Quote Originally Posted by Forever_Learning View Post
I'm getting the impression that there's a general consensus that things were more difficult in ARR?

I played during that time and I don't remember it being harder.

Hauke - people maybe wiped at the last boss due to the lamps, but that still happens. People unaware they should click return after the second boss was a bigger issues, and remains so. The ease of brayflox largely depended on how much your tank wanted to pull, which I think remains the case.

I always felt the only difficult dungeon pre-50 was Stone Vigil.
Hauke wasn't just the void lamps. The patroling maidens with their aoe terrorize could easily wipe groups as well. Not everyone would stun that cast or realize to focus them down. Brayflox was more just about being up to date and paying attention, more for healers as some nasty poisons there. Qarn's bees with final sting which could wreak a tank, as well as its crocs with their rear cone attacks. Dzamel where need to fight in specific locations for the first portion, and not get knocked over a ledge in a later one. Stone vigals delayed spawn ice sprites. Aurum Vales fruit mechanic. Each added a small degree of challenge to their respective dungeon, either by adding a little more complexity or a little more difficulty. Not enough to really be much of a hurdle to most, but enough to catch those coasting along as well as be appreciated by others. Just enough of a change of pace to be noticed but not also warrant going up a full difficulty setting, as they very carefully built up the difficulty across the dungeons in ARR much like one would expect from a single player game. ARR's MSQ expected more out of the player as they progressed through it.

The expansion dungeons and MSQ have not felt that way yet. Having to prioritize specific trash mobs for stuns/kills is rare, and instead we just mass aoe them all. Very few twists are applied to any mechanics. In short, very little in the new content tries to get the player to step outside of normal play. So once see and understand the gimmick, its easy. As the gimmick is usually just an odd aoe pattern.