I miss HM dungeons...
A while ago there was a PF running ARR HM dungeons with no echo and on Min iLv and it made me remember how interesting dungeons could be. Environmental hazards, bosses with mechanics that were more than
dodge orange thing, and biggest of all: Wall-to-wall pulls are impossible sometimes because you need to focus down a specific target or make sure you don't pull something that can one shot the party.
This part in Lost City of Amdapor...
You have to pull the ads without alerting the Baalzephon, cause otherwise it murders the healer, and you can't pull everyone because the Baalzephon is being healed by the towers and you
can't out-damage them. There was strategy to pulling things. Wall-to-wall pulls are the worst thing to ever happen to this game.
Coincidentally in the same dungeon, my brother in law always tells this story about how he was doing it for his first time with a bunch of people, and they didn't know how to handle the doors, but they all worked it out and kept psyching each other up until they killed the boss. Also, HM dungeons used to drop Darklight gear, which was the best stuff you could get via drops before Labrynth of the Ancients came around, so there was a reason to run them.
This entire experience just doesn't exist in the game anymore. Dungeons never provide any real challenge nor gear worth the hustle, and interesting mechanics are entirely MIA. Variant dungeons are the closest we've got to old HM dungeons, which is I why I enjoy them so much, but we've only gotten 3 so far, and while I love my Statice mount, that's the only reward I can think of right now.
More Variant Dungeons and the Exploratory zone can't come back soon enough... and heck, bring back HM dungeons.