People that say dungeons are too easy...

[Shurrikhan]

This is partly true. But WoW dungeons from vanilla and TBC required CC, strategy good group composition and tanks would only pull a pack at a time. Sometimes you would even have to pull strategically or risk aggroing another pack which would result in a wipe.

And classic dungeons like Blackrock Depths and Maraudon could take hours to complete fully.

Wrath of the Lich King is what started the YOLO pull everything, with dungeons being super easy, barely an inconvenience. Players, similar to what is happening now in this community, began complaining that dungeons were way too easy. So Blizzard responded in the next expansion Cataclysm, by making dungeons a lot more challenging.

Everyone hated it.

So, they went back to the YOLO pull snoozefest and that's where they've been ever since. If you want a greater challenge, you have to run mythics. Maybe players here want something similar. I will say this may be a case of forum posters not being what the majority of the playerbase actually wants.

The comparison made was between current XIV and current WoW, which reached its difficulty levels beyond Heroic more than a decade ago and has had M+ for over 7 years.

And many still consider Cataclysm to be the best period Normal/Heroic dungeons ever had. Dislike for any difficulty in dungeons was far from unanimous.

Wild times, set up CC on 5/6 targets in a trash pull or prepare to wipe lmao

Unless you were running a Survival Hunter and/or there was the perfect mixture of mobs for your composition, hard CCing at least as many enemies as you have party members wasn't even possible. Nor was that amount of pre-fight hard CC (unless you mean something else by "set up") necessary unless the whole party was significantly underskilled and/or undergeared.

CC was essential, yes, but not to that point. Smart interrupts (DK had ~4 at the time by itself, and some other specs came close to that) and just 1-2 hard CCs on the most annoying but isolateable mobs was enough for decently geared and skilled parties and made dungeons far faster than sacrificing all AoE damage.

Cataclysm dungeons were a terror only for those equivalent to Ice Mages, won't damage-even-in-downtime healers, or those without utilities even on hotbars. For most randomly matched players, they caused some wipes, and not every party was guaranteed a clear without their knowing/learning at least parts of their spec and fights'/mobs' mechanics, but they were plenty manageable.

[Rolder50]

Difference being that WoW has Mythic Plus where you can scale the dungeon up as much as you want. Those mechanics that don't do anything on normal can and absolutely will slap you around on higher keys.

[Lium]

Difference being that WoW has Mythic Plus where you can scale the dungeon up as much as you want. Those mechanics that don't do anything on normal can and absolutely will slap you around on higher keys.

I understand the point that you and others are making, but normal dungeons is where everyone starts when leveling. That's the baseline. How many casual players are doing higher keys? That would be like comparing the base raids of any other MMO to savage raids here. That not really and apples to apples comparison. It's more like an apples to caramel apples comparison.

And now I want some caramel apples.

[Striker44]

And many still consider Cataclysm to be the best period Normal/Heroic dungeons ever had. Dislike for any difficulty in dungeons was far from unanimous.

This...doesn't feel legitimate. The sudden ramp up in difficulty of dungeons in Cata is near-universally given as a big reason Cata crashed, and the significant re-vamps they were given to tone the difficulty down considerably are further evidence of that. I spent years in WoW, both in-game and on the forums, and for every rare person I encountered who "liked" the original Cata dungeons, there were probably a dozen others who didn't...and even that rare one who did likely acknowledged the difficulty level was overwhelmingly disliked.

[Mayhemmer]

I know it's been parroted enough times, but I'd like at least to see some more interesting trash in dungeons. I know I saw a few people talking about trash mechanics but for the life of me I can't seem to find that discussion. There's plenty they could do without turning mob packs into mini-bosses, or whatever else people seem to think is going to happen if they made trash mobs any more involved than just standing there getting stunlocked to death.

People mentioned seeing more mobs that use the prey mechanic, tethering to a random player and focusing them. More of that would be nice.

I don't know if I've seen it in normal dungeons, but why not put sets of mobs among packs that enrage when the other is killed, getting a not-insignificant buff to their damage and attack speed.

Throw in the occasional mob that focuses the healer and also has stun immunity. Mobs with stun immunity is a thing I think the devs should use more often in general, but I feel like they're afraid to do because god forbid players getting upset that their wall-to-wall facerolling is met with even the slightest bit of inconvenience.

There's a decade worth of mob mechanics to pull from and iterate on, and too many good ones to just continue going with the 'vomits AoE puddle at random players feet every 3 seconds' garbage.

[Enjuden]

Quick preface. I have been playing WoW: Dragonflight for the past month or so and got a character to max level over there. I am maining a Havoc Demon Hunter. (It kind of goes with my reaper main here.)

It takes no time at all to level a toon in WoW and it is an overall very shallow and empty experience, as most of the WoW community will readily tell you. (Just take a peep at their forums. It's just as bad as this one.)

But running dungeons is still the fastest way to level up, so I ran a bunch of Dragonflight dungeons and previous expansion dungeons on the way to level 60.

The dungeons are a complete joke, even at level 70. Everyone just ignores mechanics and the vast majority of boss fights are tank and spanks and they die in seconds. These are normal dungeons and if you want a greater challenge you run mythics, but normal dungeons is how you level.

Compare that to FFXIV dungeons where everything past level 50 has myriad one-shot mechanics that require you to be aware of your surroundings and to watch what the boss is doing. You are constantly tap dancing and doing the Hokey Pokey to avoid instant death. Especially in Expert dungeons.

I didn't have a care in the world while running WoW dungeons because mechanics in normal dungeons are inconsequential. I do, however, have to pay attention in roulettes because the moment I get complacent after running the same dungeon over and over again, I can die instantly. And sometimes do!

So, in your opinion, when you say dungeons here are too easy, what kind of challenge level are you looking for exactly? Should everything be on the level of Criterion dungeons?

What one shot mechanics? What instant death? And no, Doom that can be dispelled/bar goes to 100 doesn't count since it is hilariously overgeared. You'd have to be trying to have that filled up to max.

[Shurrikhan]

This...doesn't feel legitimate. The sudden ramp up in difficulty of dungeons in Cata is near-universally given as a big reason Cata crashed, and the significant re-vamps they were given to tone the difficulty down considerably are further evidence of that. I spent years in WoW, both in-game and on the forums, and for every rare person I encountered who "liked" the original Cata dungeons, there were probably a dozen others who didn't...and even that rare one who did likely acknowledged the difficulty level was overwhelmingly disliked.

I've played about 16 years of WoW. More relevant to this point, I played through all of Cata, half of MoP, most of WoD. Across MoP and WoD among Challenge dungeon parties or in Dungeon Finder Heroics one of the most frequent complaints I'd hear was that there was no "real" dungeons outside of those requiring premades (and often dependent on being undergeared even then). Heck, I encountered far more irritable/angry/impatient/generally-upset parties in tBC and WotLK Heroics than in Cata Heroics.

Perhaps there were just fewer people running them --that's not something I can know beyond queue times, which were largely the same-- but for those who actually like dungeons for the dungeoning, instead of just for the Valor farm / grinding gear-currency, things were pretty damn good.

They were not particularly hard for people who at least mostly knew their spec and could at least mostly figure out mechanics, but they weren't a steamroll. But neither, a couple weeks in, was there any expectation of them being a steamroll, which in many ways made the experience far more enjoyable than WotLK. You had actual dungeons again, not just mere hallway sprints the speed of which was, above all else, determined by gear and just how gun-ho your tank was or could be made to be (WoW's version of "Pull to the ****ing wall, tank!").

* And for however much talk there may be Cata dungeons being intolerable, they had nothing on the toxicity-inducing speedbump that was Pit of Saron and Halls of Reflection in terms of the average quality of Dungeon Finder parties.

[Volgia]

My hot take here is that the dungeons feel dumbed down because they require the trust AI to be able to do them, so you will never get interesting mechanics with trash before bosses. Even bosses have a hard time surprising you because it needs to be doable by the AI itself.

You cannot have an adventure without stakes, and gameplay wise the stakes are always to lose or wipe, but nothing Endwalker from the 2 years I've been playing has been threatening, maybe I saw a couple of wipes at the beginning of Smileton but after 6.1 it never happened again.

Some of the design decisions this expansion feel like a response to what the devs think the players find fun. People figured weird openers to have a 6 min buff aligment? Well let's make a 2 min buff aligment so everyone can do that easily. People liked wall to wall enemies and had to do some work not everyone could do to kill big amounts of mobs? Well let's do without aggro and make AoE as simple as possible so everyone can do it, cuz that's what players find fun right?

[Xaphire]

This...doesn't feel legitimate. The sudden ramp up in difficulty of dungeons in Cata is near-universally given as a big reason Cata crashed, and the significant re-vamps they were given to tone the difficulty down considerably are further evidence of that. I spent years in WoW, both in-game and on the forums, and for every rare person I encountered who "liked" the original Cata dungeons, there were probably a dozen others who didn't...and even that rare one who did likely acknowledged the difficulty level was overwhelmingly disliked.

I loved the cata dungeons, but they were tuned too hard for queueing into with randoms. I did all the heroic dungeon achievements for the mount the first week or so of the expansion. As much as I would personally enjoy more challenging dungeon content, the experiences I've had in duty finder makes me think they're as difficult as they can be while still being able to consistently be cleared.

[Leifei]

I think that the dungeon difficulty is mostly fine. However, a DPS check on each boss would be a nice addition. DPS are mostly irrelevant outside of Extreme, Savage, and Ultimate fights because those instances already have DPS checks.