Posting this for a LS mate who was throwing ideas around.

There seems to be some discussion among some people that current endgame dungeons are tilted towards a small handful of very specific party setups and strategies. An example is the "Run like hell through Darkhold skipping every fight you can possibly run from so you've enough time to fight ogre/batty" strategy.

It works, and it's the easiest method to ensure best chance of victory and drops, but what if you can't find enough healers or your tank has a freak accident and dies. Going into darkhold without "The Right Setup" increases the difficulty drastically.

So, the proposed idea would be to set star levels for instanced dungeons similar to those used in guildleves, with difficulty and rewards changing accordingly. Then make it so that certain gear (or HQ versions of it) only appear on certain difficulty levels.

* - Might be comparable to a ***** leve, might get some NQ gear. Good for those who want to 'practice' or just wanna do it for RP/story/quest completion purposes.

** - increase in mob level/density, better chance at NQ gear

*** - New areas accessible, mob level up (Just under the current difficulty of dungeons now), High chance of NQ gear, possibility of +1 gear

**** - Mob level up (this tier would be slightly MORE difficult than how it is currently), time limit (1.5 hr), NQ gear guaranteed, greater possibility +1 gear, +2 gear rarely

***** - Mob level up (this tier is for those looking for the most difficult challenges), time limit (1hr), high chance for +1 gear, +2 maybe, +3 rarely
With a difficulty/reward scale like this you could go into a dungeon with a sub-optimal team and still get some challenge and reward, but if you wanted the best rewards you'd still have to work at strategy and team building. Also, this allows to salvage a run where someone DCs or just isn't the right fit for the strategy in mid run by lowering the star rating like we do in guildleves.

If this idea has been proposed before, our apologies, and just fold this thread into the other discussion.

Otherwise, what are some thoughts on the idea?