Why are Criterion dungeons so hard?

[RamenJD]

It's hard but not impossible to come up with ideas that aren't just team jump rope bosses. The deepest floors of deep dungeon are about carefully navigating around traps and roaming enemies, and conserving limited use items/buffs.

The point you made just contradicted to yourself. You said it’s just the team jump rope bosses. But in both PotD and HoH, all the boss fights are scripted with fixed timelines, and their mechanics in my opinion are very basic. Boss fight being in a scripted timeline is just how the fight design has been in this game for many years (especially since HW), and deep dungeon bosses are no exception.

Trash mobs on the other hand, there’re roaming mobs in both first area and second area too. If you get to the 2nd area in ASS, you would have some similar feelings of being in a deep dungeon too. All 4 mobs are roaming and you have to observe their walking routes which are different per instance, and pull them carefully without accidentally aggoring any other mob (which is gonna likely wipe you). The only difference between ASS and a deep dungeon floor is missing the traps and pomanders.