningful new content as a reward to complement the usual items and Artifact Power.

In the next beta build, both Arcway and Court of Stars will only be available as Mythic dungeons, unlocked at an appropriate point midway through the main Suramar questline. And in hopefully the build after that, you'll see a few extra items spicing up the loot tables of those dungeons as an extra attraction once they're unlocked. Their Normal and Heroic versions were already far less likely to be seen, due to queue mechanics, and this change is aimed at clarifying the role of these dungeons as endgame unlocked content.

It's crucial to remember that while the label "Mythic" may conjure up visions of hardcore raiding and may seem intimidating for those who haven't yet tried them, the main difference between Heroic and Mythic dungeons lies in the expected item level (810 vs. 830ish) and the fact that there is no random matchmaking available for the latter. An organized group of 5 players with experience and gear from Heroic dungeons should find success when venturing into Mythic. Higher levels of Mythic, accessed via Keystones, are where the major challenges lie.

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Game Designer

#34 - June 14, 2016, 5:44 a.m.

06/13/2016 10:37 PMPosted by Ningjing
Mythic+ isn't available until raids open.

Standard, level 1, mythic is.

At least last we heard and that could change.

Correct. Standard Mythic dungeons (zone in, kill stuff, loot stuff, weekly lockout) will be open right away. The only part that won't be there right away is the "Mythic+" Keystone system, since that parallels other endgame progression systems like raiding and the rated PvP season.

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Game Designer

#35 - June 14, 2016, 5:46 a.m.

06/13/2016 10:28 PMPosted by Tiriél
Now I will have to wait to continue the Suramar storyline until I'm geared for Mythic?

The Arcway and Court of Stars quests will be optional - they'll become available at the appropriate points in the story, but you'll be able to continue the main quest campaign even if you don't finish them. The intent is for unlocking Suramar's dungeons to be a reward for progressing that far in the questline, not to block further quest progress until they are completed.

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Game Designer

#122 - June 15, 2016, 7:13 p.m.

06/15/2016 12:53 AMPosted by Dragnas
So are warriors still going to have their class quests need these dungeons. If so, this seems poorly thought out. Mythic groups usually have Ilvl requirements, and seeing as the gating of the class quest will prevent us from having the third relic slot it will put us behind a little. Honestly I'd rather that the normal dungeons open up at an early rep, and where the quests need you to do something it requires heroic/mythic instance to complete and those modes be tied to higher difficulty.

Class Order campaign quests that currently send players into Suramar dungeons are being changed to target different dungeons - that should be visible in the next build.