Quote Originally Posted by KaivaC View Post
I'd say the gap is pretty big, though perhaps not as bad as it was back in HW (I glimpsed a little bit of it in 3.56). I do feel like the last two dungeons ramped up the difficulty a little bit. I think the highest that the bar should get for casual players should be Shinryu. Anything higher than that would be hitting Savage territory, and that would do more harm than good, I feel. Fractal and Hells Lid are a pretty good step-up I think, because while they are still not absolutely dangerous, they will still punish you if you mess up.
Seems reasonable. I find Hells Lid better than Fractal on that, though, probably because they use vuln up more liberally and the bosses have attacks that punch back harder. Fractal doesn't feel like much is a threat to kill me. But conceptually I do think expert is the place that needs the difficulty boost, so I'd go for that plan.

I've said it before, but rather than having mobs consisting of 5-6 enemies, I'd like to see unique mobs with mechanics. Something that actually requires more than just the same old stuff.
Remember the old days when trash required stuff like CC and was more than "round up 3 packs and AoE it?" Good itmes.

Of course, it has to be balanced, and ideally if Fractal and Hells Lid were to be the dungeons that started the trend of scaling difficulty, then it should continue into 5.0. Maybe by the end of that expansion, optional dungeon content can start to be tuned towards Shinryu (with balance in mind...don't want the devs to overtune the enemies.)
Sounds good. I think we're largely on the same page. I don't want to chase people out of the game, but expert really shouldn't be named that if it's sleepwalk content.